Emine Hande Tuna Uncategorized

Imaginative Fragility at APA Pacific 2023

I’ll be presenting my paper titled “Imaginative Fragility” at the upcoming APA Pacific conference on April 5th at 1 pm. I feel fortunate to be joined by an outstanding group of panelists, and I’m grateful to Olivia Bailey for bringing us together.

Here is the abstract of my talk:

Leyla, Fatma’s daughter, tells her that she is no longer in love with her spouse and wants to get a divorce. Fatma feels like she cannot imagine, let alone comprehend, why one would want to end a marriage because they are no longer in love. She can’t bring herself to imagine it because even the mere act of imagining it feels as though it would shatter her whole worldview. She was never in love with her own spouse, her mom was not in love with her father. Indeed, it never occurred to her that marriage involved such kind of feelings or commitments. Of course, she has watched many romantic Turkish soap operas, but she always thought that loving marriages or the idea of marrying for love were all purely fictional and have nothing to do with her reality. At times, she had contemplated what it means to be in love and felt some yearning for it but she never considered that marriage has anything to do with love. So now when Leyla tells her that she can no longer be with her husband because she is not in love, she cannot imagine why love has got something to do with marriage. 

I call this phenomenon Fatma experiences “imaginative fragility.” I claim that it occurs when an otherwise competent imaginer feels unwillingness or inability to engage in an imaginative activity because they perceive it as an existential threat to themselves. In this paper, my aim is to define imaginative fragility. To clarify this phenomenon, I compare it to cognitive dissonance and imaginative resistance. I argue some of the cases that we associate with cognitive dissonance may actually be cases of imaginative fragility. And some cases of imaginative resistance – but not all – can also be cases of imaginative fragility. Additionally, I claim that cases where we feel resistance or inability to engage with imaginative activities prompted by works of fiction are not always cases of imaginative resistance, but they are cases of imaginative fragility. Therefore, imaginative resistance cases and imaginative fragility cases do not always overlap.

Emine Hande Tuna Uncategorized

Kant on Extrinsic Final Value – NAKS Biennial 2023

I will be presenting my paper, “Objective Purposiveness and Extrinsic Final Value”, at the Biennial Meeting of the North American Kant Society in March 2023, in Mexico City.

Here is the abstract: This paper proposes an alternative Kantian approach to extrinsic final value, namely the value we attribute to an object for its own sake due to its extrinsic features. Then it explores the merits of the approach in relation to extant views, Christine Korsgaard’s and Wlodek Rabinowicz and Toni Rønnow-Rasmussen’s.

Here is the handout.

Hex and I on Kant street in Mexico City

Emine Hande Tuna Uncategorized

Bolzano’s Aesthetics – APA Eastern 2023

I will be giving a talk titled “Bolzano’s Cognitivism” on a panel on Bolzano’s aesthetics alongside Dominic McIver Lopes, Sandra Shapsay, and Clinton Tolley.

Here is the abstract: This paper examines Bernard Bolzano’s aesthetic cognitivism. One main identifying marker of aesthetic cognitivism is the belief that aesthetic experience is actual cognition. However, aesthetic cognitivism comes in many flavors, each with its own additional commitments. Bolzano’s cognitivism has a German Rationalist flavor to it and is reminiscent of the accounts of earlier German rationalists like Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten and Christian Wolff, one of the fathers of rationalism. As a result, it may appear constrained, rigid, or even archaic. To begin, the features of his philosophy that contribute to this perception, as well as the points of disagreement between Bolzano and the rationalists, will be identified. It will then be argued that, while incorporating various rationalist elements into his theory of aesthetics, Bolzano developed a distinct brand of aesthetic cognitivism.

Emine Hande Tuna News

IR & Kant @ APA Central

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I will be presenting my paper, “Kant on the Puzzle of Imaginative Resistance,” at the APA Central in February 2021. Hopefully, in person, in New Orleans, Louisiana. Here is the abstract:

Abstract: The phenomenon of “imaginative resistance” (IR) refers to psychological difficulties otherwise competent imaginers experience when engaging in particular imaginative activities prompted by works of fiction. While the topic has attracted considerable philosophical attention, so far no historical investigation of the phenomenon has been carried out. I want to amend this gap in the literature by constructing a Kantian explanation. The choice to focus on Kant is not arbitrary. We can derive important insights from his empirical psychology which allow us to articulate certain aspects of IR that have been neglected, particularly the role of emotions. The main Kantian contribution to this debate, as I will show, is to upset the polarization between rival explanations of IR, by suggesting that our possible responses to morally flawed works can vary. In some cases, we resist imagining counter-evaluative claims due to our unwillingness to do so, and in others, due to an inability.

