Noël Carroll
Philosophy of Art: A contemporary introduction
(1999)
[SK's vitriol]
[156]
4
Art and aesthetic experience
Part I
Aesthetic theories of art
Art and aesthetics
The term "aesthetics" has a variety of meanings. In ordinary language, people often refer to
so-and-so's aesthetics
— ... something like ...
artistic principles, preferences, and/or ... agenda.
A reader, listener or viewer can also have "an aesthetic" in this sense. Here it refers to
her convictions
about art or
her preferences.
However, "aesthetics" also has
a theoretical usage.
...
In the broadest sense,
"aesthetics"
is roughly equivalent to
"the philosophy of art."
... This is a loose sense, but one that is frequent, even among philosophers.
However,
for theoretical purposes,
"aesthetics" also has
a narrower meaning.
"Aesthetics" originally derives from the Greek work, [sic] aisthesis, which means "sense perception" or "sensory cognition." In the middle of the eighteenth century, this term was adapted by Alexander Baumgarten as the label covering the philosophical study of art. Baumgarten chose this label because
he thought that artworks
primarily address
sensory perception and very low-level forms of cognition.
The important thing to notice about Baumgarten's usage of the term is that
he looked at art
from
[157]
the reception side
of things. He conceived of it from the perspective of the way in which art addresses spectators.
Thus, when philosophers talk about aesthetics in the narrower sense, that frequently signals that they are interested in
the audience's portion of the interaction
between artworks and readers, listeners and viewers. Commonly "aesthetics" is used
as an adjective,
modifying nouns that clearly refer to the audience's share. Some examples include:
"aesthetic experience,"
"aesthetic perception,"
and
"the aesthetic attitude."
These phrases all refer to
some mental state
that a spectator brings to or undergoes either
in response
to artworks or to nature.
. . . and who would or could dispute that art audiences indeed are in some mental state or other??
. . . how on Earth to convince oneself that the "mental state" of an audience member is not actually a response to the work before them? If this is not to be considered either a "mental state" or a "response," then . . . are they to be considered an audience??
... The task of a philosopher of aesthetics in this context is
to attempt to say
what is distinctive
about aesthetic experience ... in contrast to other sorts of experiences ...
" . . . so that the thinking-and-feeling ones amongst the philosopher's people can more easily identify the unthinking-and-unfeeling ones; that is, so that this cohort's oblivious insistence that nothing really is distinctive here at all makes them easy to identify and even easier to break with . . . "
What, for instance, is the difference between an aesthetic experience and the experience of analysing a computer program? Here the emphasis is primarily on
the experiencing subject
rather than
the object
that gives rise to the experience.
However, in addition to "aesthetic
experiences,"
there are also aesthetic
properties
or
qualities.
What are these?
What has these?
It is the object rather than the subject that possesses the properties, no?
Yet these are . . . aesthetic properties? So to speak?
... not all aesthetic properties are expressive properties, since not all of them involve anthropomorphic terminology. ... But like expressive properties, these [aesthetic] properties too
supervene on
discernible properties and structures
in artworks.
... whether aesthetic properties are expressive or not, these properties are ...
response-dependent properties.
Being three meters long is a property that an object could have whether or not humans exist. ... However, the property of monumentality ... is dependent upon human perception. Mountains of certain scales and configurations strike creatures like us ... as being monumental.
Well, we've already been dropped a hint in the subsection listing with the (later) heading in Part II, "Detection or Projection?" . . .
This is not to say that it is arbitrary that we call a given mountain monumental, since,
as creatures of the sort we are,
we can all agree
that Mt. Cook is monumental. Nevertheless,
it depends upon
creatures built like us
to detect
its monumentality. ...
[158]
... Godzilla, in all probability, would not be struck by the monumentality of Mt. Cook.
Hmm. Sort of like how women find me threatening but men find me pathetic? Sounds like it's sort of the same thing with Godzilla, humans and the mountain. Thankfully Godzilla isn't real, so at least I don't have to live or work with him.
Insofar as
aesthetic properties are
respondent-dependent
properties,
they are also implicitly connected
to
the reception side of things.
This is
not to suggest
that when we attribute the property of monumentality to Mt. Cook, we are
referring to our experience.
Hmm. But we're not not referring to it. Even if the the property exists in some sense independently of us, we cannot become aware of it other than by way of experience, no?
We mean to be referring to
a property of the object
... but it is a property that the object possesses and discloses
only
in relation to
the possibility of
experiencers like us.
🤐 🤐 🤐
We
experience
aesthetic qualities
as
qualities of objects,
like Mt. Cook, rather than
as
properties of ourselves.
The phenomenon of experiencing-as seems more like the real crux of the issue. Why should this matter? Perhaps it should not, but it obviously does matter intensely. In a certain manner of speaking, someone can throw out all of their possessions and/or break with all of their people, only to find in the end that they are the problem. (Or at least that's what their people will say! And this is as likely recapitulate the mistake as to identify it!)
But these properties of objects can only obtain in relation to subjects like us
Hmm. What other kind(s) of subjects are there?
(I say "like us" rather than "humans," since other kinds of rational beings, such as E.T., may also be able to detect aesthetic properties).
Well okay, hold the Outer Space bullshit, please, but at least the question hasn't gone abegging.
Be it duly noted that the possibility of aesthetic disagreement has been broached as between humans and aliens before it has been conceded to be an interhuman possibility. As far as I can tell, that really is a splendid introduction to this field. So, good job on that one.
Understood as a term indicating "audience-relatedness" or "receiver-relatedness," there is at least a possible distinction to be drawn between
"aesthetics"
and
"art."
In principle, a theory of art
could be designed
without reference to
potential audiences.
... Perhaps prehistoric peoples thought of what we now call art ... as magical devices ... If there had been a prehistoric theory of art, it might have identified art as a certain sort of technology.
