Scholars criticize privileging aesthetics over social and ecological considerations in park design. I argue that the real culprit is not aesthetics, but aestheticism. Aestheticism treats aesthetic objects as if they were ontologically distinct from everyday objects. Aestheticism in park design—treating parks like artworks to be admired like paintings—dovetails into treating parks like representations of a romanticized wilderness: of pristine, untouched landscapes. I argue that aestheticism is a means of constructing an ontological distinction between the beholder and the beheld, for landscapes (...) are not truly pristine if they are sullied by human presence. As an alternative, and while drawing on the works of John Dewey and Yuriko Saito, I argue for a continuity between everyday objects and aesthetic objects. I also draw attention to the question of whose every day is privileged and propose to introduce Wittgenstein’s concept of multi-aspectivity in the analysis of everyday affordances. (shrink)

Experience of the sublime is most often discussed as a facet of the aesthetic experience of nature. In this paper, I argue that religious liturgy can be a source of sublimity and that experiences of the liturgically sublime are analogous to aesthetic experiences of nature and natural sublimity. Experiences of the liturgically sublime are not religious experiences, since the aesthetic experience of liturgy is not dependent upon any particular belief, such as belief in a deity, does not communicate specific information, (...) and is fundamentally physical in its experience, since it is based upon sensory experiences of the physical environment. I conclude that, as aesthetic experiences of liturgy are similar in important ways to experiences of natural sublimity and can be fully appreciated by any attendant of a liturgy, so can anyone, regardless of belief set or religious background, experience and appreciate liturgical sublimity to the fullest degree. (shrink)

My aesthetic judgements seem to make claims on you. While some popular accounts of aesthetic normativity say that the force of these claims is third-personal, I argue that it is actually second-personal. This point may sound like a bland technicality, but it points to a novel idea about what aesthetic judgements ultimately are and what they do. It suggests, in particular, that aesthetic judgements are motions in the collective legislation of the nature of aesthetic activity. This conception is recommended by (...) its ability to explain some important but otherwise recondite features of aesthetic practice and, more importantly, by allowing us to ground the normativity of aesthetic judgement in the familiar normativity of practice. It also offers a more systematic way of understanding the rivalry between the ideals of aesthetic universality and diversity. (shrink)

Aesthetic value cannot be discussed separately from aesthetic experience. According to Western aesthetics discourse, the paradigm of aesthetic experience is a s.

The field of science communication is plagued by challenges. Communicators face the difficulty of responding to unjustified public skepticism over issues like climate change and COVID-19 while also acknowledging the fallibility and limitations of scientific knowledge. Our goal in this paper is to suggest a new model for science communication that can help foster more productive, respectful relationships among all those involved in science communication. Inspired by the pragmatist philosophy of John Dewey, we develop an experience model, according to which (...) science communication consists in people’s experiences with science and the meanings they develop from those experiences. Three principles are central to the model: experience is cumulative, context matters, and audiences have agency. We argue that this model has significant implications both for communication research and practice, which we illustrate by applying it to the phenomenon of vaccine hesitancy. We show how science communicators can help to identify and alleviate structural factors that contribute to skepticism as well as fostering opportunities for meaning making around shared experiences. (shrink)

Editor’s NoteThanks to the initiative of Alan Norrie, we are pleased to present here a symposium on Nick Wilson’s book The Space that Separates: A Realist Theory of Art. Several authors have contri...

The ecology of fear has become a common rhetoric in efforts to support climate mitigation. The thesis of the collapse is an extreme version, asserting the inevitable collapse of the world. Fear, then, becomes the ultimate emotion for spurring action. In this article, drawing on the work of the pragmatist John Dewey, we show that fear is an ambiguous emotion. Dewey stressed the quality of an emotion. Following his reasoning, this article draws a distinction between intense and moderate fear. Intense (...) fear annihilates action, while moderate fear fulfils the conditions for an emotion of quality (in the Deweyan sense), which enables action. For this reason, the thesis of the collapse must be rejected, while an ecology of fear, drawing on moderate fear, may be maintained. (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)

Many artists, art critics, and poets suggest that an aesthetic appreciation of artworks may modify our perception of the world, including quotidian things and scenes. I call this Art-to-World, AtW. Focusing on visual artworks, in this paper I articulate an empirically-informed account of AtW that is based on content related views of aesthetic experience, and on Goodman’s and Elgin’s concept of exemplification. An aesthetic encounter with artworks demands paying attention to its aesthetic, expressive, or design properties that realize its purpose. (...) Attention to these properties make percipients better able to spot them in other entities and scenes as well. The upshot is that an aesthetic commerce with artworks enlarges the scope of what we are able to see and has therefore momentous epistemic consequences. (shrink)

