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This essay examines an oil painting by Georgia O’Keeffe, Ritz Tower (1928), applying the terms of William James’s pragmatic conception of truth and the ideas that play a part in it, for example, pluralism and spiritualism, along with assistance from Martin Heidegger’s notion of Wohnung (dwelling). This is not only a fruitful way to look at her painting but paintings in the same or similar genre. Aesthetic judgments made about Ritz Tower are true if they work (in the pragmatic sense) for those who make said judgments if they find them successful in fitting in with other ideas and beliefs in their aesthetic experience of the painting or other artworks.

In the essay “Of the Standard of Taste,” the nature of the individual critic that can contribute to the standard is outlined, but how we move from an individual or individuals to a group of common consensus on an object of taste is left unaddressed. One way to see the expansion of agreed critics is to employ the narrow circle from the Treatise (3.3.2-3). It is suggested that the details of how we get from individuals to a group with similar judgments of taste be worked out along the lines Hume suggested in his discussion of the narrow circle. Civility is needed to move from individuals to a group, and what better way to make this transition than through Hume’s narrow circle? Disinterestedness is a case I develop to further the analogy between moral and aesthetic practices. Other moral qualities are suggested to be worked out in detail in aesthetic contexts.

In 2009, the promulgation of US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) tobacco regulation focused attention on cigarette flavor additives. The tobacco industry had prepared for this eventuality by initiating a research program focusing on additive toxicity. The objective of this study was to analyze Philip Morris' Project MIX as a case study of tobacco industry scientific research being positioned strategically to prevent anticipated tobacco control regulations. We analyzed previously secret tobacco industry documents to identify internal strategies for research on cigarette additives and reanalyzed tobacco industry peer-reviewed published results of this research. We focused on the key group of studies conducted by Phillip Morris in a coordinated effort known as \"Project MIX.\" Documents showed that Project MIX subsumed the study of various combinations of 333 cigarette additives. In addition to multiple internal reports, this work also led to four peer-reviewed publications (published in 2001). These papers concluded that there was no evidence of substantial toxicity attributable to the cigarette additives studied. Internal documents revealed post hoc changes in analytical protocols after initial statistical findings indicated an additive-associated increase in cigarette toxicity as well as increased total particulate matter (TPM) concentrations in additive-modified cigarette smoke. By expressing the data adjusted by TPM concentration, the published papers obscured this underlying toxicity and particulate increase. The animal toxicology results were based on a small number of rats in each experiment, raising the possibility that the failure to detect statistically significant changes in the end points was due to underpowering the experiments rather than lack of a real effect. The case study of Project MIX shows tobacco industry scientific research on the use of cigarette additives cannot be taken at face value. The results demonstrate that toxins in cigarette smoke increase substantially when additives are put in cigarettes, including the level of TPM. In particular, regulatory authorities, including the FDA and similar agencies elsewhere, could use the Project MIX data to eliminate the use of these 333 additives (including menthol) from cigarettes.

Out of the fear of dying, Anna Ivanovona asks Yurii Zhivago about consciousness and the experience of death. He responds, \"Your consciousness is you in others; you have always been in others and you will remain in others.\" Since consciousness does not become extinct, there is no death in this sense and, hence, nothing to fear. Ivanovona is comforted by these remarks, but what do they mean? Can we make sense of them? Possible interpretations are mentioned, and I discuss Zhivago's argument in terms of Buddhist and modern philosophy. I conclude that it is best treated metaphorically rather than literally and that the Buddhist reading is the best interpretation.

An argument is made for Leibniz as our first modern food philosopher. This is based on his theory of cognition or perception and culinary examples he used in the New Essays on Human Understanding. This view is contrasted with Locke and Hume’s accounts of perception. Their atomistic approach proves to be woefully inadequate for food products like sauces, whereas Leibniz’s view gives us an account of them. All agree that food products like sauces are complex ideas, but Locke and Hume try to argue that they are made up of simple ideas or impressions that are clear and distinct. “Simple” for Leibniz is an abstraction, and perceptions cannot be separated out from ideas, so complexity is more easily achieved in his scheme of things. In the end, he has a more adequate view of food products.

