Alice Harberd

Papers

FORTHCOMING:

Aesthetic Bias in Epistemic Evaluation and the Value of Art, The British Journal of Aethetics, [forthcoming, penultimate version]

I argue that aesthetic properties can negatively bias our epistemic evaluations: they can make us think that communications which are actually significant or profound are banal or unimportant. Then, I argue that this observation has implications for our understanding of the value of art. Many people think their favourite artworks are valuable qua art partly because of the insights they convey – a version of a view called aesthetic cognitivism. One objection to this view highlights the difficulty of giving examples of insights learned from art - articulations of the supposed ‘insights’ often sound hopelessly banal. However, the potential for aesthetically-induced epistemic underestimations undermines this objection. The aesthetic properties which articulations of insights from artworks tend to bear are likely to give a false impression of banality. So, attempts to articulate insights from artworks aren’t reliable evidence of the epistemic value of those works.

UNDER REVIEW:

A paper on stereotypes and aesthetic perception (title redacted for review purposes)

WORK IN PROGRESS:

Closure and the Narrative Self 

I argue that a particular epistemological worry about narrative self-conceptions has been taken too seriously. This is the worry that pressure to realise closure in our self-narratives will lead us to misunderstand ourselves. Some apparent motivation for this worry stems from the aesthetic character of narrative – I argue that these considerations do not in fact support the worry. Rather, the aesthetic character of narrative provides routes for a narrative self-conception to help us resist pressure towards resolution.

The Aesthetics of Self-Inquiry

I argue that aesthetic experience plays an important role in supporting a particular kind of curiosity about oneself, which is both epistemically beneficial, and constitutive of a healthy self-love. First, I argue that the value of self-inquiry is not entirely epistemic: the activity of self-inquiry is a way of paying ourselves a kind of affectively-laden attention characteristic of a healthy self-regard. Then, I argue that the aesthetic plays an important role in self-curiosity. This is because it is distinctive of aesthetically experiences which are both valuable and powerful that they are generative – they make us keep wanting to return to the object we are experiencing. So, aestheticizing our self-conception can help us maintain the kind of curiosity distinctive of healthy attachment to the self. One way to do this is to formulate an aesthetically rich narrative of one’s life.

Narrativity is a Choice

This paper argues against Strawson's (2004) objections to narrative theories of the self by defending a particular view of what it means for a representation to be 'narrative'. Whether a representation counts as narrative, on this view, depends not only on its intrinsic features, but on how it is expressed. The two key implications of this view for the debate about narrative self-conceptions are, firstly, that being narrative doesn't imply that a representation is coherent in the way Strawson implies is problematic, and secondly, that Strawson isn't entitled to claim that his own self-conception is not narrative.

Singing

I have been lucky enough to perform and record with groups including the Taverner Consort, Instruments of Time and Truth, The Marian Consort, London Choral Sinfonia, St. Martin's Voices, Sansara and Eleutherios. I also sing with the choirs at the Royal Hospital Chelsea, the Tower of London Chapel, and St Brides Church.

Alongside classical singing, I enjoy Javanese Gamelan - an Indonesian percussion orchestra. I am a very rusty pesindhen (female vocal soloist) and sometimes play with Siswa Sukra at the Indonesian Embassy in London.

Some music I like: this by renaissance composer John Sheppard, this by Poulenc, this Scottish folk song, this by The Smiths, this by Ariel Pink, this by Taylor Swift, this by Tchaikovsky, this by contemporary Scottish composer James MacMillan, this Javanese Gamelan piece, this American Songbook classic... I could go on!