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)

Traces of many past events are often layered or superposed, in brain, body, and world alike. This often poses challenges for individuals and groups, both in accessing specific past events and in regulating or managing coexisting emotions or attitudes. We sometimes struggle, for example, to find appropriate modes of engagement with places with complex and difficult pasts. More generally, there can appear to be a tension between what we know about the highly constructive nature of remembering, whether it is drawing (...) on neural or worldly resources or both, and the ways that we need and use memory to make claims on the past, and to maintain some appropriate causal connections to past events. I assess the current state of work on situated affect and distributed memory, and the recent criticisms of the ‘dogma of harmony’ in these fields. I then deploy these frameworks to examine some affective dimensions of place memory, sketching a strongly distributed conception of places as sometimes partly constituting the processes and activities of feeling and remembering. These approaches also offer useful perspectives on the problems of how to engage – politically and aesthetically – with difficult pasts and historically burdened heritage. In assessing artistic interventions in troubled places, we can seek responsibly to do justice to the past while fully embracing the dynamic and contested constructedness of our present emotions, memories, and activities. (shrink)

It is argued that the theory of situated cognition together with dynamic systems theory can explain the core of artistic practice and aesthetic experience, and furthermore paves the way for an account of how artist and audience can meet via the artist's work. The production and consumption of art is an embodied practice, firmly based in perception and action, and supported by features of the local, agent-centered and global socio-cultural contexts. Artistic creativity and aesthetic experience equally result from (...) the dynamic interplay between agent and context, allowing for artist and viewer to relate to the artist's work in similar ways. (shrink)

The Aesthetic Field develops an account of aesthetic experience that distinguishes four mutually interacting factors: the creative factor represented primarily by the artist; the appreciative one by the viewer, listener, or reader; the objective factor by the art object, which is the focus of the experience; and the performative by the activator of the aesthetic occurrence. Each of these factors both affects all the others and is in turn influenced by them, so none can be adequately considered (...) apart from them. Thus aesthetic appreciation, for example, has creative, objective, and performative aspects. This situation of four factors, together with social, cultural, technological, and historical influences on them, is called the aesthetic field. Although the factors are theoretically distinguishable, they are experienced as a unity. It is important, therefore, not to confound the theoretical explanation of aesthetic experience with the experience, itself. The aesthetic field has important implications for understanding the various individual arts, new developments in the arts, and the critical appraisal of the arts. Moreover, the concept transforms traditional issues in aesthetics. (shrink)

Wittgenstein and Heidegger’s objections against the possibility of an aesthetic science were influential on different sides of the analytic/continental divide. Heidegger’s anti-scientism is tied up with a critique of the reduction of the work of art to an object of aesthetic experience. This leads him to an aletheic view of artworks which precedes and exceeds any possible aesthetic reduction. Wittgenstein too rejects the relevance of causal explanations, psychological or physiological, to aesthetic questions. His appeal to ordinary (...) language provides the backdrop for his critique of the philosophical tradition’s focus on a narrow range of evaluative aesthetic terms, thus excluding most of the language we ordinarily employ in the relevant cases. The main aim of this paper is to compare Heidegger with Wittgenstein, showing that: (a) there are significant parallels to be drawn between Wittgenstein and Heidegger’s anti-scientism about aesthetics, and (b) their anti-scientism leads them towards partly divergent criticisms of what I will call ‘aestheticism’. The divergence is mainly due to a disagreement concerning appeals to ordinary language. Thus situating the two philosophers’ positions facilitates a possible critical dialogue between analytic and continental approaches in aesthetics. (shrink)

While feminist aestheticians have long interrogated gendered, raced, and classed hierarchies in the arts, feminist philosophers still don’t talk much about popular music. Even though Angela Davis and bell hooks have seriously engaged popular music, they are often situated on the margins of philosophy. It is my contention that feminist aesthetics has a lot to offer to the study of popular music, and the case of popular music points feminist aesthetics to some of its own limitations and unasked questions. This (...) essay addresses the paucity of work in feminist philosophy and popular music by applying insights from other areas of feminist aesthetics to questions of popular music, and thereby using feminist aesthetics – specifically, Julia Kristea’s notion of female genius and the genius spectator – to critique itself. (shrink)

Since its emergence in the 1950s, analytic aesthetics has become the mainstream approach to aesthetics in the English-speaking world, and it has subsequently spread throughout most of the world, including mainland China. Although it was introduced into the Chinese academic world at an early time, around the late 1950s, and has been disseminated and researched in China over the past three decades, analytic aesthetics remains underdeveloped in China. Chinese academics tend to have little familiarity with, and exposure to, analytic approaches (...) to aesthetics. Unsurprisingly, given this situation, Chinese contributions to analytic aesthetics have had a marginal impact on the international academic discussion. This paper aims at providing a picture of the development of analytic aesthetics in China. In section 1, I clarify the scope of the paper. Section 2 briefly introduces aesthetics in China so as to outline the context for our discussion about analytic aesthetics. In section 3, I first offer a brief historical narrative of the dissemination and reception of analytic aesthetics in China, and then explore how analytic aesthetics has been researched and taught in China. -/- . (shrink)

Wittgenstein’s and Heidegger’s objections against the possibility of a science of aesthetics were influential on different sides of the analytic/continental divide. Heidegger’s anti-scientism leads him to an alētheic view of artworks which precedes and exceeds any possible aesthetic reduction. Wittgenstein also rejects the relevance of causal explanations, psychological or physiological, to aesthetic questions. The main aim of this paper is to compare Heidegger with Wittgenstein, showing that: there are significant parallels to be drawn between Wittgenstein’s and Heidegger’s anti-scientism (...) about aesthetics, and that their anti-scientism leads both towards partly divergent criticisms of what I will call ‘aestheticism’. The divergence is mainly due to a broader metaphilosophical disagreement concerning appeals to ordinary language. Thus situating the two philosophers’ positions facilitates a possible critical dialogue between analytic and continental approaches in aesthetics. (shrink)

In this paper, I offer a new interpretation of Margaret Cavendish’s remarks on beauty. According to it, Cavendish takes beauty to be a real, response-independent quality of objects. In this sense, Cavendish is an aesthetic realist. This position, which remains constant throughout her philosophical writings, contrasts with the non-realist views that were soon after to dominate philosophical reflections on matters of taste in the early modern period. It also, I argue, contrasts with the realism of Cavendish’s contemporary, Henry More. (...) While there are passages in Cavendish’s work that might seem to count against my reading—specifically, passages on disagreement in aesthetic judgement, on the power of beauty to elicit the passions, and on our inability to specify the nature of beauty—I show that, when situated against the background of Cavendish’s broader metaphysical and epistemological views, those passages in fact support the realist interpretation. (shrink)

Theodor Adorno's Aesthetic Theory is a vast labyrinth that anyone interested in modern aesthetic theory must at some time enter. Because of his immense difficulty of the same order as Derrida - Adorno's reception has been slowed by the lack of a comprehensive and comprehensible account of the intentions of his aesthetics. This is the first book to put Aesthetic Theory into context and outline the main ideas and relevant debates, offering readers a valuable guide through this (...) huge, difficult, but revelatory work. Its extended argument is that, despite Adorno's assumptions of autonomism, cognitivism, and aesthetic modernism, his idea of artistic truth content offers crucial insights for contemporary philosophical aesthetics.The eleven chapters are divided into three parts: Context, Content, and Critique. The first part offers a brief biography, describes Adorno's debates with Benjamin, Brecht, and Lukács, and outlines his philosophical program. The second part is an interpretation of Adorno's aesthetics, examining how he situates art in society, production, politics, and history and uncovering the social, political, and historical dimensions of his idea of artistic truth. The third part evaluates Adorno's contribution by confronting it with the critiques of Peter Bürger, Frederic Jameson, and Albrecht Wellmer.Lambert Zuidervaart is Professor of Philosophy at Calvin College. (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)

