Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'fragments/reports', 'Causal Connections' and 'Recent Aesthetics in England and America'

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4 ideas

21. Aesthetics / A. Aesthetic Experience / 1. Aesthetics
Aesthetics has risen and fallen with Romanticism [Scruton]
     Full Idea: The rise and fall (as we presently perceive them) of aesthetics have been contemporaneous with the rise and fall of Romanticism.
     From: Roger Scruton (Recent Aesthetics in England and America [1980], p.3)
     A reaction: Maybe it started a little before Romanticism, as part of the Englightenment aim of being rational about everything, and maybe it survives Romanticism because we want to be scientific about everything.
21. Aesthetics / A. Aesthetic Experience / 2. Aesthetic Attitude
Aesthetic experience informs the world with the values of the observer [Scruton]
     Full Idea: It is possible to conclude that aesthetic experience has a peculiar practical significance: it represents the world as informed by the values of the observer.
     From: Roger Scruton (Recent Aesthetics in England and America [1980], p.13)
     A reaction: An excellent remark. If you look at, or listen to, anything, you can make a conscious effort to drain away your personal values (objectivity; science?), or you can consciously flood them with values. But moral and aesthetic vision must differ...
21. Aesthetics / C. Artistic Issues / 7. Art and Morality
Musical performance can reveal a range of virtues [Damon of Ath.]
     Full Idea: In singing and playing the lyre, a boy will be likely to reveal not only courage and moderation, but also justice.
     From: Damon (fragments/reports [c.460 BCE], B4), quoted by (who?) - where?
26. Natural Theory / C. Causation / 8. Particular Causation / b. Causal relata
Salmon says processes rather than events should be basic in a theory of physical causation [Salmon, by Psillos]
     Full Idea: Salmon argues that processes rather than events should be the basic entities in a theory of physical causation.
     From: report of Wesley Salmon (Causal Connections [1984]) by Stathis Psillos - Causation and Explanation §4.2
     A reaction: It increasingly strikes me that the concept of a 'process' ought to be ontologically basic. Edelman says the mind is a process. An 'event' is too loose, and a 'fact' too vague, and heaven knows what Hume meant by an 'object'.