Trauma’s ubiquity in society leads to an acknowledgement that damaging experiences likely affect more students than they leave untouched. Dewey acknowledged the importance of the past throughout his theorizing of experience and simultaneously recognized that students need to draw upon past experiences in new learning encounters. In this paper, we argue that Dewey may have opened the door to account for the possibility of traumatic experience affecting learning. We acknowledge the potential of music to prompt a trauma response and seek (...) to explore ways that music education may also provide a mechanism for working through difficult and traumatic pasts. (shrink)

In his ecological approach to perception, James Gibson introduced the concept of affordance to refer to the perceived meaning of environmental objects and events. this paper examines the relational and causal character of affordances, as well as the grounds for extending affordances beyond environmental features with transcultural meaning to include those features with culturally-specific meaning. such an extension is seen as warranted once affordances are grounded in an intentional analysis of perception. toward this end, aspects of merleau-ponty's treatment of perception (...) are explored. finally, a resolution of the apparent tension between the relational and perceiver-independent nature of affordances is presented. (shrink)

Paul Natorp, John Dewey and Sergius Hessen are usually considered to represent three different philosophical and pedagogical doctrines developed at the turn of the Twentieth century. These are, respectively: neo‐Kantianism, pragmatism and humanistic pedagogy widely rooted in Wil‐ helm Dilthey’s philosophy. Contrary to this common classification, Hessen himself described his own concept of pedagogy as an applied philosophy as a continuation of Natorp’s thought. However, Hessen also noted that an approach very similar to his one can be found in John (...) Dewey’s theory. In this case, the fundamental issue is to determine the relationship between philosophy and pedagogical theory and practise. The main part of this article will identify the specificity of this relationship: the specificity implied by the concept of pedagogy understood as applied philosophy. The concept of pedagogy, understood as an applied philosophy in its theoretical and practical aspects, is the basis for critical reconstruction of social life in general. It is the opinion shared by all three philosophers that this type of reconstruction should be based on the communal dimension of basic social interactions, that is, on the communal dimension of work. The only way for the renewal of a different form of social life leads through regaining through them an essential communal dimension of human work. All three authors agreed that to regain the communal dimension of human work by another form of social interaction would only be possible when certain conditions are present; that is, when work will be permeated by individual creativity. The presence of such conditions shall be ensured by the educational community. Thus, the educational community should be a starting and end point for any critical social reconstruction as well as for the pedagogy understood as an applied philosophy. (shrink)

This paper argues that twentieth-century philosopher Cornelius Castoriadis’ innovative concept of imagination is closely related to his treatments of dance. More specifically, it revolves around his concept of “figure,” which thereby suggests a productive partnership with my own philosophy of dance, which I call “Figuration.” The first and second sections below review the interpretations of Castoriadis’ imagination in the two book manuscripts on him in English, Jeff Klooger’s Psyche, Society Autonomy (which supplements Castoriadis with Fichte) and Suzi Adams’ Castoriadis’ Ontology (...) (which supplements him with hermeneutics). My final section defends Castoriadis against these two critical supplements through a close reading of his magnum opus, The Imaginary Institution of Society. There I re-choreograph Castoriadis’ use of the Freudian concept of “leaning on” (Anlehnung, from the Greek anaclisis) as “bending back” (anaclasis, following Klooger’s misspelling of anaclisis). In short, the imagination is like a dancer, bending back to nature understood as “the region which resists” (to varying degrees) the social. (shrink)

This paper outlines the rationale underpinning the conception of science education as sociopolitical action, and then presents a critique of such a conception from the perspective of liberal education. More specifically, the paper discusses the importance of the conception of science education as sociopolitical action and then raises questions about the content of school science, about the place and value of scientific inquiry, and about the opportunities students have for self-directed inquiry. The central idea behind the critique is that a (...) conception of science education as sociopolitical action downplays the importance of knowledge for its own sake and totally neglects the personal/aesthetic dimension of science. (shrink)

Although there are many possible ways of understanding menopause, it is the notion of menopause as hormone deficiency that currently dominates. How is it that this account remains prevalent rather than some alternative understanding of menopause? This question is explored through the employment of a framework informed by both actor network theory and symbolic interactionist studies. The author exploits the common ground shared by these two conceptual approaches to analyze how practices generate and reify particular kinds of knowledge about menopause. (...) The analysis is situated within Australian menopause clinics and explores several key contemporary practices of these clinics to show how the particular understanding of menopause as hormone deficiency is generated and stabilized. The study stresses the knowledge/practice nexus and emphasizes that meanings are not given in advance but are generated through practices. In particular, the focus is on the interactions of the social and the material entities of menopause clinics and how through these interactions the understanding of menopause as hormone deficiency is produced. (shrink)

