William Walker Conlin writes:
"I must admit that it concerns me to see discussion of a so-called
"aesthetic experience". How can this experience be differentiated from other
descriptions of bliss or relief?"
I touched on this in my earlier posting to Artsy6. I claim palatal
experiences seem to me to be of a different genus from aural experiences. The
"bliss" of an orgasm seems to me generically different from the "bliss" I feel
from Beethoven's Ninth.
This is not to insist I'm convinced there is a total difference in kind
between aesthetic blisses and other blisses not usually thought of as
aesthetic. In track and field, for example, consider this scenario. My very
good
friend, whom I believe to be the best of the twelve runners in the mile race,
is
tripped by another runner at the end of the first lap (of the four-lap
race). He tumbles onto the track. By the time he gets up, he's a good thirty
yards behind everyone else. But he starts chasing them. At the end of the
third lap, he at last catches the eleventh-place runner. As they all race
across the final back stretch, my friend is visibly moving up, passing one
runner
after another. As they make the final turn and head into the home stretch,
he is in fourth place, with only about a hundred yards to go. But he
displays a tremendous kick, he sprints, he catches the third guy, he catches
the
second, and finally, five yards from the end, he catches and passes the
leader, he wins, and then tumbles to the track again, this time in exhaustion -
and happiness.
I've seen such a race, and I'm not sure how much the bliss, for me as a
spectator, is different from certain memorable endings I've been exposed to in
theater and at the movies.
Yes, I'm aware that Ducasse and others would claim the experience from the
story-element in a theater (and by extension, at a sporting event) is always
vicarious and never aesthetic. I don't readily accept that dismissal. I can
imagine Ducasse (a very good man, but perhaps not in aesthetics) similarly
dismissing the blazingly triumphant and tumultuously satisfying endings of
some terrific symphonies and operas because they are in some way what he
called "vicarious". Playwrights, screenwriters, novelists have spent long hours
shaping and reshaping their work. All those works occasion an experience in
the audience. Ducasse would claim they're all "vicarious". And yet some
occasion a.e.'s and some don't. One of my favorite tv series is I SURVIVED (Not
"I SURVIVED...AND BEYOND.) I regularly writhe with the victims. But I seldom
confuse that experience with an aesthetic one. (Though sometimes I'm given
pause by a victim's ability to summon up extremely effective details and
shapes to their narratives.)
Conlin goes on to write:
"There is nothing about an experience that has an ontic quality of
"artness"."
I would never suggest my EXPERIENCE has "artness". Indeed, I'd never even
ascribe that alleged quality to any object or event that occasioned my a.e.
Conger is right in denying that quality is a mind-independent entity.
Over the years on this forum, I've said that no object or event has an absolute
ontic status as "art", so the search for a "definition of art" is folly.
But I can still ask, "What is going on when I have an a.e.? Why does that
object or event occasion it?"
Conlin:
"It's a slippery slope, to say that this experience is somehow different
from other experiences of strong emotion. If we get caught up in descriptions
of experiences and emotions we will end up trying to define consciousness."
Agreed, it's a slippery slope. But slippery slopes also go upward. It's
we who do the slipping, not the slope.
As for Dennett, I'll simply say his position is different from mine, and
I'll characterize mine only by saying it's closer to that of Chalmers et al.
(Though I differ from him too.) I can't rid my mind of the conviction that
consciousness is a fundamentally different sort of entity from any material
thing. I certainly don't claim there's no connection, but I'm with the guy in
the hospital who, shown a scan of a pulsing neural plexus in his brain and
told, "That's your pain", answers, "Like hell that stuff is my pain."
