ate interpreted "reaction/experience/feeling" as naming three different
events in sequence. She wrote:
"You [and Saul] agree with each other as to the sequence of
events-experience,reaction,response,judgement."
But that's not what I mean to convey at all. I meant all three words --
"
reaction/experience/feeling" -- to refer to the same single event.
Do you mean to say that you think all three words occur at the same
time concurrent with the event? It seemed to me that there is a
sequence since the event has to occur in order for anything to be felt
or reacted to.Did you assume that Saul and I thought this simultaneity
as well?
-----Original Message-----
From: Cheerskep <[email protected]>
To: aesthetics-l <[email protected]>
Sent: Sat, Dec 21, 2013 6:53 pm
Subject: Re: Aesthetic experience
I confess to a dizzying obtuseness about how something I write can be
interpreted in ways vastly different from what I had in mind. I'm not
being
arch
with that line; I do mean it was I erring in not seeing how I could be
read
in different ways.
I wrote:
"I use 'response' when I have in mind 'what I say or
do in specific reply'. So, for me, it comes after my "reacting", the
feeling I have as I experience. I always react, but I often don't
respond.
"For me,
a reaction/experience/feeling is prior to judgment."
Kate interpreted "reaction/experience/feeling" as naming three different
events in sequence. She wrote:
"You [and Saul] agree with each other as to the sequence of
events-experience,reaction,response,judgement."
But that's not what I mean to convey at all. I meant all three words --
"
reaction/experience/feeling" -- to refer to the same single event. When
I hear
a melody, I react to that melody; that reaction is itself a feeling;
that
feeling is an experience. Probably I should have said there are TWO
discrete parts to my CONSCIOUS awareness: the hearing (that is, the
aural
sensation) and the reaction to the hearing. (They are all but
simultaneous.)
Sometimes the hearing occasions boredom, sometimes it occasions an a.e.
We might put it this way: First there's the hearing-experience, and then
there's the reaction-experience. Sometimes that reaction-experience is
boredom, sometimes it's simply null -- blah. And sometimes it's an a.e.
-- an
aesthetic experience.
Kate goes on:
"Experience in "aesthetic experience"
is not in the same place in the sequence as experience."
What I'm now trying to clarify is that the "sequence" is composed of
only
two parts when I'm exposed to a melody -- the aural event, then the
reaction
event. That is, an aural-experience, then a reaction-experience.
Kate goes on: "If all
experiences are not aesthetic,then an aesthetic experience is either a
reaction or a response or a judgement. One of these experience uses
should change If all experiences are aesthetic then something is very
strange.
A logician might rephrase Kate's first phrase to eliminate an ambiguity.
Thus: "If some
experiences are non-aesthetic,then an aesthetic experience is either a
reaction or a response or a judgement. One of these experience uses
should change. If all experiences are aesthetic then something is very
strange."
If the logician is misinterpreting Kate, it doesn't make much
difference,
because at no time do I mean to say all experiences are aesthetic. Some
are
boring, some are blah, etc.
To repeat: I always react, but sometimes I don't "respond" in the sense
of
"actively reply".
I don't use 'judgment' in the same way as Saul. If, for Saul, to have a
blah reaction or a bored reaction, amounts to making a judgment, then,
for
him,
"judgment" is part of the reaction-experience. As I've said, for me
"judgment" tends to involve factors outside the work itself. If a
script bored
me, I'd reason that it wouldn't please enough people to sell well
enough, and
I'd decide not to publish it. I don't "judge" that a smell is
unpleasant,
though if were a chef I might judge a smell is not enticing enough to
please
my customers. But that'd be AFTER reacting negatively to the smell.