One challenge faced by aesthetics is the development of an account able to trace out the continuities and discontinuities between general experience and aesthetic experiences. Regarding this issue, in this paper, I present an enactive model of some raw cognitive dynamics that might drive the progressive emergence of aesthetic experiences from the stream of general experience. The framework is based on specific aspects of John Dewey’s pragmatist philosophy and embodied aesthetic theories, while also taking into account research in ecological psychology, (...) cognitive sciences, and dynamic systems theory. The model focuses on dynamically relevant nodes at the pre-reflective and the reflective side of experience that would work as nested rhythmic constraints at different cognitive timescales with the potential to shunt experiences toward the aesthetic in everyday situations. My proposal constitutes a way to explore aesthetic experiences from an enactive perspective that regards them as transformative events in which cognitive processes entrain and are entrained by changes taking place in the environment, the brain, and the body. (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)

While the idea of art as self-expression can sound old-fashioned, it remains widespread—especially if the relevant ‘selves’ can be social collectives, not just individual artists. But self-expression can collapse into individualistic or anthropocentric self-involvement. And compelling successor ideals for artists are not obvious. In this light, I develop a counter-ideal of creative receptivity to basic features of the external world, or artistic objectivity. Objective artists are not trying to express themselves or reach collective self-knowledge. However, they are also not disinterested (...) or emotionless. They can be unmoved by personal feelings and human concerns, but they are still receptive—just attuned to the more elemental forces that creatively inspire them. I elaborate this ideal in dialogue with John Ruskin’s influential critique of the pathetic fallacy. By contextualizing Ruskin’s view vis-à-vis Romantic and Modernist poetics, post-Kantian aesthetics, modern environmental art, and contemporary theories of expressiveness, I show how it indirectly motivates my account. (shrink)

This special issue focuses on the theoretical, empirical and practical integrations between embodied cognition theory and educational science. The key question is: Can EC constitute a new theoretical framework for educational science and practice? The papers of the special issue support the efforts of those interested in the role of EC in education and in the epistemological convergence of EC and educational science. They deal with a variety of relevant topics in education and offer a focus on the role of (...) the body and embodied experience in learning and educational settings. In conclusion, some further topics are suggested that will need to be investigated in the future, such as a critical evaluation of the possibility for an epistemological alliance between educational theory and embodied cognition, and the contribution that enactive cognition can provide to educational systems, organizations, institutions and policies. (shrink)

A widely cited roadblock to bridging ecological psychology and enactivism is that the former identifies with realism and the latter identifies with constructivism, which critics charge is subjectivist. A pragmatic reading, however, suggests non-mental forms of constructivism that simultaneously fit core tenets of enactivism and ecological realism. After advancing a pragmatic version of enactive constructivism that does not obviate realism, I reinforce the position with an empirical illustration: Physarum polycephalum (a slime mold), a communal unicellular organism that leaves slime trails (...) that form chemical barriers that it avoids in foraging explorations. Here, environmental building and sensorimotor engagement are part of the same process with P. polycephalum coordinating around self-created, affordance-bearing geographies, which nonetheless exist independently in ways described by ecological realists. For ecological psychologists, affordances are values, meaning values are external to the perceiver. I argue that agent-enacted values have the same status and thus do not obviate ecological realism or generate subjectivism. The constructivist-realist debate organizes around the emphasis that enactivists and ecological theorists respectively place on the inner constitution of organisms vs. the structure of environments. Building on alimentary themes introduced in the P. polycephalum example and also in Gibson’s work, I go on to consider how environment, brain, visceral systems, and even bacteria within them enter perceptual loops. This highlights almost unfathomable degrees of mutually modulating internal and external synchronization. It also shows instances in which internal conditions alter worldly configurations and invert values, in Gibson’s sense of the term, albeit without implying subjectivism. My aim is to cut across the somatic focus of enactive constructivism and the external environment-oriented emphasis of ecological realism and show that enactivism can enrich ecological accounts of value. (shrink)

