Despite the popularity that the embodied cognition thesis has gained in recent years, explicit memories of events personally experienced are still conceived as disembodied mental representations. It seems that we can consciously remember our personal past through sensory imagery, through concepts, propositions and language, but not through the body. In this article, I defend the idea that the body constitutes a genuine means of representing past personal experiences. For this purpose, I focus on the analysis of bodily movements associated with (...) the retrieval of a personal memory, which have certain features that make them different from procedural memories, pragmatic actions and common gestures, as well as other forms of embodied memories found in recent literature. I refer to these as “kinetic memories” and analyse their representative nature as well as their adaptive functions. Kinetic memories are bodily movements in which some event or action that took place in the past can be seen, because they are an externalisation of the subject’s inner intention of representing a past personal experience. Kinetic memories represent a past experience sometimes by imitation of a past movement, and other times through embodied symbols and metaphors. Furthermore, although sometimes they present direct pragmatic benefits, such as communicative benefits, they seem to enhance the whole reexperience of the past event and memory recall, which I argue is one important adaptive value. (shrink)

A framework for the mind-matter problem in a holistic universe which has no parts is outlined. The conceptual structure of modern quantum theory suggests to use complementary Boolean descriptions as elements for a more comprehensive non-Boolean description of a world without an a priori mind-matter distinction. Such a description in terms of a locally Boolean but globally non-Boolean structure makes allowance for the fact that Boolean descriptions play a privileged role in science. If we accept the insight that there are (...) no ultimate building blocks, the existence of holistic correlations between contextually chosen parts is a natural consequence. The main problem of a genuinely non-Boolean description is to find an appropriate partition of the universe of discourse. If we adopt the idea that all fundamental laws of physics are invariant under time translations, then we can consider a partition of the world into a tenseless and a tensed domain.In the sense of a regulative principle, the material domain is defined as the tenseless domain with its homogeneous time. The tensed domain contains the mental domain with a tensed time characterized by a privileged position, the Now. Since this partition refers to two complementary descriptions which are not given a priori we have to expect correlations between these two domains. In physics it corresponds to Newton 's separation of universal laws of nature and contingent initial conditions Both descriptions have a non-Boolean structure and can be encompassed into a single non-Boolean description. Tensed and tenseless time can be synchronized by holistic correlations. (shrink)

Journal Name: Semiotica Issue: Ahead of print.

In twentieth-century continental philosophy, German philosophical anthropology can be seen as a sort of conceptual laboratory devoted to human/animal research, and, in particular, to the discontinuity between human and non-human animals. Its main notion—the idea of the special position of humans in nature—is one of the first philosophical attempts to think of the specificity of humans as a natural and qualitative difference from non-human animals. This school of thought correctly rejects both the metaphysical and/or religious characterisations of humans, and the (...) positivistic gradualism, that sees the human being as an animal endowed with a greater degree of certain faculties. At the same time, German philosophical anthropology still takes it for granted that such natural-qualitative novelty is unique in the realm of the living, that in correspondence with humans there is the hiatus, the discontinuity par excellence. The semiotic side of this view is the distinction between signs and symbols developed by Ernst Cassirer and Susanne Langer: animal signs would be mere proxies for perceptive elements or stimuli, whereas only human symbols could convey complex representation of objects and situations. The goal of this contribution is to criticise the alleged uniqueness of the hiatus and its semiotic implications through the opposite approach of the diffuse discontinuities. This approach that focuses on the semiotic traits of different species-specific environments can be traced back to Jakob von Uexküll’s biosemiotical phenomenology, which thinks of discontinuities as a normal phenomenon of animal life. (shrink)

We disagree with Juslin & Vll's (J&V's) thesis that music-evoked emotions are indistinguishable from other emotions in both their nature and underlying mechanisms and that music just induces some emotions more frequently than others. Empirical evidence suggests that frequency differences reflect the specific nature of music-evoked emotions: aesthetic and reactive rather than utilitarian and proactive. Additional mechanisms and determinants are suggested as predictors of emotions triggered by music.

