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Exploring the Crack in the Cosmic Egg: Split Minds and Meta-Realities
by Joseph Chilton Pearce Thom HartmannThe classic follow-up to the bestselling The Crack in the Cosmic Egg • Explains the process of acculturation and the mechanisms that create our self-limiting “cosmic egg” of consensus reality • Reveals how our biological development innately creates a “crack” in our cosmic egg--leaving a way to return to the unencumbered consciousness of childhood • Explores ways to discover and explore the “crack” to restore wholeness to our minds and reestablish our ability to create our own realities In this classic follow-up to his bestselling The Crack in the Cosmic Egg, Joseph Chilton Pearce explains the process of acculturation and the mechanisms that create our self-limiting “cosmic egg” of consensus reality. Laying the groundwork for his later classic Magical Child, Pearce shows that we go through early childhood connecting with the world through our senses. With the development of language and the process of acculturation not only do our direct experiences of the world become much less vivid but our innate states of nonordinary consciousness become suppressed. Trapped in a specific cultural context--a “cosmic egg”--we are no longer able to have or even recognize mystical experiences not mediated by the limitations of our culture. Motivated primarily by a fear of death, our enculturation literally splits our minds and prevents us from living fully in the present. Drawing from Carlos Castaneda’s writings about Don Juan and the sense of “body-knowing,” Pearce explores the varieties of nonordinary consciousness that can help us return to the unencumbered consciousness of our infancy. He shows that just as we each create our own cosmic egg of reality through cultural conditioning, we also innately create a “crack” in that egg. Ultimately certain shifts in our biological development take place to offset acculturation, leaving an avenue of return to our primary state. Pearce examines the creation of the “egg” itself and ways to discover its inherent cracks to restore wholeness to our minds, release us from our fear of death, and reestablish our ability to create our own realities through imagination and biological transcendence.
Exploring the Ecologies of Music and Sound: Environmental, Mental and Social Ecologies in Music, Sound Art and Artivisms
by Makis SolomosMakis Solomos explores the ecologies of music and sound, inspired by Felix Guattari, for whom environmental destruction caused by capitalism goes hand in hand with deteriorating ways of living and feeling, and for whom an ecosophical stance, combining various ecological registers, offers a glimpse of emancipation, a position strengthened today by intersectional approaches. Solomos explores environmental, mental and social ecologies through the lens of the history of music and current artivisms – especially in the fields of acoustic ecology, contemporary music and sound art. Several theoretical and analytical debates are put forward, including a theory of sound milieus and the biopolitics of sound; the relationships between music and the living world; soundscape compositions, field recording, ecomusicology, and the creation of sound biotopes; the use of sound and music to violent ends as well as considering the social and political functions of music and the autonomy of art, sonic ecofeminism, degrowth in music, and much more.
Exploring the Edge Realms of Consciousness
by Ken Jordan Daniel PinchbeckA diverse group of authors journey into the fringes of human consciousness, tackling psychic and paranormal phenomena, lucid dreaming, synchronistic encounters, and more. Collected from the online magazine Reality Sandwich, these essays explore regions of the mind often traversed by shamans, mystics, and visionary artists; adjacent and contiguous to our normal waking state, these realms may be encountered in dreams or out-of-body experiences, accessed through meditation or plant medicines, and marked by psychic phenomena and uncanny synchronicities. From demons encountered in sleep paralysis visions to psychic research conducted by the CIA, the seemingly disparate topics covered here congeal to form a larger picture of what these extraordinary states of consciousness might have to tell us about the nature of reality itself.From the Trade Paperback edition.
Exploring the Origin, Extent, and Future of Life
by Constance M. BertkaWhere did we come from? Are we alone? Where are we going? These are the questions that define the field of astrobiology. New discoveries about life on Earth, the increasing numbers of extrasolar planets being identified, and the technologies being developed to locate and characterize Earth-like planets around other stars are continually challenging our views of nature and our connection to the rest of the universe. In this book, philosophers, historians, ethicists, and theologians provide the perspectives of their fields on the research and discoveries of astrobiology. A valuable resource for graduate students and researchers, the book provides an introduction to astrobiology, and explores subjects such as the implications of current origin of life research, the possible discovery of extraterrestrial microbial life, and the possibility of altering the environment of Mars.
