Art as Microcosm (2004)

[william.scherk]

2 minutes ago, anthony said:

We are capable of a huge range of emotions and this is one of them. Unless one considers emotions are "tools of cognition"

I consider emotions to be 'tools of cognition.'  I believe that without emotion, human cognition is gravely compromised. 

 

[Jonathan]

43 minutes ago, anthony said:

 

The feeling of the sublime, however, is when the object does not invite such contemplation but instead is an overpowering or vast malignant object of great magnitude, one that could destroy the observer.

Yeah, in other words, the Sublime is triggered by the types of malignant entities that can be found in all of Rand's novels.

J

[Jonathan]

2 minutes ago, william.scherk said:

I consider emotions to be 'tools of cognition.'  I believe that without emotion, human cognition is gravely compromised. 

 

Emotion is Tony's only tool of cognition! It's the only one that he ever uses.

J

[anthony]

A glaring omission from scholarly writing on Kant that I've read, is that he hardly mentions ~what~ the content of a painting or artwork IS, or has been, or could be, or should be. He is fixed solely on beauty, which only the "inspired Genius" (artist) can bring to us, and which the majority of people can't recognize anyway. (He indicated). Even back then, was there elitism in art.

Another omission is literature, although Schopenhauer refers to poetry somewhat, and in that Kant is dead right. There isn't any beauty in a word, in itself - un-orated and on a page (one may consider type-face beautiful, but that's another thing). The 'beauty' obviously lies in the imagery conveyed by word-combinations, identified by a reader's mind. Taking in the written language is an indirect process to which Kant apparently understood he couldn't attach Sublime feelings, as in a concrete artwork; however, a novel's characters still act and think and feel their own emotions, according to the author's values. A fictional character could have all sorts of powerful feelings (may be "sublime" also) and the reader understands and feels with them, or not, according to his values.

Rand's novels (nor anyone's) are not examples of the Sublime--as evidenced by Kant, who relied on instant, direct emotionality.

[Jonathan]

5 minutes ago, anthony said:

A glaring omission from scholarly writing on Kant, is that he hardly mentions ~what~ the content of a painting or artwork IS, or has been, or could be, or should be. He is fixed solely on beauty, which only the "inspired Genius" (artist) can bring to us, and which the majority of people can't recognize anyway. (He indicated). Even back then, was there elitism in art.

False, on all counts. You need to read more carefully and more widely.

Um, what you need to focus on is attempting to understand what is being said, rather than giving everything a quick, hostile reading. The idea isn't to continually try to make Kant say what you want him to say so that you can validate your predetermined condemnation of him.

 

9 minutes ago, anthony said:

Taking in the written language is an indirect process to which Kant apparently understood he couldn't attach Sublime feelings, as in a concrete artwork; however, a novel's characters still act and think and feel their own emotions, according to the author's values. A fictional character could have all sorts of powerful feelings (may be "sublime" also) and the reader understands and feels with them, or not, according to his values.

Rand's novels (nor anyone's) are not examples of the Sublime--as evidenced by Kant, who relied on instant, direct emotionality.

Garble, non-sequitur, slop-thought.

J

[anthony]

But what's the harm in one philosopher's ideas of art, some may say? I anticipated from my mixed reading that Kant had a grand, master plan up his sleeve. Art, aesthetics and so on, were his universalized, soft entree to more and bigger things, apparently.

(Extracts from a very fat work by Erman Kaplana, on Nietzsche and Kant):

"The most universalizable principles, for Kant, are love of honour, servicing the common good, acting according to beauty and harmony. This conclusion results from his understanding of the moral individual as someone who can overcome his subjectivity and manage to "take a standpoint outside himself in thought, in order to judge the outward propriety of his behaviour, as it seems in the eyes of the onlooker" thus observing himself from outside.

Kant thus considered aesthetic and ethical judgments integrated, both essentially and teleologically".

[...]

"Therefore, he reiterates the feeling of the sublime as deriving from the rationalization or universalization of a now moral (moralized) aesthetic feeling. He puts this as follows:

""When universal affection toward the human species has become a principle within you to which you always subordinate your actions, then love to the needy still remains; but now from a higher standpoint, it has been placed in its true relation to your total duty"".

