The reading can be found here. (Feel free to join even if you don't finish it)

Aesthetic experience is a kind of experience, so the tools of philosophy of perception — especially attention — should tell us what distinguishes it. What makes an experience aesthetic is how you attend, not what you're attending to. Attention varies along two axes: it can be focused or distributed with respect to objects, and focused or distributed with respect to properties. That yields four combinations, of which only one is Nanay's candidate for aesthetic attention. Aesthetic attention is the case where attention is fixed on a single perceptual object but distributed across that object's various properties — and this differs sharply from ordinary attending, which is typically selective, task-driven, and homes in on the one or two properties an action requires This is offered as a reconstruction of the Kantian idea of disinterestedness: attending to an object without filtering its properties through what you want from it. Disinterestedness becomes a claim about attentional structure rather than about motives or emotional distance. Consequences: aesthetic experience isn't restricted to artworks or beautiful things (any object can be attended to this way), and Dickie-style skepticism about "special modes of attention" is answered by giving attention a concrete psychological description rather than an honorific one.

Guiding questions:

1) Think of the last thing you found beautiful. Were you attending to it the way Nanay describes — one object, many properties at once — or does his description miss something about what you were doing?

2) Nanay makes aesthetic experience a matter of attentional structure, not of the object. Does this get the extension right? It lets a rusted fence be an object of aesthetic experience; does it also wrongly count staring absently at a wall, or usefully so?

3) Can you attend this way to something you badly want — food when hungry, a person you're attracted to, a house you're about to buy? If not, is that a virtue of the account (it vindicates disinterestedness) or a problem (it rules out real aesthetic experiences)?

4) Nanay's account is about perceptual attention. What happens to novels, music heard over an hour, or films — objects that unfold in time and aren't laid out before you all at once?

5) Suppose someone attends exactly as Nanay describes and feels nothing — no pleasure, no absorption, no sense that anything was worthwhile. Have they had an aesthetic experience? What does your answer say about whether the account is meant to be sufficient, or only a necessary ingredient?

These sessions are participant-driven discussions focused on philosophical essays, facilitated by a trained CU Boulder philosopher. Our goal at each discussion is to build a philosophical dialogue by investigating as a community of thinkers. Each session focuses on a philosophical text, but we do not regard the authors we read as unquestionable authorities. Rather, we consider each author to be another voice in our shared dialogue. 

To prepare, please read the selected text to the best of your ability. Most months you'll find a reading guide linked above. If you are unable to read ahead, please come anyway. We recommend bring a copy of the reading with you - digital or printed out.

At the discussion, after brief introductions and a review of the discussion policies, the facilitator will ask participants to share questions and ideas for group discussion.  The facilitator will then guide the group in working through as many of their questions as possible before recapping and wrapping up the discussion.

No background in philosophy is expected or required. We are excited to discuss the ideas raised by your interaction with the text!

Click here for our discussion guidelines.

Boulder Public Library "Classics of Philosophy" reading group:

We used to have a group just like this group, but meeting on the 2nd Monday of each month. This group has closed, but you can still brows the list of past sessions for ideas on things to read!

Great philosophy podcasts

The History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps - Over 350 episodes covering various philosophers and topics. Includes episode series on Indian philosophy and Africana philosophy.

Hi-Phi Nation - approximately 40 episodes (as of 2020) that discuss philosophical ideas in contemporary contexts.  The most recent seasons have focused on issues of justice and politics.

Discussion groups

Grey Havens Philosophy - A Longmont, CO based nonprofit running weekly and monthly philosophical discussion groups for all ages.

Your local philosophers!

Philosophy Department at the University of Colorado - Boulder