A natural landscape can look serene, a shade of colour cheerful and a piece of music might sound heartrending. Why do we ascribe affective qualities to objects that can't entertain psychological states? The capacity that objects, and especially artworks, have to express affective states is a bizarre phenomenon that needs to be clarified in numerous respects. Philosophers are still struggling with the phenomenon of expressiveness being a matter of imagination, perception, or mnemonic association, and usually do not agree on (...) the role that emotions and human bodily expressions play in it. Benenti questions the main theories that populate the aesthetics domain using the tools of philosophy of mind. This study deals with crucial debates concerning seeing-in, cognitive penetration, the relation between phenomenal character and representational content and between emotions and expressions. It aims at providing a viable account of the experience we have of expressive properties by casting light on its fundamentally perceptual nature. The outcome is an empirically informed and critical overview of a topic which has been rather neglected in the philosophy of mind. The book will be of interest to scholars of the philosophy of mind, aesthetics, the cognitive sciences, and psychology. (shrink)

We revisit evaluation of logical formulas that allow both uninterpreted relations, constrained to be finite, as well as an interpreted vocabulary over an infinite domain. This formalism was denoted embedded finite model theory in the past. It is clear that the expressiveness and evaluating complexity of formulas of this type depend heavily on the infinite structure. If we embed in a wild structure like the integers with additive and multiplicative arithmetic, logic is extremely expressive and formulas are impossible to (...) evaluate. On the other hand, for some well-known decidable structures, the expressiveness and evaluating complexity are similar to the situation without the additional infrastructure. The latter phenomenon was formalized via the notion of “Restricted Quantifier Collapse”: adding quantification over the infinite structure does not add expressiveness. Beyond these two extremes little was known. In this work we show that the possibilities for expressiveness and complexity are much wider. We show that we can get almost any possible complexity of evaluation while staying within a decidable structure. We also show that in some decidable structures, there is a disconnect between expressiveness of the logic and complexity, in that we cannot eliminate quantification over the structure, but this is not due to an ability to embed complex relational computation in the logic. We show failure of collapse for the theory of finite fields and the related theory of pseudo-finite fields, which will involve coding computation in the logic. As a by-product of this, we establish the first lower bounds for the complexity of decision procedures for several decidable theories of fields, including the theory of finite fields. This article includes material in the extended abstract “Embedded Finite Models: Beyond Restricted Quantifier Collapse,” that appeared in the Logic in Computer Science conference (LICS ’23). (shrink)

This book addresses the philosophical problem of expressiveness, defined as the capacity of objects to convey affective states. Common in both everyday language and artistic contexts, expressive attributions pose significant philosophical questions. The book has a dual aim: to clarify the nature of experiencing objects as expressive and to propose a novel theory of "expressive experience." The first aim involves examining existing attempts to understand expressive experience, identifying misunderstandings about the mental states involved, and specifying the role of emotions. (...) The second aim builds on this clarification, presenting an original theory that synthesizes key insights from previous accounts. While the primary focus is the analytic debate of the past fifty years, the book also incorporates perspectives from phenomenology, Gestalt psychology, and ecological psychology. Expressiveness intersects with various philosophical and psychological issues, challenging theories of perception and emotions, and bridging aesthetics with the philosophy of mind, developmental psychology, and cognitive sciences. (shrink)

In these comments to Marta Benenti’s book Expressiveness, I make two points. The first concerns the relation between the proposal defended by Benenti and what are generally referred to as resemblance theories of expressiveness. My aim is to understand how far we can take Benenti’s case against the role of resemblance in expressiveness. The second is related to a debate internal to the philosophy of music, namely, the one concerning formalism. While taking a position with respect to (...) this issue falls outside of the aims and scope of Benenti’s book, I note that her proposal may have interesting consequences for the future of this central debate. (shrink)

, Derek Matravers defends a new version of the arousal theory of musical expressiveness. In this paper it is argued that for various reasons, including especially what the theory implies about the inappropriateness of certain kinds of response to music, we should reject Matravers's theory in favour of some form of cognitivism.