Enriching Arts Education through Aesthetics examines the use of aesthetic theory as the foundation to design and implement arts activities suitable for integration in school curricula in pre-school and primary school education. This book suggests teaching practices based on the connection between aesthetics and arts education and shows that this kind of integration promotes enriched learning experiences. -/- The book explores how the core ideas of four main aesthetic approaches – the representationalist, the expressionist, the formalist, and the (...) postmodernist – translate into respective ways of designing and implementing experiential aesthetics-based activities. Containing relevant examples of interventions used in classes, it analyzes the ways in which the combination of different aesthetic approaches can support varied, multifaceted, multimodal and balanced teaching situations in school. (shrink)

This paper explores various notions of aesthetic affordance recently developed through embodied, situated and enactive approaches to aesthetic experience by Maria Brincker and Shaun Gallagher, and the similarities and differences between them and the idea of affective affordance put forward by Joel Krueger and Giovanna Colombetti. This discussion is a way to try to offer some answers to the question of what aesthetic affordances particularly afford compared to affective affordances. I will focus on the affordances that we (...) perceive during various aesthetic experiences in which we find ourselves more moved by the object, event or person(s) causing the experience than we had anticipated. I will argue that these experiences emerge as opportunities to carry out an active exploration of aspects of the narrative self that we feel is related to features of the experience; and that one particular brain network likely to be involved in these experiences – i.e. the default network – might help us to understand how these experiences meaningfully change our relationship with ourselves and with the social context of which we are a part. (shrink)

The article analyzes the significance of situated knowledges for going beyond dominating conceptual dichotomies that a) establish status quo dialectics, b) proliferate homogenization of the Global Northern experienced materialities, and c) conceal and suppress alternate affectual body-environment experiences and materializations. With the example of postsocialist ontogenealogies, the article analyzes the potential blind spots when failing to consider both sides of a status quo dialectic in their interconnectedness. To conclude, the article suggests the potential of situated knowledges as a vehicle for (...) future environmental ethicalities. (shrink)

While language use in general is currently being explored as essentially situated in immediate physical environment, narrative reading is primarily regarded as a means of decoupling one’s consciousness from the environment. In order to offer a more diversified view of narrative reading, the article distinguishes between three different roles the environment can play in the reading experience. Next to the traditional notion that environmental stimuli disrupt attention, the article proposes that they can also serve as a prop for mental imagery (...) and/or a locus of pleasure more generally. The latter two perspectives presuppose a more clear-cut distinction between consciousness and attention than typically assumed in the communication literature. The article concludes with a list of implications for research and practice. (shrink)

Adorno’s dialectical approach to aesthetics is perhaps understood better in terms of his monumental work, 'Aesthetic Theory,' which attempts to relate the speculative tradition in philosophical aesthetics to the situation of art in twentieth-century society, than in terms of purely theoretical claims. This paper demonstrates that Adorno embraces the Kantian thesis concerning art’s autonomy and that he criticizes transcendental philosophy. It also discusses how Adorno provides the outlines for a dialectical conception of artistic truth in relation to his (...) argument with Hegel. Adorno’s assessment of the Enlightenment is linked to his interpretation of twentieth-century literature. The conclusion of this paper emphasizes the political implications of Adorno’s position when the philosopher approaches art as a sign of historical truth. (shrink)

The intersection of Foucault and Hadot's work in the philosophy of antiquity is a dense and fruitful meeting. Not only do each of the philosophers offer competing interpretations of antiquity, their differences also reflect on their opposing assessments of the contemporary situation and the continuing philosophical debate between the universal and the relative. Unpacking these two philosophers’ disagreements on antiquity sheds light on how Hadot’s commitment to the Universal and Foucault’s commitment to an aesthetics of existence stem from their (...) diagnoses of the present and the persistent philosophical issue of universalism. This line of analysis is especially productive to pursue in relation to Hadot and Foucault because of the rigor of their thought, the lack of polemics in its debate, and the importance of both thinkers to philosophy generally. (shrink)

In this essay, David Hildebrand connects Democracy and Education to Dewey's wider corpus. Hildebrand argues that Democracy and Education's central objective is to offer a practical and philosophical answer to the question, What is needed to live a meaningful life, and how can education contribute? He argues, further, that this work is still plausible as “summing up” Dewey's overall philosophy due to its focus upon “experience” and “situation,” crucial concepts connecting Dewey's philosophical ideas to one another, to education, and (...) to democracy. He opens the essay with a brief synoptic analysis of Democracy and Education's major philosophical ideas, moves on to sections devoted to experience and situation, and then offers a brief conclusion. Some mention is made throughout about the surprisingly significant role art and aesthetics can play in education. (shrink)

Even though the American thinker John Dewey and the Italian Luigi Pareyson belong to two different philosophical traditions, on the aesthetic ground they show many resonances and similarities. Using Pareyson’s words, “just as it happens between people, who in particularly happy encounters […] reveal themselves to each other,” it is therefore possible to have Dewey’s aesthetics and Pareyson’s dialogue with each other, highlighting their affinities. This operation can strengthen the idea that the aesthetic experience is a way to (...) fulfil human existence. Thus, the hermeneutic character of Pareyson’s aesthetics in combination with Deweyan pragmatist aesthetic theory not only have great importance for the artistic experience, but also considerable value for human beings’ everyday lives. -/- Starting from some Deweyan resonances in Pareyson’s aesthetics, the discourse focuses on his aesthetics in its educational and hermeneutic significance within the dialogue between the two philosophers, coming, finally, to Dewey’s and Pareyson’s aesthetics in connection with so-called “everyday aesthetics.” Although a Deweyan influence on Pareyson is ascertained, and the similarities between them are not superficial at all, it is worth bearing in mind the different backgrounds of the two philosophers in order to accurately situate their reflections. (shrink)

This paper sets out to interpret the phrase ‘the city landscape’. Beginning with landscape aesthetics based on two categories — the picturesque and the sublime — the author attempts todemonstrate that a city can be interpreted in terms of a cultural landscape. This necessitates a re‑interpretation of the category of the sublime, whereby, through references to Edmund Burke, Theodor W. Adorno and Arnold Berleant, the sublime assumes the nature of a category which determines the existential situation of a person (...) in the world. Here, the sublime provides people with an impulse to undertake efforts to fashion their surroundings and forge the essence of the living world. As such, the sublime also becomes a category that promotes social activities aimed at improving the quality of life in a city, such as the activities of ‘urban gardeners’. (shrink)

