RE: Examining the theory

Tue, 23 Sep 2008 08:15:57 -0700

As to all experience being ultimately subjective: Yes. However, is there not some substantial difference between "The temperature today is 70 degrees F." and " Being in love is like floating on a cloud, being lost in the sky and feeling rapturous ..."? Wasn't it you who discriminated between primarily sense experience and statments of opinion: "Edward Albee wrote that play" vs. "That play is the most important drama of the 20th century and mirrors most marriages exactly". So, all experience is ultimately subjective but some experiences are more verifiable by others. It's always a matter of degree. All experiences being mediated by metaphor: I don't get that. "It's 70 degrees outside" is a pretty plain fact. "It's as hot as the kitchens of hell" is metaphorical (or should that be, a simile). Perhaps all experience may be conveyed (to an extent) by metaphor. Leonardo's statement's clarity: I guess we're different folks. I don't claim to understand EXACTLY what Leonardo meant by "improve". I do feel I understand some meaning from the statement. Maybe he recognized that his statement would be ultimately understood in the perceiver's own way and was OK with the perceiver defining "improvement" in his/her own terms. I feel I understand less of his explanation of aerial perspective. Perhaps that's OK, as I have no interest in investigating or translating the meaning, as I'm surely no graphic artist. I would agree that, as what we mean to convey is more emotional/affective/sublime, we may have a greater need to rely on, or to utilise, metaphor. Not all experience is so meaningful though. 


From: William Conger <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Reply-To: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: RE: Examining the theory
Date: Tue, 23 Sep 2008 07:40:21 -0700 (PDT)

Geoff Crealock wrote:

> Who are some of the artists I've read, writing about
> art? Leonardo da Vinci
> and Paul Klee are two examples. If reference is made to
> sense experiences, I
> do get it but when the references are to opinion-based or
> personal-experience-based events, I tend not to.
Are there any experiences that do not ultimately rest in subjective sense experience? Are there any experiences that are not related by means of metaphor?
If you can "get" Leonardo's explanation of, say aerial perspective, which is very declarative, what about his statement, "He is a poor student who does not improve upon his master"? I would agree that the latter statement is quite vague, particularly in not defining what he means by improve.
Does Leonardo's "improve" refer to art quality -- the truly mysterious -- or to explicating and demonstrating rules for art production? Since art quality is almost always -- certainly always in Leonardo's era -- conflated with production rules (like those prescribed for anatomic proportions, perspective, sfumato, etc.) how does one eliminate the mysterious, ineffable, unclear and non-sensible from the expository literalness of production rules? The two conditions are so interdependant that one must admit to some incomprehensible insensible element-- let's call it an information gap -- that must be filled with metaphor, something subjectively invented by the reader or perceiver.
What I'm driving at here is the idea that it's not just that "some" sensory experience forces us to rely on subjective, metaphorical substitution for that which is experienced but that ALL sensory experience requires subjective metaphorical substitution. Incidentally, This is where I agree with Cheerskep in his insisting on the function of language to be the search for some "serviceable" link enabling people to reasonably share otherwise very mismatched notions or ideas, meanings, and the like. He puts the empahsis on the literal IS, a presumed one to one equation between a wod and a referent. I put the emphasis on finding some common ground, as it were, between metaphorical expressions where the very nature of the metaphors is necessarily ineffable because our experiences are subjective and entangle reasoning with feeling. 
WC


> Requiring something inexpressible to be beyond my
> experience: I infer that
> you mean that I need or make something inexpressible to be
> beyond my
> experience. If we are dealing with the inexpressible or
> ineffable, we're
> dealing with things which are going to resist
> communication. I'm not aware
> of needing to impose some kind of meaning but I would leave
> room for not
> understanding all about myself.
I respond by claiming that you cannot help but impose meaning, a subjective metaphorical "as-if" substitution. I agree that this substitution may not be easily communicated or one may choose to not attempt communication for both syntactical and normative societal reasons. 
WC

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