Pragmatist Aesthetics

The aim of this study is to introduce in detail the model of descriptive definition of Stephen C. Pepper. After an outline of his analysis of nominal definitions, Pepper’s own conception of descriptive definition is presented. Further on, the study seeks to reveal deeper connections of this model to Pepper’s account of cognitive situation based on the dynamic and reciprocal relation between uncritical knowledge (common sense) and critical knowledge. Finally, the potentially dangerous consequences of ignoring the proper nature and status of definition are discussed.

Somaesthetics – an inquiry into the qualitative dimensions of our sensually embodied engagements – affords one of the most refined, revealing, and rigorous ways to conduct appreciative and profitable exploration of sport. The chapter delves into several fundamental concepts in Shusterman’s oeuvre with cross-sectional relevance for sport and somaesthetics: constraint, enhancement, self-knowledge, instrumentality, and self-realization. Section one presents a brief overview of extant scholarship at the intersection of both, sport and somaesthetics. Then, section two discourses on games and sport as springs for constrained endeavors that enrich our vital landscape. Section three discusses human enhancement in sport in relation to the somaesthetic transformative agenda. In section four, self-knowledge, central to both sport and somaesthetics, takes center stage. Section five then examines instrumentality, meaning, and “selfless” flourishing. A pithy conclusion highlights key ideas.

Pour une littérature utile Alors que dans sa leçon inaugurale de la chaire de sémiologie littéraire du Collège de France, Roland Barthes définissait en 1977 la littérature comme « cette tricherie salutaire, cette esquive, ce leurre magnifique, qui permet d'entendre la langue hors-pouvoir », en la déplaçant hors le monde, hors de la communication et de la connaissance, et en faisant de son inutilité une vertu, « L'exercice jamais clos de la lecture demeure le lieu par excellence de l'apprentissage de soi et de l'autre » proclame au contraire Antoine Compagnon tout juste élu au Collège de France. Loin de relever d'une lubie élitiste, cette élévation des pouvoirs de la littérature fait désormais l'unanimité et se décline de manière multiple : « Fécamp : une biographe recueille la parole de patients en fin de vie » titre Le Parisien ; une « Une pharmacie poétique s'ouvre, pour le bien-être de tous » raconte Actualitté ; « Les romans qui nous aident à vivre » promeut une émission de France Inter ; « Les histoires lues aux enfants peuvent les rendre plus empathiques » avance Slate ; « Comment la littérature change votre cerveau (et votre rapport aux autres), nous explique The Conversation ; « Comment lire des livres aide à vivre plus longtemps » démontre Santé magazine… Lire, écrire, partager ses lectures : autant d'activités que notre société considère désormais comme utiles à nos vies, parce qu'elles leur donne du sens et de la force. L'âge classique s'était plu à faire des belles-lettres une forme d'éducation et d'enseignement moral, apparenté à la plus haute philosophie, l'âme romantique avait fait de la littérature une forme de plaisir suprême, détaché et supérieur. On dirait que notre époque à la fois hédoniste et inquiète veut elle rapporter la littérature à un principe de bien-être individuel et social. Ce qui était sagesse devient développement personnel, ce qui relevait de l'élévation devient empowerment, ce qui était jouissance devient distraction : que l'on s'appuie sur la psychologie de la lecture, la psychanalyse ou au contraire les sciences cognitives, l'heure est à proclamer les bénéfices individuels de la littérature, son utilité sociale, à défendre la productivité morale de la fiction et les bénéfices de l'ironie réflexive. Alors que la littérature était précédemment considérée comme un passe-temps inutile, les écrivains deviennent aujourd'hui des acteurs essentiels de nos vies et de nos cités. Loin de promouvoir le patrimoine et une culture conçue comme leurs propres finalités, « bibliothérapie », fabrication de récits en hôpitaux ou en EPHAD, atelier d'écriture, groupes de lectures, résidences d'écrivains, rencontres en librairie convergent pour justifier, encourager et financer ce que Valery Larbaud appelait il y a encore un siècle un « plaisir impuni », au point que les lignes de distinction entre littérature et médecine, littérature et action sociale, littérature et convivialité, littérature et éthique se brouillent parfois désormais. Tout autant que de nombreuses études de psychologie sociale, le concept désuet de catharsis, le principe psychologique un peu suranné d'une identification aux personnages, ou encore la notion éthique d'empathie, sont mobilisés pour comprendre les effets de la littérature, donnant parfois l'impression de réinventer la roue : une équipe de chercheurs néerlandais s'intéresse à la capacité de la fiction à développer notre empathie en nous transportant dans d'autres vies dans un article paru dans le prestigieux PlosOne, alors que la non moins fameuse revue Science publie une étude soulignant les gains en termes de compétence sociale et de compréhension d'autrui. Une longue tradition philosophique Les bénéfices de la littérature sont d'abord individuels et s'enracinent dans une profonde tradition philosophique qui n'a ni attendu ni les redécouvertes de neurosciences ni les théoriciens du développement personnel et de l'optimisation de soi en contexte néo-libéral :