This thesis explores the concept of timbre through the lens of analytic philosophical aesthetics and philosophy of music. I argue that timbre should be thought of as providing the grounds for artistic and aesthetic values in music. To this end and firstly, I critique the physical sense of timbre in favour of two anti-realist senses of timbre. These two are the qualitative and the semantic senses which are developed from two of Siedenburg and McAdams’ four senses of timbre. I (...) argue that the qualitative sense of timbre is the experience of the unique qualities of sounds. The semantic sense is that which associates timbres to objects and concepts. Within the semantic sense, I argue for what I call a genealogical sense of timbre which relates timbres to sources and concepts through a history of built up associations. Secondly, these two senses are situated within the artform of music by demonstrating the functions they may fulfil there and how these ground artistic and aesthetic values. Regarding these values, I employ Robert Stecker’s definitions of artistic and aesthetic value. Finally, I summarise the two arguments for why we should think that timbre can provide grounds for aesthetic and artistic value in music. (shrink)

In this clearly written and well argued book, Mark Johnson presents a theory of embodied cognition and discusses the implications it has for theories of meaning, language and aesthetics. His pragmatist foundations are on show when he writes that ‘The so-called norms of logical inference are just the patterns of thinking that we have discovered as having served us well in our prior inquiries, relative to certain values, purposes, and types of situations’ (p.109). Johnson’s particular contribution to theories of meaning (...) and language is that he grounds ‘inference’ even at the most abstract level in patterns of sensorimotor experience (p.279). He rejects traditional analytic theories of language on the basis that their central concept of reference is grounded in an erroneous and unfounded distinction between transcendent universals and bodily particulars (p.89-91). (shrink)

Maria Gołaszewska (1926–2015), a Polish philosopher, was associated throughout her life with Poland’s oldest academic institution, the Jagiellonian University in Cracow. She was a student of the phenomenologist Roman Ingarden, himself a student of Edmund Husserl. During the postwar and communist years in Poland, Gołaszewska conducted research focusing on issues related to art and aesthetics. She created her own conception of empirically and anthropologically oriented aesthetics, which I believe is a prime example of a theory that accounts for the perspective (...) of gender, and in this sense should be acknowledged as an important contribution to contemporary gender-sensitive/feminist philosophy. In the article, I present Gołaszewska’s life, academic career, and philosophy as a cognitively valuable response to feminist philosophy’s search for a suitable description of women’s experiences related to art and aesthetic perception. (shrink)

The range of the aesthetic has expanded to cover not only a wider range of objects and situations of daily life but also to encompass the negative. This includes terrorism, whose aesthetic impact is central to its use as a political tactic. The complex of positive and negative aesthetic values in terrorism are explored, introducing the concept of the sublime as a negative category to illuminate the analysis and the distinctive aesthetic of terrorism.

The hope that art could be personally or socially transformational is an important part of art history and contemporary art practice. In the twentieth century, it shaped a movement away from traditional media in an effort to make social life a medium. Artists imagined and created participatory situations designed to facilitate potentially transformative expression in those who engaged with the works. This chapter develops the concept of “transformative expression,” and illustrates how it informs a diverse range of such works. Understanding (...) these artworks in this way raises two interesting questions, one about the nature of aesthetic value and the other about the nature of action. Answers to these questions lie in understanding the social and aesthetic character of our capacity to distance ourselves from our commitments and act in the expressive, playful, spontaneous, or imaginative ways that participatory art invites. (shrink)

The point of this symposium is to locate one trajectory of the new wave of discussions about beauty beyond the customary confines of analytic aesthetics and to situate it at the intersection of aesthetics, ethics, social-political philosophy, and cultural criticism. Three essays follow this introduction authored by Marica Muelder Eaton, Paul C. Taylor, and Susan Bordo. They represent a conjoined effort to move 'beauty' beyond the traditional parameters of past contextual theories of art. This introductory essay offers some guidance as (...) to why a symposium on beauty merits attention in 1999. (shrink)

Waiting for Godot’s many commentators have emphasized the absurdity of hope in the play, but there has not been an account of how the play reprises hope’s historical transformation and weakening in modernity. This essay provides that account, arguing that Beckett’s Waiting for Godot sponsors a form of hope appropriate to the predicaments of modern societies. Godot stages the blockage of hope by reflecting the obsolescence and fragmentation of the religious and progressive legitimations for the concept that used to be (...) broadly convincing. Despite this blockage, however, Godot does not give in to nihilism. It, rather, models a form of responsible, self-aware hope appropriate to an historical situation where hope does not admit of rational justification. To develop this interpretation of the play and to defend its minimalist conception of hope, the essay draws on Theodor W. Adorno’s Negative Dialectics and aesthetics. (shrink)

In this article, it is claimed that by considering Rancière’s understanding of politics of aesthetics alongside Stengers’ conception of the ecology of practices, it is possible to think about the autonomy of artistic practices which would be created and sustained politically. Rancière demonstrates that the artistic autonomy was previously subordinated to a variety of historical imperatives, while Stengers warns about an apolitical mission of the great narrative of the Anthropocene. Both philosophers make a case for talking about the autonomy of (...) artistic practices based on political differing, but in Stengers’ philosophy, the political principle of dissensus is supported by an ecological perspective. She argues for a symbiotic consensus, where the political is defined as being both contradictory and attuned to the situational interconnectedness. In the destructive environment of the Anthropocene, Stengers challenges the tradition of critical reflexivity and proposes a way out – the autonomy of practices that is not universally given but needs to be constantly recomposed together. (shrink)

Joseph Margolis holds that both artworks and selves are ”culturally emergent entities." Culturally emergent entities are distinct from and not reducible to natural or physical entities. Artworks are thus not reducible to their physical media; a painting is thus not paint on canvas and music is not sound. In a similar vein, selves or persons are not reducible to biology, and thought is not reducible to the physical brain. Both artworks and selves thus have two ongoing and inseparable ”evolutions”—one cultural (...) and one physical. Rather than having fixed ”natures” that remain stable for any purpose other than numerical identity, artworks and selves have ”careers” due to their cultural evolution that change with the course and flux of history, interpretation and reinterpretation. The question for this essay is how a Margolisian encultured artist, who is also an individual ”self," can construct an identifiable ”career” that is both from culture and develops culture constructively in a way that involves an individual, as well as collective, contribution. In answering this question I will provide a theory that shows how Margolis’ work on the artist as cultural agent leaves room for creative innovators within a cultural context. In short, I claim that Margolis’ idea that a person is a thinking-and-doing practitioner that emerges from and works within a cultural context does allow for the agent to use that same context to acquire the tools and skills necessary to make something new. I will then consider how this innovation might be possible by making recourse to some theories of creativity from neuroscience and psychology. This essay will focus on Margolis’ theory of the creative artist as cultural agent as supplemented with an account of the nature of the human being as a raw set of genetic materials and capacity for acquiring cultural competence. My claim is that this is the site for an adequate account of how some encultured persons are able to create exceptional innovations in artistic domains and others are not. I agree with Margolis that it is true that innovation is not possible by any pre- or non-encultured self but I also think that extremes of cultural mastery and innovation, as in the case of highly creative and innovative artists, are not possible without an inborn potentiality to develop to a high level of cultural ability under the right conditions. This is not to deny Margolis’ theory of artists as cultural agents. Indeed, I accept Margolis’ view of the deep importance of culture to the development of the self and to the creative artist wholeheartedly. I also agree that this is a crucial aspect of artistic agency and creativity that has been given short shrift in analytic aesthetics. My intention here is only to answer one question that is still left unanswered after understanding and acknowledging the importance of culture: How do we account for the disparity in ability in cultural agents and artists that cannot be attributed to cultural training and socio-historical factors? How do we account for the existence of the exceptionally creative artist in a situation where the cultural and socio-historical factors are roughly equivalent for others who demonstrate lesser amounts of creativity? (shrink)