"According to Kant, this is how aesthetics and ethics converge, and how the particular ethical conduct can be universalized through aesthetics".

(That's the purpose of his aesthetics, the convenient leader into his duty ethics and from there on towards a harmonious, obedient society).

 

[Jonathan]

54 minutes ago, anthony said:

But what's the harm in one philosopher's ideas of art, some may say?

Who is saying that? Is it the people who live in your head?

 

55 minutes ago, anthony said:

""When universal affection toward the human species has become a principle within you to which you always subordinate your actions, then love to the needy still remains; but now from a higher standpoint, it has been placed in its true relation to your total duty"".

What do you think the above means, Tony? Put it into your own words.

 

56 minutes ago, anthony said:

(That's the purpose of his aesthetics, the convenient leader into his duty ethics and from there on towards a harmonious, obedient society).

 

Obedient to what or whom? Specify which "duties" you think that individuals would incur under a Kantian system.

J

[Brant Gaede]

If Tony can't/won't deal up front and forthrightly with Jonathan's criticisms--J's name calling is irrelevant for it's only ad hominem never argumentum ad hominem--one has to assume nothing he has to say on the subject can be considered right or come with the authority of a true expert. So I am only looking for actual on the subject replies to Jonathan--No luck so far (I possibly missed some)--and not for knowledge of esthetics technically or philosophically.

True experts never bore me--whatever the subject or possible level of my comprehension. (I suspect Sigmund Freud would have bored me.) That's why Einstein has never bored me even when he wasn't talking physics. Einstein was a modest man. He declined to let his mouth go where his brain couldn't.

--Brant

I'm not nice by being nice contra to what I think is being said, but I'm more circumspect socially or right in your face one on one, sometimes with the use of silence or non-objection depending especially on the turf--is it mine or someone else's?

[anthony]

3 hours ago, Brant Gaede said:

If Tony can't/won't deal up front and forthrightly with Jonathan's criticisms--

What "criticisms"?! Whew. Look back, and you'll see pages of stone-walling, blanket denials, trashing conceptual arguments, sarcastic questions, and a pretence of not understanding. All with hardly one proper counter-argument.

He doesn't have many original answers, and until he commits himself to truthful argument I'll barely pay attention to his distasteful, uninformative posts.

 Anyway, I have put up some academically sourced quotes about the Sublime and Kant, etc.  I made my honest assessments - anyone else can add their own objective, moral appraisals from Kant's own words and those of his scholars. I'm not expecting much.

For instance. Would anyone like to address the premises of how Kant saw his "aesthetics and ethics converge"? Is his ethics palatable to those here? ("Servicing the common good"). Is it palatable, in fact, that he forsaw his aesthetics to be the "universalizing" medium of his code of ethics?

To get the ball rolling I'll make a proposition: Universalizing = collectivizing.

[Brant Gaede]

I can't stand to call you stupid, Tony, and I can't stand to call you a liar. I don't think you're either. It might help if you were one, the other, even both.

I went to a church on Sunday to witness a baptism. First, not about the baptism, I experienced something over-whelming and terrifying in me then I experienced transcendence. (This wasn't religious; I don't believe in God.)

Was this transcendence an experience of the Sublime?

Yes? No? Just a simple answer. Don't add on five paragraphs of explanation or explication; you can do that in a following post. Just a naked answer. Even only, I don't know. There. You have three choices and no outs. As for me, myself and I--I think I did.

Yes

No

I don't know

That's all--nothing more. Not a word. Save more words for the next post which you are welcome to immediately write and post.

(There's a TV show I've never watched: Naked and Afraid.)

--Brant

[Thorn]

18 hours ago, anthony said:

An emotion, identifiable too, is a rapid reaction to making an identity of something - and, according to one's metaphysical view of existence.

This is borderline word soup. I take it you mean emotions follow one's metaphysical value judgements.

18 hours ago, anthony said:

So it is not a certainty to be the same emotion someone else has in the same circumstance.

Agreed, What does that matter?

