Aesthetic Experience

This essay presents a multifold argument on Oakeshott's aesthetics. First, his famous essay "The Voice of Poetry" deals more explicitly and thoroughly with art than is often acknowledged. Second, aesthetic experience is a competitor to philosophic insight in so far as it discloses the coherence of a world of ideas through its uniting form and content; yet "art" remains a mode. Third, the essay points out that the absence of history from any major role in Oakeshott's most important treatment of (...) art is a puzzle worthy of consideration. It is argued that Oakeshott's exclusion of history is intimately related to his interest in art's non-temporality, specifically, the ability of art to create a fictive "world of the text" which includes representations of human action in time which are set apart from both history and practical human conduct. (shrink)

A classic and fraught question in the philosophy of film is this: when you watch a film, do you experience yourself in the world of the film, observing the scenes? In this paper, we argue that this subject of film experience is sometimes a mere impersonal viewpoint, sometimes a first-personal but unindexed subject, and sometimes a particular, indexed subject such as the viewer herself or a character in the film. We first argue for subject pluralism: there is no single answer (...) to the question of what kind of subjectivity, if any, is mandated across film sequences. Then, we defend unindexed subjectivity: at least sometimes, films mandate an experience that is first-personal but not tied to any particular person, not even to the viewer. Taken together, these two theses allow us to see film experience as more varied than previously appreciated and to bridge in a novel way the cognition of film with the exercise of other imaginative capacities, such as mindreading and episodic recollecting. (shrink)

Somaesthetics and Sport (ed. Andrew Edgar, Brill, 2022) is a multifaceted collection of essays: Richard Shusterman’s theoretical framework is robust enough to lend unity to the volume, but it mostly functions as a springboard for the individual papers, never suffocating their theoretical explorations or making the book repetitive or a boring read. The ten essays also communicate with one another through certain recurring notions such as agency, somatic awareness, the Suitsian account of games or the interdisciplinary intertwining of philosophical arguments (...) with the results of sport psychology and physiology. Displaying the various ways Shusterman’s somaesthetics can be used to further the philosophical analysis of the aesthetic experience of watching and doing sports, the volume fills a gap in the scholarship of the aesthetics of sport as well as in the interdisciplinary field of somaesthetics. (shrink)

When we cook, by meticulously following a recipe, or adding a personal twist to it, we sometimes care not only to (re-)produce a taste that we can enjoy, but also to give our food a certain aftertaste. This is not surprising, given that we ordinarily take aftertaste to be an important part of the gustatory experience as a whole, one which we seek out, and through which we evaluate what we eat and drink—at least in many cases. What is surprising (...) is that aftertastes, from a psychological point of view, seem to be analogous to afterimages, and thus have little or no epistemic import. In this paper we tackle this puzzle, and argue that we are right in treating aftertastes seriously. The moral is that both from a metaphysical and an epistemic point of view aftertastes should be categorized differently from afterimages. (shrink)

Experientialism in aesthetics is the view that the artistic merit or the aesthetic value of something is determined by the final value of certain experiences of it. These are usually specified as experiences of it with understanding and appreciation. Until recently, experientialism was the dominant view. Not anymore. Experientialists are now subject to a barrage of objections, many of which they have not answered. Here I argue that all of these objections fail. I develop a new form of experientialism that (...) is immune to them. It also has an independent rationale. It incorporates an account of the value of art appreciation that is plausible in its own right. And it endorses many of the core insights of anti-experientialists, especially concerning the final value of good art. Those of us unconvinced by experientialism need to take this form of it seriously. I conclude by identifying some genuine problems it faces. Even these aren’t clearly insoluble. (shrink)

This article integrates John Dewey’s _Art as Experience_, Mikel Dufrenne’s _Phenomenology of Aesthetic Experience_, and phenomenological interviews with museum visitors to answer what it means to be ‘moved by art’. The interviews point to intense affective and existential experiences, in which encounters with art can be genuinely transformative. We focus on Dufrenne’s notion of ‘adherent reflection’ and Dewey’s notions of ‘doing and undergoing’ to understand the intentional structure and dynamics of such experiences, concluding that being moved contains two merged forms (...) of intentionality: one overt aspect of perceptual intentionality directed at the work, and a covert affective intentionality directed back at oneself in one’s situated existence. These are operational simultaneously but can work in loops, one leading to an intensification of the other and vice versa. As such, these analyses emphasize the value of phenomenological interviews and advance the integration of phenomenological and pragmatist thinking in the context of aesthetic experience. (shrink)

