1. I want to discuss a new area of scientific research called neuro-aesthetics, which is the study of art by neuroscientists. The most prominent champions of neuroaesthetics are V.S. Ramachandran and Semir Zeki, both of whom have both made ambitious claims about their work. Ramachandran says boldly that he has discovered “the key to understanding what art really is”, and that his theory of art can be tested by brain imaging experiments, although he does not describe these experiments, or explain (...) what results the theory predicts (Ramachandran and Hirstein 1999, 17). Zeki, who originally coined the term “neuro-aesthetics”, claims to have laid the foundations for understanding “the biological basis of aesthetic experience”, and to have formulated a “neurobiological definition of art” (Zeki 1999, 2, 22). If these claims are true, we are at the dawn of a new age in the study of art. Up to now, most of the people studying art have been historians, some of whom can read Latin, but hardly any of whom have mastered even the rudiments of brain science. And aesthetics has been in the hands of philosophers, who still disagree among themselves about ideas that were stated in the fourth century BC. Neuroaesthetics is different. As Ramachandran (2000, 19) says: “These ideas have the advantage that, unlike the vague notions of philosophers and art historians, they can be tested experimentally”. So, is neuro-aesthetics the next big thing? I want to assess its prospects, starting with Ramachandran. (shrink)
losopher David Hume wrote: ‘Beauty is no quality in things themselves: It exists merely in the mind which contemplates them.’ Some people find this claim shocking and absurd, while others think that it is obviously true. I want to consider how it should be interpreted, and whether it is plausible. But I shall begin by examining another view about beauty, which Hume deliberately rejected when he wrote these words. It is attributed by tradition to the mathematician and philosopher Pythagoras, who (...) lived in the second half of the sixth century BC, and it has influenced artists, poets and philosophers ever since. The Pythagorean view is that beauty consists in mathematical perfection. (shrink)
1. A new wave of subjectivism in the theory of pictorial art began around forty years ago; and since then it has gathered pace in tandem with changing fashions in the philosophy of mind. The initial impetus was provided by the publication of Ernst Gombrich’s 1956 Mellon Lectures, Art and Illusion.1 In this book, and in many subsequent articles and lectures which elaborate its theme, Gombrich argues that the development of Western art – essentially the art of ancient Greece and (...) the art of Western Europe from Giotto to Cezanne – consists in a series of discoveries about the nature of visual perception, and the means by which the effect of visible objects on our senses can be simulated. ‘What may make a painting like a distant view through a window’ he writes, ‘is not the fact that the two can be as indistinguishable as is a facsimile from the original: it is the similarity between the mental activities both can arouse.’ And in another place: ‘The goal which the artist seeks with such self-critical persistence is … a psychological effect.’2 These remarks are concerned with a specific artistic tradition, and with specific pictorial devices, such as foreshortening and shading, which I shall not write about here. But Gombrich’s work launched a search for a general theory of depiction based on the same approach. The search intensified in the wake of Nelson Goodman’s Languages of Art, which persuaded most of its readers that the resemblance theory of depiction could not be made to work, but did not provide a plausible alternative to it. Today there is broad agreement among philosophers that the nature of pictorial art cannot be explained by analysing the relationship between the marks on the surface of a picture and the kinds of objects that they represent. The consensus is that it can only be explained by defining the psychological effect that these marks produce.3 Today, the two most influential theories of depiction that are guided by this general idea are Richard Wollheim’s and Christopher Peacocke’s.. (shrink)
In the Meno, Socrates asks why knowledge is a better guide to acting the right way than true belief. The answer he proposes is ingenious, but it fails to solve the puzzle, and some recent attempts to solve it also fail. I shall argue that the puzzle cannot be solved as long as we conceive of knowledge as a kind of belief, or allow our conception of knowledge to be governed by the contrast between knowledge and belief.
Traditionally, the story that opens chapter three of Genesis is called The Fall. David Daube, who was the greatest authority on ancient law in his generation, and a biblical scholar of exceptional brilliance, said that it should be called The Rise. I shall explain why shortly, but first let me remind you of the orthodox interpretation of the story.