18 hours ago, anthony said:

In Sublimity, I guess this one you describe would fall under "pleasurable terror", of the imagined possibility of harm while knowing you're safe. Not "dynamic" sublime, more like the "mathematical" sublime of vast space. That feeling, everyone has known at some stage, is of 'discombobulation', a temporary 'disembodiment' and mental hiatus from briefly being unable to take in the scale of the height and view, which your sight is not accustomed to.

Maybe that's what you would feel, but I certainly did not. Yes, it would fall under "pleasurable terror", but hardly safe. It was a certain kind of exaltation.

18 hours ago, anthony said:

So what, really? We are capable of a huge range of emotions and this is one of them.

The point is describing a certain kind of emotion, something which many philosophers have identified as a certain aesthetic quality.

18 hours ago, anthony said:

Unless one considers emotions are "tools of cognition", so prime causes. Unless the object by philosophers is to -emotionally- link our minds directly Nature, to achieve "Oneness". Then, through beauty and sublime in art -emotionally- link us to all mankind. Except, it is the knowledge and understanding of man and nature by which we feel emotions for them. The more you know, the more you feel - in a nutshell. Is that so hard?

You are not making any sense. Now this is qualified word soup and a complete non-sequitur.

It's about identifying a certain kind of emotion, a certain kind of quality, that can be experienced in certain situations. Replace sublime with beauty, if that helps.

Take a fine art nude of, say, a woman. Her face is serene, limbs are gracefully shaped and the forms are curving freely like wind. Looking at the artwork you may get this peculiar feeling of harmony, like everything about the woman is fitting percetly and put together just right. Now, what is this strange quality? I know, let's call it beauty!

Of course, someone interjects: "So what, really? Unless one considers emotions are "tools of cognition", so prime causes" and so on and so forth. Does that really make sense to you? For really reals?

[anthony]

On 2016/06/02 at 4:29 PM, Thorn said:

This is borderline word soup. I take it you mean emotions follow one's metaphysical value judgements.

Agreed, What does that matter?

Maybe that's what you would feel, but I certainly did not. Yes, it would fall under "pleasurable terror", but hardly safe. It was a certain kind of exaltation.

The point is describing a certain kind of emotion, something which many philosophers have identified as a certain aesthetic quality.

You are not making any sense. Now this is qualified word soup and a complete non-sequitur.

It's about identifying a certain kind of emotion, a certain kind of quality, that can be experienced in certain situations. Replace sublime with beauty, if that helps.

Take a fine art nude of, say, a woman. Her face is serene, limbs are gracefully shaped and the forms are curving freely like wind. Looking at the artwork you may get this peculiar feeling of harmony, like everything about the woman is fitting percetly and put together just right. Now, what is this strange quality? I know, let's call it beauty!

Of course, someone interjects: "So what, really? Unless one considers emotions are "tools of cognition", so prime causes" and so on and so forth. Does that really make sense to you? For really reals?

You're thinking narrowly, an individual's emotions and reason unprescribed by some philosopher's aesthetic theories is what I am largely on about. What came first? What is lasting? Man's consciousness and emotions, not a convoluted phenomenon-feeling-"reason" hypothesis designed to encourage 'one-ness with Nature' or 'prove' reason. I've been the loudest advocate of the necessity and efficacy of emotions, so spare the lecture. But one has to know the distinction between "the Sublime" - and one's sublime-type emotions. The first has the authoritarian, neo-mystical imprint of some thinkers. The other is real to man. One can very simply ditch the first - an archaic, man-made theory, dating back to an era when Nature certainly seemed 'mystical' and was always unknowable, turbulent and dangerous - and keep the second, an essential existent (yup, dependent on one's metaphysical value premises) without pause. 

To simplify: In quick order, you see-identify a fine art nude; you recognise the inherent beauty; you are left feeling a specific individual emotion e.g. upliftment. Is that so difficult? Why do you have a need to impose The Theory of Sublimity, defined by Schopenhauer, etc., after that?

Beauty, too, I have endlessly stood for - in tandem with content or substance - so that's a straw man.

