Denis Dutton

Denis Dutton (9 February 1944 – 28 December 2010) was an academic, web entrepreneur and libertarian media commentator/activist. He was a professor of philosophy at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand. He was also a co-founder and co-editor of the websites Arts & Letters Daily, ClimateDebateDaily.com and cybereditions.com.^[1]

Dutton was from Los Angeles, California, specifically the San Fernando Valley, where his parents owned a bookstore;^[2] he was educated at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He taught at several American universities, including the University of California, Santa Barbara and the University of Michigan–Dearborn, before emigrating to New Zealand. From 2008 to 2010 he was the Head of the Philosophy school in an unofficial capacity at Canterbury and, when Professor Copeland, Head of the School^[3], was quarantined because of influenza in 2009, Dutton acted briefly as Head of Humanities.

He was one of the founding members and first chair of New Zealand Skeptics.

Art appreciation theory

Dutton observed that authenticity in art may be used in the sense of nominal authenticity, in the sense of a work of art being correctly attributed to its author rather than being a forgery, or expressive authenticity, where a work is a true expression of an individual’s or a society’s values and beliefs. He discussed the ambiguity inherent in both definitions, asking whether crude "native carvings" made for tourists are authentic, and whether a performance of a Shakespeare play with female actresses or a performance of a Bach composition on a piano are inauthentic.^[4]

Dutton's 2009 book The Art Instinct: Beauty, Pleasure, and Human Evolution^[5] opposes the commonly held modernist view that art appreciation is culturally learned, claiming instead that art appreciation stems from evolutionary adaptions made during the Pleistocene.^[6] He set out an abbreviated version of his theory in a 2009 Google Talk lecture.^[7]

Views on Progress

In reviewing Charles Murray's book Human Accomplishment, Dutton^[8] argued that despite the fact that "wealth, cities and their cultural endowments, communication, and political freedom have...improved in recent centuries", nevertheless world progress in the arts and sciences had declined, especially since around 1800.

Dutton wrote approvingly of the four cultural conditions that Murray claimed necessary for people to reach their full potential, these being:

1. "...the most talented people believe that life has a purpose and that the function of life is to fulfill that purpose."
2. that "encourages the belief that individuals can act efficaciously as individuals."
3. where organizing structures are rich and old, including "theories, styles, and techniques...such as the spectroscope in physics or the grand piano in music".
4. where people have "a well-articulated vision of, and use of, the transcendental good relevant to that domain." Such a good, according to Dutton, can include truth, morality, or beauty.

Criticism of academic prose

Dutton used his editorship of the journal Philosophy and Literature to criticise many literary and cultural theorists for a writing style that is, "no better than adequate -- or just plain awful."^[9] In 1995, his Bad Writing Contest criticised the prose of Homi K. Bhabha and Fredric Jameson.^[10] In 1998, the contest awarded first place to University of California-Berkeley Professor Judith Butler, for a sentence which appeared in the journal diacritics:

The move from a structuralist account in which capital is understood to structure social relations in relatively homologous ways to a view of hegemony in which power relations are subject to repetition, convergence, and rearticulation brought the question of temporality into the thinking of structure, and marked a shift from a form of Althusserian theory that takes structural totalities as theoretical objects to one in which the insights into the contingent possibility of structure inaugurate a renewed conception of hegemony as bound up with the contingent sites and strategies of the rearticulation of power.

Dutton said, "To ask what this means is to miss the point. This sentence beats readers into submission and instructs them that they are in the presence of a great and deep mind. Actual communication has nothing to do with it."^[9] Butler challenged the charges of academic pedantry and obscurantism in the pages of the New York Times^[11] and the affair briefly became a cause célèbre in the world of academic theorists. Dutton then ended the contest.

