Has critique run out of steam, as Bruno Latour (2004) famously suggested? In this paper we take a closer look at Judith Butler's concept of 'performativity' as an exemplary case of a certain paranoid epistemological stance in contemporary critical theory more broadly. Whereas Butler's edifice posits an 'infinitely distant' nature as a kind of transcendental occasion which enables the productive work of cultural fictions, thereby confining critique to the realm of language, we seek to offer two plausible alternatives to this epistemic prison: the new materialist approach, which offers an affirmative possibility of theorizing nature, and the value-form reading of Marx, which discovers a certain negativity of value at the heart of contemporary social formations.
This paper examines the philosophical implications of AI-generated digital objects in artistic institutions, focusing on Ahmed Elgammal's (2017) study, which assumes that aesthetic appeal, novelty, and indistinguishability from human-made artworks suffice to classify these objects as artworks. I challenge this tacit premise by arguing that AICAN-generated digital objects cannot be evaluated in the same way as human artworks because they lack extrinsic properties necessary for correct categorization. Drawing on Kendall Walton's Categories of Art (1970), I assert that truth and falsity apply to aesthetic judgments of artworks. I examine and defend Walton's requirements for the correct categorization of artworks against relevant objections. I proceed by applying Walton's requirements to AICAN outputs. I argue that AICAN's digital objects fail to meet two crucial requirements for correct categorization. Thus, their aesthetic properties necessarily remain category-relative, exposing artistic practice to radical relativism in aesthetic judgment. I contend that Walton's distinction between aesthetic objects and artworks provides a plausible framework for understanding AICAN's outputs and the aesthetic response they elicit. Accordingly, I argue that AICAN digital objects should be regarded as aesthetic objects rather than artworks.
This paper criticizes the interpretation that Sextus considered Academic philosophy as a form of dogmatism, either negative or positive. First, it offers an interpretation of Academic philosophy as a third main kind of philosophy distinct from dogmatism. Next, it examines what Sextus says concerning each major Academic: Arcesilaus, Carneades, and Clitomachus. Finally, it holds that Academic philosophy is the closest philosophical neighbor to skepticism by developing a new interpretation of the final part of the Outlines. In each case, it is shown that, for Sextus, both Pyrrhonism and Academic philosophy are non-dogmatic, and that they differ in their specific ways of being non-dogmatic. The main thesis of this paper is that Academic philosophy is closer to skepticism than to dogmatism.
