Moritz Geiger's Postulate of Aesthetics As an Autonomous Science
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Empathy, Mirror Neurons and SYNC
Mind Soc (2016) 15:1–25 DOI 10.1007/s11299-014-0160-x Empathy, mirror neurons and SYNC Ryszard Praszkier Received: 5 March 2014 / Accepted: 25 November 2014 / Published online: 14 December 2014 Ó The Author(s) 2014. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com Abstract This article explains how people synchronize their thoughts through empathetic relationships and points out the elementary neuronal mechanisms orchestrating this process. The many dimensions of empathy are discussed, as is the manner by which empathy affects health and disorders. A case study of teaching children empathy, with positive results, is presented. Mirror neurons, the recently discovered mechanism underlying empathy, are characterized, followed by a theory of brain-to-brain coupling. This neuro-tuning, seen as a kind of synchronization (SYNC) between brains and between individuals, takes various forms, including frequency aspects of language use and the understanding that develops regardless of the difference in spoken tongues. Going beyond individual- to-individual empathy and SYNC, the article explores the phenomenon of syn- chronization in groups and points out how synchronization increases group cooperation and performance. Keywords Empathy Á Mirror neurons Á Synchronization Á Social SYNC Á Embodied simulation Á Neuro-synchronization 1 Introduction We sometimes feel as if we just resonate with something or someone, and this feeling seems far beyond mere intellectual cognition. It happens in various situations, for example while watching a movie or connecting with people or groups. What is the mechanism of this ‘‘resonance’’? Let’s take the example of watching and feeling a film, as movies can affect us deeply, far more than we might realize at the time. -
Dialogues in Philosophy, Mental and Neuro Sciences Crossing Dialogues ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Dialogues in Philosophy, Mental and Neuro Sciences Crossing Dialogues ORIGINAL ARTICLE Association The roots of psychopathological understanding: Karl Jaspers’ Verstehen and the infl uence of Moritz Geiger’s empathy Crossing Dialogues Association, Rome (Italy) M This paper presents the main contents of Geiger’s 1910 lecture on empathy and focuses on its possible infl uence on Jaspers’ General Psychopathology. In particular, some key methodological distinctions traced by Jaspers (explaining vs. understanding, static vs. genetic understanding, understandability vs. non-understandability) are compared to Geiger’s similar concepts. Geiger’s role in shaping Jaspers’ concept of understanding (and non-understandability) is still neglected and it is time to recognize it. In particular, Geiger’s distinction between the direct empathy for the other’s expressions at one side, and the ‘reliving after the event’ of the ‘inner correlation of the psyche’ on the other side had a major role in shaping Jaspers’ similar distinction between static and genetic understanding. Keywords: psychopathology, phenomenology, hermeneutics, history of psychiatry, Einfühlung. DIAL PHIL MENT NEURO SCI 2016; 9(2): 36-42 INTRODUCTION Understanding (Verstehen) is a crucial issue the psychological ground: in hermeneutics since Schleiermacher’s claim “a sensuous object distinct from me ‘expresses’ that its task is “to understand the discourse [ausdruckt] something interior or soul-like” (Lipps, just as well and even better than its creator” 1906, p.1). (Schleiermacher, 1819/1978, p.9). Empathy was the instrument humans have Through the epistemological debate that took in order to grasp the psychological level, and place in the second half of the nineteenth century according to Lipps there was a projection (known as the Methodenstreit), the following of the observer’s feelings onto the observed distinctions were fi nally imported into Karl Jaspers’ expressions. -
Íngrid Vendrell Ferran1 Geiger and Wollheim on Expressive Properties and Expressive Perception