Peter Kivy claims that expressivists in aesthetics cannot explain why we argue about art. The situation would be different in the case of morals. Moral attitudes lead to action, and since actions affect people, we have a strong incentive to change people’s moral attitudes. This can explain why we argue about morals, even if moral language is expressive of our feelings. However, judgements about what is beautiful and elegant need not significantly affect our lives. So why be concerned with (...) other people’s feelings about art? Kivy thinks the best explanation of our tendency to argue about art is that we implicitly believe in objective facts about aesthetics. This would count against expressivism. I argue two things: that there is no good reason to think that we don’t care about preferences and emotions unless they have significant practical consequences and that the truth of expressivism about aesthetic language is compatible with beliefs about objective aesthetic facts. (shrink)

Inspired by the text entitled The Collapse of the Fact/Value Dichotomy and Other Essays (2004) of Hilary Putnam, the volume focuses on the theory and practice of knowledge, but one can legitimately extend it to other fields, most especially in aesthetics. Certain observable features in the fields of aesthetics, practice and artistic creation show that old evaluation criteria may now be obsolete. This is because upon further consideration, the definition of value remains opaque : should the artwork be judged according (...) to its moral value, its market value, or its formal value ? To side with or against the concept of value in art and aesthetics does not preclude a certain number of differences concerning the very nature of what is meant by value. If traditionally the ‘fact’ was the work, taken in all its tangibility, currently the materiality of the object no longer seems to play such a major role. Art is increasingly populated by so-called ‘immaterial’ or ‘ephemeral’ works and is therefore rarely, or badly, quantifiable according to old aesthetic and economic evaluation criteria. The progressively pragmatic contextualization of works within the social space puts forward a new definition of aesthetic value, no longer eternal and ideal, but rather anchored in the sensible and the politico-economic issues of a culturally specific situation. The current changes too support the idea that the question of ‘value’ and its confrontation with the concept of ‘fact’ is urgent. What role do artistic practices and aesthetic theories play ? A role of emancipation, of liberation, escape, or transformation ? Or on the contrary, could art become another means to subject individuals to the status quo ? As can easily be noticed, the question of maintaining or rejecting the dichotomy of facts and values is at the heart of the most pressing issues. (shrink)

Why is it that we respond emotionally to plays, movies, and novels and feel moved by characters and situations that we know do not exist? This question, which constitutes the kernel of the debate on »the paradox of fiction«, speaks to the perennial themes of philosophy, and remains of interest to this day. But does this question entail a paradox? A significant group of analytic philosophers have indeed thought so. Since the publication of Colin Radford's celebrated paper »How Can We (...) Be Moved by the Fate of Anna Karenina?« (1975), the number of proposals to solve, explain, reformulate, dismiss or even revitalize this apparent paradox has continued to proliferate. In line with recent developments in the philosophy of emotion, in this paper I will argue against the sustainability of the paradox, claiming that the only reasonable way to continue our discussions about it consists in using it as a heuristic tool to shed light on problems regarding our involvement with fiction. Against this background, I will then focus on one of the problems related to how our emotional responses to fiction contribute to our appreciation of it. The paper is divided into three main sections. The first section shows the parallel evolution of the paradox of fiction and the analytic philosophy of emotion. Here I claim that, although the paradox is epistemically flawed, since one of its premises is rooted in a limited view on the emotions typical of early cognitiv-ism, the discussions it provokes are still epistemically useful. As Robert Stecker (2011, 295), among others, has pointed out, the paradox was formulated during the heyday of cognitive theories of the emotions in which emotion necessarily requires belief. Today, however, only few authors would endorse this premise. If emotion does not always require belief (as the majority of authors in the contemporary debate admit), let alone belief about the existence of the object towards which it is directed, then there is no reason to speak of a paradox. From this first conclusion, however, it does not follow that the paradox is completely without use from the epistemic point of view. A glimpse at the topics touched on during the discussions about how to solve, reformulate, or negate the paradox reveals their value in shedding light on the interrelation between emotion and fiction. The second section elaborates a phenomenologically inspired cognitive account of the emotions by focusing on their cognitive bases, their influence on Emotion in the Appreciation of Fiction 205 cognitions, and their cognitive function. In this model, emotions are responsible for indicating values, for showing what matters to us, and for being appropriate to their objects. My claim is that this view applies not only to reality, but also to our involvement with fiction. In the final section I draw on this account to focus on one kind of appreciation of fiction which necessarily requires our emotional involvement. Following an idea put forward by Susan Feagin (1996, 1), I employ the concept of »appre-ciation« to refer to a set of abilities exercised with the aim of extracting value from the work. There is a long tradition in aesthetics that condemns any focus on the emotions in the appreciation of art and fiction, and defends the necessity of aesthetic appreciation without emotional influence. To refer to this negative attitude towards the emotions, I will borrow an expression coined by Susan Feagin (2013, 636), who refers to »the intellectualized view of appreciation«. Against this widespread view, I will argue that some aspects of the fiction can only be appreciated with the help of our emotions. The cognitive approach developed in the previous section can explain how the emotions might in fact play a significant role in the appreciation of art and fiction. Attention will be paid to three activities involved in appreciation, for all of which emotion is crucial: processing relevant information about the fictional world, understanding aspects of it, and becoming acquainted with the values it presents. My aim here is to argue that there are particular aspects of the fictional world that can only be appreciated if recipients have the appropriate emotions. (shrink)

Aesthics: Art and moral attuning. Art can help us understand everyday moral deliberation. Better perhaps than ethics. People don’t just act randomly in moral situations nor do they argue internally about which ethical principle to follow before deciding what to do. We built our moral sensitivity whilst living our lives, adhering to aesthetic norms of interaction. Regular engagement with works of art educates our moral sensitivity.

In this wide-ranging and authoritative volume, leading scholars engage with the philosophy and writings of Wilhelm Dilthey, a key figure in nineteenth-century thought. Their chapters cover his innovative philosophical strategies and explore how they can be understood in relation to their historical situation, as well as presenting incisive interpretations of Dilthey's arguments, including their development, their content, and their influence on later thought. A key focus is on how Dilthey's work remains relevant to current debates around art and literature, (...) the biographical and autobiographical self, knowledge, language, science, culture, history, society, and psychology and the embodied mind. The volume will be important for researchers in hermeneutics, aesthetics, practical philosophy, and the history of German philosophy, providing a valuable introduction to Dilthey's work as well as detailed critical analysis of its ongoing significance. (shrink)

The chapter provides an overview on what it means to be in a world that is uncertain, e.g., how under conditions of limited understanding any activity is an activity that designs and constructs, and how designing objects, spaces, and situations relates to the (designed) meta-world of second-order cybernetics. Designers require a framework that is open, but one that supplies ethical guidance when ‘constructing’ something new. Relating second-order design thinking to insights in philosophy and aesthetics, the chapter argues that second-order cybernetics (...) provides a response to this ethical challenge and essentially it entails a poetics of designing. //// 'A Poetics of Designing' is part of the first book-length collection of texts in Design Cybernetics. It introduces the subject from the point of view of aesthetics. Importantly, the chapter argues that second-order cybernetics circumvents the necessity for a muse inspired artist or genius as a mediator between higher spirits and life, in favour of artists and designers who have true agency. //// Cybernetics is often associated with AI, which is, however, only one of the branches that developed on the basis of the interdisciplinary research begun in the 1940s and entitled cybernetics. I hope the chapter contributes to a better understanding of the second-order cybernetics that has been conceived in close relationship with art and design from the late 60s onwards. (shrink)

