Abstract While perceptual experience seems necessary for appreciating some artworks, it is not necessary for appreciating others. We must arguably see a painting or a reproduction of it if we are to appreciate it and listen to a performance or recording of a work of music if we are to appreciate it. However, there are some artworks the appreciation of which does not require us to perceive them or recordings, reproductions or copies of them. Descriptions of the non-aesthetic properties of some artworks can put those with the requisite background knowledge in a position to appreciate them. The puzzle of appreciation by description is why descriptions of the non-aesthetic properties of some artworks could enable us to appreciate the artworks they describe, while descriptions of the non-aesthetic properties of other artworks could not. I solve the problem by giving an account of the general requirements for the aesthetic appreciation of art that explains why descriptions enable the aesthetic appreciation of some artworks but not others. This account also illuminates the conditions that descriptions and perceptual experiences of artworks must meet if they are to enable appreciation of those artworks. This account shows that, contrary to some rival accounts of the prerequisites for the aesthetic appreciation of art, what matters is not the non-inferentiality of our access to the non-aesthetic properties on which artworks' aesthetic properties depend, but the non-inferentiality of our experiential responses to those properties.
Catharine Abell (Thu,) studied this question.