Cost, Copyright, and Embodiment - A Submission to the Canadian Copyright EConsultation

The following is my submission to the Canadian Copyright EConsultation which was conducted recently to give Canada's citizens - the ultimate stakeholders - a chance to register their views on copyright reform. Sorry if the writing clunks a little or verges on the didactic - I banged it out in three hours right before the deadline. But please do critique the reasoning, as I've come to what I'm sure are some pretty controversial conclusions. You can get more info about the consultation at Professor Michael Geist's blogs here and here. The original Consultation page is here.

Copyright Consultation Submission

My name is Todd Howe. I’m drafting my submission to the Consultation today in my capacity as a private citizen. Though I am employed in the lower tiers of the telecommunications industry and have taken an active interest in issues of copyright and privacy, I have no direct economic interest in the outcome of this consultation process other than that shared in common by all Canadians. Without prejudging the difficult work the consultation now has before it in finding an equitable synthesis of the many views it has received, I would urge the ministry to consider this factor carefully during its deliberations: the starting point of native impartiality which the many ordinary Canadians involved in this process bring to the table.

I am grateful for this opportunity to present my views to the Consultation. On my view this process, enabled as it is by the unique ability of our age to rapidly collate and disseminate information, is one of the most important innovations in Canadian public policy in recent memory and I would encourage the government of Canada to continue in this vein as we move towards the desired reformation of copyright law. I believe it is, in fact, ultimately illustrative of the correct approach to take in enabling Canadians to interact with their own culture – an open and fair one.

Why does copyright matter? (How do Canada’s copyright laws affect you?)

There’s little doubt that issues of copyright have become increasingly important to Canadians in a way that the original framers of copyright law could never have imagined. It is now possible, thanks to technology, to divorce the content of a creative work from its physical manifestation, to abstract it away from books and journals and recordings and performances.

I would like to suggest that, in principle at least, this process has only one precedent in our history as a species, and that is the oral tradition - which of course predated any form of physical transcription and which continues to exist today. This simple, human process by which we relate news to our neighbours, whistle a popular tune whilst walking down the street, or read aloud to one another accomplishes, on a smaller scale, the same sort of symbol-reproduction enabled by the digital realm. Before the scriptorium, before the invention of movable type, before the cassette, our minds were the original means of reproduction and dissemination of information. Like a sort of mental lithography, we have always possessed the native ability to peel away a token of some original experience and transmit it to our neighbours via language.

Reproduction, then, is at the heart of communication and I believe this is why the framers of our Constitution enshrined the “freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication” as an inviolable right under Article 2(b). We are fortunate to live in a state that recognizes these rights and in the present context I believe this is vital since the history of technology tracks a progression towards removing physical resistance to the storage and flow of information. This, naturally, has positive consequences for the individual’s ability to communicate, to understand the broadest context of world events, and to participate in public dialogue.

Of course, this all takes place within an external economic context, and I wouldn’t suggest that we lose sight of this, but I want to stress that with the advent of the Internet, it is as though information has undergone a phase change. Like ice to water, and water to vapour, information has evaporated. It may now exist in this highly lubricated realm, a place that, as it becomes increasingly reproducible, increasingly has no place, and within this realm its supply has so outstripped external physical demand that information’s price is rapidly approaching zero.

Unless we make the decision to impose onerous restrictions on the architecture of the Internet itself, this progression is a linear one, and in my opinion is an emergent property of our nature as human beings. We move within this symbolic medium of information and culture, it informs and expands our views, and we create more and more of it as time goes by. It has become more of an ecology than an economy, though there are important similarities between these concepts, and similarly to the economy of commodities, we are poorer and less free if these flows are unnaturally restricted. Although we have the ability to manipulate markets, this is in most (if not all) cases highly inadvisable. If we accept the idea that economies are an emergent property of our natural interactions, then we must largely adapt to their conditions rather than the other way round. If this means that the price of information (when divorced from physical media) must collapse, then so be it.

