David Davies
Professor
David Davies has taught at McGill since 1987. He has a PhD in Philosophy from the University of Western Ontario (1987), following a BA in Politics, Philosophy and Economics (Wadham College, Oxford, 1970) and an MA in Philosophy (Manitoba 1979). His doctoral research and much of his research for the following few years was on the Realism/Anti-Realism debate in contemporary metaphysics, and on related issues in the Philosophy of Mind and Philosophy of Language. For the past 20 years his research has focused mainly on metaphysical and epistemological issues in the Philosophy of Art, where he has also published widely on topics relating to literature, film, photography, music, dance, performance, and the visual arts. He has been a director, since 1998, of the annual Philosophy of Science conference held at the Inter-University Centre in Dubrovnik, Croatia, and is a founding director of the Philosophy of Art conference held in the same location starting in 2012. He was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 2015, and served as President of the American Society for Aesthetics from 2021-23.
Please see link to Research CV for full details.
Books and Monographs
An Ontology of Multiple Artworks (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2024)
Philosophy of The Performing Arts (Oxford: Wiley Blackwell, 2011)
Aesthetics and Literature (London: Continuum/Bloomsbury, 2007). [Albanian translation forthcoming]
Art as Performance (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004) [Chinese translation by Fong Jun (Nanjing: Jiangsu Meishu Chubanshe (Jiangsu Fine Arts Publishing House), 2008]
Edited books
Blade Runner, co-edited with Amy Coplan, edited collection of original papers in the series âPhilosophers on Filmâ, (London: Routledge, 2015).
The Thin Red Line, edited collection of original papers in the series âPhilosophers on Filmâ. (London: Routledge, August 2008).
Contemporary Readings in the Philosophy of Literature, anthology co-edited with Carl Matheson, (Toronto, April 2008).
Articles Published, Forthcoming, or In Progress
âAnalytic Aesthetics since 2000', to appear in Garry Hagberg, ed., Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, in progress.
âSibleyan objectivism about aesthetic propertiesâ, with Elisabeth Schellekens, in progress.
âWhat is the mode of being of the artwork?, in Noel Carroll, ed., Controversies in Contemporary Aesthetics (London: Routledge). In progress.
âPhilosophical aspects of fictional discourseâ, in Keith Brown, ed., The Encyclopaedia of Language and Linguistics 3rd Edition, Vol. 4 (Elsevier: Oxford, forthcoming).
âWhat should a nominalist say about multiple artworks?â, forthcoming in Joshua Brown and Otavio Bueno, eds., The Philosophy of Jody Azzouni (Dordrecht: Springer).
âTheatrical works, theatrical performances, and performance practiceâ, forthcoming in Philosophy, Analytic Aesthetics, and Theater (Routledge) edited by Michael Y. Bennett.
âCreativity and imagination in danceâ, co-authored with Anna Pakes, forthcoming in Amy Kind & Julie Langkau, eds., Oxford Handbook on the Philosophy of Imagination and Creativity.
âCollingwood on âpainting imaginativelyâ and the expressive nature of the artworkâ, forthcoming in David Collins and Christopher Williams, eds., Interpreting R. G. Collingwood (Cambridge: Cambridge UP), 204-22.
âNine explananda in search of an explanansâ, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 81.4 (Fall 2023), 444-53.
âSculptureâ, in Noel Carroll and Jonathan Gilmore, eds., Routledge Companion to the Philosophies of Painting and Sculpture (New York: Routledge, 2023), 17-27.
âPerformance artâ, in Noel Carroll and Jonathan Gilmore, eds., Routledge Companion to the Philosophies of Painting and Sculpture (New York: Routledge, 2023), 59-68.
âWhere is the (art)world is Martin Creed?â, in Elisabeth Schellekens and Davide Dal Sasson, eds., Aesthetics, Philosophy, and Martin Creed (London: Bloomsbury, 2022), 9-26.
âThe anthropology of artâ, in Lydia Goehr, Jonathan Gilmore, and Jonathan Fine, eds., A Companion to Arthur C. Danto (New York: Wiley-Blackwell, 2022), 102-10.
âDefinition of Fiction: State of the Artâ, British Journal of Aesthetics 62.2 (April 2022), 241-55.
âAppreciating Improvisations as Artâ, in Alessandro Bertinello and Marcello Ruta, eds., Routledge Handbook of Philosophy and Improvisation in the Arts (London: Routledge, 2021), 145-58.
