I like Cheerskep's focus on what is undeniable: "An a.e. is a sensation, a personal experience as undeniable as a jolt of fear"
But it is also undeniable that sometimes the word 'art' (or something like it) must be used in today's world -- when deliberations are conducted concerning what or who should go where. When Cheerskep is assembling his personal collection of prints and drawings - no -- all that he needs to query is his personal sensation. (and here, Cheerskep is in the same position as the great princes who patronized the arts in the distant past) But when the art museum's acquisition committee -- or the personnel committee of an art department -- has a meeting -- it must be assumed that something like "important art" exists outside the personal sensations of any one person. You may call it a fiction -- but it's necessity in those situations is undeniable (even if the situations themselves may soon disappear) Derek asks: "How do you know these 'a.e.'s' are (just?) sensations?" This was in response to my saying: "An a.e. is a sensation, a personal experience as undeniable as a jolt of fear, tactile pleasure, my experience with vanilla ice cream, or with the color-sensation occasioned by encountering a material object like an apple." In other words, during an "aesthetic experience" the "experience" I am pointing at is what takes place in the aware mind; it is the conscious feeling within occasioned by the observation/contemplation of certain objects and events. A key word in my description of my notion of a.e. is 'undeniable'. A sensation is undeniably taking place. When it occurs, it is, of course, undeniable only to the person doing the experiencing, but to him it is certainly that. The word 'experience' is certainly used in other ways. Sometimes we use it with no reference to what one is aware of. "He experienced a blow to the head that put him in a coma for four months." The notion behind this use of 'experience' is different from the "awareness" notion of experience in, "He experienced great pain during and after the accident." I concede there may be bodily changes -- an increase in heart rate -- occasioned by the observation, and it's a nice question what causal connection there may be between the mental and the cardiac event. (William James suggested we don't run because we are afraid -- we are afraid because we run.) Derek asks further: "And even if these 'a.e's' were just 'sensations' would they exist independently of consciousness? (So might they not also depend on the 'out there' somehow?)" No. In my view, conscious experience and, say, the concurrent neural activity are different entities. If I am experiencing pain, and a doctor shows me, on some sort of electronic scope, a pulsing nerve in my brain, and he says, "That's your pain," I would demur. If Derek takes nerves in the brain to be "out there", then yes, I believe consciousness is somehow "dependent" on them, but not in a way that is pertinent to anything I've said about a.e.'s. If by "out there" he means in the external, mind-independent world (where by 'mind' I mean the combination of consciousness and any correlative neural role), and he's asking if my conscious experience can exist outside my head the way, say, the Plymouth Rock exists outside my head, then again my answer is no. My consciousness cannot exist outside my consciousness. Derek goes on: "Speaking personally I am not aware of anything equivalent to a 'tactile pleasure' when I look at a Goya painting or listen to Mozart for example. Indeed it is nothing like stroking a cat, for example." It almost always gives me humbling pause when I see what I've written fails to "communicate" serviceably. When I wrote, "An a.e. is a sensation, a personal experience as undeniable as a jolt of fear, tactile pleasure, my experience with vanilla ice cream, or" a visual sense datum like red, I did not mean an a.e. tastes like vanilla ice cream. I meant that just as fear, ecstasy, exultancy in victory, tastes, smells, and tactile pleasures and pains are undeniable moments of consciousness, so is an a.e. A logician might put it this way: An aesthetic experience and a tactile experience are alike in that they are both distinct classes of consciousness; but the two classes have different members characterized by different attributes. I like the comparison of a jolt of fear with an a.e., because they both are emotional experiences within, occasioned by observing something "out there". In that way they are alike. But they are unlike in the attributes of the specific experiences. We'd also agree sudden fright is different from the sudden elation afforded by a joke we find funny, but they are alike in that both are feelings occasioned by an observation. Two caveats: When I say "I mean", what I have in mind is, "Here is the notion I am trying to convey." This notion of "to mean" stipulates an intention to communicate as essential to a person's trying "to mean". Thus we can reasonably say people mean, but words don't. Words do not intend ever -- only the wordsmith does. I talk about the aesthetic experience a good deal in this posting, but I do it with the limited understanding betrayed by anyone who finds himself confined to defining by ostension -- i.e. by pointing. E.g. "the special, peculiar, cherishable experience when we contemplate, say, Mozart, Shakespeare, Van Gogh, Pavarotti, Allegra Kent, et al at their best are instances of what I call an 'aesthetic experience'." ____________________________________________________________ Need cash? 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