This is the viewpoint I wish to bring to the table, and the specific way in which I will frame the remainder of my response: the creation of the digital realm, in my opinion, has created something like a vast shared memory, a resource that is both intimately personal and radically collective. It is no more subject to the laws of commodities than one’s memories of an experience can be. All forms of information have been absorbed into what we call our culture. Copyright law affects me by imposing external conditions on world culture. Unless handled very carefully, we run the risk of creating injustices of the quality experienced during book burnings, the banning of native traditions and languages, and religious proscriptions on certain ‘heretical’ thoughts. And what is thought, other than a series of symbols processed by a mind?

If the Internet is a new type of global memory, inappropriate restrictions could very well convert it into a mechanism for the destruction of thought and culture not dissimilar to George Orwell’s famous description of a ‘memory hole’.

How to remain relevant? (How should existing laws be modernized? How should copyright changes be made in order to withstand the test of time?)

So much for principle. Pragmatic concerns must be addressed, of course – though our minds spend an increasing amount of time in the ‘cloud’ of global information technology, we still stand upon the ground. I would not suggest any fundamental dichotomy between these realms, but there are differences.

In reaching for new ways to formulate copyright law, I will largely defer here to the framework established by Professor Michael Geist – any new legal regime must strive for balance between the rights of the creator and the user, it must be technologically neutral, it must strive for simplification and clarity, and it must embody enough flexibility to adapt to changing technological, and thus economic, conditions.

To this, however, I would add an important caveat. To truly ‘withstand the test of time’ copyright law absolutely must not attempt to hold back the tide of the information revolution no matter how much the beneficiaries of the old order may protest. We simply can’t protect the market of the candle makers once the lightbulb has come on the scene, nor should we. I do not believe that it is possible for any copyright law to remain relevant if it does not acknowledge and accept the most important consequence of this sea-change – the collapsing price of information as information.

Thus, I would suggest that ideally, Professor Geist’s suggestion of the scope of copyright law should in fact be restricted solely to the commercial distribution of physical media. This would greatly simplify the task of crafting new copyright law and, though the suggestion may appear shocking, it is the logical conclusion of the ideas developed above. If we were to apply copyright law exclusively to the problem of counterfeit product, we would in one stroke satisfy the four conditions Professor Geist calls for.

First, this would strike an objective balance between creator’s rights and user’s rights. In the physical realm, we have a right to dispense of the values we have created through our labour. Copyright, patent, and similar law, in my understanding, was developed in order to give the creator of a new idea a head start in the market, to encourage the requisite effort, investment, and innovation by making it more likely that a return of some sort will be realized. We brand the products we create because we wish to capitalize on the reputation we establish in the market. In the realm of culture, however, I would suggest that reputation is the only objective limiting factor. If we counterfeit, we commit the injustice of fraud by misrepresenting the provenance of our product, of stealing time from its creator, and they deserve monetary compensation. If we plagiarize, we commit a similar injustice of misrepresentation but the coin here is exclusively moral rather than economic. What we owe the creator of an intellectual work is citation and recognition.

This idea easily meets the second, third, and fourth conditions of the need to maintain relevance by creating a clear distinction between the commercial physical embodiment of an idea or a work, and non-physical and non-commercial distribution modes. It’s simple, clear, easy to enforce without creating the kind of massive intrusions on privacy being suggested by other national jurisdictions, and it’s certainly flexible enough to deal with the changing environments created by cultural and technological transformation when the problem itself collapses.

I believe the problems were are grappling with today are nothing more than an artifact of a misunderstanding of the nature of information, a misunderstanding we ignore at our peril. As many artists and creators are discovering, there is an important linkage between the realm of idea and the realm of distribution – marketing. It becomes, then, a problem of finding new ways to entice people to purchase physical transcriptions of ideas by adding value to their product, whether it be a boxed set or a performance. However the ideas that inhere within these products, when subjected to lossless reproduction, are their gift to the body of human knowledge. For law to remain relevant, we need to realize that though the labour of an artist may be great, ‘intellectual property’ is a myth. Once an idea is created, it slips from our fingers for the same reasons that a physicist will never own the second law of thermodynamics, Ohm’s law, or any other nonmaterial product of labour.

If we value intellectual creation, as even the most prolific young consumers of ‘pirated’ media must admit upon reflection, then it becomes a moral and cultural problem of ensuring the respect exists to drive reward. And despite the protest of media interests, there is data available to indicate that such a culture has already taken shape as reproduction drives reputation and purchase of product, though the precise patterns of usage may change in unpredictable ways.

