scholarly journals Enactivism and Normativity The Case of Aesthetic Gestures

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Boncompagni
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Psychology ◽  
Dynamic Interaction ◽  
Sense Making ◽  
Radical Enactivism ◽  
The Aesthetic

Enactivist approaches claim that cognition arises through a dynamic interaction between an acting organism and its environment. An ongoing challenge for these approaches is the problem of accounting for normativity while avoiding overly reductionist outcomes. This article examines a few proposed solutions, including agent-environment dynamics, participatory sense-making, radical enactivism, the skilful intentionality framework, and enactivist cultural psychology. It argues that good examples of enacted normativity are gestures of appreciation/disapproval performed in the aesthetic domain. Both Wittgenstein and Dewey explore this issue and their ideas could be productively worked upon in an enactive account.

scholarly journals Enactivism, Radical Enactivism and Predictive Processing: What is Radical in Cognitive Science?

2017 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 54-83 ◽  
Author(s):  
Klaus Gärtner ◽  
Robert W. Clowes
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Dynamic Interaction ◽  
Predictive Processing ◽  
Radical Enactivism ◽  
Problem Section ◽  
The World ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Basic Cognition

AbstractAccording to Enactivism, cognition should be understood in terms of a dynamic interaction between an acting organism and its environment. Further, this view holds that organisms do not passively receive information from this environment, they rather selectively create this environment by engaging in interaction with the world. Radical Enactivism adds that basic cognition does so without entertaining representations and hence that representations are not an essential constituent of cognition. Some proponents think that getting rid of representations amounts to a revolutionary alternative to standard views about cognition. To emphasize the impact, they claim that this ‘radicalization’ should be applied to all enactivist friendly views, including, another current and potentially revolutionary approach to cognition: predictive processing. In this paper, we will show that this is not the case. After introducing the problem (section 2), we will argue (section 3) that ‘radicalizing’ predictive processing does not add any value to this approach. After this (section 4), we will analyze whether or not radical Enactivism can count as a revolution within cognitive science at all and conclude that it cannot. Finally, in section 5 we will claim that cognitive science is better off when embracing heterogeneity.

Watching Textual Screens Then and Now: Text Movies, Electronic Literature, and the Continuum of Countertextual Practice

CounterText ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 172-190 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven Wingate
Keyword(s):  
Aesthetic Experience ◽  
Computer Code ◽  
Sense Making ◽  
Experimental Film ◽  
Electronic Literature ◽  
Visual Poetry ◽  
The Status ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
The Continuum

Contemporary works of electronic literature that focus on the use of moving text are aesthetically related to the text movies that arose in the experimental film community, particularly in the 1960s, and both share much in common with concrete and visual poetry. Though criticism has traditionally placed a barrier between works of electronic literature and cinematic text movies on the basis of their perceived medium (cinema characterised by emulsion and electronic literature characterised by computer code), textual screen works originating from both media utilise similar techniques in the presentation and manipulation of text. Interactivity is potentially a differentiator between electronic literature and cinema, but this distinction is negated by the fact that not all works of electronic literature are interactive (that is, they do not require an interactor in order to function). The increasing digitisation and, to a lesser extent, interactivity of cinema also argues against placing a gap between electronic literature and cinematic works that utilise the textual screen. Text movies, visual poetry, and other digital works featuring moving text can be seen as belonging to the same family; they are united by the aesthetic experience of perceiving them, which derives from a dynamic tension between the act of reading and the act of watching. Taken together, they form a continuum of countertextual practice that involves the destabilisation of reading and the displacement of literary significance away from traditional means of sense-making and towards the use of text-as-objects that do not always achieve the status of language.

Towards a Compositional Model of Ideology

2020 ◽  
Vol 64 (1) ◽  
pp. 95-116
Author(s):  
Jennifer Ponce de León ◽  
Gabriel Rockhill ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
Karl Marx ◽  
Historical Materialism ◽  
Sense Making ◽  
Louis Althusser ◽  
Social Agents ◽  
Compositional Model ◽  
Friedrich Engels ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Eduardo Galeano

This article sets forth a compositional model of ideology by drawing on the tradition of historical materialism and further developing its insights into the aesthetic composition of reality. It demonstrates how ideology is not simply a set of false beliefs but is rather the process by which social agents are composed over time in every dimension of their existence, including their thoughts, practices, perceptions, representations, values, affects, desires, and unconscious drives. By working through a number of diverse debates and authors—ranging from Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels to Louis Althusser, Eduardo Galeano, Rosaura Sánchez, and Paulo Freire—it thereby elucidates how ideology is best understood as an aesthetic process that includes aspect of sense and sense-making, and that therefore requires a collective, cultural revolution as its antidote.

Poetic destroyers. Vico, Emerson and the aesthetic dimension of experiencing

2017 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 337-355 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luca Tateo
Keyword(s):  
Meaning Making ◽  
Sense Making ◽  
Social Injustice ◽  
Collective Knowledge ◽  
Giambattista Vico ◽  
Artistic Experience ◽  
Human Conduct ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Whole Systems

The aesthetic dimension of meaning-making in human conduct has been often overlooked. In this article, “aesthetic” refers to an immediate form of experiencing in which affective, ethical and cognitive dimensions are experienced as a totality, rather than a more restrictive meaning of artistic experience. The philosopher Giambattista Vico (1670–1744) developed the concept of “poetic logic,” that is a specific mode of thought typical of early stages of civilization. Poetic logic is the first form of collective elaboration of experience, a way of creating universals concepts based on sensory, affective sense-making and religious thinking. Vico claims that poetic logic was the cornerstone for the elaboration of whole systems of collective knowledge (poetic economy, science, geography, history, law, etc.) crystallized in myths. Poetic logic, based on imaginative function is a proper epistemological stance that, though overcome by rationality at a later stage of civilization, still plays an important function in keeping alive the ethical dimensions of collective life against the “barbarism of reflection.” Two centuries later, Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882), one of the fathers of Pragmatism, developed an idea of poetic and imagination as forms of knowledge. Though echoing Vico’s ideas, he represents the aggressiveness of modernity. From the discussion of their ideas, I will try to sketch the psychological aspects of the aesthetic dimension of experience that can be found in a wide range of human activities, including actions of killing, overpowering and social injustice. I will try to argue that meaning-making is oriented through processes that affect such aesthetic dimension.

scholarly journals Deconstruction as a strategy for creating an alternative biography (based on P. Yatsenko’s novel «Nechui. Nemov. Nebach»)

2020 ◽  
pp. 29-34
Author(s):  
Yana Kravchenko
Keyword(s):  
Free Play ◽  
Sense Making ◽  
Literary Biography ◽  
Aesthetic Object ◽  
Literary Meaning ◽  
Binary Oppositions ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
The Way

The research is determined by the transformation of worldview and ideology focuses in the modern national self-identification as well as by the need in generalizing specific processes of reformatting the canonic forms of literary biography. P. Yatsenko’s steampunk novel “Nechui. Nemov. Nebach” forms the basis for the analysis of the way the deconstructive strategy of the alternative biography creation is put into practice. The author’s concept proves to correlate with J. Derrida’s ideas about the denial of the universal source of literary meaning and about the transference of the sense-making centre within the aesthetic object. The concept of the decentralized structure (“free play”), implemented in P. Yatsenko’s novel, leads to the replacement, transformation, and transference of sense-bearing and formal text components. The play strategies of visualization, employed in the novel’s paratext, along with elements of alternativeness manifest the change in the polarity of the traditional binary oppositions and denial of the authoritative centre, which is characteristic of deconstruction. The integrity of Nechui-Levytskyi’s biography, which is realized in P. Yatsenko’s novel through the general worldview and ideological-and-aesthetic context, acquires other centres owing to the devices of structure deconstruction, such as romantic, ideological, adventure-and-mystery, humour-and-farce, religious, symbolic, and axiological centres.

