I'm happy with Cheerskep's reply. However, his use of the word occasions as a verb reveals his not-quite-successful effort to hide any causality between an object and his reaction to it. Let's be honest. We all go through the day responding to 'occasions' we did not choose. How we separate those into groups of direct causes and merely awakened possible thoughts about what might be causes but are really free and volitional creative responses or interpretations to events at large is hard to say. This is a very hard problem and while it's convenient to rely on post-structuralist 'death of the author' subjectivity, there remains the fact that our language logic constitutes an architecture forcing us to live within or with some presumptions. I favor the notion that we create or imagine our interpretations of experience. Most of us would not want to light the fuse of a bomb in our pants knowing that doing so would cause our being blown to bits, a vivid example of the simple cause-effect rule, or the if-then logical construction, yet we all know that many people have done exactly that and for them lighting the fuse means instant heavenly bliss. For some the bomb prompts the mental occasion of stupid, horrid death; for others it means an eternity of sensual gratification. Other options or 'occasions' come to mind. It's hard to know when something 'occasions' a right thought. We can't rely only on the purity of subjectivity, can we? wc
----- Original Message ---- From: "[email protected]" <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Fri, September 28, 2012 9:01:45 AM Subject: "Me-meanings" etc. #1 William writes: "Cheerskep confuses me. He claims that an artwork 'never brought him to the a.e., as if it can 'communicate' anything at all." I didn't say exactly that. I wrote: "I have never been "brought to experience" an a.e. because of an "explanatory" remark about the work -- by its creator or any other commentator." In a further attempt to clarify, I wrote, "if the work -- of any genre -- did not occasion an a.e. in me on first encounter, no "explanation" or comment from the creator or a critic made the ecstasy kick in when I then revisited it." Occasionally on the forum my aim is specifically to argue that a word, a sentence, a "work" of any kind does not DO anything, cannot CAUSE anything, does not HAVE anything. At other times that 's not my main point, but still I don't want to be inconsistent with the earlier point, so I smuggle in stuff that perhaps won't call attention to itself but is there to keep the faith with the earlier argument. Thus I use a word like 'occasion'; I'll say a work by Mozart or Dickinson "occasions" an a.e., my position being that it no more "causes" the a.e. than a stable rock "causes" the breaking of a toe at the end of my swinging foot. Similarly, in the piece William is commenting on, when I write, "Some good, and a million awful, stories can be said to have exactly those august "messages" as themes," I purposely chose the phrase "can be said". I (I hope) would never say a story "has" a theme, but I know others would, and the sneaky phrase allows me to get on to the main argument of the day. If I repeated every qualification/reservation pertinent to a moment, my pebbly style would be even more insufferable than it is.) All of which is to maintain that, if I'm alert, I'd never claim that an "artwork" brings me anywhere, or that it can "communicate". Still, my lingo there is stealthy to a fault, and William's "confusion" is perhaps justified. But I'm damned if I can figure out why he writes, "Cheerskep seems to be saying is that he favors form above all. He's a 'significant form' guy in the modernist tradition of Bell, Fry, and a host of othersb&. Cheerskep is right when he claims that no artists' intentions ever had anything to do with his aesthetic experience. I can question why he restricts that to 'significant form' as he recognizes it because it seems self-limiting, but is, I readily admit, clearly valid as far as it goes." >From the very first time I read Bell's essay on "significant form" I thought it was air-headed baloney. I say each word - 'significant' and 'form' - fronts a fuzzy, balled up notion in Bell's head. William must have had some reason for believing I'm a champion for the notion of "significant form", but I can't espy what it is. Consider: In London I saw Ian Holm playing King Lear. As he made the noises, "Howl, howl, howl, howl!" I had a vivid, seizing a.e.. Picture Bell saying, "Ah,B yes! Significant form, that!" I don't disagree with William when he writes his relatively harmless line, "sensual experience can be the source of imaginative creativity, both for an artist and for audiences." But I have no idea what he has in mind with his next line: "Each member of each group imagines individual propositions as aesthetic." On the other hand, I think William had a brilliant insight of kinds when he wrote, "An analogy [for significant form] might be the pleasure one takes in watching a film with a favorite actor regardless of what the film portrays otherwise." Finally William writes: "I do reject Cheerskep's contradictory notion that the artwork's content can be delivered to him even as he rejects an ontic status for it. If it's not there it can't be delivered." Here I think William is showing his own "imaginative creativity" in deciding I have the notion " that the artwork's content can be delivered." This is probably my own fault. I have a writing principle: Whenever you're trying to occasion a radical notion in readers' minds, use as many everyday, kitchen words as possible. The effort to avoid all of them can make you sound like a nutter. I use all kinds of terms that I think can be the occasion for awful confusion. (For examples, 'word' and 'is'. But I use them to put the reader in at least the same vicinity as my topic. Alas, I realize someone could later summon up these usages as ostensible evidence of my inconsistency.) This posting is already long, but I think I need to add this. I would never utter or write the phrase "the artwork's content can be delivered" except to quote someone who is very inarticulate or befuddled or both. In that phrase, 'content' could occasion so many different notions it's useless without a good many supplementary utterances to describe the notion the speaker has in mind. In any solely verbal work, the only thing the speaker or writer can "deliver" are sounds, and sights of scriptions. What arises in a listener's mind as he hears is a function of his receiving apparatus - his brain - and his retrievable memory of what went through his mind when he heard the sound earlier in his life (which can also be yesterday.) I'll rephrase something I posted a few days ago. What the "man in the street" would call "words": audible or inky, they can't DO anything. The ink on paper -- that he'd point at and say "That's a word" -- is as inert as stone. When he reads, he's inclined to say it's the "word" that's acting, but all the action is by his brain. It's recalling memories he connects with those sounds and inky shapes. And piecing together new notions he's never had before. Treat a "word" the way you would a footprint. "That footprint is suspicious!" No. IT'S not suspicious; YOU are. If I say "hypostatize" to him, it's likely no notion will arise in his head, and he will say "hypostatize" is "meaningless" to him. Which he'll say because the sound "hypostatize" connects with nothing in his memory. But if I say "milk", "truth", "belief", "sign", it's likely he wouldn't call any of them meaningless, because if ANYTHING comes to his mind when he hears my talk-noise, he'd say: There! That's obviously "the meaning for me"! Let's call what comes to his mind a "me-meaning" for him. A me-meaning can be okay -- as long as it isn't thought to be "the" "real" mind-independent "meaning of the word". Certainly the me-meanings that arise in HIS mind from his hearing those sounds won't replicate the me-meanings that arise in MY mind. Those notions -- his "me-meanings" -- where do its pieces come from, and how do they get assembled? Like this. When I say "sign", "democracy", "Muslim", "salvation" or even "Cleopatra" what comes into his head are solely bits of memory retrieved and mosaicked by his racy brain as it frisks the familiar sound, and creates new me-meaning. Consider: where else would such bits come from if not from his memory? Would you believe him if he claimed his notion of Cleopatra came from a bolt shafted down by Plato or Zeus?