Sociologists of education often emphasize goods that result from a practice (external goods) rather than goods intrinsic to a practice (internal goods). The authors draw from John Dewey and Alasdair MacIntyre to describe how the same practice can be understood as producing “skills” that center external goods or as producing habits (Dewey) or virtues (MacIntyre), both of which center internal goods. The authors situate these concepts within sociology of education’s stratification paradigm and a renewed interest in the concept of alienation, (...) contrasting the concepts of skills, habits, and virtues to capital, credentials, and habitus. They close by connecting the argument to broader critiques of procedural liberalism and the ideology of meritocracy, then giving suggestions for an expanded sociology of education beyond the stratification paradigm. (shrink)

This paper investigates what it may mean to re-imagine learning through aesthetic experience with reference to John Dewey’s Art as Experience. The discussion asks what learning might look like when aesthetic experience takes centre stage in the learning process. It investigates what Dewey meant by art as experience and aesthetic experience. Working with Dewey as a philosopher of reconstruction of experience, the discussion examines responses to poetic writings and communication in learning situations. In seeking to discover what poetic writing does (...) within the experience of a reader and writer it considers three specific learning situations. Firstly there is an examination of a five-year old child’s experience of shared communication through the story of Horton the Elephant. Secondly there is an account of the responses of an 11-year-old child to poetry in a 1950s classroom setting, and later reconstructions of those experiences by the child as adult. Thirdly, the paper extends to intensive writing with 12 to 13-year-old children. The focus is on the process of learning via acts of expression as aesthetic experiences. Through art as experience the child develops perceptions that recover a coherence and continuity of aesthetic experience in art as in everyday life. (shrink)

This article contributes to work on temporality in education. Challenging the future-oriented focus in contemporary education, the authors question how ideas and assumptions regarding the future—centred on the Child—can set narrow boundaries around children in schools. In carrying out this task, we employ the work of Lee Edelman and John Dewey to examine the educational ramifications of the focus on the future, which we call ‘educational futurism’. The argument seeks specifically to explore how educational futurism imposes limits on educational discourse (...) and privileges a certain future—making it unthinkable to imagine ways outside of such a privileged future. Juxtaposing Lee Edelman and John Dewey, we draw out connections and disconnections between their disparate philosophies, illustrating the ways in which educational futurism ignores or overlooks the lived experiences of children. We conclude by briefly noting the queerness of children and the impact of such queerness on broadening discussions of the future of children and their educations. (shrink)

Kant’s approach to the nature of artworks suggests that art has a metaphysical dimension that accounts for the two major elements of aesthetic experience. Aesthetic judgements are occasioned by experiences of pleasure and have an objective aspect since they are experiences with which other persons are expected to agree. More recently, Arthur Danto has argued that an artwork must be situated in an artworld. Pragmatists see aesthetic experience instead as integral to experience and requiring no special explanation other than association (...) with consumatory moments of experience. I want to argue that the pragmatist approach is basically correct, that contra Danto and Kant, aesthetic experience has no special implications for metaphysics. I locate this notion of aesthetic experience in the work of Ralph Waldo Emerson and offer speculations about the cultural relativity of concepts of aesthetic beauty. (shrink)

In the United States, running as a leisure activity continues to grow in popularity. Healthism can explain some of this popularity, but it does not explain ultradistance running. Motivations for running can be seen through the framework of the Kantian beautiful and the sublime. Beauty arises through extrinsic motivation and relates to an economy of form, while the sublime arises through intrinsic motivation and relates to confronting the challenge of infinity. The commercial, casual, and competitive aspects of distance running correspond (...) to the beautiful, while its wilderness, serious, ultradistance aspects correspond to the sublime. This framework is used to explain the resistance of ultrarunning to the would-be detrimental effects of commodification, as well as ultrarunning’s ‘wild turn.’. (shrink)

: John Dewey believed every person is capable of being an artist, living an artful life of social interaction that benefits and thereby beautifies the world. In Art as Experience, Dewey reminds his readers that the second Council of Nicea censored the church's use of statutes and incense that distracted from prayer. Dewey, in an interesting turnabout, removes dogma from the church, but lauds the sensory details that enable higher understanding of human experience. Dewey evokes a paradox: the appreciation and (...) need for the "experiential" artifact, but art as catalyst to realms beyond the physical. For Dewey, art functions as experience. Processes of inquiry, looking and finding meaning are transformative, extending connections with what is good and right. Expanded perceptions open venues for understanding and action. Attention to detail excites potential for meaning, yielding important societal insights, previously taken for granted. Transformative experiences occur when people intuit new concepts, that occasion seeing in valued ways. Art communicates moral purpose and education. Dewey believes moral purpose is justifiable, art conveying messages that stimulate reflection on purposeful lives. Dewey is a pragmatist whose attraction to art postulates it as a means to an end because he envisions the end as just and fair: democracy. (shrink)