Emine Hande Tuna News

Upcoming Virtual & Non-virtual talks on Apt Perception & Installation Art (APA Eastern, ASA Annual, Padova)

otWahok0RR+j16o0M6NlyA_thumb_118eOctavian Ion and I will be presenting our paper titled “Apt Perception, Aesthetic Engagement, and Installation Art” at the American Society for Aesthetics Annual Meeting which will be held virtually the week of November 9-14, 2020. We will also be presenting it at the “Space, Site, Installation” Conference which was initially set to held in Padova on March 23-25 but now postponed and at the 2021 Eastern APA.

Here is the abstract:

In this paper we apply the account Susanna Siegel develops in The Rationality of Perception to aesthetic cases and explore the implications of such an account for aesthetic engagement as well as curatorial and exhibitionary practices. We contend that one’s prior outlook – expertise, beliefs, desires, fears, preferences – can have both aesthetically good and bad influences on perceptual experiences, just as it can have both epistemically good and bad influences. Unless we take our perception of high-level and low-level aesthetically relevant properties to be assessable as apt or inapt, we will be at a loss to explain cases of “hijacked” aesthetic perception. We explore the merits of the aptness of perception thesis for reconceptualizing aesthetic engagement in more pluralist terms and show how such reconceptualization allows us to make sense of our engagement with installation art. We end by discussing some practical implications this approach has for curatorial and exhibitionary practices.

One of the examples we talk about is the 2019 Mickalene Thomas exhibit at the Art Gallery of Ontario. Hence the photograph.

Emine Hande Tuna News

Virtual Talk on Kant & Imaginative Resistance JUNE 8TH NAKS

DP883945.jpgI will be presenting my paper, “Kant on the Puzzle of Imaginative Resistance,” on June 8th at 12:30 pm (EST) at the North American Kant Society Biennial Meeting. It will be a virtual talk. Here is the abstract:

Abstract: The phenomenon of “imaginative resistance” refers to psychological difficulties otherwise competent imaginers experience when engaging in particular imaginative activities prompted by works of fiction. While the topic has attracted considerable philosophical attention since 1994, Hume is often cited as the first philosopher to have diagnosed the phenomenon. Unfortunately, so far no historical investigation of the phenomenon has been carried out and no attempt has been made to examine how imaginative resistance connects up with the writings of any of the major philosophical figures in the history of aesthetics. I want to amend this gap in the literature by constructing a Kantian explanation of the phenomenon. The choice to focus on Kant is not arbitrary since I believe that we can derive important insights from his empirical psychology which allow us articulate certain aspects of the imaginative resistance phenomenon that have been neglected within the existing literature, particularly the role of emotions. The main Kantian contribution to this debate, as I will show, is to upset the polarization between rival explanations of imaginative resistance, by suggesting that our possible responses to morally flawed works can vary. In some cases, we resist imagining counter-evaluative claims due to our unwillingness to do so, and in others, due to an inability.

Emine Hande Tuna News

CANCELLED: “Aptness of Perception and Aesthetic Normativity” in Tallinn

I will presenting my paper titled “Aptness of Perception and Aesthetic Normativity” at the European Society for Aesthetics Conference in Tallinn, Estonia, in June.  Here is the short abstract for the talk:

ABSTRACT: In this paper I apply the account Susanna Siegel develops in The Rationality of Perception to aesthetic cases and explore the implication of such an account for rethinking one of the traditional problems in philosophical aesthetics. I contend that one’s prior outlook – expertise, beliefs, desires, fears, preferences – can have aesthetically good and bad influences on perceptual experiences, just as it can have epistemically good and bad influences. Analyzing these bad influences in cases of “hijacked” aesthetic perception will reveal that, unless we realize that our perception of high-level and low-level aesthetically relevant properties is assessable as apt or inapt, we will be at a loss to explain what goes wrong in these cases. I argue that, just as perception can be rational or irrational (“the rationality of perception thesis”), so too can it be apt or inapt (“the aptness of perception thesis”). I explore the merits of the aptness of perception thesis for reconceptualizing aesthetic normativity.