The heart of Dewey’s call to humanize techno-industrial civilization was to conceive science and technology in the service of aesthetic consummations. Hence his philosophy suggests a way to reclaim and affirm technology on behalf of living more fulfilling lives. He remains a powerful ally today in the fight against deadening efficiency, narrow means-end calculation, “frantic exploitation,” and the industrialization of everything. Nonetheless, it is common to depict him as a philosopher we should think around rather than with. The first (...) section of this essay explores his philosophy of technology and environment in light of Bacon, Heidegger, and Borgmann. Most of the techno-industrial and vocational activities which we pretend are “instrumental,” Dewey argued, actually reduce “to a very minimum the esthetic aspect of experiences had in the course of the daily occupation.” It is argued that, insofar as cooperative intelligence can guide the direction of technological development, it does not honor contemplative life if we abdicate or downgrade that responsibility. The second section of this essay explores Dewey’s instrumentalism as a critique of vicious intellectualism. It is argued that, for Dewey, genuine progress serves the aesthetic dimension of experience. This assertion contrasts with the most common interpretive error among both critics and admirers of Dewey, namely that he is mostly a champion of science. Moreover, critics of Dewey’s instrumentalist theory of inquiry often mistake it as (a) an attack on any conception of intrinsic value, or (b) an attempt to collapse the value of means into the value of ends. In Dewey’s view, we habitually look for progress in the wrong place because we carry around with us some big idea of a final and ultimate good for measuring it. In his view, the ameliorative expansion of significance that emerges from our dealings with perplexing situations is the only place progress can really be found. (shrink)

Resumen: En La actualidad de lo bello, Gadamer hace una referencia reveladora a la improvisación musical y a la importancia de la escucha musical, además de poner en primer plano la necesidad de justificación del arte. Situando este debate a través de Goethe y Platón, junto con las Lecciones de Estética de Adorno de finales de la década de 1950 y una discusión sobre Nietzsche y la Antigüedad, es posible establecer que lo que está en juego es la afinación, así (...) como una tensión que invita a un debate ulterior tanto sobre la detención del amante en Carson como el demorarse en Heidegger. Al revisar la hermenéutica gadameriana de la programación y la interpretación musical, incluida la improvisación y el desafío de la nueva música, las reflexiones de Gadamer sobre la cultura musical en el contexto de la cultura social y su reflexión no solo pueden ser leídas a través de Platón y Goethe, sino también a partir de las concepciones de "lo bello" en Hölderlin y Rilke. Se trata de una "conversación" cultural en la que la contribución del público puede estar en tensión con la programación musical progresiva, además de la dinámica de respuesta que surge en la energeia de la improvisación tanto para el intérprete como para el oyente.// Abstract: Gadamer’s On the Relevance of the Beautiful makes telling reference to musi-cal improvisation and the importance of musical listening in addition to fore-grounding the need for justification. Situating this discussion via Goethe and Plato along with Adorno’s late 1950s lectures on Aesthetics together with a discussion of Nietzsche and antiquity, what is at stake is attunement and a tension which invites a discussion of Carson on the lover’s arrest and Heidegger on tarrying. By reviewing Gadamer’s hermeneutic of musical pro-gramming and performance, including improvisation and the challenge of new music, Gadamer may be read on music culture in the context of social culture and his reflection not only via Plato and Goethe but Hölderlin and Rilke on ‘the beautiful.’ At work is a cultural ‘conversation’ where audience input can be in tension with progressive musical programing along with the dynamic of response emergent in the energeia of improvisation for performer and listener. (shrink)

Accounts of the ontology of musical works seek to uncover what metaphysically speaking a musical work is and how we should identify instances of musical works. In this article, I examine the curious case of the mash-up and seek to address two questions: are mash-ups musical works in their own right and what is the relationship between the mash-up and its source materials? As mash-ups are part of the broader tradition of rock, I situate this discussion within an ontology of (...) rock as defended by Theodore Gracyk and Stephen Davies and offer some interpretation as to what their positions might be in regard to mash-ups. Finally, I argue that the account of mash-ups that best makes sense of our evaluative practices would hold that they are emergent musical works that are distinct in their own right and yet also happen to be cases of musical works that instantiate parts of other musical works. (shrink)

The article introduces the problematics of the classical two-valued logic on which Western thought is generally based, outlining that under the conditions of its logical assumptions the subject I is situated in a world that it cannot address. In this context, the article outlines a short history of cybernetics and the shift from first- to second-order cybernetics. The basic principles of Gordon Pask’s 1976 Conversation Theory are introduced. It is argued that this second-order theory grants agency to others through a (...) re-conception of living beings as You logically transcending the I. The key principles of Conversation Theory are set in relation to the poetic forms of discourse that played a key role in art as well as philosophical thinking in China in the past. Second-order thinking, the article argues, is essentially poetic. It foregoes prediction in favour of the potentiality of encountering tomorrow’s delights. (shrink)

Movies have a striking aesthetic power: they can draw us in and induce a peculiar mode of involvement in their images – they absorb us. While absorbed in a movie, we lose track both of the passage of time and of the fact that we are sitting in a dark room with other people watching the play of light upon a screen. What is the source of the power of movies? Noël Carroll, who cites Maurice Merleau-Ponty as an influence (...) on his account of the power of movies, agrees with Merleau-Ponty that our perceptual experience of movies draws on many of the capacities at work in our perceptual experience of everyday situations. Yet Merleau-Ponty’s account of perception shows that Carroll’s emphasis on intellectual inference and the entertaining of unasserted thoughts is a distortion of the phenomenology of cinematic absorption. According to Merleau-Ponty, such intellectual operations come into play in cases of breakdown but should not be read back into the primary absorbed experience as being implicitly operative.. (shrink)

Using William Shakespeare’s Hamlet and the play-within-the play, The Murder of Gonzago, as a case study, this essay argues that theatrical utterances constitute a special case of language usage not previously elucidated: the utterance of a statement with propositional content in theatre functions as an event. In short, the propositional content of a particular p (e.g. p1, p2, p3 …), whether or not it is true, is only understood—and understood to be true—if p1 is uttered in a particular time, place, (...) and situation (i.e. during a theatrical event); otherwise, the propositional content in those theatrical utterances can either be false or contingently true. (shrink)

Monists and pluralists disagree concerning how many ordinary objects there are in a single situation. For instance, pluralists argue that a statue and the clay it is made of have different properties, and thereby are different. The standard monist’s response is to hold that there is just a single object, and that, under the description “being a statue”, this object is, e.g., aesthetically valuable, and that, under the description “being a piece of clay”, it is not aesthetically valuable. However, (...) Fine provided an ontological reading of the expression “an object under a description”: the theory of rigid embodiments. The debate between monists and pluralists reduplicates in the domain of ordinary occurrences, like walks and conferences. Specifically, they disagree whether an occurrence in progress (also called “process”) like John’s walk that is happening at tn is identical to some completed occurrence (also called “event”) like John’s walk that happened between, e.g., t1 and tn. Under the adoption of the pluralist’s position, the article aims to provide a novel theory of ordinary occurrences that develops the ontological reading of “under a description” to account for occurrences in progress and completed occurrences. As a first result, we formulate a theory according to which both occurrences in progress and completed occurrences are rigid embodiments. As a second result, we argue that the suggested theory is explanatorily powerful to the extent it solves two puzzles that we call “the Puzzle from the Completion of a Process” and “the Metaphysical-cum-Semantical Puzzle”. (shrink)

