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4/16 (Virtual Event) Meaning it: Cavell, Wittgenstein, & Knowing in Feeling

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Standish meaning it

Tuesday, April 16 at 4:30pm.

Virtual event: Please REGISTER to receive zoom information -OR- come and watch with us in EWFM 625.

You can access the talk's Handout here.

Abstract: In this talk, Prof. Standish will first examine Stanley Cavell’s essays on music – in particular his “Music Discomposed”, which is concerned with the “new” music influenced by Arnold Schoenberg and his pupils. Cavell’s discussion is less a reflection on the qualities of this music than a philosophical questioning of the implications of attitudes towards it, especially regarding the exercise of judgement in criticism, composition, and performance. In the course of this he provides an account of what he calls “knowing by feeling” (sometimes “in feeling”). Touching on connections with his later occasional pieces on music, published in Here and Now (2023), and exploring some late remarks by Wittgenstein on the philosophy of psychology, Standish shall, in the second part, examine the wider ramifications of the idea of “meaning it” that emerges. In particular, he considers connections between this conception of meaning and the development of AI. 

Paul Standish is Professor and Head of the Centre for Philosophy of Education at UCL IOE. He has extensive teaching experience in schools, colleges and universities, and his research reflects that range. He is the author or editor of some twenty books, with a sustained interest in Wittgenstein extending from his Beyond the Self: Wittgenstein, Heidegger, and the Limits of Language (1992, Ashgate) to Wittgenstein and Education: On not sparing others the trouble of thinking (2023, Wiley), co-edited with Adrian Skilbeck. Aside from authoring many essays on Stanley Cavell, he is co-editor with Naoko Saito of two books - Stanley Cavell and the Education of Grownups (2012, Fordham UP) and Stanley Cavell and Philosophy as Translation: The Truth is Translated (2017, Rowman & Littlefield) – as well as a forthcoming special issue entitled Walden in Tokyo: Stanley Cavell and the Thought of Other Cultures (Journal of Philosophy of Education, 2024). He is President of the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain.