Diderot, Reid e l’esperienza percettiva. Compensazioni sinestetiche, linguistiche ed estetiche

Sensible qualities, not presumed abstract or pure aesthetic properties, are the main source for the Diderot’s and Reid’s aesthetic theories. Both authors work on the perceptual activity in normal situations and in blind people’s cognitive experience.This essay is aimed at emphasizing both the connections between perceptual activity and aesthetic experience and the role of aesthetic devices in the cognitive life. In Diderot sensible qualities are connected to emotions; in Reid they are the natural signs of emotions and mental properties. This kind of relationship is the key to interpreting how cognitive activity is configured as an aesthetic experience because of the sensible qualities’ role.

Nose-wise: Smell Studies Come of Age

This essay argues that to arrive at a proper understanding of the aesthetic and cognitive potential of smell, we must look outside the western tradition to those traditions where the power of smell does not carry all the baggage, all the disqualifications that Kant and Freud, and even Proust, saddled it with. The cases of Indian perfumery, the Chinese incense clock, and the Japanese incense ceremony known as kōdō, which involves “listening to the incense” (ko wo kiku), are presented by way of example. This essay also seeks to recover the original meaning of the term “aesthetic,” which Baumgarten defined as the science of grasping “the unity in multiplicity of sensible qualities.”

Externalists Should Be Sense-Datum Theorists

One increasingly popular view in the philosophy of perception is externalism about sensible qualities, according to which sensible qualities such as colors, smells, tastes, and textures are features, not of our minds, but of mind-independent, external objects in the world. The primary motivation for this view is that perceptual experience seems to be transparent—that is, when we attend to sensible qualities, it seems like what we are attending to are features of external objects, not our own minds. Most (if not all) externalists are either naïve realists or externalist representationalists. However, in this article, I argue that those who are moved by the primary motivation for externalism should instead be sense-datum theorists, for externalists’ primary motivation supports the sense-datum theory, not their actually favored views. I argue that externalists should focus on different motivations, get new ones, or become sense-datum theorists.

The Varieties of Instantiation

Working with the assumption that properties depend for their instantiation on substances, I argue against a unitary analysis of instantiation. On the standard view, a property is instantiated just in case there is a substance that serves as the bearer of the property. But this view cannot make sense of how properties that are mind-dependent depend for their instantiation on minds. I consider two classes of properties that philosophers often take to be mind-dependent: sensible qualities like color and bodily sensations like itches. Given that the mind is never itself literally red or itchy, we cannot explain the instantiation of these qualities as a matter of their having a mental bearer. Appealing to insights from Berkeley, I defend a view on which a property can be instantiated not in virtue of having a bearer—mental or material—but rather in virtue of being the object of a conscious act of perception. In the second half of the paper, I suggest that the best account of sensible qualities and bodily sensations ultimately makes use of both varieties of instantiation.

Sublime in the aesthetics of Nicolai Hartmann and Edmund Burke

This article is dedicated to the interpretation of the aesthetic thought of Nicolai Hartmann and Edmund Burke, that is, the interpretation of their different understandings of the sublime, and its relation to the beautiful. While Hartmann?s sublime is an aesthetic value that is subordinate to the beauty, Burke defines the sublime as a form of aesthetic experience that is on the same level as beautiful. Burke forms an understanding of the sublime based on his analysis of the aesthetic experience, which includes his understanding of passions, states of the soul and the analysis of the sensible qualities of the aesthetic objects, while Hartmann formally considers sublime as one kind of beautiful, and reaches his understanding of it based on his inquiry of the aesthetic object and his definition of beautiful.

Qualities and the Galilean View

It is often thought that sensible qualities such as colours do not exist as properties of physical objects. Focusing on the case of colour, I discuss two views: the Galilean view, according to which colours do not exist as qualities of physical objects, and the naïve view, according to which colours are, as our perception presents them to be, qualities instantiated by physical objects. I argue that it is far from clear that the Galilean view is better than the naïve view. Given the arguments in this paper, the naïve view ought to be taken seriously. The discussion here appeals especially to theorists who, like Goff, are already convinced that the quantitative language of physical science fails to capture all qualities

Aristotle on Perceptual Interests

Traditional interpretations of Aristotle’s theory of perception mainly focus on uncovering the underlying mechanisms that are at stake when perceivers are affected by sensible qualities. Investigating the nature of sense perception is one of Aristotle’s main worries and one that he explicitly relates to the question of its causes (e. g. Sens. 436a16–17, 436b9) and its ends (e. g. de An. 434a30 ff.). Therefore I suggest that, in order to fully explain Aristotle’s view of perceptual phenomena, the possibilities, the constraints, and the goals defined by the embodied and situated engagement of perceivers with the external world must be taken into account. Accordingly, in this paper, I provide an affective reading of Aristotle’s theory of perception. I shall ask what, in addition to functioning sense organs and appropriate response mechanisms, the perceiver contributes to perceptual content. Specifically, I propose to shed light on the significance of perceptual experience for the perceiver and I aim to show that, according to Aristotle, one’s biological and personal qualities are perceptually relevant, meaning that they underpin perception, rather than coming into play after perception has occurred and its objects have been discerned. The paper is divided into two parts, respectively dealing with sensory affections and more complex affective phenomena. As regards the domain of primal sense perception, I will focus on smell as a representative example: since Aristotle identifies it as the least developed of human sensory faculties, it will serve as a revealing illustration of how sense perception is informed and qualified by what, drawing on contemporary philosophical terminology, I will call ‘perceptual interests’, viz. the affective sense of what is at stake in the living being’s interaction with the environment. I will then proceed to consider the way more complex affective phenomena underpin perception by examining the case of emotions and that of virtues of character. By showing how perception is affectively inflected and how emotion is rooted in perception’s bodily nature, I aim to sketch out the general lines along which I believe that the Aristotelian theory of perception should be approached.

On the Digression in the Theaetetus

I examine the function and argument of the Digression (172c–177c) in Plato’s Theaetetus. The Digression refutes the ‘semi-Protagorean’ thesis that justice and piety and sensible qualities are perceiver-relative but that we can objectively calculate ‘being and benefit’; or rather, refutes the conjunction of this thesis with the claim that the semi-Protagorean orator or legislative advisor is wise and happy. Avoiding question-begging arguments from Forms, a providential cosmos, or the tripartite soul, Plato argues that objective measurement, even if its object is a value-free universe, has normative implications: by revealing the errors of scale underlying the polis’ conventional values, it makes it impossible for the philosopher to live happily if he assimilates himself to the polis. I offer explanations of Plato’s adaptation of Pindar in his description of the philosopher’s flight through the cosmos to ‘geometrize’ and ‘astronomize,’ and of Plato’s critique of those who claim descent from Heracles.

Burke’s understanding of the sublime

The subject of this article is an interpretation and clarification of one part of Edmund Burke?s aesthetic thought that refers to his understanding of the aesthetic experience of the sublime. For Burke, the sublime is one of the two most important forms of aesthetic experience, besides the beautiful. The intention of this article is to introduce and explain the crucial moments of Burke?s aesthetic viewpoint on our experience of the sublime. In accordance with this, the first chapter of the article is an analysis of the passion that belongs to self-preservation. The second chapter examines Burke?s explanation of the state of the soul that is caused by the sublime objects. The third chapter is dedicated to the analysis of the material causes or sensible qualities of the sublime objects. The last chapter of the article is an interpretation of his physiological explanation that is supposed to offer a specific insight as to why do the sensible qualities of the objects cause the sublime and how do they affect the human nervous system.