Taking its title from the discussion of a ‘new Meno’ to be found in Difference and Repetition, through an examination of the link between learning and thinking set out across Deleuze's work this paper charts the important sense in which philosophical thought is characterised by an apprenticeship. The claim is that just as certain aesthetic and biological processes involve inscrutable and non-resembling elements that cannot be known in advance, the experience of learning is one oriented by unforseen encounters. With (...) a view to a peculiarly heuristic use of dictionaries in the case of language learning, the paper shows how the logic of this experience is one whereby the putative meaning of things does not enjoy a priority over the immanence of their expression. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 26.2 (2002) 397-404 [Access article in PDF] The Sexist Sublime in Sade and Lyotard Caroline Weber In this case the masculine returns to haunt the place of the feminine like a ghost...., bloody and inhuman, in order to manifest and to root unforgettably in us the idea of a perpetual conflict and a spasm in which life is constantly being cut short. Antonin Artaud, The Theater (...) and Its Double"VIOLENCE," JEAN-FRANÇOIS LYOTARD ASSERTS in a recent article on Kantian aesthetics, "is necessary to the sublime." 1 More precisely, the sublime, held to transport an individual beyond his or her "ordinary" register of aesthetic responses, may do violence to a person's faculty of imagination, by shattering the accepted limits of sensory experience. Lyotard explains: In the sublime, the imagination must be subjected to violence, because it is by way of its suffering, the mediation of its violation, that the joy of seeing—or almost seeing—the law can be obtained.... This "joy" [here Lyotard cites The Critique of Judgment] "is only possible by the mediation of pain." 2Indeed, students of Kant's work have long been familiar with the exclusion of sentiment, pathos, and personal interest that he posits as a requirement for exalted status in the aesthetic and the moral sphere. For Kant, the law is precisely about the painful suppression of pleasure-seeking impulses for the sake of a disinterested, higher good. To achieve the transcendental perfection of the law, typically understood to be the domain of God alone, one must, godlike, overcome the [End Page 397] limitations of human nature and human feeling. And this effort—of which the Passion is just one vivid example—can be extraordinarily painful. In this context, Lyotard's formulation of the problem may not strike us as particularly startling. In contending that the Kantian experience of the sublime requires the mediation of pain, the French poststructuralist appears simply to be reminding us that the law, whether aesthetic or moral in nature, always demands some sort of discomfort, some kind of sacrifice.We might be more inclined to accept this last statement if Lyotard's own work hadn't already taught us to think otherwise. For as he demonstrates admirably in The Differend, his 1983 meditation on testimony and the Holocaust, there is always a winner and a loser under the law; its attendant pains are always selectively applied. From a discursive point of view, this asymmetrical relationship manifests itself in a differend, a situation where two parties find themselves in dispute, and "the 'regulation' of the conflict that opposes them is done in the idiom of one of the parties, while the wrong suffered by the other is not signified in that idiom." 3 According to Lyotard, the suffering of the Jews at the hands of the Nazis exemplifies this pattern. In a strict juridical sense, any attempted protests by concentration camp prisoners had no meaning, and no right to mean anything, in Third Reich Germany: In the differend, something "asks" to be put into phrases, and suffers from the wrong (tort) of not being able to be put into phrases right away. This is when the human beings who thought they could use language as an instrument of communication learn through the feeling of pain... to recognize that what remains to be phrased exceeds what they can presently phrase.... 4Here Lyotard reveals that an encounter with the law, mediated by pain, inevitably creates injustices and wronged parties. In this paper, I will draw on this insight from The Differend to point up the ethical deficiencies or torts inherent in his own ruminations on the Kantian sublime—and in those of another philosopher whose thinking closely resembles Lyotard's on the subject, the notorious Marquis de Sade. To limit the scope of my inquiry, I shall focus in this brief essay on the differend to which each thinker's writings subject the figure of the mother.For Lyotard and Sade alike, the mother represents first and foremost the capacity to reproduce. With this capacity... (shrink)

What can we learn from the open and attentive perception of children and poets? How does this perception contribute to a methodology that reaches the intricate entanglement of worldly phenomena in its entire otherness? In this essay, we aim to answer these questions, taking into account the phenomenological grounds which lead us to achieve a singular state of perception and, therefore, a more crystal clear knowledge of the beings and things in the lived world. We seek to explore other forms (...) of rationality and aesthetic sensibility, by considering poetic language and a phenomenological understanding of the environment. We argue for a modality of thought that encompasses the foundations of Goethe, Husserl, Bateson, Ingold, Leiris and Krishnamurti to collapse the dichotomy between person and environment. (shrink)

Aesthetic non-cognitivists deny that aesthetic statements express genuinely aesthetic beliefs and instead hold that they work primarily to express something non-cognitive, such as attitudes of approval or disapproval, or desire. Non-cognitivists deny that aesthetic statements express aesthetic beliefs because they deny that there are aesthetic features in the world for aesthetic beliefs to represent. Their assumption, shared by scientists and theorists of mind alike, was that language-users possess cognitive mechanisms with which to objectively grasp abstract rules fixed independently of human (...) responses, and that cognizers are thereby capable of grasping rules for the correct application of aesthetic concepts without relying on evaluation or enculturation. However, in this article I use Wittgenstein’s rule-following considerations to argue that psychological theories grounded upon this so-called objective model of rule-following fail to adequately account for concept acquisition and mastery. I argue that this is because linguistic enculturation, and the perceptual learning that’s often involved, influences and enables the mastery of aesthetic concepts. I argue that part of what’s involved in speaking aesthetically is to belong to a cultural practice of making sense of things aesthetically, and that it’s within a socio-linguistic community, and that community’s practices, that such aesthetic sense can be made intelligible. (shrink)

Wittgenstein’s remarks on “seeing-as” have influenced several scholars working on depiction. They have especially inspired those who think that in order to understand depiction we should understand the specific kind of visual experience depictions arouse in the viewer (e.g. Gombrich [1960], Wollheim [1968; 1987]). In this paper I would like to go a different way. My hypothesis is that certain of Wittgenstein’s claims both in the Tractatus and in his later writings resonate well within the context of an objective resemblance (...) account of depiction (Hyman, 2006). (shrink)

In this paper the concept of knowledge in seen as embodying dialogue and learning in a shared practice. Sharing a practice involved sharing representations of practice. This necessitates the sharing of experiential knowledge at various levels and in various forms. It is proposed that participatory design can therefore be seen as consisting in dialogue and learning for the development of future practices and representations. The discussion in this paper is situated within the domain of landscape architecture. A study is made (...) of their co-operative practices, which are evolved, in order to show the need for participatory embodied activity (whether expressed verbally or physically) in sharing practical knowledge (e.g. of aesthetic judgement). (shrink)

This article concerns sound aesthetic preferences for European foreign languages. We investigated the phonetic-acoustic dimension of the linguistic aesthetic pleasure to describe the “music” found in European languages. The Romance languages, French, Italian, and Spanish, take a lead when people talk about melodious language – the music-like effects in the language (a.k.a., phonetic chill). On the other end of the melodiousness spectrum are German and Arabic that are often considered sounding harsh and un-attractive. Despite the public interest, limited research has (...) been conducted on the topic of phonaesthetics, i.e., the subfield of phonetics that is concerned with the aesthetic properties of speech sounds (Crystal, 2008). Our goal is to fill the existing research gap by identifying the acoustic features that drive the auditory perception of language sound beauty. What is so music-like in the language that makes people say “it is music in my ears”? We had 45 central European participants listening to 16 auditorily presented European languages and rating each language in terms of 22 binary characteristics (e.g., beautiful – ugly and funny – boring) plus indicating their language familiarities, L2 backgrounds, speaker voice liking, demographics, and musicality levels. Findings revealed that all factors in complex interplay explain a certain percentage of variance: familiarity and expertise in foreign languages, speaker voice characteristics, phonetic complexity, musical acoustic properties, and finally musical expertise of the listener. The most important discovery was the trade-off between speech tempo and so-called linguistic melody (pitch variance): the faster the language, the flatter/more atonal it is in terms of the pitch (speech melody), making it highly appealing acoustically (sounding beautiful and sexy), but not so melodious in a “musical” sense. (shrink)

Throughout the present paper, I propose an analysis of René Magritte’s artwork Les mots et les images (La Révolution surréaliste, 1929) in connection with a reflection on the associated theories he formulated in the handout for his London lecture (1937). Read in reference to selected writings (and in erratic observation with other artworks of his oeuvre), the eighteen propositions of Les mots et les images, along with their development in the 1937 document, might help at investigating the aesthetic principles that (...) guide and characterise Magritte’s reflection around language. In this same regard, in the last part of my article I will focus on Michel Foucault’s Ceci n’est pas une pipe (1973) and, particularly, on the distinction between resemblance (ressemblance) and similitude (similitude). These last remarks, I argue, offer the opportunity not only to think about the way in which images and words are related to each other in Magritte’s works, but also to inves- tigate the vital issue of language, which has occupied a crucial place within French thought. (shrink)