What to do? (How to foster innovation and creativity? How to foster competition and investment? How to position Canada as a global leader in the digital economy?)

I have avoided addressing the existence of current international law (eg; WIPO and the distressingly exclusionary ACTA) until this point for the simple reason that I find much of it to be wrongheaded. However, it may be relevant to quote the Berne Convention’s three-step test here:

“Members shall confine limitations and exceptions to exclusive rights to certain special cases which do not conflict with a normal exploitation of the work and do not unreasonably prejudice the legitimate interests of the rights holder.”

The test here turns on the inclusion of terms such as ‘normal’ and ‘legitimate’, and are open to a wide variety of interpretation. I would interpret it in the sense outlined above – non-physical and non-commercial uses fall completely outside of its scope. This test actually makes a lot of sense to me because at the time it was written, it really only applied to questions of counterfeit and physical, commercial right.

It is my belief that a laissez-faire approach to non-commercial usage would in fact foster the outcomes desired. But to see this, it depends on where one places the boundaries of concepts such as ‘innovation’ and ‘competition’.

Under the system I’m suggesting, it’s undeniable that there would be structural changes in the media industry as progress towards a freer regime of information and culture erodes many of the implicit or explicit monopolies previously it has previously enjoyed. But it’s also hard to deny that this would be a net benefit to Canadian interests seen as a whole.

How could innovation and creativity possibly not be fostered by giving every Canadian freer access to their culture, to use and manipulate and amplify our values? How could competition and investment possibly tear itself away from a population steeped in a culture of expanded awareness? Is this not a better outcome for Canada than a geography punctuated by illumined centres of learning and priviledge surrounded by dark provincial backwaters? If Canada wishes to become a leader in the global digital economy it must embrace it rather than resisting its conclusions.

I think in this situation, which we might refer to as a radically expanded knowledge economy, there is still plenty of opportunity to get paid. I don’t see the need to rush into any further systems of international legal integration, and particularly not when the outcomes are being decided behind closed doors, as is demonstrably the case with ACTA. This can only undermine Canadian sovereignty and our right to decide our own future.

I believe that the abolition of non-commercial copyright provisions lights the way forward for Canada. I do not believe that a serious concern exists that people will stop writing novels or creating culture or engaging in intellectual innovation. This is a part of who we are, and we engage in these activities for many reasons. Some economic interests may lose some of their control over the flow of ideas – this is to be lauded as a great improvement for Canadians. If an interim fund were to be created or sustained, as many such funds already exist to fund innovation in Canada, I would not protest too loudly. I may suggest they be given an appropriate sunset clause as the emerging market forces show the way forward. But in the end I believe most of the impetus behind the drive to copyright reformation is about maintaining crumbling monopolies as the world changes around us.

Thank you for your consideration.

Kant, Wegner, and the Clockwork Will

This essay explores Kant’s claim that free will is a necessary precondition for morality by contrasting it with the experimental results of Wegner’s inquiry into instances of illusory will, and concluding that Kant’s system relies on a conception of will that Wegner’s results challenge. Also, an inquiry is made into whether there may be other ways in which to view or resolve this tension and its wider implications for questions of will and causation.

The moral necessity of an autonomous will

In the wake of the Newtonian revolution, Immanuel Kant proposed that the good will operates closest to form when in complete coherence with an objective law derived from its nature as will. This state of affairs entails when the ideal will might not “be conceived as obliged thereby to act lawfully, because of itself from its subjective constitution it can only be determined by the conception of good.” [Kant, 17].

Yet for Kant and those of us with less than perfect wills, it is duty, obligation, and intent that holds moral primacy, rather than any end in the objects of our actions as moral beings – after all, good outcomes may happen accidentally regardless of one’s intent, and any decisions based on practical reason must always be contingent on the specific conditions and events in the world. Kant writes “the purposes which we may have in view in our actions, or their effects regarded as ends and springs of the will, cannot give to actions an unconditional or moral worth.” [8]

For Kant, then, it is vital that the will possess autonomy, for there to be any sound conception of moral worth. The will must be free to make the decision to pursue its moral duties or not, where such duties lie in cleaving to the logical forms of moral law – Kant’s categorical imperative – rather than in one’s desires, which Kant viewed as mechanistic, the dross ‘springs’ of contingent behaviour.

