Oh, I guess I should share this here. It needed about 200 more pages to work the way I wanted it to, but it’s a first pass at a lot of stuff I’ve been thinking about on the biology side of things with an awesome friend and collaborator, Jay Schulkin (free to download until 23 December)
https://www.cambridge.org/core/elements/biological-cognition/BB78D9F2B8434933AEED70DE7F63E4EEAfter a long discussion with a friend yesterday, I am wondering whether I am doing too much by trying to discuss metal aesthetics AND horror aesthetics in the book I am getting started on. It’s a hard call, horror seems to have a wider appeal, and seems more familiar. But music has a similar stickiness factor, and there’s a lot of metal that works to build atmosphere in ways that are worth taking seriously. It’s a difficult question that I need to think about carefully.
I’ve started working on a paper on atmosphere with a friend I haven’t seen in years. If this comes together it will be the third collaboration that came together over social media. But the thing I’m really loving about it is that I get to listen to Seventeen Seconds, Faith, and Pornography by The Cure as research. For my money, that’s one of the best three album runs in music, and three intriguing examples of albums that construct slightly different atmospheres.
A brief #introduction before I get down to it today. I'm a philosopher and musician, working on German philosophy and the philosophies of music and film. Musically, I play mostly Black American Music (#BAM). I also have two young boys. In my spare time (ha!) I watch a lot of football (#FulhamFC and #SCFreiburg, mainly) and watch too many movies. Since I'm already overcommitted, I'll be coaching my older boy's futsal team this winter.
My pic is my border collie/aussie mix, Luke. He's a good boy.
Some people dive deeply into music, listening to the same things over and over. This can be true even of people who try to keep up with new music.
Other people are constantly exploring new releases. For example, I’ve probably listened to 10-15 new albums every week this year.
Does this difference in strategies for exploring aesthetic spaces tell us anything interesting about aesthetic cognition? Or is it just an individual difference that little else follows from?
I'm teaching a class called *Finding wisdom in distress*. We read philosophy, psychology, & social science; we watch horror films; and we listen to some recent albums that are off their radar. Today is the last day on music. I try to give them one easy and one challenging album. The challenging album today is Caïna's *Gentle Illness*. It aims to express profound mental distress, and where things start to feel stable, it aims to evoke feelings of disorientation by violating your expectations
Much of the aesthetics literature focuses on beauty & fine art. Something similar holds in neuro-aesthetics. Everyday Aesthetics does better at capturing a diverse range of mundane phenomena. But it is important and interesting that some people seek out discomfort and engage with art as a way to explore uncomfortable experiences. Metal & horror evoke fully embodied responses that often linger beyond the initial engagement. I think is significant, and that it reflects a deep fact about cognition
1st introductory post:
Interdisciplinary researcher, I took a 7 yr break in my philosophy of science & mind studies to earn a master's degree then PhD in neuroscience. Next year, full circle, I'll defend my PhD in philosophy.
In neuro, I developed and now study a mouse model of myside bias (preprint forthcoming). Just one facet of my overall work: combining phil & neuro to enrich our understanding of the evolutionary constraints the mind-brain of the researcher may yet confront + co-opt.
Hi!
Time for a re
#introduction as I'm back after a three year hiatus, and many things have changed. I'm a philosopher by training, but I spend a lot of time hanging out with neuroscience folks. My current interests center on issues at the intersection neuroscience, Yogācāra Buddhist philosophy, and the aesthetics of extreme metal music & horror films. I'm just getting into it, but I hope to be writing a book on these issues - hopefully for a broad range of audiences - over the next year and a half!
Brazil's National Museum went up in flames tonight, massive flames at that. It's a total loss, millions of priceless historical artifacts turned to ash in seconds, including a 10,000 year old naturally preserved mummy, the oldest such mummy in the Americas. I am feeling beyond devastated and helpless at this moment. To lose history is to lose our own humanity is to lose everything.
Tom Mulherin
CJ Stevens - Metaphysiology
Dreamgazer the Mindflayer