The book reconstructs the history of Western ethics. The approach chosen focuses the endless dialectic of moral codes, or different kinds of ethos, moral doctrines that are preached in order to bring about a reform of existing ethos, and ethical theories that have taken shape in the context of controversies about the ethos and moral doctrines as means of justifying or reforming moral doctrines. Such dialectic is what is meant here by the phrase ‘moral traditions’, taken as a name for (...) threads of moral discourse, made in turn of other interwoven threads, including transmission of shared codes, appeals to reform of prevailing custom, rational argument about the justification of some precept on the basis of some shared general teaching or principle, and rational argument about the ultimate basis for principles and justification of authoritative teaching. That is, the approach adopted to the reading of ethical texts depends on a firm belief in the fact that philosophers hardly created any ethical doctrine out of nothing. The main point this book tries to highlight is how different philosophical theories emerged and followed each other as a result of attempts at accounting for what was going on in the world of moral traditions. Changes were propelled by controversies between different schools, and highly abstract arguments were the unintended effects of moves made by controversialists forced to transform (and occasionally to turn upside down) their own doctrines in order to face the challenge posed by other arguments. This is the reason why the book examines not only texts that already enjoy pride of place in the history of philosophy (Aristotle, Kant, Hegel), but also other texts usually treated in the histories of religions (the Bible, the Talmud, the Quran), and others considered to be much less philosophical (Plutarchus, Pufendorf). -/- 1. Plato and a response to ethical scepticism. Two different traditions of morality in VI-V century Greece are described. The birth of philosophical questioning of traditional morality and temporal and spatial variation of custom is described within the context of the v century crisis, the demise of traditional aristocratic and tyrannical rule and the birth of democracy. Two conflicting answers to the challenge are reconstructed, namely conventionalist or immoralist theories formulated by the Sophists and the eudemonist and intellectualist Socratic theory. Plato’s own reformulation of Socrates answer to the Sophists is reconstructed. His psychological views, his classification of the four cardinal virtues and his political theory are described as parts of a unitary system, culminating in an extremely realist moral ontology identifying the idea of the good with the essence of the (moral and extra-moral) world itself. -/- 2. Aristotle and the invention of practical philosophy. Aristotle’s invention of practical philosophy as a field separated from first philosophy is shown to be an implication of his break with Plato moral ultra-realism. Aristotle’s agenda in his moral works is arguably dependent on a polemical intention, namely dismantling Socratic intellectualism. The semi-inductive or virtuously circular method of practical philosophy is illustrated, starting with the received opinions of the better and wiser individuals and trying dialectically to sift what is left of mistake and inconsistence in such opinions, finally trying to correct mistakes and make the overall practical science more consistent. The chapter illustrates then the relationship of individual ethics, or ‘monastics’, with the art and the science of the pater familias, or ‘economics’, and the science of the ruler and citizen, or politics. The nature of virtues, or better, excellences of character, is discussed, highlighting the basic role of hexis, or ‘disposition’. Prudence, or better practical wisdom, is the focus of the chapter. Its relationship with bouleusis or deliberation is examined, and its autonomous status vis-à-vis theoretical knowledge is stressed. -/- 3. Diogenes and philosophy as a way of life. The chapter provides an overview of Hellenistic ethics, which almost amounts to Hellenistic schools of philosophy, in so far as ‘philosophy’ became in these centuries primarily the name for a way of life. The typical character of the Cynical movement is highlighted, that of a school of life, not a school aimed at providing any kind of intellectual training was to be provided. -/- 4. Epicurus and ethics as self-care. The peculiar character of the Epicurean school is described, a combination of a science of well-being aiming, more than at pleasure as in the popular view, at reduction of useless suffering, of unnecessary needs, and at a balanced selection of pleasures of the best and most durable kind. -/- 5. Epictetus and ethics as therapy of the passions. The various phases of Stoicism are described, and the shifting place given to ethics in the Stoic system of idea, culminating in the paradoxical view of ethics, its impossibility in principle notwithstanding, as the only truly significant and necessary part of philosophy. Cicero is treated, showing how his own synthesis of various Hellenistic trends is as a truly philosophical enterprise, deserving serious consideration after one or two centuries when he was confined to the role of literate. Epictetus is chosen as the best example of what the Stoic tradition could yield, an art of living based on sophisticated introspection, in turn aimed at making a kind of cognitive therapy possible, dismantling obnoxious passions at their root by systematically correcting false representations. -/- 6. Philo and the reconciliation of Torah and Platonism. A reconstruction of basic ideas from a few books of the Hebrew Bible is provided, starting with the Prophetic tradition and the focus on God’s mercy as the source of motivation and standard for human behaviour. Then a comparative analysis is undertaken of a parallel tradition, namely the three codifications of the Torā (Law or, better, Instruction), highlighting how a core of moral ideas may be recognized as a basis and preamble of codification of civil law, cultural practice, and regulation of ritual purity. The importance of Leviticus is stressed as the turning point when emphasis mercy, typical of the Prophetic tradition, is combined with the legal tradition, yielding the change in sensibility of the Second Temple time. Philo of Alexandria is described as one of the three leading figures – together with Rabbi Hillel and Rabbi Yeshua – at the apex the emergence of the mentioned new sensibility, gradually including mercy as an essential part of justice and establishing the starting point of both the Rabbinic and the Christian tradition. This consists precisely in the precept of one’s neighbour’s love or of the golden rule, two eventually identical precepts whose meaning is arguably more sober and sensible than the long-lasting Christian tradition deriving from John and Augustine has made us believe and no novelty vis-à-vis so-called Ancient-Testament teachings. -/- 7. Augustine and Christianity as Neo-Platonism. The first section examines the moral doctrines of so-called 'ethical Treaties' from the Talmud, a group of treaties, among which the best known is Pirqé Avot, that were left out of the six "orders" of the canon as they did not fit in any of the six groups of issues ritual or legal on which the division was based. According to Maimonides, their peculiar theme is provided by the Deòt, 'opinions', i.e., mental dispositions, that is, the translation of the Greek term hexeis and Arab akhlak (in turn providing in this language the name for ethics as such). The three topics I reconstruct are: i) the notion of Torah: The Torah is understood as the world order itself, or as the ‘Wisdom’ that existed even before creation and was ‘the tool by which the world was built’; however, the Torah is an earthly and human entity, as it was "received" by humans, and from that very moment belongs to them; ii) the relationship between love of God and love of neighbour; the treaties require us to study and practice the Torah ‘for its own sake’, that is, require us to act out of love, not out of fear or hope of reward; iii) the idea of sanctification of daily life: having disappeared with the destruction of the Temple the possibility of any conflict between liturgical service and everyday life, the latter is assumed to be in itself divine service: to give food to the poor has the same value as sacrifices in the Temple, and as an implication, the insistence become recurrent on the goodness of created things in themselves along with a polemic against ascetic currents. The conclusions drawn are: i) the moral teachings of the Talmud and those of Yeshua are, rather than similar, virtually identical; one may safely say that the precept of love and the golden rule are central ones for all Talmudic rabbis, that mercy plays an indispensable role alongside with justice, and the latter is not a different thing from one’s neighbour’s love; ii) a peculiarity of Talmud rabbis facing Yeshua is the idea of study as worship, and knowledge as a source of justice; but this is an idea of Judaism after the Temple's destruction that cannot be attributed to the Pharisees of Yeshua’s time; iii) the relation of study and practice in the Talmud parallels that between faith and deeds in Paul's epistles, that is, respectively faith or learning are a necessary and sufficient condition to be recognized as righteous , but deeds are the inevitable effect of either faith or learning. The sayings ascribed to Yeshua are examined first, yielding the conclusion that a close equivalent may be found for every saying in Talmudic literature and yet the whole is ascribed to one rabbi, with rather consistent stress on God’s mercy and unconditional forgiving as the mark of true imitation of God. Thus, Yeshua’s teaching is pure Judaism. The third section describes briefly the galaxy of Gnostic currents and Manichaeism, trying to sketch the profile of moral teachings resulting from an encounter of Asian spiritual traditions, Hellenistic lore and sparks of teachings from apocalyptic Jewish currents. The last section summarizes the turbulent history of several encounters between Christian currents and Hellenistic philosophical schools. The first one was with late Cynicism. Recent, rather controversial, literature discovered the jargon and a few topics from the Stoic-Cynical popular philosophy in a few books from the New Testament itself. This, far from proving that Rabbi Yeshua had been influenced by cynic preachers, is a proof of the necessity felt by Christian preachers to translate the original ‘Christian’ teaching into a Greek lexicon deeply impregnated with cynic terminology. The second was with Platonism, yielding the mild and temperate moral teaching of Clemens of Alexandria, teaching the sanctity of nature and the human body, the joy of moderate fruition of ‘natural’ kinds of pleasures, and the beauty of the marital life – in short, the opposite of the standard picture of Medieval Christianity. Ambrose of Milan brings about a different kind of synthesis, namely with Middle Platonism, where Stoic themes prevail. The most shocking case is Augustine, where an early Manichean education is overcome in a former phase by a synthesis of Plotinian Neo-Platonism and Christian preaching, yielding a sustained polemic with the Manicheans and rather optimistic views on life and Creation, the body and sexuality, and Hebrew-Judaic tradition not far from Clemens of Alexandria. In a later phase, occasioned by controversy on the opposite front, with such Christian currents as the Pelagians and Donatists, Augustine comes back to heavily anti-Judaic and world-denying ascetic attitudes where is earlier Manichean upbringing seems to emerge again. The tragedy of medieval Christianity will be the later Augustine’s overwhelming influence. A final section is dedicated to the monastic tradition where a curious mixture of world-denying asceticism with an astonishingly penetrating ‘science’ of introspection emerges. -/- 8. Al Farabi and the reconciliation of Islam and Platonism. The Qurān and the qadit, that is, collections of sayings ascribed to the prophet Muhammad contain a wealth of precepts and catalogues of virtues mirroring moral contents from the Jewish and the Christian traditions, among them the basic notion of imitation of the Deity, where mercy is assumed to be its basic trait. An important tradition within Islam, namely Sufism, stressed to the utmost degree the role of mercy, turning Islam into a mystic doctrine centred on retreat from the world, abandonment to God’s will, and a peaceful and fraternal attitude to our fellow-beings. A secular literary tradition originating in the Sassanid Empire, the literature of advice to the Prince had for a time a widespread influence in the newly constituted Arabic-Islamic commonwealth. In a later phase, the legacy of Hellenic philosophy made its way into the intellectual elite of the Islamic world. The first important legacy was Platonic, and the Republic became the main text for Islamic Platonism. Al-Farabi wrote an enjoyable remake of the Platonic Republic, arguing that the citizen’s virtues were the basis on which the political building needs to rest. The secular lawgiver is enlightened by the light of reason in his everyday practice of governance, but room is made for the Prophet as the voice of revealed truth that confirms and completes the rational truth that philosophy may afford. In a second phase also Aristotelian and Stoic influence were assimilated. Miskawayh’s treatise was the masterwork at the time Arabic philosophy reached its Zenith. It is a treatment of the soul’s diseases and their remedies, combining the Aristotelian doctrine of the golden mean with the Stoic doctrine of the passions and elements of Galenic medicine. Towards the eleventh-twelve centuries a war raged among theologians and philosophers, finally won by the former with disappearance of philosophy as such. The newly established mainstream, yet, was no kind of intolerant fanaticism. It drew from the work of mystic theologian Al-Ghazālī, the best heir of Sufism, teaching a tolerant and peaceful attitude to our fellow-beings and a passive attitude to destiny as an expression of the Divine will. -/- 9. Moshe ben Maimon and the reconciliation of Torah and Aristotelian ethics. The encounter between the Talmudic tradition and Hellenic philosophy had taken place a first time in Alexandria at the time of Philo but the two traditions had parted way again. In fact, the kind of Platonic Judaism founded by Philo survived only within Christianity, in the fourth Gospel and then in writings by Clemens of Alexandria. The Talmudic literature had absorbed just less striking traits from the Hellenic Philosophy, namely an idea of ethics as care of the self and a role for the education of character as propaedeutic to theoretical knowledge. In the Arabic-Islamic world, a second round started when Jewish authors writing in Arabic undertook the task to prove the full compatibility of the tradition deriving from Torah and Platonic philosophy. The culmination of this attempt is provided by Moshe ben Maimon who tried to use Aristotelian ethics as a language into which the teaching from the Pirké Avot could be translated. -/- 10. Thomas Aquinas and the reconciliation of Christian morality and Aristotelian ethics. In the first section the fresh start is described of philosophical ethics in Latin Europe at the turn of the Millennium. In a first phase, Anselm and Peter Abelard built on a Platonic and Augustinian legacy. In this phase. remarkable innovations are introduced, including Abelard’s claim of the obliging character of erring consciousness. In a second phase, the rediscovery of Nicomachean Ethics thanks to Latin translation of Arabic versions gives birth to a new wave of ethical studies, recovering the very idea of Aristotelian practical philosophy, with the potential implication of full legitimization of natural morality, i.e. ethics without Revelation. Aquinas’s ethics is a theological ethics out of which it would be vain to try to extract a self-contained philosophical ethics. His treatment of topics in philosophical ethics, yet, does not boil down to repetition of Aristotelian arguments but is rather a creative reshaping of such arguments. For example, he introduces also in the practical philosophy a first principle parallel to the principle of non-contradiction; and he also carries out a synthesis of Aristotelianism, Stoicism, and neo-Platonism. Even though it is essentially moral theology, Aquinas’s doctrine - unlike Augustine – grants full citizenship to "natural" morality, firstly by rejecting the claim that the corruption of human nature due to the original sin is so radical as to leave "pure nature" incapable of moral goodness. The doctrine is presented in a more sophisticated formulation in a few of the Quaestiones, such as De Malo and De Veritate, in the Summa contra Gentes and in the commentaries to Aristotle than in the famous Summa Theologica, but the latter work includes the only or the largest exposition of some decisive part of the theory. Thus, the Summa Theologica should be read for what it is more than criticized for not being what it was not meant to be. It was not meant to be the brilliant synthesis of all that Reason he had been able to produce with what Revelation had added about which the Neo-Thomists used to dream, but rather a manual for the training of preachers and confessors, where theoretical claims are not too demanding and a few serious tensions are left. Besides a jump between the Prima Secundae and the Secunda Secundae, being the former an essay in virtue theory and the latter a handbook for confessors, the most serious tension is perhaps the one between the ethics of right reason presented in most of Ia-IIae and the eudemonistic ethics developed in quaestiones 1-5 of the same part; the alternative ethical theory which also may be found in Augustine, the Stoic view of a cosmic reason eventually coincident with the moral law, was believed by Anselm (followed by John Duns Scotus and William of Ockham) to be incompatible with eudemonism. It is questionable whether Thomas could reduce the tension proving that it is just an apparent tension, in so far as the right reason and bliss derived from knowledge of God tend to coincide, but this is just a conjecture. Thomas’s ethics is a virtue ethic, not a law-based one, and moral judgment focuses on the virtues, particularly charity, not on the commandments and even less on absolute prohibitions; Thomas, however, would not have considered a drastic alternative between law and the virtues such as the one which has been advanced in late twentieth-century philosophy to be justified. Nonetheless, when it discusses ‘special’ virtues, it ceases to be an ethics of virtue and becomes a disappointing and often contradictory discussion of legal and illegal acts. Such a discussion takes most of the time ‘reasonable’ middle positions on controversial issues but not the alternative approach that Aristotelianism would have made possible; even when some occasional Aristotelian claim shows up, such as money’s barrenness as a reason against usury, this seems to be made by an author who apparently ignores the Aristotelian Thomas of the Prima Secundae. It is an ethic of human autonomy which recognizes the binding character of the individual conscience and, potentially, even a duty to disobey unjust laws. It is true that what Thomas writes in his discussion of death penalty and persecution of heretics is simply disgusting, and yet we should blame Thomas the man, not Thomist ethical theory. Finally, Thomas’s ethics is not ethical ‘absolutism’, as both traditionalist Catholic theologians and secularist enemies of dogmatic morality tend to believe. It is instead an ethic of prudential judgment. Exceptions to this approach – or better results of logical fallacies – are such claims as the absolute character of negative precepts and of the existence of "intrinsically evil acts", claims that simply cease to make sense in the light of Thomas’s own distinction between human act and natural act, carrying consequences Thomas did not live long enough to draw or was not consistent enough to dare to draw. -/- 11. Francisco de Vitoria and casuistry. The first topic illustrated is the discussion about the notion of pura natura, namely the human condition after the original sin and before divine revelation. The core notion was already there in Aquinas but was later developed by Caietanus (Thomas de Vio) with a number of interesting implications: firstly a view of human nature as such much more positive than Augustine’s and his followers’ view, including both Calvinists and Jansenists; secondly, the implication that the philosopher’s morality, as opposed to the Christian’s morality, is a quite respectable kind of morality; thirdly, that theocracy and