(The "fear factor" - of extreme 'sublime' feelings to extreme phenomena (volcanos, earthquakes ... hmm) can be simply dealt with; clearly in such moments men, like animals, revert back to survival mode and their neo-cortex and brain chemicals. Yeah, right, after which one's rationality returns (... and what is proven? Not much). How Sublimity has managed to persist right into the modern era amid scientific knowledge is amazing and amusing. Whether earlier and recent sublimists after Longinus were ignorant of man's automatic reaction to potential life-threat, or shrewdly utilized it to their ends, I can't know).

[anthony]

Brant, you experienced an instant emotion of your own value-making and realizing. Because it was individually and personally to you of a "sublime" nature, don't let the Sublimists hi-jack it from you.

[Jonathan]

1 hour ago, anthony said:

You're thinking narrowly, an individual's emotions and reason unprescribed by some philosopher's aesthetic theories is what I am largely on about. What came first? What is lasting? Man's consciousness and emotions, not a convoluted phenomenon-feeling-"reason" hypothesis designed to encourage 'one-ness with Nature' or 'prove' reason. I've been the loudest advocate of the necessity and efficacy of emotions, so spare the lecture. But one has to know the distinction between "the Sublime" - and one's sublime-type emotions. The first has the authoritarian, neo-mystical imprint of some thinkers. The other is real to man. One can very simply ditch the first - an archaic, man-made theory, dating back to an era when Nature certainly seemed 'mystical' and was always unknowable, turbulent and dangerous - and keep the second, an essential existent (yup, dependent on one's metaphysical value premises) without pause. 

Billy, would you mind trying to translate the above? You seem to be farther along than the rest of us in learning Tony's personal, crazy "language." Could you make the above less incoherent?

 

1 hour ago, anthony said:

To simplify: In quick order, you see-identify a fine art nude; you recognise the inherent beauty; you are left feeling a specific individual emotion e.g. upliftment. Is that so difficult? Why do you have a need to impose The Theory of Sublimity, defined by Schopenhauer, etc., after that?

The answer to your question is that no one is "imposing" anything, but instead they are identifying a phenomenon. You know, A is A, a thing is what it is, existence is identity and consciousness is identification? Are you familiar with those terms? See, the idea is that a thing is what it is, and identifying a phenomenon by genus and differentia is the virtuous cognitive practice of properly using one's mind. Do you know how a chair is different from a blanket, and do you recognize the value and cognitive importance in grasping that difference? Well, the same is true of grasping the difference between the experience of Beauty and the experience of the Sublime! See, they're two different things! Differentia!

 

1 hour ago, anthony said:

How Sublimity has managed to persist right into the modern era amid scientific knowledge is amazing and amusing.

Especially amusing is that Sublimity is Rand's signature aesthetic style!

 

1 hour ago, anthony said:

Whether earlier and recent sublimists after Longinus were ignorant of man's automatic reaction to potential life-threat, or shrewdly utilized it to their ends, I can't know).

Indeed, there seems to be much that you can't know.

J

 

P.S.

Here are the questions again, from my previous post, that you evaded:

19 hours ago, anthony said:

But what's the harm in one philosopher's ideas of art, some may say?

Who is saying that? Is it the people who live in your head?

 

19 hours ago, anthony said:

""When universal affection toward the human species has become a principle within you to which you always subordinate your actions, then love to the needy still remains; but now from a higher standpoint, it has been placed in its true relation to your total duty"".

What do you think the above means, Tony? Put it into your own words.

 

19 hours ago, anthony said:

(That's the purpose of his aesthetics, the convenient leader into his duty ethics and from there on towards a harmonious, obedient society).

 

Obedient to what or whom? Specify which "duties" you think that individuals would incur under a Kantian system.

-----

 

[william.scherk]

2 hours ago, Thorn said:

Quote

So it is not a certainty to be the same emotion someone else has in the same circumstance.

Agreed, What does that matter?

I can't imagine what this guy (imaged below) is feeling, but I am stirred emotionally a bit.  I can almost describe the feeling I had when I first saw the image.  I had been looking on Google Image for similar images to one which was used as illustration of the Romantic/Sublime arty-farty heyday. Google Images returns, most often, a similar colour-range (the illustration tended blue) and quite often a contextual/conceptual similitude: the Google Image results for 'search for this image' gave "like" mountains, peaks, horizons.  Some kind of artificial intelligence was able to assess a sort of magnitude of the image and thus returned renderings of dimensional space. Some returns were photographs, some were Romantic paintings in European 'top of the world' genres. Several were 'modern art' that was tied to the original by a conceptual link likely to be terror/wasteland -- arctic scenes, and one arctic scene illustrating Frankenstein. 