While inanimate objects can neither experience nor express emotions, in principle they can be expressive of emotions. In particular, music is a paradigmatic example of something expressive of emotions that surely cannot feel anything at all. The Contour theory accounts for music expressiveness in terms of those resemblances that hold between its external and perceivable properties and the typical contour of human emotional behavior. Provided that some critical aspects are emended – notably, the stress on the perception of similarity instead (...) of the more plausible hypothesis that the listener perceives manifestations that are similar – we are inclined to endorse contour theory. In particular, we share its basic idea that expressive properties are perceived. Although other kinds of processes – high-level conceptual inferences, imagination – sometimes characterize our encounters with music, still perception constitutes the standard process underlying the detection of expressiveness. Moreover, we propose to extend contour theory to visual arts. Taking into consideration, as a case study, depicted landscapes, we observe that they frequently cannot but express emotions such as joy, sadness, liveliness or melancholy. The fact that pictures, unlike music, lack any temporal dimension is a prima facie reason for doubting the extendibility of contour theory’s conceptual arsenal to them. Nevertheless, while being obviously unable to behave somehow, we claim that depicted landscapes can perfectly convey dynamic information. If this is the case, the extension of the notion of contour to visuals art via the stress on the notion of dynamism would represent a second interesting revision of contour theory. (shrink)

Now I may not be an educated man . . . But it seems to me to go against common sense to ask what the poet is ‘trying to say’. The poem isn’t a code for something easily understood. The poem is what he is trying to say.

Nick Zangwill (2004, 2007) appears to be acquiring the status of repudiator-in-chief of emotion in music. He is invoked in this role by such authors as Kraut (2007, p. 67), Bonds (2014, p. 5), Robinson (2014), Young (2014, pp. vii, 1, 3–4, 151), Davies (2017) and Kania (2017). His ‘manifesto’ paper (2004) was recently reprinted in Lamarque and Olsen (2018, pp. 574–582). This development is unfortunate, because Zangwill, for all his radical-sounding theses, actually argues against views that hardly anyone holds. (...) What is more, some of his arguments in favour of the obvious seem confused and defective. But as for his really radical thesis that ‘Music, in itself, has nothing to do with emotion’, he provides hardly any justification. What is more, contrary to what Zangwill believes, such justification is not to be found in Hanslick, who in fact sees emotional content as a relatively important element of music. (shrink)

A series of papers on different aspects of practical knowledge by Roderick Chisholm, Rudolf Haller, J. C. Nyiri, Eva Picardi, Joachim Schulte Roger Scruton, Barry Smith and Johan Wrede.

This volume is a collection of some of the most important philosophical papers by Peter Gärdenfors. Spanning a period of more than 20 years of his research, they cover a wide ground of topics, from early works on decision theory, belief revision and nonmonotonic logic to more recent work on conceptual spaces, inductive reasoning, semantics and the evolutions of thinking. Many of the papers have only been published in places that are difficult to access. The common theme of all the (...) papers is the dynamics of thought. Several of the papers have become minor classics and the volume bears witness of the wide scope of Gärdenfors’ research and of his crisp and often witty style of writing. The volume will be of interest to researchers in philosophy and other cognitive sciences. (shrink)

The development of G. H. von Wright’s work in ethics is traced from the early 1950s to the publication of The Varieties of Goodness in 1963, with special focus on the influences stemming from Wittgenstein’s later thought. In 1952, von Wright published an essay suggesting a formal analysis of the concept of value. This attempt was soon abandoned. The change of approach took place at the time von Wright started his work on Wittgenstein’s Nachlass and tried to articulate the main (...) lines of Wittgenstein’s Philosophische Untersuchungen in spoken and written form. This preoccupation with Wittgenstein led to a new approach to value judgments in an 1954 article, which shows strong late-Wittgensteinian influences on methodical as well as stylistic levels. Some traces of the 1954 approach are still visible in The Varieties of Goodness, while the stylistic imitations and allusions have mostly been dropped. Furthermore, von Wright’s approach in The Varieties is wider in scope, aiming at a broad overview of the phenomenon von Wright calls the “varieties of goodness”. But new conncections to the later Wittgenstein also seem to emerge: the idea of a "perspicuous presentation" of ethical concepts and the will to make philosophy relevant for "kulturens större sammanhang". (shrink)