In the past 60 years or so, the philosophical subject of artistic expression has generally been handled as an inquiry into the artistic expression of emotion. In my view this has led to a distortion of the relevant territory, to the artistic expression of feeling’s too often being overlooked. I explicate the emotion-feeling distinction in modern terms, and urge that the expression of feeling is too central to be waived off as outside the proper philosophical subject of artistic expression. Restricting (...) the discussion to the art of painting, I sketch a partial psychological model for the exrtistic expression of feelipression of feeling. Although the feeling-emotion contrast is seldom made clear in their writings, I stress that many, or even most of the eminent pre-1960’s voices in aesthetics and art criticism—Croce, Dewey, Langer, Bosanquet, Berenson and others—would more or less agree that feeling is no less important for expression than emotion, and indeed can be interpreted as anticipating many points that I set forth. (shrink)

Let me begin by repeating two well-known features of critical realism. First, the core objective of the human species – it’s moral truth, is a sustainable, diversified global society in which the f...

Dance receives relatively little attention in the history of philosophy. My strategy for connecting that history to dance consists in tracing a genealogy of its dance-relevant moments. In preparation, I perform a phenomenological analysis of my own eighteen years of dance experience, in order to generate a small cluster of central concepts or “Moves” for elucidating dance. At this genealogical-phenomenological intersection, I find what I term “positure” most helpfully treated in Plato, Aristotle and Nietzsche; “gesture” similarly in Condillac, Mead and (...) Kristeva; “grace” in Avicenna, Schiller and Dewey; and “resilience” in Fanon, (Judith) Butler and Deleuze. With these analyses in place, I apply the four Moves in analyzing various forms of dancing (including salsa dancing and the pollen dance of the honeybee) and coordinate them to outline a comprehensive philosophy of dance. This philosophy points to certain conditions for an ideally flourishing, dancing society. And these conditions create the possibility for a coalition of sympathetic discourses (including critical race theory, queer theory, disability studies and democratic theory) united in pursuit of political virtue. The development of a philosophy of dance offers a deeper understanding of the intellectual values of a practice often identified with bodily immediacy and therefore judged uninteresting. It also reinvigorates philosophy with the dynamism and bodily relevance of the practice of dancing. Most important, it demonstrates the meaningful intersection of aesthetics and political ethics, by exploring how aesthetic practices underlie and inspire human flourishing. (shrink)

In the cave allegory, Plato illustrates his theory of ideas by showing that the world man senses and tries to understand, actually only is a dim representation of the real world. We know the allegory for its light and shadow; however, there is also sound and echo in the cave. In this article, I discuss whether the narrative of the prisoners in the cave is in tune with an audial experience and whether an allegory led by sound corresponds to the (...) one led by sight. I start with a phenomenological analysis of the cave as a place of sound. After that, I elaborate on the training of attentive listening skills and its ramifications for pedagogical practice. I conclude that there are profound differences between seeing and listening and that sound reveals different aspects of “the real” compared to sight. The significance of Plato’s cave allegory should be evaluated in relation to modern, scientific thought characterised by a visual-spatial language. With support of this allegory, the light-shadow polarity has become the Urbild of represented reality. At the same time, a visually oriented culture of ideas repeatedly confirms Plato’s cave allegory as its central metaphor. Finally, an elaboration on the sounds in the cave proves to be fruitful in an educational sense: The comparison of sound and sight sharpens the differences and complementarities of audial and visual experiences. (shrink)

Games may seem like a waste of time, where we struggle under artificial rules for arbitrary goals. The author suggests that the rules and goals of games are not arbitrary at all. They are a way of specifying particular modes of agency. This is what make games a distinctive art form. Game designers designate goals and abilities for the player; they shape the agential skeleton which the player will inhabit during the game. Game designers work in the medium of agency. (...) Game-playing, then, illuminates a distinctive human capacity. We can take on ends temporarily for the sake of the experience of pursuing them. Game play shows that our agency is significantly more modular and more fluid than we might have thought. It also demonstrates our capacity to take on an inverted motivational structure. Sometimes we can take on an end for the sake of the activity of pursuing that end. (shrink)

In this article I discuss the advantages of a theory of political representation for a prag- matist theory of (global) democracy. I first outline Dewey’s disregard for political rep- resentation by analyzing the political, epistemological and aesthetic underpinnings of his criticism of the Enlightenment ideal of democracy and its trust in the power of the detached gaze. I then show that a theory of political representation is not only com- patible with a pragmatist Deweyan-pragmatist perspective on democratic politics but also (...) that Dewey’s concept of “publics”, if applied to contemporary circumstances of globalized politics, requires such a theory. I suggest a pragmatic theory of political rep- resentation that combines elements of Dewey’s aesthetics, particularly his own theory of vision, with Michael Saward’s conception of representative claim-making into the notion of aesthetic democratic representation. (shrink)