Likewise, ... A philosopher could develop a theory of the aesthetics of nature without ever mentioning art. Thus, at least in principle, "art" and "aesthetics" can be viewed as different theoretical domains of study:
art is primarily
the theoretical domain of certain objects
... ; whereas
"aesthetics" is primarily
the theoretical domain of
a certain form of receptive experience,
or perception, or of response-dependent properties which are
not necessarily unique to artworks.
...
In the broad theoretical sense, briefly mentioned earlier, there need be no difference ...
[159]
But in the narrow theoretical sense, the two terms, at least in principle, signal a different primary focus:
the philosophy of art is object-oriented;
aesthetics is reception-oriented.
One can at least imagine
a philosophy of art that renders questions of aesthetics peripheral,
particularly in terms of the definition of art.
Perhaps. What I cannot imagine is art without reception. I have to give in to the Social Theories-and-Theorists at least to that extent. Even as a believer in and a practitioner of 'art for the drawer,' I feel compelled to reject the supposition that such artists neither expect nor desire any "reception." I suppose my dissent from pretty much everyone in this field begins and ends with my belief that this is an entirely coherent way of being an artist, perhaps that it is the only honest way, yes, the pure way, or at least the closest workable and human(e) solution to the problem of purity and contamination as that problem manifests for artists an audiences.
In principle, then, these two domains of investigation can be contrasted. ...
However, to complicate matters, there is also
one approach
to the philosophy of art which maintains that
any definition of art
must necessarily involve
notions of aesthetic experience.
Such definitions,
for obvious reasons,
are called
aesthetic definitions of art.
On this view ... artworks are objects whose
function
is to engender aesthetic experiences. For aesthetic theorists of art, though the philosophy of art and aesthetics
might have,
in some sense,
been independent
areas of inquiry,
as a matter of fact,
they are not.
... Artworks
just are
objects and events predicated upon instilling aesthetic experiences in audiences.
The longstanding intuition of your friend here in the blue boxes is and has always been:
There is no need to find a definition of art.
There is more harm than good done by trying just this hard to find one.
There is no aesthetic definition of art to be found.
BUT
Aesthetics is the gatekeeper to the palace.
Looking for the function of art?
The "form"-and/or-"content"?
The "institution?"
Got something to "express" and/or "represent"?
Got some urgency to do so?
Well then follow the aesthetics!
This is not the way to make "art." It is the way to live.
This is the way which 'we must be prepared to recommend to everyone.' (Quoting Lasch, applied narrowly here to "art," but entailing the full breadth of the later Laschian project.)
Sure, we could just "define" 'living' stipulatively, according to our 'recommendation.' That is a time-honored rhetorical device, and most people will understand it as such without needing a philosopher to analyze it out for them. It's not even good rhetoric, though, because the entire force of a good 'recommendation' comes from the fact (implicit or explicit as it may be) that there are, in truth, other (worse) options available. Those who 'recommend' the only known option thereby make fools of themselves, as do those who proceed as if so many obviously available options did not actually exist.
An 'aesthete,' I would stipulate, is neither a head-in-the-clouds contemplator nor a theorist-of-art in possession of a blunt-force "aesthetic definition of art." Rather, an aesthete is 'prepared to recommend to everyone' a certain way of art-life wherein aesthetics keeps the gate.
Obviously, it is not the worst thing for this view to have some nonaesthetic art around as a foil!
This way of understanding the relationship between art and aesthetics is
tendentious
because it represents
a particular theoretical bias;
it makes a substantive claim about the nature of art. According to aesthetic theorists, "art" and "aesthetics" might, in some abstract sense, have turned out to be the names for different domains of inquiry; but in fact, once one studies the matter, it is discovered that they are not, because one cannot, so the aesthetic theorist alleges, say what art is without invoking the concept of aesthetic experience. Thus, on this view,
the philosophy of art
belongs squarely in
the domain of aesthetics,
along with the study of the aesthetics of nature.
... For aesthetic theorists of art, "aesthetics" and "philosophy of art" are not interchangeable because they are merely neutral,
theoretically uncommitted
labels for the same inquiry. ... Thus, on the tendentious use of "art" and "aesthetics," the underlying theoretical viewpoint is that the two terms are interdefinable: ...
[160]
The aesthetic definition of art
... if you had asked [Clive Bell] how to identify significant form, his answer would have been in terms of that which has the capacity to engender aesthetic experience ... Nevertheless, we did not treat Bell's version of formalism as an aesthetic theory of art, since he does not mention aesthetic experience in his definition explicitly. ...
The aesthetic theorist of art starts with the supposition that there is something special about our commerce with artworks.
😱 😱 😱
... Moreover, though different in kind from other sorts of experiences, there is also something uniform about our encounters with artworks. They abet a peculiar—that is to say, distinctive—type of contemplative state.
Seems like this would be more of a collabo between artwork and contemplator?
... suffice it to say for the time being that, customarily, when encountering artworks, our attention is engaged by its sensuous forms, its aesthetic properties, [etc.] ... In the best of cases, the aforesaid features of the work are inter-related in interesting ways and detecting these correspondences is satisfying.
This sort
of contemplation or absorption is
reputedly different in kind
from what we experience when pursuing
a practical task,
like looking up a phone number. ... the contemplative state is its own reward; we do not enter it for the sake of something else.
This contemplative state is what theorists call aesthetic experience. Artworks are opportunities to undergo this special state. ...
[161]
... What
audiences expect to derive,
according to aesthetic theorists of art, are aesthetic experiences. Therefore, it is reasonable to hypothesize that
what artists intend to do
by way of making artworks is to afford the opportunity for audiences to have aesthetic experiences— ...
This is a thoroughly un-reasonable hypothesis, even by Our Man's standards. On the other hand, if it is intended to make aesthetic theorists of art look as "unreasonable" as possible, then he has succeeded at least in that.
... People buy nails to drive through surfaces in order that those surfaces will adhere to each other. Hardware stores stock nails so that people with this goal can find what they are looking for.
" . . . That's called a 'transaction,' kids. Aesthetics are 'transactional too' . . . "
(The ensuing six-point syllogistic chain is hereby excised.)
...
