Ross, Steven, Warenski, Lisa. Socratic Metaethics Imagined
2017, Sophia and Philosophia 1.3., 1-8
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Added by: Björn Freter
Abstract: A time machine mysteriously appeared one day in ancient Athens. Curious about the future of philosophical dialogue, Socrates entered the device and traveled to the 21st Century. He spent several months in the United Kingdom and United States discussing metaethics before returning to Athens, now a devoted and formidable quasi-realist moral genderexpressivist.
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Saito, Yuriko. Why Restore Works of Art?
1985, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 44(2):141-151.
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Added by: Clotilde Torregrossa, Contributed by: Erich Hatala MatthesSummary: Saito examines arguments concerning why artworks should be restored, which are couched in terms of a debate between "purist" and "integral/conservator" restoration. Purists believe artworks should only be cleaned, emphasizing the integrity of the material object, whereas integral restorationists are open to adding material to the work, emphasizing the integrity of the original aesthetic experience. Rather than embracing a particular side in this debate, Saito's discussion reveals how cultural/historical considerations can be as important to the debate over restoration as aesthetic considerations.Comment: This article offers a useful philosophical framework for thinking about the relationship among preservation, restoration, and authenticity. Using it alongside the following readings might be particularly good in inspiring further discussion: Coleman, Elizabeth Burns. “Aboriginal Painting: Identity and Authenticity.” Jeffers, Chike. “The Ethics and Politics of Cultural Preservation.” Young, James O. “Art, Authenticity and Appropriation.” Korsmeyer, Carolyn. “Real Old Things.” Karlström, Anna. “Authenticity.”
Saito, Yuriko. The Moral Dimension of Japanese Aesthetics
2007, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 65(1): 85–97.
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Added by: Clotilde Torregrossa, Contributed by: Meilin Chinn
Summary: Saito presents the moral dimension of Japanese aesthetics in terms of two design principles: respect for the quintessential, innate characteristics of things and honor and responsiveness to human needs. She analyzes the sensitivity to objects and people at work in a wide range of Japanese arts and crafts, including garden design, haiku, painting, pottery, and food, emphasizing that the cultivation of a moral attitude toward things is often practiced through aesthetic means.
Comment: This text is appropriate for a course on Japanese aesthetics and/or philosophy. It would work well in a cross-cultural discussion of everyday aesthetics and the relationship between ethics and aesthetics.
Schattschneider, Doris. Marjorie Rice (16 February 1923–2 July 2017)
2018, Journal of Mathematics and the Arts, 12(1): 51-54.
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Added by: Fenner Stanley TanswellAbstract:
Marjorie Jeuck Rice, a most unlikely mathematician, died on 2 July 2017 at the age of 94. She was born on 16 February 1923 in St. Petersburg, Florida, and raised on a tiny farm near Roseburg in southern Oregon. There she attended a one-room country school, and there her scientific interests were awakened and nourished by two excellent teachers who recognized her talent. She later wrote, ‘Arithmetic was easy and I liked to discover the reasons behind the methods we used.… I was interested in the colors, patterns, and designs of nature and dreamed of becoming an artist’?Comment (from this Blueprint): Easwaran discusses the case of Marjorie Rice, an amateur mathematician who discovered new pentagon tilings. This obituary gives some details of her life and the discovery.
Secco, Gisele Dalva, Pereira, Luiz Carlos. Proofs Versus Experiments: Wittgensteinian Themes Surrounding the Four-Color Theorem
2017, in How Colours Matter to Philosophy, Marcos Silva (ed.). Springer, Cham.
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Added by: Fenner Stanley TanswellAbstract:
The Four-Colour Theorem (4CT) proof, presented to the mathematical community in a pair of papers by Appel and Haken in the late 1970's, provoked a series of philosophical debates. Many conceptual points of these disputes still require some elucidation. After a brief presentation of the main ideas of Appel and Haken’s procedure for the proof and a reconstruction of Thomas Tymoczko’s argument for the novelty of 4CT’s proof, we shall formulate some questions regarding the connections between the points raised by Tymoczko and some Wittgensteinian topics in the philosophy of mathematics such as the importance of the surveyability as a criterion for distinguishing mathematical proofs from empirical experiments. Our aim is to show that the “characteristic Wittgensteinian invention” (Mühlhölzer 2006) – the strong distinction between proofs and experiments – can shed some light in the conceptual confusions surrounding the Four-Colour Theorem.Comment (from this Blueprint): Secco and Pereira discuss the famous proof of the Four Colour Theorem, which involved the essential use of a computer to check a huge number of combinations. They look at whether this constitutes a real proof or whether it is more akin to a mathematical experiment, a distinction that they draw from Wittgenstein.
Seibt, Johanna. Properties as Processes
1990, Ridgeview Publishing.
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Added by: Jamie CollinSummary: Sellars' critics have, predominantly, studied single aspects of his work. This essay, on the other hand, is motivated by Sellars' dictum that "analysis without synopsis is blind" (TWO 527). My intent is to give a synopsis of Sellars' thought by focusing on the nominalist strands of his scheme. I shall try to draw the reader's attention to the systematicity and overall coherence of Sellars' work, since I think that any successful analysis of his writings must heed their systematic context. By presenting Sellars' logical, semantic, epistemological and metaphysical arguments for the expendability of abstract entities in their systematic connection, I hope to promote both 'full scope nominalism' and 'full scope Sellarsianism.'Comment: This would be useful in a course on metaphysics or on philosophy of language. The book is not easy, but is unique in being a book-length exploration of metalinguistic nominalism. Recommended for graduate and perhaps advanced undergraduate courses.