There is a fundamental incompatibility between a developmental orientation to education and instrumental and scientistic conceptions of rationality that dominate educational inquiry. An expanded conception of rationality is provided in the critical theory of Jurgen Habermas. This study draws on Habermas' work to present a theory of inquiry that is consistent with a developmental perspective. I distinguish three interdependent realms of experience--the objective world of nature, the intersubjective world of society and the subjective world of each individual. Then, I argue (...) that current conceptions of rationality tend to reduce personal and interpersonal experience to the objective material realm. Under prevailing conceptions, human action is rational when it pursues valued ends guided by knowledge about the world and effective means-ends relationships. Both theories of knowledge and theories of value in these conceptions are inadequate for a developmental orientation. -/- First, knowledge is defined as justified true belief. Theories of truth are based on the correspondence of beliefs with an external world; theories of justification are based on perceptual certainty. These conceptions objectify experience by making experience an object of natural science and instrumental action separate from and external to the person. Such conceptions reduce experience to the objective material dimension and cannot adequately account for the personal and interpersonal dimensions of human experience and understanding. -/- Second, because value claims are not capable of justification by these standards, they are considered ultimately irrational and treated as subjectively held empirical properties of individuals. The only standard of rationality is efficiency and economy in the selection of means. Ethics is reduced to empirical science. But the removal of practical questions from public discourse divests action of ethical significance. With its strict separation of descriptive and normative domains, empirical-analytic inquiry can neither acknowledge its standard of instrumental efficiency nor reach into the practical arena to guide the selection of values and ends that orient and gude human action. Practical questions that cannot be framed in terms of technical problems cannot be taken seriously. -/- Whereas these conceptions of rationality are generally derived from theories of experienced based on individual consciousness, Habermas looks to language for a more adequate account of the intersubjective nature of experience. This account provides an expanded conception of rationality with theories for justifying beliefs and actions that incorporate the personal and interpersonal dimensions of experience so critical to a developmental perspective. Through an analysis of the universal pragmatic structure of language directed to the resolution of problematic truth claims and moral claims, this study presents a consensus theory of truth (for a more adequate theory of knowledge) and a communicative theory of ethics (based on a more adequate theory of human values). -/- The concept of truth refers to a universal pragmatic convention of the unforced agreement of an ideal community of inquirers. Ethical conduct is guided by norms that reflect a rational general will and that regulate genuine human needs. Problematic truth claims and moral claims are discursively justified by the force of the better argument under the conditions of an anticipated "ideal speech situation" inherent in the very structure of communication. Furthermore, a theory of inquiry is developed in which inquiry processes are represented as historically evolved extensions of developmental process in the three realms of experience. Three interrelated forms of inquiry are derived--empirical-analytic, hermeneutic and critical. I derive each from its respective experiential realm, and indicate the logic of inquiry, object domain, and kind of knowledge gained from each. -/- An exploration of the relationship between inquiry and development provides a foundation for a developmental orientation to education. Finally, the theory is contrasted with prevailing inquiry approaches in education and illustrated with an application to a particular educational problem. (shrink)

This article focuses on situations and emotional perception. To this end, I start with the Kuleshov effect wherein identical shots of performers manifest different expressions when cut to different contexts. However, I conducted experiments with a twist, using Darth Vader and non-primates, and even here expressions varied with contexts. Building on historically and conceptually linked Gibsonian, Gestalt, phenomenological and pragmatic schools, along with consonant experimental work, I extrapolate these results to defend three interconnected points. First, I argue that while perceiving (...) expression is sometimes about reading minds, it is more squarely about perceiving solicitations or closures for action. Second, I frame expressions as a subcategory of Gibson’s affordances. This includes those showing up through context, in turn suggesting Kuleshov-like scenarios are not mere perceptual tricks. Third, I maintain that situations—with or without other human beings—have action-motivating expressive qualities or what Gestalt theorists called physiognomic characters, following Werner. These likewise emerge through ecological relations, and are very much like affordances and in the world as much as them. With resemblance theories, my account agrees that we perceive expression in the world. However, it indicates a broad range of cases in which expression shows up as consequences of overall situations that solicit or close actions, as opposed to mere resemblance between entities and human expressions. (shrink)

