Reacting to Telfer's Food as Art

Telfer posits that the process of preparing, presenting, and consuming meals is too common, too necessary, too simple, too temporally, spatially, and sequentially insufficient to be considered as art. She defends these claims with references to the accepted practices of evaluation and classification to determine an artifact’s status as an art form or a work of art (p 20). She states food can be, and in some cases, is, an art, but it is only a minor art because it is not only simple, it is also limited by its impermanence, meaninglessness, and its inability to move us (p 26).

I found this particular reasoning constrictive, incomplete, and biased.

I agree with the idea offered in class by Ed, that the person experiencing the thing will be the one imposing the meaning of art upon it.

I think art is, by its nature, relational; and its relational nature has its origins in biology. All of our sensory perceptions are the result of signals transported through various organic mechanisms to the brain, which then interprets this data. Everyone is a unique assemblage of organic, psychological, and historical experiences. Although we may share many experiences in common, our associations are filtered through our individuation.

Art is a construct. Whether it is a social or cultural construct, each person will have a unique relationship to art. While individuals in our society may have evolved beyond the need for interpretation of particular organic sensory stimuli for survival, we cannot deny their rank as survival mechanisms for our ancestors. I am unwilling to presume that my concept of art is superior to any other person's concept of art (external judgment of a foreigner's internal experience). For these reasons, I am uncomfortable with evaluating or classifying any art as major or minor.

In response to Jacob's question, I believe that food is an art to those who experience it as such, and that often, the nature of the preparation, presentation, and consumption of food is inherently artistic.

My Question:
Can Telfer legitimately claim a disconnect between what food we eat, how and where it is grown or raised, how it is processed, transported, stored, marketed, obtained, and utilized by us, from what it tells us about the world and ourselves, as well as what it represents to us and others? (P 27

Reflecting on Environmental Protection Policies and Forest Management

Section 40 of the Massachusetts Forest Cutting Practices Act (MGL Chapter 132) declares that the public welfare requires the rehabilitation, maintenance, and protection of forest lands for the purpose of conserving water, preventing floods and soil erosion, improving the conditions for wildlife and recreation, protecting and improving air and water quality, and providing a continuing and increasing supply of forest products for public consumption, farm use, and for the woodusing industries of the commonwealth.

Are the goals to rehabilitate, maintain, and protect forest lands to conserve water, prevent floods and soil erosion, protect and improve air and water quality, and improve conditions for wildlife compatible with the goals of improving conditions for recreation, or of providing a continuing and increasing supply of forest products for public consumption, farm use, and for the woodusing industries of the state?

Should these policies be changed to reflect the broader goal of restoring natural forest habitat and wildlife communities or restructured to prevent long-term habitat and biodiversity losses?

Due to the interdependent nature of all life within and between ecosystems, issues of connectivity and the necessity of wildlife corridors must be considered. How do we balance conservation, preservation, or restoration of environmental systems across private and multi-use public lands? Does preservation of endangered and at risk species warrant dominance of private land by state or federal policies? How do we morally determine the merit, and fate, of invasive species in conflict with native species? How do we categorize non-native species that have been occupying the continent for 200 years? For 100 years? For 50 years? For 30 years? How do we judge and respond to invasive species whose offspring mature in 1 year? Literally hundreds of generations of some invasive species have successfully occupied our lands. At what point do we classify non-native species as native? Should we ever classify non-native species as native? Do invasive species ever occupy a niche without ousting the former occupants of that niche? If restoration requires it, how do we quantify the benefit of disturbing lands previously disturbed by anthropogenic actions?

What is the goal? Is the goal restoration to pre-anthropogenically disturbed condition? Is the goal obtaining a balance between post-anthropogenically disturbed condition in a manner that best supports the maximum environmental health and biodiversity of native habitat, flora, and fauna?

From a philosophical point of view, if this is the ethical position, is it a feasible position? If this involves extinct species and we have the technological ability to recreate extinct species, should we? How do we return the past without dislodging the present and affecting the future? What is our ethical obligation to the present? What is our ethical obligation to the future? Do we have any moral obligation to the past?

