Michael -- This is an interim quick response to your last where you wrote: "You seem to be the person pushing the claim that all a.e. are "sui generis.""
Just the opposite, Michael. I said -- and I believe this of an immense number of people -- some folk claim the experience they get from certain music, paintings, poetry, plays share at their core a unique feeling. No two taste experiences are the "same", but still, they say, we can say taste-experiences are discernibly different from a smell experience, or the experience of anger, pain, sexual enjoyment, or winning a race. We are justified, they claim, in saying taste experiences are alike in some basic way, and they are talking about the feeling, not the fact that it begins in the mouth. They do believe the feeling they get from a Van Gogh painting and a Mozart symphony share a sameness that they don't share with taste or anger etc. I suggest you yourself basically agree with them. You just wrote: "I notice that the responses they provoke seem to be similar enough to each other--and different enough from my responses to other things. . . -- that I can make rather general observations about them." These folks will stress they are talking about the feeling itself, not its sources or causes. Different though they are -- as all taste experiences are -- generically the Mozart and Van Gogh feelings are the same, they claim -- sui generis. This alleged "same" feeling is the subject of innumerable papers, and chapters in philosophy of art textbooks. They call it an "aesthetic experience". Exactly what I've been doing in these past few postings on this thread has been to suggest that we at least momentarily entertain the idea that there is no such thing as "THE" aesthetic experience -- that the Van Gogh feeling and the Mozart feeling are as different as the taste of lemon and anger. For example, some aestheticians have said categorically that the experience, the feeling, from a stage drama "is" not aesthetic at all, it's vicarious. (And many have in an arbitrary way asserted the experiences from a sunset, the ocean, or "an unfolding real-life drama" cannot "be" aesthetic.) In my next posting, I'll try to examine what I'll claim is your approach: You take as a given that some works are "works of art". Their effects are all different, but "similar enough". . . At this point I haven't accepted or denied that there is a unique core feeling that we are justified in calling "aesthetic". ************** Worried about job security? Check out the 5 safest jobs in a recession. (http://jobs.aol.com/gallery/growing-job-industries?ncid=emlcntuscare00000002)
