A Few Kant Quotes

[Ellen Stuttle]

The issue is at the basis of English jurisprudence in the form of "innocent until proven guilty."

Exactly. You are innocent until proven guilty, one doesn't say: "well, I don't know, I can't prove that you are innocent, nor that you're guilty, so according to the epistemologists I may not say that you're innocent, that would be a positive statement that I cannot prove." In the same way we may say that God does not exist if it hasn't been proved that he does exist. Now I have the suspicion that people will have seldom problems with this if they are asked whether Zeus exists or whether a teapot is orbiting Pluto, saying that they're agnostic about that as you can't prove that these statements are not true.

DF, you have it exactly backward about the analogy to "innocent until proven guilty."

And, in fact, right, neither can you prove that Zeus doesn't exist, or that a teapot is not orbiting Pluto -- or, to add one more typically used, that there aren't green gremlins on Mars, or any other such example. You can say that you have no reason to believe that any of those cases IS true, but you're not in a position to prove that they aren't true, any more than you're in a position to prove that you never committed a murder. Therefore instead of the assertion that they aren't the case, the correct statement is that there's no evidence that they are the case.

Ellen

___

Edited July 27, 2008 by Ellen Stuttle

[Neil Parille]

Ellen,

An interesting book on the Nazis and religion is Richard Steigman-Gall's The Holy Reich. He argues that the Nazis were influenced by the "social Gospel" which had its origins in liberal protestantism.

Another book of interest (which I haven't read) is From Darwin to Hitler by Richard Weikart. As I understand it, he doesn't argue that Darwin caused Nazism or that Nazi race ideology came from Darwin, but that racial ideas influenced by Darwin were important to the Nazis.

David Steele's article is good, but for some reason he doesn't mention Peikoff.

-NEIL

____

Edited July 28, 2008 by Neil Parille

[Ellen Stuttle]

I do not agree that the two statements are the same, and I consider the first statement epistemologically inadmissable, since it's the assertion of a negative which is impossible to demonstrate.

___

One can easilty prove that the square root of two is not the ratio of integers. You can't get any more negative than that.

Ba'al Chatzaf

I recommend reading more carefully. ;-) I did not say that EVERY negative is impossible to prove.

Ellen

___

[Ellen Stuttle]

Ellen,

An interesting book on the Nazis and religion is Richard Steigman-Gall's book The Holy Reich. He argues that the Nazis were influenced by the "social Gospel" which had its origins in liberal protestantism.

Another book of interest (which I haven't read) is From Darwin to Hitler by Richard Weikart. As I understand it, he doesn't argue that Darwin caused Nazism or that Nazi race ideology came from Darwin, but that racial ideas influenced by Darwin were important to the Nazis.

-NEIL

____

I came across material on that Darwin to Hitler book when I was looking stuff up. Apparently there was an earlier book which attempts entirely to exonerate Enlightenment thought (including Kant) and its scientific aftermath from any connection to Nazism -- I forget the title off-hand and I have to scoot. I'll see if I can find it again later.

One impression I'm forming is that lots of people of different persuasions want to find ways to blame Nazism on whatever they especially dislike in the history of German thought.

Ellen

___

[Newberry]

In my second post, <a href="http://www.objectivistliving.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=5855&view=findpost&p=53026" target="_blank">http://www.objectivistliving.com/forums/in...ost&p=53026</a>

War itself, provided it is

conducted with order and a sacred respect for the rights of civilians,

has something sublime about it, and gives nations that carry it on

in such a manner a stamp of mind only the more sublime the more

numerous the dangers to which they are exposed, and which they are

able to meet with fortitude. On the other hand, a prolonged peace

favours the predominance of a mere commercial spirit, and with it a

debasing self-interest, cowardice, and effeminacy, and tends to

degrade the character of the nation.

Notice, there is no comment about defense, nor was there more about war in the Critique of Judgment. I conclude that Kant thought that war is good, without the qualifier about defense, you can assume he thinks it sublime even if it is initiated. Handy theory for any aggressive country.

Edited July 28, 2008 by Newberry

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

It would be more helpful if you were more clear. You seem to be calling me tribal, a bullshitter on facts, and thoughtless in my evaluations. Let me know if I didn't understand you correctly.

Michael,

I can't be any more clear unless you point to something specific you don't understand.

And, no, from what you described, you didn't understand correctly.

I am discussing an epistemological method and resulting habits of rhetoric, and how this comes off in public, not what your intent is or how your inner moral construction is formed.

There are any number of reasons someone can overlook accuracy and endorse intellectual sloppiness, not just being tribal, bullshitting or being thoughtless.

But he cannot escape the impression overlooking accuracy and endorsing intellectual sloppiness leaves since he is not in the minds of others. He can only control that by insisting on accuracy in the people and ideas he endorses.