prosecution of the unfaithful lacked justification, with more far-fetching consequences than Aquinas himself had dared to draw. The second topic is casuistry, a new name for a comparatively older way of thinking, which was already there in late Stoicism and Cicero as well as in the Talmudic literature. This is an approach aimed at yielding probable enough solutions for doubtful cases even in absence of completely safe staring points. The genre developed from medieval reference books for confessors and became by the sixteenth-century a sophisticated tool-box for dealing with various fields of applied ethics. Francisco Vitoria, the main authority of Baroque Scholasticism, was a controversial figure, among the proponents of the new discipline of casuistry and a consistent proponent of more separation between the religious and the civil authority, stricter limits to the legitimacy of war, innate rights of non-Christian nations in the New World based on the notion of pura natura, providing a standard of ‘natural’ goodness, previous to revelation, on which the Indian nations were judged to live in a naturally good condition, provided with the institutions of family, justice, and religion had accordingly a right to full respect by Christian sovereigns. Bartolomé de Las Casas, arguing along similar lines, was the leader of a historical battle in defence of the rights of the Indios. -/- 12. Michel de Montaigne and the art of living. A short description of one of the Renaissance Phyrronism, one of the classical philosophies revived in the fifteenth and sixteenth century. Montaigne combines the sceptical epistemology with an understanding of ethics – indeed of philosophy as a whole – in terms of an art of living inspired by two basic ideas, sagesse, that is, practical wisdom as the only kind of rationality available after theology, science, and tradition have declared bankrupt, and an aesthetic ideal of self-transformation through the art of writing and introspection. -/- 13. Pierre Nicole and neo-Augustinianism. The chapter illustrates first the vicissitudes of Augustinianism newly born after the late medieval triumph of Thomist Aristotelianism in the alternative Protestant and Catholic versions processed by the Calvinists and the Jansenists. Then it illustrates the doctrines of Pierre Nicole, Blaise Pascal’s best disciple, on the impossibility of introspection, on the ubiquity of self-deception, on the incurably evil character of the passion of love, and on the two moralities, the one of the man of the world, the morality of honesty which is indispensable for granting peace and order but devoid of any true value for eternal salvation, since the same external behaviour may be prompted by opposite motivations, and the morality of charity, the only true one but also useless to society. The third topic is Pierre Malebranche’s view of self-deception as a ubiquitous phenomenon accounting for human action and responsibility and his reformulated theory of self-love, no less ubiquitous than for Nicole and yet not as incurably evil, given the distinction between morally indifferent and even necessary amour de soi and vicious amour proper, a distinction on which the whole of Rousseau’s moral and political theory rests. -/- 14. Samuel von Pufendorf and the new science of morality. The chapter is dedicated to the discovery of the idea of a ‘new moral science’. Hugo Grotius is discussed first highlighting the real character of his project, much closer to the Thomist idea of a natural law accessible to non-corrupted human reason when human beings are living in a state of pura natura. Then Hobbes’s combination of scepticism, voluntarism, and conventionalism is described and both the continuity with Grotius’s new science, in the search for non-revealed rational morality, and the break with him, in the adoption of voluntarism and refusal of an intellectualist view of natural law, are illustrated. Pufendorf’s work is illustrated as a synthesis of the two previous attempts and the – up to Schneewind underestimated – paradigmatic example of the new science of morality. -/- 15. Richard Cumberland and consequentialist voluntarism. The chapter gives an overview of eighteenth-century Anglican ethics, noticing how the Cambridge tradition gave special weight to natural theology as opposed to positive or revealed theology – and how two Cambridge fellows, John Gay and Thomas Brown, elaborated on Cumberland’s (and Malebranche’s, as well as Leibniz’s) strategy for finding a third way between intellectualist view and voluntarist view of the laws of nature. The result of their elaboration was a kind of a rational-choice account of the origins of natural laws, where a law-giver God chooses among a number possible sets of laws on a maximizing criterion, and God’s maximandum is happiness for his creatures. The chapter notices also how such a solution aimed at solving at once the problem of evil and that of the foundation of moral obligation by proving how God’s choice was justified as far as it was the one minimising the amount of suffering in the world. 16. Richard Price and intuitionism. The chapter describes first the doctrines of the Cambridge Platonists, an example of hyper-rationalist reaction to Calvinism. Secondly it describes the sophisticated and universally ignored – from Sidgwick to Anscombe –version of what was later labelled ‘ethical intuitionism’ – showing how it escapes familiar objections and misrepresentations of intuitionism – from Mill to Rawls – in grounding its argument on transcendental arguments while carefully avoiding recourse to introspection and psychological evidence, which has been taken as a too easy target by critics of intuitionism. Thirdly, the chapter discusses Whewell’s ‘philosophy of morality’, as opposed to ‘systematic morality’, not unlike Kant’s distinction between a pure and an empirical moral philosophy. Whewell worked out a systematization of traditional normative ethics as a first step before its rational justification; he believed that the point in the philosophy of morality is justifying a few rational truths about the structure of morality such as to rule hedonism, eudemonism, and consequentialism; yet a system of positive morality cannot be derived solely from such rational truths but requires consideration of the ongoing dialectics between idea and fact in historically given moralities. Whewell’s intuitionism turns out closer to Kantian ethics than commentators have made us believe until now, and quite different from what Sidgwick meant by intuitionism. -/- 17. Adam Smith and the morality of role-switch. The chapter describes first, Hutcheson’s attempt at basing the ‘new science’ of natural law on different bedrock than Pufendorf and the English Platonists, namely a moral sense, a faculty whose existence is assumed to be proved on an empirical basis. The second step is a reconstruction of Hume’s rejoinder in terms of a new science of man including morality on an ‘experimental’ basis, that is, a ‘Newtonian’ hypothetical-deductive approach, distinguished from Hutcheson’s allegedly uncritical descriptive approach to human nature. The third step is a reconstruction of Adam Smith theory of morality understood as emerging from a spontaneous interplay of exchanges of situations (the most basic meaning of the word ‘sympathy’ as construed by this author). -/- 18. Jeremy Bentham and utilitarianism. The bulk of the chapter is dedicated to the doctrines of Jeremy Bentham. The Enlightenment spirit that suggested the idea of a new morality, free from religion, is illustrated. The notion of utility is illustrated as well as the subsequent formulations of the principle of utility. The idea of felicific calculus is discussed, showing how its inner difficulties prompted several reformulations of the principle of utility in order to avoid undesirable implications of proposed formulations. The role of the thesis of spontaneous convergence between interest and duty is discussed, showing how it left numberless questions open, and the distinction between the virtues of prudence, justice and beneficence is described as a way out of the deadlocks of classical utilitarianism. After Bentham, Mill’s reformed utilitarianism is reconstructed, showing how it is a kind of mixed system – as closer to common sense as it gives up Bentham’s claims to consistency and simplicity – resulting as unintended consequences from the controversies in which Mill was too keen to engage. The hidden agenda of the controversy between Utilitarianism and Intuitionism, going beyond the image of the battle between Prejudice and Reason, is described, showing how both competing philosophical outlooks turn out to be more research programs than self-contained doctrinal bodies, and such programs appear to be implemented, and indeed radically transformed while in progress thanks to their enemies no less than to their supporters. -/- 19. Immanuel Kant, practical reason and judgment. The chapter argues that Kant took from Moses Mendelssohn the idea of a distinction between geometry of morals and a practical ethic. He was drastically misunderstood by his followers precisely on this point. He had learned from the sceptics and the Jansenists the lesson that men are prompted to act by deceptive ends, and he was aware that human actions are also empirical phenomena, where laws like the laws of Nature may be detected. His practical ethics made room for judgment as a holistic procedure for assessing the saliency of relevant moral qualities in one given situation; this procedure yields the same results as the geometry of morals does for abstract cases but does so immediately and without balancing conflicting duties with each other, since what makes for the salient quality of a situation is perceived from the very beginning. Kant's practical philosophy is richer than the received image, making room for an ‘empirical moral philosophy’ or moral anthropology including treatment of commerce, needs, value and price, happiness and well-being; the overall social theory and philosophy of history is less different from Adam Smith's than the received image makes believe; the paradox of happiness is central to Kant's philosophy; a distinction between happiness and well-being is clearly drawn; the distinction plays a basic role in establishing a link between the economic and the moral life. -/- 20. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and the critique of abstract universalism. The chapter describes first the Romantic movement and the implications some of its concerns, rescuing passions, community, tradition, the individual as the bearer of a unique destiny, and the longing for organic unity between the individual, mankind and nature. Hegel’s contribution is discussed then, highlighting how, on the one hand, he shared a number of these concerns and on the other he had more rationalist leanings. The notion of morality is the pivotal point of the reconstruction, highlighting how Hegel construes this notion as a key to his own diagnosis of the malaise of modernity – the separation of individual and Gemeinschaft – and how his attack on Kant turns around this very idea. -/- 21. Friedrich Nietzsche against Christianity and the Enlightenment. The chapter illustrates first the idea of deconstruction of the back-world of values. Nietzsche claims to be legitimate heir of the French moralists, Leibniz, Kant and Hegel, in so far as he allegedly carries out to its deepest implications their discovery of what lies behind traditional naïve belief in the existence of an objective realm of values just waiting for description by the philosopher. The two exemplars form which genealogy draws inspiration are the classical philologist’s historical reconstructions of lost meanings and the chemist’s decomposition of elements. Then the genealogy of the notions of good and evil carried out in the first dissertation of Genealogy of morals is illustrated with its paradoxical conclusion that will to power is in fact the only ‘genuine’ kind of goodness. The third point illustrated is the dialectic of ascetism and self-realization with its ambiguous outcome. The suggested interpretation of such outcome is that Nietzsche’s normative ethics is a kind of virtue ethics taking an aesthetic ideal as a normative standard -/- 22. George Edward Moore and ideal utilitarianism. The chapter discusses the ideas of common sense and common-sense morality in Sidgwick. I argue that, far from aiming at overcoming common-sense morality, Sidgwick aimed purposely at grounding a consist code of morality by methods allegedly taken from the natural sciences to reach, also in ethics, the same kind of “mature” knowledge as in the natural sciences. His whole polemics with intuitionism was vitiated by the a priori assumption that the widespread ethos of the educated part of humankind, not the theories of the intuitionist philosophers, was what was worth considering as the expression of intuitionist ethics. In spite of a naïve positivist starting-point, Sidgwick was encouraged by his own approach in exploring the fruitfulness of coherentist methods for normative ethics. Thus, Sidgwick left an ambivalent legacy to twentieth-century ethics: the dogmatic idea of a “new” morality of a consequentialist kind, and the fruitful idea that we can argue rationally in normative ethics albeit without shared foundations. Then it reconstructs the background of ideas, concerns and intentions out of which Moore’s early essays, the preliminary version, and then the final version of Principia Ethica originated. I stress the role of religious concerns, as well as that of the Idealist legacy. I argue that PE is more a patchwork of rather diverging contributions than a unitary work, not to say the paradigm of a new school in Ethics. I add a comparison with Rashdall’s almost contemporary ethical work, suggesting that the latter defends the same general claims in a different way, one that manages to pave decisive objections in a more plausible way. I end by suggesting that the emergence of Analytic Ethics was a more ambiguous phenomenon than the received view would make us believe, and that the wheat (or some other gluten-free grain) of this tradition, that is, what logic can do for philosophy, should be separated from the chaff, that is, the confused and mutually incompatible legacies of Utilitarianism and Idealism. -/- 23. Edmund Husserl and the a-priori of action. The chapter illustrates first the idea of phenomenology and the Husserl’s project of a phenomenological ethic as illustrated in his 1908-1914 lectures. The key idea is dismissing psychology and trying to ground a new science of the a priori of action, within which a more restricted field of inquiry will be the science of right actions. Then the chapter illustrates the criticism of modern moral philosophy carried out in the 1920 lectures, where the main target is naturalism, understood in the Kantian meaning of primacy of common sense. The third point illustrate is Adolph Reinach’s theory of social acts as a key the grounding of norms, a view that basically sketches the very ideas ‘discovered’ later by Clarence I. Lewis, John Searle, Karl-Otto Apel and Jürgen Habermas. A final section is dedicated to Nicolai Hartman, who always refused to define himself a phenomenologist and yet developed a more articulated and detailed theory of ‘values’ – with surprising affinities with George E. Moore - than philosophers such as Max Scheler who claimed to Husserl’s legitimate heirs. -/- 24. Bertrand Russell and non-cognitivism. The chapter reconstructs first the discussion after Moore. The naturalistic-fallacy argument was widely accepted but twisted to prove instead that the intuitive character of the definition of ‘good’, its non-cognitive meaning, in a first phase identified with ‘emotive’ meaning. Alfred Julius Ayer is indicated as a typical proponent of such non-cognitivist meta-ethics. More detailed discussion is dedicated to Bertrand Russell’s ethics, a more nuanced and sophisticated doctrine, arguing that non-cognitivism does not condemn morality to arbitrariness and that the project of a rational normative ethics is still possible, heading finally to the justification of a kind of non-hedonist utilitarianism. Stevenson’s theory, another moderate version of emotivism is discussed at some length, showing how the author comes close to the discovery of the role of a pragmatic dimension of language as a basis for ethical argument. Last of all, the discussion from the Forties about Hume’s law is described, mentioning Karl Popper’s argument and Richard Hare’s early non-cognitivist but non-emotivist doctrine named prescriptivism. -/- 25. Elizabeth Anscombe and the revival of virtue ethics. The chapter discusses the three theses defended by Anscombe in 'Modern Moral Philosophy'. I argue that: a) her answer to the question "why should I be moral?" requires a solution of the problem of theodicy, and ignores any attempts to save the moral point of view without recourse to divine retribution; b) her notion of divine law is an odd one more neo-Augustinian than Biblical or Scholastic; c) her image of Kantian ethics and intuitionism is the impoverished image manufactured by consequentialist opponents for polemical purposes and that she seems strangely accept it; d) the difficulty of identifying the "relevant descriptions" of acts is not an argument in favour of an ethics of virtue and against consequentialism or Kantian ethics, and indeed the role of judgment in the latter is a response to the difficulties raised by the case of judgment concerning future action. A short look at further developments in the neo-naturalist current is given trough a reconstruction of Philippa Foot’s and Peter Geach’s critiques to the naturalist-fallacy argument and Alasdair MacIntyre’s grand reconstruction of the origins and allegedly unavoidable failure of the Enlightenment project of an autonomous ethic. -/- 26. Richard Hare and neo-Utilitarianism. The chapter addresses the issue of the complex process of self-transformation Utilitarianism underwent after Sidgwick’s and Moore’s fatal criticism and the unexpected Phoenix-like process of rebirth of a doctrine definitely refuted. A glimpse at this uproarious process is given through two examples. The first is Roy Harrod Wittgensteinian transformation of Utilitarianism in pure normative ethics depurated from hedonism as well as from whatsoever theory of the good. This results in preference utilitarianism combined with a ‘Kantian’ version of rule utilitarianism. The second is Richard Hare’s two-level preference utilitarianism where act utilitarianism plays the function of eventual rational justification of moral judgments and rule-utilitarianism that of action-guiding practical device. -/- 27. Hans-Georg Gadamer and rehabilitation of practical philosophy. The post-war rediscovery of ethics by many German thinkers and its culmination in the Sixties in the movement named ‘Rehabilitation of practical philosophy’ is described. Among the actors of such rehabilitation there were a few of Heidegger’s most brilliant disciples, and Hans-Georg Gadamer is chosen as a paradigmatic example. His reading of Aristotle’s lesson I reconstructed, starting with Heidegger’s lesson but then subtly subverting its outcome thanks to the recovery of the central role of the notion of phronesis. -/- 28. Karl-Otto Apel and the revival of Kantian ethics. Parallel to the neo-Aristotelian trend, there was in the Rehabilitation of practical philosophy a Kantian current. This started, instead than the rehabilitation of prudence, with the discovery of the pragmatic dimension of language carried out by Charles Peirce and the Oxford linguistic philosophy. On this basis, Karl-Otto Apel singled out as the decisive proponent of the linguistic and Kantian turn in German-speaking ethics, worked out the performative-contradiction argument while claiming that this was able to provide a new rational and universal basis for normative ethics. An examination of his argument is some detail is offered, followed by a more cursory reconstruction of Jürgen Habermas’s elaboration on Apel’s theory. -/- 29. John Rawls and public ethics as applied ethics. Rawls’s distinction between a “political” and a “metaphysical” approach to one central part of ethical theory, namely the theory of justice, is interpreted as a formulation of the same basic idea at the root of both the principles approach and neo-casuistry, both discussed in the following chapter, namely that it is possible to reach an agreement concerning positive moral judgments even though the discussion is still open – and in Rawls’ view never will be close – on the basic criteria for judgment. -/- 30. Beauchamp and Childress and bioethics as applied ethics. The chapter presents the revolution of applied ethics while stressing its methodological novelty, exemplified primarily by Beauchamp and Childress principles approach and then by Jonsen and Toulmin’s new casuistry. -/- . (shrink)