... Support for this theory derives
[162]
from the fact that it ostensibly gives us the best explanation available of the characteristic activities of the creators and consumers of the objects and performances we call artworks. ...
... perhaps another way to say it ... hypothesizing that artworks are objects that are intentionally designed to function as sources of aesthetic experience is the posit that coheres best with what we think we know about the behavior of the creators and consumers of art. ...
Stated precisely, the aesthetic definition of art maintains:
x is an artwork if and only if (1) x is produced with the intention that it possess a certain capacity, namely (2) the capacity of affording aesthetic experience.
This is
a functional definition
of art, since it defines art in terms of the intended function that all artworks are alleged to have. It is
an aesthetic definition
of art, since it designates that intended function in terms of the capacity to afford aesthetic experience. ...
... One component of the theory is
the artist's intention.
We can call this
an aesthetic intention,
since it is the intention to create something capable of imparting an aesthetic experience.
Nota bene:
We
also have
portrayed
this intention
as
transactional,
though we have not yet
called
it by precisely that epithet.
The first thing to notice about this theory is that it ... does not require that the aesthetic intention be the only intention, nor does it require that it be the dominant or primary intention. It simply requires that an aesthetic intention be one of the intentions ...
This allows that an artwork might also he produced [sic] in order to realize certain religious or political intentions. It will he an artwork [sic] just so long as there is, in addition, an aesthetic intention behind it. ...
[163]
...
...
Moreover, it is important to note that
the relevant intention
is
an intention
to afford aesthetic experience;
it is not
an intention to create art.
If it were an intention to create art, then the definition would be circular, since in order to tell whether a work was motivated by an intention to create art, we would have to know antecedently what counts as art.
What if the artist is herself an exponent of precisely this theory? The theory could later be shown abjectly false, but if she believed it to be true as she was creating the work, then condition (1) is duly served. There is no danger of circularity here because, sad to say, there is nothing in the given conditions requiring antecedently known things to be true things. Rather, the person whose intention is in question merely has to believe it to be true; or, "intention" being the slippery little devil that it is, perhaps it is enough merely to sincerely wish something to be true, to wish it into existence, so to speak, and to 'objectify' that wish in some concrete art-object.
...
Some may fear that by alluding to aesthetic intentions, the definition is impracticable.
How can we know
... ? ... isn't the mind of the artist remote from spectators? ...
Actually,
this is not so hard to determine.
If a painting, for example, exhibits
care in its composition,
harmony in its color arrangements,
and
subtle variations
in its lighting effects and brushstrokes, then
that is evidence
that it is intended to support aesthetic experience.
Here we infer
the presence of an aesthetic intention on
the same kind of grounds
that we infer
everyday intentions
—as
the best explanation
of the behavior of agents.
In this case, the agent is the artist;
her behavior is
the way in which she
handles
her materials.
On these grounds, that she had an aesthetic intention is
the most probable explanation
of her behavior.
" . . . and to be sure, an explanation of her behavior certainly is in order . . . "
... additional evidence for hypothesizing aesthetic intentions includes the genre of the work. If a work belongs to an artistic genre in which the promotion of aesthetic experience is a standard feature of works in that genre, then it is likely that anyone working in that genre shares this generic intention.
In which genres does he mean to suggest that this promotion non-standard?
By including the requirement of an intention in the definition of art, the aesthetic theorist succeeds in drawing a distinction between artworks and nature. ...
[164]
...
Similarly, by incorporating reference to intentions in the definition, the aesthetic theorist is able to accommodate the existence of bad art. Bad art comprises works intended to afford aesthetic experience which fail to realize their intentions. ...
I missed the part of the theory that says that the experience of bad art is not itself aesthetic.
If there can be negative aesthetic experiences, so to speak, then "bad art" is in fact covered by the theory. What is not covered? Simply, art which is not aesthetic, which is not experienced aesthetically . . . whatever that would mean.
...
One might fear that ... if all that is required for art status is
the mere intention
to provide aesthetic experience—rather than
the realization of said intention
—that makes it too easy for a candidate to count as an artwork. ... anyone can claim that any artifact is underwritten by an aesthetic intention ...
But ... The aesthetic definition of art has resources to deny large numbers of artifacts art status. These resources reside in
the notion of what it is
to have
an intention and, by extension, an aesthetic intention.
An intention is
a mental state
that is itself comprised of at least two
constituent types
of mental states:
beliefs
and
desires.
In order to intend to take the bus to Baton Rouge, I must not only desire to go to Baton Rouge, I must also possess certain beliefs, such as: that Baton Rouge exists and that it is a place that one can reach by taking a bus. Before you ascribe to me the intention to go to Baton Rouge by bus, you must satisfy yourself that I possess the relevant beliefs and desires. If I tell you that I intend to go to Baton Rouge by bus, but you see me in an airport without bus service, and I tell you sincerely that I know there is no bus service connected to the airport, then you will be very reluctant to attribute the intention to go to Baton Rouge by bus to me. ...
[165]
Why will you
refrain from attributing
to me the intention to go to Baton Rouge by bus? Because I do not seem to have
the beliefs appropriate to that intention.
... If your
best explanation
of my behavior blocks the hypothesis that I have the right sort of beliefs, then, all things being equal, you are ready to override what I say ...
Very well. We can see what artists have done. Now, what have they said?
A similar story may be told about the desire component of intentions. If my behavior indicates that I do not possess the right kind of desires, then you refrain from attributing to me an intention to go to Baton Rouge.
I'm not seeing any difference here between beliefs and desires, but that probably isn't important.
...
...
Consider an example—
Edward T. Cone's
musical composition "Poème Symphonique."
... Can it be said to be motivated by the intention to promote aesthetic experience? ... it does not seem likely that someone ... steeped in the tradition, could believe anyone would be able to derive an aesthetic experience from [this] ... the principle of charity in interpretation encourages us to presuppose that [the composer] , like everyone else, does not believe that "Poème Symphonique" has the capacity to afford aesthetic experience.