\"Tortured by a longing for fame, wasting his days in argument, believing in countless ridiculous ideas, in systems, in criticisms, in the importance of the codification or reform of art, he [Pellerin] had reached the age of fifty without producing anything but sketches\" (SE, p. 48). Another distraction is his servicing politics with art: glorifying the Revolution with a painting entitled The Genius of the Revolution (SE, p. 96), or another painting that \"showed the Republic, or Progress, or Civilization, in the form of Christ driving a locomotive through a virgin forest.

What is the number of tastes or flavors we have? Is it five, as most Chinese believe? None, as the ancient Taoists asserted? Four, as Western science traditionally claims? Recently, umami has been added to the traditional four: sweet, sour, salty, and bitter (the Chinese added another: spicy or pungent). Aristotle and Raghavan Iyer (of India) thought there were seven components of taste: sweet, sour, salty, bitter, astringent, pungent, and harsh. In 2001 Gary Kunz and Peter Kaminsky argued for fourteen in their book. Not to be outdone, Jean Anthelme Brillat- Savarin thought the number of tastes is infinite, because each one is unique. Some recent studies by Richard Mattes on rats show that fats do have taste and can be chemically detected in their blood, so we may be adding a sixth component to the scientific perspective: fat. The number of elements continues to expand with the development of analysis and experimentation of the gustatory experience. Many of these elements are shared by the world cuisines that tell us something about human nature or constitution.

What are the historical origins of aesthetic education? One of these comes from the eighteenth century. This became an important theme in a novel of the time. In the midst of Julie and those who were close to her, Jean-Jacques Rousseau in his epistolary novel, Julie, or the New Heloise: Letters of Two Lovers who Live in a small Town at the Foot of the Alps (1761), develops a philosophical position he labels \"the epicureanism of reason,\" as opposed to an epicureanism of the senses whose advocates he calls \"vulgar epicureans.\" The hallmarks of his epicureanism are abstainment, moderation, and simplicity. These three features are examined and abstainment is found to be the most controversial in regard to taste. Rousseau attacks the food practices of the vulgar epicureans–those who practiced the urban, Parisian cuisine and he applauds the country life and its cuisine. Widely read at the time, the novel made European culture self-conscious and forced it to pay attention to aspects of living that had gone unnoticed or underappreciated, including taste and food. Through the voices of Julie and her tutor turned lover, Saint Preux, they provide a lively critique of French (and Swiss) society and its values.

A look at Danto’s many discussions of the end of art and its meaning. Also examined is Hegel’s idea of the end of art and his use of the dialectic to explain it. Both philosophers sought the meaning of art in the object or artwork–more so for Danto, because he thinks the object is a material one that would exclude conceptual artists’ thought experiments, which are impossible to represent or materialize. So conceptual art truly signals the end of art in that there are no other boundaries to be scaled or conquered. As Hegel put it: \"Thought and reflection have spread their wings above fine art.\"

Both John Dewey and Martin Heidegger thought that art's audience had to take a detour in order to appreciate or understand a work of art. They wrote about this around the same time (mid-1930s) and independently of one another, so this similar circumstance in the history of aesthetics is unusual since they come from very different philosophical traditions. What was it about the climate of the times that led them to such an idea? Is it still viable today? Both philosophers thought that art's audience is not in a position to immediately appreciate works of art--that one is missing something for a direct appreciation or apprehension--so one must take a detour. Why the detours and what are they? Are the detours similar? And are Dewey and Heidegger right about this? In this essay, the author attempts to answer these questions. The author first provides a definition of \"detour\" and discusses how Dewey and Heidegger thought about detour. (Contains 14 notes.)