Reid rejects the image theory -the representative or indirect realist position -that memory-judgm... more Reid rejects the image theory -the representative or indirect realist position -that memory-judgments are inferred from or otherwise justified by a present image or introspectible state. He also rejects the trace theory, which regards memories as essentially traces in the brain. In contrast he argues for a direct knowledge account in which personal memory yields unmediated knowledge of the past. He asserts the reliability of memory, not in currently fashionable terms as a reliable belief-forming process, but more elusively as a principle of Commonsense. There is a contemporary consensus against Reid's position. I argue that Reid's critique is essentially sound, and that the consensus is mistaken; personal memory judgments are spontaneous and non-inferential in the same way as perceptual judgments. But I question Reid's account of the connection between personal memory and personal identity. My primary concern is rationally reconstructive rather than scholarly, and downplays recent interpretations of Reid's faculty psychology as a precursor of functionalism and other scientific philosophies of mind.
Scruton is a self-confessed elitist for whom culture is ' the creation and creator of elites ' , ... more Scruton is a self-confessed elitist for whom culture is ' the creation and creator of elites ' , though its meaning ' lies in emotions and aspirations that are common to all ' . This article argues that one can uphold his humane conception of the value of high culture without endorsing elitism. It develops a surprisingly unelitist strand in Scruton's thinking into a meritocratic middle way between elitism and populism, in order to explain why art is in some sense an elite product, but with communal resonance. This aim is furthered by interpreting high culture in terms of the less elitist concept of the classic.
This article addresses the dichotomy between design regarded as fashion and styling, and design a... more This article addresses the dichotomy between design regarded as fashion and styling, and design as problem solving. Design involves both, and there is a continuum between them. The most successful designed objects, whether chairs, cars or office blocks, exhibit an interpenetration of styling and problem solving, and design has an ineliminable aesthetic component. Consumerism, on the other hand -the production of artifacts for a consumer market -is not essential to design. The term, and perhaps the profession of design originated in the 18th century. But the kind of work that designers since the eighteenth century have done, was earlier done in a less professional and self-conscious way by makers of the object in question. Thus one can speak of narrower and broader concepts of design. A narrower concept involves the formulation of production plans by a class of designers, separate from producers, and which at some stage became professionalized; these products are manufactured, giving rise to consumerism. A broad sense, in contrast, involves planning in some form, whether or not by plans and professional designers; consumerism is not involved. This broad sense is ancient, and goes back to Neolithic crafting of flint tools, for instance.
This article develops a dynamic account of rhythm as 'order-in-movement' that opposes static acco... more This article develops a dynamic account of rhythm as 'order-in-movement' that opposes static accounts of rhythm as abstract time, as essentially a pattern of possibly unstressed sounds and silences. This dynamic account is humanistic: it focuses on music as a humanly-produced, sonorous phenomenon, privileging the human as opposed to the abstract, or the organic or mechanical. It defends the claim that movement is the most fundamental conceptualization of music-the basic category in terms of which it is experienced-and suggests, against Scruton, that music literally and not merely metaphorically moves.
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