Aesthetic Disagreement, Aesthetic Testimony, and Defeat

The phenomenon of defeat is hot in epistemology. However, surprisingly little attention has been paid to defeat in the semantics of aesthetic discourse and aesthetic epistemology. We think that this is a lack that needs supplying. Here, we argue for a conditional claim: if epistemic defeat about aesthetic matters—what we will call, for convenience, aesthetic defeat—exists, this gives us (pro tanto) reason to worry about several views in the semantics of aesthetic discourse—to wit, contextualism and relativism—and one major player in the epistemology of aesthetic testimony—i.e. pessimism about the capacity of aesthetic testimony to generate knowledge. None of these can straightforwardly accommodate aesthetic defeat. The alternative is to endorse scepticism about aesthetic defeat; however, there is reason to believe the latter move is highly implausible. We conclude that the theorist of aesthetic discourse is faced with a choice between either being a realist about the semantics and an optimist about the epistemology, or coming up with a thorough defence of defeat scepticism.