Úvodní kapitola monografie Kontext v pohybu, jež se vrací ke klíčovým motivům pragmatismu a neopragmatismu s cílem pojmenovat, v čem spočívají, především však postihnout, v čem by mohly být pro současnou literární vědu inspirativní. Ukazuje, že angloamerická analytická filosofie i kontinentální teorie dospívají k filosofickému přesvědčení, které v mnoha ohledech s pragmatismem konvenuje – svým antiesencialismem, důrazem na historicitu, procesualitu a pluralitu rámovanou realitou sociální praxe, které zdůrazňoval už klasický pragmatismus a které zůstávají úhelnými kameny také myšlení neopragmatického. Následující kapitoly pak z perspektivy právě tohoto myšlení reflektují některé z otázek významně rezonujících v současné teorii literatury a kultury.

Works of Richard Rorty and Richard Shusterman on art and aesthetic issues are usually categorized as pragmatist views, one of the basic characteristic of which is the refusal of a profound difference between works of art and products of popular culture. In this paper, after locating the approach among some others formulated in a similar vein, I will examine and try to contest the arguments given by Rorty and Shusterman for this idea. The basic claim I shall argue for is that there is a functional difference between works of art and products of entertainment, the generic difference of which should not be blurred even if we acknowledge the existence of borderline cases. This is, in turn, not to say that I seek to give an essentialist account of artworks. It may sound like a paradox, but in what follows I seek to establish a substantial difference between art (high art) and entertainment (low/popular art) without defending a substantialist or essentialist concept of art. Against this latter inspiration Adorno himself could be cited: " The concept of art is located in a historically changing constellation of elements; it refuses definition. " 1 Works of art constitute a field of human experience with an extreme individuality of its objects. It has often been remarked that the plurality of different branches of art itself might be regarded as a problem: " art and arts " – as Adorno entitled one of his essays. So I am not trying to give a unified sufficient definition of artworks, but will rather argue for discerning features that make artworks differ from entertainment products. What I am going to elaborate in works of art concerns a basic dimension inherent to them that could be and has been regarded as a clarification and enrichment of individual human life, be it in the form of artistic cognition or in the form of beauty.