Will as illusion

Turning the clock forward to the twentieth century and the work of Daniel M. Wegner, an experimental psychologist, we find a rather different view of the will emerging. Wegner conducted a series of trials in which the experimental subject and an assistant of Wegner’s were both instructed to view a set of images on a screen, and jointly move a cursor about the screen in a sort of high-tech Ouija game. An auditory cue, a word corresponding to one of the images onscreen is played to the subject and the assistant, and at some point after this cue the subject and assistant are both instructed to stop the cursor on an image of their individual choice.

What the subject does not realize is that some of these stops are forced by the experimental assistant. And yet, for all stops made during the course of the experiment, the subject rates their level of intention as high, and most particularly so when the auditory cue corresponds with the image selected – regardless of whom it was selected by.

Wegner interprets his results as indicating that empirical will and phenomenal will are separable, and that the experience of will may be no more than a feeling or interpretation of events, disconnected from any causation on the subject’s part. The results pose the challenge, “How can we know when, and by extension if, we will?”

A challenge to Kant’s moral Idealism

This poses an enormous difficulty for Kant since the nature of will is the linchpin of his moral system.

Implicit in Kant’s philosophy is the enlightenment view of nature as a giant clockwork of sorts in which all objects in the natural world mesh and interact in a fine orchestration of cause and effect so that if all prior states of a system are known, then its successive states may be reliably predicted. As Kant makes clear, however, moral decisions must not be informed by the states of objects in the natural world since this would effectively yoke the moral will to deterministic natural forces and circumstances, rendering the sort of clarity of principle he sought impossible, resulting instead in a “disgusting medley of compiled observations and half-reasoned principles”. [14]

Kant requires that we reason our way to decisions motivated by the categorical imperative, a law transcending these worldly ‘springs of the will’. Kant’s moral system requires a free will for the exercise of this reason for morality to be relevant. And yet Wegner has provided us with evidence that free will may not exist at all or, if it does, that it may be attenuated. There is a contradiction here which threatens to blast the foundations of Kant’s view of human nature and ethics.

Is Volition then Causal?

The issues of human nature, volition, and their relation to causality raise some questions in regard both to Wegner’s results and Kant’s moral theory. Though the modern impulse is to infer the signature of a deterministic, clockwork will in Wegner’s results, this may not be necessary since his results would be just as consistent with a theory of internally caused and acausal events of will as it is to the caused/determined hypothesis, and indeed modern physics provides some evidence for acausal events in its analysis of collapsing probabilistic states. This itself suggests that there is the potential of a different interpretation; our causal models may be dated.

But leaving this aside, there is an even more interesting premise shared by Wegner and Kant in this discussion – Kant makes an appeal to omniscience and an essential will when he rejects the natural world (and thus, synthetic a posteriori knowledge) as a source of moral guidance. Wegner, identifying a very specific grey area in which people mistakenly identify (or project) their will on account of correlation rather than causation, also makes an implicit appeal to omniscience and analytic truth when he moves to question whether will in its wider applications is an illusion. Must this be a question of not-will excluding will?

Only those with an existing vision condition could seriously doubt the efficacy of their own eyes for long after having viewed an optical illusion. Wegner, no doubt, experienced various instances of will to create his experiment. And despite Kant’s apparent disdain of the will’s real-world efficacy (witness his reification and hence isolation of will as an end-in-itself as well as the proposal that instinct may be more fitting to the cause of human happiness [6]), even he appears to smuggle in a test against ‘phenomena’ by creating a sort of social test for the imperative (cf. tests and ‘universal legislation’ [22,28]).

Wegner has brought some interesting evidence to the table that apparently contradicts the evidence by introspection that we have will. But as Sternberg [28] points out, many revolutions in science do not wipe out one or the other side of a dichotomy, but rather introduce a new way of thinking about problems in a wider sense that inform both views. In fact, the interface of many concepts in the natural world exhibit grey areas, gradations. It is to be hoped that further work in both epistemology and neurology will find new analytical tools and heuristics to subsume or explain such apparent volitional contradictions, in much the same way as we can identify astigmatism, and in much the same way as Einstein was able, finally, to fine-tune the clockwork of Newtonian physics.

