Serial music was one of the most important aesthetic movements to emerge in post-war Europe, but its uncompromising music and modernist aesthetic has often been misunderstood. This book focuses on the controversial journal die Reihe, whose major contributors included Stockhausen, Eimert, Pousseur, Dieter Schnebel and G. M. Koenig, and discusses it in connection with many lesser-known sources in German musicology. It traces serialism's debt to the theories of Klee and Mondrian, and its relationship to developments in concrete art, modern poetry (...) and the information aesthetics and semiotics of Max Bense and Umberto Eco. M. J. Grant sketches an aesthetic theory of serialism as experimental music, arguing that serial theory's embrace of both rigorous intellectualism and aleatoric processes is not, as many have suggested, a paradox, but the key to serial thought and to its relevance for contemporary theory. (shrink)

– The paper explores first the postulational basis and significance of‘measures of information’in current information theory and their possible relations to physical entropy and Brillouin's‘negentropy’regarded as the negative of entropy. For some purposes, the same pattern or formal structure may be abstracted from both‘entropy’and‘information’. The paper analyzes, in the second place, the mathematical analogies which have been traced between information theory and quantum mechanics and argues that the analogies have but a limited value when (...) we come to grips with the deeper, and yet unsolved, problems of quantum theory. Lastly it is urged that the indiscriminate extensions of statistical and information‐theoretic methods, and of quantum‐mechanical analogies, e.g.‘linguistic duality’, to psycholinguistics, literary and aesthetic Gestalten, can result only in crude exaggerations. Dialectical methodology requires the continual reformulation of all scientific descriptions which have to reckon perpetually with the richness of human materials. (shrink)

In his recent work, ‘Sport, Aesthetic Experience, and Art as the Ideal Embodied Metaphor’, Tim L. Elcombe explores links between sport and art from a pragmatically informed conception of aesthetic experience. However, Elcombe's work does not highlight the role of the imagination in the interpretation of the aesthetic something Michael Polanyi claims to be the ‘cornerstone of aesthetic theory’. With the backdrop of an increased interest in the aesthetics, phenomenology, and epistemology of sport, this discussion essay seeks to (...) defend the usefulness and value of definitional demarcation debates between sport and art, to use Polanyi’s distinctions among technical, scientific and artistic problems to support the claim that sport is not art, and to offer an account of how sport contributes in its own way to human flourishing and why it is no less valuable experientially than art. (shrink)

Feminism and Tradition in Aesthetics takes a fresh look at the history of aesthetics and at current debates within the philosophy of art by exploring the ways in which gender informs notions of art and creativity, evaluation and interpretation, and concepts of aesthetic value. Multiple intellectual traditions have formed this field, and the discussions herein range from consideration of eighteenth century legacies of ideas about taste, beauty, and sublimity to debates about the relevance of postmodern analyses for feminist (...) aesthetics. Forward by Arthur C. Danto, 20 authors include Paul Mattick, Jr., Caroline Korsmeyer, Timothy Gould, Christine Battersby, Mary Devereaux, bell hooks, REnee Lorraine, Trinh T. Minh-ha, Elizabeth Ann Dobie, Adrian Piper, Anita Silvers, Susan Feagin, Mary D. Garrard, Ellen Handler Spitz, Noel Carroll, Joanne Waugh, Joseph Margolis, Rita Felski, and Hilde Hein, as well as Peg Brand's essay, "Revising the Aesthetic-Nonaesthetic Distinction: The Aesthetic Value of Activist Art.". (shrink)

In his recent work, ‘Sport, Aesthetic Experience, and Art as the Ideal Embodied Metaphor’, Tim L. Elcombe explores links between sport and art from a pragmatically informed conception of aesthetic experience. However, Elcombe's work does not highlight the role of the imagination in the interpretation of the aesthetic something Michael Polanyi claims to be the ‘cornerstone of aesthetic theory’. With the backdrop of an increased interest in the aesthetics, phenomenology, and epistemology of sport, this discussion essay seeks to (...) defend the usefulness and value of definitional demarcation debates between sport and art, to use Polanyi’s distinctions among technical, scientific and artistic problems to support the claim that sport is not art, and to offer an account of how sport contributes in its own way to human flourishing and why it is no less valuable experientially than art. (shrink)

