27 ideas
| 9327 | Organisms understand their worlds better if they understand themselves [Gulick] |
| Full Idea: Organisms come to better understand their worlds by coming to better understand themselves and the ways in which their own structures engage their worlds. | |
| From: Robert van Gulick (Mirror Mirror - Is That All? [2006], §III) | |
| A reaction: Van Gulick is defending a higher-order theory of consciousness, but this strikes me as a good rationale for the target of philosophy, which has increasingly (since Descartes) focused on understanding our own minds. |
| 9325 | In contrast with knowledge, the notion of understanding emphasizes practical engagement [Gulick] |
| Full Idea: In contrast with standard notions of knowledge, the concept of understanding emphasizes the element of practical engagement from the outset. | |
| From: Robert van Gulick (Mirror Mirror - Is That All? [2006], §II) | |
| A reaction: This could be the very interesting germ of a huge revolution in our approach to epistemology, which I find rather appealing. Plato's desire that knowledge should have 'logos' seems to me in the same area. It sounds rather internalist, which is good. |
| 9326 | Knowing-that is a much richer kind of knowing-how [Gulick] |
| Full Idea: Knowing-that is a much richer kind of knowing-how. | |
| From: Robert van Gulick (Mirror Mirror - Is That All? [2006], §II) | |
| A reaction: This thought could rather rapidly revive the discredited notion of knowing-how. I think it might slot into an account of the mind in terms of levels, so that my internalist view of knowledge emerges at higher levels, built on more basic responses. |
| 20653 | Six reduction levels: groups, lives, cells, molecules, atoms, particles [Putnam/Oppenheim, by Watson] |
| Full Idea: There are six 'reductive levels' in science: social groups, (multicellular) living things, cells, molecules, atoms, and elementary particles. | |
| From: report of H.Putnam/P.Oppenheim (Unity of Science as a Working Hypothesis [1958]) by Peter Watson - Convergence 10 'Intro' | |
| A reaction: I have the impression that fields are seen as more fundamental that elementary particles. What is the status of the 'laws' that are supposed to govern these things? What is the status of space and time within this picture? |
| 9319 | Is consciousness a type of self-awareness, or is being self-aware a way of being conscious? [Gulick] |
| Full Idea: Is consciousness just a special type of self-awareness, or is being self-aware a special way of being conscious? | |
| From: Robert van Gulick (Mirror Mirror - Is That All? [2006], Intro) | |
| A reaction: This is a really good key question, which has hovered over the debate since Locke's definition of a person (as 'self-aware'). I take the self to be a mechanism of most brains, which is prior to consciousness. Maybe the two are inseparable. |
| 9320 | Higher-order theories divide over whether the higher level involves thought or perception [Gulick] |
| Full Idea: Higher-order thought (HOT) models treat metastates as thought-like, and higher-order perception (HOP) models regard them as at least quasi-perceptual and resulting from some form of inner monitoring or inner sense. | |
| From: Robert van Gulick (Mirror Mirror - Is That All? [2006], §I) | |
| A reaction: I would understand 'thought' to at least partially involve judgements. The HOT theory (Carruthers) seems to suit epistemological foundationalists, who want truth to enter on the ground floor. This pushes me towards the HOP model (Lycan) as more plausible. |
| 9321 | Higher-order models reduce the problem of consciousness to intentionality [Gulick] |
| Full Idea: Higher-order models would effectively reduce the problem of consciousness to that of intentionality. | |
| From: Robert van Gulick (Mirror Mirror - Is That All? [2006], §I) | |
| A reaction: This gives the bigger picture - that higher-order theories are the cutting edge of attempts to give a naturalistic, reductivist account of consciousness. That seems to be the only way to go, so we should encourage them in the enterprise. |
| 9322 | Maybe qualia only exist at the lower level, and a higher-level is needed for what-it-is-like [Gulick] |
| Full Idea: Some higher-order theorists say we have qualitative but unconscious mental states of color or pain (qualia), but there is nothing it is like to be in such a state, which needs higher-order awareness. The meta-states are devoid of qualia. | |
| From: Robert van Gulick (Mirror Mirror - Is That All? [2006], §I.5) | |
| A reaction: He calls this the 'stranded qualia' problem. Clearly one begins to sharpen Ockham's Razor at this point, if the higher-level state isn't contributing something. I don't rule out unconscious qualia. The strength of a real pain is distorted in a dream. |
| 23928 | Good art produces exaltation and detachment [Bell,C] |
| Full Idea: The contemplation of pure form leads to a state of extraordinary exaltation and complete detachment from the concerns of life. | |
| From: Clive Bell (Art [1913], I.III) | |
| A reaction: The last part is what gets the arts a bad name with the people who do deal with the concerns of life (which won't go away, even for an artist!). However, being totally trapped in the concerns of life is probably a recipe for misery. |