In 1931, Wittgenstein listed ten influences on his intellectual development: ‘I don’t believe I have ever invented a line of thinking,’ he wrote, ‘I have always taken one over from someone else. I have simply straightway seized upon it with enthusiasm for my work of clarification. That is how Boltzmann, Hertz, Schopenhauer, Frege, Russell, Kraus, Loos, Weininger, Spengler, Sraffa have influenced me.’1 The order in which these names occurs is probably the order in which Wittgenstein encountered them, or their ideas. (...) As we shall see, the title of this article derives from Kraus. But its subject is Loos’s influence on Wittgenstein. Loos is unique among the influences Wittgenstein acknowledged. He is the only one who made a major contribution to the arts - as an architect, and as a pioneer of modernism. He was not merely a critical and prophetic voice, as Kraus and Weininger and Spengler were, but a seminal force in the principal artistic movement of the twentieth century. Moreover, his influence on Wittgenstein is an especially interesting one, given this book’s theme, because it involves both Wittgenstein’s philosophical writings and the only other significant contribution he made to the arts, namely, the house which he built for his sister Margaret Stonborough- Wittgenstein between 1926 and 1928. As we shall see, Wittgenstein’s early conception of the nature and purpose of philosophy, which unfolded between 1914 and 1919, was influenced by Loos’s cultural criticism and theory of design. And the design of the house in Kundmanngasse would have been inconceivable without the example of Loos’s work, and the influence of his ideas. Accordingly, I shall divide this article into three parts. I shall begin by describing Loos’s principal ideas. Then I shall consider the house which Wittgenstein built for his sister. Finally, I shall comment on Loos’s influence on Wittgenstein’s philosophy. (shrink)
This paper argues that we need to distinguish between two different ideas of a reason: first, the idea of a premise or assumption, from which a person’s action or deliberation can proceed; second, the idea of a fact by which a person can be guided, when he modifies his thought or behaviour in some way. It argues further that if we have the first idea in mind, one can act for the reason that p regardless of whether it is the (...) case that p , and regardless of whether one believes that p . But if we have the second idea in mind, one cannot act for the reason that p unless one knows that p . The last part of the paper briefly indicates how the second idea of a reason can contribute to a larger argument, showing that it is better to conceive of knowledge as a kind of ability than as a kind of belief. (shrink)
In the Meno, Socrates asks why knowledge is a better guide to acting the right way than true belief. The answer he proposes is ingenious, but it fails to solve the puzzle, and some recent attempts to solve it also fail. I shall argue that the puzzle cannot be solved as long as we conceive of knowledge as a kind of belief, or allow our conception of knowledge to be governed by the contrast between knowledge and belief.
Peter Hacker is one of the most notable interpreters of Wittgenstein's work, a powerful and sophisticated exponent of Wittgensteinian ideas, and a distinguished historian of the analytic tradition. Thirteen leading philosophers and Wittgenstein scholars offer specially written essays in honour of Hacker. Their contributions deal with a variety of themes associated with Wittgenstein. Some deal with issues of Wittgenstein scholarship and interpretation, including areas that have attracted an increasing amount of attention, such as ethics and religion. Others deal with central (...) topics from the history of analytic philosophy. Finally there are essays that explore and assess Wittgensteinian ideas, in some cases as developed by Hacker, in the philosophy of language and the philosophy of mind, or in related areas such as the philosophy of action and the philosophy of neuroscience. (shrink)
In a recent paper in this journal, 'Pictures, Colour and Resemblance', Michael Newall criticizes my views about how colours are depicted. In this reply, I set out my views and then discuss Newall's criticism of them.
theory of knowledge defended in Timothy Williamson's book Knowledge and its Limits is compared here with the theory defended in the author's articles ‘How Knowledge Works’ and ‘Knowledge and Self-Knowledge’. It is argued that there are affinities between these theories, but that the latter has considerably more explanatory power.
The questions tackled here are fundamental ones: Is our experience of color an illusion? How does the metaphysical status of colors differ from that of shapes?
Pluralism—the incommensurability and, at times, incompatibility of objective ends—is not relativism, nor, a fortiori, subjectivism, nor the allegedly unbridgeable differences of emotional attitude on which some modern positivists, emotivists, existentialists, nationalists and, indeed, relativistic sociologists and anthropologists found their accounts.
The questions considered are whether colours are relative to systems of colour concepts, to the conditions in which they are observed, or to observers or communities of observers; and whether the relativity of colours, such as it is, implies that they are less real than shapes or intervals in time. The argument is based on the thought that Special Relativity provides the best available intellectual framework for thinking about the supposed relativity of qualities of physical things.