Many philosophers believe that aesthetic testimony can provide aesthetic knowledge. This leaves us with the question: why does getting aesthetic knowledge by experience – by seeing a painting up close, or witnessing a performance first-hand – nevertheless seem superior to aesthetic testimony? I argue that it is due to differences in their epistemic value; in the diversity of epistemic goods each one provides. Aesthetic experience, or the experience of art or other aesthetic objects, affords multiple, distinctive epistemic goods whereas aesthetic (...) testimony affords less. In particular, it provides aesthetic knowledge of truths, a kind of propositional knowledge, as well as aesthetic knowledge of things, a kind of non-propositional knowledge. Although aesthetic experience is superior because it has more epistemic value, this doesn’t mean that aesthetic testimony provides weaker justification for aesthetic belief than aesthetic experience; the difference is evaluative, not normative. In this way, we can explain a key pessimistic intuition about aesthetic testimony – that it is inferior to aesthetic experience – whilst preserving the optimistic view that aesthetic testimony makes aesthetic knowledge available to others. The superior epistemic value of first-hand aesthetic experience is compatible with a number of important observations about aesthetic testimony, including the importance of aesthetic trust. (shrink)

This paper offers a reading of Hartmann’s philosophy of literature from the perspective of contemporary aesthetics. In particular, I focus on his defense of the truth-value of literary works. After outlining the main concern of the paper (sect. 1), I place Hartmann’s view within the context of current aesthetic cognitivism (sect. 2). In the following three sections, I discuss Hartmann’s account, examining his critique of the thesis that literature is cognitively valuable because it transmits factual truths (sect. 3); his defense (...) of the view that literature discloses life (sect. 4); and the link between cognitive value and the ontology of the literary work (sect. 5). Finally, I discuss Hartmann’s focus on the concept of “truth” in the light of recent debates on knowledge of “what it is like” and on “understanding” (sect. 6). (shrink)

In this paper, I offer a new interpretation of Margaret Cavendish’s remarks on beauty. According to it, Cavendish takes beauty to be a real, response-independent quality of objects. In this sense, Cavendish is an aesthetic realist. This position, which remains constant throughout her philosophical writings, contrasts with the non-realist views that were soon after to dominate philosophical reflections on matters of taste in the early modern period. It also, I argue, contrasts with the realism of Cavendish’s contemporary, Henry More. While (...) there are passages in Cavendish’s work that might seem to count against my reading—specifically, passages on disagreement in aesthetic judgement, on the power of beauty to elicit the passions, and on our inability to specify the nature of beauty—I show that, when situated against the background of Cavendish’s broader metaphysical and epistemological views, those passages in fact support the realist interpretation. (shrink)

Many hold that aesthetic appreciation is sensitive to the authenticity or genuineness of an object. In a recent body of work, Carolyn Korsmeyer has defended the claim that genuineness itself is an aesthetic property. Korsmeyer’s aim is to explain our aesthetic appreciation of objects that afford a sense of being ‘in touch with the past’. In this paper, I argue that genuineness cannot explain our appreciation of these objects. There is no aesthetic experience of the genuine.

We demonstrate that many philosophers accept the following claim: When an aesthetic object is apprehended correctly, taking pleasure in said object is a reliable sign that the object is aesthetically successful. We undermine this position by showing that what grounds our pleasurable experience is opaque: In many cases, the experienced pleasure is attributable to factors that have little to do with the aesthetic object. The evidence appealed to is a form of Higher-Order Evidence (HOE) and we consider attempts to overcome (...) said evidence. We argue they are unsuccessful. We conclude by considering what this means for our practice of making aesthetic judgements. (shrink)

It is a noteworthy disanalogy between contemporary ethics and aesthetics that the fitting-attitude account of value, so prominent in contemporary ethics, sees comparatively little play in aesthetics. The aim of this paper is to articulate what a systematic fitting-attitude-style framework for understanding aesthetic value might look like. In the bulk of the paper, I sketch possible fitting-attitude-style accounts of three central aesthetic values – the beautiful, the sublime, and the powerful – so that the general form of the framework come (...) through. (shrink)