Michael

[tjohnson]

And, in fact, right, neither can you prove that Zeus doesn't exist, or that a teapot is not orbiting Pluto -- or, to add one more typically used, that there aren't green gremlins on Mars, or any other such example. You can say that you have no reason to believe that any of those cases IS true, but you're not in a position to prove that they aren't true, any more than you're in a position to prove that you never committed a murder. Therefore instead of the assertion that they aren't the case, the correct statement is that there's no evidence that they are the case.

Ellen

I think the issue here is that if someone is making a rather extraordinary claim or assertion then the onus is on them to provide evidence, whether it is a positive or negative assertion. DF felt that the influence Kant's work on the direction of art was rather extraordinary and so requires substantiation whereas others feel differently.

[Newberry]

Ellen:

The issue with Kant, however, isn't one of a particular link in a chain of influences. Instead, it's one of changing the enterprise -- major watershed mark.

Again, very astute.

The whole course of Western thought post-Kant was affected by Kant in one way or another. Henry Veatch used to whimsically describe the situation as "the Kantian swerve." Even Aristoteleans -- such as Veatch -- had to adjust to the altered problem-set in a way which addressed Kant.

I think that Rand was correct in the extent of the importance she gave to Kant, though not in her moral assessment, or in the uni-causal status -- or even in her interpretation of what he was saying.

Other than her condemnation she didn't give us much to go on. Maybe she was smarter than we think, ;) that unraveling the Kantian "can of worms" in public is rather thankless.

Michael

[Jonathan]

In my second post, <a href="http://www.objectivistliving.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=5855&view=findpost&p=53026" target="_blank">http://www.objectivistliving.com/forums/in...ost&p=53026</a>

War itself, provided it is

conducted with order and a sacred respect for the rights of civilians,

has something sublime about it, and gives nations that carry it on

in such a manner a stamp of mind only the more sublime the more

numerous the dangers to which they are exposed, and which they are

able to meet with fortitude. On the other hand, a prolonged peace

favours the predominance of a mere commercial spirit, and with it a

debasing self-interest, cowardice, and effeminacy, and tends to

degrade the character of the nation.

Notice, there is no comment about defense, nor was there more about war in the Critique of Judgment. I conclude that Kant thought that war is good, without the qualifier about defense, you can assume he thinks it sublime even if it is initiated. Handy theory for any aggressive country.

Actually, there is more about war in the Critique of Judgement:

(§48)

Beautiful art shows its superiority in the beautiful descriptions it gives of things that in nature would be ugly or displeasing. The Furies, diseases, devastations of war, etc., may (as evils) be described as very beautiful, as they are represented in a picture. There is only one kind of ugliness which cannot be represented in accordance with nature and without destroying all aesthetic satisfaction, and consequently artistic beauty, namely, that which excites

disgust

. For, in this singular sensation, which depends purely on the imagination, the object is represented as it were obtruding itself for our enjoyment, while we strive against it with all our might. And the artistic representation of the object is no longer distinguished from the nature of the object itself in our sensation, and so it cannot possibly be regarded as beautiful. The art of sculpture, again, because in its products art is almost interchangeable with nature, excludes from its creations the direct representation of ugly objects, e.g. it represents death by a beautiful genius, the warlike spirit by Mars, and permits all such things to be represented only by an allegory or attribute that has a pleasing effect, and thus only indirectly and by the aid of the interpretation of reason, and not for the mere aesthetic judgment.

So much for your simplistic theory that "Kant thought that war is good."

Let's add a little context to the quote you provided above. Here's what precedes the section you quoted:

For what is it that, even to the savage, is the object of the greatest admiration? It is a man who is undaunted, who knows no fear, and who, therefore, does not give way to danger, but sets manfully to work with full deliberation. Even where civilization has reached a high pitch, there remains this special reverence for the soldier; only that there is then further required of him that he should also exhibit all the virtues of peace — gentleness, sympathy, and even becoming thought for his own person; and for the reason that in this we recognize that his mind is above the threats of danger. And so, comparing the statesman and the general, men may argue as they please as to the pre-eminent respect which is due to either above the other; but the verdict of the aesthetic judgement is for the latter. War itself...

Now, can you imagine an interpretation other than the one you made about Kant's statement on war having something sublime about it? Perhaps that rising to resist immense dangers requires us to find and recognize in ourselves "powers commensurate to the task," where the smaller concerns of peaceful, daily living, which pose no threat and are not looked upon as "objects of fear," tend not to stimulate a sense of boldness or "greatness of resistance"?

J

Edited July 28, 2008 by Jonathan

[Dragonfly]

DF, you have it exactly backward about the analogy to "innocent until proven guilty."

No, you have it backward about the analogy. The point is that you don't have to prove that you're innocent/not quilty to state unambiguously that you are innocent.

And, in fact, right, neither can you prove that Zeus doesn't exist, or that a teapot is not orbiting Pluto -- or, to add one more typically used, that there aren't green gremlins on Mars, or any other such example. You can say that you have no reason to believe that any of those cases IS true, but you're not in a position to prove that they aren't true, any more than you're in a position to prove that you never committed a murder. Therefore instead of the assertion that they aren't the case, the correct statement is that there's no evidence that they are the case.

