Traditionally, the sense of touch—alongside the senses of taste and smell—has been excluded from the aesthetic domain. These proximal modalities are thought to deliver only sensory pleasures, not the complex, world-directed perceptual states that characterize aesthetic experience. In this paper, I argue that this tradition fails to recognize the perceptual possibilities of haptic touch, which allows us to experience properties of the objects with which we make bodily contact, including their weight, shape, solidity, elasticity, and smoothness. These features, moreover, (...) may be indicative of how well-suited an object is for its function, and in feeling them we can thus feel the positive aesthetic quality of functional beauty. (shrink)

This paper presents the story of an isiXhosa traditional healer, Nomzi Hlathi, as told to the first author. Nomzi was asked about how she came to be an igqirha and the narrative focuses on those aspects of her life story that she understood as relevant to that developmental process. The material was obtained from a series of semi-structured interviews with Nomzi, with some collateral from her cousin, and synthesised into a chronological narrative presented in Nomzi’s own words. The aim of (...) the study was to examine her account of her unfolding experience within three hermeneutic frames. The first is the isiXhosa traditional account of what it is to become an igqirha, a process initiated by intwaso, an illness understood to be a call from the ancestors, and guided by messages from the ancestors in dreams and other symbolic communications. The second is the perspective of Western Clinical Psychology on the cognitive, emotional and behavioural disturbances that characterise intwaso. The third is the perspective of transpersonal psychology on the nature and development of shamanic healing gifts, as understood from observations of such practices in traditional societies across the world. As the narrative of Nomzi’s story is quite long, this paper presents her narrative as well as the methodology which gave rise to it. The interpretative review of the material from each of the three perspectives is presented in a second paper. (shrink)

This thesis constructs an Interactive Theory of Beauty to change the way we think about beauty and aesthetic form, in order to resolve the conceptual discrepancies between the features that characterize the traditional concept of beauty and the features of the phenomenology of beauty. The assumptions that underlie these discrepancies are identified. I hypothesize an alternative assumption that would need to be the case to resolve the tensions between the traditional concept and the phenomenology. This involves (...) rejecting the idea that beauty is an objective property of the object, and instead considering the possibility that beauty is an awareness of a certain aspect of the perceptual processing of the object. As such, beauty would be neither purely subjective nor purely objective; but a relational property. This hypothesis is mapped out in terms of a computational model of perception. The argument relies on the explanatory power of this conception of beauty. I employ my central hypothesis to explain how beauty can be both universal and subjective; an experience of the aesthetic form of the object which can, in some cases, supervene on representational content; and a property which is experienced as inferred from more basic properties, yet ineffable. While I focus mainly on visual beauty, I suggest applications for musical beauty and haptic beauty, particularly in non-sighted persons. This Interactive Theory of Beauty also accounts for the instrumentality of beauty, which is a feature of scientific and mathematical beauty. If my central hypothesis is correct, then the experience of beauty may offer insights into the nature of creativity in all fields of enquiry. (shrink)

In this, the second of two papers, three interpretative investigations are undertaken of Nomzi’s story of her troubled childhood, her dreams of ancestors calling her to become an igqirha, her training by experienced healers, various rituals that were performed at different stages of her life, and her eventual graduation as an igqirha at the age of 61. The narrative cannot be understood apart from the framework of the isiXhosa traditional understanding of intwaso, the initiatory illness, the role of the ancestors, (...) and the manner in which clairvoyant abilities of divination and healing are developed under their guidance. Nomzi’s account, however, reflects a considerable modification of the tradition, several features of which she does not seem to understand herself. From a clinical psychological perspective, Nomzi’s behavioural disturbances in childhood, as well as her lifelong suspiciousness and paranoia, can be understood as a consequence of an unstable childhood in which there was no secure attachment, nor any adult guidance on emotional regulation of the kind needed to form the basis of a stable adult personality. From the perspective of transpersonal psychology, it seems likely that Nomzi was endowed with a degree of natural clairvoyance, but her development as a healer was impaired by displacement of her paranoid ideation into the role of witch-finder, and her chronic social alienation. (shrink)