Exploring the Philosophy of Death and Dying: Classical and Contemporary Perspectives
by Michael Cholbi Travis TimmermanExploring the Philosophy of Death and Dying: Classical and Contemporary Perspectives is the first book to offer students the full breadth of philosophical issues that are raised by the end of life. Included are many of the essential voices that have contributed to the philosophy of death and dying throughout history and in contemporary research. The 38 chapters in its nine sections contain classic texts (by authors such as Epicurus, Hume, Nietzsche, and Schopenhauer) and new short argumentative essays, specially commissioned for this volume, by world-leading contemporary experts. Exploring the Philosophy of Death and Dying introduces students to both theoretical issues (whether we can survive death, whether death is truly bad for us, whether immortality would be desirable, etc.) and urgent practical issues (the ethics of suicide, the value of grief, the appropriate medical criteria for declaring death, etc.) raised by human mortality, enabling instructors to adapt it to a wide array of institutions and student audiences. As a pedagogical benefit, PowerPoints, discussion questions, and test questions for each chapter are included as online ancillary materials.
Exploring the Province of Legislation: Theoretical and Practical Perspectives in Legisprudence (Legisprudence Library #9)
by Francesco Ferraro Silvia ZorzettoLegisprudence considers a variety of perspectives and relies on contributions from numerous different disciplines. Rather than providing examples of the various possible approaches to legisprudential studies, this book – bringing together lawyers and legal theorists from seven different countries – highlights two aspects of the many disciplines involved. Firstly, it discusses theoretical abstraction, which borders on, or enters into the realm of full-fledged philosophical speculation. Secondly, it examines empirical observation of specific cases, precisely situated regarding their spatial or historical collocation, or referring to a particular species of legislative policy. Focusing on legislation both as a process and as a result, the aim of the book is twofold: on the one hand, it demonstrates that, far from being a purely theoretical and exclusively academic intellectual enterprise, legisprudence can offer criteria for both assessing and improving the quality of real-world legislation. On the other hand, it shows how lawmaking is at least as interesting and legitimate a field of inquiry as adjudication and interpretation of laws for legal theorists and philosophers of law, and that they are already equipped with extremely valuable intellectual tools for fruitful legisprudential inquiry. The book is organized in two parts. The first part comprises legal-theoretical accounts on general aspects of legislation as a process and as a result. The second part presents contributions focusing on specific experiences of evaluations of legislative quality and contributions to the legislature’s work on the part of the public, as well as on particular legislative policies, methodologies in lawmaking, and problems regarding legislation as an instrument.
Exploring the Psychological Benefits of Hardship
by Eranda Jayawickreme Laura E.R. BlackieCan adversity lead to enduring positive change across the lifespan? Providing a thoughtful and considered exploration of this question, this book presents a critical reassessment of posttraumatic growth, based on correcting prior theoretical and methodological limitations in the current research. Its core argument is that posttraumatic growth should be reconceptualized as positive personality change, and thus should be studied using novel methodological approaches from the field of personality psychology. Broadly, this argument is put forward in five progressive sections. Beginning by giving a conceptual and interdisciplinary overview of posttraumatic growth as a phenomenon, the volume then reviews the current academic conceptualization of posttraumatic growth and makes a case for a 'reset' in the research. The next section maintains that posttraumatic growth is in fact a form of positive personality change and should be analyzed using personality science methodology. Using positive personality change as a theoretical foundation for posttraumatic growth, the following two sections look at posttraumatic growth in context. It is explored both in the long term, such as in the development of reflective knowledge and wisdom, and in specific situations such as with refugees in Sri Lanka and survivors of the Rwandan genocide. Lastly, Exploring the Psychological Benefits of Hardship: A Critical Reassessment of Posttraumatic Growth concludes by offering recommendations for scholars and researchers that will improve the quality of research on posttraumatic growth, and will advance this important and worthy field.