Scientific literacy is one of the primary purposes of science education which briefly focuses on using and interpreting scientific explanations, understanding science within its culture. However, science curricula emphasize science with its cognitive aspects and underestimate affective and aesthetic aspects of science. Science education needs to cover beauty of science for students to cross borders between their own culture and culture of science and to achieve the aim of scientific literacy. Relating aesthetic aspects of science with content of science and (...) paving the way for aesthetic experiences through artworks may enrich science education. The purposes of this study are to discuss the need of integrating aesthetic aspects of science in science instruction and to propose examples and pedagogical suggestions to promote aesthetic experiences into the science education. Artworks are selected to present socio-cultural aspects of science to demonstrate the culture of science, their stories are explained, and pedagogical suggestions are proposed. Advantages and difficulties of using artworks in science instruction are discussed as a result of the study. (shrink)

This article addresses the issue of units of analysis and atomistic models in psychology taking creativity research as a case study. A classic typology in this area, initially proposed by Rhodes, distinguishes between the four P's of creativity: person, process, product, and press. Continuing an effort to rewrite this basic language of the discipline from a cultural psychological perspective in the form of five A's, the discussion here focuses on bringing relationships to the fore within this framework and problematising strict (...) distinctions between each of the five elements. A closer look at the five A's of creativity, drawing on theoretical considerations and illustrated by interviews with creators working in different domains, reveals the permeable borders surrounding these units and challenges clear divisions between actors and audiences, action and artefacts, actors and artefacts. In the end, it is argued that creative phenomena cannot be properly understood and studied outside of their integrated and dynamic totality defined as a creativity complex. Implications of adopting this “molecular” perspective for theory and methodology are discussed. (shrink)

The most constructive response to the crisis in moral theory has been the revival of virtue ethics, an ethics that has the advantages of being personal, contextual, and, as this paper will argue, normative as well. The first section offers a general comparative analysis of Confucian and Whiteheadian philosophies, showing their common process orientation and their views of a somatic self united in reason and passion. The second section contrasts rational with aesthetic order, demonstrating a parallel with analytic and synthetic (...) reason, and showing that rule-based ethics comes under the former and virtue ethics under the latter. The third and final section discusses a Confucian-Whiteheadian aesthetics of virtue, focusing on love as the comprehensive virtue. The principal goal of the paper is to propose that an appropriation of Confucian virtue ethics will enhance the otherwise slow development of a Euro-American process ethics. (shrink)

What are the possibilities for art to provide non-reactionary, productive spaces for pedagogical endeavors? How can culture function pedagogically and critically beyond the continuing constraints of positivism on the one hand and fixed systems on the other? In what ways can art’s impasse open spaces, its weakness move beyond the teleological, and its exit provide pedagogical possibilities beyond its current horizons? These and other such questions about the limitations and potential for pedagogy and culture through the lens of art lie (...) at the core of Baldacchino’s Art’s Way Out: Exit Pedagogy and the Cultural Condition. This review of his work is divided into two overarching sections, a summary of his work and questions that his arguments have raised for this reader, and questions that address the ideas presented in Art’s Way Out and the philosophical tools utilized to make them.Summary, Questions, and ArgumentsAt one level, this work asserts that art is central to pedagogy and p .. (shrink)

Existence of similarities of overall brain activation, specifically during emotional and other common psychological operations (discussed by Lindquist et al.), supports a proposal that emotion participates continuously in dynamic adjustment of behavior. The proposed participation can clarify the relationship of emotion to musical experience. Music, in turn, can help explore such participation.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Aesthetics of Representation:Dramatic Texts and Dramatic EngagementKathleen Gallagher (bio)Staking the TerritoryThere are several ways in which aesthetic discourses might be positioned in the field of drama education. While some might locate "aesthetics" in the cognitive or interpretive realm of learning, and others the affective or philosophical realm, I have chosen to speak of the discourses of aesthetics as they relate to both cognitive and embodied responses to the (...) (extra)ordinary events of a drama classroom. I am already unsatisfied with the recognizable distinctions implied in this binary, but I persist in the hope that the relationship between these learning functions will become clear as I proceed with what I have termed the sociology of aesthetics in drama practice. In drama, we attempt—collectively—to represent our lives through art as we come to know the world and our sensuous responses to it.Fenner's brief history of aesthetic experience and aesthetic analysis will further help stake the territory about which we are speaking in a drama classroom.1 Calling aesthetic experiences the "raw data" that aesthetics is meant to explain, he helpfully distinguishes between Kantian understandings of the conditions of aesthetic judgment and the emergence of those thinkers in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries who began to focus on the psychology of aesthetic experience. Following these thinkers and further developments in the early part of the twentieth century, the work of John Dewey explored the psychological nature of what he called "an experience" in the field of education more generally.2 This article will also privilege the notion of aesthetic experience but will, more specifically, focus on an exploration of ideas borne out of aesthetic experiences that cultivate sociological questions about representation and the nature of cognitive and embodied engagement in classroom drama. Key to my view of dramatic representation is the notion of a provoked imagination. [End Page 82]In the nineteenth century, Archibald Allison claimed that it was the imagination that was responsible for what we term "aesthetic experiences."3 Earlier philosophers of aesthetics had determined that the mere presence of beauty could create an aesthetic experience, but Allison insisted upon the "exercises of the imagination" in his understanding of aesthetic experiences. Contemporary writers in the field of arts education have also favored this more active conception of aesthetic responses, such as the formidable Madeleine Grumet and Maxine Greene. They and others will be cited here in support of a conception of "aesthetic experiences" in the drama classroom as active, selective, and highly framed experiences.Dramatic Texts and Aesthetic Knowing: Framing the ExperiencesOne can hardly discuss the idea of aesthetic exploration without first engaging with the rather unwieldy idea of "creativity." Radford, citing Margaret Boden, puts forward a very helpful notion of creativity as "conceptual space."4 This "conceptual space" is what I will refer to as "the frame" carefully placed around dramatic learning, usually by a highly skilled teacher. Frequently because of this frame, something entirely forgettable to students is shaped into something worth considering. The "frame," therefore, consists of both careful pedagogical planning and, in many cases, a piece of text that ignites the conceptual space and inspires a deliberate probing. This deliberate probing, or what Radford might call creative thought, invites co-creators to "play at the boundaries of sense."5 Bruner speaks about the "creative act" as bringing about a "shock of recognition,"6 or what Radford equally describes as something speaking to something "within us." This idea is particularly helpful in deconstructing what is often at work in a collaborative piece of improvised drama activity in a classroom of young people.To this end, I would like to offer three brief episodes as examples of textual and improvised drama engagement that speak to Bruner's and Radford's ideas of "recognition," or resonance with "something within us," and to my own understanding of how ideas of representation or mimesis are operating in moments of aesthetic knowing for young people. The other principle at work, seemingly at odds with these ideas, is the notion of distance or alienation from an event, in effect a dis-identification. What I would especially hope to demonstrate in the following brief, empirical... (shrink)

