William writes:
> But I say everything has it (radiance) and one needs
> to be sensitive to it.
>
Two points. First: If everything has it, then having it distinguishes an
object not at all. I had the impression you were saying something about its
being
the element that distinguishes what you'd call "art" from "non-art".
The second point I've already made, and you ignore it: If indeed you do think
it's the "radiance" in an object that distinguishes an object as "art", how
come other sophisticated folk of respectable sensibility don't see it when you
do? Are you the optimal, last-appeal judge?
William goes on:
> Since beauty is a matter of description and not
> definition, I agree that everyone could indeed have
> different descriptions.
>
You say:
"I'm insisting that description is not
definition and descriptions are infinite in the sense
that nothing can really be fully described.
Descriptions are metaphors, and open to modification,
debate, judgment, improvement, etc., in soliciting
consensus."
I'm still not sure what you have in mind with "describe", but I sense you
continue to think "beauty" IS. I'd say that different people -- automotive
engineers, artists, housewives, farmers -- would "describe" a particular Rolls
Royce
differently. Does this usage of 'describe' seem based on the same notion you
have in mind with the word?
If it is, then I repeat you apparently think "beauty" is a mind-independent
object of some kind, and, no matter how people describe it, it "IS" what it it
"IS", just like the mind-independent Rolls Royce. I could summon an
explanation of what I have in mind when I say the Rolls Royce "is", but it'd be
entirely in terms of Peircean anticipated future experience, where by
'experience'
I'd mean sense data I'd take in if I went into my neighbor's garage: I'd
experience this visual data, that smell; if I knocked on it I'd feel this; if I
grabbed that handle I "see" then what I term a 'door' would open etc. I'd
believe
you could do the same. If I claimed there IS a Rolls Royce in my neighbor's
garage, but we went in there and neither of us could do any of those "sensual"
things, I'd have to admit I was wrong: There IS no car there. Because the
occasion for those sensations for both of us is all I could have in mind in
saying
there IS a Rolls Royce there.
I honestly have no idea what you have in mind when you talk about that object
you believe "exists", 'beauty'.
You say:
>
> You are committed to a mechanical, literal,
> materialist objectivity in a situation re art and
> beauty, etc., as concepts (however open-ended) that
> are not subject to such measurements.
>
This I know: There is a "material" painting on the wall in my living room.
When I contemplate it, I see, smell, can touch -- just like the Rolls Royce --
and experience certain feelings I cherish. Now, either your "beauty" is a
mind-independent object like that physical painting and that car, or it is
solely
notional, and therefore idiosyncratically different in each mind.
I claim it's totally notional, and your apparent belief that it's
non-material but still a mind-independent object is as misguided as your
apparent belief
in mind-independent "concepts" --or, more to the point, "deliciousness".
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