This article introduces the problem of inexistence to studies in genre and gender, providing a hermeneutic point of reference for literary history and trans theory. It seeks to negotiate the affinities and disaffinities between queer and trans by foregrounding the latter’s struggle for existence against the former’s mobilization of a rhetoric of negative relationality, while at the same time preserving the bonds of intimacy across and beyond the coalition of LGBTQIA+. Such queer intimacy is read in relation to a (...) class='Hi'>haptic technology of queer close reading, enabling differentially sexed bodies to imaginatively inhabit each other. I begin by considering how Djuna Barnes’s close, haptic readings of Henry James and Marcel Proust enact a reversal of sex, but I consider how the affective evidence of these trans moments do not amount to trans existence but raise the ethical necessity of holding open the difference between the ephemeral trans experiences within cis existence and the real struggle for trans existence of trans subjects today. Such a divide, however, is simultaneously held against the moments of intimacy that are capable of being produced across cis and trans subjects through such close reading and cross-inhabitation of bodies. To read trans literary history before trans, I thus propose the notion of trans inexistence through an interpretation of Jacques Maritain’s figure of the “angel” and Hegel’s “beautiful soul.” By situating Barnes’s and Jean Genet’s own characterizations of their transfeminine characters in terms of the angel in a post-Romantic, Catholic context, I interpret the trans angel as a figure of inexistence, tied to a minimal transcendence from the terms of history and materiality, including the sexed body. Finally, I consider how Genet’s phenomenology of proprioception draws together the problems of queer intimacy, haptic reading, and trans inexistence. In analyzing how Genet and his characters cross-inhabit each other’s bodies via proprioceptive mimicry, I unfold both the vast potential and the limits of the intimacies constructed across cis male and transfeminine lives and the accompanying role played by the literary mode of romance. (shrink)

Introduction. Flesh and its reversibility ; Defining the baroque ; 'Good looking' ; A cinema of baroque flesh -- 1. Flesh, cinema and the baroque : the aesthetics of reversibility. Baroque vision and painting the flesh ; Baroque flesh ; Analogous embodiments : the film's body ; Baroque vision and cinema ; Summation : face to face-feeling baroque deixis -- 2. Knots of sensation : co-extensive space and a cinema of the passions. Synaesthesia, phenomenology, and the senses ; Cinesthesia and (...) the Bel composto ; A passionate baroque : emotion, excess, and co-extensive space ; Assault and absorption : cruel baroque ; Summation : beside oneself -- 3. Baroque skin/semiotics. Chiasm : language and experience ; Baroque poetic language and the seventeenth-century infinite ; Baroque luxury ; Skin-deep : baroque texturology ; Tickles : baroque wit ; Summation : cine-mimesis -- 4. One hand films the other : baroque haptics. Touching-touched ; Haptic visuality and the baroque ; Baroque haptics and cinema ; Analogical assemblages : Baroque databases ; Summation: TEXXTURE -- Conclusion : or the baroque 'Beauty of the act'. (shrink)

A new philosophical analysis is provided of the notorious Sleeping Beauty Problem. It is argued that the correct solution is one-third, but not in the way previous philosophers have typically meant this. A modified version of the Problem demonstrates that neither self-locating information nor amnesia is relevant to the core Problem, which is simply to evaluate the conditional chance of heads given an undated Monday-or-Tuesday awakening. Previous commentators have failed to appreciate the significance of the information that Beauty (...) gains upon waking, and which is relevant to the conditional chance of heads: de re acquaintance with the awakening itself and the non-locating knowledge that it is an experimental awakening. David Lewis and company are committed to several unjustifiable and unacceptable probability assessments. Previous commentators have in effect confused the information that Beauty undergoes this particular experimental awakening for the information that she undergoes some experimental awakening or other. Lewis in particular thereby illegitimately tips the scales both in favor of heads and in favor of Monday. The Sleeping Beauty Problem is equivalent to a ball-in-urn word problem in elementary probability theory. (shrink)