Google Image is a tool of cognition, and thoroughly infused with a Kantian emotional-collective-behavioural AI programme. But that is beside the point:  using Randian philosophy of the arts we can look forward to an Objectivism-heavy AI programme that stresses the rational approach to cognition. Key findings from the Randian project will probably ultimately allow humankind to infuse robotic-mind/AI/cloud-computing with emotion -- which will make robot cognitions much more useful.

Anyhow, drift.   Here is that image returned from Google that gave me an initial thrill..  A bodily thrill.  Beyond 'thrill' I find it hard to identify the subsequent emotion 'melody' and 'chords.'  By imagining, I can evoke a simulacra, and compare it to the thrill-and-subsequent 'song in my heart' that this image still can help conjure. 

In my cognitions since, I fetched up a memory of my first remembered emotion-memory, the only thing that survived infantile amnesia. It was my first flight in an airplane over mountains and sea when I was two and a half.

Quote

Quote

In Sublimity, I guess this one you describe would fall under "pleasurable terror", of the imagined possibility of harm while knowing you're safe. Not "dynamic" sublime, more like the "mathematical" sublime of vast space. That feeling, everyone has known at some stage, is of 'discombobulation', a temporary 'disembodiment' and mental hiatus from briefly being unable to take in the scale of the height and view, which your sight is not accustomed to.

Maybe that's what you would feel, but I certainly did not. Yes, it would fall under "pleasurable terror", but hardly safe. It was a certain kind of exaltation.

It is tricky to give another person the 'reality' of emotion felt.  The basics are easy as pie (fear, anger, disgust, surprise, anticipation, joy, acceptance, sadness) and in most cases we can initiate an empathic understanding with a narrative.  We can also perform the emotion with face, tone, gesture, etc, so the other guy more or less can invoke a conceptual gestalt of what had befallen us. 

Whoa. I drift in and out of consciousness. What am I getting at?  Let me try with Yoda-ish voice, rooted in Rand, but flowering, flowering.

Emotions are five-dimensional it seems (he said passively), if not more. In the body are they rooted. In the body they are felt. In the mind they are 'felt' as of the body. In the dimension of 'depth' or 'intensity' each of the basic emotions can be understood conceptually as a scale, and of an obliquity measured as percentage/mix/color. And then the dimension of time, which gives the symphonic quality to emotional life:  its recursions, harmonies, discords, quietudes and storms of great temporal complexity.

Here I look for another image that the Kantian Google delivered up from a fresh search using the mountaineer on the rock-needle.  This is the one that my emotions tag most strongly, in several dimensions. I can only imagine what might be my cognitions were I  there in front of the massif. I will never be there in that microcosm.

But, fair enough, these images are not Art, only commodity. And everyone except psychopaths and autists and so on are perfectly able to model and interpret emotions. It is in almost everyone's toolkit if only in primitive form (as with developmentally disordered people, or those with severe cognitive deficits). 

And this is not art, but it gives me a thrill of remembrance of a thrill that is kin to the ''thrill of it all" that we humans feel from time to time. If not a 'peak experience' ... Starting at  5:06. I know I have put this up before, but this post is twice as boring as the last time. Bonus!

Say Yoda does:  I wish we would talk about items or types of art that individually thrill us -- with that meta "thrill of it all" ... if the tone or tenor of this thread has gotten bogged in a swamp of dudgeon, lances, contempt and  pique, surely we avatars of Reason can get our emotions under control and inspection.  

From this point forward I will view this thread as Objectivish Humour, subsection Wildly Intemperate Arty Farts.  Here we interpret the farts of people whose rational digestive system we suspect is clogged and struggling  -- and we savour our own perfect toots. Here I witness the thrill of Objectivish Arguendo.  It is all about the put-down, and the moralistic mustard, an absurd struggle to command the peak of reason. Without which there would be no O'vishes, passively, aggressively, befuddled, fiddling. 