The paper proposes that taking the notion of “community of inquiry” as a regulative ideal is a valuable working tool for the refinement and improvement of the practice of Philosophy for Children (P4C). Reed (1996) and Sprod (1997) have already drawn attention to this, stating that the community of inquiry is more a regulative idea than a typical occurrence. Building on these claims, we will show that taking the notion of community of inquiry as such gives new light to many (...) of the items and aspects of the description of what constitutes a community of inquiry. Consequently, it provides ways to identify important moments in the philosophical practice that consolidate the community of inquiry, and a working tool to grasp and handle some of the crucial moves that the facilitator, as well as other participants, do to install and strengthen the community in the sessions. (shrink)

This paper formulates a Deweyan theory of performing arts practice that relies for its support on two main things: The unity Dewey ascribed to all intelligent practices (including artistic practice) and The observation that many aspects of the work of performing artists of Dewey’s time include features (“dramatic rehearsal,” action, interaction and habit development) that are part of Dewey’s characterization of the moral life. This does not deny the deep import that Dewey ascribed to aesthetic experience (both in art and (...) in life), but it does suggest that we might use his theory of ethical practice in conjunction with his theory of art as experience in order to create a more robust and unified Deweyan theory of what the performing artist does. (shrink)

Theodor W. Adorno is a gigantic figure in musical aesthetics, and many still consider his views relevant, not only for analyzing the modernist music he was inspired by and that he inspired himself, but also for more contemporary developments in classical music. John Adams is arguably the foremost contemporary composer who has tried to break away from the modernist musical language that was still very much dominant when he began his career as a composer, and he has been very outspoken (...) about his antipathy toward the Schoenbergian-inspired compositional techniques that are at the background of Adorno’s musical aesthetics, particularly his Philosophy of New Music. By presenting an interpretation of Adams’ music that draws on some key aspects of John Dewey’s aesthetics—aesthetic experience, rhythm, and his appreciation of common culture—I raise the question of how relevant Adorno’s seminal book still is for understanding the aesthetics of the new music of today. (shrink)

The debate around ethical consumption is often characterised by discussion of its numerous failures arising from complexity in perceived trade-offs. In response, this paper advances a pragmatist understanding of the role and nature of trade-offs in ethical consumption. In doing so, it draws on the central roles of values and value in consumption and pragmatist philosophical thought, and proposes a critique of the ethical consumer as rational maximiser and the cognitive and utilitarian discourse of individual trade-offs to understand how sustainable (...) consumption practices are established and maintained. An in-depth qualitative study is conducted employing phenomenological interviews and hermeneutic analysis to explore the consumption stories of a group of ethically minded consumers. The research uncovers the location of value within a fluid, yet habitual, plurality of patterns, preferences, morals, identities and relationships. Its contribution is to propose that consumer perception of value in moral judgements is represented by an overall form of aggregate personal advantage, which lacks conscious reflection and delivers a phenomenological form of value rooted in habits, reflecting a pragmatist representation of value unified as a ‘consummatory experience’. (shrink)

Safe-by-Design (SBD) frameworks for the development of emerging technologies have become an ever more popular means by which scholars argue that transformative emerging technologies can safely incorporate human values. One such popular SBD methodology is called Value Sensitive Design (VSD). A central tenet of this design methodology is to investigate stakeholder values and design those values into technologies during early stage research and development (R&D). To accomplish this, the VSD framework mandates that designers consult the philosophical and ethical literature to (...) best determine how to weigh moral trade-offs. However, the VSD framework also concedes the universalism of moral values, particularly the values of freedom, autonomy, equality trust and privacy justice. This paper argues that the VSD methodology, particularly applied to nano-bio-info-cogno (NBIC) technologies, has an insufficient grounding for the determination of moral values. As such, an exploration of the value-investigations of VSD are deconstructed to illustrate both its strengths and weaknesses. This paper also provides possible modalities for the strengthening of the VSD methodology, particularly through the application of moral imagination and how moral imagination exceed the boundaries of moral intuitions in the development of novel technologies. (shrink)