Agency and Action ROYAL INSTITUTE OF PHILOSOPHY SUPPLEMENT: 55 EDITED BY John Hyman and Helen Steward CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS Thi es One 5XA3-BFA-OTY3 ...
Pluralism—the incommensurability and, at times, incompatibility of objective ends—is not relativism, nor, a fortiori, subjectivism, nor the allegedly unbridgeable differences of emotional attitude on which some modern positivists, emotivists, existentialists, nationalists and, indeed, relativistic sociologists and anthropologists found their accounts.
I argue that itches, tickles, aches and pains—sensations of all sorts—are generally in the places where we say they are. So, for example, if I say that I have an itch in the big toe on my left foot, then, by and large, that is the very place where the itch is. James denied this in the 1890s; Russell and Broad denied it in the 1920s; Wittgenstein and Ryle denied it in the 1940s; Lewis and Armstrong denied it in the (...) 1960s; and since then various kinds of materialists have denied it. But if itches etc. are states of the sensitive parts of bodies, then it is true. (shrink)
The modern causal theory of perception—the theory defended by Grice and Strawson—differs from the classical theory advanced by Descartes and Locke in two ways. First, the modern theory is an exercise in conceptual analysis. Secondly, it is a version of what is sometimes called direct realism. I shall comment on these points in turn.
This paper is about the semantic structure of verbal and deverbal noun phrases. The focus is on noun phrases which describe actions, perceptions, sensations and beliefs. It is commonly thought that actions are movements of parts of the agent’s body which we typically describe in terms of their effects, and that perceptions are slices of sensible experience which we typically describe in terms of their causes. And many philosophers hold that sensations and beliefs are states of the central nervous system (...) which we generally describe in terms of their typical causes and effects. For example ‘Brutus’s killing of Caesar’ is thought to describe a movement of a part of Brutus’s body – e.g. the thrust of an arm – in terms of one of its effects, namely, Caesar’s death. And ‘Hyman’s visual perception of a table in front of him’ is thought to describe the visual experience I’m having right now in terms of its cause. The object of the paper is to show that these doctrines misrepresent the semantic structure of verbal and deverbal noun phrases. (shrink)
I shall be mainly concerned with the question ‘What is personal propositional knowledge?’. This question is obviously quite narrowly focused, in three respects. In the first place, there is impersonal as well as personal knowledge. Second, a distinction is often drawn between propositional knowledge and practical knowledge. And third, as well as asking what knowledge is, it is also possible to ask whether and how knowledge of various kinds can be acquired: causal knowledge, a priori knowledge, moral knowledge, and so (...) on. I shall dwell briefly on each of these three points. First, there is the distinction between personal and impersonal knowledge – in other words, between the psychological concept of knowledge and the social one.1 We use the concept of knowledge to describe the cognitive condition of individuals; but we also use it to describe the progress of scientific and historical research. So for example we can speak or enquire about the state of knowledge in a particular field of biology or history. And if we do so, we are evidently not concerned with what anyone in particular knows about, say, the genetics of fruit flies or the career of Charlemagne, but rather with what the scientific or academic community knows. Needless to say, there is a close connection between personal and impersonal knowledge. But ‘It is known that p’ does not simply mean ‘Someone or other.. (shrink)
In the past thirty years or so, the doctrine that actions are events has become an essential, and sometimes unargued, part of the received view in the philosophy of action, despite the efforts of a few philosophers to undermine the consensus. For example, the entry for Agency in a recently published reference guide to the philosophy of mind begins with the following sentence: A central task in the philosophy of action is that of spelling out the differences between events in (...) general and those events that fall squarely into the category of human action. There is no consensus about what events are. But it is generally agreed that, whatever events may prove to be, actions are a species or a class of events. We believe that the received view is mistaken: actions are not events. We concede that for most purposes, the kind of categorial refinement which is involved in either affirming or denying that actions are events is frankly otiose. Our common idiom does not stress the difference between actions and events, at least not in general terms, because it has no need to. Perhaps it sounds a little odd to say that some events are performed; but if we balked at describing, say, the abdication of Edward VIII as one of the politically significant events in Britain in 1936, it could not be for metaphysical reasons. And since actions, like events, are datable — though often, as we shall see, only imprecisely — actions are said to take place and to occur. But an important class of actions consist in moving something; indeed, according to many philosophers, every action consists in moving something. And when we consider actions of this sort from a theoretical point of view it becomes imperative to distinguish between actions and events. Or so we shall argue. (shrink)