Studi di estetica, anno XLVII, IV serie, 2/2019 Sensibilia ISSN 0585-4733, ISSN digitale 1825-8646, DOI 10.7413/18258646094 Íngrid Vendrell Ferran1 Geiger and Wollheim on expressive properties and expressive perception Abstract The aim of this paper is to reconstruct Geiger’s realist and Wollheim’s projection- ist accounts on expressive properties and expressive perception by considering them within the larger contexts from which they emerged, by using as far as pos- sible a common language and by focusing on the questions of the nature of ex- pressive properties and of how we grasp them. My aim is to show that it is possi- ble to put into dialogue phenomenological and Anglo-American aesthetics and that this dialogue might lead to new insights about how we engage with art. Keywords Aesthetics, Realism, Projectionism 1. A dialogue between phenomenological and Anglo-American aesthetics In recent years, philosophers working in the field of aesthetics have become increasingly interested in explaining how we are able to per- ceive qualities expressing emotional states in both nature and works of art. We speak of the cheerfulness of a landscape, the serenity of a poem, the melancholy of a painting, the sadness of a film, and so on. These examples do not refer to the emotional expressions of particu- lar humans, or human-like figures or animals appearing in these works, but to properties which seem to be expressed by natural ob- jects and by art works themselves. Contemporary philosophers em- ploy different names to refer to this phenomenon. On the one hand, authors inspired by the phenomenological tradition deploy the con- cepts of “moods”, “atmospheres” and “characters”; they also speak of “quasi objective feelings” and of “half-things”. -
A Phenomenological Critique of the Idea of Social Science
A Phenomenological Critique of the Idea of Social Science Jonathan D. F. Tuckett 17/11/2014 Submitted for the Degree of Ph.D. in Religious Studies School of Literature and Languages Religion University of Stirling Abstract Social science is in crisis. The task of social science is to study “man in situation”: to understand the world as it is for “man”. This thesis charges that this crisis consists in a failure to properly address the philosophical anthropological question “What is man?”. The various social scientific methodologies who have as their object “man” suffer rampant disagreements because they presuppose, rather than consider, what is meant by “man”. It is our intention to show that the root of the crisis is that social science can provide no formal definition of “man”. In order to understand this we propose a phenomenological analysis into the essence of social science. This phenomenological approach will give us reason to abandon the (sexist) word “man” and instead we will speak of wer: the beings which we are. That we have not used the more usual “human being” (or some equivalent) is due to the human prejudice which is one of the major constituents of this crisis we seek to analyse. This thesis is divided into two Parts: normative and evaluative. In the normative Part we will seek a clarification of both “phenomenology” and “social science”. Due to the various ways in which “phenomenology” has been invented we must secure a simipliciter definition of phenomenology as an approach to philosophical anthropology (Chapter 2). Importantly, we will show how the key instigators of the branches of phenomenology, Husserl, Scheler, Heidegger, and Sartre, were all engaged in this task. -
Handbook of Phenomenological Aesthetics Contributions to Phenomenology
HANDBOOK OF PHENOMENOLOGICAL AESTHETICS CONTRIBUTIONS TO PHENOMENOLOGY IN COOPERATION WITH THE CENTER FOR ADVANCED RESEARCH IN PHENOMENOLOGY Volume 59 Series Editors: Nicolas de Warren, Wellesley College, MA, USA Dermot Moran, University College Dublin, Ireland. Editorial Board: Lilian Alweiss, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland Elizabeth Behnke, Ferndale, WA, USA Rudolf Bernet, Husserl-Archief, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium David Carr, Emory University, GA, USA Chan-Fai Cheung, Chinese University Hong Kong, China James Dodd, New School University, NY, USA Lester Embree, Florida Atlantic University, FL, USA Alfredo Ferrarin, Università di Pisa, Italy Burt Hopkins, Seattle University, WA, USA Kwok-Ying Lau, Chinese University Hong Kong, China Nam-In Lee, Seoul National University, Korea Dieter Lohmar, Universität zu Köln, Germany William R. McKenna, Miami University, OH, USA Algis Mickunas, Ohio University, OH, USA J.N. Mohanty, Temple University, PA, USA Junichi Murata, University of Tokyo, Japan Thomas Nenon, The University of Memphis, TN, USA Thomas M. Seebohm, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität, Germany Gail Soffer, Rome, Italy