John Dewey was the foremost figure and public intellectual in early to mid-twentieth century American philosophy. He is the most academically cited Anglophone philosopher of the past century, and he is among the most cited Americans of any century. In this comprehensive volume spanning thirty-five chapters, leading scholars help researchers access particular aspects of Dewey’s thought, navigate the enormous and rapidly developing literature, and participate in current scholarship in light of prospects in key topical areas. Beginning with a framing essay (...) by Philip Kitcher calling for a transformation of philosophical research, contributors interpret, appraise, and critique Dewey’s philosophy under the following headings: Metaphysics; Epistemology, Science, Language, and Mind; Ethics, Law, and the Starting Point; Social and Political Philosophy, Race, and Feminist Philosophy; Philosophy of Education; Aesthetics; Instrumental Logic, Philosophy of Technology, and the Unfinished Project of Modernity; Dewey in Cross-Cultural Dialogue; The American Philosophical Tradition, the Social Sciences, and Religion; and Public Philosophy and Practical Ethics. (shrink)

This paper is a conceptual essay rooted in two basic observations. First, felt dignity—the subjective sense people have of their own autonomy and self-worth—ultimately emerges from, and is thus most evident in the connective space between people. Second, stories are everyday works of art that afford unique insight into the subtle complexities of the socio-emotional realities of work. Building on these observations, we describe how personal stories about episodes of interpersonal connections and disconnections at work—moments in which we feel mutual (...) appreciation and empowerment or a sense of separation and distancing from another—can help us better understand the felt experience of dignity at work. In attending to such personal stories as art, we become more attuned to their felt, aesthetic qualities, which then helps us develop a more holistic and visceral appreciation of how actors experience, make sense of, and claim felt dignity. In support of our ideas, we present a few illustrative story excerpts and briefly consider how a select few aesthetic qualities—the way the stories’ elements are configured, the stories’ acuity or sharpness, and their rawness—enhance the felt impact of the stories and help to remind us of their and the storytellers’ intrinsic value. (shrink)

I describe how close attention to the process of sculpting clay from the perspective of Material Engagement Theory can create a detailed description of a mutable sense of agency and of self. First, I show that sculpting is associated with a loss of sense of agency and self. Second, that to sense agency as a systemic phenomenon creates anxiety. Third, that meaning in an art encounter develops in association with an anterospective viewpoint. Fourth, that within the logic of the extended (...) mind, emergent meaning becomes openly available for further exploration. Fifth, that artistic creativity is not an opaque process. It proceeds in a similar manner to other forms of human, sense-making activities. Finally, that playing seriously with clay can be used in an investigative manner—as a tool for material conceptualisation. (shrink)

The development of art marketing as a new field of management occurs in a context of great confusion as to what constitutes the very definition of art, one aspect of this confusion being nothing else but the confusion between art and marketing itself. This confusion leads to conflicts between those who consider that art should be defined by a clear aesthetic criterion and those who accept the absence of such a criterion as a legitimate consequence of the principle of freedom (...) which applies both to the creation of the artist and to the taste of the public. This state of confusion does not seem to be experienced in the same way in France where it has tended to be considered as a symptom of crisis in the world of art and in the United States where it has raised as a dominant force in contemporary art. Hence the confusion of art and marketing varies as a function of time (as shown by the emergence of a new field of management) and of space (as shown by the comparison of the French and American cases). It will be proposed that it is possible to account for these historical fluctuation thanks to an institutional approach based on the notion of system of legitimacy. We shall propose the essentially dynamic institutional foundations of modernity leading to the proliferation of innovations which consequences are ever more difficult to anticipate as a reason why, in America, philosophers coming from the analytic tradition found it meaningful to address questions such as “What is art” (Arthur Danto) or “When is there art” (Nelson Goodman”) expressing the need to go beyond pragmatism as expressed by John Dewey’s Art as Experience to promote a positive attitude towards contemporary art, while, in France confusion between art and marketing has been commonly considered negatively as the sign of the triumph of the most radical form of rhetoric, i.e. sophism. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIn ‘The Principles of Art’, R. G. Collingwood argues that art is the imaginative expression of emotion. So much the worse, then, for Collingwood. The theory seems hopelessly inadequate to the task of capturing art’s extension: of encompassing all the works we generally suppose should be rounded up under the concept. A great number of artworks, and several art forms, have nothing to do with emotion. But it would be surprising were Collingwood philistine enough to think that art is only (...) ever concerned with communicating quotidian affective states, like anger, fear or love. Surely he has some more sophisticated notion of emotion in mind, and quite probably of expression too. And it turns out that those sophisticated notions can be pushed towards a version of the expression theory that meets the extensional challenge. If we interpret Collingwood as saying that expression is a particular application of imagination, and that imagination is the faculty that refines ideas of emotions, and that ‘emotions’... (shrink)

