By a combination of defective wording of what I had in mind, and of letting myself too quickly use terms before pressing myself to get usefully clear notions for each of them, I've managed to mislead, and seemingly even offend and anger some members of our forum recently. I don't want to do that, so let me see if I can repair some of those results.
Please keep in mind I'm not trying to defend what I did say, so I hope the replies I evoke are not "You didn't say that." I'm here trying to get closer to what I should have said. It started, I think, with my reporting that in a book I wrote about the creating of a novel I remarked that, though I could teach some elements of the craft, I could not teach sensibility or imagination. And I added, because I believe it, that high intelligence has little correlation with sensibility and imagination. I made that last remark because I'd encountered a number of writers who felt unjustified despair about their prospects because their grades in school and their scores on "IQ" tests were mediocre. To convey what I had in mind with "high intelligence" I described a woman with summa-level performance in the whole range of testable aptitudes. I noted that among the not-testable gifts were sensibility, imagination and long-term memory. Kate wrote back to say that she doesn't think "high intelligence of itself means the person has either creativity or sensitivity. Mathematicians, for example, Kate has found to be, "Very good at problems, not imaginative and sensitive." She added: "And before you claim designing the solutions to problems is creative, it isn't creative compared to wading in the foggy wastes of inventing a great novel, where there is no if this then that, no else, nothing but speculation and supposition." Reacting to her warning, I wrote: "Don't worry -- I'd never say 'designing the solutions to problems is creative'. It's not creative in the sense interesting on this forum." Right there I blundered two or three times. One immediate response said: "But how would you know that? Are you surmising or just projecting? I find reading a well-written mathematics text or a technical explanation of maps or DNA or the kinetic forces acting on a moving automobile very engaging and often quite aesthetically pleasing." When I first read this, I interpreted the lister as saying I was wrong to believe forum members are never engaged by the design of solutions to problems of any kind, either on the forum or off. This was unintended by me, so I hurried to deny I believe it. I agreed that individuals on the forum have a wide range of interests in all sorts of "problem-solution designs" that, I was assuming, are irrelevant to aesthetics. But by then I'd dug myself even deeper by casually remarking that one might say great chess players solve problems of calculation, not of imagination. In general terms, my thinking was that there are problems in this world for which people in medicine, engineering, mathematics, metallurgy, accounting, games and other disciplines have "solution-designs" that can be extremely useful and interesting to them, but which are irrelevant to the concerns of aestheticians. But notice: I was already fooling myself by using the term 'problem-solution designs' with no clear idea for that in my mind. (I did the same thing later with 'intellect' and 'calculating'. Something I often complained about in other listers, I was now guilty of myself.) Then it finally dawned on me that some of the trouble lay in the ambiguity of the phrase "in the sense interesting on this forum". What I had in mind with that phrase was the brief asserted on the home page of the forum: Aesthetics-L "Art, Philosophy and Aesthetics": Aesthetics-l: "Art, Aesthetics, and Philosophy" is a discussion forum devoted to all genres of art, and related philosophy. Pertinence is strongly encouraged, but the format is intentionally informal. The forum is intended to be an arena where old ideas can be reexamined, and inchoate new ideas can be tried and developed under the challenge of a lively give-and-take among informed members. The membership is unusually apt for an aesthetics forum because it comprises not only philosophy scholars but many practicing artists. Behind that brief lay the conviction that some cogitations are irrelevant to aesthetics. En passant, many minor irrelevancies are fun to read about here. But in excess their insistent clutter has driven listers to quit this forum. You may recall that the wording on the home page was devised after the experience with a lister who repeatedly posted messages about his religious and political stances. (It did not help when he boasted that what he really liked to do was test a forum's tolerance, find its breaking point. He revealed with a tone of pride that he'd been kicked off several other forums in the past.) Kate's remark about mathematicians particularly resonated with me, because of how often I've heard actors, writers, dancers et al bemoan their deficiency in math. I concluded long ago that a deficiency in math was irrelevant to most "artistry". What went on in Van Gogh's head as he painted, and what went on in Godel's head as he pondered his incompleteness theorems of mathematics seem to me generically different. I also was pondering a recent episode in my own household. When it was discovered that one of our toilets wouldn't flush, the handyman was asked to come up. He examined the problem. He found that a small chain in the toilet tank had broken. He solved the problem: He replaced the chain. I figured this problem and the solution he designed were not pertinent to aesthetics. Then it abruptly came to me that the lister who mentioned his engagement with a well-written mathematics text or a technical explanation of maps or DNA or the kinetic forces acting on a moving automobile may well feel these topics, and the others I mentioned, ARE within the scope of this aesthetics forum. One lister remarked, "Maybe you just don't have the imagination to see how they are similar, or related, or even different manifestations of the same activity, namely, intellect." To the first part of that, I have no rejoinder. I'd be a fool to maintain I have the imagination for any challenge no matter how difficult. And there's no denying that there are some "art" genres in which, from a creator's point of view, I'm a dumbbell. I have to concede a study of such topics as those above may yield lessons of applicability in aesthetics that my limitations in experience and imagination have kept me from seeing. So I want to climb down from any stance that implies those topics don't belong on the forum, though I reserve the right to demur if, after having that applicability explained, I still don't see their aptness here. More to come about intellect, high intelligence, and sensibility.
