Apt Imaginings

Apt Imaginings PDF Author: Jonathan Gilmore
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190096365
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
How do our engagements with fictions and other products of the imagination compare to our experiences of the real world? Are the feelings we have about a novel's characters modelled on our thoughts about actual people? If it is wrong to feel pleasure over certain situations in real life, can it nonetheless be right to take pleasure in analogous scenarios represented in a fantasy or film? Should the desires we have for what goes on in a make-believe story cohere with what we want to happen in the actual world? Such queries have animated philosophical and psychological theorizing about art and life from Plato's Republic and Aristotle's Poetics to contemporary debates over freedom of expression, ethics and aesthetics, the cognitive value of thought experiments, and the effects on audiences of exposure to violent entertainment. In Apt Imaginings, Jonathan Gilmore develops a new framework to pursue these questions, marshalling a wide range of research in aesthetics, the science of the emotions, moral philosophy, neuroscience, cognitive psychology, and film and literary theory. Gilmore argues that, while there is a substantial empirical continuity in our feelings across art and life, the norms that govern the appropriateness of those responses across the divide are discontinuous. In this view, the evaluative criteria that determine the fit, correctness, or rationality of our emotions and desires for what is internal to a fiction can be contrary to those that govern our affective attitudes toward analogous things in the real world. In short, it can be right to embrace within a story what one would condemn in real life. The theory Gilmore defends in this volume helps to explain our complex and sometimes conflicted attitudes toward works of the imagination; challenges the popular view that fictions serve to refine our moral sensibilities; and exposes a kind of autonomy of the imagination that can render our responses to art immune to standard real-world epistemic, practical, and affective kinds of criticism.

Apt Imaginings

Apt Imaginings PDF Author: Jonathan Gilmore
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190096365
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 273

Get Book Here

Book Description
How do our engagements with fictions and other products of the imagination compare to our experiences of the real world? Are the feelings we have about a novel's characters modelled on our thoughts about actual people? If it is wrong to feel pleasure over certain situations in real life, can it nonetheless be right to take pleasure in analogous scenarios represented in a fantasy or film? Should the desires we have for what goes on in a make-believe story cohere with what we want to happen in the actual world? Such queries have animated philosophical and psychological theorizing about art and life from Plato's Republic and Aristotle's Poetics to contemporary debates over freedom of expression, ethics and aesthetics, the cognitive value of thought experiments, and the effects on audiences of exposure to violent entertainment. In Apt Imaginings, Jonathan Gilmore develops a new framework to pursue these questions, marshalling a wide range of research in aesthetics, the science of the emotions, moral philosophy, neuroscience, cognitive psychology, and film and literary theory. Gilmore argues that, while there is a substantial empirical continuity in our feelings across art and life, the norms that govern the appropriateness of those responses across the divide are discontinuous. In this view, the evaluative criteria that determine the fit, correctness, or rationality of our emotions and desires for what is internal to a fiction can be contrary to those that govern our affective attitudes toward analogous things in the real world. In short, it can be right to embrace within a story what one would condemn in real life. The theory Gilmore defends in this volume helps to explain our complex and sometimes conflicted attitudes toward works of the imagination; challenges the popular view that fictions serve to refine our moral sensibilities; and exposes a kind of autonomy of the imagination that can render our responses to art immune to standard real-world epistemic, practical, and affective kinds of criticism.

Apt Imaginings

Apt Imaginings PDF Author: Jonathan Gilmore
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780190096373
Category : Emotions
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
'Apt Imaginings' addresses the question of how our emotions and desires for the contents of fictions, fantasies, and other products of the imagination relate to the feelings we have about things in the real world. A contribution to the theory of the emotions, the philosophy of fiction, and the psychology of art, this text argues that the normative criteria that determine the fit, morality, or rationality of our feelings for what we believe are distinct from those criteria that apply to what we imagine.

Using Fiction to Teach Secondary Students about the Middle East

Using Fiction to Teach Secondary Students about the Middle East PDF Author: Karl Ågerup
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3031455274
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 154

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Book Description
This book draws on empirical studies of classrooms teaching The Sirens of Baghdad by Yasmina Khadra to demonstrate how novels can effectively help achieve learning objectives related to intercultural understanding and global citizenship. By combining theoretical and empirical research, the book offers insights into the most effective ways to discuss cross-cultural literature with upper secondary students who have grown up in the Western world. It outlines how, where, and why such literature can enhance students' understanding of different cultures and make them more globally aware citizens.