" . . . your traditionalism can and will be used against you . . . "
The critical method here is completely absurd. The idea of being steeped in the tradition seems 'external' not only to the work but to the creation of the work. It is external to the (already) external evidence! At minimum it needs something like the "beliefs and desires" treatment in order to make any sense; and by that time we're really asking, now in the most roundabout way possible, to simply be told what the "intention" was.
...
[166]
...
... if the aesthetic theorist of art has the conceptual wherewithal ... to deny that an artist has the relevant aesthetic intention ... , then the aesthetic definition of art has teeth. ... The aesthetic theorist can do this wherever she is able to argue that it is not plausible—indeed, that it is wildly implausible—to attribute to the pertinent artist the sorts of beliefs and/or desires that are the constituents of aesthetic intentions.
And
if it is
just
mildly
so?
Thus, some aesthetic theorists of art exclude readymades, like Duchamp's Fountain, from the realm of art proper on the grounds that it is ridiculous to attribute to someone as savvy and as informed as Duchamp the belief that an ordinary urinal could afford an aesthetic experience.
What is actually ridiculous is to imagine that any object could entirely preclude, because rather than in spite of its appearance, being experienced aesthetically. That "experience" seems to be the result of a meeting (a nexus, as the transaction in hardware was called above) between a subject, an object, and a situation; and then, either it happens or it doesn't. There's nothing vexing here, nothing that ought to require a philospher's intervention. Those problems begin only when someone starts running their mouth.
...
... it may be the case that it is not that difficult to make a work of art according to the aesthetic theory. ... (even though it is difficult to make a good one). [But this] ... , appropriately enough, reflects the way things are. And, ... it is not so easy that one cannot fail to make one. ...
... The function component [of the definition] is nested inside the intention component. ... the artwork is designed to function as a source of aesthetic experience. But this intended function of the artwork is described
merely as a capacity
to afford aesthetic experience, since with artworks the artist only proposes, while the audience deposes.
...
[167]
...
... the definition is stated in terms of an intended capacity, which may remain latent; even if audiences are
not disposed
to be receptive, a work is
still an artwork.
Once again, it is downright bizarre to find any version of the aesthetic theory which so thoroughly brackets itself off from reception.
Is it any more or less empirically outlandish to deny outright any unrealized latent capacities, and to instead require all "capacities" to be . . . 'manifested'?
The fact that the audience, for some reason, refrains from using a work to serve the function it was fashioned to discharge does not compromise its artistic status.
And yet this seems empirically actionable in a way that mere "intentions" cannot be! Not that there's anything stopping us from proposing such a "definition" . . . but what is it that we have then defined?
The aesthetic definition of art is particularly attractive because of the way in which it suggests systematic answers to many of the leading questions of the philosophy of art. It enables us to say
why artworks are good,
when they are good. Specifically, artworks are good
when they realize their presiding aesthetic intentions
—when they indeed afford aesthetic experiences. They are bad when they fail to deliver the goods, i.e., aesthetic experiences.
This is bizarre and sophistic. Why should the fulfilment of an "intention" mediate value? Why should the qualitative valence of "function" qua function be able to mediate artistic value? There is nothing about that in the definition as given above, aside from the implication (fair enough, but also not sufficiently fleshed out) that it is a "good" thing to have "aesthetic experience."
The aesthetic theory also suggests a criterion for what counts as a critical reason when commenting on artworks. A critical reason for or against an artwork pertains to comments about whether and/or why an element of an artwork or the artwork as a whole contributes or fails to contribute to the potential production of aesthetic experiences.
If so, then this is just another pragmatic minefield attaching to the allowance for "latent capacities" to be determinative. We seem then to be reduced to arguing for or against the abstract plausibility of a nexus between some element and some production of aesthetic experience. This is ungoverned and ungovernable speculation. If we are called to the carpet and told to provide some evidence, then we can only find our 'evidence' by analogizing our "latent" phenomenon to some priorly-verified manifest phenomenon; and by then we are contradicting ourselves by taking our evidential case(s) to be determinative all while maintaining that the absence of this kind of 'manifest' evidence is immaterial; evidence now counts only for and never against the art status of our mark.
...
And, finally, the aesthetic defintion of art puts one in a position to say why art is valuable. Art is valuable because it affords aesthetic experience.
Again, I fail to see how or why this definition as given has any bearing whatsoever on what we are or are not in a position to say about value. The "value" of "aesthetic experience" is utterly unaffected by the success or failure of the "aesthetic definition" as a definition. This has been an explicit theme throughout the book, following the unnamed Weitz and his unnameable excursus of the 'honorific' definition.
...
...
...
[168]
... the notion of aesthetic experience is the fulcrum ... in order to assess the aesthetic theory, we need to get clear on what is involved in its central notion.
Two versions of aesthetic experience
... a major problem with Bell's theory of significant form was the failure to specify exactly what it is. He maintained that it is whatever provokes aesthetic emotions, but ... he did not clarify the nature of the aesthetic emotion, ... "The capacity to afford aesthetic experience" performs an analogous task in the aesthetic definition ...
... Entire books have been devoted to discussions of different characterizations of aesthetic experience. ... Let us look at two major accounts ... —what we may call respectively the content-oriented account and the affect-oriented account.
The
content-oriented
account is very straightforward: an aesthetic experience is
an experience of the aesthetic properties of a work.
... Aesthetic properties include the
expressive properties
of a work, the properties imparted by its
sensuous appearance
(elegance, brittleness, monumentality), and its
formal relations.
For convenience's sake, these properties can be sorted under three broad headings:
unity,
diversity
and
intensity.
On the content-oriented account, attending to the unity, diversity and/or intensity of a work (or of its parts) amounts to an aesthetic experience of the work.
... Where
the elements of the work are co-ordinated
in part or throughout, the work is
unified.
It may be unified by virtue of
repeating motifs and themes
... , or it may build to
a singular, coherent effect, ...
[169]
... When we attend to the unity-making features of a work and their mode of inter-relationship, our attention to the piece is an aesthetic experience, an aesthetic experience of unity.
Great. In other words, this could be almost anything.
...
