>> Is the quality of music determined by the final opinion of that music? > > My first response is that "in the long run" for Peirce is a normative idea in > science and does not apply necessarily--maybe only very little, or not at > all--to the fine arts. > > It is true that Bach and Mozart, for example, after hundreds of years, still > have considerable appeal. In my opinion, some of this is the result of (or at > least involves) acoustical phenemona which they > exploit--harmonies,counterpoints, etc.--which really do have a visceral > effect on the human nervous system. But I do not think that it is at all > certain that even they will be appreciated in several hundred or so years.
Aren’t we making a category error here? Peirce’s regulatory notion of final opinion seems tied towards representations and their truth values. This isn’t to deny we can talk about final interpretants, but more that certain representation are finalized. So the claim “this music is of high quality” meaning aesthetic value seems something we can determinate and thus sensible for consideration as a final interpretant. My sense though is that we need to unpack what we’re actually analyzing. After all as Gary notes just because something is held as true today need not imply it will in the future. This is both due to the nature of inquiry but also I think because we’re conflating two issues. The first whether something is appealing to some finite group. Obviously just because something appeals to one group it need not appeal to an other group. The second issue is whether something is universally aesthetical. These are two very different questions. One can answer differently for each.
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