Koopman’s book revolves around the notion of transition, which he proposes is one of the central ideas of the pragmatist tradition but one which had not previously been fully articulated yet nevertheless shapes the pragmatist attitude in philosophy. Transition, according to Koopman, denotes “those temporal structures and historical shapes in virtue of which we get from here to there”. One of the consequences of transitionalism is the understanding of critique and inquiry as historical pro...

This article addresses the portrait as a philosophical form of art. Portraits seek to render the subjective objectively visible. In portraiture two fundamental aims come into conflict: the revelatory aim of faithfulness to the subject, and the creative aim of artistic expression. In the first part of my paper, studying works by Rembrandt, I develop a typology of four different things that can be meant when speaking of an image’s power to show a person: accuracy, testimony of presence, emotional characterization, (...) or revelation of the essential “air” (to use Roland Barthes’ term). In the second half of my paper this typology is applied to examples from painting and photography to explore how the two media might differ. I argue that, despite photography’s alleged ‘realism’ and ‘transparency,’ it allows for artistic portraiture and presents the same basic conflict between portraiture’s two aims, the revelatory and the expressive. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis paper examines Mohan Matthen's account of aesthetic pleasure. The first part explores implications of Matthen's notion of ‘fit’ between features of art objects and our pleasurable contemplation of them. Through historical comparisons with Plato and Dewey, I challenge his claim not to be offering a theory of aesthetic norms. The second part of my paper sketches how Matthen might address two important problems of contemporary aesthetics: the first concerning interpretation, and the second concerning genres of art that evoke negative (...) or painful emotions such as tragedy, melodrama, and horror. (shrink)

Epistemologists of testimony have focused almost exclusively on the epistemic dynamics of simple testimony. We do sometimes testify by ways of simple, single sentence assertions. But much of our testimony is narratively structured. I argue that narrative testimony gives rise to a form of epistemic dependence that is far richer and more far reaching than the epistemic dependence characteristic of simple testimony.

Carruthers considers and rejects a mixed position according to which we have interpretative access to unconscious thoughts, but introspective access to conscious ones. I argue that this is too hasty. Given a two-level view of the mind, we can, and should, accept the mixed position, and we can do so without positing additional introspective mechanisms beyond those Carruthers already recognizes.

Issues of communication and the possibilities for the transformation of perspectives through an experimental dialogue resulting in a mutual, open, receptive, and non-judgmental consideration of the other are addressed in this paper from transdisciplinary theoretical and conceptual standpoints. The warrant for cultivating this type of communicative ability is based on arguments resulting from the assumption of widespread confusion and conflict in intrapersonal, interpersonal, intergroup, and ecological relations across the globe. I argue that there are two distinct classes of “reasons” for (...) this proposed practice of dialogue. First is recognition of the need for human individuals to engage in a regular and systematic “social maintenance” of embodied consciousness to forestall the continuous colonization of the past/future on the living present that embodied consciousness entails. Second is the teaching of a skill to creatively and respectfully engage with others in a mutual transformation of perspectives. This paper addresses the general problem of perspectives and reflexivity at the root of the communication phenomenon and by extension – to its scale and to its pathologies in individuals and collectives. It is argued that suspension of judgment, assumption, and habit helps interlocutors to recognize the possibility of holding one's history in a tensional abeyance and to focus on the living present independent of habitualized and reified identities and the embodied manner in which we unconsciously carry ourselves as social or “universalized selves” in social situations. (shrink)

