Dear All,


The following item may be of interest.



Naturalizing Aesthetics: Aesthetics, Ethics, and Emotion


Book Panel and Workshop

Drama Studio, 10 Hadenfeld Avenue (Y3A), Room 187

Macquarie University

Friday March 6, 2020



Convenors: Karen Pearlman (Macquarie) and Robert Sinnerbrink (Macquarie)

Participants: Karin Kukkonen (Oslo), Richard Menary (Macquarie), Karen Pearlman 
(Macquarie), Robert Sinnerbrink (Macquarie), Murray Smith (University of Kent), 
Wyatt Moss-Wellington (Nottingham Ningbo), John Sutton (Macquarie), Julia 
Vassilieva (Monash)



Book Panel and Symposium

What can a naturalistic approach bring to the philosophy of art and film? Can a 
naturalist aesthetics meet the objections of sceptics and provide a robust 
account of art and aesthetic experience? What can naturalism offer to 
theorizing our emotional engagement with art and film? This event brings 
together philosophers and film theorists to explore the question of 
naturalizing aesthetics and how this might help bridge the divide between the 
humanities and the sciences. Murray Smith’s Film, Art and the Third Culture: A 
Naturalized Aesthetics of Film (Oxford: 2017) has stimulated much debate in 
aesthetics and philosophy of film. Alluding to C.P. Snow’s famous account of 
the adversarial ‘two cultures’ (scientific and humanistic) and advocacy of a 
‘third culture’ combining the two, Smith argues that a naturalized approach to 
aesthetics has much to offer contemporary philosophical understanding of art 
and the philosophical theorization of film. Philosophers and film theorists 
will address key claims in Smith’s work on the naturalization of aesthetics and 
examine how this might help us advance inquiry into the aesthetics of film.

Other symposium presentations will address the topic of naturalizing aesthetics 
from a variety of theoretical perspectives (cognitivism, phenomenology, film 
theory, literary theory moral psychology, and so on). Participants will explore 
how a naturalistic approach informs their work on art and culture but also what 
art and culture requires us to consider when using naturalistic approaches. 
Topics to be address include naturalism and aesthetics, theorising cinematic 
experience from a naturalistic perspective, the role of emotional engagement in 
evaluating cinema, and cognitive approaches to narrative and literature.



Naturalising Aesthetics: Book Panel and Workshop

Drama Studio 10 Hadenfeld Ave (Y3A), Room 187



10:15 Welcome and Intro

10:30 -- 12.30 Book Panel on Murray Smith's Film, Art, and the Third Culture 
(Oxford, 2018)

David Macarthur (Sydney), Robert Sinnerbrink (MQ), Wyatt Moss-Wellington 
(Nottingham Ningbo) with response from Murray Smith (Kent)



Lunch (self-catered) 12:30 to 2pm


2:00-4:00 Workshop on Naturalising Aesthetics

Karin Kukkonen (Oslo), ‘Getting Things Wrong: Form, Literature and Predictive 
Processing’

Karen Pearlman (MQ), ‘Distributed Cognition and Filmmaking Practices’

Richard Menary (MQ), ‘Aesthetic Niches’

Murray Smith (Kent), ‘Graded Consciousness, the Attentional Blink, and Film 
Perception’

John Sutton (MQ), ‘Distributed Creativity: domains, dimensions, differences’

Julia Vassilieva (Monash), ‘Eisenstein and naturalised aesthetics’



4:15-4:30 General wrap-up discussion and conclusion



This event is generously supported by the Faculty of Arts, Macquarie University 
and the Centre for the History of Emotions node, Macquarie University.



For further information please contact Robert Sinnerbrink: 
[email protected]



Dr Robert Sinnerbrink

Associate Professor / Former ARC Future Fellow


Department of Philosophy  |   Faculty of Arts

Level 2, The Australian Hearing Hub

16 University Avenue

Macquarie University, NSW 2109, Australia


T: +61 2 9850 9935  |  F: +61 2 9850 9394 | 
[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>


Staff 
Profile<http://www.mq.edu.au/about_us/faculties_and_departments/faculty_of_arts/department_of_philosophy/staff/robert_sinnerbrink>

Google Scholar 
Profile<https://scholar.google.com.au/citations?hl=en&user=PHgwWfcAAAAJ>

Academia Page<https://mq.academia.edu/RobertSinnerbrink>

New Books:

<https://books.google.com.au/books/about/Terrence_Malick.html?id=xM-kugEACAAJ&redir_esc=y>

Terrence Malick: Filmmaker and Philosopher 
<https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/terrence-malick-9781350063624/>

<https://books.google.com.au/books/about/Terrence_Malick.html?id=xM-kugEACAAJ&redir_esc=y>

Cinematic Ethics<https://www.routledge.com/products/9781138826168>


[Macquarie University]<http://mq.edu.au>

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