In this essay, I reconsider the constitution of democratic freedom in aesthetic terms. My interest is in articulating a conception of aesthetic freedom that can be mapped onto a conception of democratic freedom. For this purpose, I bring together Charles Sanders Peirce’s ontology, which comprises fragments of an aesthetic theory, Friedrich Schiller’s concept of aesthetic play and Stanley Cavell’s democratic perfectionism. By providing a philosophical framework for constructing an aesthetics and politics that supports the recent aesthetic turn in political theory, (...) which urges overcoming political theory’s excessive dependence on an epistemological theory of representation, and by proposing a modification to the turn’s heavy reliance on theories of affect, my reading of Peirce, Schiller and Cavell offers a new way to think about the political significance of the autonomy of aesthetic experience and affect for democratic freedom. (shrink)

In her new book Hooked, Rita Felski continues a project of criticizing literary criticism that she began in The Limits of Critique (2015).

In this contribution we first sketch an outline of the concept of lifeworld (_Lebenswelt_), to introduce the readers to the guest-edited collection of essays _Varieties of the Lifeworld: Phenomenology and Aesthetic Experience_, special issue of the “Continental Philosophy Review.” We trace back the origin of the concept of lifeworld to Husserl’s late phenomenology, although also explaining (on the basis of the careful historical-conceptual reconstructions offered by some distinguished scholars of Husserl and the phenomenological movement) that the development of Husserl’s phenomenology (...) of the _Lebenswelt_ was gradual and was connected, among other things, to the question of the natural world of experience. Then, quickly referring to Gadamer, Landgrebe, Fink and other authors belonging to the phenomenological tradition, we explain that different interpretations of the topic “Lifeworld” in Husserl’s thinking have been provided: In our view, this contributes to the fact that still nowadays this topic is a fascinating and philosophically stimulating one. Finally, making reference to more recent works by such authors as Figal, Gallagher, Zahavi and Shusterman (a pragmatist philosopher, whose somaesthetics is nonetheless very rich in insights that can be connected to phenomenological views of the body and its place in the world), we emphasize how the question concerning the lifeworld is still capable today to open a great variety of perspectives and plurality of paths for thinking, as testified by the essays collected in this guest-edited special issue of the “Continental Philosophy Review.”. (shrink)

This is the first book on the role of cognition in the aesthetic theory of Li Zehou (1930–2021), one of China's most important and influential contemporary philosophers. The cognitive dimension and its integration with practice is discussed by examining one of Li's pivotal concepts: "subjectality," a human subject shaped by the world in which they live, including beauty and aesthetic experience. Li's theory is also contextualized in the threefold inspiration coming from Confucian, Kantian, and Marxist philosophies, which differently conceptualize the (...) aesthetic and cognitive dimensions in humans. By referring to different aesthetic theories and interdisciplinary approaches to cognition, the book aims to show how Li's cognitively oriented project can contribute to contemporary research into aesthetics. Although primarily written for philosophers working in aesthetics, Chinese, and comparative philosophy, the book is also addressed to anyone interested in contemporary Chinese thought. (shrink)

I demonstrate that analogies, both explicit and implicit, between Wittgenstein’s discussions of rituals, aesthetics, and aspect-perception, have important payoffs in terms of understanding his notion of a “surveyable representation” (übersichtliche Darstellung) as it applies to phenomena that are not exclusively grammatical in nature. In particular, I argue that a surveyable representation of certain anthropological and aesthetic facts allows us to see, qua form of aspect-perception, internal relations and formal connections, so that the inner nature of a ritual or the solution (...) of an aesthetic puzzle is exhibited. This particular form of seeing both explains why Wittgenstein thought that hypothetical explanations about the origins of a ritual are irrelevant to appreciating its meaning and elucidates his understanding of rituals, which involves seeing “internal relations” and “formal connections.” The upshots of the account for work in anthropology are discussed. (shrink)

I believe the first thing to say about value is that it is something that we do. We value things. There is no value out there independent of valuing beings. Thi.