Exploring the Social and Political Economy of Alexis de Tocqueville (Mercatus Studies in Political and Social Economy)
by Adam Martin Peter J. BoettkeAlexis de Tocqueville’s work touched upon an exceptionally broad range of social scientific disciplines, from economics to religion, and from education to international affairs. His work consistently appeals to scholars dismayed by existing disciplinary silos. Tocqueville is also well-regarded for diagnosing both the promise and perils of democratic life. Consideration of his ideas provokes serious consideration of and engagement with contemporary trends as citizens in democratic countries cope with challenges posed by new technological, cultural, and political changes. However, attention to Tocqueville is uneven across disciplines, with political theorists paying him the most heed and economists the least. This volume focuses on political economy, trying to bridge this divide. This book collects essays by emerging scholars from a variety of disciplines—political science, economics, sociology, philosophy, and social thought—to examine Tocqueville’s thoughts on political and social economy and its contemporary relevance. The book is divided into two halves. The first half engages with the main currents of research on Tocqueville’s own thoughts regarding economic institutions, constitutionalism, liberalism, history, and education. The second half applies Tocqueville’s insights to diverse contemporary topics including international relations, citizenship, mass incarceration, and pedagogy. This volume will be of interest to scholars and students interested in Tocqueville, the history of political thought, and a variety of current policy issues.
Exploring Transdisciplinarity in Art and Sciences
by Zoï Kapoula Emmanuelle Volle Julien Renoult Moreno AndreattaThe book is organized around 4 sections. The first deals with the creativity and its neural basis (responsible editor Emmanuelle Volle). The second section concerns the neurophysiology of aesthetics (responsible editor Zoï Kapoula). It covers a large spectrum of different experimental approaches going from architecture, to process of architectural creation and issues of architectural impact on the gesture of the observer. Neurophysiological aspects such as space navigation, gesture, body posture control are involved in the experiments described as well as questions about terminology and valid methodology. The next chapter contains studies on music, mathematics and brain (responsible editor Moreno Andreatta). The final section deals with evolutionary aesthetics (responsible editor Julien Renoult).Chapter "Composing Music from Neuronal Activity: The Spikiss Project" is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.
Exploring Well-Being in Schools: A Guide to Making Children's Lives more Fulfilling
by John Peter WhiteCan we teach others how to lead a fulfilling life? The notion of personal well-being has recently shot up the political and educational agendas, placing the child's well-being at the heart of the school’s task. With his renowned talent for distilling the most complex of philosophical arguments into accessible laymen's terms, John White addresses the maze of issues surrounding well-being, bringing clarity to this dissension and confusion. This accessible book expertly guides you through the conflicting perspectives on well-being found in the educational world by * Examining religious and secular views of human fulfilment and of a meaningful life. * Analysing the appeal of celebrity, wealth and consumerism to so many of our children. * Asking what role pleasure, success, autonomy, work, life-planning and worthwhile activities play in children's flourishing. * Showing how proposals to encourage children's well-being impact on schools' aims and learning arrangements. Whether you have little background in education and philosophy or are reading as a teacher, student or policy maker, this engaging book will take you right to the heart of these critical issues. It will leave you with a sharply-focused picture of a remodelled educational system fit for our new millennium, committed to helping every child to enjoy a fulfilling life.