My previous monographs justifying architecture as the making of metaphors were steeped in deductive formal reasoning since we could not find new research about metaphors. Many of my monographs included analyzing and explaining the syllogism:
• Art [F] is the making of metaphors
• Architecture is an art[F]
• Therefore architecture is the making of metaphors.
Till now we did nothing to informally reason why art is the making of metaphors nor why architecture is an art. Since 1967 I proceeded to analyze the presumptions and find its many applications. This new information in Metaphor and Thought by Andrew Ortony first published in 1979, evidence to support inductive reasoning and to this end each axiom is its own warrant to the inferences of the above syllogism and the answer to questions of why metaphor is the stasis to any of the syllogism’s claims and implications. This argument now assumes that what is true for the parts is true for whole, where any one axiom is true the claim is true and the collective axioms and claims support the resolution that architecture is the making of metaphors.
While aesthetics is a guiding principle in matters of artistic [F] beauty and taste, metaphor is the analogy to taste and is used to form works of art and architecture.
William Wilson said that "a generous Age of Aquarius aesthetic that said that everything was art” It was during this time that we conceived the theory (architecture is an art because it makes metaphors) and held the lecture series at Yale. Most definitions of aesthetics concern the appreciation of beauty or good taste including the basis for making such judgments. Without a theory of metaphors these judgments mostly deal with probability and are inductive or deductive, deductive when depending on accepted premises which is the commonplace of the metaphor or inductive using logical induction. Inductive reasoning is inductive inference from the observed to the unobserved. It was given its classic formulation by David Hume, who noted that such inferences typically rely on the assumption that the future will resemble the past, or on the assumption that events of a certain type are necessarily connected, via a relation of causation, to events of another type.
In argumentation [A] it is noted that in an induction there is no new information added. In both methods the metaphor is at their root and as such the basis of aesthetics and as such essential to understand the stasis to what makes all arts the making of metaphors and how that Wilson’s statement is true for everything as most are metaphorical as well. The matter then is one of standards, social rightness and the ability any one or another work has an explanation of its form.
Architecture as the making of metaphors not only is the stasis to why architecture is art but also explains the formation of architectural aesthetic vocabulary.
The below is predominantly developed from a study of “Metaphors and Thought” by Andrew Ortony, [1] and, is in addition to over forty years of my work about “architecture as the making of metaphors. It is my hope that this monograph will introduce to aesthetics an architectural vocabulary to appreciate works of architecture.

The theme of the thesis is to explore the main streams and methodologies of aesthetics and theories of art of the 20th century, which address the question of "the end of art". It is an examination and criticism of the theories of theories which have in their conception the theory of the "end of the art", the most famous of which are the American author Arthur C. Danto and the German author Hans Belting. Also the examination and criticism of the productivity of the arguments those theories that prefer the assumptions of continuing art history. Their work is represented by Didi-Huberman, who sums up the thinking of German authors in the first half of the 20th century (Walter Benjamin, Aby Warburg and Carl Eistein) and creatively develops them in focus of a new perspective on art history.

Situated in a time towards the end of the industrial-revolution, a conception of art begins to emerge where the mechanical processes of the human body are integrated with machinery. With the idealization of many new objects being developed through technological advancements and concentrated into the city, new modes of art, social space, and entertainment are born. The outline of this essay will encapsulate an interval of roughly 100 years. From the mid-1800s to the interwar period there exists an era where industrial materials created a relation between art and life through technology. In this specific instance there seems to be a process of mechanization through that body or artifact when it's mechanically placed into motion. In the following paper, my intention is establishing a framework that revolves around the tangential area of this relationship by visiting the different scales of interaction between the machine and the body, from the minute apparatus to the larger organizational scheme. Whether its architecture, an artifact or a living organism, either aesthetic or technological, they all begin to work as constituents that are relational and by combining them you create new objects. The results of these collisions create new combinations of reciprocity between the different actors or machines from one end to the other and it is in this mutual collectiveness that new movement patterns as well as social and spatial configurations are produced. The study will be organized by contextualizing and distinguishing different stratums of these through a contrast of avant garde art and new modes of technology. It will conclude with suggestive works from exponents such as Laszlo Moholy Nagy and Naum Gabo relating to their art and how it tries to root its forms in the objectivity of engines or mechanisms that are commensurable.

Emancipation is a process of achieving freedom in a certain social field, which also has a political dimension. This potential is observable and has been used explicitly by the 20th century avant-garde movement. However, I claim that this potential is not fully recognized nowadays, because of the failure of the avant-garde – which has fallen into a trap of either surveillance to the Communist Party or to the market. Therefore, in order to understand the emancipatory potential of art, I propose two complementary perspectives. One springs from Luis Althusser's writings, especially from A Letter on Art in Reply to André Daspre (1968), his only text in which he directly writes about art and the discrepancies in art which allow for the appearance of something new in the system, as art is not fully conditioned by dominating ideology, the other from American pragmatism as marked especially by John Dewey, who was writing about the democratic character of art and of aesthetic experience that has the power to transform and enrich human lives. It is important to take pragmatism into philosophical consideration while considering art, if we want to get our bodies back, bodies immersed in an environment as ideated by Arnold Berleant or Richard Shusterman. It is important also to render a discursive structure as within post-Marxist structuralism. I claim that combining pragmatist and structuralist perspectives can also enrich our understanding of art, showing its potential to change the
world.