Shapiro, Lisa. Princess Elizabeth and Descartes: The union of soul and body and the practice of philosophy
1999, British Journal for the History of Philosophy 7(3): 503-520.
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Added by: Francesca BrunoSummary: In this paper, Shapiro aims to explore Princess Elizabeth's own philosophical position, as developed in her correspondence with Descartes. In particular, Shapiro is interested in tracing Elizabeth's own thought about the nature of the union of soul and body. Shapiro argues that Elizabeth develops her view from her early, famous objection against Descartes' notion of the union of soul and body given his substance dualism to her later (less known) objections to Descartes' neo-Stoic advice to her about regulating her passions. According to Shapiro, Elizabeth defends a unique philosophical position, one that is intermediary between substance dualism and reductionist materialism. On this view, the mind is autonomous yet it depends on the (good health of the) body to function properly. Shapiro concludes her paper by reconsidering Elizabeth's practice of philosophy in light of the lack of a systematic treatment of philosophical issue by her.Comment: This article is a nice introduction to Princess Elizabeth’s own philosophical thinking, although it might require some familiarity with Elizabeth-Descartes correspondence. Lisa Shapiro aims to take Elizabeth seriously as a philosopher, focusing on her view of the nature of the union of soul and body, as set forth in her correspondence with Descartes. She also reconsiders Elizabeth’s practice of philosophy: she argues that the lack of a systematic treatment of philosophical issues on Elizabeth’s part does not make her any less of a philosopher.
Shapiro, Lisa. Descartes’s Ethics
2008, In Janet Broughton & John Carriero (eds.), A companion to Descartes. Oxford: Blackwell. pp. 445-463.
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Added by: Clotilde Torregrossa, Contributed by: Alberto VanzoAbstract: I begin my discussion by considering how to relate Descartes's more general concern with the conduct of life to the metaphysics and epistemology in the foreground of his philosophical project. I then turn to the texts in which Descartes offers his developed ethical thought and present the case for Descartes as a virtue ethicist. My argument emerges from seeing that Descartes's conception of virtue and the good owes much to Stoic ethics, a school of thought which saw a significant revival in the seventeenth century. It does, however, deviate from classical Stoicism in critical ways. Towards the end of my discussion, I return to the question of the relation between Descartes's ethics and his metaphysics and epistemology, and I suggest that the Discourse on the Method for Rightly Conducting Reason and the Meditations on First Philosophy are invested with the virtue ethical considerations of moral education and the regulation of the passions, respectively.
Shapshay, Sandra. Schopenhauer’s Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art
2012, Philosophy Compass 7 (1):11-22.
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Added by: Chris Blake-Turner, Contributed by: Christy Mag UidhirAbstract: This essay focuses on Schopenhauer's aesthetics and philosophy of art, areas of his philosophy which have attracted the most philosophical attention in recent years. After discussing the subjective and objective aspects of aesthetic experience on his account, I shall offer interpretations of Schopenhauer's theory of the sublime and solution to the problem of tragedy. In addition, I shall touch upon the liveliest interpretive debates concerning his aesthetic theory: the intelligibility of the 'Platonic Ideas' as the objects of aesthetic experience and the very possibility of aesthetic experience within Schopenhauer's system. Another aim of this essay is to suggest how some of Schopenhauer's aesthetic doctrines may be interpreted in a less metaphysically extravagant way. When understood in this manner, contemporary aestheticians might be inclined to take a closer look at Schopenhauer's aesthetic theory and philosophy of art, for it is distinctive in the tradition of Western philosophical aesthetics in its attempt to highlight and balance the hedonic and cognitive importance of aesthetic experiences; in its sensitivity both to the aesthetic experience of nature as well as of art; in the high value placed on the experience of music ; and in the innovative solution to the problem of tragedy it offers
Shapshay, Sandra. What Is the Monumental?
2021, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 79(2): 145-160
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Added by: Ten-Herng Lai & Chong-Ming LimAbstract:
The aesthetic category of the sublime has been theorized (especially in the Kantian tradition) as integrally intertwined with the moral. Paradigmatic experiences of the sublime, such as gazing up at the starry night sky, or out at a storm-whipped sea, lead in a moral or religious direction depending on the cognitive stock brought to the experience, since they typically involve a feeling of awe and reflection on the peculiar situation of the human being in nature. The monumental is a similar aesthetic category, integrally intertwined with the political, but, by contrast, has garnered almost no attention from aestheticians. My main goal in this paper is to sketch a theory of ‘the monumental’ as an aesthetic category—one that is a species of the sublime but differs qualitatively from the natural/environmental sublime in significant ways, and thus merits a distinctive label. In doing so, I aim to shed light on the nature and power of monuments specifically, and to begin to address a lacuna in our understanding of a long-standing and culturally important form of public art.Comment (from this Blueprint): This paper can be used for discussions of whether the 'monumental' is a unique aesthetic category, especially in relation to the sublime.
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