Works may also possess various properties—like sadness and gracefulness—in varying intensities. ...
Attending to the aesthetic properties of the work,
discriminating their variable intensities,
is an aesthetic experience of the work. ... And since these qualities will always appear
with some degree of intensity
... experiences of the aesthetic qualities of a work will always be experiences of the intensity of the work.
Cool. Good to know that I've been experiencing the winningness of Minnesota sports, with some degree at least.
A work that foregrounds certain aesthetic properties relentlessly—that, for example, projects sadness in every register ... —is highly unified and, therefore, affords a very unified experience of sadness. But not all works aspire to this sort of unity. Many are designed to project a variety of different feeling properties. ...
Diversity can be secured in artworks not only by projecting a wide variety of expressive properties, but also by multiplying the range of characters, events, or vocabularies ... Obviously, unity and diversity are co-varying terms here. As the work becomes more complex in its different elements, its unity may diminish ... as its themes and elements recur ... , it becomes less and less striking for its diversity. ... diversity typically is a matter of variety amidst unity. When a work is notable for this type of diversity, we often refer to it as complex.
Speaking roughly, ... according to the content-oriented account, ...
[170]
... a work has the capacity to afford aesthetic experience—experiences of unity, diversity and intensity—inasmuch as the work has features of this sort. ...
Plugging the content-oriented account of aesthetic experience into the aesthetic definition of art, then, we get: x is an artwork if and only if it is intended to present unities, diversities and/or intensities for apprehension. Something not intended to present these features to audiences is not an artwork.
. . . and now the intention condition is leveraged to those "elements" upon which "aesthetic experience" is supervenient . . . which is to say, the intention as given above must be an intention to present "elements," but it no longer has to be (NOT as given above!) an intention to afford aesthetic experience. In other words . . . one aches to know whether the supervenience of "experience" upon "elements" (i.e. on the reception side) is mirrored (truly mirrored, as in a reverse image) by a supervenience of element-intent upon experience-intent (on the creation side).
Who in their right mind would ever propose such a "theory"?
...
... the content-oriented account ... is not the only account of aesthetic experience, ...
the affect-oriented account,
in all likelihood, can claim to be the canonical account of aesthetic experience.
The content-oriented account
relies on aesthetic properties
to
define aesthetic experience;
... This says nothing at all about
the special modalities
of such experiences; ... it does not offer
a phenomenology
... Speaking very crudely, the content-oriented account characterizes such experiences in terms of what they "contain." It does not inform us about the nature of the "container." ...
According to one very well-known version of the affect-oriented account, an aesthetic experience is marked by the
disinterested and sympathetic attention
and
contemplation
of any object of awareness whatsoever
for its own sake alone.
Aesthetic experience is a form of attention. What sort of attention? Disinterested and sympathetic attention.
I would call that the "container", not the "contain"-ed.
I would not consider forms of attention to be affects, but I suppose that is more a matter of opinion.
Disinterested attention,
here, is not equivalent to
noninterested attention.
... What disinterest amounts to here is
"interest
[171]
without ulterior purposes."
...
Similarly, aesthetic experience is allegedly disinterested in this way. We attend to the artwork on its own terms. We do not ask whether it will corrupt the morals of children. Rather, for example, we attend to whether or not its formal organization is suitable.
Hmm. Is corruption not an "experience"? A "phenomenon"? Not if it has not happened yet. The malign interestedness here seems to arise from asking whether it will _____ . It hardly matters how we fill in that blank. We can even fill it with: "afford aesthetic experience." If we're already grasping after that before the "experience" itself has even been "afforded," then I would say that we have already failed the "disinterest" test. To decide in advance that we shall attend to whether or not its formal organization is suitable hardly seems like any improvement.
The George Dickies of the world will insist that what I call 'grasping' is just endemic to the transaction; it cannot be entirely or even mostly avoided, other than perhaps by subjecting audiences to truly involuntary "experience," which is outlandish and almost certainly unethical. All I can think to say in (unphilosophical) response to that is: I detect an enormous difference here between seeking "experience" and finding it, and if you don't detect it then we probably shouldn't live in the same jurisdiction.
...
In attending to something disinterestedly, we feel a release from the pressing concerns of everyday life—
Well, that's as good a way as any to describe the conceit to "attend to the suitability of formal organization" or whatever. That sounds awfully . . . pressing! It sounds like the experience of art has been made into an obligation, into homework. By then it hardly matters whether we consider "formal organization" to be 'internal' to the work while any later "moral corruption" (or uplift!) of the audience is considered 'external.' Either way, it's still homework . . . and if we assigned it to ourselves, then that indeed is a question of attitude, so to speak.
... Some authors speak of aesthetic experience as freedom from the pressures of ordinary life.
If so, then this is inessential and misleading. I would think the trick is to avoid bringing those pressures to bear on the "experience." I doubt that this requires a complete bracketing of ordinary life. (Maybe "ordinary life" doesn't need to be put out of mind at all if the artwork-at-hand doesn't particularly seem to invite it in?)
...
...
Attending to something aesthetically is
disinterested.
But it is also
sympathetic.
The relevant sort of sympathy involves more than simply not allowing ulterior motives to influence our attention. It involves
surrendering to the work
—allowing ourselves to be guided by its structures and their purposes. Sympathetic attention is directed at the object and
willingly accepts the guidance of the object over the succession of our mental states
by the properties and relations that structure the object. Sympathetic attention presupposes playing by the object's own rules, rather than importing our own—for example,
going along
with the convention of people singing to each other in operas, instead of
saying people don't behave like that,
Lolz.
Once again, if this is meant merely to give some particular (unnamed) theorist their due without naming them or becoming entangled in turf wars, then there's no point in announcing that I don't agree with it, because there is then nothing to agree or disagree with. But I just can't imagine that any half-sincere Aesthetic Theorist would count matters of belief and disbelief as (also) matters of sympathetic (unsympathetic?) attention.