You're confusing science with mathematics. It's only in mathematics that we can and must prove our statements. Science doesn't prove anything, it creates models that are verified experimentally. A good model is a model that corresponds to the data and that can make accurate predictions, that is the basis of scientific statements, together with Ockham's razor: unnecessary hypotheses are rejected. In science you can unambiguously state that something doesn't exist if there isn't any evidence that it exists. In that regard science is closer to English jurisprudence than to mathematics.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

It's only in mathematics that we can and must prove our statements. Science doesn't prove anything, it creates models that are verified experimentally. A good model is a model that corresponds to the data and that can make accurate predictions, that is the basis of scientific statements, together with Ockham's razor: unnecessary hypotheses are rejected. In science you can unambiguously state that something doesn't exist if there isn't any evidence that it exists. In that regard science is closer to English jurisprudence than to mathematics.

Dragonfly,

That's an interesting observation. Maybe Rand emphasized the not proving a negative thing about God so much because the basis of her theory of concepts is mathematical.

I agree with the gist of your statement, but I need to think about the fundaments since I also hold that mathematics and concept formation are essentially the same form of thinking in different clothes.

Michael

[Roger Bissell]

DF, you have it exactly backward about the analogy to "innocent until proven guilty."

No, you have it backward about the analogy. The point is that you don't have to prove that you're innocent/not quilty to state unambiguously that you are innocent.

And, in fact, right, neither can you prove that Zeus doesn't exist, or that a teapot is not orbiting Pluto -- or, to add one more typically used, that there aren't green gremlins on Mars, or any other such example. You can say that you have no reason to believe that any of those cases IS true, but you're not in a position to prove that they aren't true, any more than you're in a position to prove that you never committed a murder. Therefore instead of the assertion that they aren't the case, the correct statement is that there's no evidence that they are the case.

You're confusing science with mathematics. It's only in mathematics that we can and must prove our statements. Science doesn't prove anything, it creates models that are verified experimentally. A good model is a model that corresponds to the data and that can make accurate predictions, that is the basis of scientific statements, together with Ockham's razor: unnecessary hypotheses are rejected. In science you can unambiguously state that something doesn't exist if there isn't any evidence that it exists. In that regard science is closer to English jurisprudence than to mathematics.

That (see underscored above) is not ~my~ understanding of what "innocent" means in court cases or what "not exists" means in science.

Suppose I murdered someone, but the court could not prove it -- or I discovered a fossil of a new kind of dinosaur, one which was speculatively hypothesized by scientists, but I destroyed the evidence, so they couldn't establish its existence.

Am I "entitled to "unambiguously state" that I am innocent -- or that the dinosaur species did not exist?? Really??

My dictionary says the following about "innocence" [underscoring and bracketed comment added], which seems to relate to the issue of what you can "unambigously state" when an issue has not been proved:

Innocent properly means "harmless," but it has long been extended in general language to mean "not guilty." The jury (or judge) in a criminal trial does not, strictly speaking, find a defendant "innocent." Rather, a defendant may be guilty or not guilty [note the Law of the Excluded Middle here] of the charges brought. In common use, however, owing perhaps to the concept of the presumption of innocence, which instructs a jury to consider a defendant free of wrongdoing until proven guilty on the basis of evidence, "not guilty" and "innocent" have come to be thought of as synonymous. [New Oxford American Dictionary]

In other words, the defendant is not innocent until proven guilty, but to be considered innocent until proven guilty. His "innocence" is epistemological, not metaphysical, the Objectivists would say. He is legally innocent, which does not necessarily mean innocent in fact.

Same thing for the fossil I destroyed. The only sense in which I am "entitled" to state that it "did not exist" is the epistemic one: the fossil is to be presumed as not existing, until and unless it can be proved to have existed. But I, its destroyer, am ~not~ "entitled" to simply say: "the fossil did not exist." I am ~lying~!! Am I "entitled" to ~lie~??

REB

REB

[Jonathan]

I woke up this morning wondering: Would Kant list as an example of the sublime the inventing of the myth of a villain who is so overwhelmingly powerful that he is the cause of all cultural ills, if the invention of such a myth allowed its inventors to imagine or experience the feeling of their power to resist such a devastating object of fear?

J

[BaalChatzaf]

It's only in mathematics that we can and must prove our statements. Science doesn't prove anything, it creates models that are verified experimentally. A good model is a model that corresponds to the data and that can make accurate predictions, that is the basis of scientific statements, together with Ockham's razor: unnecessary hypotheses are rejected. In science you can unambiguously state that something doesn't exist if there isn't any evidence that it exists. In that regard science is closer to English jurisprudence than to mathematics.

