Brief Curriculum Vitae
John Andrew Fisher
                                        EDUCATION

                        University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, Ph.D. 1971

Philosophy Thesis: On Being Guided By A Rule: Some Reflections on a Conceptual Problem in Chomsky's Theory of Syntax

                        University of Minnesota- Twin Cities,  Institute of Technology/School of Physics and Astronomy,  B. Physics 1963


TEACHING POSITIONS
  • University of Colorado-Boulder Department Chair 1996-97,1989-92
  • Professor 1995-
  • Associate Professor 1975-95
  • University of Kent, Canterbury, England Visiting Professor 1975-76
  • University of Colorado-Boulder Assistant Professor 1968-74

CURRENT RESEARCH INTERESTS

                            Aesthetics and the Philosophy of art, Environmental aesthetics

 
PUBLICATIONS
BOOKS

Reflecting on Art (Mountain View, CA: Mayfield Publishing Co./ McGraw-Hill, 1993), 428 pp.
Song, Songs and Singing, co-edited with Jeanette Bicknell ( Wiley-Blackwell, 2013).
 

PROJECTS

Co-edited with Jeanette Bicknell special issue of The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism on "Song, Songs and Singing," vol. 71, no. 4 (Winter 2013).

 

SELECTED ARTICLES
"The Subjectivist Turn in Aesthetics: A Critical Analysis of Kant's Theory of Appreciation" (with J. Maitland), Review of Metaphysics, 27 (1974), pp. 726-51.
Reprinted in Volume IV of Immanuel Kant: Critical Assessments ed. Ruth Chadwick (London: Routledge, 1992)
"Knowledge of Rules," Review of Metaphysics, 28 (1974), pp. 237-60.
"Fallibility and Knowledge of the Future," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, (1975), pp. 44-58.
"Understanding, Linguistic Competence, and Knowledge," Philosophical Forum, XII, No. 1 (Fall 1980), pp. 3-19.
"Aberrant Speakers and Linguistic Philosophy: A Reconsideration of the Dialogue Between Cavell and the Baker," Philosophical Investigations, Vol. 4, No. 4 (1981), pp. 24-44.
"Linguistic Idealism," Metaphilosophy, Vol. 15, No. 1, (January 1984), pp. 26-34.
"Taking Sympathy Seriously: A Defense of Our Moral Psychology Toward Animals," Environmental Ethics, (Fall 1987), pp. 197-215.
Reprinted in The Animal Rights/Environmental Ethics Debate: The Environmental Perspective, ed. Eugene C. Hargrove (Albany: SUNY Press, 1992).
"The Wrong Stuff: Chinese Rooms and the Nature of Understanding," Philosophical Investigations, Vol. 11, No. 4, (October 1988), pp. 279-99.
"The Very Idea of Perfect Realism," The Philosophical Forum, Vol. XXII, No. 1 (Fall 1990), pp. 49-64.
"Discovery, Creation, and Musical Works," The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 49:2 (Spring 1991), pp. 129-136.
"Why Potentiality Does Not Matter: A Reply to Stone," Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 24:2 (June 1994), pp. 261-279.
"Is There a Problem of Indiscernible Counterparts?," The Journal of Philosophy, 92:9 (1995), pp. 467-484.
Reprinted: The Philosopher's Annual XVII: The Ten Best Articles to Appear in Print in 1995 (1996).
"Technology, Appreciation, and the Historical View of Art," (with Jason Potter), The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 55:2 (1997), pp. 169-185.
"What The Hills Are Alive With--In Defense of the Sounds of Nature," The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 56:2 (1998), pp. 167-179.
Reprinted: The Aesthetics of Natural Environments ed. Carlson and Berleant (Peterborough Ontario: Broadview Press, 2004), pp. 232 - 252.
"Rock 'n' Recording: The Ontological Complexity of Rock Music," in Musical Worlds: New Directions in the Philosophy of Music ed. Philip Alperson (University Park, PA: Penn State Press, 1998), pp. 109-123.
"The Value of Natural Sounds," The Journal of Aesthetic Education, 33:3 (1999), pp. 26-42
"Environmental Aesthetics," in the Oxford Handbook of Aesthetics ed. Jerrold Levinson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 667-678.
Reprinted: Reflecting on Nature, eds. Jamieson, Greun, Schlottmann (Oxford University Press, 2013).
"On Carroll's Enfranchisement of Mass Art as Art," The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 62:1 (Winter 2004), pp. 57-62.
"Performing Nature," Environmental Philosophy IV: I-II (Fall, Spring 2007), pp. 15-28.