The problem of aesthetic experience in a virtual environment could be reformulated as: what can we learn about aesthetics from the perspective of ‘aesthetic experience in virtual environments’, given the specific nature of such an environment? The discourse goes in circles, because it is always from theories elaborated in the field of the so-called ‘real’ that we develop the difference, but it is a process typically philosophical, that, on the other hand, can make sense only if it can be shown (...) that the virtual is an existent being that has an ontological structure of its own. The ontology of this strange object–event, and of its relationship to space–time, must therefore be addressed: what are the conditions of identity for a virtual body? What are its limits? In what sense does it have borders? Also, its specific temporality and its connection to human and computer memories are arguable dimensions that deserve analysis, as they directly affect an ontology of the virtual body, the difference between the virtual and the possible, and the relationship between the human body and the virtual body. However, the specific character of the virtual is to be an intermediate entity between object and event, between thing and image, so that virtual bodies represent a hybrid, interactive world which can be visualized as synthetic image, an immersive hybrid engaging the corporeality of the user and merging with the virtual body’s image; this hybridization, between the body of the spectator–actor and the virtual space in which it is immersed, is difficult to define with singularity. (shrink)

I argue that the main existing accounts of the relationship between the beauty of environmental entities and their moral standing are mistaken in important ways. Beauty does not, as has been suggested by optimists, confer intrinsic moral standing. Nor is it the case, as has been suggested by pessimists, that beauty at best provides an anthropocentric source of moral standing that is commensurate with other sources of pleasure. I present arguments and evidence that show that the appreciation of beauty tends (...) to cause a transformational state of mind that is more valuable than mere pleasure, but that leads us to falsely represent beautiful entities as being sentient and, in turn, as having intrinsic moral standing. To this extent, beauty is not, then, a source of intrinsic moral standing; it’s a source of a more important anthropocentric value than has hitherto been acknowledged. (shrink)

Which traits are beautiful? And is their beauty perceptual? It is argued that moral virtues are partly beautiful to the extent that they tend to give rise to a certain emotion— ecstasy—and that compassion tends to be more beautiful than fair-mindedness because it tends to give rise to this emotion to a greater extent. It is then argued, on the basis that emotions are best thought of as a special, evaluative, kind of perception, that this argument suggests that moral virtues (...) are partly beautiful to the extent that they tend to give rise to a certain kind of evaluative perceptual experience. (shrink)

Culinary products have culinary value. That is, they have value qua culinary products. However, what is the nature of culinary value and what elements determine it? In the light of the central and universal role that culinary products play in our lives, offering a philosophical analysis of culinary value is a matter of interest. This paper attempts to do just this. It develops three different possible models of culinary value, two rather restricted ones and a third more encompassing one, rejects (...) the first two, and defends the third one. (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)

Listening is not an incorporeal experience; we do not listen with our non-extended minds. We listen with all our body, and music can change completely our personal structure. It is through sound experience that we change and asset ourselves. Studies in the doctrine of affects often use sonorous metaphors and concepts such as Stimmung, resonance, consonance, that refer to sound experience. In this paper, I try first of all to show how listening is rooted in body experience. Then, I argue (...) for a new consideration of the notion of person that takes into account the fundamental sonorous basis – psycho-acoustic – of its constitution. Thanks to sounds we can reach a new conceptualization of emotional relations between persons which we attain through the person’s ordo amoris. Additionally, with the analysis of sounds we grasp some aspects of emotional experience related to the singular person (intra-personal). So, if sounds are profoundly related to corporeal experience, so strongly involving affects as to modify our personal structure and form a person’s constitution, and affects can really do that, their relationship need to be inquired where both sound experience and affection are rooted: corporeity. (shrink)

According to Étienne Gilson, an endless reproduction of the technical aspects of a work of art can modify not only the aesthetic experience of which it is an object, but also the culture it is embedded in. Since industrialization of a cultural product in the form of the internet is a means of generating mass culture, questions could be raised regarding its sources and effects. This article offers three assumptions: 1) the internet, together with its content and actions taken by (...) internet users, is a source of fear of experiencing cybercrime; 2) experiencing cybercrime is a result of using the internet; 3) in mass culture, the aesthetic experience has been replaced by the experience of fear. In order to address the titular question, I performed comparative analyses of EU citizens’ opinions on the basis of the Eurobarometer study conducted in EU countries (2013-2020) relating to the social perception of cybercrime, treated as a source of experiencing fear, and the level of their personal experience. A secondary quantitative and qualitative analysis of the collected data were performed, and a comparative method was used. (shrink)

