Cheerskep,
I claim, that every individual's work of art is unique,
because that is the only thing it can possibly be.
Good or bad, beautiful or ugly is only a matter for each
individual, or groups of like minded individuals to feel.
It all happens because every thing under the sun has the
power to reflect selectively, positive or negative feelings
from each Individual or group of individual's values and
biases in their minds.
mando
On Mar 3, 2009, at 7:49 PM, Michael Brady wrote:
On Mar 3, 2009, at 8:58 PM, [email protected] wrote:
Let's back up. I said some people believe there is such a thing as
"art"
because they have experiences when they contemplate certain music,
paintings,
poems, dramas that they claim are sui generis, of one kind. They
call them all
"aesthetic experiences".
Cheerskep,
You seem to be the person pushing the claim that all a.e. are "sui
generis." Previously, I made the point that, if I can discern that
several things share a common property (the result of the truth-
test, i.e., I don't require them to be truthful), the I can call
them WoAs. *Then* after I discern that part, I notice that the
responses they provoke seem to be similar enough to each other--and
different enough from my responses to other things (or my responses
to the same thing viewed in a different light, namely, taking the
"WoA" as a map, or whatever the DaVinci Code is all about)--that I
can make rather general observations about them. (And, for the
record, this all happens very fast: What is that? Looks like a
painting. It makes me feel ______.)
Consider how you literally feel when you get an "ice-cream
headache." Compare that to how you feel when you cut you hand or
hit your shin against a coffee-table, or have an acute stomach-
ache, or muscle-soreness from exercise or a cold and fever, etc.
We typically say of each one of these hurts. They share a common
quality, namely, producing very pronounced physical discomfort. We
say, "Oh, man, what a pain! I banged my shin against the table."
Or, "I ate that ice cream too quickly and now I've got a really
painful headache." Etc.
Isn't this just the normal uses of language?
When asked about where I hurt, I'll be more specific and describe
the kind of pain and something about its nature (throbbing, sharp,
dull, etc.). Isn't this how people reply when they're asked about
the "a.e." they get from a WoA? They begin to describe the
"aesthetic" part in some particulars. This is just the natural way
of speaking--in fact, of knowing. The inverse relationship between
extension and definition, the problem of mapping: A map
(representation) is less than what is referred to, so the
representer has to categorize, approximate, and aggregate details
in such a way to preserve the salient differences and merge the not-
so-salient ones.
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Michael Brady
[email protected]
