Senses and Sensation: Critical and Primary Sources offers a comprehensive collection of key writings essential to anyone wishing to gain a critical understanding of sensory studies. Drawing upon historical and contemporary texts from a wide range of sources, this set is inspired by the sensory turn in the humanities, social sciences and fine arts which has challenged the monopoly that psychology formerly held over the study of senses and sensation. It also builds upon the revolution in psychology and (...) the neurosciences which has led to an increased emphasis on the interaction and integration of the senses, in place of the one-sense-at-a-time approach. The four volumes include 99 essays from the humanities, social sciences, fine arts, biology, psychology and the neurosciences. Ordered by discipline, the volumes cover geography and anthropology, history and sociology, biology, psychology and neuroscience, and art and design. Each volume is separately introduced and the essays structured into coherent sections on specific themes. This work is a major scholarly resource for those working and studying in the multidisciplinary field of sensory studies. (shrink)

William Hunter's anatomical inquiry employed all of his senses, but how did his personal experiences with the cadaver become generalized scientific knowledge teachable to students and understandable by fellow practitioners? Moving beyond a historiographical focus on Hunter's images and extending Lorraine Daston's (2008) concept of an ‘ontology of scientific observation’ to include non-visual senses, I argue that Hunter's work aimed to create a stabilized object of the cadaver that he and his students could perceive in common. Crucial to this stabilization (...) was the sense of touch and its interaction with other senses, creating intersensory knowledge of the cadaver. Through a close reading of his neglected posthumous publication An Anatomical Description of the Human Gravid Uterus (1794), I demonstrate that Hunter wrote extensively about touch and other sensory experiences, using comparative metaphors and other linguistic strategies to engender clear ideas of the cadaver in the mind of the reader. That these ideas could be consistent between practitioners was guaranteed by God, but required practitioners to appropriately reflect on their sensory experiences with cadavers. Hunter's experimental practice encompassed both simple and complex methods, all aimed at increasing the range of sensorial experiences he had with the gravid uterus. His preservations of these experiences in text, image and preparation could then be used to support further anatomical investigations. (shrink)

Introduction This book is about the nature of the content of psychological states. Examples of psychological states with content are: believing today is a ...

Sensation is recognized by epistemology as one of the sources of knowledge, alongside memory, testimony, reason, induction and introspection, but this has not always been the case. It is a defining feature of modern epistemology that the senses provide valuable information about the world that cannot be reached through reason alone. However, because the senses can have an intensity and uniqueness that is difficult to describe, it is sometimes not entirely clear what they offer as knowledge, or even whether (...) epistemology has a secure and adequate grasp of them. This chapter explains some of the key theories of sensation in the history of epistemology, from ancient Greece to the present day, and shows how competing views of the relation between philosophy and science inform contemporary ideas about the senses. (shrink)

The release of Emmanuel Levinas’s Prison Notebooks (Carnets de captivité) as a part of the first tome of his collected works has further illuminated the extent of the philosopher’s preoccupation with art, especially literature. Levinas’s own literary efforts have been well documented, but less attention has been paid to the relationship between the Prison Notebooks and Levinas’s early philosophy of art. In this article, I suggest that much of what Levinas has to say apropos art in his early philosophy can (...) be traced back to meditations undertaken in captivity. I will unearth the influence of the Prison Notebooks in three articles from the 1940ʹs “L’autre dans Proust,” “La réalité et son ombre,” and “La transcendance des mots.” I argue that in Levinas’s early philosophy of art follows two distinct “paths”: the path of eros and the path of sensation. On one hand, Levinas questions how and if literature can do justice to the question of alterity, whereas on the other he seeks to make sense of the relationship between art and sensibility. I argue that in his notebooks Levinas offers an account of the meaning of sensations that forms the basis of his early aesthetics. Thus, the study of the Prison Notebooks is important as it allows us to see how Levinas’s early philosophy of art, including his seminal “La réalité et son ombre,” functions as a continuation of a philosophical project already begun during his time in captivity. (shrink)