Resemblance theories are a popular way of accounting for music’s capacity to be expressive of emotions. According to such theories, musical expressiveness depends on a perceived resemblance between music and human expressive behavior, both vocal (prosodic features, expressive vocalizations), and bodily (gestures, posture, deportment). This article asks whether the available evidence from the field of music psychology supports resemblance theories over their competitors, and answers the question in the negative. I divide the relevant scientific literature into two areas. The (...) first consists in studies that show structural analogies between musical structures and expressive behavior. The second posits causal mechanism that link our experience of expressive music to the way we experience human expressive behavior. I show that neither kind of evidence should ground a preference for resemblance theories over competing views. In the final part of the article, I ask whether the same evidence could be used to settle an issue internal to the resemblance theory, that is, the relative importance to our experience of expressive music of vocal vs. bodily emotional expressive behavior. I conclude that an answer to this question depends on how exactly we interpret some of the resemblance theory’s commitments. (shrink)

In this paper, we investigate the expressiveness of the variety of propositional interval neighborhood logics, we establish their decidability on linearly ordered domains and some important subclasses, and we prove the undecidability of a number of extensions of PNL with additional modalities over interval relations. All together, we show that PNL form a quite expressive and nearly maximal decidable fragment of Halpern–Shoham’s interval logic HS.

Emotion terms such as “sad”, “happy”, and “joyful” apply to a wide range of entities. We use them to refer to mental states of sentient beings, and also to describe features of non‐mental things such as comportment, nature, events, artworks and so on. Drawing on the literature on polysemy, this article provides an in‐depth analysis of emotion descriptions. It argues that emotion terms are polysemous and distinguishes seven related senses. In addition, the article applies the analysis to shed light on (...) a long‐standing debate in philosophy of music concerning emotion descriptions of music. (shrink)

1. The last 25 years have seen an increasing interest in the area of formal argumentation. The ultimate goal of the field is to come up with computational models of how we make decisions, based on...

In sections I-VII of this chapter I outline the theoretical background for a research programme considering whether the expressiveness of a culture's music can be recognised by people from different musical cultures, that is, by people whose music is syntactically and structurally distinct from that of the target culture. In sections VIII-IX, I examine and assess the cross-cultural studies that have been undertaken by psychologists. Most of these studies are compromised by methodological inadequacies.

Logic diagrams help people understand and solve problems in logic. This paper explores how different types of these diagrams try to find a good balance between showing complex ideas fully (expressiveness) and being easy to understand visually (clarity). It traces their journey from early, straightforward drawings to more complex systems with clear rules to prevent confusion. This change often involved making a strategic choice, a calculated “chance,” to move away from very direct visual representation to gain greater overall clarity (...) and power in problem-solving. This tension between comprehensive representation and ease of interpretation is a central challenge for anyone designing diagrammatic systems for logical relationships. A diagram that is too simple cannot convey intricate ideas completely, but one that tries to show every detail might become too complicated to understand. This means that different diagram types are often best suited for specific logical tasks or levels of complexity. (shrink)

Marta Benenti’s book, Expressiveness: Perception and Emotions in the Experience of Expressive Objects aims to answer the question, “what does the experience of expressive inanimate objects amount to?” The task is part conceptual (i.e., what does it mean for us to have an expressive experience of an inanimate object?) and part empirical (i.e., what does this experience involve? What makes it possible?). In this review, I draw on insights from the aesthetics literature to consider Benenti’s treatment of both the (...) conceptual and empirical questions. My discussion focuses on three issues: (a) whether core affect is sufficient for differentiating expressive qualities from other kinds of affective qualities; (b) whether our expressive experience is importantly different for different kinds of objects; and (c) whether objects can be expressive of things other than emotions. (shrink)

En comparant et en opposant la définition husserlienne du sens comme noyau d’identité et la définition merleau-pontienne du sens comme différence ou écart, le présent article vise à développer une réflexion originale sur le sens originel des sciences, sur la signification, les raisons et les solutions possibles de leur crise ; et enfin sur la relation entre la science et la philosophie. Tout d’abord, j’esquisserai deux conceptions possibles et assez opposées de l’expression et de la sédimentation du sens (sect. 1). (...) À partir de ces résultats, une conception différente de la méditation historique et de la Rückfrage sera esquissée : la validité et l’authenticité des formations scientifiques seront montrées comme fondées non pas sur le sens originel, mais plutôt sur leur propre expressivité, c’est-à-dire sur le fait que toute opération scientifique est une déformation cohérente mais irréductible de sa propre tradition (sect. 2). Un sens particulier de la crise des sciences émergera de ces analyses : la crise sera définie non pas comme la perte du sens originel, mais plutôt comme la reproduction statique d’une essence identique. En conséquence, une description originale de la relation entre les sciences et la philosophie sera exposée dans la conclusion, permettant d’esquisser une réflexion sur le rôle que la philosophie peut jouer par rapport à la pensée scientifique et à sa crise (sect. 3). (shrink)

