Let me begin with an admission, before I ask a very minor question:I have no knowledge of cognitive science, or neurology, or any brain science, so any speculation I would like to make would be rather wild. And I do not wish to make any silly claims.
But I wonder nonetheless: even if the natural sciences can successfully explain why certain perceptual patterns elicit certain kinds of responses in human beings, even if such a scientific study can, as it were, identify the conditions of possibility for art, and aesthetic responses, doesn't that merely provide a framework for worrying about aesthetics, rather than actually doing aesthetics? If science gives us the bedrock of "ises," how are we to move "up" to the normative concerns that are the forests of aesthetics. Isn't science a little too deep for what interests us? On Wed, Aug 6, 2008 at 5:12 PM, Michael Brady <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>wrote: > William: > > It's not a bad thing that aesthetics has grown up to occupy a significant >> corner of the cognitive sciences (all of them) and cultural studies. It's a >> good thing. Beauty still has a place, too. What we used to call art is >> either homeless or wonderfully free, take your pick. Me and many others are >> still painting anyway simply as another way to examine and symbolize >> experience in the world. We painters recognize the constraints of culture >> and cognitive patterns, as far as they go -- so far. But the pathways >> ahead in those areas are so exciting, so filled with adventure and promise, >> so fresh and unsullied by convention, I can scarcely imagine any really >> smart person not plunging ahead, especially artists, and certainly painters >> who love to look at everything as equally fascinating. >> > > Does it matter in which disciplines aesthetics is studied, if it's studied > thoroughly and well? Planetary orbits, or rather, their celestial paths > across the heavenly firmament, were originally located in the domain of > religious teachings, or at least governance. But they were transferred to > other spheres--nonmusical, as it happened--a few centuries back. Similarly, > the medical arts. > > As for William's earlier remark about studying aesthetics: > > They are necessary forms of responsive human endeavor but if we really >> want to know about feelings, emotions, reflectivity, and preferences for >> ordering information, we need to pursue neurology first, and cultural >> patterns second. >> > > I think this is one of those examples of reciprocal relationships that > provide a definition or context--or at least limit--for the other. Neurology > cannot exist separately from individual neurological events, and many of > them are so-called aesthetic events. And similarly, cultural patterns do not > exist separately from the discrete items in those patterns. I'm not actually > disputing William's assertion, but just clarifying the fact that the workers > in the aesthetic vineyards might think they're harvesting fruits for an > aesthetic wine, without realizing their juice is being trafficked in the > Cultural Studies store or Bon Wit and Teller. > > Aesthetics does not exist anymore. it has been absorbed into bigger, more >> revealing inquiries. >> > > See above. There is still a worthy pursuit of aesthetics, but despite the > abundance of sympatico souls and interested pursuers of aesthetic objects, > the ramifications of the study of aesthetics tend to ramify somewhere else, > namely as William points out, in neurology or psychology, or as Saul > remarked, in artificial intelligence. > > The resistance to studying aesthetics under the rubric of the cognitive > sciences arises, I suspect, from an underlying fear that if aesthetics is > susceptible to scientific description, and especially to encoding in > software, human autonomy loses. The ineffable quality, the je-ne-sais-quoi, > the indescribable essence of being human becomes untethered and is reduced > to data. Or at least, "genuine" aesthetics will be so very closely emulated > that "cognitive aesthetics" will reach the point of eradicating the > difference. That's one prospect of such a scientific--and thence > technological--study of aesthetics. > > We already have face-recognition software that can scan large crowds and > identify individuals in it (a feat that astonished me when I first heard > about it several years ago). How much further to developing algorithms of > facial beauty? and then pictorial beauty? But beyond that, how much further > is it to the kinds of inventive leaps humans make in finding relationships > between separate things? That, I believe, is the big worry: loss of humanity > and our uniqueness. > > They're cloning creatures right now, and they're fiddling with primordial > chemical soup ingredients, looking for a sequence in which molecules become > amino acids and, ta da, living things. > > The heliocentric theory shook up human self-opinion in the 17th century, > and Lyell did it with terrestrial time in the 19th century, and Darwin with > evolution, etc. Cognitive studies of human feelings, in this case aesthetic > feelings, can be put into a frame of artificial intelligence, another > assault on our self-opinion. > > | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | > Michael Brady > [EMAIL PROTECTED]
