I reply that the real must be defined to the satisfacion of those engaged in a discourse. There must be an agreed starting point. Normally, but not exclusively, modern thought regards the real in scientific terms, as the real world, something material and independent of our knowing it. But other views have insisted that the real is our ideas of the world even to the exclusion of any independent material existence or way of knowing it. I suppose there's a sizeable minority that claims the real to be a blend of the material and our ideas of it. But as I tried to point out, no one can make the immaterial idea material and thus whatever ideas are or whatever mental consciousness is, it can't be found out by scientific means that are restricted to measuring physical, causal properties. So we can't say what aesthetic experience is if we insist on locating it as we do material things, like atoms or cells. The only way I can imagine identifying aesthetic experience is through a make-believe (metaphorical) process by which we pretend that ideas, experiences, consciousness, and all mental activity (as opposed to physical brain activity) are embodied in material form through symbols. Thus one might say that one's aesthetic experience in a specific case, such as the experience of looking at a Titian painting, was "like" taking a warm bath. Whether or not another person would embody his or her aesthetic experience of the same Titian painting the same way, with the same words, is probably unlikely, but in discussion, the two Titian observers might come to some reasonably agreeable metaphor to symbolize their aesthetic experience, at that time and place, etc. I presume the same experience on another occasion would require a different or at least altered metaphor. What remains a problem is whether or not some metaphorical translation of purely subjective feeling/experience must occur even for the person involved who is not attempting to describe it even to himself/herself. In other words, can we know experience without translating it from pure subjectivity to some type of objectivity through language or any other symbol system. I'm inclined to say yes, but in saying yes I must believe that I can step aside from my own consciousness and and yet remain purely subjective. Some say that this is where we reach the limit of our capacity; that is, there may be something to know beyond us but we can't know it.
So Derek, choose your weapon. What is Real? Material, immaterial, or some blend? If you choose material then you will find yourself in the camp of your beloved (just kidding) but discredited behavioralists where all human action is causally functional and therefore predictable. If you choose immaterial, you will be left with pure, solipistic subjectivity, the imprisoned Idea and we have nothing to discuss because in that case only your subjectivity exists. If you choose a blend, you have the problem of showing how the duality of brain-mind works, how immaterial conscious experience, such as aesthetic experience, arises from material brain functions*. *Some materialists escape this problem by insisting that consciousness can be dispersed, or enacted like quantum quarks or some such events and we indiviuals share it in the same way that the universe shares its physical energy. If so then we bridge the brain-mind problem with a quantum consciousness. But is such shared consciousness extended to rocks and clouds? WC --- "[EMAIL PROTECTED]" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Before one could say whether aesthetic experience is > real > one would need to know what it is. (Otherwise one be > describing something else and calling it aesthetic > experience). To do that, one would need to know what > the > word 'aesthetic' means. Alas, no one seems to. Or > rather > everyone seems to have a different idea of what it > means. (A > case of Cheerskep's 'fuzziness' run riot.)