While it is widely accepted that music evokes moods, there is disagreement over whether music-induced moods are relevant to the aesthetic appreciation of music as such. The arguments against the aesthetic relevance of music-induced moods are: moods cannot be intentionally directed at the music and music-induced moods are highly subjective experiences and are therefore a kind of mind-wandering. This paper presents a novel account of musical moods that avoids these objections. It is correct to say that a listener’s entire mood (...) is not relevant to the aesthetic appreciation of music. However, the experience of mood consists of having different feelings. Music induces feelings that are intentionally directed at the music and clusters of these feelings can be recognized as typical of a specific mood. Therefore, mood-feelings are relevant to the aesthetic appreciation of music. (shrink)

This chapter presents a detailed explanation of Peirce’s early and late views on semiotic indeterminacy and then considers how those views might be applied within biosemiotics. Peirce distinguished two different forms of semiotic indeterminacy: generality and vagueness. He defined each in terms of the “right” that indeterminate signs extend, either to their interpreters in the case of generality or to their utterers in the case of vagueness, to further determine their meaning. On Peirce’s view, no sign is absolutely determinate, i.e., (...) every sign is indeterminate to at least some degree and so exhibits some degree of generality or vagueness. If Peirce was right about this, then no instance of biosemiosis is completely determinate—every biosign must be general or vague to some degree. I show that on Peirce’s view, whether a sign is general or vague depends on its immediate object, “the idea which the sign is built upon,” and I explain how Peirce would go about identifying the immediate object of a sign lacking both a minded utterer and a minded interpreter—an identification that must be possible if any biosign is indeterminate. (shrink)

The concept of experience by John Dewey revisited: conceiving, feeling and “enliving”. Dewey takes a few steps towards a differentiation of the concept of experience, such as the distinction between primary and secondary experience, or between ordinary (partial, raw, primitive) experience and complete, aesthetic experience. However, he does not provide a systematic elaboration of these distinctions. In the present text, a differentiation of Dewey’s concept of experience is proposed in terms of feeling, “enliving” (a neologism proposed in this paper) and (...) conceiving. Feeling refers to the basic mode of experience where action, emotion, cognition and communication constitute an original unity. Enliving, aesthetic experience, constitutes the lifeworld, as a person-in-world experience. Even though enliving is holistic and relational, a certain distance emerges between action, emotion and cognition which allows contemplation and choice. Conceiving, on the other hand, refers to the isolating and abstracting understanding of the world with even greater distance between action, emotion and cognition. Such a differentiation provides a clearer understanding of the scope of education. It avoids the risks of regressive tendencies in the concept of experience, and it helps to include conceiving within the realm of experience. (shrink)

In this essay, I argue, via a revision of Freud's notions of primary and secondary process, that experiences of resonant form lie at the root of many serious ineffability claims. I suggest further that Western European culture's resistance to the perception of resonant form underlies some of its present crises.

This essay develops a Kantian theory of sport which addresses: (1) Kant’s categories of aesthetic judgment (2) a comparable analysis applied to athletic volition; (3) aesthetic cognition and experience and athletic volition and experience; (4) ‘free’ and ‘attached’ beauty; (5) Kant’s theory of teleological judgment; (6) the moral concept of a ‘kingdom of ends’ and sportsmanship; (7) the beautiful and the sublime in sport-experience; (8) respect and religious emotion in sport-experience; (9) the Kantian system and philosophical anthropology; and (10) sport (...) and self-knowledge. (shrink)

Research in animal behavior begins by identifying what animals are doing. In the course of observation, the observer comes to see animals as performing a particular activity. How does this process work? How cn we be certain that behavior is identified correctly? Wittgenstein offers an approach to these questions. looking at the uses of certainly rather than attempting to find rules that guarantee it. Here two stages in research are distinguished: first, watching animals, and second, reporting the results to other (...) scientists. Certainly about what animals are doing, has different uses at each stage. (shrink)