Quantum technologies can be presented to the public with or without introducing a strange trait of quantum theory responsible for their non-classical efficiency. Traditionally the message was centered on the superposition principle, while entanglement and properties such as contextuality have been gaining ground recently. A less theoretical approach is focused on simple protocols that enable technological applications. It results in a pragmatic narrative built with the help of the resource paradigm and principle-based reconstructions. I discuss the advantages and weaknesses (...) of these methods. To illustrate the importance of new metaphors beyond the Schrödinger cat, I briefly describe a non-mathematical narrative about entanglement that conveys an idea of some of its unusual properties. If quantum technologists are to succeed in building trust in their work, they ought to provoke an aesthetic perception in the public commensurable with the mathematical beauty of quantum theory experienced by the physicist. The power of the narrative method lies in its capacity to do so. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Theory in the “Post” Era: A Vocabulary for the 21st-Century Conceptual Commons ed. by Alexandru Matei, Christian Moraru and Andrei TerianLaura Elena Savu WalkerMatei, Alexandru, Christian Moraru, and Andrei Terian, editors. Theory in the “Post” Era: A Vocabulary for the 21st-Century Conceptual Commons. Bloomsbury, 2021. 376pp.Far from “mourning” the demise of theory, this timely and thoughtfully curated essay collection testifies to its “renewed vitality,” its (...) compelling presence “across fields, domains of life, and geocultural boundaries,” and its power to build an ever-expanding world community of practioners who are forming what has come to be known as a “theory commons” (ix). As the collection’s editors point out, theory’s new lease on life hinges on ensuring both the democratic workings of this “world discourse formation” (1) and on the responsible theorizing of the very notion of community in “a world threatened by all kinds of anti-communal actions and reactions, from runaway globalization to exacerbated tribalism and tunnel-vision politics” (x). Working on the margins, specifically, out of a Romanian “lab” called The Critical Theory Institute (CTI), which opened its doors in early 2000, the contributors seek to revise the “standard history of theory,” one whose “Western origins, authority, and cultural compass ” strike them as “exceedingly reductive” (3). This project of geotheoretical repositioning and recalibration aims to recast theory as a “quintessentially cross-linguistic, cross-cultural, trans- and intercontinental undertaking” (4). As such, it carries on the project, launched in a previous volume, Romanian Literature as World Literature (2018), of fashioning an alternative to the nation-state paradigm that has long shaped literary and intellectual histories. In both of these works, Romanian critics and theorists have tuned into a wide range of voices, and tapped into a shared conceptual and methodological apparatus—itself the product of “an ethno-linguistic medley of traditions” (8). This approach informs what editors see as the “epoch-making” (17) discursive paradigm that has taken shape in globally networked post-Cold War societies (17), a viral model of cultural influence that fosters an ontology of “contact, contagion, of infection, dissemination, and horizontal accumulation” (15).To give us a sense of theory’s complex genealogy and evolution, the editors reference the Bulgarian critic Galin Tihanov, who has attributed [End Page 122] important developments in contemporary theory to the achievements of theorists (Nikolai Trubetskoi, Roman Jakobson, Vladimir Propp, and Georg Lukács) and schools of thought (Russian Formalism and the Prague Linguistic Circle). In “Traveling Theory” (1983) and “Traveling Theory Reconsidered” (2000), Edward Said called attention to the migratory nature of contributions made, for instance, by Georg Lukács, whose theories moved across different European locales in this period. Since then, contemporary theory has branched out to integrate the travels and travails of scholars affiliated with theory labs located in Bulgaria, Hungary, Slovakia, and last, but not least, Romania (10).Theory in the “Post” Era highlights five characteristics that distinguish theory in the “post” era from earlier forms: 1) It has a “reluctantly epoch-alist” thrust (19; original italics), which assumes that the “post” lexicon entails “rupture, discontinuity, and opposition” (19), radical departures, tentative claims, provisional conclusions, and ex-centric perspectives; 2) it adopts a “self-reflexive and experimental” (20; original italics) stance in which theorists invoke inherited approaches or invent new ones; 3) it introduces a “transdisciplinary” (21; original italics) scope that allows authors to interrogate the foundations, aims, and methods of theoretical discourse and practice across several knowledge domains, from which they “borrow whole vocabularies and toolkits” (21); 4) it is “nationally, transnationally, and ecologically affiliative” (20) in ways that allow theorists to “think with others at a distance” (21) about global issues; and 5) it is programmatic, placing critical and theoretical concerns in the service of “the ethical, the political, and the communal” (22). Organized around three main themes (“Aesthetics,” “Temporalities,” and “Critical Modes”), the essays juxtapose discussions of pivotal historical events and cultural phenomena with literary analyses of Romantic era “classics,” modernist experiments, and postmodern works of the post-Communist era, a corpus that includes, but is not limited to, landmark works of national culture that are now part of a fast-expanding planetary... (shrink)

