Research seeking a scientific foundation for the theory of art appreciation has raised controversies at the intersection of the social and cognitive sciences. Though equally relevant to a scientific inquiry into art appreciation, psychological and historical approaches to art developed independently and lack a common core of theoretical principles. Historicists argue that psychological and brain sciences ignore the fact that artworks are artifacts produced and appreciated in the context of unique historical situations and artistic intentions. After revealing flaws in the (...) psychological approach, we introduce a psycho-historical framework for the science of art appreciation. This framework demonstrates that a science of art appreciation must investigate how appreciators process causal and historical information to classify and explain their psychological responses to art. Expanding on research about the cognition of artifacts, we identify three modes of appreciation: basic exposure to an artwork, the artistic design stance, and artistic understanding. The artistic design stance, a requisite for artistic understanding, is an attitude whereby appreciators develop their sensitivity to art-historical contexts by means of inquiries into the making, authorship, and functions of artworks. We defend and illustrate the psycho-historical framework with an analysis of existing studies on art appreciation in empirical aesthetics. Finally, we argue that the fluency theory of aesthetic pleasure can be amended to meet the requirements of the framework. We conclude that scientists can tackle fundamental questions about the nature and appreciation of art within the psycho-historical framework. (shrink)

Combining testimonial reports from independent and partially reliable information sources is an important epistemological problem of uncertain reasoning. Within the framework of Dempster–Shafer theory, we propose a general model of partially reliable sources, which includes several previously known results as special cases. The paper reproduces these results on the basis of a comprehensive model taxonomy. This gives a number of new insights and thereby contributes to a better understanding of this important application of reasoning with uncertain and incomplete information.

Zeki and co-workers recently proposed that perception can best be described as locally distributed, asynchronous processes that each create a kind of microconsciousness, which condense into an experienced percept. The present article is aimed at extending this theory to metacognitive feelings. We present evidence that perceptual fluency—the subjective feeling of ease during perceptual processing—is based on speed of processing at different stages of the perceptual process. Specifically, detection of briefly presented stimuli was influenced by figure-ground contrast, but not by symmetry (...) or the font of the stimuli. Conversely, discrimination of these stimuli was influenced by whether they were symmetric and by the font they were presented in , but not by figure-ground contrast. Both tasks however were related with the subjective experience of fluency . We conclude that subjective fluency is the conscious phenomenal correlate of different processing stages in visual perception. (shrink)

En radicalisant le projet d'une phénoménologie de l'affectivité, en interrogeant l'abîme intérieur de l'éprouver, et en y resaissisant la source de toute création possible, cet ouvrage fait de la question du pâtir le point de départ d'une nouvelle théorie de l'agir.

Tras señalar que la actual política indígena divide a la sociedad chilena en posiciones antagónicas, el artículo plantea una mirada de superación quienes la ven como una amenaza al orden institucional y a la unidad de la nación chilena, y quienes la consideran meras modificaciones cosméticas al modelo etnocida del Estado chileno. Se señala que los compromisos del Pacto de Nueva Imperial tienen niveles parciales de cumplimiento que dejan a Chile por debajo en estas materias en el concierto latinoamericano, lo (...) que ha llevado a que la relación entre el gobierno y la CONADI con el movimiento indígena está atravesada por contradicciones y conflictos difíciles de solucionar. (shrink)

v. 1. A-D -- v. 2. E-L -- v. 3. M-Z -- v. 4. Verzeichnisse.

Previous reports have demonstrated that the comprehension of sentences describing motion in a particular direction (toward, away, up, or down) is affected by concurrently viewing a stimulus that depicts motion in the same or opposite direction. We report 3 experiments that extend our understanding of the relation between perception and language processing in 2 ways. First, whereas most previous studies of the relation between perception and language processing have focused on visual perception, our data show that sentence processing can be (...) affected by the concurrent processing of auditory stimuli. Second, it is shown that the relation between the processing of auditory stimuli and the processing of sentences depends on whether the sentences are presented in the auditory or visual modality. (shrink)

Die Entfaltung der originaren Sprachphanomenalitat unter den drei Hauptaspekten von Spracheroffmmgen, Bedeutungsstrukturen und Sprachpathos ergibt sich aus der Grundfrage nach dem Verhaltnis von Sprache und Welt eineseits sowie Sprache und Affektwirklichkeit andererseits. Dieser Gedanke eines vor-perzeptiven Sagens bei Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty und Wittgenstein wird mit Nietzsche vertieft, und zwar als Analyse der transzendentalen Einbildungskraft im Sinne jener Imago mundi, die reiner Affekt als Grund jeder logoshaften Auberung ist. Zusammen mit einer weiteren Darstellung des Mythos als Dichtung verdeutlich dies, das alles (...) vorstellende Sprechen stets auch affektives Ur-sagen bleibt. Deshalb schliebt diese sprachphanomenologische Untersuchung mit einem kritischen Ausblick auf den Begriff der Kommunikation heute, um fur diesen die lebensoriginare Realitat des Austausches gegenuber allem blob Informativen in Erinnerung zu rufen. (shrink)

Critics of the target article objected to our account of art appreciators' sensitivity to art-historical contexts and functions, the relations among the modes of artistic appreciation, and the weaknesses of aesthetic science. To rebut these objections and justify our program, we argue that the current neglect of sensitivity to art-historical contexts persists as a result of a pervasive aesthetic–artistic confound; we further specify our claim that basic exposure and the design stance are necessary conditions of artistic understanding; and we explain (...) why many experimental studies do not belong to a psycho-historical science of art. (shrink)

