Argumenta – Journal of Analytic Philosophy

This paper critically examines Murray Smith’s proposal of building ‘the third culture’, a research paradigm that unites sciences and the humanities. While I am sympathetic to Smith’s proposal, exemplified in what he calls naturalized aesthetics, I argue that it is lacking in two respects: by not giving a proper account of the spectators’ moral engagements with films, and by ignoring a wider social nature and cultural embeddedness of spectators’ artistic experiences.

I respond to the commentaries of each of my critics, while seeking to offer a through line of argument distilling some central themes addressed in the symposium. In response to Terrone, I focus on the place of normativity in the model of triangulation, noting that “proto-normativity” is already present in the biological world. Sticking with normativity but shifting the focus specifically onto moral questions, I respond to Vidmar Jovanović’s comments on the ways in which character, and emotion, are related to morality, while also acknowledging the specifically political dimension of…