Cain Todd, PhD

Vita

Cain Todd is currently Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at Lancaster University (U.K.), where he has ben working since completing his PhD at Cambridge University in 2003. His research has generally focussed on issues at the intersection of aesthetics, and the philosophy of mind and perception. He has published, amongst other things, on the nature and objectivity of aesthetic judgement, on aesthetic judgements in science and mathematics, and on the role of imagination and emotion in the appreciation of fiction. He has also written a book and a number of papers on philosophical issues concerning taste and smell. He has held visiting positions at the Universities of Geneva and Fribourg in Switzerland, and at Institut Jean Nicod in Paris. He is currently the co-editor of the journal Emotion Researcher.

Research at the ZEPP

Cain Todd's project has two main aims. The first aim is to propose an original, empirically-informed philosophical account of aesthetic experience. The second aim is to use this account to examine the prospects of a sentimentalist account of aesthetic judgement; namely, whether aesthetic judgements are constituted by affective states, and if so what bearing this has on their nature and objectivity. For both parts of the project the case of moral judgment and moral experience will form a contrast case, and the role of emotions in moral and aesthetic judgements will be examined.