Review text: "Ronald W. Langacker is universally acclaimed as one of the founding fathers of the cognitive linguistics movement. His pioneering efforts towards developing a meaning-oriented, usage-based theory of grammar have given cognitive linguistics many of its key concepts, and his theory of Cognitive Grammar is not only one of the cornerstones of cognitive linguistics, it is also a magnificent achievement in its own right." Dirk Geeraerts, January 2009.

Ronald W Hepburn; Art, Truth and the Education of Subjectivity, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 24, Issue 2, 30 May 2006, Pages 185–198, https://doi.

The aesthetic appreciation of both art and nature is often, in fact, judged to be more – and less – serious. For instance, both natural objects and art objects can be hastily and unthinkingly perceived, and they can be perceived with full and thoughtful attention. In the case of art, we are better equipped to sift the trivial from the serious appreciation; for the existence of a corpus, and a continuing practice, of criticism of the arts – for all their (...) internal disputatiousness – furnishes us with relevant criteria. In the case of nature, we have far less guidance. Yet it must matter, there too, to distinguish trivial from serious encounters. When we seek to defend areas of “outstanding natural beauty” against depredations, it matters greatly what account we can give of the appreciation of that beauty: how its value can be set alongside competing and vociferously promoted values involved in industry, commerce and urban expansion. If we wish to attach very high value to the appreciation of natural beauty, we must be able to show that more is involved in such appreciation than the pleasant, unfocused enjoyment of a picnic place, or a fleeting and distanced impression of countryside through a touring-coach window, or obligatory visits to standard viewpoints or snapshot-points.That there is much work to be done on this subject is of course due to the comparative neglect of natural beauty in recent and fairly recent aesthetics. (shrink)

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Name der Zeitschrift: Cognitive Linguistics Jahrgang: 27 Heft: 4 Seiten: 465-477.

Argues that information, in the animal behaviour or evolutionary context, is correlation/covariation. The alternation of red and green traffic lights is information because it is (quite strictly) correlated with the times when it is safe to drive through the intersection; thus driving in accordance with the lights is adaptive (causative of survival). Daylength is usefully, though less strictly, correlated with the optimal time to breed. Information in the sense of covariance implies what is adaptive; if an animal can infer what (...) the information implies, it increases its chances of survival. (shrink)

Journal Name: Cognitive Linguistics Issue: Ahead of print.

How can we best understand our aesthetic appreciation of sky and space? This essay begins by outlining the nature of spatial experience through some examples. Then it examines how our responses can be shaped by art and myth. Here we see how themes, such as ascension, that were current in prehistory and developed religions, can be reappropriated as components of a justifiable aesthetic experience. However, the task of finding defensible aesthetic responses to space as both experience and abstract idea does (...) present paradoxes. For example, how are we to respond to scientific updates about the ever greater vastness of space? The way forward presented here is to endorse, but not with any sense of uniqueness of misplaced grandeur, our freedom to contemplate with due seriousness both the near and the far and our own capacities, such as imagination and love, as also part of the wonder and mystery of the universe. (shrink)

Ronald W. Hepburn; Particularity and Some Related Concepts in Aesthetics, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 59, Issue 1, 1 June 1959, Pages 189–21.

Aesthetic appreciation of landscape is by no means limited to the sensuous enjoyment of sights and sounds. It very often has a reflective, cognitive element as well. This sometimes incorporates scientific knowledge, e.g.,geological or ecological; but it can also manifest what this article will call 'metaphysical imagination', which sees or seems to see in a landscape some indication, some disclosure of how the world ultimately is. The article explores and critically appraises this concept of metaphysical imagination, and some of the (...) roles it can play in our aesthetic encounters. (shrink)

Disturbed by these acrimonious arguments, the authors - former colleagues and university-press board members - embarked on an ambitious project to reexamine a number of major literary and philosophical works dealing with the liberal arts and education. With their discussions ranging from Plato to Rousseau, from Cicero to Vico, from Erasmus to Matthew Arnold, Sousa and Weinsheimer offer not a history of education philosophy but an examination of the present.

First Published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.