Exploring What is Lost in the Online Undergraduate Experience: A Philosophical Inquiry into the Meaning of Remote Learning (Routledge Research in Digital Education and Educational Technology)
by Steve StaklandThis book examines the significance and meaning of undergraduate online learning using a hermeneutic phenomenological study, asking what is lost when there is no face-to-face contact and exploring the essence of technology itself. Drawing on data from undergraduate students across various higher education institutions, including both interview recordings and written reports of their lived experiences, the author seeks to uncover the essence of the phenomenon by engaging with themes around the philosophy of technology and the purpose of post-secondary education, using Heidegger’s essay The Question Concerning Technology as a crucial interpretive lens. Rather than offering generalized conclusions, it presents a basis for further understanding of the experience of online learning and ultimately asks whether the efficiency afforded to undergraduates by online classes or degrees can ever replace what is learned in a classroom with other people. Providing a novel approach to the topic of online learning, which centers the concept of experience, and drawing links to current conditions and pedagogy in online higher education, it will appeal to scholars working across education and philosophy with interests in higher education, technology and education, phenomenology of education and philosophy of education.
Explosions in the Mind: Composing Psychedelic Sounds and Visualisations (Palgrave Studies in Sound)
by Jonathan WeinelThis book explores how to compose sounds and visualisations that represent psychedelic hallucinations and experiences of synaesthesia. Through a detailed discussion regarding compositional methodologies and technical approaches, the book aims to educate students, practitioners, and researchers working in related areas. It weaves together sound, visual design, and code across a range of media, providing conceptual approaches, theoretical insights, and practical strategies, which unlock new design frameworks for composing psychedelic sounds and visualisations.
Exposed: Environmental Politics and Pleasures in Posthuman Times
by Stacy AlaimoOpening with the statement &“The anthropocene is no time to set things straight,&” Stacy Alaimo puts forth potent arguments for a material feminist posthumanism in the chapters that follow.From trans-species art and queer animals to naked protesting and scientific accounts of fishy humans, Exposed argues for feminist posthumanism immersed in strange agencies and scale-shifting ethics. Including such divergent topics as landscape art, ocean ecologies, and plastic activism, Alaimo explores our environmental predicaments to better understand feminist occupations of transcorporeal subjectivity.She puts scientists, activists, artists, writers, and theorists in conversation, revealing that the state of the planet in the twenty-first century has radically transformed ethics, politics, and what it means to be human. Ultimately, Exposed calls for an environmental stance in which, rather than operating from an externalized perspective, we think, feel, and act as the very stuff of the world.
Exposing Witchcraft In the Church
by Rick GodwinThe Bible says that rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and Rick Godwin believes that rebellion is rampant in the churches today. Satan is using some unfamilar spirits to divide and destroy families and churches. Godwin's teaching exposes how the devil is using the sin of witchcraft, and how you can defeat the enemy and his evil plots. Ideal reading for pastors, church leaders and anyone else interested in knowing what the Bible says about the satanic scheme to bring down your church.
Exposure: Poisoned Water, Corporate Greed, And One Lawyer's Twenty-year Battle Against Dupont
by Robert BilottERIN BROCKOVICH meets SILENT SPRING in this astounding true story of a lawyer who spent two decades building a case against one of the world’s largest chemical companies, uncovering a shocking history of environmental pollution and heartless cover-up. The story that inspired the forthcoming motion picture from Participant Media/Focus Features, starring Mark Ruffalo, Anne Hathaway, Bill Pullman and Tim Robbins, directed by Todd Haynes. In 1998, Robert Bilott was a 33-year-old Cincinnati lawyer on the verge of making partner when his career and life took an unforeseen turn. He was taken by surprise when he received a call from a man named Earl Tennant, a farmer from West Virginia with a slight connection to Robert’s family. Earl was convinced the creek on his property, where his cattle grazed, was being poisoned by run-off from a neighbouring factory landfill. His cattle were dying in hideous ways, and he hadn’t even been able to get a water sample tested by local agencies, politicians or vets. As soon as they heard the name DuPont – the area’s largest employer – he felt they were reluctant to investigate further. Once Robert saw the thick, foamy water that bubbled into the creek, the gruesome effects it seemed to have on livestock, and the disturbing frequency of cancer and lung problems in the surrounding area, he was persuaded to fight against the type of corporation his firm routinely represented. With all the cards stacked against him, Rob happened upon a stray reference in a random memo to a chemical called PFOA – a substance he’d never heard of that is used in the manufacture of Teflon. From that one reference, he ultimately gained access to 110,000 pages of DuPont documents, some of them fifty years old, that reveal decades of medical studiesproving the harmful – more often than not fatal – effects of PFOA in animals and humans. And yet PFOA sludge had still been dumped into rivers and landfill, endangering many lives. The case of one farmer soon spawns a class-action suit and the shocking realisation that virtually every person on the planet has been exposed to PFOA and carries the chemical in his or her blood.This is the unforgettable story of the lawyer who worked tirelessly for twenty years to get justice for all those who had suffered because of this chemical.
