ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses that one of the best-known pieces of American realist art: Edward Hopper's Nighthawks. The attack on art as a source of knowledge has a distinguished pedigree. The fact that something is a work of art is not the relevant issue in deciding whether or not it is a source of knowledge. Rosalind Hursthouse's point takes us into the murky world of how to think about morality. It contrasts the standard view of acquiring moral knowledge with a more subtle view. There is an alternative model of moral knowledge, however, that goes back at least as far as Aristotle. The power of art to make some thoughts salient makes it a powerful means of conveying political messages. With respect to the acquisition of factual knowledge, Gregory Currie is sympathetic to the sceptics. He holds that we can acquire factual knowledge from fiction, but only by carefully distinguishing what is fictional from the background knowledge of fact.
