In a message dated 4/10/08 10:03:14 AM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
"We are fated to be fuzzy." I agree with that, but we should add, "to a
degree". Which is to say 'fuzzy' is fuzzy. Which, further, is to confess I am
fuzzy
when I call something "fuzzy" and fail to add that phrase.
> I agree with Cheerskep that the word taste is too
> vague, at least in how it's being used here. Although
> I think Miller may be right in saying it's a
> subjective term and therefore has no transferable
> meaning. It may be contained in what the cognitive
> scientists call qualia, the subjective associations to
> our personal histories. In that sense symbols are
> public, like images and words. Qualia is associative,
> individual, not transferable except in metaphorical
> translation -- as in what it's like to feel one's
> response to symbols. And here is where taste may
> become social by means of metaphor that symbolizes
> --but can't directly convey -- qualia. Once
> socialized by means of metaphor qualia may be regarded
> as public taste (as in the widely expressed taste for
> virtuosic skill). Nevertheless, actual qualia
> remains personal, conscious but not transferable. So
> perhaps we can speak of a public, metaphorical "as if"
> qualia and a personal "as is" qualia.
>
"Qualia" have been subject to all sorts of different philosophical
"interpretation" and dispute. Just go to 'qualia' on Google and see the
Wikipedia entry.
But most of the commentators seem to have a narrower notion of qualia than
y
ou convey here. Which is okay because the notions are all fuzzy -- to a
degree! Still, they largely tend to think of qualia as -- if this conveys it
--
the immediate raw conscious "experience", like, say, your experience of red.
In
other words the raw consciousness stirred via the five senses. Call them
primary sensations.
We all know the sensations of red, heat, itching, skunk-smell,
doorbell-sound. But I want to consider the sui-generis experience-character of
some other
feelings -- like fear, exhilaration, sleepiness, love, sexual longing,
excitement as when our team scores the winning touchdown. Call these
involuntary
experiences "secondary" sensations.
What I hope to get back to on the forum is this: Is the feeling we generally
call an "aesthetic experience" as "real" and sui generis a secondary sensation
as fear or anger?
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