| 23922 | The word 'beauty' leads to confusion, because it denotes distinct emotions [Bell,C] |
| Full Idea: The word 'beauty' connotes objects of quite distinguishable emotions, and the term would land me in confusions and misunderstandings. | |
| From: Clive Bell (Art [1913], I.I) | |
| A reaction: His main example is a comparison of beautiful women with beautiful art. Personally I don't think the word aspires to be precise, so there is no problem. Maths has beautiful solutions, golf has beautiful shots, cooking has beautiful results. Wow! |
| 23921 | Our feeling for natural beauty is different from the aesthetic emotion of art [Bell,C] |
| Full Idea: It is not what I call an aesthetic emotion that most of us feel, generally, for natural beauty. …Most people feel a very different kind of emotion for birds, flowers and butterfly wings from that we feel for pictures, pots, temples and statues. | |
| From: Clive Bell (Art [1913], I.I) | |
| A reaction: Not convinced. I think the main difference is our awareness that art is a human production, the result of choice, whereas nature is a given. Beethoven 9 and a good sunset don't seem to me far apart in our responses. |
| 23929 | We only see landscapes as artistic if we ignore their instrumental value [Bell,C] |
| Full Idea: It is only when we cease to regard the objects in a landscape as means to anything that we can feel the landscape artistically. | |
| From: Clive Bell (Art [1913], II.I) | |
| A reaction: This sounds as if only the exploitative attitude blocks the artistic view, but I would expect the scientific view (of an ecologist, for example) to do the same. |
| 23923 | Visual form can create a sublime mental state [Bell,C] |
| Full Idea: Pure visual form transports me to an infinitely sublime state of mind. | |
| From: Clive Bell (Art [1913], I.I) | |
| A reaction: Unusual for anyone to use to term 'sublime' for works of art, and I suspect that Bell was the last to do so. Bell offers a quasi-religious role for art. I accept that being struck by something exceptionally good in art is a very distinctive experience. |
| 23932 | Art is the expression of an emotion for ultimate reality [Bell,C] |
| Full Idea: My hypothesis is that art is the expression of an emotion for ultimate reality. | |
| From: Clive Bell (Art [1913], II.II) | |
| A reaction: So later in his discussion the word 'ultimate' has crept in, after a chapter about the close relation between religious and artistic attitudes. He also sees good art as deeply 'spiritual'. It seems that religious belief is essential to his theory of art. |
| 23927 | Aestheticism invites artist to create beauty, but with no indication of how to do it [Bell,C] |
| Full Idea: The danger of aestheticism is that the artist who has got nothing to do but make something beautiful hardly knows where to begin or where to end | |
| From: Clive Bell (Art [1913], I.III) | |
| A reaction: Aestheticism strikes me as the main motivation for art nouveau artifacts, which I love. You start with beautiful lines, and then find ways to implement them. Bell has a point, though! |
| 8115 | Only artists can discern significant form; other people must look to art to find it [Bell,C, by Gardner] |
| Full Idea: Bell thinks that only artists can discern significant form directly in the natural world, and that all others must look to art for significant form. | |
| From: report of Clive Bell (Art [1913]) by Sebastian Gardner - Aesthetics 3.3 | |
| A reaction: I have a horrible feeling that 'significant' form will turn out to be the sort of form that artists can see. Presumably the form spotted by geologists won't be quite so 'significant'. Not a promising theory. |
| 23924 | Maybe significant form gives us a feeling for ultimate reality [Bell,C] |
| Full Idea: When we strip things of all associations and significance, what is left is 'the thing in itself', or 'ultimate reality'. …Artists can express an emotion felt for reality through line and colour. …So through 'significant form' we sense ultimate reality. | |
| From: Clive Bell (Art [1913], I.III) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] The thing in itself is a Kantian idea. He offers this as a speculation, rather than a fact. Maybe quantum physics gets us closer to the thing in itself? Bell knows that his faith in significant form needs more justification than an emotion. |
| 23931 | Significant form is the essence of art, which I believe expresses an emotion about reality [Bell,C] |
| Full Idea: My view that the essential quality in work of art is significant form was based on experience I am sure about. Of my view that significant form is the expression of a peculiar emotion felt for reality I am far from confident. | |
| From: Clive Bell (Art [1913], II.II) | |
| A reaction: It is hard to understand the idea of 'significant' form without a clear proposal for the nature of the significance. A detective doesn't stop at the point where evidence is seen as significant. Why should a 'peculiar' emotion matter? |
| 20434 | 'Form' is visual relations, and it is 'significant' if it moves us aesthetically; art needs both [Bell,C, by Feagin] |