I have based my psychological hypotheses on studies in perception and in personality. Research in these two areas began independently, but by the late forties the supposedly unconnected processes came to be seen as different aspects of one process. For instance, a low tolerance for perceptual ambiguity and cognitive dissonance was found to be significantly correlated with lack of emotional responsiveness, dogmatism, and authoritarianism; conversely, a high tolerance for perceptual ambiguity and cognitive dissonance was found to be significantly correlated with (...) tolerance of emotional ambivalence, openness to new experience, and a liberal world view.1 Later studies, primarily those conducted in the sixties, then established strong correlations between these findings and information-processing styles. Information processing involves three stages: first, stimuli are selected from the environment ; these stimuli are then arranged into "dimensions"; finally, if two or more dimensions result, they are compared and/or combined according to certain rules. H. M. Schroder and his colleagues have established correlations between personality styles and styles of information processing.2 For example, an intolerant personality—that is, one with a low integration index—"identifies and organizes stimuli in a fixed way, and the rules derived from existing schemata are explicit in defining this one way" . What psychologists call an "abstract personality" and identify in terms of "flexibility" or "tolerance of ambiguity"—what in literary studies is most conveniently called "negative capability"—is not necessarily characterized as lacking rules but rather as possessing a greater number of conflicting rules on a lower level which may be accommodated by rules on a higher level. · 1. See Jerome S. Bruner and David Krech, eds., Perception and Personality, 2nd ed. and Robert R. Blake and Glenn V. Ramsey, eds., Perception: An Approach to Personality . Although, as Else Frenkel-Brunswick says, "rigidity in one respect may go with flexibility in another," she also adds: "There is some indication that in the case of distinct intolerance of emotional ambivalence one may as a rule be able to locate at least some aspects of intolerance of cognitive ambiguity although these may often be more apparent on a higher level than that of perception proper" The present essay, since it is one section of a projected larger study, deals with the issues inherent in this approach in only a limited fashion. One could, for instance, quote whole essays in this branch of psychology dealing with ambiguity and point to their relevance for some aspects of literary study and the teaching of literature. Ambiguity, of course, is also a central term in New Criticism. See William Empson, Seven Types of Ambiguity and Ernst Kris and Abraham Kaplan, "Aesthetic Ambiguity," in Psychoanalytic Explorations in Art, ed. Kris , pp. 243-64.· 2. H. M. Schroder, M. J. Driver, and S. Streufert, "Levels of Information Processing," in Thought and Personality, ed. Peter B. Warr , pp. 174-91. All citations to this work will appear in the text. Reuven Tsur, senior lecturer in Hebrew literature at Tel-Aviv University, is the author of several books in Hebrew on medieval and modern Hebrew poetry and, in English, A Perception-Oriented Theory of Metre. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Aesthetic Education 37.3 (2003) 78-98 [Access article in PDF] Aesthetic Understanding as Informed Experience:The Role of Knowledge in Our Art Viewing Experiences Richard Lachapelle, Deborah Murray, and Sandy Neim [Figures] Thinking calls for images, and images contain thought. Therefore, the visual arts are a homeground of visual thinking. 1A common misconception about the nature of art and of aesthetic appreciation is that these activities are essentially (...) a question of "feeling," as if tuning in to the right feeling will automatically lead to a full understanding of the work of art. Another widespread misunderstanding essentially reduces art viewing to a simple question of perception, as if looking long and hard isalways enough to apprehend the work of art's message. Fortunately, a growing body of research into adults' art viewing experiences is debunking these widely held beliefs as oversimplifications of the art viewing process. We can now assert, with a good degree of certainty, that our art viewing experiences solicit four key areas: the affective, perceptual, communicative, and cognitive dimensions of human experiencing. 2 Therefore, we would be hard-pressed not to agree with Rudolph Arnheim's reflections, presented above, on the important role of thought in shaping our artistic and aesthetic experiences.While acknowledging at the outset the essential roles of affect, perception, and communication in our art viewing experiences, this paper focuses more specifically on aspects of the intellectual dimension of this experience. First, we will present and discuss a model that we have developed over the last several years. This model identifies the kinds of knowledge and learning involved in art viewing activities. Second, we will present the results of an empirical study conducted to provide support for the model. Finally we will briefly discuss the model's usefulness for the purposes of aesthetic education. [End Page 78] The Model of Aesthetic Understanding as Informed Experience The Model of Aesthetic Understanding as Informed Experience provides an explanation of the process of understanding and appreciating a work of art from an educational perspective: it identifies the types of knowledge involved and it also pinpoints the kinds of learning at each stage in the process leading to an understanding of the aesthetic object.In this model, the process of viewing and understanding a work of art is visualized as a two-phased type of informed experience. Through a process of experiential learning, the viewer first encounters the work of art and formulates an initial interpretation. Then, through a process involving theoretical learning, the viewer compares his or her first interpretation with a related body of external, scientific information. This second step in the learning process leads to a reconstruction of knowledge about the work of art. Tandem use of the two processes assists the viewer in furthering his or her understanding of the art object; it also promotes growth in his or her art viewing skills. In the course of each new encounter with an aesthetic object, the interplay of experiential and theoretical learning leads to additional development of the viewer's background knowledge in art, resulting in better preparedness to successfully engage the next work of art. 4 Theoretical Foundations of the Model Three different theories informed the development of the model. 5 By using anecdotal evidence obtained from a group of fifty-two museum professionals, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Rick E.Robinson were able to identify the four major dimensions of aesthetic experience: intellect, communication, perception, and emotion. Each one of these dimensions constitutes, to some extent, a challenge that the work of art addresses to the viewer. According to these researchers, the intellectual dimension of aesthetic experience consists of all aspects of the viewer's attempts to use knowledge in order to find meaning in the work of art (TAS, 27-71). Csikszentmihalyi and Robinson also propose a model that describes the aesthetic encounter in terms of an interaction between the viewer, the work of art, and the artist. To this encounter, the viewer brings his skills in aesthetic appreciation; these may be... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Forgeries and Art Evaluation:An Argument for Dualism in AestheticsTomas Kulka (bio)If a fake is so expert that even after the most thorough and trustworthy examination its authenticity is still open to doubt, is it or is it not as satisfactory a work of art as if it were unequivocally genuine? 1It is a wonderful moment in the life of a lover of art when he finds himself suddenly confronted (...) with a hitherto unknown painting by a great master, untouched, on the original canvas, and without any restoration, just as it left the painter's studio. And what a picture! Neither the beautiful signature... nor the pointillé on the bread which Christ is blessing, is necessary to convince us that we have here—I am inclined to say—the masterpiece of Johannes Vermeer of Delft... quite different from all his other paintings and yet every inch a Vermeer. In no other picture by the great master of Delft do we find such sentiment, such a profound understanding of the Bible story—a sentiment so nobly human expressed through the medium of highest art.2The author of these lines is Professor Abraham Bredius, the nestor of Holland's art historians and the greatest authority on seventeenth-century Dutch painting. The source is The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs, the most prestigious periodical for the history of art of the period. The year is 1937. The painting, however, is not a masterpiece of Vermeer but a fake produced by the mediocre Dutch artist Han van Meegeren.The Problem of ForgeryMany art dealers have been financially ruined, and many art historians academically discredited, because of incorrect attribution. Apart from the practical problems that worry curators and art historians, there is also a theoretical problem, which has become a subject of heated discussions since the late 1960s. The dispute gained a momentum with the publication of Nelson Goodman's Languages of Art. In its third chapter titled "Art and Authenticity," [End Page 58] which put the problem of forgeries on the agenda of contemporary aesthetics, Goodman states that a "philosopher of art caught without an answer to [the] question... why there is any aesthetic difference between a deceptive forgery and an original work... is at least as badly off as a curator of paintings caught taking a Van Meegeren Vermeer for a Vermeer."3Although the literature on the problem of forgeries is extensive, the answers that have been put forward fall roughly into three categories: the formalist answer, which states that there is no aesthetic difference between an original painting and a deceptive forgery; the reductionist answer, which claims that there is such a difference and that it can be traced to the minute physical differences between originals and its copies; and the historicist answer, which also asserts that there must be an aesthetic difference but claims that it stems from the different histories of the two objects.The most prominent proponent of the formalist approach is Monroe C. Beardsley. His theory is based on the assumption that "two objects that do not differ in any observable qualities cannot differ in aesthetic value."4 Aesthetic formalism, as the name suggests, maintains that works of art should be judged according to their form. Only the visual features of the painted surface—the configuration of its lines and colors, composition, spatial relations, texture, design, etc., are relevant for its appreciation. The subject of our evaluation is the finished product, not the information pertaining to the history of its production. Who, when, and where painted the picture, just like the intentions of the painter, are irrelevant for the assessment of its aesthetic qualities. Only the "internal" properties, that is, the properties of the "work itself," count. The "external" properties, by which Beardsley means anything that "relates to something existing before the work itself, to the manner in which it was produced, or its connection to antecedent objects," have no bearing on aesthetic value. Hence the conclusion that if fakes resemble the original "in their internal characteristics, so that no one could tell them apart just by looking at them" there can be no aesthetic difference between them.5 Originality is thus excluded... (shrink)