In this paper, I analyse the Deweyan account of thinking and subject and discuss the educational consequences that follow from such an account. I argue that despite the grouping of thinking and reflective thought that has largely appeared in the interpretation of Deweyan work, Dewey discloses an inescapable uncertainty at the core of human thinking. This move is even more challenging given Dewey's firm faith in the power of intelligent action, and in education as the means by which human beings (...) grow and create meaningful existence. I argue that throughout his work, Dewey dismantled the understanding of the subject as a detached and self-assured centre of agency. In Deweyan understanding, on one hand, the subject is empowered to reflect on experience and to use this reflection to evolve new ways of acting, thus pushing experience forward. On the other hand, by acting, the subject can create new points of interaction within experience. This understanding of thinking and subject has far-reaching consequences for education, which must be conceived not so much as the attempt to master and control experience but as the means to create new, unpredictable experience by putting new points of interactions into our relationship with the environment, changing our being-embedded-in-the-world. Dewey repositions educational, intentional agency away from control and mastery and in the direction of growth and openness. (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)

A phenomenological model is developed as an alternative to current analyses of the imagination in sport philosophy, heirs to an Enlightenment notion that conceptualizes imaginings as abstract, eidetic, and representational. EC describes how Eidetic and Corporeal Imaginings phenomenologically structure our imaginative undertakings. EIs keep the ‘ideal’ aspect, but CIs—enacted, corporeal, non-representational—are more fundamental and foundational. Sports are particularly suited to express CIs’ muscular imaginings, which result in novel performances. An enactive framework theorizes CIs as non-representational interactions.

As conceived by founders Matthew Lipman and Ann Margaret Sharp, Philosophy for Children is a humanistic practice with roots in the Hellenistic tradition of philosophy as a way of life given to the search for meaning, in American pragmatism with its emphasis on qualitative experience, collaborative inquiry and democratic society, and in American and Soviet social learning theory. The programme has attracted overlapping and conflicting criticism from religious and social conservatives who don’t want children to question traditional values, from educational (...) psychologists who believe certain kinds of thinking are beyond children of certain ages, from philosophers who define their discipline as theoretical and exegetical, from critical theorists who see the programme as politically compliant, and from postmodernists who see it as scientistic and imperialist. The paper is written as a dialogue in order to illustrate the complex interactions among these normative positions. Rather than respond to particular criticisms in depth, I indicate the general nature of my position regarding them and provide references to published material where they have been made and responded to over the past 40 years. (shrink)

This article examines how Modern theories of mind remain even in some materialistic and hence ontologically anti-dualistic views; and shows how Dewey's pragmatism, anticipating Merleau-Ponty, 4E cognitive scientists and especially enactivism, repudiates these theories. Throughout I place Dewey’s thought in the context of scientific inquiry, both recent and historical and including the cognitive as well as traditional sciences; and I show how he incorporated sciences of his day into his thought, while also anticipating enactive cognitive science. While emphasizing Dewey’s continued (...) relevance, my main goal is to show how his scientifically informed account of perception and cognition combats skepticism propagated by certain scientific visions, exacerbated by commonplace notions about mind, that jointly suggest that human beings lack genuine access to reality. (shrink)

This study is an inquiry into design-theoretical aspects of architectural design in Finland based mainly on the pragmatist philosophy of John Dewey. The study comprises two case studies. The. rst case deals with a young family designing their future home – a detached house built from prefabricated components – in cooperation with an architect. The second case deals with the design process of a leading Finnish architect, Professor Ilmari Lahdelma, as he prepares his proposal for an architectural competition for a (...) new city library in Lohja, a competition he eventually wins. The case describes and interprets Lahdelma’s design process, the processes of other competition entries made by the of. ce staff, as well as the process of the jury’s evaluation of the competition entries. The two cases are analysed and interwoven with aspects from three different theoretical perspectives: existing design theories, Pierre Bourdieu’s. eld theory and John Dewey’s thinking regarding art and research. In the study I argue that Dewey’s philosophy can provide a framework for a design-theoretical epistemology. I also arrive at conclusions regarding the interpretation of some key design-theoretical concepts and the position of design theory and its structures. I further argue that the Finnish architectural competition system is a strong tool for generating developments in the production of the architectural avant-garde, which acts as the leading light for the rest of the. eld of architecture. The present study also highlights the gap between ‘high-’ and ‘low culture’ in the. eld of architecture, yet points out that the design of a simple family house – assumedly a case of ‘low culture’ – is by no means trivial to the family itself, and is indeed. lled with moments of aesthetic experiences, which is a central issue in Dewey’s description of creative processes. (shrink)