Husserl's idea of a self-enclosed region of pure consciousness, a transcendental subjectivity that is at once absolute being and a sense-giving synthesis of experience, has enjoyed few, if any, enthusiastic defenders. In a recent book on Husserl, David Bell struggles in vain to find anything of worth in Husserl's "transcendental ontology. ''1 To be sure, Bell is reading Husserl with Fregean eyes; yet much dissatisfaction can be found among continental thinkers as well. Jacques Derrida, for example, argues that the (...) self-presence requisite for conceiving of transcendental subjectivity as both origin and absolute being is in the end undermined by the results of phenomenological analysis itself, especially the reflections on the nature of time. Jan Pato~ka, the Czech philosopher, railed against what he saw to be Husserl's "prejudice" of subjectivism in the demand for a world-constituting activity on the part of subjectivity. One can find similar objections in the work of Roman Ingarden and Jean-Paul Sartre - that is, in the work of those who, one could say, benefited the most from Husserl's phenomenology. 2 So many have said so much, and in a multitude of convincing ways, that perhaps someone interested in Husserl can finally be content to focus on those aspects and achievements that are more or less independent of the claim that phenomenology is a "transcendental idealism," a rigorous science the region of investigation of which is an "absolutely functioning transcendental subjectivity.". (shrink)

This book is an in-depth exploration of the nature of sensations and how they are affected by different types of stimuli. The author, Harold Griffing, presents a detailed analysis of the ways in which pressure and impact can influence sensations, and offers insights into how these findings can be applied in a variety of contexts. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work (...) is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

My dissertation presents a comprehensive rethinking of the Kantian imperative, articulating it on the basis of what I call originary sense. Calling primarily upon the works of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Gilles Deleuze, and Jean-François Lyotard, I show (1) that sense constitutes the ontologically most basic dimension of our worldly being and (2) that the way in which this sense happens is determinative for our experience of the ethical imperative. By originary sense I mean to name something that (...) is neither sensible sense (sensation) nor intelligible sense (meaning), but rather a kind of unity of these two that is ontologically anterior to their separation. In the first chapter I follow Merleau-Ponty’s argument in Phenomenology of Perception that sensible sense and intelligible sense belong originarily together at the level of the lived body. We are able to intend the meaning of worldly situations (Husserl’s Sinngebung) only insofar as we are responsive in an embodied way to the imperatives that are given in the sensible itself. The intelligible lawfulness so characteristic of the Kantian imperative is thus shown to be grounded in a more fundamental unity of intelligible and sensible sense. The second chapter follows Merleau-Ponty’s later works, especially The Prose of the World and The Visible and the Invisible, showing how the sensibility that is inseparable from the imperative introduces important limitations to the universalizing tendencies of Kant’s moral philosophy, drawing us back to the irreducible situatedness of ethical situations. In the third chapter I turn to the very different articulation of sense given by Gilles Deleuze, primarily in his Logic of Sense. I show there that Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological conception of sense does not allow us to think the singularity of the imperative, the fact that the ethical command weighs on a me that cannot be grasped in terms of the generalities of my public identity. This singularity corresponds broadly to the idea of dignity in Kant’s moral philosophy. I argue that Deleuze, who conceptualizes sense as an event, gives us the resources to think singularity and to understand what it entails for our ethical practice. Finally, I attempt in the fourth chapter to think these two sides of the imperative—its demand for universality and its emphasis on singularity and dignity— together in the idea of libidinal sense. Calling on Jean-François Lyotard’s Libidinal Economy and, to a lesser extent, on Deleuze and Guattari’s Anti-Oedipus, I show that these two apparently incompatible requirements of the imperative have a common source in the event of libidinal investment (cathexis). In thus locating the source of the imperative in originary, libidinal sense, I hope both to shed some light on the irreducible complexity of our ethical being and to present a more humane, less moralizing version of the imperative than is typically articulated in moral philosophy. (shrink)

One of the most fascinating phenomena in contemporary art cinema is the re-emergence of a corporeal cinema, that is, of filmmaking practices that give precedence to cinema as the medium of the senses. This article thus explores trends of filmmaking and film theorizing where the experience of cinema is conceived as a unique combination of sensation and thought, of affect and reflection. It argues that, reconnecting with a certain tradition of French film theory in particular, contemporary French cinema offers (...) a point in case: a large collection of recently released French films typify this willingness to explore cinema's unique capacity to move us both viscerally and intellectually. In turn, the article suggests that such films, envisaged as forms of embodied thought, offer alternative ways, beyond that of mere appropriation and consumption, of envisaging the relationship of subjects to art, and, by extension, of subjects to objective world. (shrink)