Expression and Interpretation in Language
by Susan PetrilliThis book features the full scope of Susan Petrilli's important work on signs, language, communication, and of meaning, interpretation, and understanding. Although readers are likely familiar with otherness, interpretation, identity, embodiment, ecological crisis, and ethical responsibility for the biosphere-Petrilli forges new paths where other theorists have not tread. This work of remarkable depth takes up intensely debated topics, exhibiting in their treatment of them what Petrilli admires-creativity and imagination. Petrilli presents a careful integration of divergent thinkers and diverse perspectives. While she abandons hope of attaining a final synthesis or an unqualifiedly comprehensive outlook, there remains a drive for coherence and detailed integration. The theory of identity being advocated in this book will provide the reader with an aid to appreciating the identity of the theorizing undertaken by Petrilli in her confrontation with an array of topics. Her theory differentiates itself from other offerings and, at the same time, is envisioned as a process of self-differentiation. Petrilli's contribution is at once historical and theoretical. It is historical in its recovery of major figures of language; it is theoretical in its articulation of a comprehensive framework. She expertly combines analytic precision and moral passion, theoretical imagination and political commitment.
Expression and Self-Knowledge (Great Debates in Philosophy)
by Dorit Bar-On Crispin WrightProvides a timely and original contribution to the debate surrounding privileged self-knowledge Contemporary epistemologists and philosophers of mind continue to find puzzling the nature and source of privileged self-knowledge: the ordinary and effortless ‘first-person’ knowledge we have of our own sensations, moods, emotions, beliefs, desires, and hopes. In Expression and Self-Knowledge, Dorit Bar-On and Crispin Wright articulate their joint dissatisfaction with extant accounts of self-knowledge and engage in a sustained and substantial critical debate over the merits of an expressivist approach to the topic. The authors incorporate cutting-edge research while defending their own alternatives to existing approaches to so-called ‘first-person privilege’. Bar-On defends her neo-expressivist account, addressing the objection that neo-expressivism fails to provide an adequate epistemology of ordinary self-knowledge, and addresses new objections levelled by Wright. Wright then presents an alternative pluralist approach, and Bar-On argues in response that pluralism faces difficulties neo-expressivism avoids. Providing invaluable insights on a hotly debated topic in epistemology and philosophy of mind, Expression and Self-Knowledge: Presents an in-depth debate between two leading philosophers over the expressivist approach Offers novel developments and penetrating criticisms of the authors' respective views Features two different perspectives on the influential remarks on expression and self-knowledge found in Wittgenstein’s later writings Includes four jointly written chapters that offer a critical overview of prominent existing accounts, which provide a useful advanced introduction to the subject.Expression and Self-Knowledge is essential reading for epistemologists, philosophers of mind and language, psychologists with an interest in self-knowledge, and researchers and graduate students working in expression, expressivism, and self-knowledge.
