Self-Expression - Mitchell S. Green

We express ourselves through words, tone of voice, gestures, music, paint, dancing and other forms of art. Expression is an integral part of almost every human activity and of who we are. ‘Expression’ is also a concept at the heart of a great many areas in philosophy, e.g., philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, meta‐ethics and aesthetics. However, ‘expression’ has for too long been presupposed but not explained. It is therefore in dire need of systematic examination. Mitchell Green's Self‐Expression is in this respect a much needed book. Green develops and defends a view of self‐expression as a way of signalling and showing what is within. This account, he claims, promises to ‘shed light not only on problems within aesthetics, but also on issues in the philosophy of mind and language, linguistics, experimental psychology, and even the evolution of language’ such as ‘speaker meaning, speech acts, knowledge of other minds, implicature, the psychology and evolutionary biology of facial expression, empathy, qualia, and artistic expression’ (p. 4). In what follows I shall touch upon some of these topics

Art · Expression (computer science) · Computer Science · Embodied and Extended Cognition · Philosophy · Philosophy and Theoretical Science · Wittgensteinian philosophy and applications