```dataview LIST WITHOUT ID file.link WHERE file.cday = date(this.file.name) SORT file.cday ASC ``` * Short description of the activities carried out in the month: PEA meetings (reading group and work in progress): - WIP: Elsa Saliba "A Different Gaze on Avant-garde"; WIP: [[Arianna Gritti]] "[[The Experience]] of Agency in Social Networks: an Embodied Perspective"; WIP: [[Nick Young]] "[[Generating Philosophy Kanban]] through [[Artificial Intelligence]]" ; * organized and attended the PEA events on Kriegel, "Metaphysical Aestheticism" (seminar) and "[[The Varieties of Consciousness]] and the Varieties of Arts" (Workshop); * Written a short version of the paper "Inner Speech and the Phenomenology of Poetry" for the ASA pacific meeting and got selected for presenting it at the conference; * started organizing the event "PEA Workshop: Aristotele --> Kant --> Schopenhauer --> Nietzsche: Filosofie dell'esperienza"; * continued organizing [[the Philosophy]] of Poetry conference. * Continued working on the [[cognitive phenomenology of literature]] paper and on the pragmatics of poetry paper. * Short description of the activities carried out in the month: PEA meetings (reading group and work in progress): Evnive (Artifacts: function, artworks and abstract artifacts), Lopes ([[The ontology of Interactive Art]]), Jagnow (Experiencing atmosphere in Paintings) ; * Pea conferences: by Marco Bellavita "L’estetica seriale di [[Twin Peaks]]" and by [[Nick Young]] "Anti-atmospheric sound In [[Twin Peaks]]" ; * Pea conference: Philosophy of architecture (november 18-19) ; * ATMOS and PEA Conference: Atmospheres of Objects, Places and Events Atmospheres (november 20-21); started organizing the Kriegel events for december; attended the PEA seminar "Let Beauty be Your Guide" held by Keren Gorodeisky. ## Philosopher's imprint feedback **Comments for Author** This is an interesting paper discussing [[the aesthetics of design]], a topic still somewhat underexplored in aesthetics. The paper’s main move is to put forth an account that makes sense of [[the aesthetics of design]] by arguing that it cannot be fully accounted by means of perception, nor Forsey’s “use” account, to advance an agentive perspective.  Overall, I find the main idea intriguing, but at critical passages, the paper lacks rigorous argumentations, plus [[the author]] (from now on “A”) is frequently sloppy in her referencing to the literature. I will mark below some instances of such sloppiness, that must definitely be addressed in revising the manuscript. Before leaving some more detailed remarks, I’ll focus on broad-picture critical aspects that I think must be addressed.  One issue that should be addressed more clearly, is whether the experience of design is an instance of aesthetic experience. If it is so, as I think it is, then the A should definitely address the literature on aesthetic experience. This would help us better locate the contribution within the issue of aesthetic experience as discussed in the literature. But there is also another reason for delving into this issue: most contributions today seem to focus on content-approaches (e.g. Noel Carroll’s content view in his 2001, 2015; see also Vernazzani 2023), but I think the agentive perspective brings another aspect of aesthetic experience, the agentive component, that is absent or at least not immediately accommodated by content-approaches. The A could thus highlight the novelty of her approach to bring to the fore another aspect of aesthetic experience that is often neglected in the debate.  A second issue touches on the criticism of the perceptual view, mostly discussed in relation to Parsons and Carlson (2008). I find the criticism not sufficiently motivated, and in need of a much better argument. See my detailed comments below for why I found the A’s argument unpersuasive.  The A positive argument for the aesthetics of agency could be supported by citing appropriate literature from the psychology of fluency. There are many studies highlighting the hedonic effects associated with the fluency of execution of an action (e.g. the studies conducted by Winkielman). I also have a further point to make regarding the experience of effortlessness in relation to design: I am not sure that effortlessness can adequately capture all instances of design aesthetics. Take for example some creations by Ettore Sottsass, or Chippendale’s chairs. Chippendale’s chair have a distinctive design, but it hardly contributes to the experience of effortlessness in sitting on them! My using the chair as a tool for sitting is not significantly affected by its design. Maybe the A could use some clarity in narrowing down the scope of design, or clarify whether she regard her account as more limited to some design items. I do not think that this is a fatal problem, but it calls for some clarifications about the scope of this paper.  The paper’s title invoke the notion of beauty, but I am not sure beauty is the relevant aesthetic apposite addressed in the paper, since the focus seems to be on the experience of effortlessness. Although I find the paper interesting, much more work is needed to clarify the A’s stance, and support their conclusions with better arguments.  