First published in 1999, this study begins with a review of basic biological functions, stressing the importance to the organism of various kinds of information. The 'biology of information' must consider how the brain reacts to new, as contrasted with expected, inputs; these differences are discussed chiefly in relation to language. In language processing predictability is of prime importance, but to clarify what this entails it is necessary to consider just how our concepts are organized. Personal construct (...) class='Hi'>theory throws considerable light on this question, but is less informative about fantasy, which requires separate exploration. The main chapter focuses on the origins and interpretation of metaphor, in which quite disparate concepts are united but which we understand nevertheless. Existing theories of metaphor are unsatisfactory, but personal construct theory again helps resolve the psychological-linguistic issues. Finally, the question is raised as to why a good metaphor produces a response which is recognizably aesthetic in character, and its implications for our aesthetic responses to other art forms are explored. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Aesthetic Education 37.2 (2003) 1-18 [Access article in PDF] Aesthetic Inquiry in Education:Community,Transcendence, and the Meaning of Pedagogy Hanan A. Alexander What does it mean to understand education as an art, to conceive inquiry in education aesthetically, or to assess pedagogy artistically? Answers to these queries are often grounded in Deweyan instrumentalism, neo-Marxist critical theory, or postmodern skepticism that tend to fall prey to the (...) paradoxes of radical relativism and extreme subjectivism. 1 This essay offers an alternative, communitarian account of education as an art and a neo-Kantian approach to aesthetic inquiry in education that avoids these difficulties.I begin by examining the emergence of aesthetic inquiry in education in the context of the larger qualitative revolution in educational research. The struggle to justify the qualitative turn in educational thought was initially framed in terms of two influential doctrines: that cognition and affect on the one hand, and truth, beauty, and goodness on the other, can be clearly distinguished from one another. Qualitative methods were conceived as an alternative research paradigm — a new epistemology — in keeping with Thomas Kuhn's influential book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. 2 Qualitative research, on this account, is a cognitive endeavor aimed at discovering a form of knowledge no less valid and reliable than that produced by quantitative methodologies. This way of framing the discussion led to the dichotomizing of positivist and postpositivist epistemologies, one embracing absolutism, objectivism, and rationalism, the other relativism, subjectivism, and romanticism. 3 This approach succeeded in pointing to some serious flaws in the prevailing positivist account of social research, yet it left qualitative inquiry dependent on versions of epistemological relativism and subjectivism that philosophers of knowledge have shown to be self-contradictory and incoherent. 4 [End Page 1]Conceiving of pedagogy in aesthetic terms challenges the prevailing positivist epistemology on a deeper level because it questions the accepted distinctions between thinking and feeling, and between truth, beauty, and goodness. If art can be conceived as a form of cognitive inquiry in addition to affective expression, then the appreciation and assessment of education as art requires not merely a new research paradigm or an alternative epistemology. Rather, it entails a reshuffling of our very conception of the relations between science, art, and ethics.These concepts can be reconceived to avoid the paradoxes of radical relativism and extreme subjectivism if we recognize with Iris Murdoch that sovereignty belongs to communal conceptions of a transcendent good. Educational arts empower people to express, appreciate, and critique collective conceptions of goodness, and artistic criticism of pedagogy celebrates a sacred dimension in educational thought and practice. 5 This approach occasions a fresh look not only at the practice, appreciation, and assessment of pedagogy, but also at the very meaning of the concept of education and the sorts of inquiry that can fruitfully inform its practice. Two Dogmas of Educational Research Two dogmas have dominated educational research for most of this century: the idea that there exists a clear disjunction between the cognitive and affective domains; and the supposed radical independence from one another of truth, beauty, and goodness. 6 According to a popular view rooted in these doctrines, the search for truth is a cognitive affair governed by science, while ethics and the arts are tied to the emotions and the humanities. Inquiry into the former is objective — reliability depends on method not researcher — and into the latter, subjective — results can vary according to interpreter. In this attitude, the cognitive domain dominates the public arena through the influence and prestige of science and measurement. 7Until the middle 1970s, behavioral and social research in education expressed these dichotomies in the distinction made between quantitative and qualitative research. The former was thought to be scientific and objective, the latter, humanistic and subjective. As qualitative inquiry came into its own in the 1980s, its proponents sought justification and legitimization in accord with cognitive dominance. 8 First, they argued that qualitative research methods had checks against error as rigorous as its quantitative counterparts. 9 Later, the cognitive domain... (shrink)

This anthology of writings addresses the producers of the very forms that are judged aesthetically - students of architecture, graphic design, interior design, fashion, and industrial design. The selections are from philosophy, art history, literary criticism, architectural practice, Renaissance scholarship, critical theory, and the cognitive neurosciences. They represent varying points of view, formats, lengths and intents. Some are complete book chapters or essays, some excerpts from writings on topics seemingly distant from aesthetic theory. All offer insights into the (...) importance of considering form relative to its aesthetic qualities and influence. Each selection is accompanied by head notes that glean the core arguments, enhance understanding, and provide a critical educational tool so anyone involved in the act of design, whether for an urban cultural space or the packaging for a cosmetic product, can be informed about the aesthetic theories that consider the relationship between form and its impact on the individual and society. (shrink)

Cross-cultural differences in argumentation may be explained by the use of different norms of reasoning. However, some norms derive from, presumably universal, mathematical laws. This inconsistency can be resolved, by considering that some norms of argumentation, like Bayes theorem, are mathematical functions. Systematic variation in the inputs may produce culture-dependent inductive biases although the function remains invariant. This hypothesis was tested by fitting a Bayesian model to data on informal argumentation from Turkish and English cultures, which linguistically mark evidence quality (...) differently. The experiment varied evidential marking and informant reliability in argumentative dialogues and revealed cross-cultural differences for both independent variables. The Bayesian model fitted the data from both cultures well but there were differences in the parameters consistent with culture-specific inductive biases. These findings are related to current controversies over the universality of the norms of reasoning and the role of normative theories in the psychology of reasoning. (shrink)