Studies of language evolution in the lab have used the iterated learning paradigm to show how linguistic structure emerges through cultural transmission—repeated cycles of learning and use across generations of speakers. However, agent-based simulations suggest that prior biases crucially impact the outcome of cultural transmission. Here, we explored this notion through an iterated learning study of English-French bilingual adults (mostly sequential bilinguals dominant in English). Each participant learned two unstructured artificial languages in a counterbalanced fashion, one resembling English, another resembling (...) French at the phono-orthographic level. The output of each participant was passed down to the next participant, forming diffusion chains of 10 generations per language. We hypothesized that artificial languages would become easier to learn and exhibit greater structure when they were aligned with participants’ bilingual experience (i.e., English languages being easier to learn overall), or as a function of practice (i.e., languages learned second being easier to learn overall). Instead, we found that English-like languages became more structured over generations, but only when they were learned first. In contrast, French-like languages became more structured regardless of the order of learning, suggesting the presence of an asymmetric switch cost during artificial language learning. Moreover, individual differences in language usage modulated the amount of structure produced by the participants. Overall, these data suggest that bilingual experience impacts how novel languages are learned at an individual level, which can then scale up to cultural transmission of novel language at a group level. (shrink)

How can imitation lead to free musical expression? This article explores the role of auditory imitation in jazz. Even though many renowned jazz musicians have assessed the method of imitating recorded music, no systematic study has hitherto explored how the method prepares for aural jazz improvisation. The article uses Berliner's assumption that learning jazz by aural imitation is “just like” learning a mother tongue. The article studies three potential stages in the method, comparing them to the imitative, rhythmic, multimodal, and (...) protosymbolic behavior of infant perception (building on the works of Stern, Trevarthen, and Merleau-Ponty). The demonstrations of the aural imitation method draw on pedagogic experiences accumulated since 1979 at the Jazz Program at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. By analyzing structures of behavior suggested by the method, the article indicates key traits that render aural jazz improvisation possible, such as a fundamental sense of rhythm, formation of symbolic behavior, joint musical attention, and the facility to “hear via the other.” In conclusion, we critically address a frequent theoretical model describing musical improvisation as a synthesis of discrete elements or building blocks. (shrink)

The paper considers apprenticeship as a model of education that both teaches technical skills and provides the grounding for personal formation. The research presented is based on long-term anthropological fieldwork with minaret builders in Yemen, mud masons in Mali and fine-woodwork trainees in London. These case studies of on-site learning and practice support an expanded notion of knowledge that exceeds propositional thinking and language and centrally includes the body and skilled performance. Crafts -- like sport, dance and other skilled (...) physical activities -- are largely communicated, understood and negotiated between practitioners without words, and learning is achieved through observation, mimesis and repeated exercise. The need for an interdisciplinary study of communication and understanding from the body is therefore underlined, and the paper suggests a way forward drawing on linguistic theory and recent neurological findings. It is argued that the validation and promotion of skilled practice as 'intelligent' is necessary for raising the status and credibility of apprenticestyle learning within our Western systems of education. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 529 any agent qualitatively identical with S would do A in a situation qualitatively identical with S's" (257). (14) The " would " in the above statement is the " would " of Molina, and the author acknowledges that his theory resembles that of Molina (262). For a reader who cannot swallow Molina's "futurihles," a good deal of Leftow's argument falls apart. In the end, then, we (...) have here a hook that verges on the monumental hut that will he diversely judged-as is normally the caseaccording to the philosophic stance of the reader. Surely it is a hook that cannot he ignored. JAMES w. FELT, S.J. Santa Clara University Santa Clara, California Wittgenstein on Ethics and Religious Belief. By CYRIL BARRETT. Oxford : Basil Blackwell, 1991. Pp. xiv + 285. $44.95 (cloth). Since his editorship in 1974 of the volume Lectures and Conversa· tions: Aesthetics, Psychology, and Religious Belief, Cyril Barrett's name has been associated with the interpretation of Wittgenstein's views on ethics and religious belief. At last we have in hook form his comprehensive exposition of this important dimension of the philosopher's thought. Barrett ranges from the Notebooks 1914-1916 all the way to remarks in On Certainty that stem from only a few days before Wittgenstein 's death. In addition to placing pertinent remarks of early and late periods in the context of the relevant major works and their chief themes, Barrett also expounds and analyses such shorter, more explicit treatments of ethics and religious belief as the " Lecture on Ethics," the "Remarks on Frazer's Golden Bough," and the remarks collected in Vermischte Bemerkungen (Remarks on Culture and Value). The hook is sympathetic in tone-perhaps too much so. The reader quite often feels-as I will make plain in what follows-that Barrett interprets Wittgenstein in a way that obscures the strangeness of his thought, tending to assimilate it too readily to the mainstream of Western theological reflection. Barrett has a three-fold program: "to show that (a) what Wittgen· stein has to say on ethics and religious belief was for him of the ut· most importance, if not sole importance; (h) his views on these subjects did not radically alter throughout his life, appearances to the contrary notwithstanding; and (c) what Wittgenstein said about ethics was intimately interwoven with what he said about religious belief " (xiv). The elements of this program call for different sorts of evalua· 530 BOOK REVIEWS tion. Clearly Wittgenstein thought ethics and religious belief were im· portant. So the question is whether Barrett's claim, that for Wittgen· stein they are the most important elements of his work or even the only important elements of his work, is an exaggeration. Barrett takes as determinative such remarks as Wittgenstein's statement to Ludwig Ficker that the point of the Tractatus is ethical, and he must explain or discount the fact that the vast hulk of his work has little obvious hearing on ethics or religion. Or if the hulk of that work is ethical and religious, then these terms come to mean, in a Wittgensteinian context, something quite different from their senses in Barrett's somewhat domesticated reading. As for the third element in the program-the interweaving of ethics and religion-this, too, is a question of degree. And the question is whether Barrett's analysis, keeping as it does to relatively standard notions of what constitutes religious belief, really does justice to Wittgenstein's insistence that religion must he a way of life rather than a body of doctrine. But it is Barrett's second thesis which is most interesting, most difficult to understand, and most promising, if it is true, for helping us to understand Wittgenstein's thought on ethics and religion. Barrett writes: " Wittgenstein did not abandon his earlier views on ethics and religious belief with their attendant notions of the mystical, transcendental, inexpressible, viewing sub specie aetemitate.... (T) here is no compelling reason to assume such a radical change of view and... all the features of the earlier views can he fitted into the new conceptions of language-games and forms of life" (xiii). Can it he that what Wittgenstein has to... (shrink)

How can imitation lead to free musical expression? This article explores the role of auditory imitation in jazz. Even though many renowned jazz musicians have assessed the method of imitating recorded music, no systematic study has hitherto explored how the method prepares for aural jazz improvisation. The article picks up an assumption presented by Berliner (1994), suggesting that learning jazz by aural imitation is “just like” learning a mother tongue. The article studies three potential stages in the method, comparing with (...) imitative, rhythmic, multimodal, and protosymbolic behavior of infant perception (building on the works of Stern, Trevarthen, and Merleau-Ponty). The demonstrations of the aural-imitation method draw on pedagogic experiences accumulated since 1979 in the Jazz Program at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. By analyzing structures of behavior suggested by the method, the article indicates key traits that render aural jazz improvisation possible, such as a fundamental sense of rhythm, formation of symbolic behavior, joint musical attention, and the facility to “hear via the other.” In conclusion, we critically address a frequent theoretical model describing musical improvisation as a synthesis of discrete elements or building blocks. (shrink)

She has always existed and is more than a citizen of multiverses,‭ ‬most likely the ground of all.‭ ‬In the West she was introduced around C.570‭ ‬and since then many individuals have searched for her,‭ ‬tried to become familiar with her and created all sorts of,‭ ‬frequently ridiculous,‭ ‬things in her name. Once someone has a passion for her it cannot be extinguished but increases.‭ ‬Objectively this need for her is referred to as‭ ‘‬love of wisdom‭’‬,‭ ‬the need for wisdom,‭ (...) ‬while personally it is a need of some individuals. -/- This passion and need has become institutionalized and it has developed a discourse and became a socio-cultural practice of its own.‭ ‬Fairly recently it has even become a discipline at,‭ ‬mostly higher,‭ ‬institutions of learning.‭ ‬Previously those searching for and attempting to interact with her came from many walks of life and all kinds of professions,‭ ‬while in the last century or so many people began to live off her as they are remunerated for talking about,‭ ‬about the history of searching for and investigating her and saying all sorts of things about her. -/- Many things are done in her name and all sorts of neologisms are fabricated to label them,‭ ‬such as analytic,‭ ‬continental,‭ ‬idealism,‭ ‬rationalism,‭ ‬empiricism,‭ ‬and all these labels are again specified and specified ad infinitum with terms such as materialism,‭ ‬physicalism,‭ ‬weak naturalism,‭ ‬speculative and new realism,‭ ‬etc. -/- Individuals from many other disciplines and areas of life,‭ ‬such as sociology,‭ ‬the arts,‭ ‬humanities,‭ ‬cognitive sciences,‭ ‬sport,‭ ‬etc got on the bandwagon so that we now have a philosophy or love of wisdom,‭ ‬epistemologies,‭ ‬ontologies etc of everything under the sun.‭ ‬Even if you were to write some theses or do some study you will stipulate your epistemology,‭ ‬ontology,‭ ‬methodology,‭ ‬etc.‭ ‬Just as those who live off philosophy become involved in every area of humanity and all its socio-cultural practices produce so-called peer reviewed publications,‭ ‬articles,‭ ‬essays and books on philosophy of art,‭ ‬sport,‭ ‬humanities,‭ ‬cognitive sciences,‭ ‬religion,‭ ‬gods,‭ ‬sex,‭ ‬rock‭ ‘‬n roll,‭ ‬language,‭ ‬words,‭ ‬ideas,‭ ‬how words and ideas and concepts do their thing,‭ ‬etc,‭ ‬etc.‭ -/- The way these subject-matter are treated will usually consists of some form of reasoning,‭ ‬the use of arguments or argumentation and some kind of logic and a process that resembles the features,‭ ‬steps,‭ ‬stages and processes of theorizing,‭ ‬the construction and development of models,‭ ‬short term,‭ ‬medium or large theories.‭ ‬The latter is often presented in the form of entire‭ ‘‬metaphysical‭’ ‬and speculative systems such as those of Plato,‭ ‬Aristotle,‭ ‬Kant,‭ ‬Hegel,‭ ‬Marx,‭ ‬Husserl,‭ ‬Habermas et al.‭ ‬While Socrates and to some extent the later Wittgenstein attempted to be more authentic to the original principles of trying to follow and developed the ideal of identifying,‭ ‬capturing by verbal interaction‭ (‬be it discourse,‭ ‬or dialogue‭) ‬and becoming one‭ (‬like mystics of all religions who are passionate about‭ ‘‬the one‭’‬,‭ ‬the Beloved,‭ ‬the one Real Self,‭ ‬etc and attempt to become one,‭ ‬united with or‭ ‘‬oned‭’ ‬with their object or subject of desire‭) ‬with Sophos‭ – ‬by exploring and investigating or applying and executing practical use of language,‭ ‬and thereby to uncover and capture her. -/- The effects of the institutionalization of the discipline are far-reaching and the professionalization of the role of philosopher as a‭ ‘‬profession‭’‬,‭ ‬an employee of an institution and a representative of the status quo are discussed in a number of articles being cited. -/- The methods of the philosophical discourse vary,‭ ‬first of all between the so-called Continental and Anglophone Analytic philosophies,‭ ‬its movements,‭ ‬schools and institutions,‭ ‬such as research universities,‭ ‬journals,‭ ‬communities and book publishers.‭ ‬It seems as if increasingly philosophizing employs some of the stages and steps of the processes of theorizing.‭ ‬Other aspects of her methods are heuristic devices,‭ ‬the use of metaphors and analogies,‭ ‬philosophical logic,‭ ‬informal and other types of logic,‭ ‬arguments and argumentation.‭ ‬This involves the creation of fallacies in thinking and reasoning and the causing of all sorts of fallacies or crooked thinking. -/- The nature and changes of philosophical subject-matter are discussed as the socio-cultural practice lost most of its traditional‭ ‘‬objects‭’ ‬with the social and cultural differentiation of other,‭ ‬specialized disciplines.‭ ‬In turn the discourse attempts to fabricate other subject-matter,‭ ‬for example the development of so-called Experimental Philosophy,‭ ‬inter-disciplinary studies such as cognitive sciences and philosophies or meta-level explorations of and speculations about other disciplines,‭ ‬professions and domains‭ (‬for example normative,‭ ‬instrumental and subjective aesthetic‭ – ‬this the terminology and distinctions according to the working class obsessive Critical Theory of the so-called Frankfurt Schule.‭ ‬One always wonders what degree of personal experience their educated,‭ ‬middle class academics have of‭ ‘‬the working class‭’‬,‭ ‬whatever that is meant to be‭?)) ‬of human activity.‭ ‬Such as philosophy of medicine,‭ ‬sport,‭ ‬art,‭ ‬religion,‭ ‬just name it and it is bound to exist.‭ -/- Another‭ ‘‬extension‭’ ‬of or interest in‭ ‘‬philosophy‭’ ‬is that of certain individuals,‭ ‬schools or movements in other disciplines,‭ ‬for example social‭ ‘‬sciences‭’ ‬such as sociology and supporters of the above mentioned‭ ‘‬Schule‭’‬.‭ ‬They frequently use philosophical words such as ontology,‭ ‬epistemology,‭ ‬multi-dimensional,‭ ‬many-levels,‭ ‬contexts assumptions,‭ ‬pre-suppositions,‭ ‬immanent,‭ ‬transcendent,‭ ‬etc.‭ ‬Is this intended to be an extension of philosophy and the doing of philosophizing or merely cognitive bias of the form‭ ‘‬authority bias‭’‬.‭ ‬In this case the authority being‭ ‘‬the discipline of philosophy‭’‬,‭ ‬as well as the‭ ’‬use of the word philosophy‭ ‬and terms from the philosophical discourse‭’‬.‭. (shrink)