pp. 3-4: I wonder whether the A is a bit unfair towards Parsons & Carlson’s, they are not stating that all there is to say about functionality and aesthetics translated into the perceptual domain. I think the paper needs some clarity about the role Parsons & Carlson’s account of functional beauty plays in the paper.   p. 4: The A cites, at the conclusion of §1.2 that Roberts has extended Parsons & Carlson’s (2008) mainly visual account to other senses, but no reference to Roberts’ text is given, neither here, nor in the Reference list.  pp. 4-5: The A concludes section §1.1 pointing out, contra Parsons & Carlson (2008) perceptual view of functionality that “a solely perceptual view of design aesthetics may be incomplete. Some aspects of design appreciation are not captured by perception alone.” She then turns to §1.2 to Norman’s remark that good design is often “invisible” to buttress the idea that good design may not always be perceptually salient or noticeable. I think the A’s discussion is somewhat confuse. By stating that functionality translated into perceptual properties, Parsons & Carlson do not mean to suggest that such properties are always noticeable or salient. Norman’s citation disambiguates what he means with “invisible” is not, literally speaking, something that cannot be perceived (as it would be required against Parsons & Carlson’s view!) rather he means in the quote is that good design “does not draw attention to itself” and it is “harder to notice.” But this is compatible with what Parsons & Carlson say! Take the example they discuss from the “second way” in which functional beauty manifests itself: a stove may look elegant, precisely in virtue of how well it performs its function as a stove, whereas, had we looked at the stove as a safe (mis-categorizing it), its inadequacy for this alleged role would make it seem way less elegant. But for what matters, all this is perfectly compatible with good design being more difficult to spot. For example, it may be that S, being an expert designer, is much better able to judge the stove as elegant than an ordinary user R who lacks any deep knowledge of design etc.; it may thus be that for S the stove’s elegance is very noticeable, but not so for R. That doesn’t mean however that R cannot perceive the stove’s elegance in relation to its function, only that this would not necessarily be immediately salient for him!  p. 5: Norman (2013) is missing from the reference list (I guess it is The Design of Everyday Things)  p. 5: The A discussion of the butterfly keyboard exemplifies how bad design is very noticeable, but I am not sure what we should make of this in the economy of the paper. What the A would need, contra Parsons & Carlson, is to show how good design may exceed perception, in terms of properties that cannot be (even in principle) be perceived, or that something else is left concerning design is left out from Parsons & Carlson’s analysis. What the A needs is a more positive case showing that the aesthetics of design cannot be reduced to perceptual properties.  p. 6: I presume the quote at the beginning of §2.1 is from Kant, but it is not clearly understandable from the text. In general, it is worth spelling out the connection between Jane Forsay’s account and Kant’s.  p. 8: Here is another instance of the A’s sloppy referencing to the literature, there is a quote from Nguyen, but no year of publication is indicated. Also, no text from Nguyen is cited in the References.  p. 8: I have some reservations about the role played by Nguyen’s “harmony of solution,” it is not very clear why the A needs to make reference to Nguyen, when her point is made by emphasizing the agentive component that is missing in merely observing an object’s being used. I would also like to add that the first part of the paper could be restructured by placing emphasis right from the beginning on this agentive component and highlighting how this component is missing in other accounts.   p. 9: This may be a more minor point, but I’ve found a little puzzling the use of the term “interaction,” doesn’t interaction presuppose a mutual action between two agents? I interact with another person, but it makes little sense to talk of interaction when typing on my laptop, which of course is not an agent! pp. 8-9: more clarity could be used spelling out the idea of “pleasure of use.” p. 10: The A cites Montero, 2006, but the text is not present in the Reference list! p. 10: The A says “Phenomenologically, we can differentiate actions from mere movements in terms of our sense of agency: the sense that we are the source of our movements” there is a considerable literature on agency, and I think the A should at least give some coordinates to the literature.   pp. 10-15: I made some remarks earlier on effortlessness of use and design aesthetics. It is not clear to me that the A’s account accommodates instances of design where the design per se does not factor in in the experience of use. I do not think that this is a fatal problem, as I said above, but definitely something that should be addressed.  p. 15: “In sum, by adapting Montero's concept of aesthetic effortlessness to the realm of agentive experience in design interactions, we can account for the aesthetic satisfaction derived from interacting with well-designed objects“ p. 19: Neither Evnine, nor Kriegel, nor Shepherd are cited in the reference list!