Since Aristotle, touch has been found especially hard to define. One of the few unchallenged intuition about touch, however, is that tactile awareness entertains some especially close relationship with bodily awareness. This article considers the relation between touch and bodily awareness from two different perspectives: the body template theory and the body map theory. According to the former, touch is defined by the fact that tactile content matches proprioceptive content. We raise some objections against such a bodily definition of touch and suggest, as an alternative, to revive the proposal according to which touch is essentially a sense of pressure. According to the body map theory, tactile sensations are localized within the frame of reference provided by the mental representation of the space of the body. We argue that this approach of the location of bodily sensations fares better that the Local Sign theory that denies intrinsic spatiality to touch

When I report that I feel my legs crossed, there are two occurrences of the first person. The first occurrence refers to the subject of the proprioceptive experience (I feel), and it reveals the subjectivity of the bodily sensation (what it is like for me to have my legs crossed). The second occurrence of the first person refers to the limbs that feel being crossed (my legs), and it reveals what has been called the sense of bodily ownership, for want of a better name (the awareness of the legs that are crossed as my own). Whereas it is the former occurrence of the first person that has attracted most attention from philosophers, especially in relation to the epistemic property of immunity to error through misidentification relative to the first person (Shoemaker, 1968), my focus will be on the latter occurrence, and in particular on its experiential dimension. In a nutshell, does it feel different when I am aware that my legs are my own and when I am not? Here I will argue that there is a phenomenology of bodily ownership, but that it should not be conceived in terms of a feeling of myness. After considering several reductionist attempts, I will defend what I call the Bodyguard hypothesis, which spells out the phenomenology of bodily ownership in affective terms.

Appropriating and manipulating human body parts was an important component of the belief system throughout much of the world. In eastern North America, Mississippian trophy-taking behavior was predicated on beliefs that focused on human life forces believed to reside in body elements, especially the head and scalp. Archaeologists have generally neglected to apprehend the potent meanings of trophy-taking behavior as a component of indigenous belief systems. Trophy-taking has been traditionally viewed as grounded in competition over economic resources, intercommunity conflict, or the pursuit of personal status and political advancement. This essay explores how Mississippians engaged in trophy-taking behavior, including snaring life forces for religious purposes through raiding and warfare, especially mortuary programs and ritual performances that emphasized the spirit’s journey to the realm of the dead and the enduring cycle of life and death. This alternative approach embraces a multidisciplinary perspective that includes archaeology, bioarchaeology, ethnography, ethnohistory, iconography, mythology, and osteoarchaeology.

This paper argues that deathways are not first and foremost about social status, identitiy, cosmology, or other single master meanings. Drawing upon the anthropology of death, it argues that deathways are are above all about managing the social process of dying, in other words negotiating a multi-participant, protracted transition which satisfies multiple social needs. We therefore need to move from an "archaeology of death" to an "archaeology of dying".

This article aims to demonstrate the value of music education philosophy by applying characteristic philosophical procedures in an ordinary language and naturalist approach, supported by selected scientific research, to an important issue in music and music education: musical-emotional experiences. The first part considers the nature of listeners as holistic persons. The second part reviews research in contemporary music psychology. The third part examines the strengths and weaknesses of two prominent philosophical concepts of musical experience. Building on the first three parts of the article, the fourth part offers a provisional explanation of musical-emotional experiences. The fifth part explains some practical implications of our concept of musical emotions for music teaching and learning.

The following syllabus was used for an advanced course on Gender and Body in Jewish Literature, taught jointly with my spouse. We wanted to combine our interests in Jewish literature throughout the ages, as well as to question the definition of “Jewish texts.” For that purpose, we included Second Temple Jewish authors whose work was not canonized as part of the Jewish tradition, such as the writings of Philo, or the apocryphal Book of Judith. The most notable example in this context is probably the inclusion of selections from the epistles of Paul of Tarsus. Despite the inclusion of his epistles in the New Testament, he remains a Jew who lived before the destruction of the Second Temple. Similarly, our study of Jewish mysticism was not confined to the semi-canonized texts of the Zohar and related literature, but also the more esoteric Shiur Komah, part of the Hekhalot literature. Secular modern Hebrew literature and literature written by or dealing with Jews have long been recognized as Jewish literature, broadening the definition from the religious tradition to the ethnic group. In relation to that we also chose to include the film A Serious Man by the Coen Brothers and a song by Paul Simon, to further broaden the definition of “text.” The course was intentionally designed to avoid a chronological order or any bias of “canonic” vs. “non-canonic” or “religious” vs. “ethnic” definitions of Judaism. A chronological order might have given the wrong impression of an essentialized development, as well as become a repetition of the Introduction to Judaism course, designed by an historical paradigm. Instead, we organized the course according to three themes: Body, Gender, and Sexuality. While these topics overlapped throughout the entirety of the course, there is an appropriate sense of progression. We began with the ungendered body, dealing more abstractly with the tension between matter and spirit, then proceeded to various aspects of gender constructions, Jewish patriarchy, misogyny, and the thwarted masculinity of the Jewish body. We concluded with several issues pertaining to sex, some of which mirrored topics from the earlier selections, as in the issue of the relationship between sex and worship that evoked once more questions raised in the second class on God’s body. In addition to the syllabus, I attach here the timeline and three bibliographies we gave to the students. The timeline is intended to provide the historical framework that the course’s plan refuses to follow. The List of Sources for the syllabus provides full details of all materials used, for those who wish to seek them. Finally, the two bibliographies on the topic, provide further reading, as well as remind us all that the course barely scratched the surface of this fascinating issue.

A broad selection of Roman lead-glazed pottery dating from the first century ad through the fifth century ad was studied to establish locations of workshops and to address their technology of production. The ceramic bodies were analysed by ICP–AES. In addition, lead isotope analysis was undertaken on a selection of glazes. These findings suggested that there were several regions responsible for the production of lead-glazed ceramics in the western Roman world, including central Gaul, Italy and, probably, Serbia and Romania. Using the body compositions as a starting point, the glazing techniques employed by each of the potential workshops were examined using electron probe microanalysis. It was determined that there were two primary methods of glazing. The first method used lead oxide by itself applied to non-calcareous clay bodies, and the second method used a lead oxide-plus-quartz mixture applied to calcareous clay bodies. Based on these data for clay composition and glazing method, transfer of technology from the Hellenistic east to the western Roman world was proposed. Likewise, the inheritance of lead-glazing technology into late antiquity was established by making comparisons to lead-glazed ceramics dating to the seventh to ninth centuries from Italy, the Byzantine world and Tang Dynasty China.