Many contemporary artworks include active matter along with rules for conservation that are designed to either facilitate or prevent that matter’s degradation or decay. I discuss the mechanisms through which actual or potential states of material decay contribute to the work’s expressive import. Nelson Goodman and Catherine Elgin introduce the concepts of literal and metaphorical exemplification, which are critical to expression: a work literally exemplifies a property when it both possesses and highlights that property, and it metaphorically exemplifies a property (...) when the properties it literally exemplifies bring that property powerfully to mind. I argue that the literal exemplification of actual or potential states of decay enhances a work’s expressive power by stimulating our bodily and emotional responses to the physical potential of the work’s active matter. Conservation practices, by affecting the properties the work literally and metaphorically exemplifies, are key to the expressive power of works that employ states of degradation and decay. The argument is illustrated through discussion of works by Zoe Leonard, Marc Quinn, and Kara Walker that literally exemplify actually or potentially decaying materials, as contrasted with works by Ai Weiwei and Sam Taylor-Johnson that represent rather than exemplify decaying materials. (shrink)

Unlike its moral and intellectual counterparts, the virtue of aesthetic humility has been widely neglected. In order to begin filling in this gap, I argue that Kant’s aesthetics is a promising resource for developing a model of aesthetic humility. Initially, however, this may seem like an unpromising starting point as Kant’s aesthetics might appear to promote aesthetic arrogance instead. In spite of this prima facie worry, I claim that Kant’s aesthetics provides an illuminating model of aesthetic humility that sheds light (...) not only on the self- and other-directed attitudes it involves, but also on how aesthetic humility can serve as a corrective to the vices of aesthetic arrogance and aesthetic servility. In addition to revealing the ways in which Kant’s aesthetics prizes humility rather than arrogance, I aim to show that the Kantian model of aesthetic humility can enrich our understanding of humility more generally and contribute to the on-going effort in aesthetics to analyse specific aesthetic virtues and vices. (shrink)

According to the scientific image, aesthetic experience is constituted by private reverie or mindless gratification of some kind. This image fails to fully acknowledge the theoretical and hence cultural aspect of perception, which includes aesthetic experience. This chapter reframes aesthetic reflective judgment in terms of perceptual processes (section 2); intentional pleasure (section 3); non-perceptually represented perceptual properties (section 4); and intersubjectivity (section 5). By clarifying the relevant terms, the liberal naturalist account of the sublime provides the link between the sublime (...) and moral motivation (section 6). (shrink)

We might wonder whether there is a difference between experiencing an artwork and simply daydreaming. If the latter, would it be a matter of art communicating something or simply providing a backdrop for personal reverie? According to some influential key texts in philosophy, there is a difference. And it matters because our capacity for communicating the kind of thing art communicates, is a capacity linked to the possibility of not feeling alienated from the world and each other. In this chapter (...) we focus on The weather project, which was a site specific installation Olafur Eliasson created at the Tate Modern in 2003. And to consider how this artwork communicates, we adopt a key concept from Immanuel Kant’s aesthetic theory: “aesthetic ideas”. (shrink)

Abstract:In the transformation from classical to modern aesthetics, the proposition and exploration of aesthetic experience constitutes one of the major dimensions of various aesthetic problems. Pragmatic aesthetics, phenomenological aesthetics, hermeneutic aesthetics, analytical aesthetics, and new pragmatic aesthetics have comprehensively analyzed and discussed aesthetic experience. Through the construction and deconstruction of aesthetic experience in aesthetic history, the study of the key concept seems to have come to a certain predicament. This is mainly reflected in the fact that the subjective and objective (...) attribute of experience remains unclear, and the material base of aesthetics is not solid enough. In this regard, cognitive neuroscience and anthropology provide new ways to understand aesthetic experience. From the perspective of aesthetic anthropology, the study on aesthetic experience is rooted in a broad field and serves as a solid material basis for its objectification. Cognitive neuroaesthetics explains the psychological mechanism of aesthetic experience. Together, they provide an opportunity for the study on aesthetic experience to enter a new realm. Moreover, the new interpretation of the essence of aesthetic experience will help to improve the theory and practice of aesthetic education. (shrink)