Recent work in philosophy of science has shown how the challenges posed by extremely complex systems require that scientists employ a range of modelling strategies, leading to partial perspectives that make apparently conflicting claims about the target (Mitchell 2009b, Longino 2013). The brain is of course extremely complex, and the same arguments apply here. In this paper I present a variety of perspectivism called _haptic realism_. This account foregrounds the process by which the instrumental goals of neuroscience shape the way (...) that objects of investigation are probed experimentally and conceptualised through modelling. Because such models do not aim to represent their targets exactly as they are, but in ways that are most useful for the investigators, the models should not be interpreted as literal descriptions of neural systems. Scientific realism traditionally involves a semantic commitment to interpreting theories and models as literal descriptions of human-independent nature. Haptic realism makes a significant departure from this tradition. Haptic realism also calls us to reassess the ontological commitments and knowledge claims of neuroscientific models and theories. (shrink)

What do we mean when we call a work of art "beautiful"? How have artists responded to changing notions of the beautiful? Which works of art have been called beautiful, and why? Fundamental and intriguing questions to artists and art lovers, but ones that are all too often ignored in discussions of art today. Elizabeth Prettejohn argues that we simply cannot afford to ignore these questions. Charting over two hundred years of western art, she illuminates the vital relationship between our (...) changing notions of beauty and specific works of art, from the works of Kauffman to Whistler, Ingres to Rosetti, Cezanne to Pollack. Beautifully illustrated with 100 photographs--60 in full color--Beauty and Art concludes with a challenging question for the future: Why should we care about beauty in the twenty-first century? (shrink)

In this essay I propose a new theory of taste, starting from the assumption of the multisensorial and ecological approach to the senses, as proposed by Gibson in his psychology of perception and by Dewey in his philosophy and aesthetics. In contrast with an optical approach to tastes and tasting, here I propose the concept of haptic taste to describe a perceptual engagement deeply involved in the processes of experiencing food and beverages, although my examples are mostly related to (...) wine. Finally I spell out the implications of a theory of haptic taste for the way we approach cultivation of taste and expertise. I suggest we should turn from the idea of ‘good taste’ as the result of trained and acquired skills to taste as a task, to mean the practical and continuous attuning with the environment we actively contribute to shape. I believe it is appropriate today to move from a culture of taste, based on an elevation strategy, to a culture with taste, which emphasizes educated nurture. (shrink)

Under semantic monism I understand the thesis “The Good is said in one way” and under semantic pluralism the antithesis “The Good is said in many ways”. Plato’s Socrates seems to defend a “semantic monism”. As only one sun exists, so the “Good” has for Socrates and Plato only one reference. Nevertheless, Socrates defends in the Philebus a semantic pluralism, more exactly trialism, of “beauty, symmetry and truth” . Therefore, metaphorically speaking, there seem to exist not only one sun, (...) but three suns. If the platonic Socrates defends a semantic monism on the one hand and pluralism on the other, how can we unite his pluralism with his monism? My thesis is that the three references are “qualities” of the one single reference, or again, speaking metaphorically, “side suns” of the single sun. In the following, I propose first an exegesis of Plato’s last written word on the Good in Phil. 65 A 1-5 by dividing it into five sentences. Second, I ask a philosophical question on this monism and the corresponding hierarchy of values. (shrink)

During the pandemic there were many ways of handling the contagious SARS-CoV-2 virus, most of them in haptic terms, or in terms of touch: masks, hand disinfection, social distancing, quarantines, (self)isolations. Touch thus became not only the privileged object of the new bio-politics, striving to preserve life at all costs, but also what was lost during the pandemic. To be sure, a loss of something we never had that even the vaccine, which promised a return to normal, but actually (...) paved the way for a “brave new post-pandemic world,” could not rehabilitate. In short, one of the elements that radically changed with and in the (post-)pandemic world is precisely the elusive object of touch, which we propose to conceptually grasp through the coinage of the concept of its “mateReal hapticity.”. (shrink)

