Frances to William and others... The broad class of members called "aesthetic objects" may be a useful alternate way to label those "aesthetic objects" of (1) nature and of (2) culture, that are thus either not art in nature and culture, or that are art in culture. While nonart or unart or anart may each for example be admittedly a class of members that strictly cannot be art, they and art itself can each be held as a class of members that categorically can be kinds of "aesthetic objects" because "aesthetic objects" would contain both (1) objects of nature and (2) objects of culture to include those objects of human societies like religion and art.
The segregation of "aesthetic" concerns from "artistic" concerns of course begs for an explanation of the differentia between them. One of the thorns here however is that formal "aesthetic properties" must be held discovered in and applied to all existent phenomenal objects, whether they are ordinary "nonaesthetic objects" or extraordinary "aesthetic objects" or extraordinary objects of ethics and logics. The further issue to address is just exactly what unique action makes an extraordinary "aesthetic object" into an extraordinary "artistic object" which is an important point to ponder, because that action may be mainly of form or content or purpose or context or function or owner or review or response or product or artist and so on, with each source of action positing its own kind of thorns. My long standing position is that what may be needed to untangle this snarl of twine is a set of new scholarly activities to address these diverse issues. My thought here turns to say a study of intrinsic quality like beauty called callics, and a study of ideal forms and goals called aesthetics, and a study of bodily motion called somaesthetics, and a study of art called artistics, and a study of phenomena called callaesthetics, and all of them falling under a wide umbrella called say the aesthenae of the whole world. The pragmatist stance is that aesthetics is a normative method and system of good thought that prepares for ethics and contributes to logics, with the goal of seeking or finding what ought to be a combine of true knowledge. Such a formal science of general philosophy as aesthetics establishes that there can indeed be found by thinkers such real things as goodness and goalness and ideal forms with pure properties like continuity, and that things evolve by inclined dispositions and give of themselves freely for its own sake. It clearly should not be that difficult to apply these aesthetic tenets to the field and study of art, or to the emerging cognitive sciences for that matter. William wrote... The problem with nonart or unart or anart is that each term specifies a class of one or more potential objects or situations that categorically cannot be art. But the situation now is that anything at all can be art which of course means that nothing is categorically excluded, and nothing is categorically included, again, irrespective of aesthetics. I am inclined to say that for myself, the aesthetic intuition is always present with what I'd consider art, even though I know it may not be necessary. It's like saying I prefer sugar (aesthetic) with my coffee (art). I'm entitled, too, to say that the only things I will consider art are paintings of a certain kind and they must provide that involuntary aesthetic feeling. I say that only to show that any restrictions one chooses subjectively are fine even though they cannot be demonstrated objectively except by some force or rule or required standard (as was the case with the 19C Salon exhibition juries that held power over artists' careers and status).