Anthony Steinbock, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, IL, USA Shigeru Taguchi, Yamagata University, Japan Dan Zahavi, University of Copenhagen, Denmark Richard M. Zaner, Vanderbilt University, TN, USA Scope The purpose of the series is to serve as a vehicle for the pursuit of phenomenological research across a broad spectrum, including cross-over developments with other fields of inquiry such as the social sciences and cognitive science. Since its establishment in 1987, Contributions to Phenomenology has published nearly 60 titles on diverse themes of phenomenological philosophy. In addition to welcoming monographs and collections of papers in established areas of scholarship, the series encourages original work in phenomenology. -
101 Empathy and Dyspathy with Androids: Philosophical
Konturen II (2009) 101 Empathy and Dyspathy with Androids: Philosophical, Fictional and (Neuro-)Psychological Perspectives Catrin Misselhorn University of Tübingen The fact that we develop feelings towards androids, i.e., objects with a humanlike appearance, has fascinated people since ancient times. However, as a short survey of the topic in history, science fiction literature and film shows, our emotional reactions towards them are ambivalent. On the one hand, we can develop feelings of empathy almost as we do with real human beings; on the other hand, we feel repulsion or dyspathy when those creatures show a very high degree of human likeness. Recently, Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori coined the term “uncanny valley” to refer to this effect. The aim of this essay is, first, to give an explanation as to why we feel empathy towards androids although we know that they do not have feelings themselves. This presupposes a perception-based concept of empathy which is going to be developed on the basis of some of Theodor Lipps’ ideas. The second question to be answered is why empathy with androids turns into dyspathy when they become very humanlike. As I will argue, this is due to a particular kind of interference between perception and the imagination when confronted with very humanlike objects. This makes androids quite special objects right at the divide between humans and non-humans. They are non-human, but we feel ill at ease when treating them as mere objects. 1. Emotional responses towards androids The human capacity to feel emotions towards inanimate objects that are humanlike – emotions which we normally only feel towards real humans—has fascinated people since ancient times. -
Vernon Lee's Psychological Aesthetics Carolyn Burdett Revi
‘The subjective inside us can turn into the objective outside’: Vernon Lee’s Psychological Aesthetics Carolyn Burdett Reviewing Vernon Lee’s Beauty and Ugliness, which appeared in 1912, the New York Times concluded that it ‘is simply a “terrible” book: Long, involved sentences, long scientific terms, queerly inverted thoughts, French words and Latin and German, all hammer at one’s cerebral properties with unquenchable vehemence’. The review, entitled ‘What is Beauty?’, quotes for illustration of its assessment a paragraph, taken ‘almost at random from the middle of the work’.1 It makes the point well enough: its technical, reference-laden sentences are bafflingly opaque to a reader unfamiliar with the largely German-authored debate about aesthetics with which Lee is engaging. Wittingly or not, however, the New York Times’s disgruntled reviewer has selected a key passage. It takes us to the heart of the debate about psychology and about aesthetics, and about the relationship between the two, which was taking place at the end of the nineteenth century. At its simplest, Lee’s objectionable paragraph concerns the question of whether aesthetic responsiveness is primarily bodily or mental, and what it means to try to make a distinction between the two. By the time she compiled Beauty and Ugliness, a collection which included work dating back to the 1890s, Lee was making use of a newly translated word, ‘empathy’. For Lee, empathy was the mechanism which explained aesthetic experience and thus a good deal about emotion as such. She saw it as -
Organic Dreams of Electric Sheep: Image, Empathy and Pulse
