Frances to Chris... On utility in art and science, if a utile instrumental condition, or the absence and presence of a utility, is the sure way that art is found to be different from or similar to science, then the best of art would be useless and the best of science would be useful. It may be of course that good science need not have any applied use, and especially formal science that need only be pure and exact and precise and certain. On feeling in art and in science, the feeling about the object to be good must eventually be a reasonable feeling, and in any event will necessarily be fallible. On value in art and science, for the pragmatist any value of an object in satisfaction of a need is determined merely by the "conceivable" consequences conceived of the object, be the conceivable effects formal or practical or instrumental. On reality, if any object is sensed, then it is a seeming fact and is also real to sense in mind; and if it is not sensed, then it may exist as a fact, but it would not be real; so that reality is a subjective mental construct; therefore it would seem that Sullivan reflects Peirce and pragmatism on this issue.
Chris wrote... Here is Louis Sullivan's take on "the feeling of what happens"... "All real values are subjective; all objective values are unreal; they dissolve under analysis into subjective value after subjective value, and the residuum, if ever we reach it, is not what man made but what nature gave: and what nature gives is never objective - it resolves itself step by step , remove after remove, into the infinite creative mind" (from Kindergarten Chats, Chapter 8, "Values") So, for Sullivan, judgment is a "song of myself" -- which would not necessarily exclude skeptical doubt - but could hardly be based upon it. Regarding art and science, Sullivan would probably agree with William that "the former is not possible without the latter and vice-versa" -- and yet still, his emphasis on the subjective would have made him a very poor scientist, just as the pragmatist (as defined by Frances) will never have anything of value to contribute to the arts. (except, perhaps, to market it) William wrote... Several years ago, Antonio Damasio wrote a whole book on this: The Feeling of What Happens. Others have added to the thesis through extended clinical research. By dividing art as a matter of feeling and instinct from science as a matter of rationality, Frances misses the measured evidence that the former is not possible without the latter and vice-versa. Frances wrote... For the pragmatist, all judgement is critical and is fundamentally based on skeptical doubt, but eventually may lead to fallible belief.
