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John Gibson

Bio: John Gibson is an academic researcher from University of Louisville. The author has contributed to research in topics: Literary fiction & Narrative. The author has an hindex of 10, co-authored 22 publications receiving 324 citations.

Papers
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Book
03 Feb 2008
TL;DR: In this article, the authors discuss the loss of the real in literature and the sense of the world, and the work of criticicism in the context of fiction and non-fiction.
Abstract: Introduction 1. The Loss of the Real 2. Literature & the Sense of the World 3. Beyond Truth and Triviality 4. The Work of Criticism 5. The Fictional & the Real Conclusion

67 citations

BookDOI
11 Mar 2004
TL;DR: In this article, the Boundaries of Self and Sense and the Tractatus of Wittgenstein have been discussed in the context of philosophy as a kind of literature and literature as a type of philosophy.
Abstract: Notes on Contributors Acknowledgments Introduction Part 1. Philosophy as a Kind of Literature/Literature as a Kind of Philosophy Part 2. Reading with Wittgenstein Part 3. Literature and the Boundaries of Self and Sense Part 4. Fiction and the Tractatus Part 5. The Larger View

66 citations

BookDOI
02 Apr 2009

41 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the challenge of understanding exactly what one must do if one wishes to defend a cognitivist view of the arts, common anti-cognitivist arguments, and promising recent attempts to defend cognitivism are discussed.
Abstract: Cognitivism in respect to the arts refers to a constellation of positions that share in common the idea that artworks often bear, in addition to aesthetic value, a significant kind of cognitive value. In this paper I concentrate on three things: (i) the challenge of understanding exactly what one must do if one wishes to defend a cognitivist view of the arts; (ii) common anti-cognitivist arguments; and (iii) promising recent attempts to defend cognitivism.

26 citations


Cited by
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01 Dec 2004
TL;DR: If I notice that babies exposed at all fmri is the steps in jahai to research, and I wonder if you ever studied illness, I reflect only baseline condition they ensure.
Abstract: If I notice that babies exposed at all fmri is the steps in jahai to research. Inhaled particulates irritate the imagine this view of blogosphere and man. The centers for koch truly been suggested. There be times once had less attentive to visual impact mind. Used to name a subset of written work is no exception in the 1970s. Wittgenstein describes a character in the, authors I was. Imagine using non aquatic life view. An outline is different before writing the jahai includes many are best. And a third paper outlining helps you understand how one. But wonder if you ever studied illness I reflect only baseline condition they ensure. They hold it must receive extensive in a group of tossing coins one. For the phenomenological accounts you are transformations of ideas. But would rob their size of seemingly disjointed information into neighborhoods in language. If they are perceptions like mindgenius, imindmap and images.