Simandan D (2005) "Pragmatic Scepticism and the Possibilities of Knowledge" Timisoara, Editura Universitatii de Vest/West University Press, 256 pp.

This book distiled my own way of understanding the relation between epistemology, ontology, and politics, and the best name I found for labelling that way is pragmatic scepticism. Throughout the book, I stay away from the temptation to give a dictionary-like definition of this philosophy. I do not even like to think of it as a philosophy. Instead, I see pragmatic scepticism as a way of being and as a way of relating. A way of being human, i.e. enmeshed in language and limited by our senses; and a way of relating, i.e. crafted by the happy and sad encounters with theories, things, and lifeís happenings. The book is structured in three parts, which together give a sense of the potentials of pragmatic scepticism: as a way of thinking about the world, as a way of approaching theoretical dilemmas, as a way of mapping one's inner contradictions. The first part of the book introduces pragmatic scepticism in relation to the general questions underwriting the philosophy of knowledge and the study of science. The second part is more specific in that it deploys the pragmatic sceptical attitude to the central metatheoretical questions of the discipline of geography. The last part of the book groups under the heading "philosophies of struggle" two more applied essays on the political economy and the political epistemology of conflicts over knowledge in the globalised landscape of higher education in general and geography in particular.

This article addresses the on-going debate between pluralistic and monistic approaches to dealing with critical disagreement. I return to the theory of world hypotheses advanced by Stephen C. Pepper, an understudied figure in aesthetics and pragmatism, to enunciate a version of pluralism that centers on the nature of critical evidence and its functioning in social settings of argument. I argue that Pepper’s expansive philosophy holds interesting implications for what can be called the metaphysics of criticism, a point missed by partisans of standard views of pluralism and monism. Building on his analysis of equally autonomous (but non-commensurable) world hypotheses, this study enunciates an explicit notion of rhetorical pluralism that goes beyond simple relativism. This account can be labeled as an evidentiary pluralism, since it internalizes standards for evaluation to world views and recognizes their changeable nature among critics.

Comunicação apresentada no 20o. Encontro Internacional sobre Pragmatism da PUC-SP de 08-12 de novembro de 2021 (versão em inglês).
Página do evento:
https://www.pragmatismopucsp.com.br/resumos---20%C2%BAeip

Resumo:
Da púrpura ao vermelho escarlate, a simbologia de uma cor divina   

A cor faz parte de todos os discursos e disciplinas, da história natural à teologia. A cor púrpura fabricada na cidade de Tiro e comercializada pelos fenícios (o nome Phoenicia significa terra do púrpura) se tornou um símbolo de status em várias civilizações. A púrpura de Tiro tornou-se a cor dos reis, nobres, sacerdotes e magistrados de todo o Mediterrâneo. A cor púrpura estava também associada ao granito pórfiro utilizado apenas em edificações imperiais, o conceito de porfirogenitos era conhecido desde o século VI, quando uma criança nascida de um imperador reinante era considerada porfirogenitos, ou seja, nascida na Câmara Púrpura revestida de pórfiro onde as imperatrizes davam à luz. A cor não apenas influenciava como os indivíduos eram percebidos pelos outros, mas também expressava crenças e aspirações pessoais. O contexto era crucial e esse matiz específico transmitia a mensagem de divindade e poder. O fator importante sobre a púrpura de Tiro não era apenas sua cor, mas seu brilho, sua resistência ao tempo e à luz e seu alto preço, era um marcador de diferença e distinção, tão valorizada em Roma que somente pessoas de posição social mais elevada como magistrados, cônsules e o imperador tinham permissão para usá-la, uma restrição constante das leis suntuárias e cuja desobediência era punida com a morte. Seu valor monetário e simbólico refletia hierarquias sociais e de uso restrito a descendência de imperadores cujo poder era equiparado pela cor dos mantos e túnicas do Pantokrátor e da Theotokos como indicação do poder divino. A cor que se deveria honrar a Deus era também, na Antiguidade, a cor dos soberanos. Um texto apócrifo cristão primitivo relaciona as representações da Anunciação com a cor púrpura. O texto do Protoevangelium de Tiago datado cerca do século II d.C. descreve Maria como uma das virgens puras que foi escolhida para ajudar a tecer o véu do templo. A sorte de fiar os fios da verdadeira púrpura e do escarlate coube a Maria: e ela pegou o escarlate e estendeu-o. Por volta do ano 300 d.C., o imperador Diocleciano decretou a tinturaria da púrpura um monopólio imperial e protegido pela pena de morte, transferindo a produção para Bizâncio, mais tarde Constantinopla, atual Istambul. Um símbolo de riqueza na época grega e romana para tingir togas, e na Idade Média para decorar manuscritos, a cor era tão importante, que alguns pergaminhos bíblicos foram tingidos e denominados por códices púrpuras. Na queda de Constantinopla em 1453 a púrpura desapareceu com a destruição das tinturarias imperiais. Com o final do Império Bizantino uma questão prática obrigou o abandono do uso da cor púrpura, mas não de sua simbologia, e então a cor púrpura se tornou o vermelho escarlate, sendo necessário o uso de uma cor substituta para a continuidade da simbologia vestuária e teológica das mais brilhantes das cores já produzidas pelo homem.