Positive, Negative, and Neutral Emotions

While reading David Huron’s book Sweet Anticipation: Music and the Psychology of Expectation, I learned that Huron used findings and techniques from modern cognitive research to expand on music theorist Leonard Meyer’s 1956 work, Emotion and Meaning in Music. Unfortunately, I was unable to delve further into Meyer's work at this time, but hope to explore this over the summer as I found Huron's work quite impressive. I was startled by Huron's belief that there are no neutral emotions, only positive or negative emotions. He refers to the positive or negative quality of emotion as valence. He defines contrastive valence as the conjecture that the hedonic value of an experience is amplified when preceded by a contrasting hedonic state. I need to research and process the concept of no neutral emotions, but I can see where evolutionarily speaking, organisms would need positive and negative response range to promote efficient survival mechanisms.

In my primary perusals I have found references to neutral emotions in The Effect of Positive Emotions on Multimedia Learning. This article's abstract states: "The study examined whether the positive emotions experienced during multimedia learning facilitate cognitive process that leads to better learning performance and satisfaction. Positive emotions were experimentally induced before a multimedia based learning by means of self-referencing mood induction procedure (positive or neutral emotions) and during the learning by the aesthetic design of the learning materials (good or neutral design). The result of the experiment shows that there is significant effect of emotions on their transfer test, mental effort investment, as well as level of satisfaction. It also indicates that positive emotions can be generated by the instructional design that may be able to affect learners’ experience and performance. The study implies that positive emotions should be considered as important factors in instructional design. Also, emotional design principles should be studied in more detail for better instructional material design."

The link to download the study is: http://create.alt.ed.nyu.edu/courses/2015/reading/Um_Song_Plass_ED-MEDIA_07.pdf

Other resources I have found that discuss the three categories of positive, negative, and neutral emotions relate to mental illness. An example is Hemispheric Differences in Recognition of Facial Expressions: A VHF-Study of Negative, Positive, and Neutral Emotions, Published in the International Journal of Neuroscience, Volume 45. Issue 3 & 4. April 1989. pages 205 - 213. It was authored by Kenneth Hugdahl et al. I will have the summer to explore what I believe to be the possible range of emotions, and determine whether or not I agree with Huron position that there are no neutral emotions.

My Question: Do neutral emotions exist in nature?

Sweet Anticipation: Music and the Psychology of Expectation

I chose this text by David Huron for my book review. Sweet Anticipation is an empirically informed and statistically based work detailing Huron’s psychological theory of expectation. This book is a 462-page analysis of the phenomenon of musical expectation, which Huron grounds in psychological, biological, and evolutionary roots. It is a natural progression built on his experimental efforts to understand how music evokes emotions. Huron breaks his work down into 17 chapters. He provides an abundance of footnotes (28 pages), a 14-page glossary, 25 pages of references, and a 13-page index and he links the notated music examples of this book to his website. Huron defines anticipation as, “the subjective experience accompanying a strong expectation that a particular event will occur; also referred to as the feeling of anticipation” and “ in Western music theory, a type of melodic embellishment in which an expected note is immediately preceded by the same pitch.” He relates this to premonition. This book is targeted for readers interested in cognitive science and evolutionary psychology, as well as in music.

Huron calls his general theory of expectation the ITPRA theory. ITPRA stands for his five categories of expectation responses: imagination, tension, prediction, reaction and appraisal. Huron posits that implicit, statistical expectations about music are directly linked to emotional response to music because they trigger basic neurobiological responses. Huron grounds his ITPRA theory in evolutionary, musicological, biological, and psychological theories.

In ITPRA, Huron suggests that an individual’s expectations about music tap into the same neural substrates as anticipation in general. Huron posits that emotions evoked by expectation involve five functionally distinct response systems: reaction responses (which engage defensive reflexes); tension responses (where uncertainty leads to stress); prediction responses (which reward accurate prediction); imagination responses (which facilitate deferred gratification); and appraisal responses (which occur after conscious thought is engaged).

According to Huron, these five response systems typically produce a complex mixture of feelings in real-world events and they contribute to the human emotional response to music. Pre-outcome responses (feelings that occur prior to an expected / unexpected event) relate to the anticipation of an event, they are comprised of imagination and tension responses. Imagining future events has emotional and intellectual aspects; the emotional aspect is designed to spur us to action. The imagination response contemplates potential future states and acts in ways that make those states more likely if they are positive, and less likely if they are negative. Imagining an outcome is a principal motivator of behavior. Without the imagination process, individuals would fail to take steps to avoid negative outcomes. Evidence suggests that imagination response induces actual emotional states while retaining awareness that the event that would lead to that state has not actually occurred.