Dragonfly,

That's an interesting observation. Maybe Rand emphasized the not proving a negative thing about God so much because the basis of her theory of concepts is mathematical.

I agree with the gist of your statement, but I need to think about the fundaments since I also hold that mathematics and concept formation are essentially the same form of thinking in different clothes.

Michael

How about no clothes? Mathematics done abstractly has zero empirical content. Once one gets past geometry and counting, mathematics is non-inductive. Mathematics is a Platonic undertaking, in its most general form.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Dragonfly]

Suppose I murdered someone, but the court could not prove it -- or I discovered a fossil of a new kind of dinosaur, one which was speculatively hypothesized by scientists, but I destroyed the evidence, so they couldn't establish its existence.

Am I "entitled to "unambiguously state" that I am innocent -- or that the dinosaur species did not exist?? Really??

No, because you have the evidence that you're not innocent and that the dinosaur species existed. Others don't have that information and may therefore state that you're innocent and that the dinosaur species did not exist. The fact that you may make statements about the physical world doesn't guarantee that your statements will always be correct. No such guarantee can be given. Statements may be altered upon receiving new and relevant information.

In other words, the defendant is not innocent until proven guilty, but to be considered innocent until proven guilty. His "innocence" is epistemological, not metaphysical, the Objectivists would say. He is legally innocent, which does not necessarily mean innocent in fact.

In that sense science is also epistemological, not metaphysical. We never can be sure that a physical theory is correct, the theory is considered to be correct, until proven otherwise. Scientists don't waste their time however by putting a disclaimer with every statement and theory, they know that this is implicit in doing science. Certainty is for the charlatans.

Same thing for the fossil I destroyed. The only sense in which I am "entitled" to state that it "did not exist" is the epistemic one: the fossil is to be presumed as not existing, until and unless it can be proved to have existed. But I, its destroyer, am ~not~ "entitled" to simply say: "the fossil did not exist." I am ~lying~!! Am I "entitled" to ~lie~??

You're free to lie, but it still would be a lie. Others who don't have your information are entitled to say that the fossil didn't exist. That they may be wrong in this case is not relevant. Science is not about eternal truths, but about best guesses.

[Ellen Stuttle]

DF, you have it exactly backward about the analogy to "innocent until proven guilty."

No, you have it backward about the analogy. The point is that you don't have to prove that you're innocent/not quilty to state unambiguously that you are innocent. [underline added by REB.]

[....]

In science you can unambiguously state that something doesn't exist if there isn't any evidence that it exists. In that regard science is closer to English jurisprudence than to mathematics.

That (see underscored above) is not ~my~ understanding of what "innocent" means in court cases or what "not exists" means in science.

Nor is it my understanding. I'd have been inclined, DF, to think that the problem with your statings of the epistemologic issue was something which pertained to translating back and forth between Dutch and English, such that you weren't saying in English what you meant, had you not elaborated in your follow-up post.

In science what you can state is that you have no evidence that something [Edit: meaning by "something" some particular something X] exists, therefore you'll proceed on the assumption that it [X] doesn't exist until and unless evidence of its existence turns up. The feature of your formulations which especially strikes me as odd coming from a scientist is that you're the one who's proclaiming certainty while declaiming in your subsequent reply to Roger (post #265) that:

"Certainty is for the charlatans."

At any rate...you've started my fancies playing with a train of speculating which I'm finding entertaining, trying to imagine how the history of thought might have gone if Kant hadn't existed. E.g., Hegel couldn't have taken Kant as a point of departure if there hadn't been Kant, so what might Hegel's philosophy have been? If Hegel's system hadn't been what it was, what might Marx have come up with? Would we maybe not have had dialectical materialism? (A whole lot would have been different without that.) And those questions only pertain to very influential thinkers whose work derived directly from "the Kantian swerve" (Henry Veatch's description; see my post #235). What of all the others...?

Interesting to think about, to me.

Ellen

Edit: PS: While I'm on-line to correct a possible ambiguity in my meaning of "something" (see the "Edit"), I'll add that I'm going to have to become scare in listland for the next few months. We have a major renovating and refurnishing project which we'd like to get completed by November, so I won't have much time for posting while that project is still underway.

___

Edited July 30, 2008 by Ellen Stuttle

[Matus1976]

A piece of garbage tumbling down the street would probably not be sublime to Kant. My understanding of his notion of the sublime (and I admit that I'm still just beginning to re-read him after a couple of decades) is that it's an issue of magnitude. It is the feeling of not being able to get our heads around something, something so large and complex that it is impossible to fully comprehend. So it's not an issue of of being disconnected from reality, but of being overwhelmed by its immensity yet still having an idea or concept of the phenomenon which is beyond comprehension