This article is a close analysis of a popular song by the Italian singer-songwriter Paolo Conte, ‘Sparring Partner’, in Ozon's film [Formula: see text]. With particular reference to what Barthes called the ‘grain’ of the voice, the article shows how the song does not work anempathetically, cutting across characters and narrative and undermining them; nor does it work empathetically to support the characters or reflect their emotions in a straightforward way. Rather, the song creates a complex haptic moment, where (...) affect and gender fluidity combine to form a ‘haptic metaspace’; this acts as a frame for productively unstable embodiments, marked by nomadic transitions and volatilities, focused on the male of the couple. (shrink)

This article presents a conceptual discussion on the phenomenon of incorporation of tools and other objects in the light of Maine de Biran’s philosophy of the relation between the body and the motor will. Drawing on Maine de Biran’s view of the body as that portion of the material world which directly obeys one’s motor will, as well as on his view (supported by studies in contemporary cognitive science) of active touch as the perceptual modality that is sensitive to objects (...) as fields of forces resisting the perceiver’s movements, we discuss the phenomena of motor incorporation and haptic incorporation, as well as the relation between them. Motor incorporation occurs when something is integrated into the motor system, i.e. when practice enables one to animate an object as directly, effortlessly and fluently as one is able to animate one’s own body. The subject then has the experience of acting there, where the object is located, not at the body–object interface. In order to better understand the phenomenon of motor incorporation, we highlight the phenomenological difference between directly and indirectly moving something. Haptic incorporation occurs when something is integrated into the haptic system, i.e. when an object is used as an instrument for the haptic perception of other objects. Finally, we seek to shed light on the phenomenon of transparency, understanding the transparency acquired by the incorporated object as both a relational property and a matter of degrees. (shrink)

What degrees of belief does Sleeping Beauty's evidence support? That depends.

Beauty is evil, a surreptitious diversion of earthly delights planted by the devil, according to the third century theologian-philosopher Tertullian. Beauty is a manifestation of the divine on earth, according to another third century philosopher, Plotinus. Could these two really be talking about the same thing? That beauty evokes an experience of pleasure is probably the only point on which all participants in the continuing debate on beauty agree. But what kinds of pleasure one considers relevant (...) to an experience of beauty, is the crux of the problem of beauty. In ancient, medieval and eighteenth century philosophy, the problem of beauty was framed by the larger concern of what constituted a good life. The question regarding the nature of beauty was answered with a view to its role in achieving the good life for those who cultivated its apprehension. In the twentieth century, philosophers framed the problem of beauty as a problem for conceptual analysis. The questions asked were: Is beauty subjective or objective? Are there properties in the object that count towards beauty in all cases; that are sufficient or necessary for an object to be judged beautiful? What kind of pleasure is the pleasure we experience of beauty? I will examine how these questions can be seen to have been answered by earlier philosophical traditions and then I will use these questions as a guide to developing an explanatory theory of beauty based on contemporary theories of perception. (shrink)

This article explores forms of haptic sociality in interspecies interaction. Data examined are taken from a corpus of equine assisted therapy sessions, in Finland and France. During these sessions, therapists invite clients to pay close attention to the horse’s behavioral displays of comfort or discomfort and to react accordingly. In this way, the horse is regarded as a living, sentient creature, whose body has haptic and kinesthetic properties, resulting in socialization practices that cultivate forms of care. The study (...) discusses Merleau-Ponty’s concept of “esthesiologic body”, in light of analytical instances, draws on contemporary re-examinations of phenomenological notions (such as intersubjectivity and intercorporeality) by ethnomethodologists and analysts of social interaction, and proposes to respecify them in the particular context of human–animal interactions. The argument is inspired by a conversation analytic approach, sensitive to the orderly character of social actions. Two formats, displaying diverse ways in which participants interact with the horse as an _esthesiologic_ body, are examined in detail. The analysis shows the fundamental role played by touch and haptic practices in the practical accomplishment of intercorporeality. (shrink)