Textbooks and manuals on management suggest that managers are heroes who deal with difficult problems of collective adaptation and change. American films are similarly built on the premise of a hero confronted with extremely difficult situations. What if this hero figure promoted for so long in both management literature and the American film industry was the same at the structural level? This paper will attempt to clearly define the ethical performance of heroes that is perhaps shared by the imagination industry (...) and the workplace on the long run. We shall follow this picture of a hero-leader in the ethics of business and cinema through a large corpus of movies and writings on management and provide a set of six features for examining both, a common heroic structure we shall call the Hero-Leader Matrix. (shrink)

What happens when an object you take to be beautiful or aesthetically pleasing, no longer appears beautiful or pleasing when you learn something new about it? I am assuming a situation in which there is no direct change in the perceptual features of the object, and that what you learn is not the location of some new surface property but rather a bit of non-perceptual information. I classify episodes of dampened appreciation under the heading 'aesthetic disillusionment', and in this paper (...) I explore the relationship between such episodes and the broader issue of ethical constraints on aesthetic activity and appreciation. Does it make sense to say that one should not, or ought not, take pleasure in certain objects or events? I think it does – but in a very particular, almost ecological way. The subsequent discussion focuses on ethical constraints as they operate on the aesthetic appreciation of objects and events within the natural environment. (shrink)

Digitalization reveals the world in new varieties and forms. This power to unveil not only transforms human outreach and actions, but also changes our conceptions; about whom we are, about our uses and about human horizons for sense-making. In this paper, I explore experience design and the aesthetic turn in contemporary research in human–computer interaction and interaction design. This rather recent interest in aesthetic experience is in my view a move away from a view of digitalization as instances of objects (...) aligned in networks, with certain features, qualities and properties, towards an understanding of digitalization as a relation to the world, to itself, and to what it means to be human (e.g. Technology and the character of contemporary life. A philosophical inquiry. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1984, Holding on to reality. The nature of information at the turn of the millennium. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1999; Questioning technology. Routledge, New York, 1999; The question concerning technology and other essays. Harper and Row, New York, 1977; Technology and the lifeworld, from garden to earth. Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 1990). As such my attempt in this text is to outline a conceptual account concerning what it might mean to designate digitalization as experienced rather than as what we traditionally think of it—as a cause of what we perceive. The paper is based on some previous work suggesting that a focus on the beauty of digitalization (i.e. the beast) entails the possibility to investigate ambiguous meanings of digitalization, meanings that are intrinsic to digitalization but have so far received little or no attention. My suggestion is that there are aesthetic and/or sublime dimensions inherent in digitalization that involves the realization of meaning that are becoming increasingly important in both use and design of digital materials. Hence, the particular focus on aesthetics as implied by the title of this text refers to a pervasive quality harbouring meaning that through a phenomenological lens could be regarded as the material basis of digitalization. The paper concludes that it is crucial to conduct more thorough studies of the relationship between aesthetics and digitalization if we are truly interested in exploring the potential of digitalization in our lives. (shrink)

In this paper, I propose some philosophical reflections arising from the encounter with a work of art, namely the Squatting Aphrodite, which is one of the Roman copies that is held in the same room as the Venus de Milo in the Louvre Museum in Paris, France. From the description of this artwork and the effect it has on the spectator, I draw three main consequences: the conceptual difference between ordinary sensibility and everyday aesthetics; the criticism of aesthetic conformity, and (...) the political implications of adopting an ordinary perspective towards aesthetic experience. (shrink)

In this article, I enter into a discussion of how aesthetics can be conceptualized in the context of design and related to the field of human–computer interaction (HCI). I contest the current trend in design aesthetics that primarily focuses on beauty, pleasure, and the creation of emotional appeal by means of the sensual and visual elements of the design. Conversely, I advocate for a series of concepts related to aesthetics, such as reflectivity, representation, and epistemology, as these point aesthetics beyond (...) the immediate sensual and visual. Through these concepts, a deeper understanding of the character of the relationship between humans and design can be obtained: Design objects and HCI solutions can be more accurately described in their roles as interfaces for how humans approach the world. This broader perspective on aesthetics has implication for practice when designers set the task of creating new experiences for the users. (shrink)

Dewey's theory of happiness goes against the grain of much contemporary psychologic and popular thought by identifying the highest form of human happiness with moral behavior. Such happiness, according to Dewey, avoids being at the mercy of circumstances because it is independent of the pleasures and successes we take from experience and, instead, is dependent upon the disposition we bring to experience. It accompanies a disposition characterized by an abiding interest in objects in which all can share, one founded upon (...) a dynamic inner harmony and evolving adjustment to the world. The marks of such an expansive disposition are "stability of character, braveness of soul, and equanimity of soul," and the key to the development of these traits is what Dewey calls "ethical love." We conclude with consideration of three potential criticisms of Dewey's view of happiness and possible Deweyan rejoinders. (shrink)

