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The Explanation of Behaviour was the first book written by the
renowned philosopher Charles Taylor. A vitally important work of
philosophical anthropology, it is a devastating criticism of the
theory of behaviourism, a powerful explanatory approach in
psychology and philosophy when Taylor's book was first published.
However, Taylor has far more to offer than a simple critique of
behaviourism. He argues that in order to properly understand human
beings, we must grasp that they are embodied, minded creatures with
purposes, plans and goals, something entirely lacking in
reductionist, scientific explanations of human behaviour. Taylor's
book is also prescient in according a central place to non-human
animals, which like human beings are subject to needs, desires and
emotions. However, because human beings have the unique ability to
interpret and reflect on their own actions and purposes and declare
them to others, Taylor argues that human experience differs to that
of other animals. Furthermore, the fact that human beings are often
directed by their purposes has a fundamental bearing on how we
understand the social and moral world. Taylor's classic work is
essential reading for those in philosophy and psychology as well as
related areas such as sociology and religion. This Routledge
Classics edition includes a new Preface by the author and a new
Foreword by Alva Noe, setting the book in philosophical and
historical context.
The Explanation of Behaviour was the first book written by the
renowned philosopher Charles Taylor. A vitally important work of
philosophical anthropology, it is a devastating criticism of the
theory of behaviourism, a powerful explanatory approach in
psychology and philosophy when Taylor's book was first published.
However, Taylor has far more to offer than a simple critique of
behaviourism. He argues that in order to properly understand human
beings, we must grasp that they are embodied, minded creatures with
purposes, plans and goals, something entirely lacking in
reductionist, scientific explanations of human behaviour. Taylor's
book is also prescient in according a central place to non-human
animals, which like human beings are subject to needs, desires and
emotions. However, because human beings have the unique ability to
interpret and reflect on their own actions and purposes and declare
them to others, Taylor argues that human experience differs to that
of other animals. Furthermore, the fact that human beings are often
directed by their purposes has a fundamental bearing on how we
understand the social and moral world. Taylor's classic work is
essential reading for those in philosophy and psychology as well as
related areas such as sociology and religion. This Routledge
Classics edition includes a new Preface by the author and a new
Foreword by Alva Noe, setting the book in philosophical and
historical context.
Baseball is a strange sport: it consists of long periods in which
little seems to be happening, punctuated by high-energy outbursts
of rapid fire activity. Because of this, despite ever greater
profits, Major League Baseball is bent on finding ways to shorten
games, and to tailor baseball to today's shorter attention spans.
But for the true fan, baseball is always compelling to watch-and
intellectually fascinating. It's superficially slow-pace is an
opportunity to participate in the distinctive thinking practice
that defines the game. If baseball is boring, it's boring the way
philosophy is boring: not because there isn't a lot going on, but
because the challenge baseball poses is making sense of it all. In
this deeply entertaining book, philosopher and baseball fan Alva
Noe explores the many unexpected ways in which baseball is truly a
philosophical kind of game. He ponders how, for example, observers
of baseball are less interested in what happens, than in who is
responsible for what happens; every action receives praise or
blame. To put it another way, in baseball-as in the law-we decide
what happened based on who is responsible for what happened. Noe
also explains the curious activity of keeping score. A score card
is not merely a record of the game, like a video recording; it is
an account of the game. Baseball requires that true fans try to
tell the story of the game, in real time, as it unfolds, and thus
actively participate in its creation. Some argue that baseball is
fundamentally a game about numbers. Noe's wide-ranging, thoughtful
observations show that, to the contrary, baseball is not only a
window on language, culture, and the nature of human action, but is
intertwined with deep and fundamental human truths. The book ranges
over different baseball topics, from the nature of umpiring and the
role of instant replay, to the nature of the strike zone, from the
rampant use of surgery to controversy surrounding performance
enhancing drugs.
Learning to Look is a wandering journey through the nature of art -
and the ways it can transform us, if we let it. Author of Infinite
Baseball, Alva Noe, presents a collection of short, stimulating
essays that explore how we experience art and what it means to be
an "observer." Experiencing art - letting it do its work on us -
takes thought, attention, and focus. It requires creation, even
from the beholder. And it is in this process of confrontation and
reorganization that artworks can lead us to remake ourselves.