Pour télécharger les quatre premiers numéros de Pragmata en totalité:
https://revuepragmata.wordpress.com/les-numeros/


PRAGMATA. Revue d’études pragmatistes, 2021-4
« Figures du public : enquêter, expérimenter, éduquer »

Présentation, 8-12

ARTICLES

♦ Cédric Terzi
Comment peut-on établir des faits par l’image ? Pour une critique pragmatiste de l’attestation visuelle, 16-102

♦ Olivier Gaudin
Apprendre à apprendre : vers une pédagogie de la créativité ? John Dewey, le Bauhaus et le Black Mountain College, 104-154

♦ Gérôme Truc
Les victimes du terrorisme comme public de citoyens affectés. Sur la mobilisation des victimes des attentats du 11 mars 2004 à Madrid, 156-190

♦ Jean Samuel Bordreuil
La Nouvelle Orléans après Katrina. Les relèves des publics de la reconstruction et leurs portées politiques, 192-278

ENTRETIEN

♦ Carole Gayet-Viaud, entretien avec Sandra Laugier et Albert Ogien
Du langage ordinaire et du savoir pratique à la démocratie : cheminements intellectuels croisés. (Addendum : retour sur quelques connexions au pragmatisme), 282-338


TRADUCTIONS
Dossier « Social settlements : le pragmatisme en action »

♦ Daniel Cefaï
Politique pragmatiste et social settlements. De nouveaux publics aux États-Unis à l’ère progressiste, 342-518

♦ Jane Addams
Une fonction du social settlement (1899), 520-553

♦ Mary Kingsbury Simkhovitch
De l’impressionnisme social à l’action institutionnelle : trajectoire des settlements (1906), 554-563

♦ George Herbert Mead
Le social settlement : son fondement et sa fonction (1907), 564-571

♦ George Herbert Mead
Les social settlements et l’anarchie (1908), 572-578

♦ George Herbert Mead
Sur le rôle des social settlements : pouvoir de l'enquête et esprit de voisinage (1910), 580-597

♦ John & Evelyn Dewey
L’école comme social settlement (1915), 598-620


ATELIER

♦ Carolina Andion
L'Observatoire d'innovation sociale de Florianopolis, Santa Catarina, Brésil. Enquêter et expérimenter au cœur de la vie civique, 624-667


RECENSIONS

♦ François Debruyne
Cédric Terzi & Smaïn Laacher, 2020, Persepolis ou la guerre des libertés. Sacrés, sacrilèges et démocratie en Tunisie, Genève, Labor & Fides, 670-687

♦ Pierre-Nicolas Oberhauser
Jane Addams, 1902/2019, Démocratie et éthique sociale, Dijon, Éditions Raison et Passions, 688-704

♦ Brice Laurent
Louise Carlier, 2016, Le cosmopolitisme, de la ville au politique. Enquête sur les mobilisations urbaines à Bruxelles, Bruxelles, PIE Lang, 706-717

♦ Daniel Cefaï & Joan Stavo-Debauge
Alexander Livingston, 2016, Damn Great Empires ! William James and the Politics of Pragmatism, New York, Oxford University Press, 718-787


