Aesthetics and the Embodied Mind: Beyond Art Theory and the Cartesian Mind-Body Dichotomy
Aesthetics and the Embodied Mind: Beyond Art Theory and the Cartesian Mind-Body Dichotomy

Author: Alfonsina Scarinzi

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2014-11-24

Total Pages: 327

ISBN-13: 9401793794

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The project of naturalizing human consciousness/experience has made great technical strides (e.g., in mapping areas of brain activity), but has been hampered in many cases by its uncritical reliance on a dualistic “Cartesian” paradigm (though as some of the authors in the collection point out, assumptions drawn from Plato and from Kant also play a role). The present volume proposes a version of naturalism in aesthetics drawn from American pragmatism (above all from Dewey, but also from James and Peirce)—one primed from the start to see human beings not only as embodied, but as inseparable from the environment they interact with—and provides a forum for authors from diverse disciplines to address specific scientific and philosophical issues within the anti-dualistic framework considering aesthetic experience as a process of embodied meaning-making. Cross-disciplinary contributions come from leading researchers including Mark Johnson, Jim Garrison, Daniel D. Hutto, John T. Haworth, Luca F. Ticini, Beatriz Calvo-Merino. The volume covers pragmatist aesthetics, neuroaesthetics, enactive cognitive science, literary studies, psychology of aesthetics, art and design, sociology.

Aesthetics of Religion
Aesthetics of Religion

Author: Alexandra K. Grieser

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2017-12-18

Total Pages: 452

ISBN-13: 3110460459

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This volume is the first English language presentation of the innovative approaches developed in the aesthetics of religion. The chapters present diverse material and detailed analysis on descriptive, methodological and theoretical concepts that together explore the potential of an aesthetic approach for investigating religion as a sensory and mediated practice. In dialogue with, yet different from, other major movements in the field (material culture, anthropology of the senses, for instance), it is the specific intent of this approach to create a framework for understanding the interplay between sensory, cognitive and socio-cultural aspects of world-construction. The volume demonstrates that aesthetics, as a theory of sensory knowledge, offers an elaborate repertoire of concepts that can help to understand religious traditions. These approaches take into account contemporary developments in scientific theories of perception, neuro-aesthetics and cultural studies, highlighting the socio-cultural and political context informing how humans perceive themselves and the world around them. Developing since the 1990s, the aesthetic approach has responded to debates in the study of religion, in particular striving to overcome biased categories that confined religion either to texts and abstract beliefs, or to an indisputable sui generis mode of experience. This volume documents what has been achieved to date, its significance for the study of religion and for interdisciplinary scholarship.

Music and Consciousness 2
Music and Consciousness 2

Author: Ruth Herbert

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2019-04-04

Total Pages: 353

ISBN-13: 0192526502

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Consciousness has been described as one of the most mysterious things in the universe. Scientists, philosophers, and commentators from a whole range of disciplines can't seem to agree on what it is, generating a sizeable field of contemporary research known as consciousness studies. Following its forebear Music and Consciousness: Philosophical, Psychological and Cultural Perspectives (OUP, 2011), this volume argues that music can provide a valuable route to understanding consciousness, and also that consciousness opens up new perspectives for the study of music. It argues that consciousness extends beyond the brain, and is fundamentally related to selves engaged in the world, culture, and society. The book brings together an interdisciplinary line up of authors covering topics as wide ranging as cognitive psychology, neuroscience, psychoanalysis, philosophy and phenomenology, aesthetics, sociology, ethnography, and performance studies and musical styles from classic to rock, trance to Daoism, jazz to tabla, and deep listening to free improvisation. Music and Consciousness 2 will be fasinating reading for those studying or working in the field of musicology, those researching consciousness as well as cultural theorists, psychologists, and philosophers.

Rethinking the Mind-Body Relationship in Early Modern Literature, Philosophy, and Medicine
Rethinking the Mind-Body Relationship in Early Modern Literature, Philosophy, and Medicine

Author: Charis Charalampous

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2015-08-20

Total Pages: 180

ISBN-13: 1317584201

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This book explores a neglected feature of intellectual history and literature in the early modern period: the ways in which the body was theorized and represented as an intelligent cognitive agent, with desires, appetites, and understandings independent of the mind. It considers the works of early modern physicians, thinkers, and literary writers who explored the phenomenon of the independent and intelligent body. Charalampous rethinks the origin of dualism that is commonly associated with Descartes, uncovering hitherto unknown lines of reception regarding a form of dualism that understands the body as capable of performing complicated forms of cognition independently of the mind. The study examines the consequences of this way of thinking about the body for contemporary philosophy, theology, and medicine, opening up new vistas of thought against which to reassess perceptions of what literature can be thought and felt to do. Sifting and assessing this evidence sheds new light on a range of historical and literary issues relating to the treatment, perception, and representation of the human body. This book examines the notion of the thinking body across a wide range of genres, topics, and authors, including Montaigne’s Essays, Spenser’s allegorical poetry, Donne’s metaphysical poetry, tragic dramaturgy, Shakespeare, and Milton’s epic poetry and shorter poems. It will be essential for those studying early modern literature, cognition, and the body.