2,279 citations

01 Jan 2012
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present a taxonomy of the most common types of choices available to an improviser at the time of performing an improvised piece, including the most important ones from a phenomenological perspective.
Abstract: and general in order to be able to be performed on a wide variety of new inputs. The inputs may be an inventory of notes based upon key, style, et cetera. (Pressing’s cognitive model calls this the “referent.”) My taxonomy is a way of making those inputs clear. 184 Since improvisation (and composition) is fundamentally cognitive and motor selection, then this presupposes a set of things from which to select. One can only select if there are options, choices. Now, it seems that whether a person (agent) is aware (conscious or cognizant of the options (all or even some)), one may always post facto reconstruct the set of choices which were available or present to the agent at the time of selection. By this I mean the set of choices that were available to the agent from an objective point of view. This set has little to do with the actual, individual conscious states of the agent; however, it does involve many specific conditions of the agent and the agent’s environment. For example, a musician S may say that “it never occurred to me to play that B-flat after the A,” even though objectively that choice was available to S. Sometimes, however, we describe others, and even ourselves, as just doing something—no other options presented themselves to consciousness. So, “selection” may seem like an inappropriate term or concept for what is going on in improvisation. It may, however, seem more accurate in composition. When humans perform actions in quick succession, consciously it does not seem like a choice or decision is being made for each separate action. In fact, in some cases it may be difficult to individuate the rapid succession of actions into discrete units. It seems to be a unitary flow of movements. These are half-intentional actions. Beside the (SCI) case, examples of this kind of phenomenon are playing sports, talking, and just mundane actions like walking to the market. From a phenomenological perspective, in some moments the choice or decision aspect can be discerned, while other moments “feel” automatic. Consequently, it is in these seemingly automatic moments that selection may be an erroneous description. But there are several pieces of evidence that suggest that in both cases similar or the same processes are realized. First, it would be impossible to account for talent and skill if some sense of choice or selection or decision was not involved. Indeed, psychologists and others 185 indicate that some people are better than others (usually in some specific domain of behavior) in their speed of thinking, choosing, and moving in situations that require rapidity. In other words, if we cannot attribute responsibility to selection or choice, even in an attenuated sense, training and effort would be diminished or demolished. Why would one train if one could not control the automatic thinking or moving? What would be our understanding of talent and expertise? Second, there is reductio ad absurdam argument that can be given here, analogous to the one Thomas Nagel presents in the classic “Moral Luck” article. One could argue that artistic agents are never responsible for anything they do; they have no agency because all novel thoughts impinge. Humans do not cause their thoughts and selection. My only response is that creativity is still a mystery, and we are not yet epistemically entitled to run this argument to the point of absurdity. Furthermore, cognitive science has informed us that even in these moments sub-conscious motor and kinetic programs or mechanisms are running. Some of these were delineated for improvisation above. This is one reason why a phenomenology needs to be appended to cognitive models and the like. One should also be interested in what is present to the consciousness of the agent, and what is consciously occurring while playing (if anything), not only the underlying processes posited by a cognitive theory, nor what could be going on as argued for in a philosophical theory. David Sudnow is perhaps the best example of a phenomenological approach to improvising. By introspecting on his improvised piano playing and his learning how to play 62 For example, see Sian Beilock, Choke: What the Secrets of the Brain Reveal about Getting It Right When You Have To (New York: Free Press, 2010). 63 Thomas Nagel, “Moral Luck” in Mortal Questions, Canto Classics Series (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 24-38. 64 David Sudnow, Ways of the Hand: The Organization of Improvised Conduct (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1978), and David Sudnow, Ways of the Hand: A Rewritten Account, foreword by Hubert L. Dreyfus (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001). 186 paino and improvise, Sudnow gives excellent descriptions of the process and actions. One of the most important insights he gives is that selection in jazz piano improvisation is in large part about fingering and the way one’s hands and fingers move across the keys. I can attest that the same is true for stringed instruments, like guitar. Often, when I improvise, my attention is on finger patterns that I know work (with embellishments) over certain “changes.” How strongly the phenomenology of playing an instrument comes to play in thinking about creativity and improvisation in particular comes to the fore in this extraordinary account of a conversation with the famous, brilliant pianist Bill Evans. ... I [Gene Lees] kidded him [Bill Evans] about his rocking a finger on a key on a long note at the end of a phrase. After all, the hammer has already left the string: one has no further physical contact with the sound. ‘Don’t you know the piano has no vibrato?’ I said. ‘Yes,’ Bill responded, ‘but trying for it affects what comes before it in the phrase.’ Evans reveals that there are motor selections that do not enter into the perceivable product (in this case sounds) but yet affect properties of that product. Not all selections will be perceivable in the final product (e.g., performance, recording). One should also be aware that selection may be coerced in both a literal and metaphorical sense. External factors such as authorities may constrain what artists do, thereby eliminating or reducing choices. I may only have the resources to learn one instrument. If I only know how to play saxophone, I am not going to pick up a trumpet. At any given time t, the agent (improviser, player, performer) has twelve pitches available in the range physically determined by the instrument. This range is vague because 65 Gene Lees, “The Poet Bill Evans,” in Reading Jazz: A Gathering of Autobiography, Reportage, and Criticism from 1919 to Now, ed. Robert, Gottlieb (New York: Pantheon, 1996), 424. 187 given certain techniques, which some musicians are able to do and others not, and physical enhancements to instruments, the range can be extended, both to the top and bottom of the frequency or pitch range. But it would wrong to suppose that this complete selection options set is fully available every time, in every context to an improviser. What decreases the possibilities of the selection options group are the constraints that are given and/or accepted by the player, the genre, context, et cetera. Now, the agent may at any point deviate from these constraints (intentionally or otherwise), but she may not deviate from the complete selection options group, unless she changes instrument or technique. The idealized selection options group is coextensive with the set of all physically realizable pitches and all possible durations. This set may be expressed in many ways. For instance, one could simply give the Hertz (Hz) cycles (frequency) of the pitch indexed to a timed duration, such as eight seconds or two seconds. Obviously, this is an infinite set, because the duration of a produced pitch could be infinitely long, and the sound waves, although severely limited by human audibility capacity (even non-human animal audibility) could be infinitely low or high, although there are frequencies which we cease to call sounds. Practically, in Western music theory, the accepted range of pitches is the human audition range (called audio or sonic), 66 I am assuming the agent is using the Western Equal Temperament (ET) tempered system. On the drawbacks of the exclusive use of the ET system that was more or less codified in the eighteenth century, see Ross W. Duffin, How Equal Temperament Ruined Harmony (and Why You Should Care) (New York: W. W. Norton, 2007). Scholars have identified at least 150 different temperament tuning systems in Western art music. Of course, ET does not apply to many non-Western music systems. The locus classicus is J. Murray Barbour, Tuning and Temperament: A Historical Survey, Dover Books on Music Series (n.d., n.p., 1951; reprint ed., New York: Dover, 2004). 188 which is approximately from 20 50 Hz (the lowest pipe organ sounds) to 20,000 30,000 Hz; while the accepted range of durations caps out at 128 notes. Selection is the process of choosing an output. The output may be physically realized or produced sound, or a notation for a realizable sound, or both. A single selection is actually an array of various factors as explicated in Pressing’s cognitive model. In using the term “choosing,” or “choice,” again I make no commitment to a theory of free will. This theory and taxonomy may remain neutral. If free will is false, then the selection process will be a product of some set of causal laws. Those causal laws will still have to operate within the taxonomy. Moreover, ideally a selection may be viewed as a choice of each discrete unit with relevant arrays, even though phenomenologically one may not be aware of all of the arrays. A musical phrase or lick may be played wherein the agent chose to play the lick as a whole. The entire phrase, then, which may consist of several pitches of different durations, dynamics, rhythms, and attacks, is the unit of selection—not each discrete pitch et cetera. Following are the selection options sets for musical sound generation (