Disagreement is common: even informed, intelligent, and generally reasonable people often come to different conclusions when confronted with what seems to be the same evidence. Can the competing conclusions be reasonable? If not, what can we reasonably think about the situation? This volume examines the epistemology of disagreement. Philosophical questions about disagreement arise in various areas, notably politics, ethics, aesthetics, and the philosophy of religion: but this will be the first book focusing on the general epistemic issues arising from (...) informed disagreement. Ten leading philosophers offer specially written essays which together will offer a starting-point for future work on this topic. (shrink)

The "Introduction" to "Symposium: Beauty Matters" in the Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 57, No. 1 (Winter 1999), pages 1-10, is presented here. Abstract: The point of this symposium is to locate one trajectory of the new wave of discussions about beauty beyond the customary confines of analytic aesthetics and to situate it at the intersection of aesthetics, ethics, social-political philosophy, and cultural criticism. The three essays that follow, authored by Marcia Muelder Eaton, Paul C. Taylor, and Susan (...) Bordo, represent a conjoined effort to move "beauty" beyond the traditional parameters of past contextual theories of art--theories which in their own right (only decades ago and analogous to art criticism itself) opened up rich philosophical terrain beyond the confines of formalism. This introductory essay offer some guidance as to why a symposium on beauty merits attention. Exploring the ways artists and critics have revived the concept of beauty will provide a point of comparison between artworld practices and recent philosophical literature. Most importantly, a new approach to philosophical theorizing will be recommended: one that places questions of gender, race, and sexuality at the forefront of analyzing our experiences of beauty in nature, the human body, and art. Curiously, this new approach is not so much a radical departure from traditional philosophical aesthetics as it is a return to questions basic to the field since the time of Plato: questions about the types of qualities that inhere in objects of beauty, the kinds of experiences they provoke, and the ways we come to value both. (shrink)

For Kierkegaard the ‘psychological experiment’ is a literary strategy. It enables him to dramatize an existential conflict in an experimental mode. Kierkegaard’s aim is to study the source of movement that animates the existing individual (this is the psychological part). However, he is not interested in the representation of historical individuals in actual situations, but in the construction of fictional characters that are placed in hypothetical situations; this allows him to set the categories in motion “in order to observe completely (...) undisturbed what these require” without caring to what extent someone has met this requirement or is able to meet it (this is the experimental part). -/- The ‘psychological experiment’ is a category of indirect communication that is developed most extensively by Frater Taciturnus, the pseudonymous author of the third part of Stages on Life’s Way. (I) Taciturnus introduces the psychological experiment as a new trajectory in modern literature that offers an alternative to poetry and speculative drama. He develops this new trajectory in praxis (in the novella ‘“Guilty?”/“Not Guilty?” A Story of Suffering: A Psychological Experiment by Frater Taciturnus’) as well as in theory (in the ‘Letter to the Reader’ that accompanies his novella). (II) Two other pseudonymous authors further enrich the conceptual field of the psychological experiment. Constantin Constantius develops the notion ‘experimenting psychology’; Johannes Climacus reflects on the reader’s contemporaneity with the character. (shrink)

Attempting art: an essay on intention-dependenceIt is a truism among philosophers that art is intention-dependent—that is to say, art-making is an activity that depends in some way on the maker's intentions. Not much thought has been given to just what this entails, however. For instance, most philosophers of art assume that intention-dependence entails concept-dependence—i.e. possessing a concept of art is necessary for art-making, so that what prospective artists must intend is to make art. And yet, a mounting body of anthropological (...) and art-historical evidence and philosophical argument suggests that not only is such a criterion unsatisfied by most of the art-historical canon, but it also rests on a false premise: concepts of 'art' are not shared between cultures, nor even in the same culture across time. My dissertation aims to rectify this error by first exploring what our commitment to art's intention-dependence actually entails, and then showing that, properly understood, intention-dependence sets a number of important constraints on theories of art with respect to explanatory desiderata such as the success- and failure-conditions of art-attempts, the cross-cultural identification of art, and the reference of 'art' and art-kind terms. I begin by situating art's intention-dependence in the philosophical literature on intentional action, arguing that, properly conceived, intention-dependence is a weak criterion which can be satisfied either directly or indirectly. It therefore does not necessarily entail concept-dependence. I then use this distinction to motivate a new treatment of the success- and failure-conditions for art-attempts, arguing that the extant model's emphasis on compliance with 'the manner intended' is far too restrictive to capture actual artistic practices. I go on to show that Ruth Millikan's model of linguistic conventions supplies an independently plausible explanation of art's concept-independent origins in terms of the development of a system of indirectly intention-dependent conventions called an 'artworld'. I argue that this account of artworld development supplies us with the tools we need to distinguish art-kinds from other artifactual kinds. Finally, I turn my attention to methodological issues, arguing that even though 'art' is a social kind with its roots in arbitrary and historically-contingent networks of conventions, the philosophy of art is not merely an exercise in bare conceptual analysis. In fact, there is now a great deal of evidence to show that the ways we think about 'art' are inconsistent, incomplete, imperialistic, and largely unprincipled. Yet I argue that this does not mean that the artworld data have no bearing on theories of art. Instead, I argue that our best reflective understanding of our artworld practices sets the constraints on the reference of 'art' and art-kind terms. I argue that we have no privileged epistemic access to the ontology of social kinds; our only privilege lies in our ability to determine the proper subject of our inquiries. (shrink)