Immanuel Kant and his work occupied a space at the crossroads of several important movements in philosophy. In this essay, I look at two important crossroads in aesthetics. First, the subjective turn in aesthetics, when the focus on aesthetic objects was rebalanced with the focus on the subject’s experience of such objects, the weight shifting from the objective to the subjective. Second, after many years and many theories advancing the view that universality of judgment could be achieved, at least in (...) part, through adoption of the appropriate perspective – or attitude – when considering a particular aesthetic object, Kant offers us perhaps the most sophisticated view of disinterestedness of any, and as he does so he solidifies that tradition, bringing it to its culmination, and ushers in the beginning of its end. (shrink)

In this thesis the appropriate aesthetic evaluation of designed landscapes is explored. The overarching research question for this thesis is: What is an appropriate appreciation of a designed landscape as a designed landscape? This overarching research question is split into sub-questions. The first sub-question is: What is the current theoretical basis for the aesthetic evaluation of designed landscapes and does it provide appropriate arguments for aesthetic evaluations? Two important points about the aesthetic evaluation of designed landscapes were found in the (...) existing literature on environmental aesthetics and in critical evaluations of designed landscapes. Modern environmental aesthetics is focussed on natural environments as it has been shaped in response to early 20th century aesthetics, which was dominated by questions on art. The designed landscape phenomenologically related more to environments, but is ontologically closely related to artworks. Designed landscapes thus fall between two fields. The designed landscape has gone largely unacknowledged by philosophers and geographers. The lack of a specific theory for the appropriate appreciation of designed landscapes has made it easier for landscape architects and critics to miss out on the current insights of environmental aesthetics, leading to the inconsistent belief among landscape architects and landscape architecture critics that landscapes are scenic entities. Actual design criticism as offered in the Landscape Architecture Europe books is shown to be based on the inconsistent belief that aesthetic experiences of works of landscape architecture are mostly visual. To explore what an appropriate appreciation should be based in, first the ontology and phenomenology of one example, the post-war design for the landscape of Walcheren, is described and discussed. To explore its ontology, a literature research has revealed the design process and decisions. To explore the phenomenology, the descriptions of two walks on the island made by the author were analysed. The descriptions of ontology and phenomenology of Walcheren offer insights into the relevance for the aesthetic evaluation of this landscape of being designed and of the sensorial richness of this designed landscape. In both fields of ontology and phenomenology insights into aesthetic value go beyond the visible. The second and third part of the research answers the sub-questions about appropriate appreciation regarding respectively ontology and phenomenology of designed landscapes in general. The literature on topics adjacent to the field of landscape architecture, such as design and architecture aesthetics, was surveyed for aspects that might also be relevant for the aesthetic evaluation of landscape architecture. These aspects were then weighed according to a philosophical method of reasoning from first principles. Starting from a principle of appropriate appreciation, different cues were tested to see whether or not they have to be considered in such an appropriate appreciation. Following descriptions of the True Appreciation Principle (TAP) as provided by Lopes, cues were tested against the Appropriate Appreciation Principle for Designed Landscapes (AAP-DL): An appreciation of landscape L as a designed landscape is appropriate only as far as it does not depend counterfactually on any belief that is inconsistent with the truth about the nature of designed landscapes. Examples are provided where cues can influence one’s evaluation, and evaluation thus depends counterfactually on those taking those cues into account. If something might influence one’s evaluation one should consider it. The exploration has provided important cues for the aesthetic evaluation of designed landscapes. The findings are the base of an evaluative framework that takes into account the ontology and phenomenology of designed landscapes in order to evaluate designed landscapes according the AAP-DL. A discussion is provided on the importance of such an appropriate appreciation for different audiences. (shrink)

This paper addresses the problem of “the insufficiency of now” that stems from the entanglement of education with time. Namely, the embodied-lived present is always inferior compared to the hypothetical ideal future. Education and its promise hence carry the seed of inevitable disenchantment. This problem is examined based on two contrasting perspectives: Plato’s cave allegory and its application to contemporary schooling on the one hand and the Yogacara Buddhist “mind-moments” model on the other hand. The insufficiency of now emerges from (...) both models in different ways; however, the latter model accentuates the mind’s role in its formation. The paper then describes mindfulness practice in light of the latter model, and suggests that it may be a necessary pedagogy for addressing a problem that is inherent in the concept of education and in the mind. However, the teaching of mindfulness itself has to overcome the present/future dualism that is the basis for the insufficiency of now. (shrink)

Susanne K. Langer contributed an exhaustive account of aesthetics, Feeling and Form, in which she articulated her schema of the virtual and wove together the aesthetic elements of music, visual arts, dance, and literature/theater. This analysis of her work centers on two key concepts within her philosophy: the virtual as the aesthetic effect of the work and the perception of the work through intuition. In this paper, I re-read Langers philosophy through a perspective built on intersections between phenomenology, pragmatism, and (...) post-structuralist theory in order to reveal the relevance of her work to current understandings of how the dancing body produces and conveys meaning. I endeavor to show how her work provides a practical, conceptual system for understanding dance as an a-linguistic form of meaning-making, bodily experience, and knowledge. (shrink)

