Objects in the world are discrete, measurable, but meaning is an ever-changing stream of judgment, naming, and all the rest -- those impertinent "notions". Not even notions can be regarded as make-believe objects. They emerge and dissolve in a continuous flux of forming and reforming --to be grasped at by outstretched fingers of purposeful conciousness.
I think artworks are objects that symbolize that flow of 'notions" the continual play of associations that emerge, crystalize, become momentary "meanings" and then quickly dissolve to re-emerge endlessly in new ways. Our conscious is the witness to this. Or as some posit, our conscious is created by it for the purpose of witnessing it. That's why I claim ambiguity and continual referentiality and multiple association as central to experiencing art with the consequence of futility of seeking specific "meaning". This is where I depart from Cheerskep. While I agree that meaning is constructed from sense experience and is not inherent to anything objective, I don't think we can mentally constuct a meaning as if it had the discrete objecthood of things in the world. Meaning just keeps on flowing through consciousness, always changing. WC --- On Wed, 11/5/08, GEOFF CREALOCK <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > From: GEOFF CREALOCK <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Subject: Re: "Certainty" AND "ART" > To: [email protected] > Date: Wednesday, November 5, 2008, 10:35 PM > Cheerskep: (Since we seem to be onto this subject again): It > doesn't seem > much of a leap from words, or forms, lead to/engender > associations, to words > mean something. > Yes, I know, you still assert that our minds do the > meaning-finding, but in > everyday talk, most of act like, words, or smells of cats, > mean something. > Geoff C