We deal with five aspects of the intrinsic connection of logic, ethics, and aesthetics in Wittgenstein's Tractatus: (a) the indication of what Wittgenstein called the "higher" of the world and language; (b) the conveyance of values through an intuition "sub specie aeternitatis"; (c) the discussion of internal properties of volitional totalities; (d) the reference to the metaphysical subject as the subject of volition (the will) (e) the indication of a "happy life". This intrinsic connection supplements the idea of the (...) class='Hi'>transcendental unity of logic, ethics, and aesthetics, and goes beyond it. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:John Robert Leo CRITICISM OF CONSCIOUSNESS IN SHELLEY'S A DEFENCE OF POETRY IN his "Ode to Liberty" Shelley locates by encircling and enfolding metaphors a mythic Hellenic moment, one in which verse was yet "speechless" and philosophy still burdened with "lidless eyes." Greece— always for Shelley either the displaced Garden of prethematic unity or the mythic dream of integrated civic and aesthetic life—is about to inaugurate Athens and the (...) "wrinkled image" of historical consciousness.1 Poetry, thinking, and the tilling of an earth "to human use" are implicitly related and foreseen as destiny: from their enchanted caves Prophetic echoes flung dim melody. On the unapprehensive wild The vine, the corn, the olive mild, Grew savage yet, to human use unreconciled; And, like unfolded flowers beneath the sea, Like the man's dark thought in the infant's brain, Like aught that is which wraps what is to be, Art's deathless dreams lay veiled by many a vein Of Parian stone; and, yet a speechless child, Verse murmured, and Philosophy did strain Her lidless eyes for thee... (11. 49-60). Shelley could be describing the reading or speaking of a text, for poetic experience is an originating moment which unfolds our reflections and anticipations. Poetry elides speechlessness and the empty gaze. Its goings are all returnings, its experience is always inventive before meanings codify and resolve: "Every original language near to its source," we find in the Defence (p. 279), "is in itself the chaos of a cyclic poem; the copiousness of lexicography and the distinctions of grammar are the works of a later age and are merely the catalogue and the form of the creations of poetry." What was dark to experience is now illumined, 46 John Robert Leo47 as different regions in experience are uncovered or redistributed by language across our shifting horizons. Thus this bringing-foward-intoclarity, this moving of the previously inexpressed into articulation, is the pattern not only behind Shelley's view ofGreece producing a "sun-fire garlanded" Athens (1. 68), but also the more pervasive design describing other regarded experience. James Edie puts it this way: "We... can learn to make distinctions in our experience by attending to differences of meaning which are normally below the level of our own cultural threshold. By attending to a given region of experience, we can lower the differential thresholds already sedimented in our language almost indefinitely and make what was implicit in our experience more and more explicit."2 Edie's comments may be taken as responses to questions emerging from modernist readings of Shelley and other visionary poets—Blake, Hart Crane, or Charles Olson are instances—who sense the poetic project as a criticism of consciousness, within the lived body, as it struggles to make a world. How do language and the imagination consort in the critical regeneration of our lives? In what sorts of ways is renascence the uncovering and unfolding of an indefinite wholeness by the unlayering of fixed habits and attitudes? How does Shelley's Defence of Poetry, both a text on aesthetics and a reading of the world, suggest their alignment? What methods from critical discourse make Shelley's poetics present to our experience and thought? The adjustment of these issues is the task of the remainder of my article. First I examine Shelley's organization of consciousness into "reason" and "imagination" and trace the meanings of these functions in their immediate social context. A brief dispute with the reductive idealism of Platonic tradition allows for my third procedure, which is a phenomenological description of the imaginative field according to Husserl. Finally, I try to explicate Shelley's understanding of imaginative "decentering" within our experience. I Poetry and prose are saturated with references to phenomena. Texts refer to interior and exterior events (memory, rain), which are objects ofandfor consciousness. Shelley grasps this co-givenness of consciousness and world, their correlativity, as a condition revealed and strengthened by metaphor, which itself arrests us as "that of which we are speaking through words."3 But if it is the nature of language to be both perceptual and yet transcendental, both present and absent, it still exists as the imagination's voice in... (shrink)

The question of man -- Time and the will -- Receptivity and spatiality -- Distance and concealment -- Art and difference -- The 'speaking' of language -- Human nature and sensus communis -- Inspiration and genius -- Thought and expression -- A history of truth and truthfulness -- Being and the hidden God.

The awareness of the last 20 years about embodied cognition is directing multidisciplinary attention to the musical domain and impacting psychological research approaches from the 4E cognition. Based on previous research regarding musical teaching and learning conceptions of 30 young guitar apprentices of advanced level in three learning cultures: Western classical, jazz, and flamenco of oral tradition, two participants of flamenco with polarised profiles of learning were selected as instrumental cases for a prospective ex post facto design. Discourse and practice (...) of the two flamenco guitarists were analysed in-depth to describe bodily issues and verbal discourse on the learning practice in their natural contexts. Qualitative analysis is performed on the posture, gestures, verbal discourse, and musical practice of the participants through the System for the Analysis of Music Teaching and Learning Practices. The results are organised attending: the Embodied mind through differential postures and gestures of flamenco participants that showed a fusion among verbal, body language, and musical discourse with respect to the musical literacy cultures; the Embedded mind and a detailed description of circumstances and relationships of the two flamenco participants, and how music is embedded in their way of life, family and social context, and therefore transcends musical activity itself; the Enactive mind, regarding the active processes that make differences between the reproductive and the transformative flamenco apprentices, then tentative relationship are observed in the discourse of each apprentice and the way in which they practice; finally, the Extended mind through the bodily, technical and symbolic tools they use during learning. Flamenco culture of oral tradition made use of listening, and temporary external representations instead of notational, but also the body played a central role in a holistic rhythm processing through multimodality, such as singing, playing, and dancing. Conclusions point out the embodied mind as a result of the culture of learning reflected through the body and the gesture in instrumental learning. (shrink)

Williamson & Carrington argued, in a recent edition of Educational Studies, the need for a major investigation of the effectiveness of an apprenticeship approach to reading. This paper considers some of the problems associated with such investigations. It also seeks to clarify some of the terminology in the whole language repertoire before looking in detail at shared reading as an important part of such approaches. The article concludes by suggesting that ethnographic studies are the means by which issues in (...) the teaching and learning of reading may best be clarified, and teachers and children assisted. (shrink)

Iconicity, the resemblance between the form of a word and its meaning, has effects on behavior in both communicative symbol development and language learning experiments. These results have invited speculation about iconicity being a key feature of the origins of language, yet the presence of iconicity in natural languages seems limited. In a diachronic study of language change, we investigated the extent to which iconicity is a stable property of vocabulary, alongside previously investigated psycholinguistic predictors of change. Analyzing 784 English (...) words with data on their historical forms, we found that stable words are higher in iconicity, longer in length, and earlier acquired during development, but that the role of frequency and grammatical category may be less important than previously suggested. Iconicity is revealed as a feature of ultra-conserved words and potentially also as a property of vocabulary early in the history of language origins. (shrink)

What is the source of aesthetic knowledge? Empirical knowledge, it is generally held, bottoms out in perception. Such knowledge can be transmitted to others through testimony, preserved by memory, and amplified via inference. But perception is where the rubber hits the road. What about aesthetic knowledge? Does it too bottom out in perception? Most say “yes”. But this is wrong. When it comes to aesthetic knowledge, it is appreciation, not perception, where the rubber hits the road. The ultimate source of (...) aesthetic knowledge is feeling. In this essay, we articulate and defend the very idea of affective knowledge and reveal aesthetic knowledge to be a species of the genus. We then show how the view resolves a thorny problem that has bedeviled aesthetic epistemologists: how to reconcile the seemingly direct character of aesthetic knowledge with the possibility of acquiring such knowledge from criticism. One learns from criticism, we argue, when it guides one’s engagement with an object so that one can appreciate it in virtue of those of its features that render it worthy of appreciation. (shrink)

In recent years, few areas of research have advanced as rapidly as cognitive science, the study of the human mind and brain. A fundamentally interdisciplinary field, cognitive science has both inspired and been advanced by work in the arts and humanities. In _Conversations on Cognitive Cultural Studies: Literature, Language, and Aesthetics,_ Frederick Luis Aldama and Patrick Colm Hogan, two of the most prominent experts on the intersection of mind, brain, and culture, engage each other in a lively dialog that (...) sets out the foundations of a cognitive neuroscientific approach to literature. Despite their shared premises, Aldama and Hogan differ—sometimes sharply—on key issues; their discussion therefore presents the reader not with a single doctrine, but with options for consideration—an appropriate result in this dynamic field. With clarity and learning, Aldama and Hogan consider five central topics at the intersection of literature and cognitive science. They begin with the fundamental question of the nature of the self. From here, they turn to language, communication, and thought before moving on to the central issue of the structure and operation of narrative. The book concludes with thought-provoking explorations of aesthetics and politics. Illustrating their arguments with work that ranges from graphic fiction and popular cinema to William Faulkner and Bertolt Brecht, Aldama and Hogan leave the reader with a clear sense of what cognitive cultural studies have already achieved and the significant promise the discipline holds for the future. (shrink)

This work investigates one of the most widespread yet elusive ideas about our experience of art: the idea that there is something cognitively valuable in engaging with great artworks, or, in other words, that we learn from them. This claim and the age-old controversy that surrounds it are reconsidered in light of the psychological and neuroscientific literature on learning, in one of the first systematic efforts to bridge the gap between philosophical and scientific inquiries on the topic. The work has (...) five chapters. Chapter 1 lays down its conceptual bases: it explains what learning is taken to be in the current philosophical debate and it points out how Bayesian cognitive science (particularly in its predictive processing formulations) might be well-suited to capture the kind of learning involved in our engagement with the arts. The following chapters test this latter hypothesis with respect to particular art forms, namely literature and literary language (Chapter 2), narrative (Chapter 3), and visual art, music and motor activities (Chapter 4). The fine-grained discussions conducted in each of these areas will enable us to see that the relationship between art and learning is indeed fundamental and pervasive. The final chapter (Chapter 5) examines the consequences of this fact for our understanding of the role of art in our epistemic practices, its ultimate usefulness and value, and its place in the interdisciplinary study of the human mind. The upshot is a novel and wide-ranging picture, both philosophically informed and empirically sound, that bypasses many of the problems and dead ends of the current philosophical debate on the topic and captures the deep sense in which art and learning are interrelated. (shrink)

Data on toddler language acquisition and use support the idea of a cognitive that can resolve contradictory claims about human-animal similarities. Examples of imagination, aesthetic evaluation, theory of mind (ToM), and language learning reveal higher-order, relational, abstract capabilities early on. Although language itself may be a consequence of exercising this supermodule, it enables further cognitive operations on indirect experience to go far beyond animal accomplishments.

Hyppolite stresses his proximity to Merleau-Ponty, but the received interpretation of his “anti-humanist” reading of Hegel suggests a greater distance between their projects. This paper focuses on an under-explored dimension of their philosophical relationship. I argue that Merleau-Ponty and Hyppolite are both committed to formulating a mode of philosophical expression that can avoid the pitfalls of purely formal or literal and purely aesthetic or creative modes of expression. Merleau-Ponty’s attempt to navigate this dichotomy, I suggest, closely resembles Hyppolite’s interpretation of (...) Hegel’s “speculative” mode of expression. In particular, his emphasis on the “mediating” character of philosophical language, which moves between descriptive and creative expression, suggests a debt to Hyppolite. This reading provides more evidence to think that Hyppolite cannot be straightforwardly understood as an anti-humanist or post-phenomenological thinker, and paves the way for a _rapprochement_ between his work and the broader phenomenological tradition. (shrink)

Walter Benjamin called Felix Noeggerath (1885-1960) the “universal genius” or simply “genius.” In his 1916 treatise “Synthesis and the Concept of System in Philosophy,” Noeggerath offered a reading of Kant’s concept of synthesis in an original and radical manner. He dares to confront thought with the incommensurability of atheoretical Being. The linkage between logic and incommensurability is what he calls rationalism. In contradiction to this claim, any attempt to exclude atheoretical Being from the realm of logic is anti-rationalism. Noeggerath elaborates (...) on this in a penetrating discussion and modification of epistemological positions, especially those of the Marburg School and Hermann Cohen. Noeggerath constructs a notion of the philosophical system with the help of Kant’s three tables of transcendental judgements, categories, and principles in the Critique of Pure Reason. Each of these tables is known to contain 12 individual elements in four groups of three each. For the systematic division, the third group under the title “Relation” is decisive. Noeggerath assigns one systemic part to each kind of relation: “For it is to be connected: the categorical relation with ethics, the hypothetical with logic, and the disjunctive with aesthetics.” As a result the classical sequence, beginning with logic, is changed. “The order of the limbs is: a) ethics, b) logic, c) aesthetics.” In Noeggerath’s logical outline, specific mathematical concepts of meta-geometry play a decisive role. According to him, philosophy can resemble their preciseness in building a viable concept of the infinite. The prerequisite is that philosophy does not itself behave mathematically but proceeds along its own path in critical distance to the “specialized, act-kindred thinking” of the mathematician. (shrink)

This edited volume presents new lines of research dealing with the language of thought and its philosophical implications in the time of Ockham. It features more than 20 essays that also serve as a tribute to the ground-breaking work of a leading expert in late medieval philosophy: Claude Panaccio. Coverage addresses topics in the philosophy of mind and cognition (externalism, mental causation, resemblance, habits, sensory awareness, the psychology, illusion, representationalism), concepts (universal, transcendental, identity, syncategorematic), logic and language (definitions, syllogisms, (...) modality, supposition, obligationes, et cetera), action theory (belief, will, action), and more. A distinctive feature of this work is that it brings together contributions in both French and English, the two major research languages today on the main theme in question. It unites the most renowned specialists in the field as well as many of Claude Panaccio's former students who have engaged with his work over the years. In furthering this dialogue, the essays render key topics in fourteenth-century thought accessible to the contemporary philosophical community without being anachronistic or insensitive to the particularities of the medieval context. As a result, this book will appeal to a general population of philosophers and historians of philosophy with an interest in logic, philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, and metaphysics. (shrink)