This essay provides an overview of the ways in which contemporary philosophers have tried to make sense of ineffability as encountered in aesthetic contexts. Section 1 sets up the problem of aesthetic ineffability by putting it into historical perspective. Section 2 specifies the kinds of questions that may be raised with regard to aesthetic ineffability, as well as the kinds of answer each one of those questions would require. Section 3 investigates arguments that seek to locate aesthetic ineffability within the (...) object of aesthetic experiences, i.e. within aesthetic content. Section 4 discusses arguments that seek to locate aesthetic ineffability within the subject of aesthetic experience. (shrink)

Borrowing from the title and some of the content of Karl Popper's The Open Society and its Enemies, it is argued that museums have great value as sites for what may be called a philosophical culture. A philosophical culture is one in which members or citizens engage in fair-minded debate and shared reflection, presenting and evaluating reasons for different positions particularly as these have relevance for matters of governance. In a philosophical culture, persuasion is almost always a matter of seeking (...) to provide reasonable grounds for adopting some position without resorting to violence or physical force.A philosophical culture is, in turn, an important foundation for a democratic culture and republic. A philosophy of museums emerges, a model we shall call the Philosophical Culture Museum Model. This concept is stipulative and ideal in the sense that it presents a paradigm of a museum with great virtue and promise. It must be confessed, however, that, historically, this is an emerging concept of the role of museums and one not evident in many of the museums in the early modern era or today. Reasons are offered as to why the time may be right to recognize the philosophy of museums as a particular sub-field in the overall practice of philosophy. (shrink)

Evidence affirms that aesthetic engagement patterns our movements, often with us barely aware. This invites an examination of pre-reflective engagement within cities and also aesthetic experience as a form of the pre-reflective. The invitation is amplified because design has political implications. For instance, it can draw people in or exclude them by establishing implicitly recognized public-private boundaries. The Value Sensitive Design school, which holds that artifacts embody ethical and political values, stresses some of this. But while emphasizing that design embodies (...) implicit values, research in this field lacks sustained attention to largely unconscious background biases or values, rooted in cultural attitudes and personal interests, that lead theorists and planners—often too narrowly—to promote design organized around specific values such as defensibility. In examining these points, I draw on J. J. Gibson, a central figure for some writing on aesthetics and cities, and whom pragmatists and phenomenologists in turn influenced. Taking a cue from pragmatists in particular, I argue Gibson’s perceptual theory of affordances entails a theory of values, meaning our perception and therewith movements are inherently value-based. I advocate design that accounts for relatively constantly held values such as safety, while also handling the vast pluralism that exists and not crushing the aesthetic vibrancy of city life. (shrink)

Meaning in life is too important not to study systematically, but doing so is made difficult by conceptual indeterminacy. An approach to meaning that is promising but, indeed, conceptually vague is Jonathan Haidt’s ‘cross-level coherence’ account. In order to remove the vagueness, I propose a concept of ‘good fit’ that a) captures central aspects of meaning as it is discussed in the literature; b) brings the subject of meaning under the survey of the dynamicist or ‘embodied-embedded’ philosophy of cognition; and (...) c) allows the theoretical discussion on meaning to become more focused and systematic. The article addresses two apparent problems with the idea of ‘good fit,’ namely the fact that both challenges and relations of an agent with the outside world are central to meaning. It is finally pointed out which implications adopting the concept of ‘good fit’ instead of ‘meaning’ would have. (shrink)

The idea of moral progress is a necessary presupposition of action for beings like us. We must believe that moral progress is possible and that it might have been realized in human experience, if we are to be confident that continued human action can have any morally constructive point. I discuss the implications of this truth for moral psychology. I also show that once we understand the complex nature and the complicated social sources of moral progress, we will appreciate why (...) we cannot construct a plausible comprehensive action-guiding theory of moral progress. Yet while the nature and sources of moral progress consistently thwart many theoretical hopes, the idea of moral progress is a plausible, critically important and morally constructive principle of historical interpretation. (shrink)