This article uses Whitehead's process ontology and epistemology to propose Aesthetic Experience as a theory that can be used in organizational studies. The article starts from the intersections of ludic theory and aesthetics, to formulate a theory of Aesthetic Experience that improves and promotes enjoyment, creativity, satisfaction, and productivity in the workspace. Located in a process ontology and epistemology, we propose a simple approach for theory evaluation, using thought experiments to identify issues in the formulations of extant theories, and formulate (...) the theory of Aesthetic Experience using grounded methods, visual mapping, and process modeling. The broader purpose of the paper is to revive the study of Whiteheadian process philosophy within organizational studies. (shrink)

The hardcover version of the book Astrophotography: Concepts and Flows focuses only on the semiotics of art other than any technicalities covered in the Kindle eBook and paperback versions. With the arrangements in the concept of art and nuclear chemistry in its ecological terms conveyed in the meanings in art, the book is a selected series of the artworks in the photographic and installation art.

In what sense can aesthetic experience be considered an opportunity for the development of personal identity, cognitive abilities, and emotions? Theatre proves to be an important field of investigation to approach this question. During a theatrical experience, the connection between fiction and reality can take the form of active cooperation between author, actor, and spectator. A better understanding of this point can be drawn by pointing out three kinds of spectator: we can distinguish a critical spectator, an emotional spectator, and (...) an instinctual spectator, who respectively represent: the imaginative and hermeneutic attitude; empathy and fictional emotions; the unconscious satisfaction of drives. So far, a parallel can be established between literature and theatre. However, these two aesthetic experiences are profoundly different: the type of immersion provided by the theatrical experience differs from reading, because the presence of the characters is physical and actual. The pragmatic theatrical framework is the same as that which underlies childhood games. This means that the public too is to some extent called to play, i.e. to act. To appreciate the implications of this thesis, a preliminary analysis of the performance Reality (Deflorian and Tagliarini 2012) is offered, examining how its experience contributes to the development of the spectating subject. (shrink)

While the view that we perceive aesthetic properties may seem intuitive, it has received little in the way of explicit defence. It also gives rise to a puzzle. The first strand of this puzzle is that we often cannot perceive aesthetic properties of artworks without training, yet much aesthetic training involves the acquisition of knowledge, such as when an artwork was made, and by whom. How, if at all, can this knowledge affect our perception of an artwork’s aesthetic properties? The (...) second strand of the puzzle arises when we widen the scope of aesthetic experience. The very same aesthetic properties that seem to require training for their perception in artworks do not appear to require training to perceive in objects of everyday aesthetic appreciation and natural phenomena. In this paper I argue that a prominent extant attempt to explain how training is compatible with aesthetic perception—cognitive permeation—is an inadequate solution. I also develop a positive view of aesthetic perception that provides a unified solution to both strands of the puzzle. (shrink)

Traditionally, the sense of touch—alongside the senses of taste and smell—has been excluded from the aesthetic domain. These proximal modalities are thought to deliver only sensory pleasures, not the complex, world-directed perceptual states that characterize aesthetic experience. In this paper, I argue that this tradition fails to recognize the perceptual possibilities of haptic touch, which allows us to experience properties of the objects with which we make bodily contact, including their weight, shape, solidity, elasticity, and smoothness. These features, moreover, may (...) be indicative of how well-suited an object is for its function, and in feeling them we can thus feel the positive aesthetic quality of functional beauty. (shrink)

This article outlines a realist theory of aesthetic properties as higher-order manifest properties and defends it from several objections, including a possible conflict with contextualist approaches to the aesthetic properties of works of art.

The main aim of this paper is to examine the practice of describing intellectual pursuits in aesthetic terms, and to investigate whether this practice can be accounted for in the framework of a standard conception of aesthetic experience. Following a discussion of some historical approaches, the paper proposes a way of conceiving of aesthetic experience as both epistemically motivating and epistemically inventive. It is argued that the aesthetics of intellectual pursuits should be considered as central rather than marginal to our (...) philosophical accounts of aesthetic experience, and that our views about the relation between the aesthetic and cognitive domains should be reconfigured accordingly. (shrink)

