Robert Hopkins picture

Robert Hopkins

Professor of Philosophy

Education

PhD: Cambridge, 1993
MPhil (B): University College London 1989
BA: Cambridge 1986

Areas of Research/Interest

aesthetics, philosophy of mind

Rob Hopkins works mostly in the philosophy of mind and aesthetics. He’s currently writing a book on the sensory imagination, relating it to other forms of imagining, to perception and to episodic memory. Previously, he’s published on pictorial representation and picture perception (the subject of a book, `Picture, Image and Experience´ 1998), on other topics central to the philosophy of the visual arts, including the aesthetics of sculpture, photography, painting and film; and on the epistemology and metaphysical status of aesthetic and moral judgement. His work has appeared in various journals, including Mind, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Nous, Journal of Philosophy and Philosophical Review.

Rob came to NYU in 2012, having previously taught at the University of Sheffield and the University of Birmingham. He has been Honorary Secretary of the Mind Association, President of the European Society for Aesthetics, and is currently a Trustee of the American Society for Aesthetics. In 2014-5 he ran a research project, funded by the Templeton Foundation, on the relations between historical and aesthetic understanding. He is a past recipient of a Philip Leverhulme Prize.

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

‘Imagining the Past: On the Nature of Episodic Memory’ forthcoming in Memory and Imagination ed. Fabian Dorsch and Fiona McPherson.

‘Imaginative Understanding, Affective Profiles and the Expression of Emotion in Art’, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism  75:4 (2017), 64-74

‘The Real Challenge to Photography (as Communicative Representational Art)’ Journal of the American Philosophical Association 1:2 (2015), 329-48.

‘Episodic Memory as Representing the Past to Oneself’ in Review of Philosophy and Psychology 5:3 (2014), 313-331.

‘Factive Pictorial Experience: What is really special about photographs?’ Nous 46:4 (2012), 709-731.

‘Seeing-In and Seeming To See’ Analysis 72:4 (2012), 650-9.

‘What Perky Did Not Show’ Analysis 72:3 (2012), 1-9.

‘How to be a pessimist about aesthetic testimony’ Journal of Philosophy 108:3 (2011), 138-157.

‘Imagination and Affective Response’ in Reading Sartre: On Phenomenology and Existentialism ed. J.Webber (2010), 100-117.

‘Moving because Pictures?’ Midwest Studies in Philosophy XXXIV: Film and Emotion (2010), 200-218.

‘What do we see in film?’, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 66:2 (2008), 149-59.

‘What is Wrong with Moral Testimony?’, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research LXXIV:3 (2007), 1-24.

‘Critical Reasoning and Critical Perception’ in Knowing Art ed.s M.Kieran and D.Lopes (2006), 137-153.

‘Aesthetics, Experience and Discrimination’, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 63:2 (2005), 119-133.

‘Thomas Reid on Molyneux's Question’, Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 86 (2005), 340-64.

‘Molyneux's Question’, Canadian Journal of Philosophy 35:3 (2005), 441-464.

‘Painting, Sculpture, Sight and Touch’, British Journal of Aesthetics 44:2. (2004), 149-166.

Kant, Quasi-Realism & the Autonomy of Aesthetic Judgement’ European Journal of Philosophy 9:2 (2001), 166-189.

‘Beauty and Testimony’ in Philosophy, the Good, the True & the Beautiful ed. A. O' Hear, (2000), 209-236.

Picture, Image and Experience: A Philosophical Inquiry. Cambridge University Press, 1998.

‘Explaining Depiction’, Philosophical Review, vol.104, no.3 (1995),.425-455.

‘Resemblance and Misrepresentation’, Mind 103: 412 (1994), 421- 438.