Where was the logic,argument, evidence, or persuasion when William called Mando's aesthetic response to 'The Bar at the Follies Bergere' "truly funny"?
Perhaps he would like to offer it now -- but I doubt that he can, except perhaps to backtrack and re-contextualize his remark, just as Saul cautiously backed off from his initial response to Mando: "Boy are you out of the loop" The fact is that William and Saul, as well as Mando, Chris, and Boris, are occasionally convinced that their personal judgments are correct even if they are unable to convince a skeptic that "certain properties of that thing are in fact beautiful" Because the judgment of beauty cannot always be reached by whatever "sharable elements are in the art object or contained by a definition of aesthetic experience or in some cultural experience termed aesthetic or an organic relationship between the elements in the art object and the cultural experience of it." Although, there's nothing wrong with trying, and I do agree that exclusively aphoristic assertions can be tiresome, and should be the last resort instead of the first. ................... >What Miller now calls aesthetics is nothing but unexamined personal opinion. If the question of aesthetics is simply reduced to unexamined and therefore unarguable solipsistic opinions, then why even discuss the subject or even mention it at all? When something is so personal, so subjective, as to vanish as a topic of inquiry even as it's mentioned, then it really doesn't exist as something that can be discussed. But Miller goes even further to equate this unexamined personal solipsism as the only identifier of art (as opposed to his use of the term "fashion"), which, if we dare to apply logic, requires us to admit that art cannot be mentioned, let alone identified independently of the solipsist. The alternative to this dead-end sort of thinking is to argue that there is some sharable, something public, about both aesthetics and art. So what is that? One position is that the sharable elements are in the art object or contained by a definition of aesthetic experience. Another is that the sharable element is in some cultural experience termed aesthetic; and the third position argues for an organic relationship between the elements in the art object and the cultural experience of it. Miller's position is outside of any arena of discussion because its authenticity requires absolute isolation, absolute solipsism. But this is his position on many issues. He's quite content to defend it by simply demanding that he is right. A few others here, such as Mando and Boris, follow the same formula for credibility. They make aphoristic assertions. There's no logic, no argument, no evidence, no persuasion. In logic it's called the Appeal to Authority. It has its self-serving place, I suppose, in some fundamentalist religions, totalitarian regimes, slavery, prisons, advertising, but the whole tradition of intellectual civilization, it has no place. ____________________________________________________________ Weight Loss Program Best Weight Loss Program - Click Here! http://thirdpartyoffers.netzero.net/TGL2231/c?cp=S2OsazVCxYf4XHHhBXvD0wAAJz6c l_zTaptgNR5c8Mer1v9kAAYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAADNAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAEUgAAAAA=