In the first half of the twentieth century there was a remarkable convergence of art and design in De Stijl, Constructivism and the Bauhaus. But in the second half of the twentieth century fine art relinquished its liaison with design due to the influence of Dada and Surrealism's postromantic antagonism to practical-functionalism. Dada and Surrealism and postmodern fine art are characterized by a critique of the dominant social discourse of functionalism and the demand for a sublime poetics to be brought (...) into everyday life. This article argues that the apparent antipathy between postmodern fine art and design can be ameliorated if we critically analyse interpretations of evolutionary theory by postromantic philosophers such as Nietzsche, Bergson, and Deleuze and Guattari. When Bergson notes that practical-functional reasoning was created by evolution he reveals a flaw in the pursuit of an aesthetics that is totally opposed to commonsense and practical-functionalism. And when we turn to Deleuze and Guattari we find another valuable concept in the form of their notion of the machinic, which assists further in reconciling the postromantic emphasis on the sublime with the practicality of mechanism. Moreover, Deleuze and Guattari's notion of the machinic is informed by chaos theory, which allows further elaboration in terms of complexity theory. Complexity theory can be understood as a process philosophy that has no need to figure the sublime in terms of a mysterious force of nature because the mystery is located within complex interactions among a manifold of components, what one might refer to as a cosmic, machinic, combinatoire that arises out of what Christopher Langton has called the edge of chaos. This makes it possible to replace the emphasis on desire as the fundamental force of nature evident in Nietzsche, Bergson, Deleuze and Guattari with a complexity-theoretical concept of a cosmicmachinic combinatoire. It is then possible to formulate a machinic, evolutionary aesthetics that can reconcile the postromantic demand for sublimity with the demand for practical-functionalism that lies at the heart of the discipline of design. In place of the modernist machine aesthetic that informed De Stijl, Constructivism and the Bauhaus we would have a postmodernist machinic aesthetic. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Aesthetic Education 37.3 (2003) 41-57 [Access article in PDF] The Subordination of Aesthetic Fundamentals in College Art Instruction Randall Lavender we smile at a hasty philosopher who assures his disciples that art is about to be replaced with philosophy. 1Opportunities for college students of art and design to study fundamentals of visual aesthetics, integrity of form, and principles of composition are limited today by a (...) number of factors. With the well-documented prominence of postmodern critical theory in the world of contemporary art (and itsquestionable effects on higher education in art and design), the study of aesthetic fundamentals is largely subordinated to a multitude of conceptual, theoretical, and expressive priorities recycled from the art world. 2 Contemporary idea-based priorities tend to obviate, in the minds of many artists who teach, the "need" for aesthetic fundamentals in college art curricula. But as Rudolph Arnheim suggests, art is not easily replaced by ideas alone. For no matter how interested artists, instructors, or students may be in ideas, theory, or self-expression, today's college art/design students need to gain a solid grounding in aesthetic fundamentals early in their college art educations in order to become adept and well-informed makers of art and/or design.In this essay I argue for the value of aesthetic fundamentals in the education of artists and designers, and outline a series of factors that contribute to the subordination of aesthetics in college art instruction. I examine introductory-level college art/design curricula, including a pair of courses that are intended to provide students with visual, compositional, and/or aesthetic fundamentals, and explore why instructors, even in these courses, too often bypass such fundamentals in their teaching. Specifically, I discuss the ways in which traditions of art education, mixed with artist/teachers' own art training, lead to a virtual dismissal of aesthetic fundamentals. Certain assumptions that professional artists often bring to their teaching and how these contribute to the problem are examined. I identify a historical phenomenon [End Page 41] that plays a key role in the subordination of aesthetic fundamentals — the schism between "art" and "design." I suggest an approach for embracing aesthetic fundamentals in college art instruction that preserves students' individual and cultural differences, while at the same time enabling them to make aesthetic decisions in their work, and to discern aesthetic quality in each other's work. Finally, I conclude that students can fully succeed in more advanced explorations of the complex and controversial realm of contemporary art issues, and certainly in the applied arts, only after receiving a solid, balanced, and inclusive grounding in the profound aesthetic power of clear organizing principles of visual information. The Value of Aesthetic Fundamentals Why are aesthetic fundamentals — that is, principles and elements of visual organization — actually important to the education of college art students? Among other reasons, they are important because professional artists do somehow have to learn to make their work aesthetically convincing, even if they must manage other challenges as well, including "newness," historical relevance, and significance of idea. The National Association of Schools of Art and Design shares this reasoning, as evidenced by their requirement that B.F.A. students acquire "essential competencies," including becoming "visually literate," developing an "understanding of basic design principles, concepts, media, and formats," and "mastery of basic foundation techniques." 3 The problem we face in educating artists today is that the range of challenges inherent to a career in the art world often results in aesthetic considerations being assigned a low priority in visual arts curricula. Many contemporary artists teaching in college art programs see themselves as all but immune to the realm of visual aesthetics; they subscribe instead to the prevalent postmodern dictum that aesthetics are superfluous. As this way of thinking permeates college art instructors' thinking to an ever-greater extent, students of art and design find themselves increasingly distanced from aesthetic training, and from the aesthetic experience. This distancing is a loss to students.Students lose when aesthetic fundamentals are neglected because for all the effort they might make... (shrink)

As my book The Uses of Argument pointed out, we must look and see how our critical standards vary from one area or activity to another-e.g. from politics to aesthetics. Hence we need to explore how these critical standards evolve. and how the most reflective and best-informed people in any area of experience refine those standards. We cannot understand where we are now unless we understand how we got here, even in a field like mathematics. Hence we must modestly (...) recognize that the best we can do now is the best we can do now; and that those who come after us will move beyond our ideas. There is much contingency in these historical developments. (shrink)

The history of political philosophy is marked by a conception of politics as inherently tragic. As such, it has hardly ever been systematically contrasted with the other model of dramatic art, comedy. In this article, I explore the relation between Hegel's twofold notion of drama as an ordered genre of disorder – what he considers to be the highest form of self-reflective art – and the post-foundational concept of radical democracy. After outlining the interplay between order and disorder in post-foundationalist (...) theories of political difference, I summarize the way in which the steps of Hegel's poetics consecutively build on each other and elaborate the role of the dramatic genres. By means of a genealogical reconstruction of the respective concepts of democracy and drama, I demonstrate the extent to which these two methodologies correspond to poetic and political order formation in a structural homology. This conceptualization concludes with the assertion of a constitutive dramatization of political modernity which does not, however, culminate in the concept of political tragedy but points towards a still-to-be-realized, comically ordered democracy. (shrink)

