The a,e is 'an emotion' one feels, positive or negative, high or low/
good or
bad when one perceives anything. It does not have to be art/music/words
or the sunset or even one's belly button. It's an emotion the is
sometimes
shared by individuals or groups of like minded others.
Then there is 'us' the creating people keep on being themselves, but
curious
what the Real philosophers have been up to.
mando
On Jun 21, 2008, at 8:52 AM, Chris Miller wrote:
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
