Magic Tricks as Quasi-Miracles: A New Approach in the Aesthetics of Performance

A number of recent philosophical accounts of magic performance have argued that it has a distinctive aesthetic profile, stemming from audiences experiencing the ‘illusion of the impossible’. A common theme in these accounts is that in engaging with magic performance, audiences have an experience which is discordant with beliefs to which they are (or were previously) committed. We develop a different way of understanding the aesthetics of magic, utilising the idea of a quasi-miracle, which trades primarily in the notion of incongruity between explanations. On this account, the experience of magic is not one of cognitive dissonance. We compare this approach with other philosophical accounts of magic performance – especially those of Jason Leddington and Mark Windsor – and argue that construing magic tricks as quasi-miracles offers an illuminating, new dimension to conceptualising the aesthetics of magic.