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

Frederick Douglass, the abolitionist, the civil rights advocate and the great rhetorician, has been the focus of much academic research. Only more recently is Douglass work on aesthetics beginning to receive its due, and even then its philosophical scope is rarely appreciated. Douglass’ aesthetic interest was notably not so much in art itself, but in understanding aesthetic presentation as an epistemological and psychological aspect of the human condition and thereby as a social and political tool. He was fascinated by the (...) power of images, and took particular interest in the emerging technologies of photography. He often returned to the themes of art, pictures and aesthetic perception in his speeches. He saw himself, also after the end of slavery, as first and foremost a human rights advocate, and he suggests that his work and thoughts as a public intellectual always in some way related to this end. In this regard, his interest in the power of photographic images to impact the human soul was a lifelong concern. His reflections accordingly center on the psychological and political potentials of images and the relationship between art, culture, and human dignity. In this chapter we discuss Douglass views and practical use of photography and other forms of imagery, and tease out his view about their transformational potential particularly in respect to combating racist attitudes. We propose that his views and actions suggest that he intuitively if not explicitly anticipated many later philosophical, pragmatist and ecological insights regarding the generative habits of mind and affordance perception : I.e. that we perceive the world through our values and habitual ways of engaging with it and thus that our perception is active and creative, not passive and objective. Our understanding of the world is simultaneously shaped by and shaping our perceptions. Douglass saw that in a racist and bigoted society this means that change through facts and rational arguments will be hard. A distorted lens distorts - and accordingly re-produces and perceives its own distortion. His interest in aesthetics is intimately connected to this conundrum of knowledge and change, perception and action. To some extent precisely due to his understanding of how stereotypical categories and dominant relations work on our minds, he sees a radical transformational potential in certain art and imagery. We see in his work a profound understanding of the value-laden and action-oriented nature of perception and what we today call the perception of affordances (that is, what our environment permits/invites us to do). Douglass is particularly interested in the social environment and the social affordances of how we perceive other humans, and he thinks that photographs can impact on the human intellect in a transformative manner. In terms of the very process of aesthetic perception his views interestingly cohere and supplement a recent theory about the conditions and consequences of being an aesthetic beholder. The main idea being that artworks typically invite an asymmetric engagement where one can behold them without being the object of reciprocal attention. This might allow for a kind of vulnerability and openness that holds transformational potentials not typically available in more strategic and goal-directed modes of perception. As mentioned, Douglass main interest is in social change and specifically in combating racist social structures and negative stereotypes of black people. He is fascinated by the potential of photography in particular as a means of correcting fallacious stereotypes, as it allows a more direct and less distorted image of the individuality and multidimensionality of black people. We end with a discussion of how, given this interpretation of aesthetic perception, we can understand the specific imagery used by Douglass himself. How he tried to use aesthetic modes to subvert and change the racist habitus in the individual and collective mind of his society. We suggest that Frederick Douglass, the human rights activist, had a sophisticated philosophy of aesthetics, mind, epistemology and particularly of the transformative and political power of images. His works in many ways anticipate and sometimes go beyond later scholars in these and other fields such as psychology & critical theory. Overall, we propose that our world could benefit from revisiting Douglass’ art and thought. (shrink)

This paper outlines the process of verbal communication of emotion as this occurs through the phases of the referential process, including arousal of an emotion schema; detailed and specific descriptions of images and episodes that are exemplars of emotion schemas; and reflection and reorganization, which may include emotion labels and other types of categorical terms. The concepts of emotion schemas and the referential process are defined in the theoretical framework of multiple code theory which includes subsymbolic sensory, visceral and motoric (...) processes, symbolic images and words. Emotion schemas are defined as clusters of representations of events incorporating similar bodily, sensory and motoric processes activated in relation to different people in different contexts. Through the referential process subsymbolic components of a schema that have been activated in a speaker or writer and that may be connected only partially to words may be evoked in a listener or reader. The concept of the emotion schemas is examined in relation to current work in emotion theory and neuroscience. The unique effects of detailed descriptions of episodes in conveying complex aspects of emotional experience are discussed, as recognized by writers, and as demonstrated in empirical research. Computerized measures of the phases of the referential process are presented, focusing particularly on the central measure, the Weighted Referential Activity Dictionary which identifies points of narrative and imagery. The operation of the function words that dominate the WRAD are examined in relation to the structure of narrative expression underlying the verbal representation of emotion schemas. (shrink)

This paper examines the processes involved in attempting to capture the subtlest aspects of nature by the scientific method and argues on this basis that nature is fundamentally elusive and may resist grasping by the methods of science. If we wish to come to terms with this resistance, then a shift in the direction of taking direct experience into account may be necessary for science’s future complete development.