The Expression of Emotion in the Visual Arts (Routledge Research in Aesthetics)
by Vanessa BrasseyThe visual arts have long been held to have an intimate link with emotions. Despite this, the topic remains underexplored; when the expression of emotion is discussed, it is usually in relation to music.This volume corrects this lacuna and presents a variety of perspectives on the expression of emotion in the visual arts with contributions from both established and early career academics. There are chapters on the empathy theory of beauty; enaction and artistic expression; emotion and experimental psychology; a ‘persona’ theory of visual expression; and self-expression in portraiture. There are also chapters discussing the contributions to the topic by Susanne Langer and Richard Wollheim as well as a chapter comparing the work of R.G. Collingwood and Maurice Merleau-Ponty.The Expression of Emotion in the Visual Arts will be of interest to students and researchers in the philosophy of art and aesthetics, as well as those interested in conceptual issues in the visual arts.
The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals
by Charles DarwinWith a foreword by Margaret Mead: Darwin examines genetically determined behavior, combining the science of evolution with insights into human psychology.Published in 1872, thirteen years after On the Origin of Species, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals is devoted to documenting what Darwin believes is the genetically determined aspects of behavior. Together with The Descent of Man (1871), it sketches out Darwin&’s main thesis of human origins. Here he traces the animal origins of human characteristics such as pursing of the lips in concentration, tightening of the muscles around the eyes in anger and efforts of memory. Darwin&’s thesis is that if the outward signs of behavior and emotions are shown to be universal in man and similar to animals then they must be due to inherited evolutionary adaptation, not culturally acquired characteristics. Several British psychiatrists, in particular James Crichton-Browne, were consultants for the book, which forms Darwin&’s main contribution to psychology. Darwin&’s collection of detailed observations along with his acute observational abilities and pictures (a landmark in the history of illustrations within the body of the text) corroborate his thesis and form the basis of the book. The foreword by Margaret Mead is of great interest in and of itself. Her foreword, illustrated with pictures provided by her, is designed to subvert Darwin&’s chief idea. Paul Ekman, a later editor of this same work, &“wonder[s] how Darwin would have felt had he known that his book was introduced by a cultural relativist who had included in his book pictures of those most opposed to his theory.&”
The Expression of the Psychosomatic Body from a Phenomenological Perspective
by Jennifer BullingtonThis book is a contribution to the understanding of psychosomatic health problems. Inspired by the work of the French phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty, a phenomenological theory of psychosomatics is worked out as an alternative to traditional, biomedical thinking. The patient who presents somatic symptoms with no clearly discernible lesion or dysfunction presents a problem to the traditional health care system. These symptoms are medically unexplainable, constituting an anomaly for the materialistic understanding of ill health that underlies the practice of modern medicine. The traditional biomedical model is not appropriate for understanding a number of health issues that we call "psychosomatic" and for this reason, biomedical theory and practice must be complemented by another theoretical understanding in order to adequately grasp the psychosomatic problematic. This book establishes a complementary understanding of psychosomatic ill health in terms of a non-reductionistic model allowing for the (psychosomatic) expression of the lived body. A thorough presentation of the work Merleau-Ponty is followed by the author's application of his thinking to the phenomenon of psychosomatic pathology.
Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza
by Gilles DeleuzeIn this remarkable work, Gilles Deleuze, the renowned French philosopher, reflects on one of the thinkers of the past who most influenced his own sweeping reconfiguration of the tasks of philosophy. For Deleuze, Spinoza, along with Nietzsche and Lucretius, conceived of philosophy as an enterprise of liberation and radical demystification. He locates in Spinoza “a set of affects, a kinetic determination, an impulse” and makes Spinoza into “an encounter, a passion.”Expressionism in Philosophy was the culmination of a series of monographic studies by Deleuze (on Hume, Bergson, Nietzsche, Proust, Kant, and Sacher-Masoch) and prepared the transition from these abstract treatments of historical schemes of experience to the nomadology of Capitalism and Schizophrenia (Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus, co-authored with Félix Guattari). Thus, Expressionism in Philosophy is both a pivotal reading of Spinoza’s work and a crucial text within the development of Deleuze’s thought.