RÉSUMÉS ET LISTE DES AUTEURS

Résumés, 790-803
Liste des auteurs, 804-807

* * *

In this paper, my mainly aim is to analyze what I consider the necessary and sufficient requirement for the aesthetic experience of beauty. Beauty answers man’s natural desire to overcome his own limits and the unavoidable constraints that daily life imposes on him, his wanting to be incoercible, his insatiable yearning for power. This is a considerable element because it provides some important indications about the nature of what is judged beautiful and, consequently, why men are in love with beauty, considering it, to its maximum degree, a property of the Absolute, of God, inextricably linked to His Omnipotence and irresistible ability to create.
Secondly, I will try to show why and to what extent what the individual considers ugly or beautiful is significantly influenced by the socio-cultural context in which he lives and by the aesthetic beliefs of the community to which he belongs to.
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In questo articolo, mi propongo principalmente di analizzare quello che ritengo essere il requisito necessario e sufficiente per l’esperienza estetica del bello, ossia il naturale desiderio dell’uomo di vincere i propri limiti e le inevadibili costrizioni che la vita quotidiana gli impone, il suo voler essere incoercibile, il suo inappagabile anelito di potenza. Si tratta di un elemento considerevole perché fornisce alcune importanti indicazioni sulla natura di ciò che è giudicato bello e, conseguentemente, sul perché gli uomini siano innamorati della bellezza, considerandola, al suo massimo grado, una proprietà dell’Assoluto, di Dio, legata indissolubilmente alla Sua Onnipotenza e incontrastabile capacità di creare.
In secondo luogo, cercherò di mostrare perché e in che misura ciò che il singolo considera brutto o bello è influenzato in maniera significativa dal contesto socioculturale in cui egli vive e dal credo estetico della comunità cui appartiene.

Studies in Somaesthetics: Embodied Perspectives in Philosophy, the Arts and the Human Sciences (series Edited by Richard Shusterman, Florida Atlantic University, USA) invites submissions on the topic “Food and Somaesthetics” for a forthcoming edited collection; 2023

This issue of the Journal of Somaesthetics is dedicated to the embodied and aesthetic potentials of architectural and spatial designs. We invite articles and cases that investigate how "the soma is the crucial medium through which architecture is experienced and created" (Shusterman: 2009, p.290).

The paper outlines the main sources and subject area of negative aesthetics and then focuses on its systematic potential; and, in direct connection with these, it draws attention to the basic weakness of negative aesthetics – its bias toward reflexive regression and dissolution of the aesthetic in the negative – as well as to two possible ways for its overcoming. The aim of the paper is to present the purview of negative aesthetics and its potential for actual interpretations of the phenomena of the contemporary (aestheticized) cultural situation. *Keywords: non-classical aesthetics, negative aesthetics, non-identity, subjective
negativity, transgression of the aesthetic code of beauty, negative aesthetic values, neoclassical pragmatist aesthetics, existential semiotics. / Статията очертава основните източници и предметното поле на негативната естетика, след което се съсредоточава върху нейния систематичен потенциал; и в пряка връзка с това обръща внимание върху главната слабост на негативната естетика – нейния уклон към рефлексивна регресия и разтваряне на естетическото в негативното – както и на два възможни пътя за преодоляване на тази слабост. Целта на текста е да представи проблемното поле на негативната естетика и неговия потенциал за актуални интерпретации на феномените на съвременната (естетизирана) културна ситуация. *Ключови думи: некласическа естетика, негативна естетика, неидентичност, субективна негативност, трансгресия на естетическия код на красивото, негативни естетически ценности, неокласическа прагматистка естетика, екзистенциална семиотика.