Organic dreams of Electric Sheep: Image, Empathy and Pulse (After Philip K Dick) Concept Note Exhibiting the works of Baiju Parthan, Pooja Iranna, Mithu Sen and Gigi Scaria, the exhibit, ‘Organic dreams of electric sheep: Image, Empathy and Pulse: After Philip K Dick’, seeks to weave together an accumulation of questions that are indicated by the transference of images across the forms of photography and video; the implications of such transference on the image or images that make this journey, the subtle and perhaps meta changes that this journey results in for the language of images, as well as the role of the image in language formation and the ethical impulses of images so traveled that distance and reiteration begets the question of our relation to images as ‘electric sheep’, i.e. as fabrications with conditionality. The exhibits asks in effect; if we are implicated in the predominance of the image in our language, and thus also in the consequent separation, fabrication, presentation and animation of images, then what ethical considerations arise when distance mitigates the relations between image as experiential and image as construct and lastly what is the agency of the artistic within the formation of ‘electric sheep’? Empathy and Image The philosophic and aesthetic discussions of empathy dating from the translation of the term “Einfuhlung” from its German to its English, “empathy” by Edward Titchener in 1909, positioned empathy as an ability to feel into things; notably in aesthetics, into inanimate images. A central figure is Theodor Lipps (1851- 1914), who was responsible for placing empathy as the central ability through which we can examine our aesthetic responses. -
Absolute Relativity: Weimar Cinema and the Crisis of Historicism By
Absolute Relativity: Weimar Cinema and the Crisis of Historicism by Nicholas Walter Baer A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Film and Media and the Designated Emphasis in Critical Theory in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Anton Kaes, Chair Professor Martin Jay Professor Linda Williams Fall 2015 Absolute Relativity: Weimar Cinema and the Crisis of Historicism © 2015 by Nicholas Walter Baer Abstract Absolute Relativity: Weimar Cinema and the Crisis of Historicism by Nicholas Walter Baer Doctor of Philosophy in Film and Media Designated Emphasis in Critical Theory University of California, Berkeley Professor Anton Kaes, Chair This dissertation intervenes in the extensive literature within Cinema and Media Studies on the relationship between film and history. Challenging apparatus theory of the 1970s, which had presumed a basic uniformity and historical continuity in cinematic style and spectatorship, the ‘historical turn’ of recent decades has prompted greater attention to transformations in technology and modes of sensory perception and experience. In my view, while film scholarship has subsequently emphasized the historicity of moving images, from their conditions of production to their contexts of reception, it has all too often left the very concept of history underexamined and insufficiently historicized. In my project, I propose a more reflexive model of historiography—one that acknowledges shifts in conceptions of time and history—as well as an approach to studying film in conjunction with historical-philosophical concerns. My project stages this intervention through a close examination of the ‘crisis of historicism,’ which was widely diagnosed by German-speaking intellectuals in the interwar period. -
19Chronology of Works in Aesthetics and Philosophy Of
Chronology of 19 Works in Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art Darren Hudson Hick Notes on Selection This chronology, as with this Companion as a whole, focuses on those works that contribute to the Western tradition of aesthetics, and, beginning in the twentieth century, in the analytic current of thought within that tradition (as opposed to the Continental one). As with the history of Western philosophy in general, the study of philosophical problems in art and beauty dates back to the ancient period, and is infl uenced by the major philosophical and cultural move- ments through the centuries. Much of what survives from the ancient to the post-Hellenistic period does so in fragments or references. In cases where only fragments or references exist, and where dating these is especially problematic, the author or attributed author and (where available) his dates of birth and death are listed. Where works have not survived even as fragments, these are not listed. As well, much of what sur- vives up to the medieval period is diffi cult to date, and is at times of disputable