Human communication consists of an intricate combination of verbal and non-verbal signals. We shall see that the verbal aspects of messages are elaborated and supported in a number of ways by non-verbal ones. In order to understand human verbal communication we need to know about these non-verbal components. Non-verbal communication can be studied experimentally as a problem in encoding and decoding; it can also be studied as part of a sequence, using the methods of ethology or of linguistics. We shall (...) see that this kind of analysis has theoretical implications about the nature of human communication, and has practical implications in a number of fields. (shrink)

Ernst Cassirer viewed mythical thinking as a first step in our mental representation of the real world, but only a first step. What myth leaves out are the differentiations that lead eventually to science. To the primitive, mythically inclined mind, the world is an undifferentiated whole, the elements of which—including the mind itself—are thought to be concrete and interconnected. This means that there is no distinction between observer and observed, and that the observer sees the representations with which she constructs (...) her picture of reality as direct apprehensions of reality, untnediated by any sensory or cognitive categories. Far as that way of thinking may seem from the modern mindset, we have only to examine commonplace political ideas to find evidence of the implicit assumption of an unmediated connection between the wishes of poltical agents and the results they intend to achieve. (shrink)

In modern societies, educational philosophy concentrated on concept clarification and the structure of bodies of knowledge, especially science. This modernist project was found wanting, given its connections with ideologies of exploitation, violence and greed. Educational philosophy should, therefore, develop a “new key” for making the role of the aesthetic and ethical in cultural life and education meaningful. In particular, a study of ancient and traditional cultures reveals the centrality of sacred myths and rituals as means for creating coherent cultural patterns (...) which are inspirational and foster well-being. Because of the postmodern aversion to theology-as-ideology and the sensitivity to diverse perspectives and populations, the reclaiming and recreation of appropriate cultural myths and rituals is especially challenging. I present, in outline, what I think are reasonable approaches to that challenge. (shrink)

This paper reclaims the idea that human society is a form of life, an idea once vibrant in the work of Toennies, Durkheim, Simmel, Le Bon, Kroeber, Freud, Bion, and Follett but moribund today. Despite current disparagements, this idea remains the only and best answer to our primary experience of society as vital feeling. The main obstacle to conceiving society as a life is linguistic; the logical form of life is incommensurate with the logical form of language. However, it is (...) possible to extend our conceptual reach by appealing to alternative symbolisms more congenial to living form such as, and especially, art. (shrink)

Julia Ward and Ednah Dow Littlehale, lifelong friends, wrote and lectured on many of the same issues, traveled across the country to lend support to causes, and taught together at the Concord School of Philosophy. Despite their close association and mutual efforts on similar issues, I argue that their philosophical principles were essentially different, in particular their approaches to an understanding of God, society, the sexes, art, and science.

This art-science-interaction article focuses on moral implications of a recent science announcement. Against the background of literary and cultural theories, it compares a YouTube story with narratives employed in fictional stories.

This article develops a biosemiotic ´hyper-narrative model´ for the purposes of investigating emergent motor behaviors. It proposes to understand such behaviors in terms of the following associations: the organization of information acquired from the environment, focusing on narrative; the organizational dynamics of epigenetic mechanisms that underly the neural processes facilitating the processing of information; and the evolution of emergent motor behaviors that enable the informational acquisition. The article describes and explains these associations as part of a multi-ordered and multi-causal generative (...) principle of biological phenotype emergence that supersedes the theory of the arbitrary coding of life. Preceeding from narrative’s operations in a biological dimension, the article presents scientific research dealing with the associations of action-oriented organization of narrative information and underlying psychological and physiological dynamics and depicts the relations with a distributed multi-directional mapping dynamic. The article presents the explanatory implications of such a hyper-narrative dynamic model on an example of emergent motor behaviors – bruxism. Central to this discussion is the exploration of the possible mechanisms of emergence and etiopathogenesis of bruxism, based on its neurobiology. The article takes the perspective that complex systems dynamics themselves with a tendency to narrative form are found not to be underlain merely by arbitrary coded mechanisms but, rather, biological neural networks (e.g. neuro-epigenetic network) that render context-dependent bio-informational mapping analogous to that of the narrative possible. (shrink)

