# created ```dataview LIST WITHOUT ID file.link FROM -"windsurf" WHERE file.cday = date(this.file.name) AND !startswith(file.folder, "windsurf") SORT file.cday ASC ``` # modified ```dataview LIST WITHOUT ID file.link FROM -"windsurf" WHERE file.mday = date(this.file.name) AND !startswith(file.folder, "windsurf") SORT file.mday ASC ``` --- # [[diary and thoughts]] #thought #diary --- # Notes - Is there something to be said about immersion and [[The author]]’s solution in section 5 proceeds in two stages. First, it grants the force of the “design” horn by arguing that works prescribe emotions, and, second, it explains why this does not collapse into the claim that everyone must feel the same way by preserving [[the pull]] of the “subjectivity” horn. The motivation for prescription is grounded in the functional conception of artworks as [[experiential artifacts]]: their point is to shape and coordinate experience. If emotional engagement is integral to correctly grasping what is salient or significant in the represented situation, then emotions fall within what the artifact is designed to produce. As scientists and philosophers have pointed out in a tradition that goes from Charles Darwin to Antonio Damasio, Ronald De Sousa and Martha Nussbaum, emotions enable us to properly respond to our environment in a timely way which is beyond the reach of inferential reasoning. As Murray Smith (2017, 130) puts it, “emotions are signal boosters, functioning to rivet our attention on particular features of a situation”. Arguably, the same holds true for our responses to fiction, and this may encourage one to solve [[the puzzle]] of design by stating that works of fiction can prescribe emotions just like they prescribe imaginings or perceptions. This is the way in which Gaut (2017, 22) implicitly solves [[the puzzle]] of design when he argues that “Emotions are not mere feelings, but modes of seeing-as, involving evaluations and construals of what is represented. In engaging with works of art, our emotions thus shape and guide [[our understanding]] of them. To respond with pity or fear to tragedy is not only to feel, but to grasp what the work presents as pitiable or fearful.” Thus, if a work relies on our rapidly detecting and tracking evaluative structures (e.g., danger in horror, value-loss in tragedy, norm-violation in dark comedy), it can be said to prescribe emotional uptake as part of competent appreciation. [[The author]] then explains why this does not entail uniform phenomenology or action-urge by invoking the componential analysis of emotion developed in section 4: emotions comprise higher-level cognitive components (constative detection of a formal object and evaluative appraisal of a particular object, including some motivation profile) and lower-level sensory/affective components (proprioceptive “gut” feelings and algedonic valence). Specifically, the work of fiction mandates one to detect formal objects and to appraise particular objects when faced with fictional situations but leaves one significant degrees of freedom as for bodily reactions, intensity of the felt valence, and motivation to action. In other words, the mandated elements are detection of the relevant formal object (e.g., danger for fear, foulness for disgust, loss/wrong for pity/indignation) and appraising the scene in the fitting way (negative for danger, aversive for disgust, etc.), so that one’s uptakes track the work’s point, while the optional or variable elements are the intensity of bodily arousal (heart rate, breath, muscle tension), felt hedonic tone (how unpleasant it feels and how much), and the vividness/urge of action tendencies (flee, gag, intervene)—especially damped by the fiction frame. Applied to Hereditary, the classroom pigeon crash sets up cues to danger and disturbance (bang on glass; contrast between classmates’ startle and Charlie’s flat affect; her fixation on scissors). Proper uptake requires detecting danger/uncanniness and appraising the situation negatively, but one can meet that requirement with minimal bodily arousal (a cool, concept-heavy uptake) or with intense startle and dread. Likewise, in the park/pigeon decapitation, the closeup, [[sound design]], and ominous score direct attention to the formal objects of disgust and threat; proper uptake requires appraising the act as disturbing/repellent. Some viewers may feel pronounced nausea; others only a cool recognition of repulsiveness. The reconciliation is that works of fiction prescribe emotions just like they prescribe imaginings or perceptions, and this is the truth of the first horn of [[the puzzle]], yet the prescription of imaginings or perceptions tends to impose the same core experience on all appreciators whereas the prescription of emotions leaves significant degrees of freedom to each appreciator as for how to feel the emotion, and this is the grain of truth that lies in the second horn of [[the puzzle]]. Failure to see or to imagine central content blocks appreciation; failure to feel in a particular way does not—unless it undermines the mandated detection/appraisal. Emotions are required in their cognitive structure, not in their precise bodily signature or strength. Section 6 introduces the metaphor of an “emotional score” to capture how artworks guide but do not fully determine emotional experience. The proposed