"Is It Worth It? Lintott and Ethically Evaluating Environmental Art," Ethics, Place & Environment, 10:3 (October 2007), pp. 279-286.

"Jazz and Musical Works: Hypnotized by the wrong model," Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 76:2 (2018) pp. 151-162.


BOOK CHAPTERS
"The Myth of Anthropomorphism" in Interpretation and Exploitation in the Study of Animal Behavior, Vol. I, ed. by D. Jamieson & M. Bekoff, pp. 96-116 (Boulder: Westview, 1990)
Reprinted in Readings in Animal Cognition ed. by D. Jamieson & M. Bekoff (Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 1996)
"Disambiguating Anthropomorphism: An Interdisciplinary Review," Perspectives in Ethology, Vol. 9 eds. P.P.G. Bateson and Peter Klopfer, pp. 49-85 (NYC: Plenum Publishing Co., 1991)
"Aesthetics" in A Companion to Environmental Philosophy ed. Dale Jamieson (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2001), pp. 264-276.
"Environmental Aesthetics," in the Oxford Handbook of Aesthetics, ed. Levinson (Oxford, 2003), pp. 667-678
Reprinted in Reflecting on Nature ed by Jamieson, Gruen & Scholttman  2nd edition (Oxford, 2013)
"High Art vs. Low Art," in Routledge Companion to Aesthetics 2nd ed. B. Gaut & D. Lopes (London: Routledge Press, 2005), pp. 527-540.
“Music and Song," (with Stephen Davies) in Blackwell Companion to Aesthetics, 2nd ed. Davies, Higgins, Hopkins, Stecker& Cooper (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), pp. 91-95.

“Technology and Art” in Blackwell Companion to Aesthetics, 2nd ed. Davies, Higgins,
Hopkins, Stecker& Cooper (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), pp. 556-560.
“Popular Music,” in the Routledge Companion to Philosophy and Music, edited by Gracyk and Kania (London: Routledge, 2011), pp. 405-415.
"High Art vs. Low Art," major revision for Routledge Companion to Aesthetics 3nd ed. B. Gaut & D. Lopes (London: Routledge Press, 2013)
 
SELECTED REFEREED PRESENTATIONS

"The Wrong Stuff: Two Kinds of Understanding in the Chinese Room," American Philosophical Association, Pacific Division, March, 1985.

"Vandalism at the Movies-- Is Colorization a Question of Preservation?" American Society for Aesthetics, Pacific Division, Asilomar, CA., April, 1989

"Are Pieces of Music Discovered?" American Society for Aesthetics, Pacific Division, Asilomar, CA., April, 1990

"Is There a Problem of Indiscernible Counterparts?" American Society for Aesthetics, Pacific Division, Asilomar CA., March 1991.

"The Problem of Discerning Music Cross-Culturally" American Society for Aesthetics, Pacific Division, Asilomar CA., April 1994.

"Muzak and Museums, Or The Appreciation of Modern Life: An Unresolved Problem for the Historical View of Art," American Society for Aesthetics, Pacific Division, April 1995.

"The Ontological Complexity of Rock Music," American Society for Aesthetics, St, Louis, October 1995.

"The Ontology of Recordings: A First Pass," American Society for Aesthetics, Pacific Division, Asilomar, April 1996

"Appreciating the Sounds of Nature: Surveying Some Problems," American Society for Aesthetics, Pacific Division, Asilomar, April 1997

"Nature Art and Natural Beauty," American Society for Aesthetics, Pacific Division, Asilomar, March 2000.

"The Original Brillo Box Too? Noel Carroll on the Enfranchisement of Mass Art as Art," American Society for Aesthetics, Pacific Division, Asilomar, March 2002.