This paper provides an overview of the origins, vicissitudes, and abandonment of ‘metapsychology’, the psycho-biological scientific core of the Freudian opus, and introduces the authors’ key revisions. Although couched in the language of metaphor and analogy from 19th century physics, the conceptual foundations of Freud’s theories contained the seeds of a bio-semiotic theory of mind and of human nature in the natural world. Its updated, modernized, version opens the door to an inter-penetrative epistemology leading to universal principles of logical form, (...) applicable to all types of vital inter-action. (shrink)

In my continuing efforts to build a bridge between psychoanalytic findings and biosemiotics here, as in previous works, ‘biosemiotic’ refers to the hierarchy of meaning-forms (from biological to semiotic-organizations) underlying an updated psychoanalytic model of mind. Within this framework I present a broad range of bio-semiotic phenomena, processes, dynamics, defenses, and universal and unique internalized interpersonal patterns, that in psychoanalysis all commonly fall under the broad heading of the “Unconscious.” Reconceptualized as interpretive data within the purview of a psychoanalytic discourse-semantic (...) this biosemiotic framework posits an epigenetic continuum of human meaning-organizations originating at basic organic levels, moving upward through biological, psycho-somatic and affective expression, proto-semiotic transmissions, represented forms, and finally to explicit linguistic signs and complex symbol systems. In addition to assuming an uninterrupted epigenetic continuum crystallizing in hierarchic organization, this framework accentuates the multilayered and increasingly condensed quality of higher more elaborate organizations of meaning in human communication, drawing attention to persisting biological undercurrents in implied sense, intent, and motivation, all of which impact on repressive/defensive mechanisms. Drawing from previous works (Aragno 1997, 2005, 2008a, b, Psychoanalytic Inquiry 29(1):30–47, 2009, Biosemiotics 3:57–77, 2010, 2011a, Signs 5:71–74, 2011b, Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, Centennial Paper, Special Centennial Issue 59(2):239–288, 2011b, Signs 5:29–70, 2011c) in which I labored to update and revise Freud’s first topographical theory of mind, this paper presents the phenomenology of unconscious ‘data’ for the purpose of introducing a diverse range of non-linguistic signifying forms from which psychoanalysts infer mental processes and ‘interpret’ meanings. An important underlying premise regarding psychoanalytic data and its relation to the basic biosemiotic ‘agenda’ is that until grounded in an updated developmental theory of mind inclusive of pre- and proto-semiotic-forms, that is evolutionarily plausible, epistemologically based, and correlates with contemporary neuroscience, the term “sign” is merely an abstract linguistic ‘label’ rather than a mental act with antecedent developmental stages manifesting meanings through different forms and modes of expression. Drawn from the yields of the psychoanalytic method and semantic this revised metatheoretical approach provides insights into the sensory-emotive, bodily origins of unconscious layers of non-linguistic signification thereby expanding our understanding of the formative stages of the ‘semiotic function’ in human evolution. This being the third in a series of papers integrating the yields of psychoanalytic methodology with the underlying premises of ‘Biosemiotics,’ some familiarity with the background knowledge provided in the previous two is strongly recommended. (shrink)

Abstract: Forgiveness of wrongdoing in response to public apology and amends making seems, on the face of it, to leave little room for the continued commemoration of wrongdoing. This rests on a misunderstanding of forgiveness, however, and we can explain why there need be no incompatibility between them. To do this, I emphasize the role of what I call nonangry negative moral emotions in constituting memories of wrongdoing. Memories so constituted can persist after forgiveness and have important moral functions, and (...) commemorations can elicit these emotions to preserve memories of this sort. Moreover, commemorations can be a restorative justice practice that promotes reconciliation, but only on condition that the memories they preserve are constituted by nonangry negative, not retributive, emotions. (shrink)

Whether music is a catalyst for virtuous or licentious behavior, decadent or sparse thoughts, there is no doubting its importance to human civilization; but what of the sounds of Nature? For the Daoist philosopher Zhuangzi 莊子, the sounds of Nature are the epitome of what humanity calls music. Neither contrived nor laden with predispositions, they reflect the unity of things in Dao 道. Focusing on the xianchi 咸池 story in Chapter 14 of the Zhuangzi, this article argues that the true (...) value of music for Zhuangzi is not to be found in the moral or aesthetic symbolism of its notes but in its ability to return humanity to Dao. For this to happen, one must transcend the particularities of human music so as to recognize the oneness of sounds arising from Nature. Equipped with such awareness, one can then listen for the soundless music of Dao. However, music of this magnitude is so profound that conventional terminology will fail to encapsulate it, thus the xianchi story can be read as an instance of musical apophasis. (shrink)

