Sup 161. I’m Shalev.

I guess I’m pretty late on this. I missed the last two lectures and I was going to wait untill after next class to write something but I’ve been reflecting on my impression from first lecture and the readings and have some thoughts to share.

This class combines two of my favorite things, aesthetics and philosophy.

Aesthetcs because I’m a musician, photographer (www.shalevnetanel.photoshelter.com), and human.

Philosophy because of my existential crisis...and the money :D

I’ve also got a page with some of my favorite quotes about aesthetics and philosophy on my website. Let me know if you have any good ones! (Besides "an original thought is worth a thousand mindless quotes.")

Coming from the aesthetics side, I’m very interested in the psychology of art; what mechanisms are in play when we appreciate or create art? When does inspiration become conception and conception become form? How does an artist, or audience, perceive the journey of mental state to form? Is inspiration impoverished because we can only manifest into the socially constructed forms of art, or are we inspired because these forms exist as vehicle for expression? Creativity is recognized as the chief faculty for producing art; what other faculties, if any, are in play, intrinsic, or necessary to the creative process? I think the faculties we employ to appreciate art are the same we use in our moral decision making (?).

As for philosophy, I’m interested in the philosophy of language treatment of aesthetics. What is meaningful dialogue about art? Do aesthetic statements have any semantic content? Can an aesthetic statement be verifiable, true or false, in virtue of its semantic content? How can we assert aesthetic thoughts if they are not? Is it right to compare the semantic content of aesthetic statements with those employed in everyday speech?

I’m also really interested in how evolutionary psychology bears on aesthetics. So maybe I’ll do some posts about that if there’s something cool going on with mimetics.

Mimesis.

Probably the most technical and pendantic post...but mimesis ties to gothr some of these things I’ve been thinking about. Some of my ideas here were also roused by the Shakespeare excerpt at the beginning of Walton’s article. Particular the lines:

“Doth glance from heaven to earth from earth to heaven.

And as imagination bodies forth

The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen

Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing

A local habitation, and a name”

Mimesis gave me some insight to these language/aesthetic things I’ve been thinking about...so this posts is more focused on a general philosophy language picture of form vs. non-from. I do but I hone in on aesthetics towards the end. The conclusion (of this post) I reach about mimesis and aesthetics is: Every form is mimetic. And ‘art’ is art in virtue of possessing a special species of mimeticism unique to it.

I’m using 'art' here in a very vague and ambiguous sense to avoid the discussion of what forms are art. The content of this post doesn’t require a determined definition so whatever’s art to you goes. Though, I am more focused on tangible art forms in this post although I feel my ideas can apply to any sort of art (literature, music, performance arts), but its a lot tricker to deal with these forms, at least with the ideas I’m working with, so I’ll save this work for another post.

My working definition of mimesis is ‘comprehension of form in virtue of its nature.’ I’m conceiving nature to be like Greeks physis, which in a very loose way can described as entities that are what they are without external influence. As I conceive them, these ‘entites’ exist as intangible qualities that we give form and meaning to by sublimating these qualities into properties. In aggregate these properties come to represent an object or subject in natural language. Form is this sort of unique collection of features inherent features by which we recognize and talk about it. For instance, we perceive the form ‘tiger’ in virtue of a class of properties that represent its ‘tigerness.’ These properties are not intrinsic to Dthat* (entity that we call tiger) [*demonstrative], a non-form in physis, which has no properties; but become inherent to form as constituents of its meaning. Obvious examples of form are tangible things like art, architecture, cookies, guitars, tiger. Less obvious are forms that have a mix of tangible and abstract properties like music, literature, government, education. The most complex, and probably controversial forms are those to that have no tangible form but that we perceive to have properties; virtues or demerits of character ‘bravery,’ ‘moral fiber;’ concepts ‘justice;’ and mentalities faculties; mental illness, bravery, creativity; or concepts like justice, moral fiber, piety.

The transition of non-form to properties occurs on the individual level but it is the social consensus of what properties represent a given form that give it a (more or less) fixed meaning. While the first step occurs on an individual level, most individuals don’t directly have the opportunity to contribute properties to a given form. Most of us comprehend form by learning about its properties from people who have first hand acquaintance, such as with Dthat(the thing we call tiger) contribute properties to the literal meaning of ‘tiger.’ Anyone can contribute properties to intangible forms or metaphorical meanings of the simple sort but not everyone has the same wherewithal or prowess to do so. APA has more power to construct form from mental phenomena than the layperson. I guess this is sorta like the knowledge by acquaintance in the sense that psychologists are trained to look out for these sorts of things and hence have first hand access the apropos discourse.

We don’t think through this process whenever we learn about new things or as our concepts of certain entities evolve. However, we often do take a step back and consider form (Dthat(x)) in relation to non-form (Dthat (entity)) when examining the meaning of a form. When psychologists inquire into the nature of the mind, they pose the question of 'what is the nature of the mind; have apprehended the correct properties of Dthat[entity] that we call schizophrenia (for example) or are we missing something?'