Ethical concerns regarding agricultural practices can be found to co-evolve with technological developments. This paper aims to create an understanding of ethics that is helpful in debating technological innovation by studying such a co-evolution process in detail: the development and adoption of the milking robot. Over the last decade an increasing number of milking robots, or automatic milking systems (AMS), has been adopted, especially in the Netherlands and a few other Western European countries. The appraisal of this new technology in (...) ethical terms has appeared to be a complicated matter. Compared to using a conventional milking parlor, the use of an AMS entails in several respects a different practice of dairy farming, the ethical implications and evaluation of which are not self-evident but are themselves part of a dynamic process. It has become clear that with its use, the entire practice of dairy farming has been reorganized around this new device. With a robot, cows must voluntarily present themselves to be milked, whereby an ethical norm of (individual) freedom for cows can be seen to emerge together with this new technology. But adopting a robot also implies changes in what is considered to be a good farmer and an appropriate relation between farmer and cow. Through interviews, attending “farmers’ network” meetings in the Netherlands, and studying professional literature and dedicated dairy farming web forums, this paper traces the way that ethical concerns are a dynamic part of this process of rearranging a variety of elements of the practice of dairy farming. (shrink)

It is well known that John Dewey was very far from embracing the traditional idea of cognition as something happening inside one’s own mind and consisting in a pictorial representation of the alleged purely external reality out there. His position was largely convergent with enactivist accounts of cognition as something based in life and consisting in human actions within a natural environment. The paper considers Dewey’s conception of cognition by focusing on its potential contributions to the current debate with enactivism. (...) It claims that Dewey’s anti-substantial, continuistic, and emergentistic conception of the mind as a typically human conduct pulls the rug out of the idea of cognition as representation, as well as pushes the current discussion towards a serious reconsideration of representationalist assumptions about conceptuality and language. The paper emphasises that Dewey—differently from enactivists—frames the role of cognition within experience: he argues that cognition concerns those intermediate phases of our experiences of the world which are characterised by an indeterminate or troubled situation, because he claims that human beings’ interactions with their own environment are qualitatively richer and broader than cognition, including as they do many different and intertwined modes of experience. Finally, the author suggests that a coherent development of Dewey’s lines of thought should avoid rigid distinctions and hierarchies between lower and higher degrees of cognition in humans, which are still maintained in certain forms of radical enactivism. Differently, we should consider the impact of the cultural and broadly linguistic configuration of the human–environment even on perception, motor action, and affective sensibility. (shrink)

I offer the first sustained defence of the claim that ugliness is constituted by the disposition to disgust. I advance three main lines of argument in support of this thesis. First, ugliness and disgustingness tend to lie in the same kinds of things and properties (the argument from ostensions). Second, the thesis is better placed than all existing accounts to accommodate the following facts: ugliness is narrowly and systematically distributed in a heterogenous set of things, ugliness is sometimes enjoyed, and (...) ugliness sits opposed to beauty across a neutral midpoint (the argument from proposed intensions). And third, ugliness and disgustingness function in the same way in both giving rise to representations of contamination (the argument from the law of contagion). In making these arguments, I show why prominent objections to the thesis do not succeed, cast light on some of the artistic functions of ugliness, and, in addition, demonstrate why a dispositional account of disgustingness is correct, and present a novel problem for warrant-based accounts of disgustingness (the ‘too many reasons’ problem). (shrink)

In this paper, I set an aspect of what it is to live a flourishing life against the backdrop of neo liberal trends that continue to influence educational policy across the globe. The view I set out is in sharp contrast to any narrow assumption that education’s main task is the measurement of high performing individuals who will thus contribute to an economically viable society. Instead, I explore and argue for a conception of what constitutes a flourishing life that is (...) embedded in a more pragmatist analysis of what education may be. The argument begins with developing the centrality of embodiment to aesthetic sensibility and goes on to suggest how collective understanding of this within a community could constitute a sense of performance and thus contribute to the educational aim of developing a full and flourishing life. The argument is that this way of seeing life could have implications for educational practice, the role of the teacher and could help to reconfigure how education is experienced by the young. (shrink)

This paper identifies the ultimate justification for business activity as an aesthetic justification. Aesthetics, loosely defined as the appreciation of beauty, subsumes both ethics and economics within an holistic justificatory mechanism for business decisions. Five essential qualities of aesthetic judgment are identified: disinterest, subjectivity, inclusivity, contemplativity, and internality. The quality of aesthetic judgment, exercised by the individual through the organization, will determine the extent to which business activity enhances quality of life.