I can't literally say what Kant would find "sublime" but a piece of tumbling garbage does in fact fit his (and your) criteria. If you literally try to comprehend the complexity of interactions going on that relate to a mere garbage bag blowing in the wind down the street (the intramolecular forces, the molecular thermodynamic motion, the ionization from ultraviolet light, formed from nuclear reactions inside the sun 90 billion miles away, the radioactive decay going on inside the carbon atoms the bag is composed of, the exchange of 'virtual particles' which constant the forces repelling atoms, the grand mountainous miscroscopic landscape of the surface it bounces upon, the random yet average pressures created by an unimaginable number of atoms in the air banging together and banging against the bag, some traveling many km/s, the reflection of light off the back and into our eyes, the cascading effect and the folding protiens in the eye which lead this to visual perception, the specular and glossy highlighting caused by uneven and even surfaces, etc etc etc, ) it quickly spirals into something nobody could truly wrap their head around, and is thus "sublime" by your standards, and removed from perceptual recognition or 'transcendant of sense' and seemingly sublime by Kant's standards. By your and his standards ANYTHING is SUBLIME if you think about it enough, and you have a decent scientific understanding of reality. To the rest of us, Sublime is not just incomprehensibility, it is something which has profound meaning and is the highest form of beauty we can recognize.

Burke's view was that the sublime was based in pain, fear or terror, and was the opposite of beauty. It was the unknowable void, the power which overwhelms, the thing that excites terror.

Whether the reaction to the sublime was Joy or Pain according to Burke it was still based on a reaction to the recognition of something immense in reality using one's senses. Kant seems to explicitly say otherwise, that the sublime is devoid of any casual connection to recognizing something in reality. I'm quoteing Janson quoting Burke here, so if Janson's assessment of Burke's idea of the sublime is wrong - "that delicious sense of awe experienced before grandiose nature, as defined by Edmund Burke in Inquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful of 1756" - then take it up with him (or his estate)

You can read a decent history of the word and idea of Sublime here - http://historyofideas.org/cgi-local/DHI/dhi.cgi?id=dv4-44

[Roger Bissell]

I understand the problem with the (Kantian?) view that the sublime or awe-provoking quality of vastness requires or is best appreciated by a disconnect between the understanding and the imagination. It seems to suggest that understanding, grasping the causal nature, of something monumental in scope is somehow not a worthy approach to the sublime, let alone necessary to one's best interests. A denigration of the rational faculty in favor of imagination, as it were. Yet another Kantian (?) attack on reason...

For a distinctly different approach to appreciation of the sublime, I thought folks might be interested to know that in lecture 3 ("Two Definitions") of his mini- lecture series, Unity in Epistemology and Ethics (1996), Leonard Peikoff approvingly quotes and comments on Tennyson's poem "Flower in the crannied wall."

Just before we start lecture 3, I want to thank Shoshanna Milgrim. She located the fragment from Tennyson that I referred to in lecture 1 as capturing the essence of the interconnectedness of the universe and how, if you knew any one aspect fully, you would know everything. This is a philosophically exquisitely correct poem, leaving aside the religious implications; and since it's just a few lines, and Shoshanna was good enough to give it to me, I'm going to preface today's class by reading this poem by Alfred Lord Tennyson:

Flower in the crannied wall, I pluck you out of the crannies. I hold you here, root and all, in my hand. Little flower, if I could but understand what you are, root and all, and all in all, I should know what God and man is.

Isn't that nice? That's a perfect poetic expression of unity, metaphysically and epistemologically.

REB

[Dragonfly]

In science what you can state is that you have no evidence that something [Edit: meaning by "something" some particular something X] exists, therefore you'll proceed on the assumption that it [X] doesn't exist until and unless evidence of its existence turns up. The feature of your formulations which especially strikes me as odd coming from a scientist is that you're the one who's proclaiming certainty while declaiming in your subsequent reply to Roger (post #265) that:

"Certainty is for the charlatans."

I'm not proclaiming certainty. Scientific statements are never certain, but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't make them. It is in mathematics that you cannot state that something is true only while you haven't found yet evidence that falsifies the statement. For example, not finding a counterexample to Goldbach's conjecture doesn't allow us to claim that the Goldberg conjecture is true, it remains a conjecture. That's the essential difference between mathematics and physics, or between analytical statements and synthetic statements.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Scientific statements are never certain, but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't make them.

Dragonfly,

Is that an "ought from is" statement?

Michael

[Jonathan]

I can't literally say what Kant would find "sublime" but a piece of tumbling garbage does in fact fit his (and your) criteria. If you literally try to comprehend the complexity of interactions going on that relate to a mere garbage bag blowing in the wind down the street...it quickly spirals into something nobody could truly wrap their head around, and is thus "sublime" by your standards, and removed from perceptual recognition or 'transcendant of sense' and seemingly sublime by Kant's standards. By your and his standards ANYTHING is SUBLIME if you think about it enough, and you have a decent scientific understanding of reality.

In reading Kant, I don't get the impression that his view is that the sublime is experienced by taking something, contemplating ways in which one could see it as infinitely complex, and then trying to comprehend the imagined complexity. In other words, the aesthetic feeling of the sublime is not artificially induced -- you don't choose to experience something which is non-sublime as sublime by trying to coax complexity out of it.

