There’s A Nice Knockdown Argument For You: Donald Davidson And Modest Intentionalism

It might come as a surprise for someone who has only a superficial knowledge of Donald Davidson’s philosophy that he has claimed literary language to be ‘a prime test of the adequacy of any view on the nature of language’.1 The claim, however, captures well the transformation that has happened in Davidson’s thinking on language since he began in the 1960’s to develop a truth-conditional semantic theory for natural languages in the lines of Alfred Tarski’s semantic conception of truth. About twenty years afterwards, this project was replaced with a view that highlights the flexible nature of language and, in consequence, the importance of the speaker’s intentions for a theory of meaning, culminating in Davidson’s staggering claim that ‘there is no such thing as a language’

Playing The Game After The End Of Art: Comments For Hans Maes

In his philosophy of art history, Arthur C. Danto claims that in the 1960 ́s the master narrative of art had come to an end, and that we had reached the end of art. This conception has been widely considered, but also misunderstood. Hans Maes has recently discussed Danto's conception of the end of art in his article, where he clears some misconceptions about the thesis, but at the same time challenges Danto's analysis of contemporary art

Kivi ja käpy : Vuosikello luonnonmateriaaleista valmistettavista käsitöistä

Tämän opinnäytetyön tarkoitus oli tuottaa ohjemateriaali Vihreä Veräjä-hankkeelle. Ohjemateriaali on rakennettu vuosikellon muotoon ja jokaiselle kuukaudelle on neljä ohjetta luonnon materiaaleista valmistettaviin käsitöihin. Vihreä Veräjä on päihdetyötä tekevän Sininauhaliiton monivuotinen hanke, jonka tarkoituksena on tuoda luontoon liittyvä, eri menetelmin toteutettava, harrastustoiminta vaativissa elämäntilanteissa olevien asiakkaiden ulottuville. Hankkeessa on tuotettu ohjeet myös ympäri vuoden tapahtuviin eläin- ja puutarha-aktiviteetteihin. Opinnäytetyön keskeisiä teemoja ovat käsityön ja luonnon hyvinvointia edistävät vaikutukset, Green Care ja ekopsykologia. Tärkeitä aiheita ovat myös luonnonmateriaalit käsitöissä, palvelumuotoilu sekä hyvän käsityöohjeen kirjoittaminen. Aineisto on hankittu toteuttamalla sähköinen Webropol kysely ja lukemalla sekä painettua että sähköistä kirjallisuutta. Opinnäytetyön tekijän omakohtainen työkokemus ja havainnot ovat myös oleellisia tietoja. Opinnäytetyön tuloksena syntyi käsitöiden vuosikello Vihreä Veräjä-hankkeelle. Voidaan sanoa myös, että luonnonmateriaalit ovat suosittuja käsityömateriaaleja, mutta niitä ei aina osata enää käyttää. Tutkimusten mukaan luontoympäristö ja käsitöiden tekeminen vaikuttavat positiivisesti hyvinvointiin ja psyykkiseen itsesäätelyyn. Ohjemateriaali on Vihreä Veräjä-hankkeen internetsivuilla kaikkien saatavilla, joten ohjattu käsityötoiminta on luonnon antimien keräämisen jälkeen kaikkien saavutettavissa.The aim of this Bachelor's Thesis was to produce an annual plan for making crafts which are made of natural materials. The comminissioner of the thesis was a project called Green Gate and it is led by the Finnish Blue Ribbon Organization. Green Gate works with the people in difficult life situations, bringing nature-related hobbies to their lives. The aim of the project is to improve the wellbeing of the participants and at the same time to develope the Green Care methods in Finland. The theoretical background deals with the therapeutic affects of nature and handicrafts. The thesis discusses eco-psychology, Green Care and service design. An important issue is also how to write a good instruction for handicrafts. According to the theory, both being in natural, green envi-ronment and making handicrafts, reduces stress levels and empowers people. The data was collected via Webropol survey and from literature. The out-come of the survey was that the respondents would like to use natural materials in handicrafts, but there are no clear instructions. The result of the process was 52 easily approachable instructions of handicrafts made of natural materials, one for each week of the year.Käsityöohjeet kokonaisuudessaan löytyvät osoitteesta http://www.vihreaveraja-hanke.fi