Again (and again, and again!), the implicit/explicit distinction is unheard from. If that's not what it's called then I'll just have to keep looking for the right name for the distinction I mean to point to. It's quite possible to go along with all kinds of literary conventions without so much as sniffing the "disinterested" standpoint. How? If the "going along" is explicit. If there is something to go along with or not, then we have exited aesthetics. The "attention" thus paid may be entirely "sympathetic" and "disinterested" in the literal senses, but not (I woudn't think) in the sense indicated by the Aesthetic Theory of Art.
In other words, to "go along with" the above-named operatic convention is to have passed through, already, the very realization which Our Man names as un-sympathetic; and only then, having passed through it, to have summoned (seemingly ex-plicitly!) some minimal-but-sufficient degree of "sympathy." To suspend disbelief suggests, already, the presence of some disbelief-to-be-suspended. And now bring in Captain Obvious, if you insist, to declare that the opera audience doesn't believe the events before them to be real; but if this is true "disbelief," it is implicit; and if it is "suspended," that too seems to describe an end result and not any kind of real, observable, phenomenal, explicit process or action.
...
[172]
Aesthetic experience is also described as a form of
contemplation.
This should not be understood as a passive state. ... It is not a matter of a cow-like, vacant gaze, ... as in the expression "lost in contemplation." ... To contemplate an object is to be
acutely aware
of its details and their interrelationships. Contemplation, in this sense, calls for
keen observation.
It also involves
exercising actively
the constructive powers of the mind,
of
being challenged
by a diversity of often initially conflicting stimuli and of
attempting to make them cohere.
...
Art sounds like so much work! I think I'll go listen to some music instead.
This process of contemplation ... can be a source of immense satisfaction. The active search for details and connections itself can be exhilarating, and the success of such activity, where it occurs, can bestow a kind of self-rewarding pleasure on the activity as a whole.
This is beginning to sound like a sex manual written by a priest.
...
... Just as we enjoy fairground rides for the fun of it, and not because they prepare us for being astronauts ... , aesthetic experience is something we pursue for its own sake.
According to the
affect-oriented
account, aesthetic experience is
the disinterested and sympathetic attention to and contemplation of any object whatsoever for its own sake.
This way of putting it allows that
anything could be
an object of aesthetic experience. Nevertheless,
some objects are more conducive to this sort of experience than others.
...
Moreover, certain objects can be
intentionally constructed in such a way
that they are
eminently suitable
for disinterested and sympathetic attention and contemplation. ... The aesthetic experiencer
[173]
will not have to do all the work herself.
The object itself
will be
structured intentionally
to invite, sustain and, optimally, reward disinterested and sympathetic attention and contemplation. Such objects, of course,
are artworks.
Plugging the affect-oriented account into the aesthetic definition of art, then, x is an artwork if and only if x is intentionally produced with the capacity to afford the disinterested and sympathetic attention and contemplation of x for its own sake. Natural objects are not produced with this capacity, and, therefore, do not count as artworks. ... It may be that many human artifacts
can be
contemplated disinterestedly and sympathetically, but they
are not designed
to be conducive to this mode of attention, ...
...
This approach also suggests grounds for pronouncing an artwork to be good: it is good where it indeed has the capacity to encourage, support and remit disinterested attention and contemplation. It is bad when it fails to do so. ...
The importance of art in general resides in the value of developing our powers of disinterested and sympathetic attention and contemplation.
Backwards again. It's opposites day, every day with this guy . . .
Here there are
a variety of advantages
to be had from
cultivating these human powers,
That's interestedness!
though we do not seek out aesthetic experiences
in order to enhance these powers,
but rather simply
for the sake of having these powers exercised.
Well, how are we supposed to pull that off now that we've been hipped to the variety of advantages that await us? It was actually possible to be "disinterested" back when we actually did not have "interests"!
That our human powers are augmented by aesthetic experiences is a concomitant value aesthetic experiences happen to possess. We would seek out artworks and the aesthetic experiences thereof, even if they were not beneficial for human life. However, that they are so beneficial, through their exercise of our powers of observation and construction, helps explain why art is such a valued province of social life.
Yep, it is valued instrumentally and "interestedly," more so with each passing day. That's the living proof that the old theory of "disinterest" was abandoned too hastily.
...
[174]
...
Objections to the aesthetic definition of art
...
Reading "aesthetic experience" after the fashion of the content-oriented account, x is an artwork if and only if x is intended to present unities, diversities and/or intensities for apprehension.
But this formula is far too broad to provide a sufficient condition for art status, since
virtually every human artifact
will present unities, diversities and/or intensities for apprehension.
But presumably this is not intended in each and every such case?
A loaf of bread
possesses unity in virtue of being a single object, and the baker presents it to us
with the intention
that we apprehend it as such.
Well, okay. But can't this problem be solved by being clearer about artistic intentions? The imperative to be able to say exactly what constitutes "aesthetic experience" did not actually require us to define artistic intention as the intention to present whatever the contents of such a definition might turn out to be. I see no reason why our "aesthetic definition of art" must refer granularly to those contents simply because they have now been specified. We could just continue referring to the intention to engender "aesthetic experience." We probably should say that, because it at least makes some sense as an "intention" that an artist might have, whereas the intent to present "aesthetic properties" sounds like something only a philosopher (and never a practicing artist) would think to propose.
(As so often, Our Man's off-the-cuff examples of nonart end up having quite a bit more in common with artworks besides the single commonality he wishes to point up. To get this type of example to do all of the work he demands of it, he really needs to refer to a specific loaf of bread. Instead he refers generically to "a loaf of bread"; but this is meaningless, because once "bread" is considered in generality rather than in particularity, suddenly the path to arthood is wide open for any elevated/exalted instance of bread qua bread, i.e. a particularly good instance for its taste, texture, appearance, or whatever, as conventionally construed; indeed, we would have to say that the baker did intend this, and that he succeeded wildly; and at that point, if Our Man merely stipulates that bread is not art, we are left to wonder how he can be so sure of this, given that we remain without a definition that would permit this certainty. (Such is his own serial argument, all throughout this book, when it suits him.) Of course, if we absolutely have to, it's not difficult to locate some sub-artistic loaf to serve as our example; but then we have something of the opposite problem: we are cherrypicking evidence, and the skeptic can argue that this lowly loaf is simply an instance of 'bad art', and the exalted loaf remains 'good art.' And if the good-bad distinction does have to be strictly cordoned off from the art-nonart distinction, then we've self-stipulated away our last hope for a principled argument against bread as art. The only principled argument left standing, of course, is the very common property that Our Man himself has pointed out; and that property, obviously, argues for bread's arthood, not against it.