ABSTRACTCan a Naturalist Definition of art replace the historical and institutional positions argued for by philosophical aesthetics? This article considers Denis Dutton’s work in evolutionary psychology and his cluster Naturalist Definition of art. I begin with an analysis of the validity of what Dutton takes to be the most important criterion: Imaginative Experience. I propose a criticism of Dutton’s set of criteria coupled with a re-evaluation of what may be implied when referring to a naturalist basis for the arts. Specifically, (...) I argue that philosophical aesthetics, which has been criticized by Dutton as a form of cultural relativism, is instead able to address features of our interaction with the arts that have adaptive and evolutionary value. (shrink)

Proceedings of the annual congress of the Finnish Philosophical Association in 2013. Theme: memory.

Desde una perspectiva matricial de la cultura, la autora aborda el estudio de las identidades sociales en su dimensión estética. La presentación dramatúrgica de la persona propuesta por Goffman adquiere un perfil más concreto al enfocar a las identidades a partir de sus procesos de gestación y proyección, pues nunca brotan en el vacío sino a través de matrices que ineludiblemente las conforman. Mandoki explora identidades colectivas religiosas como la cristiana, la musulmana y la judía, así como prácticas familiares, escolares, (...) artísticas y médicas donde la estética opera con todo su poder de seducción, repulsión, cohesión o distinción. Ello implica no sólo que cada sujeto despliega identidades diferentes según las matrices en que se ubique y con cuyos símbolos se identifica, sino que lo realiza por medio de estrategias estéticas que suministran la adherencia efectiva. (shrink)

How to account for the power that art holds over us? Why do artworks touch us deeply, consoling, transforming or invigorating us in the process? In this paper, we argue that an answer to this question might emerge from a fecund framework in cognitive science known as predictive processing (a.k.a. active inference). We unpack how this approach connects sense-making and aesthetic experiences through the idea of an ‘epistemic arc’, consisting of three parts (curiosity, epistemic action and aha experiences), which we (...) cast as aspects of active inference. We then show how epistemic arcs are built and sustained by artworks to provide us with those satisfying experiences that we tend to call ‘aesthetic’. Next, we defuse two key objections to this approach; namely, that it places undue emphasis on the cognitive component of our aesthetic encounters—at the expense of affective aspects—and on closure and uncertainty minimization (order)—at the expense of openness and lingering uncertainty (change). We show that the approach offers crucial resources to account for the open-ended, free and playful behaviour inherent in aesthetic experiences. The upshot is a promising but deflationary approach, both philosophically informed and psychologically sound, that opens new empirical avenues for understanding our aesthetic encounters. -/- This article is part of the theme issue ‘Art, aesthetics and predictive processing: theoretical and empirical perspectives’. (shrink)

What does it mean to be an aesthetic beholder? Is it different than simply being a perceiver? Most theories of aesthetic perception focus on 1) features of the perceived object and its presentation or 2) on psychological evaluative or emotional responses and intentions of perceiver and artist. In this chapter I propose that we need to look at the process of engaged perception itself, and further that this temporal process of be- coming a beholder must be understood in its embodied, (...) contextual and dynamic speci- ficity. Through both phenomenological and neuroscientific explorations I analyze what is characteristic about a more “aesthetic stance” and argue that there is a certain asym- metry between beholder and beheld, which has to do with a disengagement of goal- directed action, and which allows for other kinds of perceptual involvement than in a more “practical stance”. It is a multi-disciplinary project integrating a sensorimotor no- tion of aesthetic affordances, 18th century philosophy, and large-scale brain network findings. What ensues is a new dynamic framework for future empirical and theoretical research on aesthetic perception. (shrink)

The purpose of this educational development study was to use qualitative methods to model the principles of guidance for the design of a Phenomenon-Based Learning (PhenoBL) entity and to produce a model for teacher education that guides the design of the PhenoBL entity. The theoretical approach to research is hermeneutic-pragmatic and encapsulates an experience-based learning perception. In this study, learning was understood as a communal process of active study of the real phenomena of everyday life and the experiences formed through (...) them. The research assignments were 1. What kind of teaching PhenoBL entities do students produce using this guiding model? 2. What elements prove to be characteristic in the design of a PhenoBL entity? 3. How do the design of the PhenoBL entity and the principles of the design model guiding the teaching practice appear in the light of this study? In accordance with the design research method, the research context was built on the teaching practice internships of an adult education for classroom teachers over three years. The research material consisted of a planning form guiding the advanced practice, the internship syntheses of the students, and plans for the PhenoBL entity produced by small groups. Data analysis was carried out between interventions using content analysis and finally using narrative plot analysis. The analysis proceeded on the basis of the researcher’s interpretation of weaving individual experiences into a great narrative conveying a shared experience. As an empirical result of this study, a model of a PhenoBL entity (ILO) design process based on Dewey's pragmatic theory, the Finnish development of school pedagogy, authentic learning and the definition of PhenoBL origin has been constructed. Research has also assembled a theoretical model for Phenomenon-Based learning. This doctoral dissertation provides research-based information on the principles and theoretical foundations of designing learning-related entities that are characterised as phenomenon-driven, highlighting the coeducational aspect. Based on the findings, the ILO-design process and its theoretical justification are presented as a suitable design tool for teacher training and teacher continuing education. (shrink)