To the rest of us, Sublime is not just incomprehensibility, it is something which has profound meaning and is the highest form of beauty we can recognize.

If the sublime, to you, is "that which has profound meaning and is the highest form of beauty that can be recognized," which word would you propose that we use for the experience of delightful horror and infinite immensity in which all thought is lost, as described by the thinkers that you linked to?

Whether the reaction to the sublime was Joy or Pain according to Burke it was still based on a reaction to the recognition of something immense in reality using one's senses. Kant seems to explicitly say otherwise, that the sublime is devoid of any casual connection to recognizing something in reality.

Where does Kant say that? His view is that the immensity of phenomena in reality engage our attention and stimulate the experience of the sublime.

I'm quoteing Janson quoting Burke here, so if Janson's assessment of Burke's idea of the sublime is wrong - "that delicious sense of awe experienced before grandiose nature, as defined by Edmund Burke in Inquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful of 1756" - then take it up with him (or his estate0

Why would you think that Janson's assessment of Burke's idea of the sublime is wrong? Janson's description of the "delicious sense of awe experienced before grandiose nature" does not contradict Burke's horror-based idea of the sublime, or that of the thinkers you linked to who have views similar to Burke's. The enjoyment of the horror of the sublime is what Janson was calling "delicious" and describing as inspiring "awe" -- that which is deliciously and awesomely frightful.

You can read a decent history of the word and idea of Sublime here - http://historyofideas.org/cgi-local/DHI/dhi.cgi?id=dv4-44

Did you read the information at the site? The thinkers who are quoted there discuss the delightful horror of the sublime, being mentally overwhelmed, and having their imaginations stimulated by it:

"travellers to the Alps were both appalled and enthralled"

"...and some part of the 'horror' and 'terror' expressed by Dennis was the result of natural and instinctive fear. 'We walk'd upon the very brink, in a literal sense, of Destruction,' he wrote. 'One Stumble and both Life and Carcass had been at once destroy'd.' Everywhere about him, Dennis saw the ruins of a broken world: 'Ruins upon Ruins in monstrous Heaps, and Heaven and Earth confounded.' The frightful view of precipices and foaming waters that fell headlong from them 'made all such a Consort up for the Eye, as that sort of Musick does for the Ear, in which Horrour can be joyn'd with Harmony.' The Alps are works which 'Nature seems to have design'd, and execut'd too in Fury. Yet she moves us less when she studies to please us more.' Before his Alpine journey Dennis had been 'delighted' at the beauty of hills and valleys, meadows and streams, but that had been 'a delight that is consistent with reason...But transporting Pleasures followed the sight of the Alpes, and what unusual Transports think you were those, that were mingled with Horrours, and sometimes almost with despair.' In a sentence Dennis expressed the idea of the Sublime that was to become a new aesthetic experience: 'The sense of all this produc'd different emotions in me, viz., a delightful Horrour, a terrible Joy, and at the same time, that I was infinitely pleas'd, I trembled.' Dennis returned to England to write various works in which he developed an aesthetic only dawning when he went abroad, to attempt to establish new literary criteria, and to make the first important distinction in English literary criticism between the Beautiful and the Sublime, categories which remained sharply opposed in his mind."

"To Shaftesbury the apparent infinity of space led men to thoughts of God, in whose 'immensity all thought is lost, fancy gives over its flight, and wearied imagination spends itself in vain, finding no coast nor limit of this ocean.'"

“'The Alps,' [Addison] wrote, 'fill the mind with an agreeable kind of horror, and form one of the most irregular, mis-shapen scenes in the world.'...His originality lay in his stress upon the effect on imagination of greatness...But although Addison shared with predecessors and contemporaries his interest in the effect of sight, he was original in his emphasis on the influence of sight less on the mind, than on the imagination.”

"The qualities of Beauty are pleasant ones, such as smallness, smoothness, delicacy, variation, color. Those of the Sublime are terror, obscurity, difficulty, power, vastness, leading to magnificence and infinity. The passion caused by the great and sublime in nature, when their causes operate most powerfully is Astonishment; and astonishment is that state of the soul, in which all its motions are suspended, with some degree of horror. In this case the mind is so entirely filled with its objects, that it cannot entertain any other...Hence arises the great power of the sublime, that far from being produced by them, it anticipates our reasonings, it hurries us on by an irresistible force.

"'Whatever is fitted in any soul,' Burke went on, 'to

excite the ideas of pain and danger

, that is to say, whatever is in any sort

terrible, or is conversant about terrible objects

, or operates in a manner analogous to terror, is a source of the sublime, that is, it is productive of the

strongest emotions which the mind is capable of feeling

.' 'All general privations,' he wrote, 'are

great, because they are all terrible; Vacuity, Darkness, Solitude, and Silence

.'