...
In response to these observations, the aesthetic theorist is apt to say that we have misunderstood what he means by unity, diversity, and intensity.
Well, yeah! The observation that something possesses unity in virtue of being a single object is asinine. Ultimately I think the asininity is in the concept of "unity" itself, since the above remark is, of course, absolutely true; but in the present context the remark is both equivocal (this indeed is not how the "aesthetic theorist" defines unity) and a non sequitur (I listed 'taste, texture, appearance' as potential conventional bases for marking a particular loaf as an exalted instance; perhaps we could list several more, but "unity" will be implicated in none of them; 'intensity' would work better).
These are to be conceived of as
aesthetic properties,
not as
brute properties of objects.
They are properties of the appearance of objects. Hills covered with green trees
may strike us as
soft and downy as we drive past them; ... But such hills and trees
are not soft
—when you get close to them, they are rough and scratchy. Rather, they appear to be soft and downy.
Similarly, when speaking of unity, diversity and intensity aesthetically, we are talking about the way in which such objects strike us and people like us. ...
[175]
...
But this still results in a theory that is far too broad ... many human artifacts,
notably,
for our purposes,
myriad nonart objects,
are
designed
to present aesthetic properties
for apprehension,
including the properties of unity, diversity and intensity. Motor boats are designed to exhibit many expressive properties intensely. They connote aggressiveness and strength, and their possession of these intensely projected properties give them a compelling unity of appearance. We might say they look very "macho." This may not be the only intention behind the design of speed boats, but it is undeniably one of them.
Probably true, but what this example does more than anything is to lay bare the most profligate mechanism for misdiagnosis of "intention": it's easy to project machoness on the boat because of how the boat (and probably the owner) make us feel, and not (not really) because of an empirically verifiable property of the boat; not because of how the owner actually feels (think weeping willow here); and not because it really is some property of the boat which makes him feel that way.
... children's playgrounds are often laid out to suggest a pleasing diversity. But neither power boats or playgrounds are art.
Can we say why not? How could we? We can't even come up with a definition.
These are supposed to be clearcut cases of nonart? We are allowed to know those when we see them? It's the borderline cases which are the true tests of a definition? But these examples are given here precisely because they do share one property (at least!) with clearcut artworks; and that seems to make them, definitionally, borderline cases rather than clear cases.
... human artifacts of all sorts are intended, among other things, to present aesthetically unified, diverse, and intense arrays for apprehension. ... Something stronger is required. But what?
The aesthetic theorist might be tempted to say that the aesthetic unity, diversity and/or intensities intended for apprehension must be artistically relevant. ... However, the aesthetic theorist cannot invoke the notion of artistic relevance in his definition, since that would presuppose that he already knows how to identify art ...
Indeed, very often
we look for properties
like unity, diversity and intensity in certain objects
just because we know
that they are artworks.
. . . and we do not often look for aesthetic properties, form, content, intention, artifactuality, social function, or institutional sanction in 'the things of the world' because we think we know art and nonart when we see it. And yet . . .
We apprehend diversity as a significant feature of Cage's 4' 33?
because it is an artwork;
we are not struck by the diversity of everyday ambient sounds, and we rarely, if ever,
suppose that they are intended
to foreground the property of diversity for our apprehension. ... But if
art status
is what makes
the intended presentation of aesthetic properties for apprehension
possible,
it seems wrong to attempt to characterize art status in the way the aesthetic definition does. The definition appears to get things the wrong way around.
Hmm. I missed the part where art status makes it all possible. Of course we don't suppose that ambient sounds are intended for aesthetic regard, but that says nothing about the mere "possibility" of regarding them that way. We can sit on a drum or drum on a chair. I've seen both. The argument from intention, oddly enough, comes to rest inexorably on a vox populi argument rather than on the ontological argument that the hunt for definitions promises. No wonder that this is where the hunt for a definition would end up: if we're truly concerned with what's "possible," then a static definition won't be found; too much more is always possible than what in fact is realized.
... the content-oriented account ... does not give us a
sufficient condition
for art status. But is the intention to present unities, diversities and/or intensities
[176]
for apprehension a
necessary condition
for art? ...
Perhaps the aesthetic theorist ... may grant that a work may lack either unity, or diversity, or intensity, but deny that there could be an artwork that was intended to present none ... The argument might go like this: unity and diversity co-vary. So if an artist presents a work remarkable for its intended lack of unity, then the work will inevitably impart a sense of diversity. ...
... any artwork will have to be presented with the intention to present either unity or diversity ... the absence of one will entail the presence of the other for apprehension.
Has anyone actually argued this?
...
... [But] confusion may be what the artist is after, rather than a sense of variety amidst unity. ... Thus, an artwork that lacks unity may not be intended to present the relevant sort of diversity ...
...
Likewise, ... Andy Warhol's film Empire—an eight-hour view of
[177]
the Empire State Building— ... One could call it unified, but it is not the intention of the film-maker that we apprehend its unity. ... To respond to the film by saying "Ah! How aesthetically unified!" would be to miss the intended point of Empire.
Similarly, Walton:
"Properties standard for us do not always have
...
[a] unifying effect
...
The fact that a piano sonata contains only piano sounds
...
does not make it seem unified to us."
(p. 63)
But if someone were to avow precisely this experience, I'm not sure what real force there is behind the mere contrary assertion, as both Walton and Our Man here have offered it.
The present version is of course the more problematic to deal with, because it is avowedly and fully intentionalist, to such an extent that it seems hardly to matter what the audience actually makes of the work in the end.