Literary beauty was once understood as intertwining sensations and ideas, and thus as providing subjective and objective reasons for literary appreciation. However, as theory and philosophy developed, the inevitable claims and counterclaims led to the view that subjective experience was not a reliable guide to literary merit. Literary theory then replaced aesthetics as did philosophy’s focus on literary truth. Along with the demise of the relevance of sensations, literary form also took a back seat. This suggested to some that (...) either literature communicated truth like any other literal form of communication or it was a mere diversion: a springboard to harmless reverie or daydreaming. Neither response satisfactorily captured what was distinctive about literature: the love readers can have for literary texts and the edification or insight claimed of works within each culture’s respective catalogue of classics. However, a concept of literary beauty has again become viable due to developments in theories of pleasure and imagination. If the defining aspect of literature is the imaginative engagement it occasions, and if this imagining is constrained by plausibility and endorsed as effective relative to our goals, ideals, and interests, then literature is not reduced to either mere fact or wish fulfillment. An account of literary beauty is available which defines literature accordingly and explains how subjective and objective reasons for appreciation intertwine to evoke pleasure and insight. (shrink)

A further step in Pylyshyn's discontinuity thesis is to examine the penetrability of haptic (tactual-kinesthetic) perception. The study of the perception of orientation and the “oblique effect” (lower performance in oblique orientations than in vertical–horizontal orientations) in the visual and haptic modalities allows this question to be discussed. We suggest that part of the visual process generating the visual oblique effect is cognitively impenetrable, whereas all haptic processes generating the haptic oblique effect are cognitively penetrable.

Classical Greece is famous for its athletic art, particularly the image of the nude male athlete. But how did the Greeks understand athletic beauty? Plato, Aristotle, Xenophon, and others discuss athletes’ beauty, while the educational ideal of kalokagathia conceptually connects athletic beauty with the good. More questions need to be answered, however, if we are to understand ancient athletic beauty. We need to ask ourselves what the Greeks appreciated when they looked at athletic bodies. What did (...) those qualities mean to them? In what way was it erotic? How did it differ for females and males? In this paper I argue that the beautiful athletic body is framed in ancient Greek thought, not just as an aesthetically pleasing image, but as an ideal expression of a certain kind of soul. (shrink)

‘Psychotechnics’, Weimar Germany’s science du jour, typically is framed as a symptom of ‘technological media’ – obscuring the persistent significance of ‘dexterity’, ‘skill’ and ‘manual labour’ at the time. More broadly, there is a tendency to construe ‘the haptic’ as predominantly a casualty of modernity: skilled hands replaced by conveyor belts; skilled hands defended by the rearguard actions of arts-and-crafts movements; skilled hands destroyed by industrialized warfare. Drawing on contemporary investigations into the ‘organ of touch’, this essay aims to (...) complicate this picture by reconstructing the proto-ergonomic project of Friedrich Herig, a German engineer, amateur prehistorian and expert on craft labour who rose to distinction in the 1920s as a designer of ‘ideal’ hand tools. Herig’s eclectic sources of inspiration reveal that matters of ‘touch’, far from obsolete, were intimately bound up with matters of tools – their design, uses and putative origins – and thus, with matters of labour. (shrink)

What is the nature of the concept BEAUTY? Does it differ fundamentally from nearby concepts such as PRETTINESS? It is argued that BEAUTY, but not PRETTINESS, is a dual-character concept. Across a number of contexts, it is proposed that BEAUTY has a descriptive sense that is characterised by, inter alia, having intrinsically pleasing appearances; and a normative sense associated with deeply-held values. This account is supported across two, pre-registered, studies (N=500), and by drawing on analysis of corpus (...) data. It is suggested that this can help to explain why beauty, unlike prettiness, is thought to be deep in both the sense of being important, and in the sense of being less closely tied to sensory surfaces. (shrink)