attribution. In these cases, whatever information is available is listed. Aesthetics in the period between the ancients and the medievals tends to be dominated by adherence to Platonic, Aristotelian, and other theories rooted in the ancient period, and as such tends to be generally lacking in substantive the- oretical advancements. And while still heavily infl uenced by ancient thinking, works from the medieval period tend also to be heavily infl uenced by religious thinking, and so many issues pertaining to art and aesthetics are intertwined with issues of religion as “theological aesthetics.” Movements in art theory and aes- thetics in the Renaissance, meanwhile, were largely advanced by working artists, and so tend to be couched in observational or pedagogical approaches, rather than strictly theoretical ones. -
Empathy and Emotions
Empathy and Emotions On the Notion of Empathy as Emotional Sharing Errata p. 17, line 24 Change “he” to “she” p. 50, line 22 Insert “as” between “has” and “a” p. 50, line 25 Insert “as” between “has” and “a” p. 73, line 28 Change “asumptions” to “assumptions” p. 112, line 20 Insert “of” after “kind” p. 136, line 4 Change “(3)” to “(iii)” p. 139, line 33 Change “Davis 1996” to “Davis 1994” p. 140, line 3 Change “Davis 1996” to “Davis 1994” p. 154 Insert reference: Verducci, S. (2000) “A Conceptual History of Empathy and a Question it Raises for Moral Education”. In Educational Theory 50: pp. 63-80. p. 154 Insert reference: Wilson, M. D. (1996) “Spinoza’s Theory of Knowledge”. In The Cambridge Companion to Spinoza (1996). Pp. 89-141. Umeå Studies in Philosophy 7 Empathy and Emotions On the Notion of Empathy as Emotional Sharing Peter Nilsson Umeå 2003 © Peter Nilsson Series editors: Gunnar Andersson, Ingvar Johansson and Sten Lindström Department of Philosophy and Linguistics Umeå University SE-901 87 Umeå ISSN 1650-1748 ISBN 91-7305-428-3 Printed in Sweden by Print & Media, Umeå University, 2003:303057 Distributor: Department of Philosophy and Linguistics, Umeå University, SE-901 87 Umeå, Sweden. ABSTRACT The topic of this study is a notion of empathy that is common in philosophy and in the behavioral sciences. It is here referred to as ‘the notion of empathy as emotional sharing’, and it is characterized in terms of three ideas. If a person, S, has empathy with respect to an emotion of another person, O, then (i) S experiences an emotion that is similar to an emotion that O is currently having, (ii) S’s emotion is caused, in a particular way, by the state of O or by S’s entertaining an idea of the state or situation of O, and (iii) S experiences this emotion in a way that does not entail that S is in the corresponding emotional state. -
Logic : the Question of Truth / Martin Heidegger ; Translated by Thomas Sheehan
PHILOSOPHY Martin Heidegger LOGIC LOGIC THOMAS SHEEHAN is Professor of THE QUESTION OF TRUTH Religious Studies at Stanford University. Martin Heidegger Heidegger’s radical rethinking of LOGIC Translated by Thomas Sheehan the meaning of truth THE QUESTION OF TRUTH Martin Heidegger’s 1925–26 lectures on truth and time provided much of TRANSLATED BY Studies in Continental Thought “It would be difficult to overstate the scope the basis for his momentous work, John Sallis, editor Thomas Sheehan of the impact of the English version of Martin Heidegger Being and Time. Not published until Heidegger’s Logic. Heidegger carries 1976 as volume 21 of the Complete out nothing short of a fundamental Works, three months before Heideg- ger’s death, this work is central to reinterpretation of the meaning of truth Heidegger’s overall project of rein- and the foundations of logic. This is a fine terpreting Western thought in terms translation that contributes much to the of time and truth. The text shows the overall strength of the work.” degree to which Aristotle underlies Heidegger’s hermeneutical theory of —Theodore George, Texas A&M University meaning. It also contains Heidegger’s first published critique of Husserl and takes major steps toward establishing the temporal bases of logic and truth. Thomas Sheehan’s elegant and insight- ful translation offers English-speaking readers access to this fundamental text INDIANA for the first time. University Press Bloomington & Indianapolis www.iupress.indiana.edu INDIANA 1-800-842-6796 Logic Studies in Continental Thought EDITOR JOHN SALLIS CONSULTING EDITORS Robert Bernasconi William L. McBride Rudolf Bernet J.