Teil I »Psychologische Ästhetik für transdisziplinäres Design« -/- Kapitel I »Empirische Ästhetik – Der Konflikt zwischen leichter Verarbeitbarkeit, sparsamer Codierung und neuronaler Aktivierung im Beobachtersystem. Eine Untersuchung über das Wesen der ästhetischen Erfahrung. -/- Jede Designpraxis verlangt täglich eine Vielzahl von Entscheidungen, welche die Wahl von „Etwas vor dem Hintergrund anderer Möglichkeiten“ darstellen. Diese lassen sich als Probleme einer Präferenz-Ästhetik interpretieren, wobei innerhalb eines Repertoires von Alternativen die attraktivste gewählt wird. Eine empirische Ästhetik ist somit ein notwendiger Bestandteil von Designtheorie. (...) Die Überlegung, wer in welcher Situation warum was bevorzugt, führt zur Forschungsfrage: »Was ist der elementare Mechanismus für eine ästhetische Erfahrung?« In der Literatur zur empirischen Ästhetik finden sich vier wesentliche Theorie-Gruppen: (1.) Es wird eine Präferenz für einfach zu verarbeitende Stimuli behauptet und z.B. mit der Processing Fluency begründet. (2.) Andere Ansätze erklären eine maximale Stimulation des Beobachters durch komplexe Objekte zum Ideal, was auch die ästhetische Erfahrung maximieren soll. (3.) Eine dritte Gruppe vermeidet die Probleme der ersten beiden, indem eine mittlere Komplexität als Präferenz behauptet wird. (4.) Und schließlich gibt es Ansätze, die auf eine integrierende Theorie letztlich verzichten und einzelne Phänomene bzw. Effekte katalogisieren. Eine Liste ungelöster Probleme formuliert die Minimal-Anforderungen an eine integrierende Theorie. Hiermit wird geprüft, ob bzw. inwieweit die Integrative Ästhetik von Schwarzfischer (2008 und 2014) jene Probleme lösen kann. Dieser Ansatz schlägt spezifische Re-Codierungs-Prozesse als basalen Mechanismus jeder ästhetischen Erfahrung vor. Hierzu wird ein Prozess-Modell entwickelt, welches die Integrative Ästhetik überprüfbar macht. Bei der Modellbildung werden manche Konzepte der Integrativen Ästhetik erweitert und andere präzisiert. Auch die Anwendungsmöglichkeiten werden durch das Modell vielfältiger, da es nicht nur als Erklärungsmodell, sondern zudem als Gestaltungsmodell einsetzbar ist. Insgesamt zeigt die Überprüfung der Integrativen Ästhetik und des Modells, dass die Gütekriterien in einem vielversprechenden Maß erfüllt werden. Die grundsätzliche Quantifizierbarkeit wird aufgezeigt sowie die Relevanz und die Anwendbarkeit für das Design nachgewiesen. Die Forschungsfrage kann somit als hinreichend beantwortet gelten: »Der elementare Mechanismus für eine ästhetische Erfahrung scheint ein Re-Codierungs-Prozess zu sein (der auf der Nutzung von In­varianzen basiert), welcher extensionale Daten zu intensionalen Gestalten transformiert, wobei eine Ressourcen-Entlastung stattfindet und der Gültigkeitsbereich der Codierung erweitert wird (was nach Jean Piaget als Dezentrierung bezeichnet wird) – was jeweils durch eine ‚Beobachtung zweiter Ordnung‘ festgestellt wird.« -/- Teil II »Transdisziplinäre Ästhetik im Dialog« -/- Kapitel II.A »Profane und heroische Beobachtungs-Experimente: Kunst-Ästhetik als methodisches Artefakt.« -/- Es reicht nicht, eine Liste mit vorgeblich ‚schönen Dingen‘ zu erstellen, um ‚das Schöne‘ zu verstehen. Piaget & Garcia (1989) unterscheiden drei Stufen in jedem Erkenntnis-Prozess: 1. isolierte Fakten, die unabhängig von einander analysiert werden; 2. konkrete Transformationen, durch welche diese Fakten mit einander verbunden sind; 3. eine Struktur, die alle denkbaren Fälle konstruierbar macht. Sie nannten diese drei Stufen ‚intra‘, ‚inter‘ und ‚trans‘. Dies kann auf das ‚höhere Erkenntnisvermögen‘ angewandt werden wie auf das ‚niedere‘. Wissenschaftlichkeit setzt nach Popper die Falsifizierbarkeit einer Theorie voraus – und damit Prognosefähigkeit. Prognosen müssen über den Bereich der bereits bekannten Fälle hinausgehen, und finden sich folglich primär in der Piaget-Phase ‚trans‘. Diese ist davon gekennzeichnet, dass es über die Gegenstände hinausgeht (‚trans-objekt‘). Zu häufig werden Artefakte nur beschrieben (‚intra-objekt‘) oder einzelne, zufällig bekannte Transformationen von Material in Artefakte bzw. von Artefakt in Verständnis aufgezählt (‚inter-objekt‘). Erst eine ‚Integrative Ästhetik‘ jenseits von zufälligen Semantiken, jenseits von sozialen Exklusions-Rhetoriken der Künstler und der ‚Leisure-Class-Eliten‘ (nach Veblen) und jenseits der Hierarchisierung von Wahrnehmungs-Modi kann den Anspruch einlösen (‚trans-objekt‘). Daraus folgen u.a. separierbare Semantiken spezifischem Maßstabs, die sich überhaupt erst dann z.B. als ‚konventionelle Kunst-Auffassung‘ beobachten lassen. Zentrierungen auf solche Semantiken können demnach „als Kunst missverstanden werden“ – obwohl sie keineswegs das allgemeine Prinzip repräsentieren, sondern stets nur Spezial­fall bleiben. -/- Kapitel II.B »Das Gehirn als Hypothesenmaschine – Ästhetische Prozesse als Selbst-Test im Beobachter-System.« -/- Die historische Trennung zwischen Techne, Poiesis und Aisthesis scheint nach der „konstruktivistischen Wende“ obsolet geworden zu sein. Jede Beobachtung kann als Handlung betrachtet werden und setzt adaptive Aspekte schon voraus. Jedoch fehlte bislang eine tragfähige konstruktivistische Ästhetik, deren Gültigkeitsbereich hinreichend groß ist: So ist die Beschränkung auf Kunst ebenso unnötig wie jene auf Kommunikation in sozialen Systemen (also auf „Kunst-Diskurse“) oder auf eine Produktions-, Werk- bzw. Rezeptions-Ästhetik. Die definitorische Auflösung des Kunst-Begriffes (z.B. bei Gernot Böhme) löst diese Schwierigkeiten nicht. Im Wesentlichen bleibt die resultierende phänomenologische Ästhetik eine Rezeptions-Ästhetik. Ähnlich begrenzt bleibt der Anwendungsbereich der Informations-Ästhetik mit kybernetischen Wurzeln. Auch die Einbettung in eine evolutionäre Ästhetik oder Neuroästhetik scheint problematisch. Daher muss eine „Integrative Ästhetik“ sehr unterschiedliche Sichtweisen in sich vereinigen. Inzwischen klassisch zu nennende kybernetische, systemtheoretische oder informations-ästhetische Ansätze verwenden meist die Logik einer Bottom-Up-Verarbeitung (Input-Processing-Output), wie sie auch die kognitive Psychologie der zweiten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts dominierte. Dass laut Schlicht et al. (2013: S.475) selbst im visuellen Kortex nur ca. 5% der neuronalen Verknüpfungen bottom-up verschaltet sind (und der „Rest” von 95% top-down oder lateral arbeitet), stellt auch die empirische Ästhetik vor Probleme. Dieser Beitrag stellt jene Integrative Ästhetik vor, welche diese Antworten auf diese Fragen zu geben vermag – und den genannten Beschränkungen nicht unterliegt. Der elementare Prozess einer ästhetischen Erfahrung besteht hier in einer Re-Codierung von extensionalen Daten zu intensionalen Codierungen. Durch die sparsamere Codierung stellt dies eine erhebliche neuronale Entlastung dar und erhöht zudem beträchtlich den Gültigkeitsbereich des Codierten. Vom Beobachter-System wird dies subjektiv als Dezentrierung (nach Piaget) positiv erlebt. Zentral ist, dass es nun mit einem einheitlichen methodischen Rahmen möglich ist, entweder bottom-up die Wahrnehmung zu analysieren oder top-down die subjektive Motivation (z.B. die erlebte Autonomie oder die erlebte Entlastung) des Akteurs zu thematisieren. Die Richtung der Prozesse wird umkehrbar. Zudem wird die konstruktivistische Wahrnehmungs-Handlung zu einer Art von Selbst-Test des Wahrnehmungs-Systems: „Funktioniere ich sensorisch und kognitiv überhaupt? Funktioniere ich korrekt, also konsistent? Und, funktioniere ich effizient?“ -/- Kapitel II.C »Beobachtende Systeme – Dezentrierende Gestalt-Integration als Basis einer Ästhetik des Alltags.« -/- An der ästhetischen Erfahrung irritiert traditionell, dass der Effekt bekannt ist, nicht aber die Ursachen und der funktionale Mechanismus. Dies leistete Mystifikationen Vorschub, was zu diversen metaphysischen Kunst-Ästhetiken führte: Der Künstler als Schamane oder Magier. Dieser Beitrag möchte dagegen einen systemsemiotischen Ansatz für eine empirische Ästhetik vorstellen. Die aktive Rolle des Beobachters im Wirkungszusammenhang soll den Blinden Fleck erhellen, aufgrund dessen sich das Phantom eines passiven Rezipienten und „quasi-aktiver“ ästhetischer Objekte so hartnäckig halten konnte. Ausgehend von gestalttheoretischen Überlegungen wird Gestalt als implizite, algorithmische Codierung begriffen. Neuere empirische Ergebnisse der „Neuro-Ökonomie“ postulieren einen Effekt der „kortikalen Entlastung“ (bei der Forschung nach der Wirkung von Marken). Der hier vertretene Ansatz verknüpft nun beide Aspekte und glaubt, daraus eine konsistente Theorie für die empirische Ästhetik des Alltags entwickeln zu können. Es muss jedoch ein weiterer Aspekt hinzu genommen werden, den Piaget „Dezentrierung“ nennt. Ästhetische Erfahrung wird dann definierbar als das Erlebnis eines Umcodierungs-Prozesses – oder genauer: als das Erlebnis einer dezentrierenden Gestalt-Integration durch das beobachtende System. Sowohl beobachtende Systeme als auch Gestalt-Integrationen sind in unserem Ansatz als multiple zu denken. Eine semiotische Differenzierung ist nun entscheidend: Die herkömmliche Informations-Ästhetik thematisierte nur die syntaktischen Aspekte des Stimulus, ohne den Beobachter in seiner aktiven Rolle zu begreifen. Gestalt-Integrationen samt deren dezentrierender Wirkung sind jedoch auch in semantischer und pragmatischer Hinsicht zu finden. Diese werden im Beitrag dargelegt. Denn erst so kann die Vielschichtigkeit ästhetischer Erfahrungen erklärt werden, wo z.B. syntaktische und pragmatische Aspekte konkurrieren können. Auch vordergründig destruktive Akte und Artefakte sind dann als Gestalt-Integrationen anderer Dimensionen oder differierender Bezugssysteme begreifbar. (Dies streift etwa auch Fragen der Ressourcen-Allokation.) Zudem muss die Kontingenz von Beobachtungs-Maßstäben, Wahrnehmungs-Modi, Struktur-Determinanten (des beobachtenden Systems) und kultur-semiotischen Prägungen mit in Betracht gezogen werden. Erst hierdurch wird der Möglichkeitsraum potenzieller Gestalt-Integrationen (der eigentlich aus einem präsentationalen und einem repräsentationalen Raum besteht) prinzipiell beschreibbar. Wenn auch die Probleme bzw. Grenzen der praktischen Durchführbarkeit entsprechender Analysen nicht unterschlagen werden sollen: Die Möglichkeiten entsprechen gut den Erfordernissen zur ästhetischen Analyse des menschlichen Alltages – schließen die Lebenswelten von nicht-anthropozentrischen Seinsformen aber wohl methodisch aus. Dieser Beitrag möchte ich primär eine empirische Ästhetik zur Diskussion stellen, die mir als Rahmen für die weitere Forschung sehr leistungsfähig erscheint. Und doch ist nichts weniger als ein theoriebildender Ansatz das Vorhaben. Eine der Konsequenzen aus diesem Ansatz ist die These, dass es sich bei Kants Diktum vom „interesselosen Wohlgefallen“ zwar für das Individuum um ein Apriori handelt, bei der Gattung Mensch jedoch evolutionär um ein Aposteriori. (shrink)