Drift, everyone. Drift back to fun.  Fun wielding the Tools.  Here is Roger, from the OT:

Quote

More precisely, this means we must proceed like an anthropologist, using Rand’s concept of “art” as our guide; we must trace the full hierarchy of concepts that validly link “selective recreations of reality according to the artist’s metaphysical value-judgments” into the overall category of “human instruments” or “tools.”

'Discombobulation'!

[Jonathan]

1 hour ago, anthony said:

Brant, you experienced an instant emotion of your own value-making and realizing. Because it was individually and personally to you of a "sublime" nature, don't let the Sublimists hi-jack it from you.

 Yeah, don't let the Sublimists get you, Brant! They're everywhere! They're trying to hi-jack your emotions. They want you to value and cheer the destruction of the 9/11 attacks, and to advocate more of the same.

That was Kant's goal. The theory of the Sublime in art has been a conspiracy stretching back in time to pre-history, and its purpose was to find a way to destroy mankind by fooling people into loving and promoting destruction. The Sublimists were having only minor successes until Kant came along and was able to trick people into loving the Sublime, often without their knowing it. Even Ayn Rand fell under the spell. She sensed that there was something evil about Kant, and said so many times, but still his magic evil worked on her, and she unknowingly became the greatest practitioner of the Sublime in the field of art, addicting millions of readers to the Sublime, and whetting their appetites for more in real life.

With a mind as brilliant as Rand's compromised, it seemed that mankind was doomed. After all, if the smartest woman who ever existed could fall so easily under Kant's spell, and become his most powerful zombie tool, what hope could we possibly have?

But, then, suddenly and without warning, Giants began to appear on the horizon. First Newberry, then Thomas M. Miovas, Jr. of OO, and, finally, the greatest of all, Tony! Somehow these Giants were immune to Kant's evil magic. They could see what even Rand could not. They would save the human race, the world, from the Sublime! Oh, thank you, intellectual Giants!

J

[anthony]

Everyone doesn't understand, or do you pretend not to?

Is this in doubt: An emotion is as independent/individualist to the individual who feels it, as is his mind/knowledge/morals. There can't be lasting 'group emotions', barring the briefly shared thrills at football matches, etc., and in the meetings between minds and values. For the bulk of his life, it's each to his own.

Would anyone want to challenge the fact that mind and emotion are integrated and should be integrated, and what one ~feels~ is consonant with what one knows, thinks and values/disvalues? As response to the changing nature and identity of realities, one feels the emotions one 'deserves' in reality - essentially. (William...)

Well known by marketers, salesmen, politicians - and presumably, philosophers, is that appealing to a person's emotions, is most of the job done. Get their 'hearts' - and their minds (and bodies and money and power) follow.

Therefore. Only specify how an individual must feel in certain scenarios, and then ascribe to a range of emotions some noble, convincing brand ("The Sublime"), and his emotions will become increasingly self-circumscribed and eventually prescribed and dominated by that artificial construct invented by other minds.

Not ... I experience *x emotion* to *y existent/fact/scene/artwork*, according to *z, my conscious view of existence* - but, ~whatever~ emotion I feel is to be subordinated and defined by, "the Sublime".

BUT ... what if my emotion is not 'properly' Sublime -when viewing a stream, a desert, a starry night - what if I feel nothing, or boredom, what is wrong with me??

You don't have to cater to rational egoism to know that for one to permit an undermining of, and any imposition and limtation on, one's emotions/subconscious/consciousness is a threat to one's highest value (next to life), that of an independent mind.

"Collectivize" men's emotions, but subtlely, through a potent and little understood medium like art (invoking the mystique of beauty and Nature too), exactly like the powerful combination of emotions-plus-religion, and you finally end up being able to control a collection of minds: therefore, 'a collective' of men, who will follow leaders or thinkers, as tamely as they will masses of other men . 

 

[Roger Bissell]

17 minutes ago, anthony said:

Everyone doesn't follow, or do you pretend not to?

False alternative. Check your premises.

REB

[Jonathan]

30 minutes ago, anthony said:

Everyone doesn't understand, or do you pretend not to?