"There was nothing particularly original in Addison's development of the categories of beauty or novelty, but his analysis of greatness was of the first importance. As we shall see, his ideas were versified by Mark Akenside and made into an elaborate system by Edmund Burke. His analysis of beauty and sublimity also lay behind various of Immanuel Kant's conceptions in his Kritik der Urteilskraft (1790). To some extent his distinction between the Beautiful and the Sublime..."

Most of the thinkers quoted seem to see the sublime as something infinite, boundless/formless, horrific and beyond comprehension, and none of them seem to share your view that the sublime "is something which has profound meaning" -- the sublime, to them, is about emotional impact, bewilderment and strained mental efforts, not deep meaning.

J

[Matus1976]

In reading Kant, I don't get the impression that his view is that the sublime is experienced by taking something, contemplating ways in which one could see it as infinitely complex, and then trying to comprehend the imagined complexity.

You should work out your idea of the sublime then, because that's almost identical to what you said in post 209

My understanding of his notion of the sublime ... is that it's an issue of magnitude. It is the feeling of not being able to get our heads around something, something so large and complex that it is impossible to fully comprehend ... being overwhelmed by its immensity yet still having an idea or concept of the phenomenon which is beyond comprehension

In other words, the aesthetic feeling of the sublime is not artificially induced -- you don't choose to experience something which is non-sublime as sublime by trying to coax complexity out of it.

Kant wrote

The sublime is that, the mere capacity of thinking which evidences a faculty of mind transcending every standard of sense.

If you have other Kant quotes on what he means by "sublime" feel free to share them. But there is no 'coaxing' going on, the complexity of the interactions related to a tumbling trash bag in the wind ARE immense and incomprehensible, they are not imaginary. Attempting to contemplate them can certainly drive a mind into a state which 'transcends every standard of sense'

And of course you are wading into mystical territory here, insisting that the sublime is not something you can feel at the 'non-sublime'. There is no absolute 'this is sublime' rule of the universe, and 'this is not sublime' where sentient beings are supposed to appropriately feel the sublime in reaction to those. Who determines what is and is not sublime? The subject himself does, like any other emotion, because of the values they have chosen throughout life, the extent with which they are intergrated, and what he percieves and then understands about what he is experiencing. The emotional reaction, sublime or not, comes in reaction to what the subject thinks is sublime, not what Kant thinks is sublime, or what the 'universe' thinks is sublime. Kant is saying what he thinks sublime IS, but in reality is preaching what he thinks it OUGHT to be.

If the word "sublime" (like Art) is to have any useful or significant meaning, it should not be something that means an overwhelming sense of grandeur, reverence, terror, or whatever ever at the incomprehensible detached from physical reality, because then it is a purely internalized emotion and is experienced for it's own sake and serves no purpose, and the word and idea become meaningless. Curl up in the fetal position, roll around on your floor and look 'inward' until you experience your sublime moment.

To the rest of us, Sublime is not just incomprehensibility, it is something which has profound meaning and is the highest form of beauty we can recognize.

If the sublime, to you, is "that which has profound meaning and is the highest form of beauty that can be recognized," which word would you propose that we use for the experience of delightful horror and infinite immensity in which all thought is lost, as described by the thinkers that you linked to?

The opposite of Sublime. In Chemistry, the opposite of Sublimation is Deposition. "ah, that is so depositive" ? Or we could ad the greek prefix 'a' and call it asublime. don't know, don't particularly care to identify such a word at this moment.

Whether the reaction to the sublime was Joy or Pain according to Burke it was still based on a reaction to the recognition of something immense in reality using one's senses. Kant seems to explicitly say otherwise, that the sublime is devoid of any casual connection to recognizing something in reality.

Where does Kant say that? His view is that the immensity of phenomena in reality engage our attention and stimulate the experience of the sublime.

I've all ready quoted it a few times.

The sublime is that, the mere capacity of thinking which evidences a faculty of mind transcending every standard of sense

Read his comments on Genuis (someone who creates something great but has no idea why or how he has and can not reliable reproduce it) and Fine Art (that which incurs the sublime where you have no idea why you feel it and is not according to any rules) and the Sublime, a feeling that 'transcends' all sense perception

You can read a decent history of the word and idea of Sublime here - http://historyofideas.org/cgi-local/DHI/dhi.cgi?id=dv4-44

Did you read the information at the site? The thinkers who are quoted there discuss the delightful horror of the sublime, being mentally overwhelmed, and having their imaginations stimulated by it:

<snip>

Most of the thinkers quoted seem to see the sublime as something infinite, boundless/formless, horrific and beyond comprehension, and none of them seem to share your view that the sublime "is something which has profound meaning" -- the sublime, to them, is about emotional impact, bewilderment and strained mental efforts, not deep meaning.

