Alice Harberd

Papers

On Aesthetics and Stereotypes. (Forthcoming) The Philosophical Quarterly.

Murdoch (1970), Nussbaum (1990), and Simoniti (2023) say our capacity to apprehend aesthetic properties is morally helpful: they think it helps us resist stereotypes and other obstacles to seeing other people as they really are, and as individual subjects. I argue that this is not the full story: aesthetic properties can actually encourage us to use stereotypes, and irrationally influence which features we stereotypically associate with a group. The mere inclusion of aesthetic properties within stereotypes, alongside everyday aesthetic perception in the background of our interaction with others, can:

1. Make stereotypes come to mind more easily;

2. Make them appear more plausible;

3. Irrationally influence which features a stereotype most prominently associates with a group;

4. Make it easier to infer from someone having one feature ascribed in a stereotype to their having other characteristics the stereotype ascribes;

5. Make the influence of stereotypes on our thoughts relatively incorrigible.

Aesthetic Bias in Epistemic Evaluation and the Value of Art. (2025) The British Journal of Aethetics. 65(2):283-304.

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.

WORK IN PROGRESS:

A paper on Narrative (title redacted for review purposes)

Style and Aesthetic Identity (invited contribution to Contemporary Debates in Aesthetics, in debate with Dr. Nick Riggle)

Aesthetic Cognitivism and Instrumentality

I argue that the problems still facing aesthetic cognitivism, the view that artworks are valuable in virtue of their insights, are traceable to the way that it models artworks as instruments for learning. It might look difficult for the cognitivist to answer this challenge satisfactorily without weakening the relationship between appreciating an artwork and cognitive success, on which the view is premised - thereby undermining the theory. However, I will argue that art’s cognitive value does, in fact, contribute to its final value. There are final values which art has under the condition of being epistemically valuable in a certain way, and these are the values to which the cognitivist should appeal. 

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.

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!