I glumly knew as I wrote my last that William would find it "insufferable". He's right when he maintains that he long ago asserted that the term 'art' has no "referent". I maintain that what I said has implications far beyond the word 'art'. But that does not mean my observations therefore can have no further pertinence in aesthetics.
The very word 'aesthetic' -- especially in that awful term 'THE aesthetic' -- is repeatedly used with harmful blindness to fact that 'aesthetic' does not "have a meaning". Moreover, this blindness obtains for the way language is misused in almost all areas of aesthetics. Philosophy of language and philosophy of art are often inextricable. William says, "it's a shortcut mode of communication to say such and such 'means' such and such. Doing that saves time. It works; it's the Pavloffian part of civilization." I can't agree with him there. I do agree that it very often "works" -- in the kitchen, on a playing field or a battlefield. We in the English-speaking world all generally tend to associate 'milk', 'run', 'shoot' with similar sensations. But as we get into more abstract discussions, our assumption of "meanings" works less and less. 'Life', 'oppression', 'freedom', 'causation', 'meaning', 'same' -- these and other abstractions are the occasion for wildly differrent conjured notions. I've tried again and again on this forum to get the members to address the fuzzy and dissimilar notions that arise with the term 'aesthetic experience' -- and I've failed. Over the years, members have continually used the term and assumed that when they utter it their audience of course has the same notion in mind as the utterer does. Nor is my "dead horse" so dead as William feels it is. It is as vivacious as a wild stallion on the prairie in aesthetics and all other areas of experience. In colleges today, teachers still assert that the "value" of a story lies in its "meaning": 'Man needs his illusions. Jealousy is bad. You can't recover the past, you can't escape the past'. To me that seems clearly not what should be drilled into students. (E.g. a million awful stories could be said to "have" those "meanings".) Here are some hints how these seemingly rarefied philosophical points might have "real life" impact: When the Chief Justice of the United States was required to address the question of gay marriages, he sounded hesitant, bothered. He worried the court was being asked to "change the definition of marriage". The most he could have reasonably had in mind is the arbitrary stipulated definition in the Federal statutes. But if he thought he was pondering "THE meaning of marriage", he should indeed have been worried. Pro-life advocates assume the term 'life' has a determinate "meaning". But confusion reigns. They'd concede a difference between a "live" sperm and a dead sperm. But "by definition" that's not the "life" they want to protect. They don't feel comfortable accusing male masturbators of mass murder. There is no THE meaning (or even "THE definition") of 'marriage' or 'life'. Or 'fair', 'insanity', 'human rights', or anything. So no legislature can ever frame a law that reflects some absolute, mind-independent, "self-evident" ontic law. We all want to believe "morally wrong" is just such a prevailing verity of the universe. But it isn't. There's the mind's realm -- notional entities; and the physical body's realm. But there's no third realm of non-temporal, non-spatial abstract entities -- truths, facts, judgments, "essences", "relations". All such abstractions are notional, products of our rambling brains at work. Nevertheless legislatures can pass laws that, arbitrary though they are, can still be approvable by your brain, and mine, and those of other like-minded folk. The great challenge to a lawmaker is what standard to choose in approving and disapproving. We both, I hope, are happy there are laws -- and law-enforcers -- against child-molesters, and those who kill for the fun of it. But less happy remembering there were once arbitrary stipulated laws supporting slavery and denying women the vote. I'm against Pavlovian thinking in philosophy of art. Enough for one insufferable posting.