Converging enactivisms: radical enactivism meets linguistic bodies

2021 ◽  
pp. 105971232110207
Author(s):  
Giovanni Rolla ◽  
Jeferson Huffermann
Keyword(s):  
Representational Content ◽  
Critical Examination ◽  
Sense Making ◽  
Biological Organization ◽  
Enactive Cognition ◽  
Radical Enactivism ◽  
Know How ◽  
Basic Content ◽  
Hard Problem Of Content ◽  
Central Claim

We advance a critical examination of two recent branches of the enactivist research program, namely, Radically Enactive Cognition and Linguistic Bodies. We argue that, although these approaches may look like diverging views within the wider enactivist program, when appraised in a conciliatory spirit, they can be interpreted as developing converging ideas. We examine how the notion of know-how figures in them to show an important point of convergence, namely, that the normativity of human cognitive capacities rests on shared know-how. Radical enactivism emphasizes the diachronic dimension of shared know-how, and linguistic bodies emphasize the synchronic one. Given that know-how is a normative notion, it is subject to success conditions. We then argue it implies basic content, which is the content of the successful ongoing interactions between agent(s) and environment. Basic content does not imply accuracy conditions and representational content, so it evades Hutto and Myin’s Hard Problem of Content. Moreover, this account is amenable to the central claim by Di Paolo et al. that the participatory sense-making relations at play in linguistic exchanges are explained in continuity with explanations of biological organization and sensorimotor engagements.

Ḥasho

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tala Jarjour
Keyword(s):  
Music Theory ◽  
Sense Making ◽  
Aesthetic Value ◽  
Social Emotion ◽  
Liturgical Practice ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Emotional Value ◽  
Ethnographic Analysis ◽  
Musical Mode

THIS CHAPTER begins by explaining the emotion of huzn, sadness, as a religious aesthetic, then presents ḥasho within canonical liturgical practice. It also explains ḥasho as an emotion to which aesthetic value is inherent, and that understanding it as such sheds light on its conception as a musical mode. The aim is to inform a thinking in which music modality might better be understood through the aesthetic indexing of emotional value. Through a combined musical and ethnographic analysis of music theory on ḥasho and of its employment in the commemoration of the crucifixion, ḥasho emerges as more than a mode or a time; it is a social emotion that marks a spiritual space. Building on previous chapters, this final chapter demonstrates the intricate connections between music modality and modes of emotionality. In ḥasho, the two meet, intersecting through the aesthetic, in an experiential conception of modality that negotiates the complexities of feeling and judging, of sensing and sense making.

Geo-societal sense-making

2020 ◽  
pp. SP508-2019-213 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Bohle
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Psychology ◽  
Adaptive Dynamics ◽  
Ecological Systems ◽  
Sense Making ◽  
Anthropogenic Pressure ◽  
Social Ecological Systems ◽  
Knowledge Based ◽  
Social Ecological ◽  
Complex Adaptive ◽  
Human Sense

AbstractAt present, only geoscientists utilize geoethics. However, geoethics may have broader, societal use. To illustrate this option, one combines theoretical insights that stem from complex–adaptive dynamics, social–ecological systems, semiotic–cultural psychology and geoethics. The following qualitative framework appears. The human niche is a network of complex–adaptive social–ecological systems, which humans conceive and build to sustain themselves. Human sense-making and practices are intrinsic and non-separable parts of the human niche. The feedback of human sense-making and human practices is iterative. The resulting feedback loop is pivotal for the dynamics of social–ecological systems. Geosciences facilitate the understanding of the dynamics of social–ecological systems. Geoethics supports the sense-making of human agents, such as, currently, geoscientists acting in a professional capacity. However, geoethics is not geoscience-specific when promoting to act actor-centric, virtue-ethics-focused, responsibility-focused and knowledge-based. Therefore, geoethics may shape societal practices beyond professional geosciences. By delivering analytical insights as well as resources for affective sense-making, geoethics may enable citizens to mitigate the challenges to their sense-making that complex–adaptive social–ecological systems may pose. Hence, geoethics may offer cultural references (analytical and affective) when human agents (individual, collective and institutional) are facing the complex–adaptive (wicked) features of the human niche, such as anthropogenic pressure or participatory governance.

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