Amid the ongoing debate over the proper interpretation of Aristotle's theory of sense perception in the "De Anima," Steven Everson has recently presented a well-documented and ambitious treatment of the issue, arguing in favor of Richard Sorabji's controversial position that sense organs literally take on the qualities of their proper objects. Against the interpretation of M. F. Burnyeat, Everson and others make a compelling case the Aristotelian account of sensation requires some physical process to occur in (...) class='Hi'>sense organs. A detailed examination of the interpretation by Everson and Sorabji of Aristotle's theory, however, shows that their reading cannot be the correct one, since it involves many textual and philosophical difficulties. Their interpretation, for instance, would require abandoning Aristotle's requirement that only a transparent substance is suitable matter for an eye. Likewise, their understanding of the Aristotle's doctrine of sensation as the reception of form without matter in "DA 2.12" cannot be reconciled with other texts of his from "On Generation and Corruption." An analysis of these texts, as well as "DA 2.7" and "De Sensu 6" on the roles of light and the transparent medium in vision, show that, for Aristotle, the physical processes which sense organs undergo are not standard qualitative changes (i.e. alterations), but activities or the actualizations of potencies in the material constituents of living animal bodies. (shrink)

Surely one of the most interesting problems in the study of mind concerns the nature of sentience. How is it that there are sensations, rather than merely sensings? What is it like to be a bat -- or why is it like anything at all? Why aren't we automata or responding but unfeeling Zombies? How does neural activity give rise to subjective experience? As Leibniz put the problem : _It must be confessed, however, that Perception_ [consciousness?]_, and that which depends (...) upon it, are_ _inexplicable by mechanical means, that is to say, by figures and motions. Supposing that there were a_ _machine whose structure produced thought, sensation, and perceptions, we could conceive of it as increased_ _in its interior size with the same proportions until one was able to enter into its interior, as he would into a_ _mill. Now, on going into it he would find only pieces working upon one another, but never would he find_ _anything to explain Perception._ [Montgomery trans.]. (shrink)

Nevertheless, despite whatever optimism about the future unification of sciences is justified, there are now, as there have been for centuries, difficult problems confronting the materialist. Perhaps the crucial problem concerns the status of sensations, a problem clearly evident as far back as Hobbes who said that sense is "some internal motion in the sentient, generated by some internal motion, of the parts of the object, and propagated through all the media to the innermost part of the organ." Here (...) Hobbes reduces sense to physical motion. But he is also found to say that sense is not motion, but "in all cases, is nothing else but original fancy," or, he says elsewhere, "phantasms" caused by internal motions. He is then directly faced with the problem of reconciling appearances and sensations with his avowed materialism. Neither Hobbes nor any one else has solved this problem, although there have recently been some novel and instructive attempts to do so. (shrink)

RésuméLe but de cet article est de mettre en évidence les différences entre Descartes et Reid au sujet du rôle que chacun assigne aux sensations dans le processus perceptuel. Dans Perceptual Acquaintance, John Yolton ne trouve quepeu de choses dans les conceptions de Reid qui ne soient pas déjà de quelque façon présentes chez Descartes. Je soutiens au contraire que la théorie des sensations-comme-signes de Reid constitue un développement considérable par rapport à celle de Descartes ou à quoi que ce (...) soit que l'on trouve chez lui, non seulement parce qu'elle est évidemment plus claire et plus cohérente, mais aussi parce qu'elle introduit l'idée d'un élément a priori dans notre expérience perceptuelle et lui attribue un rôle indispensable. Cet élément crucial est tout à fait absent de la conception cartésienne. (shrink)

Does inner sense, like outer sense, provide inner sensations or, in other words, a sensory manifold of its own? Advocates of the disparity thesis on inner and outer sense claim that it does not. This interpretation, which is dominant in the preexisting literature, leads to several inconsistencies when applied to Kant’s doctrine of inner experience. Yet, while so, the parity thesis, which is the contrasting view, is also unable to provide a convincing interpretation of inner sensations. In (...) this paper, I argue that this deadlock can be traced back to an inadequate understanding of inner sense shared by both sides. Drawing upon an analysis of the notion of obscure representations, I offer an alternative interpretation of inner sense with a special regard to self-affection, apprehension, and attention. From this basis, I will infer that outer sense delivers sensory content that is initially and intrinsically unaccompanied by phenomenal consciousness; inner sense contributes by endowing such content with phenomenal consciousness. Therefore, phenomenal qualities can be regarded as the sensory manifold of inner sense. This alternative interpretation solves the long-standing dispute concerning inner sensations and would further illuminate Kant’s notion of inner experience. (shrink)