Public radio advocacy

Dutton was a passionate supporter of public radio. In the early 1990s he founded the lobby group The New Zealand Friends of Public Broadcasting in response to proposals to devolve New Zealand's two non-commercial public radio stations.^[12]

In 1995 he was appointed to the board of directors of Radio New Zealand, where he served for seven years.^[13] After concluding his term as a director, Dr Dutton and Dr John Isles issued a report criticising Radio New Zealand for loss of neutrality in news and current affairs, failure to adhere to charter and opposed to contestable funding of broadcasting.^[14]

Late academic contributions

In 2010, Dutton introduced a course entitled “Darwin’s Dangerous Idea”^[15](Phil220) The title was borrowed, with permission, from the title of a book by philosopher Daniel Dennett, the man who famously called Darwin's formulation of evolution "The single best idea anyone has ever had." One of the purposes of the course was to demonstrate why Dennett's claim is defensible.

The required anchor text for the course was The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution, by Richard Dawkins, an evolutionary theorist. Writings by Charles Darwin were sourced from another recommended text, Darwin's On the Origin of Species, edited by Joseph Carroll. Carroll's collection included important excerpts from The Voyage of the Beagle and The Descent of Man, as well as historical background (including Darwin's own short autobiography) and source material on other evolutionary thinkers.

Dutton intended this course to be a thought-provoking journey through the making of The Origin of Species, highlighting not only his personal journey but also the obstacles that thwarted early understanding of evolutionary theory.

Because of Dutton's death, this course will not be offered again. Douglas Campbell will staff one of Dutton's entry level courses, Philosophy 110"Science Good, Bad and Bogus," as mentioned above. Campbell founded with Dutton, and at present edits, Climate Debate Daily; However, the remainder of Dutton's Courses are likely to be cancelled indefinitely^[16]

Death

In his final Email to his students in Philosophy 110, he wrote that the shoulder pain he had been suffering from was in fact cancer, and that he had recently begun a non-alternative treatment which left him feeling much better. He continued to decline, however, so that in his last lecture of 2010 he announced to his Philosophy 220 students his reluctant retirement from university teaching. Without ceremony, he thus slipped out the door of the university where he had lectured since 1984. Other students did not know of his retirement until they received a memo acknowledging the cancellation or restructuring of the courses he had been teaching. At its December 2010 graduation ceremony, the University of Canterbury awarded him a Research Medal for his work,^[17] barely a fortnight before his death from cancer on 28 December 2010.^[18][19]

Bibliography

Dutton's publications include:

• Denis Laurence Dutton (1974). Art and anthropology: aspects of criticism and the social studies. University of California, Santa Barbara. 
• Denis Dutton (1983). The Forger's art: forgery and the philosophy of art. University of California Press. ISBN 0520043413. 
• Denis Dutton, Michael Krausz (1985). The Concept of creativity in science and art. M. Nijhoff. ISBN 9024731275. 
• Denis Dutton (2003). Jerrold Levinson. ed. "Authenticity in Art". The Oxford Handbook of Aesthetics (Oxford University Press). http://www.denisdutton.com/authenticity.htm. 
• Charles A. Murray, Denis Dutton, Claire Fox (2008). In Praise of Elitism. Centre for Independent Studies, The. ISBN 1864321660. 
• Denis Dutton (2009). The art instinct: beauty, pleasure, & human evolution. Oxford University Press US. ISBN 0199539421. 
• Michael Krausz, Denis Dutton, Karen Bardsley (2009). The idea of creativity. BRILL. ISBN 9004174443. 

