Aesthetics and the Embodied Mind

Call for Papers for the Edited Volume Aesthetics and the Embodied Mind

In his work The Meaning of the Body philosopher Mark Johnson argues that aesthetics is not just art theory. Rather, it should be considered to be the study of everything that goes into the human capacity to make and experience the bodily pre-linguistic cognitive, emotional and sensory-perceptual conditions of meaning constitution having its origins in the organic activities of living creatures and in their organism-environment transactions. In this way he rejects both the Kantian view of aesthetics according to which aesthetics is nonconceptual and incapable of giving rise to knowledge and the mind/body dichotomy that underlies it. Johnson introduces the embodied mind thesis into aesthetics. The embodied mind thesis denies a separation of mind and body, sees meaning, reason and imagination as embodied and ties reason to emotion. In other words, experience and cognition are bodily mediated and depend on the sensorimotor capacities of individuals embedded in a biological, psychological and cultural context that interact with the environment in a relation of co-determination.

With the purpose of evaluating, exploring and putting into focus the impact of the embodied mind thesis on aesthetics as well as its breadth and relevance for the field we are creating an edited volume with the title Aesthetics and the Embodied Mind. We seek contributions which are firmly based on the embodied mind thesis and use it as a framework for investigating the role of aesthetics in the study of how humans make and experience meaning. Papers from literary aesthetics, pragmatist aesthetics, evolutionary aesthetics, neuroaesthetics, empirical aesthetics, computational aesthetics, psychology of aesthetics are welcome. Both theoretical and empirical contributions will be taken into consideration.

The language of the proposed publication is English. Prospective contributors are invited to send their initial proposals (500 words abstract) to the following email address: alfonsinascarinzi@googlemail.com . The invited essays (7500 words) are to be submitted by January 14, 2013.

Contact:

Dr. phil. Alfonsina Scarinzi

alfonsinascarinzi@googlemail.com

Lehrstuhl Prof. Dr. Gerhard Lauer

Faculty of Philosophy

Department of German Studies

Georg-August Universität Göttingen (Germany)

Dearline for abstract submission: 15 March 2012

Notification of Acceptance: 16 May 2012

Deadline for invited essays: 14 January 2013