This book presents a critical analysis of sense-making practices through an exploration of acoustic, creative, and artistic spaces. It studies how local cultures of sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch are impacted by global discourses and media, such as television, popular music, digital media, and literature. The authors look at sense-making practices and spatial discourses through an interconnected discussion on thought and experience that seeks to present a multidimensional cartography of the global, the local, and the glocal, to (...) closely analyze the phenomenon of globalization. The volume is an investigation of the possibilities of alternate, sustainable modes of being and existing in a world which requires a unified, ethical, biopolitical worldview that challenges the disparity of its fragments while speculating on their synesthetic conditionality. A unique contribution, the book will be of interest to scholars and researchers of English literature, media studies, cultural studies, literary cultures, post-colonial studies, globalization studies, philosophy, critical theory, sociology, and social anthropology. (shrink)

Kant’s notion of common sense (Gemeinsinn) is crucial not only for his account of judgements of beauty, but also for the link he draws between the necessary conditions of such judgements and cognition in general. Contrary to existing interpretations which connect common sense to pleasure, I argue that it should be understood as the capacity to sense the harmony of the cognitive faculties through a sui generis sensation distinct from pleasure. This sensed harmony of the faculties (...) is not only the ground of judgements of beauty and the basis of pleasure in the beautiful, but is also essential, I argue, for the reflecting judgements through which we acquire empirical concepts. (shrink)

John Keats remains one of the most familiar and beloved of English poets, but has received surprisingly little critical attention in recent years. This study is a fresh contribution to Keats criticism and Romantic scholarship, positioning Keats as a figure of philosophical interest who warrants renewed attention. Exploring Keats's own Romantic accounts of feeling and thinking, this study draws a connection between poetry and the phenomenological branches of modern philosophy. The study takes Keats's poetic evocation of touching hands, wandering feet, (...) beating hearts and breathing bodies as a descriptive elaboration of consciousness and a phenomenological account of experience. The philosophical terms of analysis adopted here challenge the orthodoxies of Keats scholarship, traditionally characterised by the careful historicisation of a limited canon. The philosophical framework of analysis enhances the readings put forward, while Keats's poems, in turn, serve to give fuller expression of those ideas themselves. Using Keats as a particular case, this book also demonstrates the ways in which theory and philosophy supplement literary scholarship. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:In Search of the Sense and the Senses:Aesthetic Education in Germany and the United StatesAlexandra Kertz-Welzel (bio)The dream that art is able to humanize human beings is very old. One person fascinated by this idea claimed:The creative artist educates and perfects through his work the nation's capacity for appreciation, just as conversely the general feeling for art thus developed and sustained creates the fruitful soil which is the (...) condition for the birth, the growth, and the activity of creative forces.1The author asserted that art has educational power and is able to improve appreciation as well as activate creative energy. Art is a way to transform the individual through its aesthetic power.Although these ideas sound similar to some approaches in arts education, this quotation does not represent the ideas of an art educator or a music educator. It is a quotation from one of the most powerful and most dangerous believers in the transforming power of art and music, in particular—Adolf Hitler (1889-1945). His ideology matched perfectly with the ideas of German music education in the 1930s, and therefore music education was a significant part of the school curriculum during the Third Reich. One of the most tempting ideas for music educators is the claim that music is capable of transforming human beings and their society.The idea of the educational power of music starts at least with Plato. Since the 1950s, aesthetic education has emphasized the aesthetic value and educational power of music. The German and the American concepts of aesthetic education are significantly different, but as a result of historical developments, they also share some similarities.The main intent of this paper is to analyze crucial issues of aesthetic education that exist in Germany and the United States. By comparing the two approaches, some core issues of music education will also be revealed in terms of idealistic dreams that are intent on making the world a better place [End Page 102] through music. This leads to some interesting insights concerning the significance but also the ambiguity of art for societies.The Roots: Ancient Greece, Schiller, and Holistic DreamsThe origin of the term aesthetics can be found in the Greek word aisthesis, which means perception through the senses.2 This meaning of aisthesis is originally not related to art. It concerns all kinds of sensations through seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, and tasting. In Greek philosophy, aisthesis as a way of experiencing the world through the senses is opposite to cognition in terms of an intellectual way of realization, the theoria. But given that art is something one can perceive through the various senses, aisthesis also concerns art.Most theories of aesthetic education refer to the ancient Greek idea of music, the musiké, which is a unity of music, dance, and literature. Plato emphasized the educational power of music and its effects on character development: "Musical training is a more potent instrument than any other, because rhythm and harmony find their way into the inward places of the soul.... "3 Since music is so powerful, the correct use and the correct kind of music are important. According to Plato, art is a way to learn about truth and ideas through beauty. But art is also dangerous, because the senses "lie" and art is only an imitation of truth. For Plato, the senses are not as clear as the intellect.Plato's concerns about the ambivalence of sensorial perception are typical for the way aisthesis and aesthetics have been understood throughout the history of philosophy. The tension between a "true" intellectual approach to knowledge and an inferior approach through the senses is one aspect of the well-known mind-body dichotomy.During the eighteenth century, the era of enlightenment, Alexander Baumgarten (1714-62) introduced the term aesthesis into the philosophical discussion.4 In his book Aesthetica (published in 1750), he attempted to justify sensorial perception and emotions as a unique way of understanding the world. Baumgarten was not interested in the arts at all and tried to establish aesthetics as the science of sensuous cognition in order to improve the sensuous capacity for cognition. Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) was the... (shrink)