"Prolegomena to a theory of entertainment," American Society for Aesthetics, Pacific Division, Asilomar, March 2004.

"Artists without Artworks?: Reconfiguring the Ontology of the Performance Arts," American Society for Aesthetics, Pacific Division, Asilomar, April 2005.

“The Concept of a Song,” American Society for Aesthetics, Pacific Division, Asilomar, April 2009

 

                                        SELECTED INVITED PAPERS

"Linguistic Facts and Philosophical Truths" (California State University, Fullerton--17th Annual Philosophy Symposium: Ordinary Language and Recent Philosophical Practice), 1987.
"Is Nature Literature/Art Possible?--A Series of Questions," paper delivered to Humanities Center Conference on "Beauty and Its Discontents," University of Colorado, Boulder, 1999.
On Stan Godlovitch's Musical Performance: A Philosophical Study, American Society for Aesthetics, Asilomar, CA., April 1999.
"Art and the Aesthetics of Nature in the West," paper delivered to the WESTAF (Western States Art Federation) Symposium on Cultural Policy in the West, Aspen CO, Sept 23-24, 1999
"An Autonomous Natural Aesthetics," comments on papers by Ira Neumann and Joseph Kupfer, Amercian Society for Aesthetics, Reno, NV, 2000.
"Goodman and LeWitt" and "The Digital Image" Comments on papers by Kirk Pillow and Reed-Tsocha, Amercian Society for Aesthetics, MPLS, MN 2001.
"Comments on 'Artworks and Representational Properties' by Sherry Irvin," American Society for Aesthetics, San Francisco, October 2003.
"Performing Nature," Invited session on Performance, American Society for Aesthetics, Pacific Division, Asilomar, March 2006
"Species and the Aesthetic Value of Wild Animals," Invited session on the aesthetics of animals at the annual convention of the American Society for Aesthetics, Los Angeles, 2007.
"The Elusive Sublime: Comments on Parsons and Brady on the sublime," American Philosophical Association, Pacific Division meetings in Los Angeles, March 2008.
Comments on Ned Hettinger, "Evaluating Positive Aesthetics," International Association for Environmental Philosophy, Allenspark, CO. June 9, 2010
Comments on Joel Rudinow's Soul Music presented at annual meetings of American Society for Aesthetics, Victoria, Canada, Nov. 2010
"Creativity and the Appreciation of Nature,” presented at APA Pacific division, April 2011.

Hume's aesthetics of nature?: Comments on Nick Wiltshire “Natural Beauty and the Standard of Taste,”  ASA annual meetings, Tampa, FL Nov. 2011. 

Kant's account of music: Comments on Samantha Matherne’s “Kant’s Expressive Theory of Music,” ASA annual meeting, Nov. 2013.

Desires and imagination: Comments on Bartel and Cremaldi, "Pornography and Imagining Desires" ASA annual meeting, San Antonio, TX. Nov. 2014

Street art, conceptual art and hybrid arts: Comments on Elisa Caldarola "Street art as hybrid art" ASA annual meeting, Savannah, Georgia, Nov. 2015

Atmosphere properties of music: Comments on Matteo Ravasio, "Musical atmospheres: Between expression and representation," ASA Eastern division meeting, Philadelphia, April 2017.

Comments on Jazz and the Philosophy of Art (Brown, Gracyk, Goldblatt), ASA annual meeting, Toronto, 2018.

 

        SELECTED PHILOSOPHY REVIEWS

Kivy, Peter, The Fine Art of Repetition, Philosophy and Phenomenological Review, LVI, no. 4 (1996), pp. 962-965.

Gracyk, Theodore, Rhythm and Noise: An Aesthetics of Rock, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 57:4 (Fall 1999), pp. 467-469

Scott Walden (ed.), Photography and Philosophy: Essays on the Pencil of Nature, Notre Dame Philosophical Review ( February 2009)

Nanay, Bence, Aesthetics as Philosophy of Perception, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 75:2 (Spring 2017). pp. 210-214.

 

                                    Some WORK IN PROGRESS

"Creativity and Nature"

"Jazz and High Art"

"Aestheitc Appreciation of Nature: the Hard Problem"