Landscape is often seen as a predominantly visual aesthetic phenomenon, which is closely connected to painting. Georg Simmel calls landscape “a work of art _in statu nascendi._” Yet from a phenomenological point of view, landscape can also be seen as something we do not only view but also experience bodily, as something we walk through and live in. In this respect, there are many connections between landscape and the experience of space and place. For Edward Casey, it is important to (...) recognize that a landscape consists of places, which thus function as “its main modules, its prime numbers.” Consequently, the aesthetic experience of landscapes will have to take its located and situated character into account. In my contribution, I will draw on this line of thought and try to point out some key aspects of a phenomenological critique of reductive accounts of landscape and consider its relevance for the arts. As landscape and nature have become a prominent theme in artistic practices since the 1960s and 1970s, this paper will relate the philosophical discussion to artistic projects such as Richard Long’s art of walking. In his practice, the status of the work of art as well as a solely pictorial idea of landscape is questioned. (shrink)

This paper discusses the empirical findings concerning the visual aesthetic experience in a neurological context. Accordingly, the aim of this paper is to shed light on the common ground across neuroscience, psychology, and philosophy to pave new roads for empirical research. Cognitive models posit that the brain employs neural networks mediating bottom-up and top- down processes, and in effect, engenders emotion and reward throughout the visual aesthetic experience. Likewise, empathy and its corresponding recruitment of bodily processes may facilitate the understanding (...) of a visual artwork’s depicted emotion, which may allow the viewer to engage with the visual artwork from a psychological distance and, consequently, to experience pleasure regardless of the visual artwork’s emotional content. In conclusion, empathetic processes may be central to the visual aesthetic experience and should be considered by future empirical research investigating the visual aesthetic experience. (shrink)

Schiller’s essays on tragedy attempt to argue that tragic experience is ethically valuable by forging a connection with Kant’s conception of autonomy. Standard interpretations hold that the connection lies in the fact that tragedies depict characters (primarily the hero) exercising autonomy. This paper argues that Schiller also views the experience prompted by tragedy as itself involving autonomy. Drawing on Kant’s discussion of aesthetic “symbols”, Schiller holds that the audience members’ experience at the tragedy is isomorphic with the autonomous exercise of (...) practical reason. Only in this way, I argue, can we make sense of Schiller’s contention that tragedy actively cultivates freedom in its viewers. Additionally, the interpretation shows how Schiller can hold that tragedy yields a kind of cognition of transcendental freedom while maintaining Kantian strictures on noumenal knowledge. (shrink)

The purpose of this essay is to advocate the ideas of Wilhelm Worringer, John Dewey, and Nelson Goodman on the roles of perception, empathy, emotion, and enjoyment in aesthetic experience. I will attempt to do this by offering a novel interpretation of some of these thinkers’ insights from a biological perspective. To this end, I will consider the following questions. What is an aesthetic experience? Does such a thing exist at all? If yes, is there a correlation between the concept (...) of the aesthetic and perception? Is it possible, then, to find a biological basis for aesthetic experience? My argument is that a fresh analysis of the aesthetics of Worringer, Dewey, and Goodman, in light of some of the discoveries and theories of the cognitive neurosciences – such as the biological correlations of emotions, the “as-if-body-loop” theory, the discovery of mirror neurons, and the phenomenon of embodied simulation – may provide a contribution to longstanding philosophical problems relating to the nature of aesthetic experience. (shrink)

Presenting an Open Peer Commentary on “In Maturana’s Wake: The Biology of Cognition’s Legacy and its Prospects” by Randall Whitaker, the article suggests that engaging with Maturana's biology of cognition in the context of design is a form of practice rather than application. Maturana's biology of cognition, the article argues, can be conceived of as initiating an educational process that supports agents to act “from within” rather than “from without.”.

We explain that most of the explanations that traditionally have been used to conceptually and ontologically differentiate aesthetic experience from any other are not compatible with a naturalistic framework, since they are based on transcendental idealistic metaphysics, reductions, and on the assumption that the aesthetic is an a priori special ontology in the object and the mind. However, contemporary works that propose as an alternative to apply directly evidence and theory from the science of emotions to the problem of aesthetics (...) introduce Aesthetic Science into a new set of problematic assumptions. We argue that conceptually equating or ontologically reducing the aesthetic to the theory of rewards cannot provide a clear alternative for any Aesthetic Science to naturalize the aesthetic experience as a heterogeneous class of events that are not already explained by affective science. This practice introduces a serious danger of making the term “aesthetic” and the respective scientific field pretty weak or completely redundant and unnecessary. (shrink)

Nguyen offers a number of profound insights about the nature and value of games. Games are works of art, according to Nguyen, because they offer players aesthetic experiences. Game designers aim to...