Is this in doubt: An emotion is as independent/individualist to the individual who feels it, as is his mind/knowledge/morals. There can't be lasting 'group emotions', barring the briefly shared thrills at football matches, and emotions of other brief meetings of minds. For the bulk of his life, it's each to his own.

Would anyone want to challenge the fact that mind and emotion are integrated and should be integrated, and what one ~feels~ is consonant with what one knows, thinks and values/disvalues? As response to the changing nature and identity of realities, one feels the emotions one 'deserves' in reality, essentially. (William...)

Well known by marketers, salesmen, con-artists, politicians - and presumably, philosophers, is that appealing to a person's emotions, is most of the job done. Get their 'hearts' - and their minds (and bodies and money and power) follow.

Therefore. Only specify how an individual must feel in certain scenarios, and then ascribe to a range of emotions some noble, convincing brand ("The Sublime"), and his emotions will become increasingly self-circumscribed and eventually prescribed and dominated by that artificial construct invented by other minds.

Not ... I experience *x emotion* to *y existent/fact/scene/artwork*, according to *z, my conscious view of existence* - but, ~whatever~ emotion I feel is to be subordinated and defined by, "the Sublime".

BUT ... what if my emotion is not properly "Sublime" -when viewing a stream, a desert, a starry night - what if I feel nothing or boredom, what is wrong with me??

You don't have to cater to rational egoism to know that permitting an undermining of and any imposition and limtation on, one's emotions/subconscious/consciousness is a threat to one's highest value (next to life), that of an independent mind.

"Collectivize" men's emotions, but subtlely, through a potent and little understood medium like art, citing the mystique of beauty and Nature too, and exactly like the powerful combinination of emotions plus religion, you finally end up with a collection of minds: therefore, a 'collective' of men who will follow leaders or thinkers, as tamely as they will masses of other men . 

 

You're arguing against positions no one has taken. You're building strawmen, conjuring up demons, and tilting at windmills. You write as if you're paranoid and delusional, insane. Your thoughts don't mesh with reality. You're hallucinating phantoms and fretting over imagined dangers. You're fighting yourself. You're your own enemy. You're creating pretend evils. Your constructing fictional vicious motivations in others. It's all in your mind, and it's not a beautiful mind.

J

[anthony]

I've opposed the 'concept' of Sublimity, its premises and its consequences. To general disagreement, it has been very clear.

Now I'm "arguing against positions no one has taken".

Really? Have you conceded the argument so quickly?

[Jonathan]

13 minutes ago, anthony said:

Now I'm "arguing against positions no one has taken".

Really?

Yes, really.

15 minutes ago, anthony said:

Have you conceded the argument so quickly?

How did your twisted brain come to the nutty conclusion that I was conceding the argument?

J

[anthony]

1 hour ago, Jonathan said:

Yes, really.

How did your twisted brain come to the nutty conclusion that I was conceding the argument?

J

Ah. OK. It is disallowed for me to infer Sublimists' premises from all the implied, but unsubstantiated support they have for the concept.

Obligingly, I have to await "a position" voiced by someone -- before counter-arguing, else it's a "straw man".. I see.

Making personal attacks is vanishingly low on my agenda. The ideas count far above personalities, in forum. The ideas, and their final consequences on people and countries is of concern to me (greatly, the politics of left-progressivism and its potential causes).

[BaalChatzaf]

On 6/1/2016 at 3:56 PM, william.scherk said:

I consider emotions to be 'tools of cognition.'  I believe that without emotion, human cognition is gravely compromised. 

 

Which emotions???  Do anger and hatred promote cognition or do they cripple cognition.  A little fear increases watchfulness.  Panic  destroys reason and judgement.  

[william.scherk]

1 hour ago, BaalChatzaf said:

 

On 6/1/2016 at 0:56 PM, william.scherk said:

I consider emotions to be 'tools of cognition.'  I believe that without emotion, human cognition is gravely compromised. 

 

Which emotions???  Do anger and hatred promote cognition or do they cripple cognition.  A little fear increases watchfulness.  Panic  destroys reason and judgement.  

I have been boring at length on this since I came to the forum in 2006.  My thesis is borrowed almost entirely, with biggest debt to Antonio Damasio. I have only convinced one person to read an item or two from Damasio's booklist. 

