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)

Human society is unique in the animal kingdom in the degree to which it depends upon its members reflective awareness of self and society. Whereas much has been learned about the sense of self, little is known about the sense of society. This paper develops three points about the human sense of society: First, this sense is a feeling of life, what German writers have called Lebensgefuhl. The paper begins by defining feeling as a psychical moment or‘phase’of bodily activity. The (...) paper later develops die idea mat what is felt of society is always an embodiment of its vital form; its social life. Second, die sense of society is a feeling of society, as distinct from a feeling in society and from a feeling of self. The middle third of die paper distinguishes these concepts and links die feeling of society to writings of Freud and Durkheim in which elements of this feeling are found. And third, feelings of society prominently include participation, love, and play. These feelings, which are embodiments of vital social form, are illustrated and discussed in die penultimate section of die paper. Having registered these three points, die paper concludes with a brief summary and discussion of implications for expanding die scope of inquiry in social science. (shrink)