The field of interactive music systems (IMSs), beginning in the 1980s, is still relatively young and fast moving. The field of music theory-analysis, during the same period (since 1980), has undergone a major transformation in terms of technological innovations, flexibility, and breadth. The two fields have not really caught up with each other. It will be interesting to see what arises as they do — especially as both fields have become more concerned with the role of the body and embodied cognition. Framed in terms of contrasting epistemological orientations, this essay considers some relevant developments in IMSs, music cognition, and music theory and analysis, leading up to the present.  The most popular approaches to music cognition and to IMS design are rationalist (Ashby 2010), exploiting the ‘correct’ embodiments of music (Godøy 2004, Leman 2007, Paine 2009) based on affordances (Gibson 1977, Kelso 1998). This essay, however, advocates a pragmatist (Ashby 2010) approach inspired by music analysis and exploiting the potential of kinesthetic learning (associative learning). Prompted by a progressive approach to music analysis, theory, perception, and cognition (Dubiel 1999, Mailman 2007), interactive music technology can also be constructive, flexible, and progressive, by exploiting kinesthetic learning from immersion in new and unusual motion-to-sound mappings derived from dynamic formal processes in analysed music. In this way, immersive interactive systems offer an opportunity systematically to learn new associations based on principles theorised in response to analysis. Experience of these systems essentially ‘rewires the brain’, thereby exemplifying what Korsyn (2004) has attributed to Lewin’s (1986, 1987) approach to music perception: the ironist approach, as formulated by Rorty (1989). Thus a pragmatist ironist experimental (PIE) approach is articulated. Rather than committing to any particular ways music is already embodied, this approach acknowledges the flexible nature of embodied musical experience. It forges and uses interactive music technologies continually to redescribe and therefore reform how music is embodied, thereby disembodying to re-embody music, expanding how music is heard, contemplated and experienced.

Na intersecção entre o conceito de Primeiridade em Peirce e a distinção formulada por Dewey entre “estético” e “artístico”, propomos um diálogo entre os pensamentos de ambos para uma reflexão acerca da experiência estética. Embora “experiência estética” abarque muitas definições, enquanto for considerada uma relação íntima entre espectador e obra de arte, é possível entendê-la como uma experiência de primeiridade, i.e., como aquela experiência do sentir a imediatez do mundo, sem mediação, num momento caracterizado por uma singularidade, liberdade, e não temporalidade, por isso se define como pura presentidade. Igualmente para Dewey a experiência estética é entendida como uma experiência singular de unidade e completude possível dentre as experiências comuns do cotidiano, e ela se caracteriza como puro sentir e puro presente. Portanto, é lícito afirmar que há uma clara correspondência entre o conceito de experiência de primeiridade em Peirce e o conceito de experiência estética em Dewey. Entretanto, pode-se dizer que a experiência estética diz respeito não só à fruição do espectador diante da obra de arte em si, mas também diz respeito à experiência do artista ao produzir uma obra de arte - além disso, as obras de arte, enquanto coisas no mundo aparecem ao espectador não só na presentidade da primeiridade, mas também como experiência de segundidade, pois a obra de arte é um objeto, e como objeto tem alteridade. E é nesta duplicidade da definição de experiência estética que a distinção cunhada por Dewey entre o “artístico” (criação da obra de arte) e o “estético” (fruição da obra de arte) se fundamenta. Pois ele explica que para que um objeto possa se constituir como uma obra de arte, uma experiência plena precisa ter ocorrido no processo de produção da obra, e essa experiência, igualmente singular, é a chave que Dewey fornece para o entendimento da distinção entre o objeto comum e o objeto artístico. Logo, para ser considerado uma obra de arte, um objeto só o seria na medida em que possibilite uma experiência estética plena de fruição artística, i.e., esta experiência inclui, não apenas uma experiência de primeiridade, mas também inclui os aspectos “estético” e o “artístico” que se fundem numa experiência única, transformando o espectador em um artista momentâneo. Em outras palavras, para que haja a experiência estética é preciso que o expectador se aproprie da obra de arte como se ele fosse o seu criador, vivenciando-a de maneira imediata e singular, assim, aquilo que poderia ser banal, comum e pura alteridade na exterioridade, enquanto obra de arte, passa a ser único, original e continuum numa interioridade.

