Aesthetic peerhood and the significance of aesthetic peer disagreement

Abstract

Both aestheticians and social epistemologists are concerned with disagreement. However, in large part, their literatures have yet to overlap substantially in terms of discussing whether there are viable conceptions of aesthetic peerhood and what the significance of aesthetic peer disagreement might be as a result. This paper aims to address this gap. Taking cues from both the aesthetics and social epistemological literatures, it develops several conceptions of aesthetic peerhood which are not only constituted by various forms of cognitive peerhood and affective peerhood, but which are also framed by a model of ordinary peer disagreement from Lackey (2010). For each of these conceptions, it suggests what the significance of ordinary aesthetic peer disagreement might be and how future discussions about it might proceed for both aestheticians and social epistemologists alike.