Works Cited

Kant, Immanuel. Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals (Handout)

Sternberg, Robert J. “Is the illusion of conscious will an illusion?” Precis of The Illusion of conscious will Ed. Wegner, Daniel M (Handout)

Hobbes’ State of Nature: The War of All Against All

Note: Page references are to a handout, but you can search the text of the work here. (NB: Uncheck the box under the search field, it introduces a typo into your search.]



In the lawless, primeval world envisioned by Hobbes’ Leviathan, the best defence is a good offence. On his view, humanity may be envisioned as existing in a ‘state of nature’ in which both the antecedent and consequent of this state holds “no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain”. [52]

This uncertainty is derived not only from a condition in which man is compelled to rely upon pre-existing values to secure his position, but human nature itself. Being essentially equal in our physical and intellectual capabilities, and most particularly so in our capacity for treachery by force or guile, the conclusion follows – abetted by our internal estimation of success in the untrammelled pursuit of a goal – that a level playing-field exists. All values are fair game, and the inclination must be to tilt the odds in one’s favour in the interest of self-preservation.

This is Hobbes’ “war of all against all”, in which all efforts are bent to the nasty, brutish endeavour of survival. The greatest profit in this competition is obtained by seizing value, and the most expeditious means to that end is to remove or disable your competition by force. Accordingly, no one is to be trusted, and this wariness or diffidence means no efforts may be diverted to "plant, sow, build, or possess a convenient seat" [51], since it would be suicide to turn one’s focus and capacities from security to the creation of value. Under constant threat of attack, the only reasonable response is to respond with overwhelming force: to wipe out or subdue all potential challengers, to "master the persons of all men he can so long till he see no other power great enough to endanger him…"

Hobbes is at pains to emphasize that there is no rest in this atavistic world. There is no hope of respite from competition as continuous expansion of one’s gain and suppression of enemies is required to ensure the greatest chance of success in this war of attrition. Even those wishing to take a merely defensive posture when their desires are satisfied risk being overwhelmed by those whose inclination is to glory in victory for its own sake, and so an inflationary cycle of violence exists, in which even the meek must develop a reputation for crushing brutality in order to give their enemies pause. The nature of competition in such a world means attack is not only expected, but mandatory.

Blog Content, JSTOR, and the Mysteries of (Free) Time

Just a quick note to point out that I haven't actually abandoned this blog, although any writing time I have is largely being siphoned off by studies, family, and other projects for the time being. So here's a brief update.

It occurred to me the other day that there is a lot of knowledge available online that isn't accessible to the public, locked away in academic archives such as JSTOR. Having run up against their barricades on occasion while doing research for earlier articles on Aleatoric - which was extremely irritating - it struck me how unfortunate this is. It's not that people don't want knowledge as specific as the stuff ferreted away on JSTOR, it's just that they don't have access to it and so have no way of appreciating it. Why? I gather there are a few factors - it must cost JSTOR a lot to host it, but I imagine the artificial scarcity created by locking it up also plays a large part by providing the justification for the kind of institutional fees they can charge to universities and other large institutions. Since I am (as of recently) a student once more, I now have access to this goldmine of information, and understand the fact that the people who archive this content need to get paid, but we are all a little poorer than we would be if, say, JSTOR began opening parts of their archives, since the number of searchable ancient texts there are legion, and they are of course all long since in the public domain. A little knowledge may be a dangerous thing, but a mountain of it is self-correcting, as long as there are people to comb through it, and those willing to engage in a dialogue in the search for truth.

While I can't hook you up with JSTOR, what I can do is make my own small contribution to online knowledge by posting some of the assignments that I've done reasonably well on. While the appeal of this stuff is going to be pretty selective, no doubt someone will come along and learn a little bit more about whichever subject is involved, and it may at least prompt some continued curiosity about the subjects I'm fortunate enough to be in a position to study.

I'd encourage anyone in university, and especially those taking Masters or Doctorates to pick up this idea and run with it. If the material you post is good, and it wouldn't really be seen by anyone once you've passed your courses anyways, why not post it online? Essays, thesis projects, whatever. Open-source your archives. At the very least, the resultant flood of material might distract momentarily from the hordes of tech and celebrity bloggers out there. (Not that there's anything wrong with that.)