Contemporary theatre allows for a script, a scenario, that is exclusively visual. If action is no longer supported by dialogue, this does not mean that it will disappear. It will undoubtedly return in gestural exchange and in a temporality that is expansive or contracted and condensed. Action becomes an opaque enigma. The interpretation of performative action is a journey that the spectator undertakes in a foreign country, where we are forced to learn a new language. It remains to be seen (...) what the reaction and the work of interpretation of the spectator would be when confronted with an action knowingly deprived of any meaningful anchor or referent. Would it merely be confusion? Confusion and an interpretative effort that often comes to an end by a harsh defeat: the aesthetic of the performative represents a moment of rupture in the process of rethinking of the traditional relationship between artist and spectator. (shrink)

It is well known that Kant’s aesthetics is framed intersubjectively because he upholds the claim of taste to universality. However, the transcendental foundation of this shared universality is a supersensible ground which is taken for granted but which cannot be brought directly into communicative experience. Kant’s reliance on the synthetic a priori structure of aesthetic judgment also removes it from the sphere of observable personal interaction. This argumentative strategy exposes it to skeptical challenge and generates inaccessible references to inner (...) representations (be they intuitions, categories of the understanding or rational ideas). It is not sufficient, as Kant did, to propose a description of aesthetic experience that is subjectively plausible and thereby claim its intersubjective validity. It is indispensable to embody intersubjectivity in behavior and language. In practical intersubjectivity, aesthetic attitudes are dealt with in a concrete and accessible manner without relying on mentalistic assumptions as a foundation. Conceptual terms such as ‘agreeable’, ‘beauty’, ‘sublime’, ‘ugly’, ‘universality’ acquire new meaning. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Educational Imperative: A Defense of Socratic and Aesthetic LearningMark StockerThe Educational Imperative: A Defense of Socratic and Aesthetic Learning, by Peter Abbs; x & 250 pp. Bristol, Pennsylvania: Taylor & Francis, 1994, $29.00 paper.O tempora! o mores! Peter Abbs begins by deploring “the cultural catastrophe” of British education in the mid-1990s. He states in his always lucid and accessible prose: “I want to come clean; I want (...) to place the general argument of the book in the current arena of public debate, and to do so without apology and without equivocation.” He bemoans today’s massive denial of spiritual energy, of intellectual enquiry, of aesthetic beauty and public virtue. In a better world, he says, education would serve, “willingly and lovingly... the transcendent ends” of culture and society. Abbs decisively rejects the “Cato” model where teachers are unquestioning skill-based technicians who employ [End Page 393] “managerial” language. Instead, he advocates a Socratic view, which is “to reaffirm that education should be primarily concerned with critical reflection, with personal development and with the sustained enquiry into the various forms of meaning.”Subsequent chapters apply this approach to the arts curriculum. Its failure to gain proper recognition and the absurd and continued conflation of Dance and Physical Education are indicted. Abbs convincingly attacks the notion of “self-expression” in art and language long upheld by educationalists. Its application at the expense of reason, abstract thinking, and the study of “the truly significant writers through the centuries” has in his view helped to trivialize and to marginalize the arts. Nowhere is this more apparent than in so-called “educational drama.” For three generations it has denied “the aesthetic field of drama, the symbolic field of its own form,” and has elevated one genre, improvisation, and made it the totality.Abbs is committed to reconciling “the creative energies of the individual and the creative energies of the culture.” Who would argue with that? And who could deny the value of critical reflection or indeed public virtue? He declares, rather ponderously: “The vested interests of Coca-Cola manufacturers or political missionaries have to be seen as too ‘recent and relevant’ to be allowed” to shape education. The Abbs academy requires “a formally protected place, an institutional space more like the theatre than Tesco [a supermarket chain], more like the cathedral than the Stock Exchange.” For all this patent seriousness and sincerity, here is an educationalist irrevocably and irreconcilably out of joint with the present. The austere modernism of Herbert Read profoundly influenced Abbs in his teens; he also admires F. R. Leavis, Richard Hoggart, and David Holbrook, whose writing at its most influential spans the 1930s and the 1960s. Abbs’s most recent source of inspiration is the art critic Peter Fuller, whose abiding legacy was a romantic nationalism that eloquently celebrated an “essentially symbolic and figurative” tradition in British art from J. M. W. Turner to Henry Moore.Modern Painters, which Fuller edited, could afford to eschew popular culture and its connections with “higher” arts. Fine for a periodical, but how could such a fastidious approach be applied to the classroom experience? Abbs describes an experiment that he performed on student-teachers at the University of Sussex to understand their aesthetic responses. Among the events and objects that the students were asked to consider were John Constable’s The Haywain, Richard Strauss’s The Four Last Songs, a visit to Claude Monet’s garden and a performance of Coriolanus. Abbs’s list does not, however, contain Pulp Fiction, a Courtney Love concert, or an S. E. Hinton novel. What place, if any, do the latter have in the arts curriculum? Must they be ruled out for being too “recent and relevant”? Can student responses to them be brought to bear on their comprehension of higher culture? Or is there a great and ultimately irreconcilable divide? Abbs never faces these issues and instead, in his fogyish [End Page 394] coda, denounces once more “the consumer society” which has “trivialized on an unprecedented scale” and has “tarnished whatever it has touched.”Mark StockerUniversity of Canterbury, New ZealandCopyright © 1995 The Johns Hopkins University Press... (shrink)

The opposition between learning as a process of self-cultivation and learning as a form of vocational training for the workplace is becoming ever more deeply entrenched in the twenty-first-century university. In language education in particular, the distinction between these two competing aims influences the way in which educators approach curriculum design and inevitably shapes the attitudes learners bring to the classroom. In this article, we contest what we see as the overly simplistic opposition between Bildung and Ausbildung by deploying a (...) conception of play that suspends the pragmatic demands of everyday existence. We argue that when learning activities are envisaged as a form of free-flowing, playful exploration, skills-based language training can be understood as an experience of Bildung in which the language learner creatively renegotiates their own identity through an encounter with both their own values and those of the target culture. (shrink)

Learning the unique linguistic forms and structures that construct and communicate scientific principles, knowledge, and beliefs is important for developing students’ disciplinary literacy. The use of scientific language is apparent in the texts that scientists produce to communicate their findings to other scientists—the research articles. Texts are underused in the science classroom and the texts that students do read often do not reflect the core attributes of authentic scientific reasoning. Adapted primary literature refers to an educational genre that enables the (...) use of scientific articles in high school. In the adaptation process, the language of the article is changed to make it more accessible for high school students. Here, we present a systemic functional linguistics analysis of an APL article compared to the original research article and to a popular article. The three texts were systematically scanned and compared for specific lexicogrammatical items that characterize five linguistic features of scientific writing: informational density, abstraction, technicality, authoritativeness, and hedging. We found that the adaptation process lowered the lexical complexity, while retaining the authenticity of the scientific writing. APL articles, as suggested by the linguistic analysis presented here, may serve as models of scientific reasoning and communication and may promote students’ language awareness and disciplinary literacy. We suggest using APL articles as an apprenticeship genre, for learning about the unique features of authentic scientific texts, and the reasoning that is reflected in the way the articles are written. (shrink)

The limit of language is one of the most pervasive notions found in Wittgenstein's work, both in his early Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and his later writings. Moreover, the idea of a limit of language is intimately related to important scholarly debates on Wittgenstein's philosophy, such as the debate between the so-called traditional and resolute interpretations, Wittgenstein's stance on transcendental idealism, and the philosophical import of Wittgenstein's latest work On Certainty. This collection includes thirteen original essays that provide a comprehensive overview (...) of the various ways in which Wittgenstein appeals to the limit of language at different stages of his philosophical development. The essays connect the idea of a limit of language to the most important themes discussed by Wittgenstein--his conception of logic and grammar, the method of philosophy, the nature of the subject, and the foundations of knowledge--as well as his views on ethics, aesthetics, and religion. The essays also relate Wittgenstein's thought to his contemporaries, including Carnap, Frege, Heidegger, Levinas, and Moore. (shrink)