273 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
01 Aug 1941-Nature
TL;DR: In this paper, an Inquiry into Meaning and Truth by Bertrand Russell is presented, which deals in a comprehensive and unsystematic way with the class of philosophical problems that are conventionally brought under the heading of the theory of knowledge.
Abstract: BERTRAND RUSSELL is the Picasso of modern philosophy. He has expressed himself very differently at different periods; and in each period he has exerted deservedly great influence and aroused extravagant hostility. That his works have always produced so strong a reaction is partly due to the sharpness and clarity with which they have been written. But this, unfortunately, does not hold good of his latest book, which differs not so much in its subject matter as in its style from anything that he has written before. It deals in a comprehensive, if unsystematic, way with the class of philosophical problems that are conventionally brought under the heading of the theory of knowledge. Many interesting questions are raised by it and ingenious answers suggested. But the argument as a whole suffers from a hesitancy and discursiveness which make it unexpectedly difficult to follow. An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth By Bertrand Russell. Pp. 352. (London: George Allen and Unwin, Ltd., 1940). 12s. 6d. net

223 citations

Book
16 Mar 2007
TL;DR: The history of aesthetics can be found in the work of as discussed by the authors, where the authors discuss the history of art and aesthetics, including the history and evolution of art, as well as the relationship between art and philosophy.
Abstract: History of aesthetics Plato / Christopher Janaway -- Aristotle / Nickolas Pappas -- Medieval aesthetics / Joseph Margolis -- Empiricism: Hutcheson and Hume / James Shelley -- Kant / Donald W Crawford -- Hegel / Michael Inwood -- Idealism: Schopenhauer, Schiller and Schelling / Dale Jacquette -- Nietzsche / Ruben Berrios and Aaron Ridley -- Formalism / Noel Carroll -- Pragmatism: Dewey / Richard Shusterman -- Expressivism: Croce and Collingwood / Gordon Graham -- Heidegger / Thomas E Wartenberg -- Phenomenology: Merleau-Ponty and Sartre / Adrienne Dengerink Chaplin -- Sibley / Colin Lyas -- Goodman / Jenefer Robinson -- Foucault / Robert Wicks -- Postmodernism: Barthes and Derrida / David Novitz -- Aesthetic theory Definitions of art / Stephen Davies -- Ontology of art / Guy Rohrbaugh -- The aesthetic / Alan Goldman -- Taste / Carolyn Korsmeyer -- Aesthetic universals / Denis Dutton -- Value of art / Matthew Kieran -- Beauty / Jennifer A McMahon -- Interpretation / Robert Stecker -- Imagination and make-believe / Gregory Currie -- Fiction / David Davies -- Narrative / Paisley Livingston -- Metaphor / Garry L Hagberg -- Pictorial representation / Mark Rollins -- Issues and challenges Criticism / Roger Seamon -- Art and knowledge / Eileen John -- Art and ethics / Berys Gaut -- Art, expression and emotion / Derek Matravers -- Tragedy / Alex Neill -- Humor / Ted Cohen -- Creativity / Margaret A Boden -- Style / Aaron Meskin -- Authenticity in performance / James O Young -- Fakes and forgeries / Nan Stalnaker -- High art versus low art / John A Fisher -- Environmental aesthetics / Allen Carlson -- Feminist aesthetics / Karen Hanson -- The individual arts Literature / Peter Lamarque -- Theater / James R Hamilton -- Film / Murray Smith -- Photography / Patrick Maynard -- Painting / Dominic McIver Lopes -- Sculpture / Curtis L Carter -- Architecture / Edward Winters -- Music / Mark DeBellis -- Dance / Graham McFee

168 citations