âPuy on âNested Typesââ, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 79.2 (2021), 251â255.
âDance and Technologyâ, in Rebecca Farinas and Julie van Camp, eds., The Bloomsbury Handbook of Dance and Philosophy (London: Bloomsbury, 2021), 321-29.
âAnalytic philosophy of musicâ, in Tomas Macauley, Jerrold Levinson, and Nanette Nielsen, eds., Oxford Handbook of Western Music and Philosophy (Oxford: OUP, 2020), 65-88.
âImagination in the Philosophy of artâ, in Anna Abrahams, ed, Cambridge Handbook of the Imagination (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020), 565-77.
âPerformance in Anglo-American Philosophyâ, co-written with Anna Pakes, in Laura Cull OâMaoilearca and Alice Lagaay, eds., Routledge Companion to Performance Philosoph y (London: Routledge, 2020), 77-87.
ââCategories of Artâ for contextualistsâ, in a symposium celebrating the 50th anniversary of Kendall Waltonâs âCategories of artâ, in Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 78.1 (2020), 75-9.
âDance seen and dance-screenedâ, Midwest Studies in Philosophy vol. 43 (2019), 117-32.
âAnimationâ, in Noel Carroll, Laura Teresa Di Summa, and Shawn Loht, eds., The Palgrave Handbook for the Philosophy of Film and Motion Pictures (Basingstoke: Palgrave-McMillan, 2019), 165-87.
âMaking sense of âpopular artââ, Croatian Journal of Philosophy XIX, no. 56 (2019), 205-27.
âArtistic crimes and misdemeanoursâ, British Journal of Aesthetics 59.3 (2019), 305-21.
âPhilosophical dimensions of film experienceâ, in Christina Rawls, Diana Neiva, and Steven Goveia, eds. Philosophy and Film: Bridging Divides (London: Routledge, 2019), 135-56.
âA moderately pessimistic perspective on âcooperative naturalismââ, Projections 12(2) (Winter 2018), 9-18.
âMisreading Emmaâ, in E. M. Dadlez, ed., Jane Austenâs Emma: Philosophical Perspectives, in the series Oxford Studies in Philosophy and Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), 184-215.
âEvidence of facture and the appreciative relevance of artistic activityâ, in Alberto Voltolini and Jerome Pelletier, eds., The Pleasure of Pictures (London: Routledge, 2018), 286-302.
âArt and thought-experimentsâ, in Michael T. Stuart, Yiftach Fehige, and James Robert Brown, eds., The Routledge Companion to Thought Experiments (London: Routledge, 2018), 512-25.
âThe semantics of Sibleyan aesthetic judgmentsâ, in James Young, ed., Semantics of Aesthetic Judgments (Oxford: OUP, 2017), 106-20.
âDescriptivism and its discontentsâ, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 75.2 (2017), 117-29.
âApplied aestheticsâ, in Kasper Rasmussen, Kimberley Brownlee, and David Coady, (eds), Blackwell Companion to Applied Philosophy (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2016), 487-500.
âThe function of generalisation in art history: understanding art across traditionsâ, in Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art 36.1 (Spring 2016), 8-19.
âFictional truth and truth in fictionâ, in Noel Carroll and John Gibson, eds., Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Literature (2015), 372-81.
âSibley and the limits of everyday aestheticsâ, Journal of Aesthetic Education 49.2 (2015), 50-65.
âFictive utterance and the fictionality of narratives and worksâ, British Journal of Aesthetics 55.1 (2015), 39-55.
âBlade Runner and the cognitive values of cinemaâ, in Amy Coplan and David Davies, eds., Blade Runner (London: Routledge, 2015), in the series âPhilosophers on Filmâ, 134-54.
âVarying impressionsâ, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 73.1 (2015), 81-92.
ââThis is your brain on artâ: what can philosophy of art learn from neuroscience?â, in Gregory Currie, Matthew Kieran, Aaron Meskin, and Jon Robson, eds., Aesthetics and the Sciences of Mind (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 57-74.
âWatching the unwatchable: IrrĂŠversible, Empire, and the paradox of intentionally inaccessible artâ, in Jerrold Levinson, ed., Suffering art gladly: the paradox of negative emotions (London: Macmillan Palgrave, 2013), 246-66.