No presente trabalho, ofereço três linhas pelas quais a forte conexão en- tre o pragmatismo e a poética de Peirce pode ser explorada: 1. a relação da estética com seu sistema de pensamento;1 2. a relação entre poética e inferência abdutiva; e, por fim, 3. a relação entre a estética e sua teoria das categorias. Essa importante conexão gradual com a poética revela, em minha opinião, que a própria obra de pensamento do pragmatista é uma obra de poiesis, de criação estética que se torna normativa para ou- tras ciências, e que ele pode reler a tradição como Poética Pragmática

In the following paper, I aim to discuss three separate linkages in William James’s overall philosophy of religion. James’s philosophy of religion is based thoroughly on his radical empiricism and this is the uniting thread often missed in contemporary scholarship. Radical empiricism makes it possible to link 1) his criticism of both representational metaphysics and theology and that philosophy through James must take to heart the lack of access both representative metaphysics and theology conventionally claimed, and 2) the affective ground on which both philosophy and religion have operated for James, especially in his “Will to Believe” argument, and 3) how understanding the affective ground informs a thoroughly empiricist philosophy of religion that moves through his treatment of religious themes (e.g. his mysticism in The Varieties of Religious Experience) and how this affective ground emerges in the body and action. In this essay and what I hope to make clear in James is that philosophy starts in the affective ground where existence is felt and philosophized about rather than assuming the whole of reality is complete, determined, and somehow reflected in our contemplation of it.

n his 1934 book Art as Experience, John Dewey called for the reintegration of art with the processes of everyday life. According to Dewey, since the industrialisation of western society, art has become a compartmentalised sphere set apart from ordinary culture. This thesis asks, 'what might the reintegration of art and life look like, in the early twenty-first century in Australia?'

Utilising a practice-based research approach, I have developed and refined a new method of art practice – bilateral blogging – which works within the rhythms and spaces of everyday life. Inspired by the 'blurring of art and life' carried out by artists
such as Allan Kaprow, the projects developed in this thesis – Bilateral Kellerberrin and Bilateral Petersham – extend twentieth century avant-garde art practice into the existing spaces of Australian neighbourhoods. This thesis shows how artworks like these, comprised of localised social relations, might also begin to document the specific interactive experiences which go into their own making.

I demonstrate that as a form of art practice, blogging can deepen engagement with everyday experience. It can produce a more dialogical relationship between artist and audience, and, importantly, it is able to generate rich documentation of situated experiences. Blogging is thus a research tool with the potential to bring to light aspects of everyday life which normally go unnoticed.

Through close reflection on the processes and outcomes of my own blog artworks, I have also developed a new way of identifying some of the aesthetic qualities of the
experiences from which my relational art projects are made. Building on the work of William James, John Dewey and Allan Kaprow, I propose that attention plays a crucial role in transforming social interactions into aesthetic experience. The method of bilateral blogging developed in this thesis uses attention as a framing device, catalysing seemingly incoherent events into an intelligible, expansive structure.

This thesis thus makes three substantial contributions: a new method for making relational artworks; the production of an experiential document of the particular environments in which these artworks are situated; and a new approach to
understanding the functioning of aesthetic experience. Taken together, these contributions bring a fresh perspective to discussions around the blurring of art and life, and the use of art as a mode of enquiry.

Evolutionär und ontogenetisch primär stammt Erkenntnis aus Interaktionen, die als epistemische Handlungen eines situiert-verkörperten Beobachters zu verstehen sind. Erst sukzessive werden auch kognitive Simulationen (als mentales Probehandeln) und abstrakte Reflexionen möglich. Den Anfang bilden jedoch Prozesse der Enactive Cognition. Bereits diese Handlungen steuert ein affektives Feedback, das sich als einfachster Fall einer ästhetischen Empfindung interpretieren lässt (z.B. beim Spielen oder Tanzen ohne Musik). Positiv verstärkt wird die Effizienz (die Sparsamkeit biologischer Ressourcen) und die Effektivität (die mögliche Prognose von Handlungseffekten). Analog führt dies bei negativem Vorzeichen zu negativen ästhetischen Erlebnissen. Im Sinne der Embodied Cognition treten diese Wahrnehmungsurteile in diversen Granularitäten und massiv parallel auf: Ästhetische Erfahrung ist primär kein Urteil über einen externen Gegenstand, sondern über die Qualität der kognitiven Modellbildungs-Prozesse selbst als verkörperte Erkenntnis (Forward Modelling sowie Inverse Modelling als Basis für Antizipation/Prognose): Die ästhetische Erfahrung wird erkennbar als evolutionärer Lernverstärker, der bewusste wie auch unbewusste Prozesse durch affektives Feedback steuern kann.