W. Conger writes:
"I need to be instructed as to why Dennett's view excludes the
"aesthetic" experience since it is not raw experience -- or feeling --
as such that is aesthetic but experience and feeling imagined or
located in some metaphorical construct that for various cultural and
evolutionary reasons is called aesthetic."
My original concern is less about Dennett's position than about
my own trouble with categorizing experiences. As far as I know there is
no way to show how various peak experiences are physiologically
different. (unless you know of some?!)
This is not to say that cheerskep is wrong about knowing
personally the difference between various peak experiences. I'm only
saying that an outsider could never measure your reactions and say:
you're experiencing bliss type a based on symptoms x, y and z.
[email protected] says:
"I can say I've never been aware of confusing a palatal experience with
a sexual experience. Similarly, when I've had an "aesthetic
experience", I've been convinced this feeling was a genus distinctly
different from sexual or palatal."
The evolutionary reasons for sexual or palatal experiences
becoming so powerful is clear to me. But why would we have a similar
experience when viewing art or listening to music?
I think there are two reasons:
One: our brains are rigged for identifying familiar patterns and finding
meaning, we often Identify with that which we find most familiar.
Two: as we enter into an artistic event/experience we put away other
concerns and find ways to appreciate the moment, this removal of
stressful concerns and presence in the moment allows us transcend into a
more pleasurable state of appreciation.
This brings up a big question that is one of the reasons I
joined the forum:
Do I determine the quality of my experience by allowing myself
to be in the moment, or does the work have to be powerful enough to pull
me into a peak experience without my consent.
How do we gauge the quality of art when we base it on our own
ephemeral experiences?
enjoying the dialogue!
-WWC
I just want to clarify a few issues about Dennett.
[email protected]
"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." "
Dennett is a non-dualist as far as brainstuff and mindstuff are
concerned. I don't think he would say "this is your pain" he might go as
far to say that "this is a picture of your neural plexus when you
describe what you call pain."
[email protected]
"The trouble is that he seems to pass over the empathy issue too slickly."
You are correct, Dennett avoids the issues of empathy his
descriptions of affect are centered on the individual experience.
"Consciousness Explained" avoids it completely as far as I know (O
regret that I have not had time to finish it). I think the reasons for
this are that it is hard to measure empathy empirically and the focus of
Dennett's book is to present an argument using thought experiments that
are backed up by empirically verifiable data. I have not read /The
Intentional Stance /but now I'm curious!
On 3/12/12 4:06 PM, [email protected] wrote:
> 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."