Experience offers a reading experience like no other. A heat-sensitive cover by Olafur Eliasson reveals words, colors, and a drawing when touched by human hands. Endpapers designed by Carsten Holler are printed in ink containing carefully calibrated quantities of the synthesized human pheromones estratetraenol and androstadienone, evoking the suggestibility of human desire. The margins and edges of the book are designed by Tauba Auerbach in complementary colors that create a dynamically shifting effect when the book is shifted or closed. When (...) the book is opened, bookmarks cascade from the center, emerging from spider web prints by Tomas Saraceno. Experience produces experience while bringing the concept itself into relief as an object of contemplation. The sensory experience of the book as a physical object resonates with the intellectual experience of the book as a container of ideas. Experience convenes a conversation with artists, musicians, philosophers, anthropologists, historians, and neuroscientists, each of whom explores aspects of sensorial and cultural realms of experience. The texts include new essays written for this volume and classic texts by such figures as William James and Michel Foucault -- Provided by the publisher. (shrink)

Recent years have witnessed an increasing number of attempts to reconstruct Marxian theory in forms that can be assessed by reference to currently received standards in various disciplines. The work has even been said to establish a new paradigm: “analytical Marxism.” One doesn't have to endorse this claim to recognize a good deal of merit in the work. Through creative application of state-of-the-art methods to traditional Marxian issues, researchers have promoted productive cross-fertilization with non-Marxian programs and have revealed many problems (...) that must be resolved for fruitful development of Marxian theory. Marx's work can be relevant to today's problems only if it is examined from vantage points provided by subsequent scientific and philosophical achievements. Moreover, critical engagement with the best science of the day has been an essential part of the Marxian theoretical project from the beginning. (shrink)

This dissertation attempts to expose the influence of Francis Bacon on the philosophy of Thomas Reid. Reid was a self-professed Baconian who viewed the human mind as a subject which was amenable to scientific investigation. Reid attempts to develop his own theory of mind according to the method of induction and experiment and general philosophy of science of Bacon. Further, Reid's use of the Baconian idols in his attack on the theory of ideas is explored. In addition, it is argued (...) that this Baconian approach helps to illuminate Reid's direct realism in perception as well as Reid's indebtedness to Bacon in his treatment of sensations as a system of signs. Finally, Reid develops a theory of evidence and common sense which owes much to the legal discussion of the time. This again links Reid to Bacon who made a similar use of legal metaphors in defending his philosophy of science against scholastic apologists. By appealing to textual evidence in the works of both philosophers' writings and reconstructing Reid's positions in light of this influence, it is hoped that a better understanding of Reid's notion of common sense is ultimately reached as well as a solution to the problem of intentionality in Reid's theory of perception. (shrink)

In its classical conception, game theory aspires to be a determinate decision theory for games, understood as elements of a structurally specified domain. Its aim is to determine for each game in the domain a complete solution to each player's decision problem, a solution valid for all real-world instantiations, regardless of context. "Permissiveness" would constrain the theory to designate as admissible for a player any conjecture consistent with the function's designation of admissible strategies for the other players. Given permissiveness and (...) other appropriate constraints, solution sets must contain only Nash equilibria and at least one pure-strategy equilibrium, and there is no solution to games in which no symmetry invariant set of pure-strategy equilibria forms a Cartesian product. These results imply that the classical program is unrealizable. Moreover, the program is implicitly committed to permissiveness, through its common-knowledge assumptions and its commitment to equilibrium. The resulting incoherence deeply undermines the classical conception in a way that consolidates a long series of contextualist criticisms. (shrink)

In Sensations of History, James J. Hodge argues that animation in new media art transforms historical experience in the digital age. Combining close textual analysis of experimental new media artworks with discussion of key phenomenological texts, Sensations of History argues for the broad critical significance of animation as we shift from analog to digital technologies. Hodge looks closely at animation aesthetics, which allow for a clear grasp of the ways digital technologies transform our sense of historical experience.