solution of [[the puzzle]] of design leads us to highlight two ways in which artifacts can induce experiences. On the one hand, [[experiential artifacts]] can generate [[mental states]] that tend to converge regardless of the peculiar individuality of each member of the audience. This arguably is the way in which pictures induce perceptual states and fictions induce imaginative states; a painting provides all viewers with the same perceptual perspective on the same scene, and a novel provided all the readers with the same propositional content to imagine. On the other hand, artifacts just yield “emotional scores”, as it were, that each member of the audience is meant to interpret in her own way, thereby generating her own peculiar version of the prescribed [[mental states]]. The musical performance analogy clarifies this: like a musical score, the emotional score sets correctness conditions plus a performance space. Correctness conditions consist in tracking the formal objects (danger, impurity, injustice, loss, etc.) and applying fitting appraisals at the right junctures; freedom corresponds to tempo/intensity/timbre analogues—bodily arousal, felt valence, action tendencies, and even the micro-dynamics of attention and anticipation. Peter Kivy’s comparison of reading to performance is broadened: the reader’s performance is not only a matter of speech; the reader’s performance is also a matter of feeling. Spectators “play” the emotional dynamics, and different “performances” can be equally correct if they respect the score’s structural constraints. The author then relates this to the paradox of fiction by mapping its three solutions onto performance styles. The quasi-emotion solution corresponds to an austere performance in which the emotional response comes down to the basic cognitive components of the prescribed emotions—thin affect sufficient for understanding. The “imaginary-object solution” favors a thicker performance that supplements such cognitive components with some mixture of bodily feelings, intensity of the felt valence and motivation to action in response to the imagined situations. Finally, the “illusion solution” makes room for a deeply passionate performance that leads one to respond to fictional situations just like one would react to real ones. The Hereditary party-to-decapitation sequence illustrates the score’s structure and latitude: first, concern and indignation (allergy info, brother’s neglect, chocolate cake) direct appraisal toward risk and blame; then escalating fear and anxiety (breathing distress, urgent transport) amplify detection of danger and negative appraisal, with craft elements (editing, audio, darkness) pacing and intensifying these appraisals. Next, shock and anguish (sudden death) switches the formal object from danger to catastrophic loss, with stylistic deceleration (silence, long takes) facilitating appraisal of devastation. Finally, disgust and pure horror (the cut to the decapitated head with ants) target disgust’s formal object (foulness/contamination/decay) and horror’s response to extreme violation. Performance latitude ranges from austere tracking of evaluative shifts (risk → imminent danger → loss → foulness) with cool but correct appraisals, through moderate felt dread, panic, and revulsion, to passionate, illusion-like engagement with intense somatic arousal and action-urge. Correctness is secured by getting the evaluative sequence right; variability lies in intensity and bodily realization. Section 7 reframes the proposal through Gombrich’s “key and lock” metaphor, extending it from perception to affect. Keys are technical artifacts that perform the function of opening locks in virtue of their structure, and pictures are “keys which happen to fit into biological or psychological locks” that open the locks of our visual system. The notion of experiential artifact extends Gombrich’s analogy beyond pictures. Experiential artifacts are keys that can open locks not only in the visual system but also in other mental domains. In this paper the author argued that experiential artifacts such as works of fiction also fulfill the function of opening locks in our affective system. However, by formulating and addressing the puzzle of designed emotions, the author pointed out that the opening of locks in the affective system differs from the standard Gombrichian case as the experiential effects can vary significantly across users. The artistic key opens the affective lock but whether the door swings open or remains ajar depends on the appreciator’s interpretation of the emotional score. The final synthesis is that the puzzle of design is resolved by distinguishing levels of mandate: mandated is the cognitive-emotional structure (what to detect and how to appraise across a work’s unfolding), and not mandated but guided are phenomenological intensity, bodily arousal, and action-urge. This preserves the idea that emotions are part of a work’s function (they’re designed) while explaining why lack of a particular felt intensity does not by itself indict appreciation—unless it blocks the required evaluative uptake. The emotional score model also clarifies how different stances toward fiction (quasi-emotion, imaginary-object, illusion) are not different kinds of object so much as different performance modes within the same designed framework.