Today, many people have realized that the climate change and biodiversity loss issues lie in how and to what extent humans consume products for their lives in the Anthropocene era. Consumerism has pushed natural resource exploitation to its peak, and the depletion of resources is becoming increasingly prevalent. The beauty and personal care industry has a large market and high profits, especially in the high-income segment. However, this advantage also carries the risk of facing scrutiny, investigations, and criticism from (...) civil society organizations, environmental activists, and consumers. More than anyone else, the industry is vulnerable to the perils of unfavourable societal assessments, particularly the repercussions of consumer-led boycott actions. In this discourse, we suggest that, given the current circumstances, it is imperative for multinational beauty corporations to take a proactive role in allocating resources towards the development of sustainable agriculture practices. This entails not only advocating for the widespread adoption of environmentally conscious production methods but also dedicating efforts towards conducting research and innovation in the area of nature-friendly manufacturing techniques. Doing so will help demonstrate their commitment to the environment and actively provide convincing evidence to consumers of their social responsibility through emission reduction and biodiversity conservation activities. (shrink)

In this article, robust evidence is provided showing that an individual’s moral character can contribute to the aesthetic quality of their appearance, as well as being beautiful or ugly itself. It is argued that this evidence supports two main conclusions. First, moral beauty and ugliness reside on the inside, and beauty and ugliness are not perception-dependent as a result; and, second, aesthetic perception is affected by moral information, and thus moral beauty and ugliness are on the outside (...) as well. (shrink)

Since Elga published his “Self-locating belief and the Sleeping Beauty problem,” there has been an intense debate about which credence between 1/2 and 1/3 Beauty should assign to (H) the coin’s landing heads, when she is awakened on Monday. The Halfers claim that she ought to assign 1/2 to H at that moment. The Thirders argue that she ought to assign 1/3 to H then. Meanwhile, Pettigrew defended a new chance-credence coordination principle, called the “Evidential Temporal Principle” (ETP), (...) in a recent edition of his book. In this paper, I provide a novel argument against the Halfer view and a partial defense of the Thirder view, respectively based on ETP. In addition, I generalize ETP to what I call the “Evidential Centered Principle,” which links one’s credences in centered propositions with their objective chances. (shrink)

Seeking beauty in education -- The meanings of beauty: a brief history -- Beauty as educational experience -- Beauty, education and the good society -- Beauty and creativity: examples from an arts curriculum -- Beauty in science and maths education -- Awakening beauty in education.

Haptic touch is an inherently active and exploratory form of perception, involving both coordinated movements and an array of distinct sensory receptors in the skin. For this reason, some have claimed that haptic touch is not a single sense, but rather a multisensory collection of distinct sensory systems. Though this claim is often made, it relies on what I regard as a confused conception of multisensory interaction. In its place, I develop a nuanced hierarchy of multisensory involvement. According (...) to this hierarchy, touch turns out to be a single modality in that its various receptors assign their features to the same tangible objects. When we grasp an object a range of distinct properties?shape, warmth, heft, texture, etc.?are all felt to belong to the object, just as different visual properties are associated with a visual object. Paradigm multisensory experiences, on the other hand, involve associations between distinct perceptual experiences, as when the way something looks affects the way something sounds. Thus despite its functional and physiological diversity, haptic touch can be regarded as a single sense. (shrink)

In such an unsheltered world, it may sound naive to suggest that this might be the moment to invoke and awaken beauty, yet this is exactly the claim that this ...