âCategories of artâ, in Routledge Companion to Aesthetics 3rd ed. (London: Routledge, 2013), 224-34.
âDancing around the issues: prospects for an empirically grounded philosophy of danceâ, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 71.2 (2013), 195-202.
âWhat type of âtypeâ is a film?â, in Christy Mag Uidhir, ed., Art and Abstract Objects (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 263-283.
âPornography, art, and the intended response of the receiverâ, in Hans Maes and Jerrold Levinson, eds., Aesthetics and Pornography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 61-82.
âThe dialogue between words and music in the composition and comprehension of songâ, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 71.1 (2013), 13-22.
âCan philosophical thought experiments be âscreenedâ?â, in Melanie Frappier, Letitia Meynell, and James Robert Brown, , eds., Thought Experiments in Philosophy, Science, and the Arts (London: Routledge, 2012), 223-38.
âEnigmatic variationsâ, The Monist 95.4 (2012), 644-63.
ââIĂŰĚŇ´ŤĂ˝appl be your mirrorâ?: embodied agency, dance, and neuroscienceâ, in Peter Goldie and Elisabeth Schellekens, eds., The Aesthetic Mind: Philosophy and Psychology (Oxford: OUP, 2011), 346-56.
âDigital technology, indexicality, and cinemaâ, Rivista di estetica 46 (2011), special edition on Ontology of Cinema, 45-60.
âMedium in musicâ, in Theodore Gracyk and Andrew Kania, eds., Routledge Companion to Philosophy and Music. (London: Routledge, 2011), 48-58.
âMultiple instances and multiple âinstancesââ, British Journal of Aesthetics 50.4 (2010), 411-26.
âLearning through fictional narratives in art and scienceâ, in Roman Frigg and Matthew Hunter, eds., Beyond Mimesis and Convention: Representation in Art and Science (Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science 262), (Dordrecht: Springer, 2010), 51-70.
âEluding Wilsonâs âelusive narratorsââ, Philosophical Studies 147.3 (2010), 387-94.
âScruton on the inscrutability of photographsâ, British Journal of Aesthetics 49 (2009), 341-55.
âThe primacy of practice in the ontology of artâ, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 67.2 (2009), 159-71.
âDodd on the âaudibilityâ of musical worksâ, British Journal of Aesthetics 49.2 (2009), 99-108.
âThe artistic relevance of creativityâ, in K. Bardsley, D. Dutton. M. Krausz, eds., The Concept of Creativity in Science and Art, 2nd ed. (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 213-33.
âOn the very idea of âOutsider Artââ, British Journal of Aesthetics 49.1 (2009), 25-41.
âSusan Sontag, Diane Arbus, and the ethical dimensions of photographyâ, in Garry Hagberg, ed., Art and Ethical Criticism (Oxford: Blackwell, 2008), 211-28.
âCollingwoodâs âperformanceâ theory of artâ, British Journal of Aesthetics 48.2 (2008), 162-74.
âHow photographs âsignifyâ the worldâ, in Scott Walden (ed.), Photography and Philosophy (Oxford: Blackwell, 2008), 167-86.
âTelling pictures: The place of narrative in late-modern visual artâ, in Peter Goldie and Elisabeth Schellekens (eds)., Philosophy and Conceptual Art (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 138-56.
âArts and intentions: reflections on Currieâs interdisciplinary turnâ, British Journal of Aesthetics 46.2 (2006). 192-203.
âAgainst âenlightened empiricismââ, in Matthew Kieran, ed., Contemporary Debates in Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005), 22-34.
âThe imaged, the imagined, and the imaginaryâ, in Matthew Kieran and Dominic Lopes, eds., Imagination, Philosophy and the Arts (London: Routledge, 2003), pp. 225-44.
âMediumâ, in Jerrold Levinson, ed., Oxford Handbook of Aesthetics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 181-91.
âFictionâ, in Berys Gaut and Dominic Lopes, eds., Routledge Companion to Aesthetics (London: Routledge, 2000), pp. 263-73.
âArtistic intentions and the ontology of artâ, British Journal of Aesthetics 39.2 (1999), pp. 148-62.
âOn gauging attitudesâ, Philosophical Studies 90 (1998), pp. 129-54.
âHow sceptical is Kripke's âsceptical solutionâ?â, Philosophia (1998), pp. 119-140.