Consciousness and Cognition

Consciousness and Cognition PDF Author: Michael Thau
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 9780195349658
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
Our thinking about consciousness and cognition is dominated by a certain very natural conception. This conception dictates what we take the fundamental questions about consciousness and cognition to be as well as the form that their answers must take. In this book, Michael Thau shows that, despite its naturalness, this conception begins with and depends upon a few fundamental errors. Exorcising these errors requires that we completely reconceive the nature of both consciousness and cognition as well as the fundamental problems each poses. Thau proceeds by discussing three famous and important philosophical puzzles - Spectrum Inversion, Frege's Puzzle, and Black-and-White Mary - each of which concerns some aspect of either consciousness or cognition. It has gone unnoticed that at a certain important level of generality, each of these puzzles presents the very same problem and, in bringing out this common problem, the errors in our natural conception of consciousness and cognition are also brought out. Thau's book will appeal to the casual reader interested in the proper solution of these puzzles and the nature of consciousness and cognition. The discussion of Frege's puzzle also contains important insights about the nature of linguistic communication and, hence, anyone interested in the fundamental questions in philosophy of language will also want to read the book.

The Philosophy of Fiction

The Philosophy of Fiction PDF Author: Patrik Engisch
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000770354
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 283

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Book Description
This book presents new research on the crucial role that imagination plays in contemporary philosophy of fiction. The first part of the book challenges the main paradigm set by Kendall Walton and Gregory Currie, according to which there is a necessary connection between fiction and a prescription that we engage imaginatively with its content. The contributors address the fundamental questions of how we can define fiction, and especially whether we can define fiction in terms of imagination. The second part focuses on a distinct but related question: can we point to some distinctive experiential features of our engagement with fiction? In the third part, the focus lies on the cognitive value of fiction and on the role that imagination plays in that respect. The chapters in this part discuss the cognitive value of fiction with respect to issues such as the training of the faculty of imagination, phenomenal experience, empathy, and the emotions. The Philosophy of Fiction will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in aesthetics, philosophy of mind, epistemology, and literary studies. Chapter 13 of this book is available for free in PDF format as Open Access from the individual product page at www.routledge.com. It has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

Seeing More

Seeing More PDF Author: Samantha Matherne
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198898304
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 448

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Book Description
Samantha Matherne defends a systematic interpretation of the philosopher Immanuel Kant's theory of imagination. To this end, she offers an account of what kind of mental capacity Kant takes imagination to be in general, as well as an account of the way in which we use this capacity in theoretical, aesthetic, and practical contexts. In contrast with more traditional theories of imagination, as a kind of fantasy that we exercise only in relation to objects that are not real or not present, Matherne argues that Kant theorizes imagination as something that we exercise just as much in relation to objects that are real and present. Thus she attributes to Kant a view of imagining as something that pervades our lives. In order to bring out this pervasiveness, Matherne explores Kant's account of how we exercise our imagination in perception, ordinary experience, the appreciation of beauty and sublimity, the production of art, the pursuit of happiness, and the pursuit of morality. However, she also argues that Kant's analysis of this wide range of phenomena is underwritten by a unified theory of what imagination is, as a remarkably flexible cognitive capacity that we can exercise in constrained and creative, playful and serious ways.

Philosophy of Sculpture

Philosophy of Sculpture PDF Author: Kristin Gjesdal
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429870035
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 227

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Book Description
Sculpture has been a central aspect of almost every art culture, contemporary or historical. This volume comprises ten essays at the cutting edge of thinking about sculpture in philosophical terms, representing approaches to sculpture from the perspectives of both Anglo-American and European philosophy. Some of the essays are historically situated, while others are more straightforwardly conceptual. All of the essays, however, pay strict attention to actual sculptural examples in their discussions. This reflects the overall aim of the volume to not merely "apply" philosophy to sculpture, but rather to test the philosophical approaches taken in tandem with deep analyses of sculptural examples. There is an array of philosophical problems unique to sculpture, namely certain aspects of its three-dimensionality, physicality, temporality, and morality. The authors in this volume respond to a number of challenging philosophical questions related to these characteristics. Furthermore, while the focus of most of the essays is on Western sculptural traditions, there are contributions that features discussion of sculptural examples from non-Western sources. Philosophy of Sculpture is the first full-length book treatment of the philosophical significance of sculpture in English. It is a valuable resource for advanced students and scholars across aesthetics, art history, history, performance studies, and visual studies.