Ranging far and wide, from Pina Bausch to Robocop, from Bob Dylan
to Vermeer, Noe uses encounters with specific artworks to gain
entry into a world of fascinating issues - like how philosophy and
science are represented in film; what evolutionary biology says
about art; or the role of relics, fakes, and copies in our
experience of a work. The essays in Learning to Look are short,
accessible, and personal. Each one arises out of an art encounter -
in a museum, listening to records, or going to a concert. Each
essay stands on its own, but taken together, they form an intimate
picture of our relationship with art. Carefully articulating the
experience of each of these encounters, Noe proposes that, like
philosophy, art is a sort of technology for understanding
ourselves. Put simply, art is an opportunity for us to enact
ourselves anew.
There is a traditional scepticism about whether the world 'out
there' really is as we perceive it. A new breed of hyper-sceptics
now challenges whether we even have the perceptual experience we
think we have. According to these writers, perceptual consciousness
is a kind of false consciousness. This view grows out of the
discovery of phenomena like change blindness and inattentional
blindness. Such radical scepticism has acute and widespread
implications for the study of perception and consciousness.
Contributors include: psychologists Susan Blackmore, Arien Mack and
Bruce Bridgeman and philosophers Daniel Dennett, Andy Clark,
Jonathan Cohen, and Charles Siewert.
The world shows up for us - it is present in our thought and
perception. But, as Alva Noe contends in his latest exploration of
the problem of consciousness, it doesn't show up for free. The
world is not simply available; it is achieved rather than given. As
with a painting in a gallery, the world has no meaning - no
presence to be experienced - apart from our able engagement with
it. We must show up, too, and bring along what knowledge and skills
we've cultivated. This means that education, skills acquisition,
and technology can expand the world's availability to us and
transform our consciousness. Although deeply philosophical,
Varieties of Presence is nurtured by collaboration with scientists
and artists. Cognitive science, dance, and performance art as well
as Kant and Wittgenstein inform this literary and personal work of
scholarship intended no less for artists and art theorists,
psychologists, cognitive scientists, and anthropologists than for
philosophers. Noe rejects the traditional representational theory
of mind and its companion internalism, dismissing outright the
notion that conceptual knowledge is radically distinct from other
forms of practical ability or know-how. For him, perceptual
presence and thought presence are species of the same genus. Both
are varieties of exploration through which we achieve contact with
the world. Forceful reflections on the nature of understanding, as
well as substantial examination of the perceptual experience of
pictures and what they depict or model are included in this
far-ranging discussion.
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Strange Pilgrims (Hardcover)
The Contemporary Austin, Heather Pesanti, Ann Reynolds, Lawrence Weschler, Alva Noe
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R1,628
Discovery Miles 16 280
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Ships in 12 - 17 working days
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In the past fifty years, contemporary artistic practice has
witnessed a surge in phenomenological types of artistic intent and
methodology, represented by divergent impulses sharing a desire to
channel ephemeral elements, resist categorization, and defy the
rarified museum experience. Time-based work is now widely accepted
as primary exhibition matter, and in the past ten years,
performance art has risen to the mainstream. Defining "experiential
art" as work that is immersive, participatory, performative, and
kinetic, Strange Pilgrims is an exhibition and accompanying
catalogue organized by The Contemporary Austin, weaving fourteen
artists into a loose collection of propositions occupying
unconventional spaces and formats. The title comes from Gabriel
Garcia Marquez's collection of twelve short stories of the same
name, riffing on the wandering protagonist as a metaphor for an
open-ended journey through strange and unfamiliar spaces. Created
in tandem with the exhibition on view in fall 2015 and winter 2016
at The Contemporary Austin's two sites, as well as a third venue,
the Visual Arts Center at the University of Texas at Austin, this
catalogue presents a parallel but stand-alone assemblage of ideas
and concepts that respond to and resonate with one another under
the broad umbrella of experience and perception. The book features
an essay by the curator Heather Pesanti, a guest essay by the
scholar Ann Reynolds, and an interview between author and critic
Lawrence Weschler and the philosopher Alva Noe. All fourteen
artists are represented through individual sections with color
plates and explicatory text. In addition, Artist's Voice sections
have been contributed by Roger Hiorns, Trisha Baga and Jessie
Stead, and Lakes Were Rivers.
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