I am saying I have been banging a drum for some time. I don't recall you engaging with any of my other boring banging, so I am kind of self-bored at the prospect of freshening up that bonging boring droning.

Perhaps I could just sketch the scope of what I mean by 'tool of cognition' ...?  I will call cognition not just thinking, but reasoning, reasoning in the sense of normal everyday evaluations, decision-making,  analyses and self-reports. For cognition, for a person making his way in the world, a lack of emotion otherwise standard issue from birth, the lack is a handicap. For a poetic version of the bonging and droning see my most recent post in this thread..

Imagine, if you will, a person with lesions in his or her brain, lesions where the emotional circuits are, rendering that person an almost perfect Spock and in no way effecting memory or intelligence (such persons are rare but perfect illustrations).

The problem results in faulty or entirely absent mechanics of valuation -- a lack of 'charge' on all emotional vectors. Without the ability to feel emotion, there is no physico-mental neuronal 'calculus' of benefit, no beads on the mental-emotional abacus, no 'skin' in the game, no chips at stake.  

If you take the time to read a story at a link I have posted three times before I would be happy to continue a conversation, Bob. Your experience of life and development on the Autism Spectrum,  your unique cognitive challenges, these  can serve to add empirical heft for my thesis once you understand it.

While I go dig up my own cache of bongo, consider a mirror or consider the face of a 'neuro-typical' person under your gaze, whether in your early life, at school, in love, in conflict, in doubt.

Can you now grasp the 'tells' on that face via everyday emoting, emoting that appears on the face?  I think you have written before on how your 'emotion detection' equipment needed a lot of programming. You might end up thinking, if something needed 'programming,' then surely that something is a tool essential to the human cognitive toolkit.

(I will edit this down and/or out,  and perhaps shift it to another thread with more of a focus on emotion where the issues have been trodden already, Bob. There is not a lot of learning going on here in this thread. But. It would be fascinating to read about your viscerals as pertains to art -- if it plays any part in your life.)

Suggested search term :  william.scherk[user]  damasio AND emotion AND cognition 

Edited June 3, 2016 by william.scherk
Added heft with links.

[Roger Bissell]

13 hours ago, william.scherk said:

13 hours ago, BaalChatzaf said:

 

On 6/1/2016 at 2:56 PM, william.scherk said:

I consider emotions to be 'tools of cognition.'  I believe that without emotion, human cognition is gravely compromised. 

 

Which emotions???  Do anger and hatred promote cognition or do they cripple cognition.  A little fear increases watchfulness.  Panic  destroys reason and judgement.  

 

I have been boring at length on this since I came to the forum in 2006.  My thesis is borrowed almost entirely, with biggest debt to Antonio Damasio. I have only convinced one person to read an item or two from Damasio's booklist. 

I am saying I have been banging a drum for some time. I don't recall you engaging with any of my other boring banging, so I am kind of self-bored at the prospect of freshening up that bonging boring droning.

Perhaps I could just sketch the scope of what I mean by 'tool of cognition' ...?  I will call cognition not just thinking, but reasoning, reasoning in the sense of normal everyday evaluations, decision-making,  analyses and self-reports. For cognition, for a person making his way in the world, a lack of emotion otherwise standard issue from birth, the lack is a handicap. For a poetic version of the bonging and droning see my most recent post in this thread..

 

First off, I have to enthusiastically second William's recommendation of Damasio's work. I've read two of his books so far and thoroughly enjoyed and learned from them. I liked Descartes' Error very much, but I especially liked Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain. If these sound like too much work, check out Damasio's TED talk here: http://www.ted.com/speakers/antonio_damasio

Secondly, while I think emotions are very important, both in our lives and in our knowledge and understanding, I wouldn't call them tools of cognition. Instead, I think that, like sensations, percepts, memories, etc., they are data of cognition - conscious products that we use to gain further insight and awareness into ourselves and the world. The tools of cognition that we use on that data are concepts, propositions, and arguments. (These are discussed in detail in Henry B. Veatch's and Francis Parker's fine but sadly out of print book, Logic as a Human Instrument.) But without emotions and all our other experiential data, there is nothing for those tools to operate on!

REB