Interrupting Danto\u27s Farewell Party Arrangements: Comments for Grigoriev

This paper is a response to Serge Grigoriev\u27s article Living Art, Defining Value: Artworks and Mere Real Things (Contemporary Aesthetics Volume 3, 2005) in which he develops Joseph Margolis\u27 provocative Danto-criticism. He especially criticizes Danto\u27s art-philosophical starting point, the problem of indiscernibles, claiming that it presupposes an objective value judgment that cannot be maintained and that it misrepresents the way in which people interact with art. In this article, Grigoriev\u27s argument is found lacking mainly on two grounds. First, it overlooks where the source of Danto\u27s starting point lies; and second, I argue that it does not lead to the kind of radical dualism Grigoriev believes. In order to show the problematic aspects of Grigoriev\u27s criticism, Danto\u27s conception of philosophy is introduced together with certain ideas from his latest work, The Abuse of Beauty

On Habits and Functions in Everyday Aesthetics

A group of theorists in everyday aesthetics, named restrictivists, have explicated the notion of the everyday in terms of a particular stance of everydayness that they believe, in time, comes to characterize people’s relationships to their daily things and environments. The everyday is revealed to be something habitual and routine that, despite its ordinariness, provides a pleasurable sense of safety and trust. In this paper, I present a series of considerations drawing on John Dewey’s notion of habit, on the one hand, and Jane Forsey’s account of the aesthetics of design, on the other, that call into question the general image of the everyday present in restrictivists’ work. These examinations, along with a look at the notion of the everyday at the end of the paper, will show, I believe, that while restrictivism may very well capture some important aspects of everyday life, the structure and character some of its main proponents attach to the everyday do not have the necessity and inevitability they assume

Hanne Appelqvist, Wittgenstein and the Conditions of Musical Communication

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Naturalism and Metaphors

This paper outlines a pragmatist aesthetic theory on the basis of themes relating to naturalism, metaphor, and solidarity found in Richard Rorty’s neopragmatism. A central part of this attempt is to show that some previous readings of Rorty’s work in aesthetics are misguided. I begin by raising aspects of Rorty’s work that have been previously largely overlooked in aesthetics and philosophy of art, and which I believe undermine particularly Richard Shusterman’s critical reading of Rorty. I shall then move on to discuss the social role Rorty assigns to metaphors in his postmetaphysical liberalist culture and argue that the social and cultural view of art and the aesthetic Rorty’s philosophy of literature contains overlaps in some significant respects with some central points of John Dewey’s pragmatist aesthetics. I close by outlining some new set of issues for pragmatist aesthetics that emerge from the discussion of Rorty’s work presented in the paper

The Aesthetic Pulse of the Everyday: Defending Dewey

In the relatively fragmented field of everyday aesthetics, some issues have gradually become the subject of increasingly heated debate. One of the primary disputes concerns aesthetic experience and how that concept should be understood. This article defends the view that the conception of aesthetic experience developed by John Dewey offers a much more promising foundation for a theory on the aesthetics of everyday life than some scholars have believed

The Aesthetics of Conversation: Dewey and Davidson

Conversation is one of the most mundane events of human life, yet the conversations we have can vary a lot. Some proceed only with great effort, while others engage us thoroughly. Drawing on Dewey’s aesthetics, this paper argues that the movement and rhythm of conversations can make them into genuine candidates for an aesthetic status. The key term of the paper is interaction. For Dewey, all experience, aesthetic experience included, is constituted by an interaction between humans and their environment. In his later philosophy of language, which is critical of conventionalist explanations of language, Davidson, in turn, offers a very rich account of the interactions conversations can involve. He cites the novels of James Joyce as an extreme example of just how intricate the forms of linguistic interaction can become. Though the notion of aesthetic experience does not figure in Davidson’s account, his analysis of the conditions for successful communication can nevertheless be seen to shed light on those features of conversations that explain Dewey’s interest in their aesthetic dimension