The uncertainty of future events/experiences is an important element of anticipation, as are the knowledge of likely outcomes and their valence. Feeling uncertain about the immediate future causes Tension, which galvanizes flight, fight, or freeze - survival responses in anticipation of future events. The tension response is a more immediate physiological preparation for an imminent event and involves changes in arousal. The tension response is activated immediately before an anticipated moment of outcome, and adjusts the level of arousal and attention according to the degree of uncertainty surrounding the outcome, the significance of potential outcomes, and the estimated time before the outcome occurs.

Prediction, Reaction, and Appraisal are post-outcome responses - the three expectation processes. They are related to the outcome of events. Huron believes that chemicals in the brain are released that positively reinforce correct predictions about events and negatively reinforce incorrect predictions. He offers two separate systems of appraising events – an immediate emotional reaction process that automatically assumes the worst possible outcome based on schematic knowledge, and a slower, but more accurate cognitive process that appraises the valance and the importance of events. Working in tandem with the earlier immediate reaction process, cognitive appraisal dilutes the earlier emotional response if the evidence that earlier response was inappropriate. Cognitive appraisal of an experienced event may help avoid the possibility of being subjected to similar detrimental events in the future. Prediction responses are transient states of reward or punishment that arise in response to the accuracy of expectation. Accurate expectations are rewarded by positively-valence emotional responses, and inaccurate expectations are punished by negatively-valenced emotional responses.

Both the reaction and appraisal responses are emotional states that arise from assessments of the event itself independent of whether that event was anticipated. The reaction response is a rapid process that occurs automatically and preattentively and activates bodily actions and / or visceral responses. Reaction responses are knee-jerk reactions but are not always instinctive reflexes; they can also be learned. Appraisal responses are more considered and conscious assessments of an outcome, and need not be compatible with the reaction response.

The five processes of ITPRA prepare biologically adaptive behavioral responses that allow organisms to be optimally prepared for dangerous occurrences in the environment. Huron theorizes that musical expectations appropriate these five biologically adaptive processes, thereby producing a complex mix of feelings. He traces the psychology of expectations from the patterns of the physical/cultural world through imperfectly learned heuristics used to predict that world to the phenomenal qualia we experienced as we apprehend the world.

I found Huron’s proposals for expectancy mechanisms and their possible evolutionary origin in harmony with my own thoughts on the subject. This added to my interest in, and enjoyment of, this work. I cannot imagine it making the New York Times Bestseller List like Levitin’s This is Your Brain on Music. The nonmusician chapters were not difficult to read, but required a certain dedication and level of attentiveness to follow his thinking. His glossary and website were very important to the quality of my understanding of the musical and cognitive components of this work. I found similarities between Huron and Davies’ writing style. They both give numerous examples to illustrate their thought processes, they both restate their important points, and they both practice summarizing as a writing technique. But I believe their books were written for different audiences. Huron’s book is more technical, more evidentiary based, and supplies more empirically standardized charts, graphs, and musical notation than Davies. I would consider his overabundance of footnotes as the biggest detraction to reading this book. While they are wonderful for research purposes, they were an interruption to the flow of my reading experience, especially when I found only a citation to the reference.

Music as Play

Watching the video of Michel Camilo and his trio perform today in class, I was struck by how much enjoyment these musicians derived from their labors. We don't talk about music labor, or music as work. We play music.

Watching the expressions on their faces as they related to each other, I had the feeling that they were making fun more than they were making music. Observing their interactions during their performance, I had the sense that the process of creating music had, for them, also created community. It seemed to me, that for them, the activity of playing music together had created a bond of comradeship in some uniquely masculine form. It felt foreign. I couldn't quite grasp it. I wondered if it was a gender difference. I noticed it strangeness, but I wasn't concerned by it because even though I couldn't catalog it, it felt both positive and natural.

Their performance left me with a sense of the power music has to create cohesiveness, to create community. It strengthened my belief that music making first served some innately biological necessary evolutionary function. Clearly, some music still has the power to do that for us.