> William Walker Conlin wrote:
>
> > 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.
>
It seems to me the "quality of your experience" is affected in good part by
what you bring to the contemplation of the work. First there are the
various strengths and weaknesses of your receiving and processing apparatus --
your brain; then there's the inventory of stored memories; then there's how
ready for duty it is that day -- are you impaired by staying up all night? By
drinking? By coming with the grievous news a loved one has just died?
Etc.
Let's assume you are not temporarily impaired by some non-intrinsic
handicap. Then both the power and character of the experiental effect
occasioned by
your contemplating a given work will depend on the aptness of the
memory-inventory and the adequacy of the apparatus. If the receiving apparatus
is
that of a deaf person, a Beethoven symphony will fall on "deaf ears". If the
memory-inventory acquired through reading is confined mostly to children's
books, then reading Eliot's THE WASTELAND will have a feeble effect on you.
Michael Brady asks:
>
> Why qualify it as a "powerful" and "peak" experience? Can't you have a
> "mundane" or "prosaic" aesthetic experience?
>
I feel Michael is right. Lots of plays, symphonies, etc have allowed me
an a.e., but they are not all of equal "power"
>
> Michael goes on:
>
> "Often members of this list assert that some images rise to the level of
> art as
> distinct from mere illustrations or pictures. I believe this is an
> erroneous
> qualitative delineation between two items that are categorically the
> same."
>
Okay, but I'd claim the categories alluded to are solely mental constructs;
there is mind independent material "out there", but there is no
non-notional entity that is a category. Consider what Michael has in mind when
he says
'Kilimanjaro'. His mind, like all our minds, tends to reify "objects",
like Kilimanjaro. But there are no mind-independent "borders" that discrete a
given chunk of material and make it an object. He says, "...when the
upsloping terrain of the plains changes into the base of the mountain. That's
where
the "mountainness" of K is to be determined, not the snowy summit."
But that is only Michael going beyond mere stipulation, where by
'stipulation' I mean a description that is intended to convey what he has in
mind when
he uses the word. To me, Michael seems to be asserting that his notion is
the ontic "fact of the matter". But someone's else's notion behind the
utterance "Kilimanjaro" may be different.
Certainly most geographers think of it differently. When they say
"Kilimanjaro is 19,341 feet high," they mean the top of the mountain is that
many
feet about sea level, not above the point where the terrain begins an upslope.
Strange though it is to hear, I claim there is no material thing that "is"
Kilimanjaro. (And, indeed, all notions of Kilimanjaro vary.)
Michael:
> "It's equivalent to focusing on the snow cap of Kilimanjaro, which is
> easy to
> see and acclaim, and ignoring the moment when the upsloping terrain of the
> plains changes into the base of the mountain. That's where the
> "mountainness"
> of K is to be determined, not the snowy summit. You pass the point of
> mountainness going up and coming down Kilimanjaro, just as one passes the
> "aesthetic" point before one reaches the crescendoes of the Ninth or
> Finlandia
> or Fingal's Cave."
>
> Michael goes on:
> "I believe there is a categorical difference in the aesthetic experience
> of
> walking in the snow on a slate-gray day and looking at Breughel's "Hunters
> in
> the Snow." That difference is produced by the difference between an actual
> event whose components happen or occur without design (walking in the
> snow)
> and an event that is invented, chosen, and designed ("Hunters in the
> Snow")."
>
> I maintain -- and he may contradict me -- that with those words Michael
feels he is talking about mind-independent entities he'd call "categories".
That is, he is not simply trying to convey a distinction between his notions,
his experiences. To me, he seems to be asserting there is an "actual"
category of events that occur without design, and a category of events that
are
designed.
My position is that a belief in mind-independent "categories" and
"qualities" leads to some very difficult positions. For example, it entails an
infinite number of categories: The category of designed events that occurred
before 1850, and of non-designed events that occurred before 1850. The
category
of designed visual events that occurred before 1931 and contained the color
red. The category of designed visual events that occurred before 1872,
contained the color red, and were designed by women. The category of
designed
visual events that occurred before 1795, contained the color red, and were
designed by Irish women. And so on.
Even Quine, the King of "Sets", seems to have seized up when he realized
that if he believed in mind-independent ontic sets he had no way of reasonably
rejecting obvious absurdities, like, say, this one: the three-member set
composed of my left toe, Churchill's last cigar, and the planet Venus.
In sum, I claim sets and categories and "qualities", and even "meanings"
are solely notional concoctions. They are not entities "out there".