Color has long been at home in the domains of classical art and aesthetics. However, with the introduction of computer art in Germany in the early 1960s, a new ‘rational theory’ of art, media and color emerged. Many believed this new ‘science’ of art would generate computer algorithms which would enable new media aesthetic ‘principles to be formulated mathematically’ — thus ending the lofty mystifications that have, for too long, been associated with Romantic notions about artwork and art-making. (...) Although, as German computer artist Herbert Franke noted, ‘Traditional aesthetic modes of expression are of little avail to the artist who works with technical systems, particularly computers’, I argue herein that the shifts in aesthetic theory brought about by the introduction of computer art are more complex than a clear-cut subsumption to mathematics, information theory or cybernetics. While the ‘Programming the Beautiful’ project that began in Europe in the 1960s — the three-fold rationalization of the artist, the artwork and color — has been largely realized, nonetheless, today we find ourselves seeped in the neo-Romanticization of new media art, the reglorification of the role of the artist, and new digital color — ironically, the exact opposite of what the project for rational art initially sought. (shrink)

In his A Theory of Justice, John Rawls suggests that a society's notion of justice informs its distribution of rights, obligations, and goods. For him, "justice as fairness" ensures that the principles dictating this distribution be agreed upon fairly. I will argue that there is no exact parallel in the Chinese tradition to what Rawls is calling "justice as fairness." Instead, we see serving a similar purpose an emphasis on the regulation of harmonious processes within the body of society. (...) This can be seen in the use of the Chinese word zhi (ÖÎ) to refer both to governing and to healing. In this sense, Chinese ideas about justice seem to come closer to Plato than to Rawls. (shrink)

This paper argues that the cognitive sciences need to incorporate aesthetic study of the arts into their methodologies in order to fully understand the nature of human cognitive processes, because the arts reflect insights into human experience that are unobtainable by the methodologies of the natural sciences. These insights differ from those acquired by scientific exploration because they arise not from the conceptual logic of reason but from the precategorial intuition of imagination. Aesthetics provides a methodology whereby we are (...) able to understand how art enables us to experience emotions caused by sense impressions. This methodology lies at the heart of Giambattista Vico’s Principi di scienza nuova (1725-44), which attempts to account for the way we live and participate in cultural, social, and civic communities. Vico’s theory challenges certain Western philosophical presuppositions that still inform much of cognitive science, such as the relation of language to our experience of the natural world, the nature of subjective and objective representations, and the role of the arts in the evolutionary development of the human mind. In basing my approach to literature on Vico’s, Susanne K. Langer’s (1953, 1967) and Merleau-Ponty’s (1962[1945], 1968) theories, I argue that the language of literature is distinguished from conventional language use by its imaginative use of aesthetic patterns that make manifest the inherent character of the external world as we experience it. By introducing the concepts of minding, metaphor, and icon as structures of the imagination, I show how the language of poetic expression in Matthew Arnold’s poem, “Dover Beach,” enables us to apprehend the ways in which we intuitively participate in the reality that underlies our conscious experience. Such participation occurs because sensory impressions of the world we experience cause modifications in the human mind that result in affective responses. Current research in the cognitive sciences increasingly indicates that such modification occurs; aesthetic study of the arts provides a means whereby we can know what it is like to experience such modifications. (shrink)

This book provides a clear and informed account of aesthetic and callistic concepts as they occur in the works of Plato and Aristotle. The author illustrates their ideas on art and beauty by close reference to their texts and finds a profound similarity which unites them, revealing many of their differences to be complementary aspects of an essentially similar viewpoint. He also shows how Greek notions of art and beauty are not merely primitive steps in the advance to modern ideas (...) but have a direct relevance to modern critical controversies. (shrink)

The generalizing methods of philosophies achieve a popularity for a period of time, which may be extended or brief, during which their proponents and even their opponents may regard them as the cognitive presuppositions for the epoch. The same effect is achieved by the more exact scientific methodologies as they find fame outside the scientific circle and are treated by some as omnipotent discoveries with powers to heal all other disciplines which may be ailing. The limping disciplines, generally classified among (...) the humanities and discerned to be in trouble since the nineteenth century, are understandably envious of the seemingly invincible, favored scientific children of our time. For our era tends to worship quantifiable data and the principles and instruments for measuring and conceptualizing it. Thus semiotics and information theory, in hopes of acquiring the status of the sciences, have led aesthetic inquiry toward the currently popular scientism; but the limited cognitive scope of this methodology has not been recognized. Sociology of knowledge, however, forewarns us of the winds of fashion on cognitive paradigms. Where the inherent explanatory scope of a doctrine, system, or method is less than is believed according to the prevailing sociological patterns, a correction will eventually set in. And an important factor in overcoming the para-religious claims will be, precisely, the fundamental antinomical tendency of the human mind. Stefan Morawski, Research Professor at the Institute of Arts of the Polish Academy of Sciences, has lectured throughout the United States and is currently teaching at the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich. His works have appeared in a variety of languages: Marxism and Aesthetics: History of Ideas has been published in Spanish and Italian; Absolute and Form, in Polish, Italian, and French; and, in English, Inquiries into the Fundamentals of Aesthetics. (shrink)

Through a series of provocative conversations, Frederick Luis Aldama and Herbert Lindenberger, who have written widely on literature, film, music, and art, locate a place for the discomforting and the often painfully unpleasant within aesthetics. The conversational format allows them to travel informally across many centuries and many art forms. They have much to tell one another about the arts since the advent of modernism soon after 1900—the nontonal music, for example, of the Second Vienna School, the chance-directed music (...) and dance of John Cage and Merce Cunningham, the in-your-faceness of such diverse visual artists as Francis Bacon, Pablo Picasso, Willem de Kooning, Egon Schiele, Otto Dix, and Damien Hirst. They demonstrate as well a long tradition of discomforting art stretching back many centuries, for example, in the Last Judgments of innumerable Renaissance painters, in Goya’s so-called “black” paintings, in Wagner’s Tristan chord, and in the subtexts of Shakespearean works such as King Lear and Othello. This book is addressed at once to scholars of literature, art history, musicology, and cinema. Although its conversational format eschews the standard conventions of scholarly argument, it provides original insights both into particular art forms and into individual works within these forms. Among other matters, it demonstrates how recent work in neuroscience may provide insights in the ways that consumers process difficult and discomforting works of art. The book also contributes to current aesthetic theory by charting the dialogue that goes on—especially in aesthetically challenging works—between creator, artifact, and consumer. (shrink)