T. 1. Synthese und Theorie. Trägerschichten.

The studies in this book set out to examine the labile resonances of phenomenology and art in Michel Henry, by examining the different figures of movement given to the concept of the aesthetic by the philosopher. They are preceded by one of Michel Henry’s own texts. Les études qui composent ce livre proposent d’interroger les résonances labiles de la phénoménologie et de l’art chez Michel Henry, en examinant les différentes figures du déplacement imprimé par le philosophe au concept d’esthétique. Le (...) tout est précédé d’un texte de Michel Henry. (shrink)

Population counts and longitude and latitude coordinates were estimated for the 50 largest cities in the United States by computational linguistic techniques and by human participants. The mathematical technique Latent Semantic Analysis applied to newspaper texts produced similarity ratings between the 50 cities that allowed for a multidimensional scaling (MDS) of these cities. MDS coordinates correlated with the actual longitude and latitude of these cities, showing that cities that are located together share similar semantic contexts. This finding was replicated using (...) a first‐order co‐occurrence algorithm. The computational estimates of geographical location as well as population were akin to human estimates. These findings show that language encodes geographical information that language users in turn may use in their understanding of language and the world. (shrink)

We investigated how color preferences vary according to season and whether those changes could be explained by the ecological valence theory. To do so, we assessed the same participants’ preferences for the same colors during fall, winter, spring, and summer in the northeastern United States, where there are large seasonal changes in environmental colors. Seasonal differences were most pronounced between fall and the other three seasons. Participants liked fall-associated dark-warm colors—for example, dark-red, dark-orange, dark-yellow, and dark-chartreuse—more during fall than other (...) seasons. The EVT could explain these changes with a modified version of Palmer and Schloss’ weighted affective valence estimate procedure that added an activation term to the WAVE equation. The results indicate that color preferences change according to season, as color-associated objects become more/less activated in the observer. These seasonal changes in color preferences could not be characterized by overall shifts in weights along cone-contrast axes. (shrink)

Unter dem Eindruck einer "Renaissance des Religiösen" einerseits und der zunehmenden Politisierung von Religionen andererseits rückt die Verhältnisbestimmung von Politik und Religion im staatlichen wie im internationalen Kontext verstärkt in den Fokus des politischen und gesellschaftlichen Interesses. In den letzten Jahren trägt auch die politische Philosophie dieser Situation vermehrt Rechnung, was sich in einer steigenden Zahl von Veröffentlichungen zu diesem Thema niederschlägt. Dabei kann sie auf eine reiche Tradition philosophischer Modelle zum Neben-, Mit- oder Gegeneinander von Politik und Religion zurückblicken. (...) Was in dieser Diskussion bisher jedoch fehlt, ist eine differenzierte Darstellung der für die Verhältnisbestimmung von Philosophie, Politik und Religion klassischen Modelle, angefangen von der griechischen Antike bis in die Liberalismus-Kommunitarismus-Debatte des ausgehenden letzten Jahrhunderts. Diese Lücke schließt der vorliegende Band: In 15 Beiträgen namhafter Experten werden klassische Modelle der Verhältnisbestimmung von Philosophie, Politik und Religion, beginnend mit Platon bis hin zu Charles Taylor, eingehend behandelt. (shrink)

Background: In modern society, death has become ‘forbidden’ fed by the medical technology to conquer death. The technological paradigm is challenged by a social-liberal political ideology in postmodern Western societies. The question raised in this study was as follows: Which arguments, attitudes, values and paradoxes between modern and postmodern tendencies concerning treatment and care of older persons with an implantable cardioverter defibrillator appear in the literature? Aims: The aim of this study was to describe and interpret how the field of (...) tension concerning older persons with an implantable cardioverter defibrillator – especially end-of-life issues – has been expressed in the literature throughout the last decade. Methods: Paul Ricoeur’s reflexive interpretive approach was used to extract the meaningful content of the literature involving qualitative, quantitative and normative literature. Analysis and interpretation involved naive reading, structural analysis and critical interpretation. Ethical considerations: The investigation complied with the principles outlined in the Declaration of Helsinki. Findings and discussions: The unifying theme was ‘Normativity under change’. The sub-themes were ‘Death has become legitimate’, ‘The technological imperative is challenged’ and ‘Patients and healthcare professionals need to talk about end-of-life issues’. There seems to be a considerable distance between the normative approach of how practice ought to be and findings in empirical studies. Conclusion: Modern as well as postmodern attitudes and perceptions illustrate contradictory tendencies regarding deactivation of the implantable cardioverter defibrillator and replacement of the implantable cardioverter defibrillator in older persons nearing the end of life. The tendencies challenge each other in a struggle to gain position. On the other hand, they can also complement each other because professionalism and health professional expertise cannot stand alone when the patient’s life is at stake but must be unfolded in an alliance with the patient who needs to be understood and accepted in his vulnerability. (shrink)

In the late 1940s and early 1950s, there emerged a radically new kind of music based on recorded environmental sounds instead of sounds of traditional Western musical instruments. Centered in Paris around the composer, music theorist, engineer, and writer Pierre Schaeffer, this became known as musique concrète because of its use of concrete recorded sound fragments, manifesting a departure from the abstract concepts and representations of Western music notation. Furthermore, the term sound object was used to denote our perceptual images (...) of such fragments. Sound objects and their features became the focus of an extensive research effort on the perception and cognition of music in general, remarkably anticipating topics of more recent music psychology research. This sound object theory makes extensive use of metaphors, often related to motion shapes, something that can provide holistic representations of perceptually salient, but temporally distributed, features in different kinds of music. (shrink)