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In this article, I present two objections against the view that aesthetic judgements - that is, judgemental ascriptions of aesthetic qualities like elegance or harmony - are justified non-inferentially. The first is that this view cannot make sense of our practice to support our aesthetic judgements by reference to lower-level features of the objects concerned. The second objection maintains that non-inferentialism about the justification of aesthetic judgements cannot explain why our aesthetic interest in artworks and other objects is limited to only some of their lower-level features that realise their higher-level aesthetic qualities. Although my concern with the view that aesthetic judgements are subject to non-inferential justification is very general, my discussion is primarily structured around Sibley's well-developed and influential version of this view. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although Forster repeatedly considered the question of music in his writings, Howards End (1910) is his first sustained attempt to explore the issue of musical perception and the status of music. Significantly, Beethoven's Fifth Symphony is the site of contention. Through a disagreement between the Schlegel sisters over how one should listen to Beethoven's symphony, Forster dramatizes the musicological debate around aesthetic perception and the status of instrumental music. The novel, this article will argue, is no less a part of that cultural debate than professional musicology. Indeed, Forster's writing bears the influence of music critics before him and has inspired musicologists after him. Moreover, by giving voice to various aesthetic positions through his characters, Forster also explores the overlaps, ambiguities and uncertainties that are elided by the seemingly dispassionate and authoritative discourse of nineteenth-century musicology. At the same time, Forster reveals a human consequence that musicological debate neglects: the exclusion of Leonard Bast, and those like him, from aesthetic experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]