The Aesthetic Dimensions of Educational Administration and Leadership provides an aesthetic critique of educational administration and leadership. It demonstrates the importance of aesthetics on all aspects of the administrative and leadership world: the ways ideas and ideals are created, how their expression is conveyed, the impact they have on interpersonal relationships and the organizational environment that carries and reinforces them, and the moral boundaries or limits that can be established or exceeded. The book is divided into three sections. · (...) Section I examines various philosophical traditions in aesthetics as they inform administrative life, focussing on major modern traditions arising from Kant, romanticism and Nietzsche, Collingwood, the pragmatic school, and critical theory. · Section II explores four aesthetic sources for administrative critique - architecture, literature, film, and movement - as they serve both to understand the social construction of administration and leadership and provide a critique of values, roles, power and authority. · Section III examines more topical and applied problems of charisma, heroism, and authority in practice, concluding with a discussion of the aesthetic analysis of politics and power within the context of contemporary educational administration and leadership theory. While presenting a significant departure from conventional studies in the field, the international contributors reflect a continuity of thought on the creation, use and abuse of administrative and leadership authority from the writings of Plato through to contemporary theory. This book should appeal to school administrators and leaders and those aspiring to these roles. (shrink)

The increasing societal emphasis on physical appearance, particularly influenced by social media, has led to a significant rise in demand for aesthetic dentistry procedures. This study aims to explore the ethical dimensions of marketing practices and the phenomenon of overtreatment in cosmetic dental procedures, highlighting the implications for patient care and professional integrity. A systematic literature review was conducted across four databases, yielding an initial 76 articles. After applying inclusion and exclusion criteria, 12 articles were selected for analysis. The review (...) focused on ethical considerations, marketing practices, and overtreatment in aesthetic dentistry, employing narrative synthesis to extract relevant data. The findings indicate that social media is a primary driver of patient expectations, often prioritizing aesthetic outcomes over health considerations. This trend raises ethical concerns about informed consent and autonomy. The commodification of dental care, fueled by aggressive marketing strategies, has resulted in a notable increase in overtreatment, where unnecessary procedures are performed to satisfy commercial pressures and idealized beauty standards. The review highlights a lack of robust ethical guidelines governing marketing practices in aesthetic dentistry, exacerbating these issues. The study underscores the urgent need for clear ethical frameworks to guide dental practitioners in balancing patient welfare with business interests. Recommendations include the implementation of ethics education in dental curricula, the development of comprehensive ethical guidelines, and fostering open communication between practitioners and patients. These measures are essential for enhancing informed decision-making and ensure that patient care remains the priority in aesthetic dentistry. (shrink)

Introduction In "search of instances where the American imagination demands the real thing, and, to attain it, must fabricate the absolute fake," Umberto ...

The major global challenges of our time, like climate and environmental crises, rising inequality, the emergence of disruptive technologies, etc., demand interdisciplinary research for effective solutions. A clear understanding of value is essential for guiding socio-cultural and economic transitions to address these issues. Despite numerous attempts to define value, existing approaches remain inconsistent across disciplines and lack a comprehensive framework. This paper introduces a novel perspective on value through the lens of granular interaction thinking theory, proposing an informational entropy-based (...) notion of value. Grounded on quantum mechanics, Shannon’s information theory, and the mindsponge theory, this framework integrates both subjective and objective considerations and is highly compatible with interdisciplinary research. The informational entropy-based notion of value effectively bridges diverse concepts of value, including use and exchange value in economics, personal values in psychology, and cultural, moral, ethical, and aesthetic values in society. By offering a unifying perspective, granular interaction thinking theory provides a valuable framework for translating insights from quantum mechanics into socio-cultural, economic, and psychological contexts, enriching theoretical discourse and enhancing analytical effectiveness. (shrink)

Discussions of green design and sustainable architecture have become common in the architectural profession, but not in philosophy. This is unfortunate, as philosophers could make important contributions to this discussion, given that these terms rife with ambiguities and that the relationships between these ideas and the traditional Vitruvian values of architecture (beauty, structure, and utility) are unclear. In a recent article, Tom Spector addresses some of these issues to assess whether the notion of sustainability could underpin an entire design philosophy. (...) He concludes that it cannot. I argue that Spector’s argumentsare flawed. After discussing the history of green design, I connect a number of theories in the new field of environmental aesthetics to the question of architectural aesthetics to show how sustainability might inform architecture. (shrink)

A new theory of aesthetics and music, grounded in the collision between language and the body. In this book, Tim Hodgkinson proposes a theory of aesthetics and music grounded in the boundary between nature and culture within the human being. His analysis discards the conventional idea of the human being as an integrated whole in favor of a rich and complex field in which incompatible kinds of information—biological and cultural—collide. It is only when we acknowledge (...) the clash of body and language within human identity that we can understand how art brings forth the special form of subjectivity potentially present in aesthetic experiences. As a young musician, Hodgkinson realized that music was, in some mysterious way, “of itself”—not isolated from life, but not entirely continuous with it, either. Drawing on his experiences as a musician, composer, and anthropologist, Hodgkinson shows how when we listen to music a new subjectivity comes to life in ourselves. The normal mode of agency is suspended, and the subjectivity inscribed in the music comes toward us as a formative “other” to engage with. But this is not our reproduction of the composer's own subjectivation; when we perform our listening of the music, we are sharing the formative risks taken by its maker. To examine this in practice, Hodgkinson looks at the work of three composers who have each claimed to stimulate a new way of listening: Pierre Schaeffer, John Cage, and Helmut Lachenmann. (shrink)