Performance and Spectatorship in Edwardian Art Writing
Performance and Spectatorship in Edwardian Art Writing

Author: Sophie Hatchwell

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2019-05-16

Total Pages: 134

ISBN-13: 3030170241

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This book explores how Edwardian art writing shaped and narrated embodied, performative forms of aesthetic spectatorship. It argues that we need to expand the range of texts we think of as art writing, and features a diverse array of critical and fictional works, often including texts that are otherwise absent from art-historical study. Multi-disciplinary in scope, this book proposes a methodology for analyzing the aesthetic encounter within and through art writing, adapting and reworking a form of phenomenological-semiotic analysis found conventionally in performance studies. It focuses on moments where theories of spectatorship meet practice, moving between the varied spaces of Edwardian art viewing, from the critical text, to the lecture hall, the West End theatre and gallery, middle-class home, and fictional novel. It contributes to a rethinking of Edwardian culture by exploring the intriguing heterogeneity and self-consciousness of viewing practices in a period more commonly associated with the emergence of formalism.

Chinese Gong Fu
Chinese Gong Fu

Author: R.F. Gonzalez

Publisher: McFarland

Published: 2019-10-04

Total Pages: 207

ISBN-13: 1476637814

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Gong fu, the indigenous martial art of China, was exported into American popular culture through numerous "kung fu" movies in the 20th century. Perhaps the most renowned of the martial arts in the U.S., gong fu remains often misunderstood, perhaps because of its esoteric practices that include aspects of Daoism, Confucianism, Buddhism and other syncretic elements. Using the science of embodiment--the study of the interaction between body, mind, cognition, behavior and environment--this book explores the relationships among practitioner, praxis, spirituality, philosophy and the body in gong fu. Drawing on familiar routines, films, artifacts and art, the author connects the reader to ancient Chinese culture, philosophy, myth, shamanism and ritual.

Empirical Philosophical Investigations in Education and Embodied Experience
Empirical Philosophical Investigations in Education and Embodied Experience

Author: Joacim Andersson

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2018-04-06

Total Pages: 157

ISBN-13: 331974609X

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Drawing on John Dewey and the later Ludwig Wittgenstein, this book employs philosophy as a conceptual resource to develop new methodological and analytical tools for conducting in situ empirical investigations. Chapter one explores the philosophies of Wittgenstein and Dewey. Chapter two exposits Deweyan ideas of embodiment, the primacy of the aesthetic encounter, and aesthetically expressive meaning underdeveloped in Wittgenstein. Chapter three introduces the method of practical epistemological analysis (PEA) and a model of situated epistemic relations (SER) to investigate the learning of body techniques in dinghy sailing. The concluding chapter introduces a model of situated artistic relations (SAR) to investigate the learning of artistic techniques of self-expression in the Swedish sloyd classroom.

idea journal: co-constructing body-environment
idea journal: co-constructing body-environment

Author: Julieanna Preston

Publisher: AADR – Art Architecture Design Research

Published: 2020-12-09

Total Pages: 362

ISBN-13: 3887788222

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This special guest-edited issue extends the current discussions of art (inclusive of interior/ spatial design and architecture) as a process of social cognition and to address the gap between descriptions of embodied cognition and the co-construction of lived experience. Papers and exhibitions presented at the 2019 Bodies of Knowledge Conference have been advanced significantly as research articles and visual essays to focus on interdisciplinary connections across research practices that involve art and theories of cognition. These contributions emphasise how spatial art and design research approaches have enabled the articulation of a complex understanding of environments, spaces and experiences, including the spatial distribution of cultural, organizational and conceptual structures and relationships, as well as surrounding design features. Contributions address the following questions: • How do art and spatial practices increase the potential for knowledge transfer and celebrate diverse forms of embodied expertise? • How the examination of cultures of practice, Indigenous knowledges and cultural practices offer perspectives on inclusion, diversity, neurodiversity, disability and social justice issues? • How the art and spatial practices may contribute to research perspectives from contemporary cognitive neuroscience and the philosophy of mind? • The dynamic between an organism and its surroundings for example: How does art and design shift the way knowledge and thinking processes are acquired, extended and distributed? • How do art and design practices demonstrate the ways different forms of acquiring and producing knowledge intersect?