The paper provides an analysis of the impact of negative emotions on decision-making processes. It questions the common-sense view that negative emotions diminish rationality of decisions, i.e., increase the probability of making suboptimal choices. It is argued in the paper that this view is untenable on the grounds of neuroscience, cognitive science and evolutionary theory: the results provided by these sciences support the view that negative emotions in most instances of their occurrence, i.e. types of negative emotions, not only fail (...) to undermine rationality of decision-making but substantially contribute to it. This does mean saying that token-negative emotions never undermine rationality of decision-making. But, as is argued in the paper, the fact that token-negative emotions may have sometimes this kind of negative effect is fully consistent with the claim that, as a rule, the effect is positive, so that one can speak about the causal connection between types of negative emotion and rational decision-making. (shrink)

This study examines the philosophical question of how it is possible to appreciate music aesthetically as an expressive art form. First it examines a number of general theories that seek to make sense of expressiveness as a characteristic of music that can be considered relevant to our aesthetic appreciation of the latter. These include accounts that focus on resemblances between music and human behaviour or human feelings, on music's powers of emotional arousal, and on various ways in which music may (...) be imaginatively construed by listeners. It argues that none of these are entirely satisfactory. Then it proposes an alternative account, focusing on what is involved when our appreciation of music as an expressive art is informed by our awareness of it as something that is expressively interpreted in performance. It is claimed that this offers the basis for a better understanding of at least some aspects of expressiveness in music and its relevance to aesthetic appreciation. (shrink)

Kant’s critical philosophy responds in parallel ways to mysticism and speculative metaphysics. In doing so, he develops the distinction between brooding reason and healthy reason, the former causing excessive attention and abstraction that the latter must contain. Mystics and metaphysicians, according to Kant, exemplify such brooding reason. His regimen for maintaining healthy reason is not simply an operation of rational thought but itself an embodied activity as well, and these two activities intersect in the imagination. Although Kant’s work is often (...) understood as wholly dismissive of mystical experience, I argue that his treatment of the religious imagination is fraught with ambiguity and can be most usefully understood as a technique for managing the incongruity of two types of religious imagination: the locative and the utopian. (shrink)

Globalization consists of global interculture strengthening local cultures as it depends on them. Globality and locality are interdependent, and “universal” must be replaced by “inter-versal” as existence inter-exists. Chinese thinking thus must be Chinese, not Western, as Western thinking must be Western, not “universal”; China must help the West be Western, as the West must help China be Chinese. As Mrs. Tu speaks English in Chinese syntax, so “sinologists” logicize in Chinese phrases. English speakers parse her to realize the distinctness (...) of English; Chinese thinkers parse Western “sinologists” to realize the distinctness of China. Inter-versal parsing toward cultural inter-enrichment occurs in three stages. This is intercultural globalization. (shrink)

: This work argues from a social-theoretical perspective for the view that every concept of 'gender' remains bound to reproduction. As every culture is interested in its continuity, it distinguishes individuals according to their assumed possible contribution to reproduction and so develops a fundamental dual classification. Subsequent gender categories are necessarily derived from this one. The conceptual and empirical arguments for this thesis are illustrated through an imagined dystopia. There I envision under what conditions a complete dissociation of the concepts (...) 'sex' and 'gender' from the old dual distinction would be possible and in what way a multiplicity of genders would be accomplished. (shrink)

This work argues from a social-theoretical perspective for the view that every concept of 'gender' remains bound to reproduction. As every culture is interested in its continuity, it distinguishes individuals according to their assumed possible contribution to reproduction and so develops a fundamental dual classification. Subsequent gender categories are necessarily derived from this one. The conceptual and empirical arguments for this thesis are illustrated through an imagined dystopia. There I envision under what conditions a complete dissociation of the concepts 'sex' (...) and 'gender' from the old dual distinction would be possible and in what way a multiplicity of genders would be accomplished. (shrink)