Derek writes:
"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.)"
Derek continues to be a combination of disingenuous and ineducable. I was
just browsing through the archives, where I find him repeatedly claiming he has
no idea what other listers can have in mind when they say "aesthetic
experience", while at the same time repeatedly mentioning his "response to
art". I see
I've worked to explain how most of use an ostensive definition: We point at
something and say the likes of, "That's what I mean by XXXX." It's quite a
serviceable way of conveying much of one's notions. I watched my children
acquire
a serviceable use of language that way.
I've told Derek numerous times, "There -- that feeling you call your response
to art, the feeling you get from Mozart and 'Crime and Punishment" -- that
"response to art" is the kind of feeling the rest of us have in mind when we
say
"aesthetic experience".
When he continues to insist he has no idea what we're thinking when we say
"aesthetic experience" I frankly don't believe him. He's being disingenuous.
Derek says, "a word has meaning only in its relevant
speech community," and he says some public signs "have meanings which
sometimes stretch beyond a given speech community," and he says we " need to
know
what the word 'aesthetic' means." Since my view is that words are inert, they
don't DO things, I obviously feel they can't carry out some action Derek has in
mind when he says that words "mean", or they "have meaning".
So I described in detail why we tend to think words are "doing" something,
why we assume they are carrying on the action we call "meaning": It's because
repeated juxtaposition of the uttered word with an idea, image, or feeling has
produced in the mind an ASSOCIATION between the uttered word and those ideas,
images, feelings. "Milk!" "Hot!" "No!" "Angry!" So when we see the word and the
image comes to mind, we feel it's the word "doing" it, but it's only our
associating mind that's doing something.
When I ask him "to describe as precisely as he can what he has in mind when
he says, "a word has meaning" -- in particular what he has in mind with the
word 'meaning' and the word 'has'," his response is a quintessential duck and
run: " If I could do that I would be able to describe human consciousness,
which
I can't."
Derek would hide behind what he would insinuate is an impossibility --
"describe human consciousness". But I've asked Derek to describe only a PART of
human consciousness -- i.e. what he has in mind when he utters a certain word
--
and I asked that he do it not perfectly but only as precisely as he can.
He must have a notion in mind when he uses a word to convey it. Since I'm
quite sure my description has conveyed a serviceable replica of my notion of
the
associating mind and inert words and "meaning", I'm convinced that we can
serviceably describe the notion behind lots of words. So I don't believe Derek
when he says he can't do it. I DO believe that upon trying to describe his
particular notion of "meaning" he found it so chaotic and fuzzy he couldn't
describe
it. But that's the fault of his particular notion, not because he's being
asked to do the generically impossible.
The suggestion that we can never describe -- as precisely as we are able --
what we have in mind when we use a word seems to me false, and inexcusable in
an aesthetician. Granted, the notion behind some words is harder to articulate
than others. But it's an essential assignment in aesthetics. No one can be
taken seriously who, when he uses a word bound to occasion all sorts of
disparate
notions in readers, says, "Oh, don't ask me to describe the particular notion
I have in mind when I use a word. That would be asking me to describe human
consciousness!"
The prototypical word his notion for which we've asked him to describe is
'art'. He refuses even to try -- evidently on the grounds that it's impossible.
But Bruce Attah did a yeoman's job of describing what he had in mind with the
word. Attah's most basic error was in in effect asserting this "IS" art. He
could have survived the forum's onslaught by merely asserting "This is MY
notion
of art, what I have in mind when I use the word." I believe Derek is
fundamentally wrong in claiming one can't describe a notion because it's "human
consciousness".
I feel that Derek often puts acute challenges to what other listers have
asserted, but he leaves us with the feeling he has nothing to "say" himself.
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