"lack of awareness of one's aesthetic response does not mean that the
object did not evoke any response;"
Michael: if the experiencer is unconscious/lacks awareness of an aesthetic
response, how does someone else know that the experiencer had the
experience? From studying others' responses to a stimulus/art work, one
might be led to assume a response but how would anyone know if the
experiencer fails to report it. Or, could you know something about my
experience that I don't know? Well, OK, brain imaging studies aside.
Point 2: It doesn't trouble me, but I think we're meanng different things by
aesthetic. I might refer to what you refer to as simply a response - I don't
get the aesthetic part in your sense.
Geoff C
From: Michael Brady <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Reply-To: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Expertise and aesthetic experience
Date: Sat, 11 Oct 2008 16:46:54 -0400
On Oct 11, 2008, at 4:00 PM, GEOFF CREALOCK wrote:
Some of us do agree that reading (whatever) is unlikely to evoke an
aesthetic experience. Or, to be more specific, reading criticism. Reading
a poem, novel might be different.
Seeing a sunset (say) can provide an intense experience. However, I would
not consider it artistic (no human hand involved in producing it) but
possibly aesthetic. Would others agree
I respond to all writing in some degree in an aesthetic way. Writing is
representation in a two-stage way, namely, first from ideation in the
writer's noggin to mental words, and then to written words. The reader
experiences these two stages in reverse order.
Representation entails one essential aspect, viz., the representation
(picture, mental ideation, word) is not the thing represented. They are
two distinctly different entities, and that fact implies a corollary. The
representation cannot fully capture or manifest, depict or portray the
thing represented. It's less than the referent. As such, the maker of the
representation (speaker, writer, painter, etc.), chooses the degree and
mode of abbreviating the referent. The maker arbitrarily declares that all
of X in the referent is contained in X' in the representation. The
representation is, in fact, a map to the referent.
The long and short of this is that the representation stands independently
and can be apprehended as a thing in itself. The very components of a
representation can be appreciated for themselves as aesthetic objects.
The critic's words provoke aesthetic reactions. I suppose for many, the
provocation and response occur well below the limbic horizon, until
perhaps the writer turns a particular vivid phrase.
Why do some political speakers so catch the public's attention? I'm
thinking of Kennedy, Clinton, and Obama, mainly, and perhaps Reagan. Throw
in Cuomo, a few others, maybe? Because the aesthetic properties of their
speeches were so overabundant and evident. Think of the clumsy and
plodding speakers (almost all the rest) and note their lack of the
theatrical *and* textual achievements of the best. Their speeches also
have an "aesthetic experience": it's called dreary.
But beyond delivery and presentation, the words and the way they are
written are themselves aesthetic. Turgid writing is "aesthetic" too,
aesthetically bad, whether it's in a novel or an art criticism essay.
Sensate objects evoke aesthetic responses ("aesthetic experience" tends to
sound too passive: "I was walking down the street and, like, an aesthetic
experience happened to me, I dunno how!"), and they are actively engaged
by us. We look or listen to the thing out there, and then we engage our
mental and physical awareness (which may occur almost instantaneously).
I believe that "aesthetic experience" (misnamed as it is) points to an
action on the perceiver's part independent of the "art status" of the
stimulus. I believe that "art" designates a type of representational human
artifact that does not depend on exact and specific external correlation
and truthfulness. A WOA is completely free of the necessity to be
truthful. In other words, "art" does not designate a threshold degree of
quality in a thing, but its manner of representation and expectation of
verification.
Thus: anything can be experienced aesthetically; lack of awareness of
one's aesthetic response does not mean that the object did not evoke any
response; nonfiction writing in itself can be aesthetcially pleasing; and
the designating something by the term "art" does not depend on its
"aesthetic properties," which it and everything else has.
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Michael Brady
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