In Games: Agency as Art, Thi Nguyen has given us a deep and compelling picture of agency as much more layered, volatile, environment-dependent and discontinuous than it appears in most philosophical accounts. Games ‘inscribe … forms of agency into artifactual vessels’.1 1 When we play a game, we take up a form of agency, including a set of motivations, values and goals, which has been artificially provided by the game. Our purpose in playing, in the kinds of gameplay that interest (...) Nguyen, is to have the aesthetic experience of first-personally exercising the kind of agency sculpted by the game. As we move in and out of gameplay, we take up and drop values, motives, and goals that are provided to us by the game. Games can expand our autonomy and the richness of life by allowing us to practice different forms of agency, taking on different ends for the aesthetic experience of striving to meet them. While I am on board with these central moves of Nguyen’s book, in this essay I will argue that the situation is substantially messier than Nguyen portrays it as being. Game play, I will claim, is inextricably embedded and entangled in its larger social, material and cultural context. Conversely, I will argue, everyday life is routinely sculpted in ways Nguyen claims are distinctive of games. (shrink)

This essay offers an account of Kierkegaard’s view of the limits of thought and of what makes this view distinctive. With primary reference to Philosophical Fragments, and its putative representation of Christianity as unthinkable, I situate Kierkegaard’s engagement with the problem of the limits of thought, especially with respect to the views of Kant and Hegel. I argue that Kierkegaard builds in this regard on Hegel’s critique of Kant but that, against Hegel, he develops a radical distinction between two types (...) of thinking and inquiry: the ‘aesthetic-intellectual’ and the ‘ethico-religious’. I clarify this distinction and show how it guides Kierkegaard’s conception of a form of philosophical practice that involves drawing limits to the proper sphere of disinterested contemplation. With reference to two rival interpretations of Kierkegaard’s approach to the limits of thought—which I call ‘bullet-biting’ and ‘relativizing’—I further show how my ‘disambiguating’ account can better explain how, and why, his work courts a form of self-referential incoherence, in which it appears that certain limits of thought are at once affirmed and violated. (shrink)

Colombian literature of the nineteenth century captures the emerging process of the new nation and shows the ethical changes needed for the formation of a new country. By using the Colombian novel and poetry produced in the nineteenth-century, this paper will show how these are unfolded in practical effects of the works, drawing on the authors’ desire to influence with their work the ethical and political progress of the country, their society and the life of citizens, and to contribute to (...) the foundation of the modern state in Colombia through a citizen ethics proposed in the texts. Additionally, this paper stresses the literary effort of reappraising the national moral and political situation, of confronting this with the past and, accordingly, of assessing the current situation. -/- La literatura colombiana del siglo XIX captura el proceso de la emergente nación e indica los cambios éticos necesarios para la conformación de un nuevo país. Recurriendo a la novela y la poesía colombiana del siglo XIX, se evidenciará cómo se despliega en estas efectos prácticos de las obras, bajo el anhelo del autor de incidir con sus letras en el progreso ético y político del país, la sociedad y la vida de los ciudadanos, con la fundación del Estado Moderno en Colombia a través de una ética ciudadana propuesta en los textos. Igualmente, se resalta el empeño literario de revaluar la situación moral y política nacional, confrontarla respecto al pasado y evaluar la actualidad conforme a ella. (shrink)