I'll start. You're free to quote and republish my stuff as long as you credit the source, as per the terms of the Creative Commons attribution share alike license, but I would insist that you not plagiarize this material, especially when it comes to your own courses. Not only will it make you feel like a tool, but your teachers know how to use Google too, kids.

Any comment on these offerings is welcome.

Cheers... Todd

Aesthetics: Valuation and Viewer Engagement: Gaut’s Ethicist Integration

Artistic Value and Ethics

The question of artistic value – what makes a [thing] a good work of art – is a problem to be reckoned with by any modern philosopher of aesthetics. Perhaps the issue has always been in the public eye. In recent years though, from Voice of Fire to a Stuffed Shark in formaldehyde, many feted artworld events inspire reactions ranging from ennui and bemusement to resentment and accusations of profiteering. Media dismissal on the allegation of brand opportunism was widespread in the case of Damien Hirst. Often in these rarefied reaches of the artworld, major financial interests often hinge on questions of artistic value, as the film Who the *&^* is Jackson Pollack seeks to inform and ‘edutain’ us.

The relationship of ethics to art and value seems a perennial one as well. Motivating questions of censorship and ‘community standards’, political considerations of taboo or protest art may themselves create change or be party to upheavals in culture, as book burnings throughout history may attest to. A number of philosophical forays have been made into this charged subject, among them Moralism, the position that ethics is the issue in art’s value (which shall remain unexamined here), Autonomism, which posits no place for ethics in artistic value and Ethicism, one of the moderate views and dominated these days by the work of Berys Gaut.

Two Viewpoints

Autonomism holds that the value of an art work as a work of art is independent of other values. In the view of Rob van Gerwen, “Ethical autonomism holds that art’s autonomy consists in its demand that art appreciators take up an artistic attitude. A work’s agency is then in how it merits their audience’s attitudinal switch.” 1 On this view, the art appreciator is expected to undergo an internal transformation, a shift in consciousness to assume a view of the work as a world of its own, one to become absorbed in, as though it were a experiential axiom of a sort. The work presents a morality-free virtual environment for a contemplative transaction with the viewer. By firewalling the area within an artwork’s [frame] off from questions of ethics, autonomism naturally engages itself with the question of the autonomy of the artist and free expression, or political autonomy for art as well:

“Art’s autonomy is a fact of modern Western history. This autonomy refers to the practice as a whole. We think it an intrinsic value that there be such a practice (Art) where people can entertain thoughts and feelings with regard to issues deemed important, without immediately being affected by these thoughts and feelings in more usual agent-related ways.” 2

Ethicism rejects the notion of an artwork’s moral autonomy while refraining from moralizing. Gaut writes, in reference to the idea that art may be morally corrupting, “This is a version of the causal thesis and should be kept distinct from ethicism. Further, ethicism has nothing to say about the issue of censorship…” 3 However, Gaut does not suggest that the viewer remains unaltered by an artwork.

“It is obvious that works prescribe the imagining of certain events: a horror film may prescribe imagining teenagers being assaulted by a monster; Juliette prescribes imagining that acts of sexual torture occur. Perhaps less obviously, works also prescribe certain responses to these fictional events: the loud, atonal music of the horror film prescribes us to react to the represented events with fear, Juliette invites the reader to find sexual torture erotically attractive, to be amused by the contortions described, to admire the intricacy of their implementation, and so forth.” 4

Gaut’s merited-response argument makes the case that such prescriptions are aesthetically relevant, since a failure to respond in the manner intended by the work involves an internal failing on the part of the artwork; a lack of conviction, potentially, or clarity, or integration between means and ends. In this, Gaut shares the autonomist idea that art may be a moral agent – the difference is that ethicism sees a role for this aspect of a work in its evaluation, while autonomism discards it. “Art can teach us about what is ethically correct,” he writes, “but the aesthetic relevance of this teaching is guaranteed only when the work displays it in the responses it prescribes to story events.” 5 Gaut believes works ought to show rather than tell. He also believes that ethical values in a work of art are merely one ingredient in any pro tanto, all-things-considered impression of the work.