This paper addresses James O. Young's and Nemesio Puy's critical assessments of Nelson Goodman's account of musical expressiveness. For that, I draw substantially on the work of Maria do Carmo d’Orey (1933–2023), an important although underrecognized Goodman scholar who argued (pace Goodman) that exemplified resemblance—not plain resemblance—is the core of expressiveness, as well as of other forms of representation. I call theories of exemplified resemblance ‘frame theories.’ Young claims that (1) Goodman's theory is but a muddled version of (...) resemblance theory; (2) if emotion predicates applied to music are literal, then Goodman's theory lacks motivation; (3) Goodman's version bears no theoretical benefits. Puy denies 3 while granting 1 and 2. In this paper, §3, §4, §5, and §6 constitute an argument that: (i) resemblance theory is a defective version of frame theory; (ii) objections based on the metaphoric-literal distinction have no legs; (iii) the theoretical payoffs of Goodman's version outstrip what Puy concedes. Sections 3 and 4 challenge Claim 1; §5 and §6 challenge Claim 2; together they show that framing generates resemblance, which conflicts with granting Claims 1 and 2. (shrink)

In this paper, I will examine an evolutionary hypothesis about musical expressiveness first proposed by Peter Kivy. I will first present the hypothesis and explain why I take it to be different from ordinary evolutionary explanations of musical expressiveness. I will then argue that Kivy’s hypothesis is of crucial importance for most available resemblancebased accounts of musical expressiveness. For this reason, it is particularly important to assess its plausibility. After having reviewed the existing literature on the topic, (...) I will list five challenges the hypothesis is supposed to meet. Although my list of challenges does not aim at exhaustiveness, I believe that the hypothesis must meet all of the challenges I suggest if it is to work as a cornerstone for a theory of musical expressiveness. (shrink)

Peter Kivy and Stephen Davies developed an influential and convincing account of what features of music cause listeners to hear it as expressive of emotion. Their view (the resemblance theory) holds that music is expressive of some emotion when it resembles human expressive behaviour. Some features of music, they believe, are expressive of emotion because of conventional associations. In recent years, Kivy has rejected the resemblance theory without adopting an alternative. This essay argues that Kivy has been unwise to abandon (...) the resemblance theory. New and compelling psychological evidence supports the theory. The essay also argues that new psychological evidence indicates that convention makes a smaller contribution to musical expressiveness than Kivy and Davies believe. (shrink)

In sections I-VII of this chapter I outline the theoretical background for a research programme considering whether the expressiveness of a culture’s music can be recognised by people from different musical cultures, that is, by people whose music is syntactically and structurally distinct from that of the target culture. In sections VIII-IX, I examine and assess the cross-cultural studies that have been undertaken by psychologists. Most of these studies are compromised by methodological inadequacies.

This article aims to set out the appropriate ontological principles for analysing a non-human dimension of the concept of affect, starting with the work of Silvia Schwarzböck, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, as well as an expansion of the affective to non-living forms of existence. This expansion of affect towards a specific inorganic affect allows us to explore an alternative approach to traditional notions of memory and historical representation. The expressiveness of images, bones and objects, only recently accepted as (...) imaginary material in the accounts of Argentina’s recent past (such as the works by Albertina Carri, Marta Dillon and Maria Moreno) requires us to reconsider the conceptual frameworks of affect and recall, and include in them this inorganic memory which expresses itself beyond any subjective or communal links. (shrink)

Δ.Δακρότσης, «Τεχνητή νοημοσύνη και εκφραστικότητα: η αναγκαιότητα περάσματος της εννοιολογικής γνώσης από το μονοπάτι της αισθητικής εποπτείας» (Artificial Intelligence and expressiveness: The necessity for conceptual knowledge to go through the path of aesthetic perception), Days of Art in Greece, Τεύχος 18, Φθινόπωρο 2024, σς 26-39.

