Comments on Expressivenesss: Perception and Emotions in the Experience of Expressive Objects

In this commentary, I address two aspects of Benenti’s approach to the problem of expressive experience. First, I examine her characterization of response-dependent account of expressive properties, and I contend that her concern with the possible relativistic consequences of this approach could be appeased if she would have taken into account some versions of this account à la McDowell. Secondly, I question the need to ground expressive experience in the presence of inherently expressive features of the music eliciting expressive experiences. After a particular understanding of the possible representational contents afforded by the duck-rabbit figure, I propose that the multiple representational capacity ascribable to the figure does not require that the features grounding those representational contents possess any inherent representational character. Similarly, I contend, we can make sense of the normative character of expressive experiences without endorsing a particular commitment with the existence of inherently expressive features grounding those experiences.