Does the universe embody beautiful ideas? Artists as well as scientists throughout human history have pondered this "beautiful question." With Nobel laureate Frank Wilczek as your guide, embark on a voyage of related discoveries, from Plato and Pythagoras up to the present. Wilczek's groundbreaking work in quantum physics was inspired by his intuition to look for a deeper order of beauty in nature. In fact, every major advance in his career came from this intuition: to assume that the universe (...) embodies beautiful forms, forms whose hallmarks are symmetry--harmony, balance, proportion--and economy. There are other meanings of "beauty," but this is the deep logic of the universe--and it is no accident that it is also at the heart of what we find aesthetically pleasing and inspiring. As he reveals here, this has been the heart of scientific pursuit from Pythagoras, the ancient Greek who was the first to argue that "all things are number," to Galileo, Newton, Maxwell, Einstein, and into the deep waters of twentieth-century physics. Gorgeously illustrated, A Beautiful Question is a mind-shifting book that braids the age-old quest for beauty and the age-old quest for truth into a thrilling synthesis. Yes: the world is a work of art, and its deepest truths are ones we already feel, as if they were somehow written in our souls.--From publisher description. (shrink)

Haptic object recognition is usually an efficient process although slower and less accurate than its visual counterpart. The early loss of vision imposes a greater reliance on haptic perception for recognition compared to the sighted. Therefore, we may expect that congenitally blind persons could recognize objects through touch more quickly and accurately than late blind or sighted people. However, the literature provided mixed results. Furthermore, most of the studies on haptic object recognition focused on performance, devoting little (...) attention to the exploration procedures that conducted to that performance. In this study, we used iCube, an instrumented cube recording its orientation in space as well as the location of the points of contact on its faces. Three groups of congenitally blind, late blind and age and gender-matched blindfolded sighted participants were asked to explore the cube faces where little pins were positioned in varying number. Participants were required to explore the cube twice, reporting whether the cube was the same or it differed in pins disposition. Results showed that recognition accuracy was not modulated by the level of visual ability. However, congenitally blind touched more cells simultaneously while exploring the faces and changed more the pattern of touched cells from one recording sample to the next than late blind and sighted. Furthermore, the number of simultaneously touched cells negatively correlated with exploration duration. These findings indicate that early blindness shapes haptic exploration of objects that can be held in hands. (shrink)

The arithmetical -- Tripartite city, tripartite soul -- The one, the two, and the three -- The arithmetical character of Kallipolis -- Eros -- Intimations of Eros -- The three waves -- Kallipolis v. The republic -- Democracy, psychology, poetry -- Democracy -- Narrative psychology -- Psychological narrative -- Appendix -- The meaning of "dialectical" -- The technical meaning of "dialectic" -- The non-technical of "dialectic" -- Dialectic in The republic.

James Kirwan provides both a lucid and concise history of the concept of beauty as a distinct aesthetic experience (marginalized by the rise of philosophical aesthetics in the twentieth century), and offers a new and persuasive answer to the age-old question of what beauty is an answer that, placing the responsibility for beauty firmly with the eye of the beholder, explains what it is in this "eye" that gives rise to beauty.

Touch is the first sense to develop in the womb, yet often it is overlooked. The Senses of Touch examines the role of touching and feeling as part of the fabric of everyday, embodied experience. -/- How can we think about touch? Problems of touch and tactility run as a continuous thread in philosophy, psychology, medical writing and representations in art, from Ancient Greece to the present day. Picking through some of these threads, the book ‘feels’ its way towards writing (...) and thinking about touch as both sensory and affective experience. -/- Taking a broadly phenomenological framework that traces the tactility from Aristotle through the Enlightenment to the present day, it examines the role of touch across a range of experiences including aesthetics, digital design, visual impairment and touch therapies. The Senses of Touch thereby demonstrates the varieties of sensory experience, and explores the diverse range of our ‘senses’ of touch. (shrink)

On Beauty and Measure features renowned philosopher John Sallis' commentaries on Plato's dialogues the Symposium and the Statesman. Drawn from two lecture courses delivered by Sallis, they represent his longest and most sustained engagement to date with either work. Brilliantly original, Sallis's close readings of Plato's dialogues are grounded in the original passages and also illuminate the overarching themes that drive the dialogues.