Expressions of Judgment: An Essay on Kant's Aesthetics
by Eli FriedlanderKant's The Critique of Judgment laid the groundwork of modern aesthetics when it appeared in 1790. Eli Friedlander's reappraisal emphasizes the internal connection of judgment and meaning, showing how the pleasure in judging is intimately related to our capacity to draw meaning from our encounter with beauty.
Expressions of Judgment: An Essay on Kant's Aesthetics
by Eli FriedlanderThe Critique of Judgment-the third and final work in Kant's critical system-laid the groundwork of modern aesthetics when it appeared in 1790. Eli Friedlander's reappraisal of this seminal accomplishment reformulates and elucidates Kant's thought in order to reveal the inner unity of the Third Critique. Expressions of Judgment emphasizes the internal connection of judgment and meaning in Kant's aesthetics, showing how the pleasure in judging is intimately related to our capacity to draw meaning from our encounter with beauty. Although the meaningfulness of aesthetic judgment is most evident in the response to art, the appreciation of nature's beauty has an equal share in the significant experience of our world. Friedlander's attention to fundamental dualities underlying the Third Critique-such as that of art and nature-underscores how its themes are subordinated systematically to the central task Kant sets himself: that of devising a philosophical blueprint for the mediation between the realms of nature and freedom. This understanding of the mediating function of judgment guides Friedlander in articulating the dimensions of the field of the aesthetic that opens between art and nature, the subject and the object, knowledge and the will, as well as between the individual and the communal. Expressions of Judgment illuminates the distinctness as well as the continuity of this important late phase in Kant's critical enterprise, providing insights for experienced scholars as well as new students of philosophy.
The Expressive Moment: How Interaction (with Music) Shapes Human Empowerment
by Marc LemanA new way to understand expressive interaction, focusing on the dynamic, fast, pre-reflective processes underlying interactions with music.The expressive moment is that point in time when we grasp a situation and respond quickly, even before we are aware of it. In this book, Marc Leman argues that expression drives this kind of interaction, and he proposes a general framework for understanding expressive interactions. He focuses on the dynamic, fast, and pre-reflective processes underlying our interactions with music—whether we are playing an instrument, dancing, listening, or using new interactive technologies. Music offers a well-established domain for studying these fast and interactive processes, and Leman argues that understanding the power of expressive interaction through music may help us understand cognitive processing in other domains, including language, human action coordination, human-animal interaction, and human-machine interaction.Leman regards expressive interactions with music as energizing and empowering. He argues that music is based on patterns that intervene with a reinforcing loop in the human brain, strengthening learning, motivation, and reward. He argues further that the reinforcing effect is influenced by the interaction flow, by fast processes that handle expressive qualities on the fly.Leman sets out the framework in which expressive interaction is situated, describing, among other things, a pragmatic model of communication in which the fundamental components are enactment and dynamics. He looks in more detail at the cognitive-motivational architecture, discussing sensorimotor and motivational schemes. Finally, he discusses applications for the concepts behind expressive motivation in such fields as sports, entertainment, rehabilitation, multimedia art, and music education.
Expressivism, Pragmatism And Representationalism
by Huw Price Simon Blackburn Robert Brandom Michael WilliamsPragmatists have traditionally been enemies of representationalism but friends of naturalism, when naturalism is understood to pertain to human subjects, in the sense of Hume and Nietzsche. In this volume Huw Price presents his distinctive version of this traditional combination, as delivered in his Ren Descartes Lectures at Tilburg University in 2008. Price contrasts his view with other contemporary forms of philosophical naturalism, comparing it with other pragmatist and neo-pragmatist views such as those of Robert Brandom and Simon Blackburn. Linking their different 'expressivist' programmes, Price argues for a radical global expressivism that combines key elements from both. With Paul Horwich and Michael Williams, Brandom and Blackburn respond to Price in new essays. Price replies in the closing essay, emphasising links between his views and those of Wilfrid Sellars. The volume will be of great interest to advanced students of philosophy of language and metaphysics.