In this paper, I discuss how information theory has been used in the study of animal communication, as well as how these uses are justified. Biologists justify their use of Shannon’s information measures by the work they do in allowing for comparisons between different organisms and because they measure a quantity that is purported to be important for natural selection. I argue that there are problems with both sorts of justification. To make these difficulties clear, I focus (...) on the use of Shannon’s information measures to quantify the amount of information transmitted by the fire ant’s odor trail and the honeybee’s waggle dance. Both of these systems are relatively simple and well understood, and the application of Shannon’s information measure to these systems initially seemed very promising and relatively straightforward. They are therefore particularly suitable for revealing the benefits and difficulties of applying Shannon’s information measures to biological systems in general, and animal communication systems in particular. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Aesthetic Education 37.1 (2003) 40-53 [Access article in PDF] Aesthetic Experience and Aesthetic Analysis David E. W. Fenner The "raw data" that aesthetics is meant to explain is the aesthetic experience. People have experiences that they class off from other experiences and label, as a class, the aesthetic ones. Aesthetic experience is basic, and allother things aesthetic — aesthetic properties, aesthetic objects, aesthetic attitudes — (...) are secondary in their importance to aesthetic experiences. 1Considering aesthetic experience as the raw data that philosophical aesthetics seeks to explain is a relatively recent phenomenon. This was certainly not the focus in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Aesthetic judgment was the focus of Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, Hume, and Kant: "How do we make meaningful judgments (hopefully real ones) about the aesthetic quality of (certain) objects and events?" But with George Santayana, John Dewey, and Jerome Stolnitz, the focus changes. Now the interest is in the aesthetic experience: what makes those experiences we label "aesthetic" special? Why do we separate those experiences from others?The movement from the Taste Theories to those focused on aesthetic experience is not a movement that is over and done with — far from it. There is still (and I think there will always be) a tension between these two very basic aspects of philosophical aesthetics. And, although I claim that aesthetic experience is the most basic thing that aesthetics studies, I recognize that this is challengeable and only true from a certain temporal viewpoint.I recently taught the most rewarding undergraduate course in aesthetics. The reason that it was so rewarding was that the students carried the class with deep and insightful discussions, and they were not shy about challenging what was coming out of my mouth. One of the challenges that informed our entire semester focused on the tension between experience and judgment. I lectured comfortably about aesthetic experience as our "raw data," and I lectured equally comfortably about how taking an aesthetic view of an object or event meant focusing primarily, if not exclusively, on [End Page 40] what is available to us through simple sensory acquaintanceship with the object. "Aesthetics," I said, "is about the sensuous aspects of our experiences." And so we could, for instance, take an aesthetic view of a Robert Mapplethorpe photograph which precluded our experiences being mired in the themes that the more famous Mapplethorpe photos take as their content. "Mapplethorpe is a great photographer," I argued, "and one can see this if one is willing to focus strictly on what meets your eye when you look at the picture." In short, I held the position that the aesthetic view is the formal one.Without saying more, what I did was conflate two different things. On the one hand, I argued that aesthetic experience is a natural part of life that aesthetics seeks to explore. On the other, I argued that appreciating something aesthetically was to appreciate its formal qualities, those qualities that one could access simply through looking, hearing, touching, for example. But these really are two different things.Aesthetic experiences, if we are to treat them as "raw data," must be explored without pre-conception, prejudice, or limitation. And, truly enough, the vast majority of aesthetic experiences are not focused exclusively, in terms of their contents, on formal or simple-sensory matters. Aesthetic experiences are, first, experiences. They are complex things, having to do with things as tidy as the formal qualities of the object under consideration and with things as messy as whether one had enough sleep the night before, whether one just had a fight with his roommate, whether one is carrying psychological baggage that is brought to consciousness by this particular aesthetic object. Later in this essay, I want to explore some of this complexity.The other side of what was happening in my class, the formal focus on the sensory as the basis for an aesthetic viewing, is not the substance of "aesthetic experience" per se. It is rather the basis of what we might call "aesthetic analysis." Aesthetic analysis has to do with separating out from our... (shrink)

I examine the prospects for an ideal observer theory in aesthetics modelled on Roderick Firth’s 1952 paper ‘Ethical Absolutism and the Ideal Observer’. The first generation of philosophers to consider an Ideal Aesthetic Observer found fault with Firth’s omniscience condition; more recent writers have criticized the affective component of an IAO’s response. In the end, most discussants reject the possibility of an IAO theory. Though the IAO theory gets the model wrong for answering meta‐aesthetic questions, revisiting (...) the debate prompts useful reconsideration of the role of the critic and the nature of aesthetic appreciation. (shrink)

This paper explores how the virtuous aesthetic cosmopolitan—one actively engaged in cultivating an authoritative appreciation for culturally unfamiliar works or traditions of art, in a manner informed by moral cosmopolitan principles—engages with the ‘exotic’ artwork in a manner that is both morally responsible and aesthetically discerning. After providing an overview of philosophical cosmopolitanism and the aesthetic cosmopolitan’s project, I consider in depth a particular example: the music of Mauritanian singer Noura Mint Seymali as encountered by an unaccustomed listener. I explore (...) potential problematic responses to the work, including both chauvinistic and exoticizing responses. I then consider possible strategies for alternative responses, informed by the aesthetic and hermeneutic theories of Hume, Gadamer, and Charles Taylor. Having revealed deficiencies with these alternatives, I go on to argue that the cosmopolitan’s best strategy is a mode of appreciation that is ‘conversational’ in nature, an open-ended approach modeled on an exchange between the appreciator and an other-cultural interlocutor. In proposing such a model, I draw on the work of Kwame Appiah and Maria Lugones, as well as Anthony Laden’s recent work on conversational norms. (shrink)

Research on cultural transmission among Americans has established a bias for transmitting stories that have disgusting elements. Conceived of as a cultural evolutionary force, this phenomenon is one type of emotional selection. In a series of online studies with Americans and Indians we investigate whether there are cultural differences in emotional selection, such that the transmission process favours different kinds of content in different countries. The first study found a bias for disgusting content among Americans but not among Indians. Four (...) subsequent studies focused on how country interacts with kind of emotional content in reactions to transmission of stories or information. Whereas Indian participants, compared to Americans, tended to be less interested in, and excited by, transmission of stories and news involving common disgust-elicitors, the opposite pattern held for transmission of happy surprises and good news. We discuss various possible explanations and implications. (shrink)

In this article, I explore a short history of exchange between cybernetics and aesthetics in Brazil, beginning with the reception of Max Bense’s “new aesthetic” by concrete and neo-concrete poets and artists. I focus on his intellectual exchange with the poet and literary critic Haroldo de Campos, who promoted Bense’s information aesthetics in Brazil throughout the 1960s to tell a little-known history of cybernetic theory wedded to aesthetic practice, demonstrating the role that Brazilian critics, writers and (...) artists played in mediating and deviating from some of the major tenants of first-order cybernetics. Rather than embracing the total “entropy” of meaning that characterized Bense’s “generative aesthetics”, Brazilian poets and artists drew upon cybernetics and information theory to produce artistic works that engaged figuration, bodies, politics, spectatorship and participation. (shrink)