Ethicism: Choosing a Frame for Value

The seemingly fantastic variations in art prices on the market suggests, when you place the twenty-five dollar knock-off of ‘Dogs Playing Poker’ acquired in an ironic mood at the local flea market against the latest six-figure Group of Seven slab at Sothebys, that the patrons of select schools, styles, and artistic media value them highly, far above the valuation of an average artwork. As a working theory, we might assume that since the physical utility-value of most forms of art approaches zero (unless you’re Chretien, in which case bedside sculptures make for fine cudgels), the higher valuation of one art-work over another is mainly attributable to psychological needs. Of autonomism and ethicism, ethicism best accounts for the psychologically biased real-world valuation of some select piece of [art] by the clever device of not discounting ethics – a central part of human society, culture and law – from people’s evaluations of representational art.

Though many forms of art seem to exist as a medium that is passively experienced (dance the notable exception), they are in fact a participatory experience, and this is Gaut’s point, all-things-considered: by integrating ethics and aesthetics, he is making the connection that human values and valuation occupy a substantial amount of one’s attention while making decisions in the real world - of which the art world is a part. The emotional responses prescribed by a work of art are experienced as a visceral, highly personal connection to one’s real-world values. As Gaut says, “…these responses are actual, not just imagined ones.” 6

While one ought to be able to make the argument that ethics is itself a value – in which case autonomism, which places a frame around the artwork declaring that inside the frame ethics shall not tread, would be dead. Autonomism does not deny that art is itself a value. However, the aim here is to make the weaker case that ethicism is a better model. Simply situating it on an ordinal axis is enough, and the evidentiary requirements are simpler to fulfill: produce one real-world example the value of which ethicism accounts for better.

Perhaps iconic and sacred artworks fit the bill. Ethics and art have been intimately connected with religious and legal institutions since their inception. From Egypt’s innovative hieroglyphs to Michelangelo’s frescos, large scale artistic undertakings have adorned temples and palaces around the world. In many cases, the temples and palaces are themselves artistic expressions. Since the patron, be they individual or institutional, would usually pick the theme for their new work of art it would reflect the patron’s favourite religious symbols, maxims, literary scenes, decorative motifs, etc.

To judge by the surprising number of icon shops in Toronto today, the connection is still a relevant one. The purchase of an icon, iconic depiction or religious scene is an act of valuation of a particular kind of art-work, one which often specializes in bringing to mind stories, mental states such as equanimity, even codes of behavoir as alluded to through their characterization of a diety and its attendant symbolism. Since a substantial amount of the value of these pieces inheres in their connection to ethical precepts, since this is why they are valued as artworks, a problem is presented to autonomism: if there are no relevant valuations of artworks that include considerations of ethics, how are icons to be accounted for?

And why, then, do people like the Stuffed Shark? Could it be because it presents some implicit commentary in iconic language? Ethicism doesn’t create a value-free zone within the frame of an art-work, thereby restricting the scope of ethics to ‘all decisions other than art’. While the autonomists hold that art trumps a major area of valuation, ethicism identifies the connection between the viewer, his environment, and the [art] object’s representational feedback from that environment. While it’s a given that a meditative, focused, or framed attitude is widely adopted when viewing certain artworks, this point of view is a contemplative one, not passive reception – active, participatory, psychologically engaged with the work – and so values and our systems of valuation participate as well. Beys Gaut’s merited-response argument keeps ethics in the basket of values used to evaluate artworks, and rightly so, since deeply held beliefs often trigger the most deeply experienced emotions.

“The aesthetic relevance of prescribed responses wins further support from noting that much of the value of art derives from its deployment of an affective mode of cognition – derives from the way works teach us, not by giving us merely intellectual knowledge, but by bringing that knowledge home to us.” 7

Works Cited

1 van Gerwen, Robert. “Ethical Autonomism: The Work of Art as a Moral Agent” http://www.contempaesthetics.org/newvolume/pages/article.php?articleID=217

2 Ibid.

3 Gaut, Berys. “The Ethical Criticism of Art” Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art Ed. Peter Lamarque and Stein Haugom Olsen: Blackwell Publishing, Malden. 2004, 284

4 Gaut, 288

5 Gaut, 290

6 Gaut, 289

7 Gaut, 290