Dear All, During the second week of October, Distinguished Professor Stephen Davies (Department of Philosophy, University of Auckland) will visit the Department of Cognitive Science and the ARC Centre of Excellence in Cognition and its Disorders (CCD), Macquarie University.
Stephen Davies (http://artsfaculty.auckland.ac.nz/staff/?UPI=sdav056 ) is an eminent philosopher of art, with particular expertise in music and the relationships between aesthetics, art, and evolution. On Thursday 10 October (around 1-3 pm), I will organise with Robert Ross a meeting to discuss The Artful Species (2012), his recent book published by Oxford University Press: http://artfulspecies.wordpress.com/ (publisher description pasted below). If you are interested in attending the book discussion, please send me email ([email protected]). We will distribute some preliminary readings and provide you with updated information regarding the structure, time, and location of the meeting by email. On the next day, Stephen Davies will present a paper at the CCD/Department of Cognitive Science. This seminar is public and you do not have to register if you wish to attend. The details are available below and at this URL: http://www.ccd.edu.au/events/seminars/abstract.html?abstract=410. Title: The Aesthetics of Human Adornment Speaker: Stephen Davies Abstract: In this paper I review the origins of human adornment and ornamentation, such as jewelry. I suggest that personal adornments are neither trivial nor meaningless and consider their social functions. And I discuss connections between the aesthetic character of such adornments and their functionality. Date and time: Friday, 11 October 2013, 12:15PM until 1:30PM; Location: Australian Hearing Hub (AHH), room 3.610, Macquarie University Best regards, Nicolas Bullot and Robert Ross PS: Description of The Artful Species by the publisher: “The Artful Species explores the idea that our aesthetic responses and art behaviors are connected to our evolved human nature. Our humanoid forerunners displayed aesthetic sensibilities hundreds of thousands of years ago and the art standing of prehistoric cave paintings is virtually uncontested. In Part One, Stephen Davies analyses the key concepts of the aesthetic, art, and evolution, and explores how they might be related. He considers a range of issues, including whether animals have aesthetic tastes and whether art is not only universal but cross-culturally comprehensible. Part Two examines the many aesthetic interests humans take in animals and how these reflect our biological interests, and the idea that our environmental and landscape preferences are rooted in the experiences of our distant ancestors. In considering the controversial subject of human beauty, evolutionary psychologists have traditionally focused on female physical attractiveness in the context of mate selection, but Davies presents a broader view which decouples human beauty from mate choice and explains why it goes more with social performance and self-presentation. Part Three asks if the arts, together or singly, are biological adaptations, incidental byproducts of nonart adaptations, or so removed from biology that they rate as purely cultural technologies. Davies does not conclusively support any one of the many positions considered here, but argues that there are grounds, nevertheless, for seeing art as part of human nature. Art serves as a powerful and complex signal of human fitness, and so cannot be incidental to biology. Indeed, aesthetic responses and art behaviors are the touchstones of our humanity.” _______________________________________________ SydPhil mailing list: http://bit.ly/sydphil New archive: http://bit.ly/SydPhilArchive To UNSUBSCRIBE, change your MEMBERSHIP OPTIONS, find ANSWERS TO COMMON PROBLEMS, or visit our ONLINE ARCHIVES, please go to the LIST INFORMATION PAGE: http://bit.ly/sydphil ... and if you can't get to that page, try the EMERGENCY PAGE: http://bit.ly/SydPhilEmergency