This paper is about style appropriation: the use by someone of stylistic cultural innovations distinctive of a cultural group that is not her own. While I agree with the key insight of C. Thi Nguyen and Matthew Strohl : 981-1002) – namely, that style appropriation is sometimes found objectionable because group intimacy is believed to have been breached – I disagree with their core claim that the settled beliefs of the group cannot be wrong about whether its group intimacy has, (...) in fact, been compromised in this way. I accept that facts about group intimacy can generate normative reasons concerning style appropriation, but develop a distinctive account of how this comes to be so: one which holds that such facts are independently grounded, rather than being decided by group opinion. This alternative picture of how group intimacy grounds normative reasons does better justice to the intuitive thought that reality, including its normative regions, is belief-independent. The paper ends with some replies to potential objections. (shrink)

In this paper, I address the question of how emotional qualities can be attributed to musical timbre, an acoustic feature that has proven challenging to explain using traditional accounts of musical emotions. I begin presenting the notion of musical expressiveness, as it has been conceived by cognitivists to account for the emotional quality of various musical elements like melody and rhythm. However, I also point out some limitations in these accounts, which hinder their ability to fully elucidate the emotional (...) expressiveness of timbre, especially when considering it as a result of non-cognitively mediated processes. Consequently, I explore the link between timbre and atmosphere by reviewing anecdotal sources that have characterized timbre in terms of atmosphere. The goal here is to determine if these characterizations should be seen as merely allusive and metaphoric expressions or if they genuinely reveal essential properties of timbre. To achieve this goal, I delve deeper into the notion of atmosphere, and I show that it shares several key traits with the notion of musical emotions as conceived in the cognitivist’s account. Both musical emotions and atmospheres are affectively charged externalities that are apprehended by the subject without cognitive mediation. Drawing from this insight, I conclude that the notion of atmosphere can serve as a valuable tool in explaining the emotional expressivity of timbre without invoking the resemblance-based mechanisms often found in cognitive accounts of expressiveness. (shrink)

The optimal balance between decidability and expressiveness is a big problem of logical systems, in particular, of quantified epistemic logics (QELs). On the one hand, decidability is a very significant characteristic of logics that allows us to use such logics in the framework of artificial intelligence. On the other hand, QELs have important expressive capabilities that should not be lost when we construct decidable fragments of these logics. QELs are known to be much more expressive than first-order logics. One (...) important example of their extra expressive power is that they allow us to distinguish between de dicto and de re readings of epistemic sentences. It is clear that such capabilities should be preserved as much as possible in decidable fragments. In this paper, we consider extensions of QELs that include quantification over modalities. Denote this extensions by $$\hbox {Q}_{\Box }$$ Ls. $$\hbox {Q}_{\Box }$$ Ls allows us to make more subtle distinctions between de dicto and de re readings of epistemic sentences, and we also should keep these new features as much as possible in decidable fragments. It is known that there are not much interesting decidable QELs. The situation with $$\hbox {Q}_{\Box }$$ Ls is the same. But in recent years (after 2018), we have obtained a variety of decidable $$\hbox {Q}_{\Box }$$ Ls constructed in different ways. We distinguish between (1) the approach in which for every undecidable $$\hbox {Q}_{\Box }$$ L and for every variant of its decidable fragment, a specific proof is constructed, and (2) the approach in which a class of decidable $$\hbox {Q}_{\Box }$$ Ls is obtained using general tools and a uniform method for all $$\hbox {Q}_{\Box }$$ Ls of this class. In this paper, we compare the results of these approaches. (shrink)

This article explores how the thought that language is expressive, in the sense of bearing emotional or affective meaning, can be made sense of, with particular attention to two authors for whom this thought plays an important role. It begins by introducing the idea of language being “expressive” and using Charles Taylor's work to consider its potential interest, before showing how the expressiveness of language might be accounted for by a position that seems particularly suited to this task, namely (...) Merleau‐Ponty's view of embodied expression in Phenomenology of Perception. I then set out a significant challenge to that position based on Wittgenstein's “private language argument,” which implies there is no necessary connection between language use and a subject's internal (affective) states, thus contesting Merleau‐Ponty's explanatory emphasis on the body. I therefore propose a revised “complex” view of language's expressiveness that meets this Wittgensteinian challenge by reconceiving the body's role. Finally, I draw out some implications of this revised view, arguing that while language itself cannot be considered expressive, it remains significant that we can experience language as expressive. I also suggest that, although apparently threatened, Taylor's position can not only accommodate, but be better understood with, this revised view. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Model Theory Proof Theory Modal Predicate Logic.