| Full Idea: By 'form' Bell means the relations of lines, colours and shapes. Forms are 'significant' when the relationships of lines and so on move us aesthetically. If something is art it must have, to at least a minimum extent, significant form. | |
| From: report of Clive Bell (Art [1913], p.17) by Susan Feagin - Roger Fry and Clive Bell 3 | |
| A reaction: So art has two necessary conditions - that it move us aesthetically, and that it does so by means of its form. The obvious problem is to explain which forms are 'significant' without mentioning the aesthetic feeling they have to invoke. |
| 23934 | The only expression art could have is the emotion resulting from pure form [Bell,C] |
| Full Idea: If art expresses anything, it expresses an emotion felt for pure form and that which gives pure form its extraordinary significance. | |
| From: Clive Bell (Art [1913], III.I) | |
| A reaction: I don't think 'expresses' is the right word here. Artists express, but works just transmit. I personally doubt whether anything can have 'extraordinary significance' simply because it expresses one particular emotion. Why art, but not geometry? |
| 23925 | Mere copies of pictures are not significant - unless the copies are very exact [Bell,C] |
| Full Idea: A literal copy is seldom reckoned even by its owner a work of art. Its forms are not significant. Yet if it were an absolutely exact copy, clearly it would be as moving as the original, and a photographic reproduction of a drawing often is. | |
| From: Clive Bell (Art [1913], I.III) | |
| A reaction: What if the original artist made the copy? In 1913, Bell begins to spot this modern problem. He undermines his own theory of significant form here, if the form only becomes significant once we have checked it is an original. |
| 23926 | Art is distinguished by its aesthetic emotion, which produces appropriate form [Bell,C] |
| Full Idea: The characteristic of a work of art is its power of provoking aesthetic emotion; the expression of emotion is what gives it its power. ...Rightness of form is invariably a consequence of rightness of emotion. | |
| From: Clive Bell (Art [1913], I.III) | |
| A reaction: Bell doesn't dig very deep, because the obvious next question, not really addressed, is what makes the emotion 'right'. He suggests that significant form reveals reality, but why would an emotion do that? Does each work have a distinct emotion? |
| 23933 | Aesthetic contemplation is the best and most intense mental state [Bell,C] |
| Full Idea: Art is not only a means to good states of mind, but, perhaps, the best and most potent that we possess; …there is no state of mind more excellent or more intense than the state of aesthetic contemplation. | |
| From: Clive Bell (Art [1913], II.III) | |
| A reaction: Why does intensity make it good? It is pretty intense being involved in a road accident, but that doesn't make it good. There are many states of mind we enjoy or value highly, but we need more than that to prove them objectively 'excellent'. |
| 23935 | Aesthetic experience is an exaltation which increases the possibilities of life [Bell,C] |
| Full Idea: Those who have been thrilled by the pure aesthetic significance of a work of art …carry a state of excitement and exaltation making them more sensitive to all that is going forward about them. Thus they realise …the significance and possibility of life. | |
| From: Clive Bell (Art [1913], IV.III) | |
| A reaction: This seems like a bit of an afterthought, because he struggles to explain why his 'significant form' is so important. He shifts between it being an end - an intrinsic value - or a moral state, or now an increaser of life potential. |
| 22691 | Only artistic qualities matter in art, because they also have the highest moral value [Bell,C] |
| Full Idea: The only relevant qualities in art are artistic qualities: judged as a means to good, no other qualities are worth considering; for there are no qualities of greater moral value than artistic qualities, since there is no greater means to good than art. | |
| From: Clive Bell (Art [1913], II.III) | |
| A reaction: Wishful thinking, I suspect. I can't see anyone acquiring a moral education just by looking a Cezannes. This seems to be a late manifesto for the aesthetic movement. |
| 9324 | From the teleopragmatic perspective, life is largely an informational process [Gulick] |
| Full Idea: From the teleopragmatic perspective, life itself is largely an informational process. | |
| From: Robert van Gulick (Mirror Mirror - Is That All? [2006]) | |
| A reaction: From the cynical perspective a human is just 'blood and foul smell in a bag', but that may not give you whole story. The point here is that the informational view will cover both the genetic and the mental levels of human life. True but unilluminating? |
| 23930 | Religion sees infinite value in some things, and irrelevance in the rest [Bell,C] |
| Full Idea: The essence of religion is a conviction that because some things are of infinite value most are profoundly unimportant. | |
| From: Clive Bell (Art [1913], II.I) | |
| A reaction: The aspect of religion which most worries atheists like Nietzsche. You can end up with a rather cool and detached view of genocide, if you really believe that worldly matters are unimportant. Do souls in heaven worry about the next life after that? |