When we reach to pick up an object, our actions are effortlessly informed by the object’s spatial information, the position of our limbs, stored knowledge of the object’s material properties, and what we want to do with the object. A substantial body of evidence suggests that grasps are under the control of “automatic, unconscious” sensorimotor modules housed in the “dorsal stream” of the posterior parietal cortex. Visual online feedback has a strong effect on the hand’s in-flight grasp aperture. Previous work (...) of ours exploited this effect to show that grasps are refractory to cued expectations for visual feedback. Nonetheless, when we reach out to pretend to grasp an object (pantomime grasp), our actions are performed with greater cognitive effort and they engage structures outside of the dorsal stream, including the ventral stream. Here we ask whether our previous finding would extend to cued expectations for haptic feedback. Our method involved a mirror apparatus that allowed participants to see a “virtual” target cylinder as a reflection in the mirror at the start of all trials. On “haptic feedback” trials, participants reached behind the mirror to grasp a size-matched cylinder, spatially coincident with the virtual one. On “no-haptic feedback” trials, participants reached behind the mirror and grasped into “thin air” because no cylinder was present. To manipulate haptic expectation, we organized the haptic conditions into blocked, alternating, and randomized schedules with and without verbal cues about the availability of haptic feedback. Replicating earlier work, we found the strongest haptic effects with the blocked schedules and the weakest effects in the randomized uncued schedule. Crucially, the haptic effects in the cued randomized schedule was intermediate. An analysis of the influence of the upcoming and immediately preceding haptic feedback condition in the cued and uncued random schedules showed that cuing the upcoming haptic condition shifted the haptic influence on grip aperture from the immediately preceding trial to the upcoming trial. These findings indicate that, unlike cues to the availability of visual feedback, participants take advantage of cues to the availability of haptic feedback, flexibly engaging pantomime, and natural modes of grasping to optimize the movement. (shrink)

Kant uses the concept of the symbol to show the complicated relationship between the autonomy of beauty and its systematic function as a transition from nature to freedom, which are the two most important topics in the third Critique. Beauty’s symbolism of morality lies in the analog between aesthetic reflection and moral disposition; concretely, it lies in the purity or disinterestedness and self-legislation as negative and positive freedom in both subjective states of mind. In this scenario, beauty’s (...) symbolism does not refer to aesthetic ideas that either involve intelligent interests (in the beauty of nature) or presuppose an end (in the beauty of art); it also cannot be grounded in the supersensible substrate, which is an elevated and metaphysical principle of the judgment of taste given in the Dialectic but not the original principle of subjective purposiveness in the Analytic. With this formal relationship, beauty and morality accelerate each other in the empirical-anthological sense—but they are also not a sufficient or necessary condition for each other. Furthermore, through symbolism, taste looks toward the intelligible and serves as a transition from nature to freedom from the transcendental perspective. (shrink)

A general shortcoming of the localist, decompositional, approach to neuroscientific explanation that the target article exemplifies, is that it is incomplete unless supplemented with an account of how the hypothesized subsystems integrate in the normal case. Besides, a number of studies that show that object recognition is proprioception dependent and that cutaneous information affects motor performance make the existence of the proposed subsystems doubtful.

Introduction -- The form of happiness -- Affirmation -- Beauty is everywhere -- Love of life -- Fundamental OK -- The uniqueness of each moment -- Taste -- Spontaneity -- The reality of reality -- Healing -- Beauty cures -- Creative expression -- Nature and music -- The invisible ally -- The heart of beauty -- Sharing -- The beauty of the soul -- Good and beautiful -- Aesthetics and biology -- Knowledge -- Mind and (...) class='Hi'>beauty -- Revelation -- Hidden resonance -- Trascendence -- Self, nature, and society -- Abuse vs. awe -- Beauty is the opposite of war. (shrink)