Emotion Theory: The Routledge Comprehensive Guide

Emotion Theory: The Routledge Comprehensive Guide PDF Author: Andrea Scarantino
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1040013481
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 1160

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Book Description
Emotion Theory: The Routledge Comprehensive Guide is the first interdisciplinary reference resource which authoritatively takes stock of the progress made both in the philosophy of emotions and in the affective sciences from Ancient Greece to today. A two-volume landmark publication, it provides an overview of emotion theory unrivaled in terms of its comprehensiveness, accessibility and systematicity. Comprising 62 chapters by 101 leading emotion theorists in philosophy, classics, psychology, biology, psychiatry, neuroscience and sociology, the collection is organized as follows: Volume I: Part I: History of Emotion Theory (10 chapters) Part II: Contemporary Theories of Emotions (10 chapters) Part III: The Elements of Emotion Theory (7 chapters) Volume II: Part IV: Nature and Functions of 35 Specific Emotions (22 chapters) Part V: Major Challenges Facing Emotion Theory (13 chapters) Special Elicitors of Emotions Emotions and Their Relations to Other Elements of Mental Architecture Emotions in Children, Animals, and Groups Normative Aspects of Emotions Most of the major themes of contemporary emotion theory are covered in their historical, philosophical, and scientific dimensions. This collection will be essential reading for students and researchers in philosophy, psychology, neuroscience, sociology, anthropology, political science, and history for decades to come.

A Companion to Arthur C. Danto

A Companion to Arthur C. Danto PDF Author: Lydia Goehr
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1119154235
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 436

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Book Description
A Companion to Arthur C. Danto paints a detailed portrait of one the most significant figures in twentieth-century philosophy and art criticism, offering unparalleled coverage of all aspects of Danto’s writings, artworks, and thought. Edited by two long-time colleagues of Arthur Danto, this interdisciplinary resource presents more than 40 original essays from both prominent Danto scholars and leading practitioners from various sub-fields of philosophy. The Companion illuminates Danto’s many contributions to the artworld, aesthetics, criticism, and philosophy of knowledge, action, science, history, and politics. The essays explore central concepts and intersecting themes in Danto’s writings while providing new interventions into the areas of philosophy in which Danto engaged. Topics include Danto’s mode of writing and art production, his critical engagement with artists and philosophers, conflicts in Danto’s views and in interpretations of his works, and much more. An important addition to Danto studies, A Companion to Arthur C. Danto is essential reading for practitioners, scholars, and advanced students looking for a critical, provocative, and insightful treatment of Danto’s philosophy, art, and criticism.

The Routledge Companion to the Philosophies of Painting and Sculpture

The Routledge Companion to the Philosophies of Painting and Sculpture PDF Author: Noël Carroll
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 100063454X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 737

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Book Description
Comprising 45 chapters, written especially for this volume by an international team of leading experts, The Routledge Companion to the Philosophies of Painting and Sculpture is the first handbook of its kind. The editors have organized the chapters across eight broader sections: Artforms History Questions of form, style, and address Art and science Comparisons among the arts Questions of value Philosophers of art Institutional questions Individual topics include art and cognitive science, evolutionary origins of art, art and perception, pictorial realism, artistic taste, style, issues of race and gender, art and religion, art and philosophy, and the end of art. The work of selected philosophers is also discussed, including Diderot, Hegel, Ruskin, Gombrich, Goodman, Wollheim, and Danto. With an introduction from the editors and comprehensively indexed, The Routledge Companion to the Philosophies of Painting and Sculpture serves as a point of entry to the subject for a broad range of students as well as an up-to-date reference for scholars in the field.