Yes I did read it, you apparently skimmed it looking only for the section that supports your interpretation. That site traced the HISTORY of the word and it's changing usage OVER TIME. If you think that, today, Sublime means something horrible and terrifying, you are disconnected from the modern english language.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/sublime

Dictionary.com -

1. elevated or lofty in thought, language, etc.: Paradise Lost is sublime poetry.

2. impressing the mind with a sense of grandeur or power; inspiring awe, veneration, etc.: Switzerland has sublime scenery.

3. supreme or outstanding: a sublime dinner.

4. complete; absolute; utter: sublime stupidity.

American Heritage Dictionary

1. Characterized by nobility; majestic.

2.

1. Of high spiritual, moral, or intellectual worth.

2. Not to be excelled; supreme.

3. Inspiring awe; impressive.

4. Archaic Raised aloft; set high.

5. Obsolete Of lofty appearance or bearing; haughty: "not terrible,/That I should fear . . . /But solemn and sublime" (John Milton).

None of the modern definitions include anything pertaining to horror or terror, but they implicitly relate to a feeling associated with recognizing something in reality.

The wikipedia entry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sublime_(philosophy) has a good history of Sublime as well.

You are focusing on a particular era, prior to that, the sublime was the awe at great rhetorhic, and then it was nobility, then it was terror and beauty, then it was just the highest recognition of beauty or awe, as it seems to have settled on today.

The modern usage of the word sublime is fine with me, an exalted or reverent feeling at experiencing or recognizing the highest or most beautiful thing once can concieve. The usage advocated by British explorers and writers of the 17th century, as you point out, one of terror and beauty, but yet still experienced at the recognition or reaction to something profoudnly beautiful and terrible, is fine as well, since it is grounded in reality. We just need a sufficient opposing term. Kant's usage is the worst and only useless one, since it focuses only on the FEELING and not the thing which caused the feeling.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

If the word "sublime" (like Art) is to have any useful or significant meaning, it should not be something that means an overwhelming sense of grandeur, reverence, terror, or whatever ever at the incomprehensible detached from physical reality, because then it is a purely internalized emotion and is experienced for it's own sake and serves no purpose, and the word and idea become meaningless. Curl up in the fetal position, roll around on your floor and look 'inward' until you experience your sublime moment.

Michael (Matus),

Stepping away from Kant a second, I have trouble with this kind of dismissal and mocking that goes with it. That's a lot of shoulding. (As Barbara once mentioned, despite her differences with Dr. Albert Ellis, she saw a sign in his office she loved. It said, Don't should on me." See here.)

The problem is that our inner mental states exist and they can become independent objects of our observation. Just as we can look at our hand or leg, or even look in a mirror, and see what we see as separate things, we can also look at our mental processes and see all that as a separate thing. That is the true meaning of being aware of yourself—stepping back and taking a look-see, so to speak.

People who promote the objections you present above usually dismiss our internal mental world as if it did not exist except as something arbitrary, and they use words like whim or feelings, etc., to describe it.

I have difficulty in my communications with Michael Newberry precisely on this point and how this inner mental reality can be expressed as a subject of art and not just an attribute inputted to a physical thing from outside it. (Volition-based input on the subject of an artwork is called theme and style.)

But I can offer some proof of what I am saying. How about controlling the inner mental state by goal-directed conceptual volition housed right within it? How about scientific measurement? How about repeatable results? Would that be enough to check this premise? Take a look at the following video:

How's that for curling up in the fetal position, rolling around on the floor and looking inward?

Can you do that? I can't.

But I can learn it. So can anyone who wants to.

That is at the very root of volition. I don't know where this leads, but it exists. The mind exists. It can control the very brain it is housed in.

(I wonder if understanding Kant's meaning changes when looked at from this perspective. I will have to wait to answer that one. I don't discuss Kant because I haven't read much of his work. I'm sorry to say, I get awfully bored with his stuff.)

So I ask, why can't a person look at the complexity and richness and grandeur of his own mind—not just anyone's mind, his own mind, and not just the word "mind" as a floating abstraction, but the actual mental operations that are the referents of the concept "mind"—contemplate that and experience a sublime moment?

I say he can. In fact, that happens to me quite often.

The mind is a beautiful thing. I love the independent mind so much I have made the independent use of it a theme of Objectivist Living.

Michael

[Nicholas Dykes]

Ba'al,

That all sounds very Kantian.

I prefer David Kelley's view, presented in The Evidence of the Senses, that we directly perceive entities. Our machines, telescopes and microscopes, merely enable us to see farther or deeper, but what we observe are still objective entities.

If we were only aware of our own sense impressions, as you seem to suggest, we would be condemned to solipsism, as Antony Flew pointed out a long time ago.

For the record. I discuss this matter in my recent book.

Nicholas Dykes

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Nick,

Which post are you referring to? There is a post number to the upper right just above the text box of every post. If you don't know how to link to it yet, that OK. If you would give the post number, I could add it for you later. As it stands, I don't know what comment by Ba'al you are addressing.

Michael