A thorough-going re-elaboration of modern experience via the senses.

Marx criticized political economy for propounding an inverted, mystical view of economic reality. But he went beyond asserting the falsity and apologetic character of the doctrine to characterize it as reflecting a social practice of inversion or mystification — an inverted social world — in which individuals incorporate their own actions into a process whose dynamic lies beyond their control. Caught up in this process, individuals confront aspects of their own agency in the alien or reified form of a given, (...) determining reality. Marx leaves unclear exactly how the process exerts and maintains its hold on agents, the nature of the reasons they might have for wanting to free themselves of it, and under what conditions they could do so. However, it is possible to abstract somewhat from Marx's specific concerns and to model a self-reproducing practice of reification that works through the informational environment of decision. Though of wider interest, this more general conception can shed light on the nature and critique of Marx's inverted world. It draws on conceptual resources from decision theory, game theory and general equilibrium theory. (shrink)

This working paper uses the works of philosophers like Hegel, Marx, and Rawls to explore political philosophy and estrangement.

In 1925, David Katz published an influential monograph on touch, Der Aufbau der Tastwelt, which was translated into English in 1989. Although it is called “the world of touch,” it also discusses the thermal and the nociceptive senses, albeit briefly. In this chapter, we will follow this approach, but we will speak about “somatosensory senses” in general in order to remind ourselves that perceptions of temperatures and pains should also be considered together in this context.

It is one of the premises of eliminative materialism that commonsense psychology constitutes a theory. There is agreement that mental states can be construed as posited entities for the explanation and prediction of behavior. Disputes arise when it comes to the range of the commonsense theory of mental states. In chapter one, I review major arguments concerning the span and nature of folk psychology. In chapter two, relying on arguments by Quine and Sellars, I argue that the precise scope of (...) commonsense psychology cannot be determined because there are no resources to distinguish claims that are commonsense from all others. I use this conclusion to evaluate Churchland’s proposal that folk psychology should be eliminated in favor of a scientific theory. I argue that, although such an elimination is possible, it is unnecessary because commonsense psychology is in part informed by scientific theories. The properties that are usually attributed to mental states, on my view, are not common sense and would re-emerge even if we replaced our current theory with a scientific one. In chapter three, I examine how this affects eliminativist arguments, such as Churchland’s proposals for how to solve the emergence of the phenomenal character of sensations. I argue that it might be the case that some phenomenal properties are the result of endorsing a particular theory, but phenomenal character as such is a permanent feature of any theory about internal states. Addressing the problem of the incorrigibility of mental states, in chapter four, I challenge Rorty’s idea that such a property is the mark of the mental and can be attributed to our mental states based on our everyday usage of mental terms. The position asserted in the dissertation is compatible with the view that any theory can be revised, but doubts are expressed concerning the likelihood for a complete replacement of the current folk-psychological theory. Taking inspiration form Sellars, in chapter five, I argue that the establishment of a conceptual framework entails a wholistic jump from no concepts to a rudimentary framework. With this leap some properties are solidified and stand in the way of elimination. (shrink)

A path-breaking collection launching a new series of books on the senses in antiquity. Synaesthesia and the Ancient Senses presents a radical reappraisal of antiquity's textures, flavours, and aromas, sounds and sights. It offers both a fresh look at society in the ancient world and an opportunity to deepen the reading of classical literature. The book will appeal to readers in classical society and literature, philosophy and cultural history. All Greek and Latin is translated and technical matters are explained for (...) the non-specialist. The introduction sets the ancient senses within the history of aesthetics and the subsequent essays explore the senses throughout the classical period and on to the modern reception of classical literature. (shrink)

The post-Darwinian double-aspect theory that Professor Robert Kunzendorf's introduces in On the Evolution of Conscious Sensation, Conscious Imagination, and Consciousness of Self points to evolutionary functions of certain sensations, youngling vivid images, and self-consciousness.