This guide accompanies the following article: Matthew Kieran, ‘Art, Morality and Ethics: On the (Im)moral Character of Art Works and Inter‐Relations to Artistic Value’. Philosophy Compass 1/2 (2006): pp. 129–143, doi: 10.1111/j.1747‐9991.2006.00019.x Author’s Introduction Up until fairly recently it was philosophical orthodoxy – at least within analytic aesthetics broadly construed – to hold that the appreciation and evaluation of works as art and moral considerations pertaining to them are conceptually distinct. However, following on from the idea that artistic value is (...) broader than aesthetic value, the last 15 years has seen an explosion of interest in exploring possible inter‐relations between the appreciative and ethical character of works as art. Consideration of these issues has a distinguished philosophical history but as the Compass survey article suggests (‘Art, Morality and Ethics: On the (Im)Moral Character of Art Works and Inter‐Relations to Artistic Value.’Philosophy Compass 1.2 (2006): 129–43), it is only very recently that figures in the field have returned to it to develop more precisely what they take the relationships to be and why. Consensus is, unsurprisingly, lacking. The reinvigoration of the issues has led sophisticated formalists or autonomists to mount a more considered defence of the idea that aesthetic and literary values are indeed conceptually distinct from the justification or otherwise of the moral perspective or views endorsed in a work (Topic I). The challenges presented by such a defence are many but amongst them are appeals to critical practice (Lamarque and Olsen), scepticism about whether or not art really can give us bona fide knowledge (Stolnitz) and the recognition that truth often seems to be far removed from what it is we value in our appreciation of works (Lamarque). One way to motivate consideration of the relevance of a work’s moral character to its artistic value concerns the phenomena of imaginative resistance. At least sometimes it would seem that, as Hume originally suggested, we either cannot or will not enter imaginatively into the perspective solicited by a work due to its morally problematic character (Topic II). In some cases, it would seem that as a matter of psychological fact, we cannot do so since it is impossible for us to imagine how it could be that a certain attitude or action is morally permissible or good (Walton). The question then is whether or not this is a function of morality in particular or constraints on imaginative possibility more generally and what else is involved. At other times, the phenomena seem to be driven by a moral reluctance to allow ourselves to enter into the dramatic perspective involved (Moran) or evaluation of the attitude expressed (Stokes). Nonetheless, it is far from obvious that this is so of all the attitudes or responses we judge to be morally problematic. After all, it looks like we can and indeed often do suspend or background particular cognitive and moral commitments in engaging with all sorts of works (Nichols and Weinberg). If the moral character of a work interacts with how we appreciate and evaluate them, then the pressing question is this: is there any systematic account of the relationship available to us? One way is to consider the relationship between our emotional responses to works and their moral character (Topic III). After all, art works often solicit various emotional responses from us to follow the work and make use of moral concepts in so doing (Carroll). Indeed, whether or not a work merits the sought for emotional responses often seems to be internally related to ethical considerations (Gaut). Yet, it is not obvious that we should apply our moral concepts or respond emotionally in our imaginative engagement with works as art as we should in real life (Kieran, Jacobson). A different route is via the thought that art can convey knowledge (Topic IV). There might be particular kinds of moral knowledge art distinctively suited to conveying (Nussbaum) or it may just be that art does so particularly effectively (Carroll, Gaut, Kieran). Either way where this can be tied to the artistic means and appreciation of a work it would seem that to cultivate moral understanding contributes to the value of a work and to betray misunderstanding is a defect. Without denying the relevance of the moral character of a work some authors have wanted to claim that sometimes the immoral aspect of a work can contribute to rather than lessen its artistic value (Topic V). One route is to claim that there is no systematic theoretical account of the relationship available and what the right thing to say is depends on the particular case involved (Jacobson). Another involves the claim that this is so when the defect connects up in an appropriate way to one of the values of art. Thus, it has been claimed, only where a work reveals something which adds to intelligibility, knowledge or understanding in virtue of its morally problematic aspect can this be so (Kieran). The latter position looks like it could in principle be held whilst nonetheless maintaining that the typical or standard relationship is as the moralists would have it. Yet perhaps allowing valence change for such reasons is less a mark of principled explanation and more a function of downright inconsistency or incoherence (Harold). The topics themselves and suggested readings given below follow the structure articulated above as further amplified in the Compass survey article. The design and structure given below can be easily compressed or expanded further. Author Recommends 1 Carroll, Noël. ‘Art, Narrative and Moral Understanding.’Aesthetics and Ethics: Essay at the Intersection. Ed. Jerrold Levinson. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1998. 126–60. 2 This article develops the idea that engaging with narrative art calls on moral concepts and emotions and can thereby clarify our moral understanding. 2 Carroll, Noël. Beyond Aesthetics: Philosophical Essays. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2009. 4 Part IV consists of six distinct essays on questions concerning the inter‐relations between art and morality including the essay cited above and the author’s articulation and defence of moderate moralism. 3 Gaut, Berys. ‘The Ethical Criticism of Art.’Aesthetics and Ethics: Essay at the Intersection. Ed. Jerrold Levinson. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1998. 182–203. 4 Gaut, Berys. Art, Emotion and Ethics. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2007. 7 This monograph provides the most exhaustive treatment of the issues and defends the claim that, where relevant, whenever a work is morally flawed it is of lesser value as art and wherever it is morally virtuous the work’s value as art is enhanced. Chapters 7 and 8 defend concern ethical knowledge and chapter 10 is a development of the article cited above concerning emotional responses. Chapter 3 also gives a useful conceptual map of the issues and options in the debate. 5 Jacobson, Daniel. ‘In Praise of Immoral Art.’Philosophical Topics 25 (1997): 155–99. 9 A wide ranging and extended treatment of relevant issues which objects to generalising moral treatments of our responses to art works and defends the idea that particular works can be better because of rather than despite their moral defects. 6 Kieran, Matthew. ‘Forbidden Knowledge: The Challenge of Cognitive Immoralism.’Art and Morality. Ed. Sebastian Gardner and José Luis Bermúdez. London: Routledge, 2003. 56–73. 11 A general argument for immoralism is elaborated by outlining when, where and why a work’s morally problematic character can contribute to its artistic value for principled reasons (through enhancing moral understanding). 7 Kieran, Matthew. Revealing Art. London: Routledge, 2005. Chapter 4. 13 This chapter argues against both aestheticism and straightforward moralism about art, elaborating a defence of immoralism in relation to visual art whilst ranging over issues from pornographic art to the nature and demands of different genres in art. 8 Lamarque, Peter. ‘Cognitive Values in the Arts: Marking the Boundaries.’ Contemporary Debates in Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art. Ed. Matthew Kieran. Oxford: Blackwell, 2006, 127–39. 15 This article concisely outlines and defends a sophisticated aestheticism that denies the importance of truth to artistic value. 9 Stolnitz, Jerome. ‘On the Cognitive Triviality of Art.’British Journal of Aesthetics 32.3 (1992): 191–200. 17 This article articulates and defends the claim that no knowledge of any interesting or significant kind can be afforded by works appreciated and evaluated as art. 10 Walton, Kendall. ‘Morals in Fiction and Fictional Morality, I.’Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Suppl. 68 (1994): 27–51. 19 This article builds on some comments from Hume to develop the idea that when engaging with fictions it seems impossible imaginatively to enter into radically deviant moral attitudes. Online Materials ‘Aesthetics and Ethics: The State of the Art.’American Society of Aesthetics online (Jeffrey Dean):. ‘Art, Censorship and Morality’ downloadable podcast of Nigel Warburton interviewing Matthew Kieran at Tate Britain (BBC/ou Open2.net as part of the Ethics Bites series):. ‘Art, Morality and Ethics: On the (Im)Moral Character of Art Works and Inter‐Relations to Artistic Value.’Philosophy Compass 1.2 (2006): 129–43 (Matthew Kieran):. ‘Ethical Criticism of Art.’Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Ella Peek):. ‘Fascinating Fascism.’New York Review of Books Piece Discussing Leni Riefenstahl (Susan Sontag):. ‘The Beheading of St. John the Baptist (1450s), Giovanni de Paolo’ (Tom Lubbock):. Vladimir Nabokov and Lionel Trilling discuss Lolita (CBS):. Sample Syllabus Topic I Autonomism/aestheticism • Anderson, James C. and Jeffrey T. Dean. ‘Moderate Autonomism.’British Journal of Aesthetics 38.2 (1998): 150–66. • Beardsley, Monroe. Aesthetics: Problems in the Philosophy of Criticism. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1958. Chapter 12. • Kant, Immanuel. The Critique of Judgement.Trans. James Creed Meredith. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1952 [1790]. • Lamarque, Peter. ‘Cognitive Values in the Arts: Marking the Boundaries.’Contemporary Debates in Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art. Ed. Matthew Kieran. Oxford: Blackwell, 2006, 127–39. • ——. ‘Tragedy and Moral Value.’Australasian Journal of Philosophy 73.2 (1995): 239–49. • Lamarque, Peter and Stein Olsen. Truth, Fiction and Literature. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994. Chapter 10. • Stolnitz, Jerome. ‘On the Cognitive Triviality of Art.’British Journal of Aesthetics 32.3 (1992): 191–200. Topic II Imaginative Capacities, Intelligibility and Resistance • Moran, Richard. ‘The Expression of Feeling in Imagination.’Philosophical Review 103.1 (1994): 75–106. • Nichols, Shaun. ‘Just the Imagination: Why Imagining Doesn’t Behave Like Believing’. Mind & Language 21.4 (2006): 459–74. • Stokes, Dustin. ‘The Evaluative Character of Imaginative Resistance’. British Journal of Aesthetics 46.4 (2006): 387–405. • Tanner, Michael. ‘Morals in Fiction and Fictional Morality, II’. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Suppl. Vol. 68 (1994): 51–66. • Walton, Kendall (1994). ‘Morals in Fiction and Fictional Morality, I’. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Suppl. Vol. 68 (1994): 27–51. • Weinberg, Jonathan. ‘Configuring the Cognitive Imagination.’New Waves in Aesthetics. Eds. K. Stock and K. Thomson‐Jones. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. 203–23. Topic III Moralism and Emotions • Carroll, Noël. ‘Moderate Moralism.’British Journal of Aesthetics 36.3 (1996): 223–37. • Carroll, Noël. ‘Art, Narrative and Moral Understanding.’Aesthetics and Ethics: Essay at the Intersection. Ed. Jerrold Levinson. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1998.126–60. • Gaut, Berys. Art, Emotion and Ethics. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2007. Chapter 10. • ——. ‘The Ethical Criticism of Art.’Aesthetics and Ethics: Essay at the Intersection. Ed. Jerrold Levinson. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1998. 182–203. • Hume, David. ‘Of the Standard of Taste.’Selected Essays. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1993 [1757]. 133–53. • Kieran, Matthew. ‘Emotions, Art and Immorality.’Oxford Handbook to the Philosophy of Emotions. Ed. Peter Goldie. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2009. 681–703. • Tolstoy, Leo. What is Art?. London: Penguin, 2004. Chapters 5 and 15. Topic IV Moralism and Knowledge • Aristotle. Poetics. Trans. M. Heath. London: Penguin, 1996 [367–322 BC]. • Carroll, Noël. ‘The Wheel of Virtue: Art, Literature and Moral Knowledge.’Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 60.1 (2002): 3–26. • Gaut, Berys. Art, Emotion and Ethics. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2007. Chapters 7 and 8. • Gaut, Berys. ‘Art and Cognition.’Contemporary Debates in Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art. Ed. Matthew Kieran. Oxford: Blackwell, 2006. 115–26. • Kieran, Matthew. ‘Art, Imagination and the Cultivation of Morals.’Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 54.4 (1996): 337–51. • Nussbaum, Martha. ‘Finely Aware and Richly Responsible: Literature and the Moral Imagination.’Love’s Knowledge. New York: Oxford UP, 1990. 148–68. • Plato. The Republic. Trans. D. Lee. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1974. Book 10. Topic V Immoralist Contextualism • Harold, James. ‘Immoralism and the Valence Constraint.’British Journal of Aesthetics 48.1 (2008): 45–64. • Jacobson, Daniel. ‘In Praise of Immoral Art.’Philosophical Topics 25 (1997): 155–99. • ——. ‘Ethical Criticism and the Vices of Moderation.’Contemporary Debates in Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art. Ed. Matthew Kieran. Oxford: Blackwell, 2006. 342–55. • John, Eileen. ‘Artistic Value and Moral Opportunism.’Contemporary Debates in Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art. Ed. Matthew Kieran. Oxford: Blackwell, 2006. 331–41. • Kieran, Matthew. ‘Forbidden Knowledge:The Challenge of Cognitive Immoralism.’Art and Morality. Ed. Sebastian Gardner and José Luis Bermúdez. London: Routledge, 2003. 56–73. • Kieran, Matthew. Revealing Art. London: Routledge, 2005. Chapter 4. • Patridge, Stephanie. ‘Moral Vices as Artistic Virtues: Eugene Onegin and Alice.’Philosophia 36.2 (2008): 181–93. Focus Questions 1 What is the strongest argument for the claim that the moral character of a work is not relevant to its artistic value? Does artistic or literary criticism tend to concern itself with the truth or morality of works? If so, in what ways? If not, why do you think this is? 2 What different explanations might there be for difficulty with or resistance to imaginatively entering into attitudes you take to be immoral? How might this relate to the way our imaginings work as contrasted with belief? How might different literary or artistic treatments of the same subject matter make a difference? 3 How do narrative works draw on our moral concepts and responses? Can we suspend our normal moral commitments or application of moral concepts in responding emotionally to art works? Should we respond emotionally to art works as we ought to respond to real world events we witness? Why? Why not? 4 How, if at all, do art works convey moral understanding? How, if at all, is this related to the kinds of moral knowledge art works can teach or reveal to us? When, where and why might this be tied to the artistic value of a work? How can we tell where a work enhances our moral understanding as opposed to misleading or distorting it? 5 What art works do you value overall as art which commend or endorse moral values and attitudes that you do not? Is appreciation of them always marred or lessened by the morally dubious aspect? If not, what explains the differences in evaluation? What, if anything, might you learn by engaging with works which endorse moral attitudes or apply moral concepts different from those you take to be justified? How, if at all, might this connect up with what makes them valuable as art? (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Aesthetic Classroom and the Beautiful GameBradley Baurain (bio)IntroductionSoccer fans will not be surprised that understanding "the beautiful game" can contribute to understandings of teaching and learning. After all, at least one theorist sees "the nature of all social life" to be reflected in soccer: "The unfolding match between team-mates and opponents [illustrates] … the interdependency of human beings, and the 'flexible lattice-work of tensions' generated through their social (...) bonds. Power flows fluidly between players, jockeying for possession and moving between attack and defence."1 Another finds striking parallels between cultural history and tactics of play in soccer, including a "modernist" period emphasizing cautious ball control and defense-oriented player formations, and the current "postmodern" style emphasizing creativity and fluidity; he even identifies the history of the free kick as a microcosm of the whole.2The idea I explore in this essay is in a sense simply an extended analogy: A well-played soccer game has much in common with a well-taught lesson or course. Features of the one are set for comparison and discussion alongside features of the other. Yet, as with any good analogy, matters are not really so simple. One makes the comparison so that the juxtaposed items inform and illuminate one another—that is, one looks at a thing in order to see a different thing more clearly. So while I contend that soccer has much in common with teaching, the reverse is also true; I am not using soccer only as a "way through" to teaching. Neither of my terms of comparison are merely means to an end; instead both are ends in themselves. Reading the soccer parts of this essay will, I trust, inform and illuminate teaching and [End Page 50] curriculum, but at the same time my goal is for any soccer player who might read the teaching parts also to learn something about "the beautiful game."Soccer, "the beautiful game," is an apt comparison for the aesthetic classroom. My thoughts on what characterizes aesthetic teaching will emerge and take on flesh as this essay develops, but let me begin by describing it as "concerned for acts of mind as opposed to end products, fluidity and imagination rather than fixed sequence, judgment within learning experiences in contrast to deciding everything in advance, and dwelling with subject matter rather than merely covering subject matter."3 As Wanda May comments: "I suggest that when teaching is done well … it is a work of art because we reconfigure and decorate our spaces, make our marks, elevate ourselves and others above confinement, routine, and the mundane. We expand our capacity to see, hear, love, critique, and act on our possibilities in the world."4 I could as easily have applied both of these quotations to soccer. It is no accident that John Dewey links sports with the aesthetic: "Dance and sport are activities in which acts once performed spontaneously in separation are assembled and converted from raw, crude material into works of expressive art."5I anchor my discussion in four concepts foundational to the aesthetic classroom: play, relationality, process, and flow. My analysis of each of these key ideas moves back and forth among soccer, aesthetic and pedagogical theory, and classroom research and narratives. Examples, including those from my own experience, are drawn primarily from the related fields of language education and English as a Second Language (ESL). If soccer and the classroom can have much in common, another way of introducing this essay is to say that I spend it trying to see what takes place in the gaps, in the "muchness" that lies between the two terms of the analogy. I hope that readers will "make much" of this, too, for without them the seeing remains incomplete.The Concept of Play, Playing with ConceptsThough it has become a multibillion-dollar global business, at its best soccer is play: "We play sport, we don't work sport."6 Play means having fun and inspiring joy, but this sense of freedom does not mean play is unstructured. Games have rules, skills, procedures, and boundaries, and these features enable rather than constrain. From Dewey's point of view, they are... (shrink)

Most of us think that we can obtain knowledge about the aesthetic properties of objects via testimony – at least sometimes. We can learn that a painting is beautiful by reading a book, or learn that a film is awful by talking to a friend (as long as our sources are reliable). At the same time, if we go on to share this knowledge we have to carefully qualify it as second-hand in order to avoid misleading our audience. Simply stating (...) that a painting is beautiful or that a film is awful is liable to give off the impression that we have experienced it ourselves. In this paper I draw on my other work in the pragmatics of normative language to explain why aesthetic discourse has these distinctive features. Because our aesthetic practices have developed as a way for us to share both our beliefs and our affective states, traditional theories of assertion and testimony fail to capture the full richness of what we are up to in our aesthetic conversations. (shrink)

Two central assumptions of current models of language acquisition were addressed in this study: (1) knowledge of linguistic structure is "mapped onto" earlier forms of non-linguistic knowledge; and (2) acquiring a language involves a continuous learning sequence from early gestural communication to linguistic expression. The acquisition of the first and second person pronouns ME and YOU was investigated in a longitudinal study of two deaf children of deaf parents learning American Sign Language (ASL) as a first language. Personal pronouns in (...) ASL are formed by pointing directly to the addressee (YOU) or self (I or ME), rather than by arbitrary symbols. Thus, personal pronouns in ASL resemble paralinguistic gestures that commonly accompany speech and are used prelinguistically by both hearing and deaf children beginning around 9 months. This provides a means for investigating the transition from prelinguistic gestural to linguistic expression when both gesture and language reside in the same modality.\nThe results indicate that deaf children acquired knowledge of personal pronouns over a period of time, displaying errors similar to those of hearing children despite the transparency of the pointing gestures. The children initially (ages 10 and 12 months) pointed to persons, objects, and locations. Both children then exhibited a long avoidance period, during which one function of the pointing gesture (pointing to self and others) dropped out completely. During this period their language and cognitive development were otherwise entirely normal, and they continued to use other types of pointing (e.g., to objects). When pointing to self and others returned, it was marked with errors typical of hearing children; one child exhibited consistent pronoun reversal errors, thinking the YOU point referred to herself, while the other child exhibited reversal errors inconsistently. Evidence from experimental tasks conducted with the first child revealed that pronoun errors occurred in comprehension as well. Full control of the ME and YOU pronouns was not achieved until 25-27 months, around the same time when hearing children master these forms. Thus, the study provides evidence for a discontinuity in the child's transition from prelinguistic to linguistic communication. It is argued that aspects of linguistic structure and its acquisition appear to involve distinct, language-specific knowledge. (shrink)

