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It isn‘t “religious mumbo jumbo”. I didn’t even mention religion. Information encoded using multiple senses will form different and more lasting memories for mo

It isn‘t “religious mumbo jumbo”. I didn’t even mention religion. Information encoded using multiple senses will form different and more lasting memories for most humans. I think you managed to agree with what I wrote and dismiss it at the same time.

b450 5y ago
In a past life in philosophy, a professor of mine worked in aesthetics, and specifically wrote on the significance of genuineness or authenticity, and its special connection to the sense of touch. I don't remember it well but your remarks reminded me of it. Here is a review which summarizes it: <https://ndpr.nd.edu/reviews/things-in-touch-with-the-past/ https://ndpr.nd.edu/reviews/things-in-touch-with-the-past/> An excerpt: > Touch is often practically impossible for ordinary viewers of many genuine specimens of very valuable things, such as a Gutenberg Bible or Michelangelo's David. Protected as they often are by glass encasings, barriers and surveillance technology, these objects are for the most part currently only sensorily accessible through vision. > However, Korsmeyer rejoins, the sense of touch is still at work given the viewers' physical closeness to these objects and the subsequent in-principle possibility of touching them. Korsmeyer's connection between touch and genuineness explicitly resonates with recent claims about the role of contagion in experiences of the authentic. Cognitive scientists Paul Bloom and George Newman, among others, have argued that our valuing authenticity in objects is explained by our implicitly accepting a magical law of contagion (see, e.g., Newman and Bloom 2012). According to such a law, desirable or odious qualities can be transmitted by contact. So, for example, the value that we attribute to the original David kept in the Gallery of the Academy of Florence (and that we do not attribute to the 20th century copy currently visible in the Piazza della Signoria) is explained by the possibility of touching an object that Michelangelo himself touched. Korsmeyer refers to this feature of our implicit reasoning patterns as 'the transitivity of touch'.

b450 5y ago

In a past life in philosophy, a professor of mine worked in aesthetics, and specifically wrote on the significance of genuineness or authenticity, and its special connection to the sense of touch. I don't remember it well but your remarks reminded me of it. Here is a review which summarizes it: <https://ndpr.nd.edu/reviews/things-in-touch-with-the-past/ https://ndpr.nd.edu/reviews/things-in-touch-with-the-past/> An excerpt: > Touch is often practically impossible for ordinary viewers of many genuine specimens of very valuable things, such as a Gutenberg Bible or Michelangelo's David. Protected as they often are by glass encasings, barriers and surveillance technology, these objects are for the most part currently only sensorily accessible through vision. > However, Korsmeyer rejoins, the sense of touch is still at work given the viewers' physical closeness to these objects and the subsequent in-principle possibility of touching them. Korsmeyer's connection between touch and genuineness explicitly resonates with recent claims about the role of contagion in experiences of the authentic. Cognitive scientists Paul Bloom and George Newman, among others, have argued that our valuing authenticity in objects is explained by our implicitly accepting a magical law of contagion (see, e.g., Newman and Bloom 2012). According to such a law, desirable or odious qualities can be transmitted by contact. So, for example, the value that we attribute to the original David kept in the Gallery of the Academy of Florence (and that we do not attribute to the 20th century copy currently visible in the Piazza della Signoria) is explained by the possibility of touching an object that Michelangelo himself touched. Korsmeyer refers to this feature of our implicit reasoning patterns as 'the transitivity of touch'.