What is the role of the environment, and of the information it provides, in cognition? More specifically, may there be a role for certain artefacts to play in this context? These are questions that motivate "4E" theories of cognition (as being embodied, embedded, extended, enactive). In his take on that family of views, Hajo Greif first defends and refines a concept of information as primarily natural, environmentally embedded in character, which had been eclipsed by information-processing views of cognition. He continues (...) with an inquiry into the cognitive bearing of some artefacts that are sometimes referred to as 'intelligent environments'. Without necessarily having much to do with Artificial Intelligence, such artefacts may ultimately modify our informational environments. -/- With respect to human cognition, the most notable effect of digital computers is not that they might be able, or become able, to think but that they alter the way we perceive, think and act. (shrink)

This essay centers on a storyteller's performance of ritual in stories to draw associations between the life of the Biblical Mary with her son Jesus and the subjectivities and dispositions of people living in impoverished conditions. The storyteller explores these subjectivities and dispositions, characterizing the exploration as a journey. She also defines an ethical position where the self meets otherness—both sacred and cultural—to engender positive human relations. The essay combines the storyteller's performance with the author's to reproduce the effects, advance (...) the ethics, mitigate the politics of representation, and provide an understanding of the journey's end—a place called home. (shrink)

The ArgumentBiology, understood in turn-of-the-century Germany to include psychology, held a central but enigmatic place in the philosopher Ernst Cassirer's work. From his earliest studies with Hermann Cohen through his long engagement with the theoretical biology of Jakob von Uexküll and Adolf Meyer-Abich, Cassirer consistently used the history and practice of biology to examine and delineate a set of characteristic tensions between the natural and cultural sciences. This paper examines Cassirer's treatment of this theme by addressing two contrasting interpretations he (...) gave — in hisPhilosophy of Symbolic Forms and in hisEssay on Man — to the benchmark case from empirical psychology of the “talking” horse “Clever Hans.” The original case involved the horse's ability to signal answers to remarkably complex questions by stamping its hooves, an ability that ultimately appeared to rest on a capacity to detect extremely minute unintentional movement cues in its auditors as it reached the appropriate answer. Due to both Cassirer's shifting description of the case within his philosophy and the case's inherent polyvalence, Cassirer's remarks provide a useful window onto the social, epistemological, and stylistic meaning of his “unified” philosophy of human culture and science. (shrink)

The aim of this essay is to emphasize a number of important points that will provide a better understanding of the history of philosophical thought concerning scientific knowledge. The main points made are: (a) that the principal way of viewing abstraction which has dominated the history of thought and epistemology up to the present is influenced by the original Aristotelian position; (b) that with the birth of modern science a new way of conceiving abstraction came into being which is better (...) characterized by the term idealization, the name that was later, in fact, to be used by scientists to describe their scientific activity; (c) that, however, on account of the influence of empirical and inductive philosophy, scientists have often not had sufficient methodological awareness of this new way of viewing abstraction; (d) that this new concept of abstraction has frequently been expressed in the framework of philosophies that lie outside the mainstream of contemporary epistemology or even exhibit marked anti-scientific tendencies; (e) that the theme of idealization has been taken up again in the last few decades and a great contribution in this direction has been made by the so-called Pozna school of methodology. (shrink)

The article compares Fritz Kaufmann and Ernst Cassirer’s conceptions of aesthetics, focusing in particular on their characterisation of the experience of apprehension of art objects. Firstly, analysing Kaufmann’s early investigation of the experience of the reception of art images and Cassirer’s observations on art as a symbolic form, it argues that the two philosophers conceptualise the reception of art objects in a similar way, as an experience structured across different layers of meaning constitution that are based on specific functions of (...) consciousness. While these similarities seem to suggest a convergence between Kaufmann’s early phenomenological reflections and Cassirer’s revised Marburg Neo-Kantianism, an account of Kaufmann’s direct confrontation with Cassirer shows that there remain profound differences regarding their final understanding of the aims of their philosophical inquiries as well as of the epistemological premises of their approaches. These differences become clearer in Kaufmann’s later reflections where he articulates the implications of his interpretation of transcendental phenomenology, stressing in particular the role of eidetic reduction. (shrink)

Using a base of philosophical athropology, this article suggests that an ethical analysis of persuasion must include not just the logic human response, but culture and experience as well. The authors propose potential maxims for ethical behavior in advertising and public relations and applies them to two case studies, political advertising and the Bridgestone/Firestone controversy.

This article analyses the concept of ?aesthetic emotion? in John Dewey's Art as experience. The analysis shows that Dewey's line of investigation offers valuable insights as to the role of emotion in experience: it shows emotion as an integral part and structuring force, as a cultural and historical category. However, the notion of aesthetic emotion is characterized by a fundamental ambiguity. There is a conflict between a mechanical and an organic understanding of emotion, a confusion of emotion as structure and (...) of emotion as process, of emotion as content and as agency. The central problem may consist of the conception of aesthetic experience as the ideal. While evil and despair are thereby excluded from the art, everyday life is left wanting, as it cannot live up to the ideal. (shrink)

Despite the by now historical tendency to demarcate scientific epistemology sharply from virtually all others, especially theological “epistemology,” it has recently been recognized that both enterprises share a great deal in common, at least as far as the epistemology of discovery is implicated. Such a claim is founded upon a psychological analysis of figuration, where, it is argued, metaphor plays a crucial role in the mediation of discovery, in the domains of science and religion alike. Thus, although the conventionally conceived (...) scientific method is crucial to the enterprise, primacy must nonetheless be accorded to discovery, which drives virtually all disciplines. (shrink)

While we often see games as less serious or at least less transcendental than religion there is reason to believe that games can evoke similarly meaningful narratives that allow us to learn a great deal about ourselves and our world. And games do so often using the same symbolic and metaphorical mechanisms that generate meaning in religious experience. In this paper, I explore some of the ways in which game myths—the myths created from and through games—generate meaning in our lives. (...) People experience myths in games very similarly to how they might in religion. I first explain what myth means in contemporary literature and then show how the very make up of games opens them to a mythical reality. I highlight two ways in particular. I will argue that the inefficiencies within games promote a deep engagement with the world, and this gratuitous nature provides a system for creating myths and actualizing mythical potential. (shrink)