In my dissertation, I develop a novel approach to thought experiments and literary learning. It’s novel primarily because, unlike many prominent approaches, it has us refrain from advancing theories, from giving logical analyses, and from explicating. We are, instead, to proceed in a way inspired by Wittgenstein’s writings. We are, that is, to clarify words that give rise to problems and to clear those problems away. To clarify words, we may compare language games in which figure terms like “thought experiment.” (...) Thereby, we might see that the concept these terms express has a family resemblance character. To clear away problems, we may describe how such a concept, if not illuminated, yields philosophical problems about thought experiments and literary learning. -/- After I develop this approach, I bring it to bear on two problems, and I achieve two main results. One problem concerns the nature of thought experiments. It is: Why do we have trouble explaining what we know them to be? I find that, despite appearances, we have no such trouble. Central to this result are two claims about thought experiments. One is that imaginings aren’t common to them. The other is that our unreflective concept of them has a family resemblance character. -/- The other problem concerns stories in works of literary fiction. It is: How could we possibly learn about the world from them? To solve it, you might claim that we learn by performing thought experiments, and then appeal to a theory of them. I find that you’d risk explaining the wrong thing. That is, you may well explain only how we learn—not how we do so from literature itself. Central to this result are three claims, which concern how these stories differ from thought experiments. They differ, I claim, (i) in how we count imaginings as experiences of them, (ii) in how free we are to interpret them, and (iii) in how complex they may be. This done, I’ve twice taken my novel approach and achieved results. (shrink)

Abstract:In this article, I argue that the cognitive value of narrative arts is an epistemic understanding of a complex set of facts. My argument is the following: because we are epistemically limited agents (in a sense of our cognitive capacity and motivation), engagement with narrative arts is the optimal way to familiarize ourselves with complex phenomena in the world, such as social injustice, institutional racism, and financial crises. Exemplary narrative works of art possess epistemic features that other epistemic sources, such (...) as scientific articles and newspaper reports, lack. These features are narrative compression, simplified language, engagement with fictional characters, and artistic features. These features make exemplary narrative works of art an optimal way for an average agent to learn about the complex world around them. The article consists of three parts: Knowledge and Understanding, Narrative Arts as Epistemic Sources, and Understanding the Financial Crisis of 2007–8 with The Big Short (2015). In the first part, I introduce concepts of knowledge and understanding and explain why they are important for my claim. In the second part, I present my claim and offer arguments for it. In the third part, I illustrate my claim with the movie The Big Short (2015). (shrink)

In a Star Trek: The Next Generation episode, Cpt. Picard is captured and trapped on a planet with an alien captain who speaks a language incompatible with the universal translator, based on their societal historical metaphors. According to Shapiro (2004), the concept of a universal translator removes everything alien from alien languages, and since the Tamarian language refers only to their historical and cultural archetypes, Picard can only establish dialogue by invoking human analogues, such as Gilgamesh. The purpose of this (...) paper is threefold. First, we will tie such communication to standard cognitive models in cognitive linguistics, pioneered by Lakoff and Johnson (1980) and Lakoff (1987). Second, we will show that metaphorical imaging resembling the Tamarian language is already present in our culture, by analyzing Dawkins's (1982) notion of a meme, who presupposes that memes as cultural living structures physically reside in the brain, and comparing that to a common format of a meme in pop culture. We will also contrast this concept with living natural languages such as Wolaytta, using a great number of proverbs, which can be seen as desemanticized metaphors that are used to embody different domains of the social realm of life (Make et al. 2014). Third, we will compare the notion of such a language with the current state of machine-learning and deep-learning techniques for natural language processing of metaphorical phrases, pinpointing that even deep learning today is powerless without sufficient training datasets (cf. Perifanos et al. 2020) or specific known word contexts and embeddings (Rei et al. 2017), compared to the same situation the universal translator was faced with when dealing with the Tamarian language. (shrink)

Marjorie Perloff, among our foremost critics of twentieth-century poetry, argues that Ludwig Wittgenstein provided writers with a radical new aesthetic, a key to recognizing the inescapable strangeness of ordinary language. Taking seriously Wittgenstein's remark that "philosophy ought really to be written only as a form of poetry," Perloff begins by discussing Wittgenstein the "poet." What we learn is that the poetics of everyday life is anything but banal. "This book has the lucidity and the intelligence we have come to expect (...) from Marjorie Perloff.—Linda Munk, _American Literature_ "[Perloff] has brilliantly adapted Wittgenstein's conception of meaning and use to an analysis of contemporary language poetry."—Linda Voris, _Boston Review_ "_Wittgenstein's Ladder_ offers significant insights into the current state of poetry, literature, and literary study. Perloff emphasizes the vitality of reading and thinking about poetry, and the absolute necessity of pushing against the boundaries that define and limit our worlds."—David Clippinger, _Chicago Review_ "Majorie Perloff has done more to illuminate our understanding of twentieth century poetic language than perhaps any other critic.... Entertaining, witty, and above all highly original."—Willard Bohn, _Sub-Stance_. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Dewey and the Aesthetic Unconscious: The Vital Depths of Experience by Bethany HenningPentti MäättänenBethany Henning Dewey and the Aesthetic Unconscious: The Vital Depths of Experience London: Lexington Books, 2022. 182 pp. incl. indexBethany Henning examines Dewey's conception of aesthetic experience by looking for connections to several trends and traditions. Henning relates pragmatism to Freudian psychoanalysis, feminism, wisdom from esoteric sources, erotic drive, and religion. "In the American thought (...) that we have surveyed thus far, the aesthetic, the religious, and the ethical stand as completions and realizations of one another" (p. 25). This variety of viewpoints is no doubt interesting and potentially fruitful, but there is a danger that the result may remain somewhat sporadic.One of the traditional problems and tasks in philosophy is to explain how the world is experienced as an organized, bounded whole. How are the various sensations and ideas of them related to each other? On what ground can we experience these relations between ideas? Henning refers to William James and says that these relations are directly experienced, we feel them (p. 46). According to Henning there is a unique force responsible for this, and it "can only be a kind of noncognitive, preverbal awareness, and for Dewey, it can only be the qualitative immediacy that is known to us only in aesthetic experience" (p. 25). How can we experience these relations? Here Henning appeals to Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758) who provided his own view of habits, which account for "the relations between ideas by relating them through their spatiotemporal contiguity, causality, or through resemblances" (p. 21; italics in the original). This is how the American mind was firmly set on a theoretical path that distinguishes it from "the European conception" (ibid.).This is a surprising claim, indeed. Here is what David Hume has to say about the connexion or association of ideas: "The qualities, from [End Page 369] which this association arises, and by which the mind is after this manner convey'd from one idea to another, are three, viz. RESEMBLANCE, CONTIGUITY in time or place, and CAUSE and EFFECT."1 It is quite inconceivable how this simple relabeling of Hume's principles of association as habits might have any effect on any theoretical path, especially on the emergence of pragmatism. Edwards wrote decades before Charles Peirce entered the scene. Edwards' habit is just a new name for old European ideas. It is obvious that Hume's principles of association, which deal with internal mental processes, have not much to do with Peircean habits of action, which are about overt bodily action in the world where we meet also hard facts involving brute force, muscular effort, and resistance.The starting point of Henning's analysis is immediate qualitative experience, affective sensual awareness, which also prefigures and is the ground of signification (p. 107). Qualitative immediacy is felt, had, and undergone. There is a need to experience the world as meaningful, to move from that world as had and undergone to the world as known. Knowledge about this immediate experience becomes possible with the emergence of mind, when "situations, in their qualitative tone, are also socially significant so that interactions are aided by the mediation of symbols" (p. 88). We can give names to qualitatively different feelings. This knowledge is different from qualitative immediacy in that it is discursive, cognitive, and syntactical (p. 38). But how does this kind of knowledge emerge? What is the origin of names and symbols? What is the notion of meaning applied here? According to Henning, meaning "must be felt, had and undergone, in a way that is primarily qualitative rather than primarily cognitive" (p. 107). There is also "erotic need for meaningful connection" (p. 113). Further, Henning appeals to Julia Kristeva's semiotic theory, but Peirce's semiotics is not mentioned. An explicit definition of meaning would be in place here, especially as Peirce and Dewey have one to offer.According to Peirce, "what a thing means is simply what habits it involves" (CP 5.400).2 Note that there are no restrictions on this. If it is a linguistic expression, then we have Ludwig Wittgenstein's language games... (shrink)

The subject of the study is the aesthetics of early Friedrich Schlegel. In his aesthetics, Schlegel continues the traditions of German classical philosophy, focusing special attention on the principles of the beautiful and sublime in art. Schlegel considers beauty, like morality, to be inherently inherent in a person who, along with the moral, has an "aesthetic imperative". As a "transcendental factor", beauty is based on disinterested pleasure and represents an ideal that ancient Greek art approached at one time, and (...) the aspiration for which modern art lacks so much. The highest beauty is organic like nature; two main "elements" make up the essence of beauty: "phenomenon" and "good". The beautiful in its broad sense also encompasses the sublime. Schlegel pays special attention to the ugly as an aesthetic category opposed to the beautiful and sublime, and gives an outline of the future theory of the ugly. He connects the ugly with the animal nature of man and shows that it is based on the disgusting, painful, monstrous, "beggarly chaos" of being, manifesting an absolute denial.  The central aesthetic principles – the beautiful and the sublime – are opposed by two types of the ugly: the own ugly and the "sublimely ugly". Schelling considers art to be one of the main components of culture as a humanitarian factor and sees three types of culture: natural, organically growing on the basis of mythology, artificial, created on the basis of reason according to aesthetic laws and aesthetic, which means a special emphasis in culture on aesthetic essence, on artistry. Schlegel is convinced that further positive development of culture and art is possible only under the guidance of the "correct" aesthetic theory, the beginnings of which he learns from his contemporaries. (shrink)

The objective of this study is to identify inimitable examples of the introduction of aesthetic content into the Western European metaphysical tradition, as it was embodied in Kant's understanding of the world concept of philosophy, which has certain aesthetic connotations. In the article, the author analyzes new stages of the movement towards the world concept of philosophy, on which the aesthetic meaning of the basic structures of transcendentalism is explicitly or implicitly realized: the art of schematism as a world concept (...) of epistemology; the world concept of art as an organ of understanding artistic works. In addition, this discussion becomes particularly relevant when they seek to reveal how much the concept of schematism allows us to advance to the explanation of the world concept of philosophy. The work reveals how Kant reproduces the definition of the world concept of philosophy according to a certain model, while posing the problem of the typical embodiment of the idea, the ideal of the philosopher as a model. In this connection, a new complication of aesthetic analysis is being carried out in order to show how the world concept of philosophy was personified and presented as if in the ideal of the philosopher as a model. Therefore, the paradox of the world concept of philosophy lies in the fact that we have to talk about a sample of what does not yet exist. The author reproduces a transcendental language that will reveal the movement of aesthetic thought into the center of the world concept of philosophy, where the traditional artistic technique of personification of the philosopher's ideal as a model is performed, where the contemplation of meaning is transferred into the universality of the concept, into the contours of metaphysics. (shrink)

Gesture-first theories of language origins often raise two unsubstantiated arguments against vocal origins. First, they argue that great ape vocal behavior is highly constrained, limited to a fixed, species-typical repertoire of reflexive calls. Second, they argue that vocalizations lack any significant potential to ground meaning through iconicity, or resemblance between form and meaning. This paper reviews the considerable evidence that debunks these two “myths”. Accumulating evidence shows that the great apes exercise voluntary control over their vocal behavior, including their breathing (...) apparatus, larynx, and supralaryngeal articulators. They are also able to learn new vocal behaviors, and even show some rudimentary ability for vocal imitation. In addition, an abundance of research demonstrates that the vocal modality affords rich potential for iconicity. People can understand iconicity in sound symbolism, and they can produce iconic vocalizations to communicate a diverse range of meanings. Thus, two of the primary arguments against vocal origins theories are not tenable. As an alternative, the paper concludes that the origins of language – going as far back as our last common ancestor with great apes – are rooted in iconicity in both gesture and vocalization. (shrink)

This book presents the foundations of classical Chinese aesthetic discourse--roughly from the Bronze Age to the early Middle Ages--with the following animating questions: What is art? Why do we produce it? How do we judge it? The arts that garnered the most theoretical attention during this time period were music, poetry, calligraphy, and painting, and the book considers the reasons why these four were privileged. Whereas modern artists most likely consider themselves musicians or poets or calligraphers or painters or sculptors (...) or architects, the pre-modern authors who produced the literature that established Chinese aesthetics prided themselves on being wenren, "cultured people," conversant with all forms of art and learning. Other comparisons with Western theories and works of art are presented at due junctures. Key Features Addresses Chinese aesthetic discourse on its own terms Provides comparisons of key concepts and theories with examples from Western sources Includes more coverage of primary sources than any other English-language book on the subject Each chapter opens with a helpful summary, highlighting the chapter's key themes. (shrink)

Since the publication of The Structure of Scientific Revolution , relativism, resulting from the concepts of paradigm and paradigm shift, becomes one of the central problems in the philosophy of science. The author of this dissertation agrees with Thomas Kuhn in his criticism of the Logical Positivism, but denies that relativism arrives as a direct consequence. In this dissertation, the author tries to tackle the problem by analyzing some underlying basic concepts, e.g. paradigm, language and rationality. Firstly, he points out (...) that a hard-core model of paradigm, as understood by I. Lakatos, is not totally appropriate for an all-rounded understanding of a paradigm. Rather, among the elements certain "family resemblance" comes to the surface, they are therefore regarded as belonging to the same paradigm. A paradigm is not a hindrance to but an exemplar for our learning. And a paradigm shift needs not result in a total switch over, it could be a revolution with inheritance. Secondly, the incommesurability of languages does not mean the breakdown of communication between different linguistic communities. True bilinguals can achieve cross-paradigm understanding. In addition, due to the creative activities within a language, the problem of untranslatability could be solved. Finally, rationality, rather than assuming a hierarchical structure, could be taken as a reticulated model. As a result, various disagreements at the axiological level could be rationally resolved. ;The author also tackles in passing some issues concerning language and rationality in the Chinese tradition of science, and compares this tradition with that of the western. (shrink)

This paper examines the relationship between learning and practice, rule and invention, in Japanese art. Drawing on Chinese precedent, learning through the close observation of conventional models for technical mastery or stylistic construction, underpinned training in almost all of the arts and crafts in Japan. The practice of building individually inventive projects was usually developed only after the successful completion of long apprenticeships in studio settings. The pictorial engagements of Edo, today's Tokyo, form the principal focus for this examination of (...) how individually forged learning pathways developed within the formal constraints of Tokugawa period art-training arrangements. This paper... (shrink)