ABSTRACT
The question is: What sort of concept of authorship do we need to account for our appreciative practices? Our appreciative practices are not entirely uniform, of course, but I assume they at least include activities such as attributing praise for achievements and blame for failures. When the achievements of an artwork, taken as a whole, are significant, it is often the authors who receive awards. When the failures of an artwork, taken as a whole, are significant, it is often the authors who bear responsibilitysometimes financial, sometimes even legal. In the context of artistic appreciation, then, authorship is a causal concept, which centrally involves control over the work as a whole and, in relation, responsibility. Or so I shall argue, building upon plausible proposals along these lines that have been advanced by film theorists such as V. F. Perkins and philosophers of art like Paisley Livingston.