References

1. ^ Ray Sawhill (2000-11-03). "The gleeful contrarian". Salon.com. http://archive.salon.com/tech/view/2000/11/03/dutton/index.html. Retrieved March 25, 2008. 
2. ^ Sailer, Steve (2010-12-28). "Denis Dutton, RIP". Steve Sailer's iSteve Blog. http://isteve.blogspot.com/2010/12/dennis-dutton-rip.html. Retrieved 2010-12-28. "When I mentioned to him once where I was from, he pointed out that he'd grown up in the San Fernando Valley, too, and his parents had owned the well-known Dutton's bookstore in North Hollywood." 
3. ^ "University of Canterbury School of Philosophy and Religious Studies - Staff page". http://www.phil.canterbury.ac.nz/people/. Retrieved 2008-03-27. 
4. ^ Denis Dutton (2003). Jerrold Levinson. ed. "Authenticity in Art". The Oxford Handbook of Aesthetics (Oxford University Press). http://www.denisdutton.com/authenticity.htm. 
5. ^ http://www.theartinstinct.com The Art Instinct. Retrieved on 2008-06-08.
6. ^ Gottlieb, Anthony (2009-02-01). "The Descent of Taste". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/01/books/review/Gottlieb-t.html?ref=books. Retrieved 2010-05-01. 
7. ^ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-Di86RqDL4
8. ^ Of Human Accomplishment
9. ^ ^{a b} Dutton, Denis (1999-02-05). "Language Crimes: A Lesson in How Not to Write,Courtesy of the Professoriate". The Wall Street Journal. http://www.denisdutton.com/language_crimes.htm. Retrieved 2010-10-30. 
10. ^ Dutton, Denis (1998). "The Bad Writing Contest: Press Releases, 1996-1998". DenisDutton.com. http://denisdutton.com/bad_writing.htm. Retrieved 2010-10-30. 
11. ^ Butler, Judith (1999-03-20). "A 'Bad Writer' Bites Back". New York Times. https://pantherfile.uwm.edu/wash/www/butler.htm. Retrieved 2010-10-30. 
12. ^ "NZine: Public broadcasting- Not everyone is apathetic". 1998-07-18. http://www.nzine.co.nz/features/broadcasting.html. Retrieved 2008-03-27. 
13. ^ Marion Hobbs, MP (2002-02-04). "Board appointments for NZOA and RNZ". New Zealand Government. http://www.beehive.govt.nz/node/12965. Retrieved 2008-03-26. 
14. ^ Coddington, Deborah M.P. (2004-03-30). "Parliamentary debate: 3rd reading of Radio New Zealand Amendment Bill". Hansard. http://www.parliament.nz/mi-NZ/PB/Debates/Debates/6/5/4/47HansD_20040331_00001531-Radio-New-Zealand-Amendment-Bill-In-Committee.htm. Retrieved 2008-03-27. ^{[dead link]}
15. ^ http://www.denisdutton.com/220.htm
16. ^ http://www.canterbury.ac.nz/courseinfo/GetCourseDetails.aspx?course=PHIL220
17. ^ Matthews, Philip (16 December 2010). "Renowned academic receives top honour". The Press. http://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/news/4463532/Renowned-academic-receives-top-honour. Retrieved 27 September 2011. 
18. ^ "Professor, web entrepreneur Denis Dutton dies". The Press. 28 December 2010. http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/education/4498558/Professor-web-entrepreneur-Denis-Dutton-dies. Retrieved 27 September 2011. 
19. ^ "Arts author Denis Dutton dies aged 66". BBC News. 2010-12-29. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-12088898. 

External links

• Denis Dutton's personal website
• Arts & Letters Daily
• "And in this corner ...". The Press. 2 February 2008. Archived from the original on 2008-03-28. http://www.webcitation.org/5WeF69tFd. 
• Video (and audio) of interview/conversation with Dutton and John Horgan on Bloggingheads.tv
• Current Biography cover story on Dutton
• Dutton on TED.com -- A Darwinian theory of beauty
• An interview about Arts & Letters Daily on The Marketplace of Ideas
• An interview about The Art Instinct on The Marketplace of Ideas
• Denis Dutton: A Darwinian theory of beauty, TED.com. Denis Dutton's provocative theory on beauty - art, music and other beautiful things. Landscape art discussed in the timeframe between 6:55 - 8:35.

Persondata
Name	Dutton, Denis
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	1944-02-09
Place of birth
Date of death	2010-12-28
Place of death