Just books

[MaryLupin]

I am a non-fiction reader primarily. Right now I am reading books about the American philosophical movement called Pragmatism and books about the embodied mind. I am currently reading Mark Johnson's The Meaning of the Body: Aesthetics of Human Understanding. What I like about this book in particular is the way it pulls apart the notion of the human mind as computer by showing how deeply animal we are in our acts of cognition. After this book, I would like to read some of Maxine Sheets-Johnston or maybe Experience and Nature by John Dewey. And after that...

I am also a poetry lover. Currently, on my bedside table is a collection of Wallace Steven's poetry and prose. "Sunday Morning" reverberates. I mean "Complacencies of the peignoir" -- really. Such a line makes the mind rock, unstables the self and opens the heart for the rest of the poem.

More generally I am interested in the intersection between cognition and aesthetics.

Anyone here interested in the same things?

[Thomas Hood]

More generally I am interested in the intersection between cognition and aesthetics.

Anyone here interested in the same things?

Welcome to BookTalk. Yes. I think "the intersection between cognition and aesthetics" lies in the modulation of the medium of expression. Wallace, though, is unkind in criticizing his wife's hunger for a formal faith.

Tom

[MaryLupin]

Welcome to BookTalk. Yes. I think "the intersection between cognition and aesthetics" lies in the modulation of the medium of expression. Wallace, though, is unkind in criticizing his wife's hunger for a formal faith.Tom

Thanks for the welcome.

Questions for you:

could you flesh out what you mean by "modulation of the medium" for me?

and re Wallace's attitude to "faith" - do you think he should have done what Darwin did viz his wife's faith? I mean Wallace's poetry is very largely about the topic of the transition from "complacencies" of the old ways to this new poetic realm where words at the limits of intelligibility renew the "gods." Elsie and her peignoirs, at least in part, represent this movement.

[Thomas Hood]

Questions for you:

could you flesh out what you mean by "modulation of the medium" for me?

Mary, Saffron would love to have you over at her A Passion for Poetry section:

http://www.booktalk.org/a-passion-for-poetry-f92.html

About 'modulation of the medium', let's consider the example at hand, "Sunday Morning." How does it reverberate -- say more than it literally says, convey attitude and values? An unrhymed poem in iambic pentameter about religion . . . . Doesn't that ring a bell? It's a parody -- maybe unconscious -- of Paradise Lost.

Wallace could have expressed himself in an indefinite number of ways, but he chose this one particular way, this particular modification of the medium, and this choice discloses Wallace himself, which is why the poem is poetic and not just a rhyme. In good poetry like Wallace's, the medium is the message. Modulation of the medium includes not just the music of language but also choice of topic, choice of vocabulary, pacing, and all other language features.

Tom

[MaryLupin]

About 'modulation of the medium', let's consider the example at hand, "Sunday Morning." How does it reverberate -- say more than it literally says, convey attitude and values? An unrhymed poem in iambic pentameter about religion . . . . Doesn't that ring a bell? It's a parody -- maybe unconscious -- of Paradise Lost.

I doubt it was unconscious since he talks of Milton in The Necessary Angel.

Wallace could have expressed himself in an indefinite number of ways, but he chose this one particular way, this particular modification of the medium...the medium is the message. Modulation of the medium includes not just the music of language but also choice of topic, choice of vocabulary, pacing, and all other language features.

Of course I agree about this. The art of poetry is made possible by an exacting attention to the way the senses pertain to language. As you say, the rhythm, pacing, and other musical features work with the more symbolic and logical structures of language and culture to create a new way of understanding the world in which we live.

But that isn't what I meant when I mentioned my interest in the intersection between aesthetics and cognition, although, of course poetry is an example of this intersection in action. I was thinking about ideas that have been expressed in books like The Meaning of the Body: Aesthetics of Human Understanding by Mark Johnson, The Primacy of Movement by Maxine Sheets Johnstone and Pragmatist Aesthetics: Living Beauty, Rethinking Art by Richard Shusterman.

It is these ideas that explain my understanding of Stevens' poetic stance (earth as the only paradise) viz Milton's looking to an altogether unearthly paradise to answer what are the earthly problems that attend our human natures.

And thank you for mentioning Saffron. I will go check it out. I also see there is a thread about Book IV in Paradise Lost. A delightful "chapter" in the poem. I like it, I suppose, because it reveals Satan's humanity.

[Thomas Hood]

I was thinking about ideas that have been expressed in books like The Meaning of the Body: Aesthetics of Human Understanding by Mark Johnson, The Primacy of Movement by Maxine Sheets Johnstone and Pragmatist Aesthetics: Living Beauty, Rethinking Art by Richard Shusterman.

Has reading aesthetic theory helped you to interpret texts? I once spent a great deal of time on the works of I.A. Richards, and although I like his ideas, I haven't found them productive.

Tom

[MaryLupin]

Has reading aesthetic theory helped you to interpret texts?

Oh yes. I have become much more sensitive to the relationship between the body and the text. For example, how the rhytmn of a passage is interpreted by the body provides insight into how a text achieves its deep and often lasting emotional power. I think of it a bit like the beat in music when associated with human heart rate. There are only so many reasons why a heart rate is elevated in the healthy human being. All of them involve the "passions" in some way or another. By mimicking that, songs prod the listener in the unconscious. We respond, whether we want to or not. Poetry does the same thing of course. Texts do it as well, but often they are more subtle about it. I think one of the reasons Cormac McCarthy's book The Road is so very successful in creating the post-apocalyptic world is because he makes full use of this rhythmical underpinning in the human body. I mean if you were to visually represent McCarthy's rhythmn in that book using only a man walking (no sound, no narrative) how would the man's steps be? How would his clothes jitter as he walked? What would that walking feel like? In the answers I find a large component of the meaning of The Road.

There is so much power in our body. So much of what the world means comes to us from the way our bodies move and perceive. And almost all of that meaning comes long before consciousness. Since texts are all about conveying meaning, it seems to me useful to understand how meaning is actually achieved by us.

[Thomas Hood]

There is so much power in our body. So much of what the world means comes to us from the way our bodies move and perceive. And almost all of that meaning comes long before consciousness. Since texts are all about conveying meaning, it seems to me useful to understand how meaning is actually achieved by us.

I have gotten more practical help in responding to texts from psychology that from aesthetic theory, especially the James-Lange theory of emotions (posture evokes feeling) and the ideomotor effect (form evokes action):

http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRel ... motor.html
How People Are Fooled by Ideomotor Action
Ray Hyman, Ph.D.

Although Hyman emphasizes the negative, I did not appreciate the ever-present power of the ideomotor effect until I read this.

Tom

[MaryLupin]

I have gotten more practical help in responding to texts from psychology that from aesthetic theory, especially the James-Lange theory of emotions (posture evokes feeling) and the ideomotor effect (form evokes action)

I found that really interesting. It seems we are on similar tracks. The best of current aesthetic theory combines psychology, cognitive science, anthropology and other disciplines to reexamine our ideas of the aesthetic. Most of these new ideas have a strong strain of Pragmatism within them. William James is one of the thinkers that carved out this Philosophical territory, and of course, he is mentioned in the article you linked for me. So I suspect your interest in ideomotor effects and such aspects of human activity intersect with my interests in the bodily aspects of the aesthetic.

[Thomas Hood]

There is much power in our body. So much of what the world means comes to us from the way our bodies move and perceive. And almost all of that meaning comes long before consciousness. Since texts are all about conveying meaning, it seems to me useful to understand how meaning is actually achieved by us.

Could you suggest a means for amplifying or accessing the preconscious? I think abstraction sometimes helps.