Not included in this picture are natural urges like ‘hunger,’ ‘pain,’ ‘pleasure;’ and the sorts of raw feeling-sensations triggerd by tangible or intangible stimuli such as the sensation of experiencing a sunset or being moved by a speech. These things are physistic, having no external influence (only causation) that give or maintain form. Thus the best we can do to talk about sensations is to construct lexical allusions that only denote sensations but doesn't attribute properties to Dthat[demonstrative](sensation). We use words to provide expression for what has not yet been committed to form but are still comprehensible in language as awareness of these sensations is a property of sentience, which is a formalized concept. Such terms can only be predicated to take on metaphorical or figuartive meaning. “Happiness is a warm gun’ is palpably metaphorical but is nonsensical as a literal statement. Sensations may seem similar to the forms of the third (complex) sort but these forms can be predicated in virtue of its properties; “bravery is being scared being acting anyway,” “creativity is a capacity to perceive non-standard analogies between things.” On the other hand, pain cannot be predicated beyond the scope of what the word ‘pain’ serves to identify. We are limited to stating “‘pain’ is a bodily sensation.” Although we can substitutes the words in this proposition for ones with similar meanings; “agony is something we feel;” but it is words and not properties that are being replaced and therefore this operation has no bearing on semantic content. Thus we have to resort to metaphors to talk about sensations like ‘hunger,’ ‘pain’ and the sensations. We say things like “the pain is sharp” or hyperboize (also a kind of metaphor) “I’m hungry enough to eat an elephant.’ We also rely on metaphors (and art) to express interpretive sensuality; “the poem is so powerful it cries before me,” “love is a maze,” “surfing is a way of life.” These simulacrumic forms exist in a sort of purgatory between form and non-form and are sources of tension in language due to our inability to properly define them but our desire and need to talk about them.

Aesthetics.

"Art is not merely an imitation of the reality of nature, but in truth a metaphysical supplement to the reality of nature, placed alongside thereof for its conquest."--Friedrich Nietzsche

The foremost appeal of art is it a vehicle to construct form representing the intangible qualities that language fails to capture. Art is a vehicle for manifesting the intangible sensations; Dthat sensation(‘hunger’), Dthat(‘pain’) and ones we don’t even have names for: Dthat(the sensation I get from watching a sunset), into forms that we can treat in language as we do actual forms. Art allows us to manifest our raw sensations into form while simultaneously bypassing and invoking real-world form.

The force guiding this phenomenon is mimeticism.

Art is mimetic on two levels. The first level is on the same pier as non-forms of art as we can predicate the forms of art in virtue of tangible features (including soundwaves and human movement) and social value, as we would actual forms.

Inside the art world a special of mimesis at play that allows us to predicate sensations with features of art. We do so by using features of art to predicate Dthat(sensation) by stripping an actual form of its properties in exchange for a select group of properties that is represented in art as features. An indication of this is that we perceive features as being true to the sensations the artist intends to represent or as failing to capture the intended thought content. We just know that a painting of a rainbow and unicorns flocking in a meadow cannot represent sorrow. On the other hand, a painting heavy in dark blues, gray and black is fertile for statements of this sort and we can predicate ‘sorrow’ in virtue features; “sorrow has broody colors ” Maybe these kind of aesthetics statements are still a sort of metaphor. But regardless, they allow us to talk to make the same sorts of propositions about sensations that we use to talk about actual forms.

Of course we also treasure art for aesthetic appeal. This goes with out saying. But my idea that art primarily serves as supplement to natural language might be more controversial. Some art certainly is created just for our aesthetic appreciation, but I believe we are not invested in art purely for aesthetic pleasure alone but as a platform giving leverage to talk about what can’t be expressed using everyday language.

We appreciate art by making an activity of measuring the depiction of an object to its features in the real world in virtue of art-mimeticism; both in relation to Dthat(sensation or entity) and to non-forms of art (actual forms), which pose as physistic relative to art form. In relation to art, these non-forms of art exist without external influence until the artist grabs hold. Art exploits this tension between non-form (physis) and form by asserting a distinction between forms of art and forms that are non-art by treating actual form(properties) as art-form(features) or Dthat(sensation) as art-form(features).

Art is a spectacle of contradiction. We are captivated by art because of its inadequacy to be what it is not; an invariably ill fated attempt to capture the intangible qualities of physis--qua asserting actual forms to be art-form and representing physis in these forms; fundamentally mimetic and a vehicle to express the intangible in language by way of exploiting this dialectic.

Thoughts?

Forthcoming: Mimesis and controversy in art; a starving dog, urinal, September 11^th and the early twentieth century photography scare.