Andriy Bilenkyy is a PhD Candidate on the College of Toronto’s Division of Philosophy. Funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Analysis Council of Canada, his research is located on the intersection of aesthetics, philosophy of language, and metaphysics. In his dissertation, Andriy focuses on themes, the cognitively and aesthetically important properties that we appear to predicate of works of literature in describing them as ‘about one thing’ in some yet-to-be-elucidated sense of ‘aboutness.’ Outdoors of philosophy, Andriy has an curiosity in literary research and visual art, and an affection for espresso and cats.
What are you engaged on proper now?
My dissertation! At this level, my purpose is to encourage my concentrate on literary aboutness. What’s so puzzling concerning the property being about so-and-so that we attribute to tales, novels, poems, and different works of literature? Analytic philosophers of literature all for that means and interpretation have been discussing literary aboutness and different ‘international’ properties of works of literature since Beardsley. Traditionally, although, these discussions had been typically overshadowed by the debates concerning sentential content material, drive, and different ‘native’ properties of works of literature. And though some philosophers of literature did take note of the ‘international’ stuff, they often did that anticipating that the ‘international’ stuff will assist them make clear different points, be it literary cognitivism, the standing of literary criticism, or both.
So, what I’m making an attempt to do today is to point out that literary aboutness deserves philosophical consideration in and of itself. It’s a peculiar property, in spite of everything, unusually distinct from referential aboutness or sentential aboutness, however indirectly much like the property depicting so-and-so possessed by pictorial representations. For one, literary aboutness is gradable; but, the diploma to which some story f is extra about F than about G doesn’t appear simply explainable by way of the frequency of references to F within the textual content of f or the saliency of F to some reader of f or the writer’s intention to focus the reader’s consideration on F. Furthermore, disagreements over literary aboutness are frequent, substantive, and but are troublesome to resolve; it’s not clear, for instance, what kind of proof one can enchantment to in an effort to settle the talk concerning whether or not some story is extra about F than about G.
My objective, at this level, is to systematize these observations to assemble a number of puzzles of literary aboutness that might encourage my concentrate on this property. I’m scheduled to current a paper on one among these puzzles at this 12 months’s annual assembly of the American Society for Aesthetics, and I look ahead to listening to what my commentator and my viewers give it some thought.
What’s your private philosophy?
This query jogs my memory of the primary course in philosophy that I took as an undergrad! It was a PHL100 with Peter King, and it started with a collection of remarks on the context-sensitive options of the phrase “philosophy;” amongst these was the commentary that when individuals say, “my private philosophy is so-and-so” they don’t all the time imply the identical as after they say, “the core of Kant’s philosophy is so-and-so.” That being my first encounter with philosophy may clarify why I discover context-sensitivity so philosophically fascinating and funky.
On a extra severe word, although: sooner or later I’ve adopted a (broadly) Aristotelian strategy to questions concerning the good life, in keeping with which to reside a superb life is, roughly, to reside a life that includes exercising some characteristically human capabilities: epistemic, artistic, and moral; mainly, it’s the life of information, creativity, and kindness, with pleasure being a product of those, individually or in a mix. It’s been some time since I re-examined this strategy, and maybe if I had been to try this, I’d must revise a number of the components. However it nonetheless strikes me as believable.
What frequent philosophical dilemma do you assume has a transparent reply?
I believe that some puzzles raised by fiction may not be as vexing as individuals standardly assume. Take, as an illustration, the puzzle of fictional discourse. On the usual presentation by Searle, reconstructed lately and with nice care by Predelli, fictional discourse is puzzling as a result of (very roughly) we perceive sentences that happen in works of fiction so simply, although fiction typically breaks the grammar-force conventions that we depend on in understanding sentences that happen elsewhere. It appears to me that this puzzle arises solely from the force-conventionalist view about linguistic competence peculiar to Searle; for many who don’t subscribe to this view, fiction may nonetheless be puzzling, however for different causes.
What books are at the moment in your ‘to learn’ listing?
I’ve obtained two ‘to learn’ lists, one for philosophy and one other, for literature; for sure, compiling these lists is one factor however ticking issues off them is kind of one other 🙂 Listed below are some objects that I hope to get to sooner slightly than later.
Philosophy:
- Must We Mean What We Say by Stanley Cavell; my adviser, Sonia Sedivy, recommends it as extraordinarily related for a number of the questions I’m exploring in my dissertation.
- Wise Choices, Apt Feelings by Allan Gibbard; lately, I audited a course on expressivism co-taught by Imogen Dickie and Nate Charlow, and it made me notice how elementary Gibbard is for some developments in philosophy of language and metaethics, the 2 areas through which I’d like to enhance my competence.
- Philosophies of Arts: An Essay in Differences by Peter Kivy; Kivy’s views have affected all types of debates in aesthetics, and I’d like to have interaction with them extra intently and systematically.
Literature:
These had been all discovered on numerous ebook prize lists or had been really useful by mates, colleagues, or my mother, whose studying strategies are usually spot-on 🙂
What trigger or charity do you care about most?
In charity and volunteering, I often prioritize scholar organizing, psychological well being, and animal welfare. Over the previous few years, I’ve served the College of Toronto’s philosophical group as a co-founder of the Mental Health and Disability Caucus and, at the moment, as President of the division’s Graduate Philosophy Student Union. However, as a Ukrainian-Canadian, for the previous six months I couldn’t get my thoughts off Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the infinite stream of emergencies it generated and continues to generate. So, I’ve been making an attempt to contribute to varied efforts to assist Ukrainians affected by the warfare, together with Ukrainian students in misery, organized by Canadian charities and by the College of Toronto, together with my residence division.
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