...
At the same time, Empire ... does not invest its subject with intense aesthetic properties, ... Thus, if Empire is an artwork,
" . . . But that's what we're trying to figure out! . . . "
then there are artworks that are not intended to present unities, diversities, or intensities ...
But what if we read the aesthetic definition of art in terms of the affect-oriented account ... ? ... On that view, x is an artwork if and only if x is intentionally produced with the capacity to afford disinterested and sympathetic attention and contemplation for its own sake. ...
It seems unlikely. ... many artworks are produced with religious and political purposes in mind. They are not designed to be contemplated disinterestedly, ... [e.g.] A feminist novel ...
a disinterested reading
might
subvert the intention
of the novel.
Exactly.
I mean, uh . . . definitely don't do that to a feminist novel. That would be really terrible. But, you know, maybe just let this happen from time to time, with some other type of artwork, rather than trying so hard to stop it from happening; and then, do take note of whether or not the Earth flies off its axis.
...
Of course, the aesthetic theorist may claim that
such works
are not really art,
" . . . though they'd do better to claim that such works are art, and that their own favored practices really are not . . . "
but that just seems to beg the question, ...
[178]
... Nor does it make much sense to argue on the grounds that such works
have aesthetic properties and formal structures
that the works
have a secondary intention
to invite disinterested contemplation, if those features are all rhetorically
in the service of
moving readers to
an interested consideration
of personal and political oppression.
Indeed, secondary intention is twice as dubious as the 'primary' kind. But if it is granted that such works do have aesthetic properties in spite of the artist's lack of intent, then it seems that the skeptic too has split the artist's 'intention' in pieces and attempted to partition them out according to salience: i.e., what matters most here is whatever really was intended: that is, the religious and political purposes; and beyond that, if there also are "aesthetic properties," "formal structures," and who knows what else in evidence, none of that can count for against the art status of the work, not even if it would qualify that way, just because the criterion of intention is not met. The entire infinite field of 'intentions not had by the artist' could all be 'fulfulled' at once, unwittingly, and this still would not count for or against the art status of the work. But it strains credulity to think that there really is no tipping point beyond which the actual intent of an artist, admirably fulfilled as it may be, could prevail over a profusion of unintended consequences.
I say totally unironically: I wonder if this was not the intention of the intentionalist? But it is one outcome of intentionalism.
Indeed, cases like this one suggest an even deeper problem ... The definition requires that an artwork be intended to have the capacity to afford a
disinterested
and a
sympathetic
response. But in many cases, this may be
an impossible combination.
I still have a lot of catching up to do with the actual Aesthetic Theorists who may be implicated here, but I find it unlikely that they meant to account for Our Man's feminist novel archetype; and perhaps it is not just unlikely but actually known for real that this art-archetype did not exist at all when they were writing. Or maybe I'm wrong about that.
To stipulate that sympathetic response could as well apply to the practical affairs of social activists as to the broader, vaguer "affair" of the "disinterested contempation" of artworks seems like a deliberate miscontextualization of the "aesthetic theory of art." It seems as if Our Man has created this impossible combination himself. We must then jump in the time machine of Dantonian historicism in order to prove that some later Feminist Novel disproves some earlier Theory of Art, a theory which is thereby shown to have failed to see the future and to have therefore underdrawn the boundaries of "art," since both the Feminist Novel and the abstract painting just are "art," obvs, because they are both part of the history of art, and because history now proceeds in two directions at once rather than just one. I hope I'm missing something here, because this is pretty annoying!
Surely, a sympathetic response to a social protest fiction ... involves being moved to indignation. ... for readers to change their society and to change their lives. A sympathetic response ... should predispose the spectator toward certain practical actions, ...
... Furthermore, it is hard to understand how an artist can
rationally intend
such a work to have the capacity to promote both of these modes of attention and contemplation, since
each cancels out the other.
Or
perhaps
explicit belief
does
cancel out
implicit belief
BUT
"disinterested contemplation" and "sympathetic viewership"
are not
necessarily
quite so opposed.
Obvs, the way this would work, in theory, is that the viewer is disinterested during their viewing and only later evinces . . . interest. I say "evinces" so as not to eliminate tout court all things "implicit"; in other words, to indicate that the formation of explicit beliefs and actions begins . . . implicitly. Perhaps it leads nowhere productive if it does not begin this way! Perhaps THAT is aestheticism.
???
...
Of course, it is open to the aesthetic theorist to claim that where works possess only the capacity to afford
sympathetic responses
that somehow
[179]
preclude disinterested responses,
then we are not dealing with art. A work is art only where both intended capacities can be realized. But this would result in a radical gerrymandering of art history.
Of course. But here we have stumbled headlong into a really excellent dis-honorific theory of activist art.
What is (still) missing? We are only discouraged and never encouraged to parse the word "disinterested" as it is parsed in formal politics. Not even here have we been encouraged to do that, nor has this possibility even been hinted at, although we have now been admonished to parse the antonym with all of its political baggage and its attendant practical actions front of mind.
Whither the "disinterested" roles in formal democratic politics? There are plenty of "interests" at stake even here, certainly, but purportedly these are collective interests. It is personal interests which are bracketed by a person serving in a certain role; but this is done, perhaps paradoxically, for a reason. In other words: Ostensibly we have a collective interest in certain forms of individual disinterest.
I wonder if the activist artist's worst nightmare actually is precisely the audience member who does bring their existing "interests" to bear on any-and-everything they encounter? What is the outlook for an agenda which only ever meets with other, existing agendas? What really is worse, to meet with diametric opposition, or with a 'narcissism of small differences'? And what could be worse aesthetically than a cacophony of agendas?
...
Or, the aesthetic theorist might bite the bullet and say that the creators of engaged artworks are self-contradictory, but they just don't realize it. However,
ascribing irrationality to artists
on such a large scale seems
quite unpalatable,
Oh. Really?
You do wonder how much time this guy has spent outside of the office.
Maybe the problem here, once again, is with our notion of "intention" and with our preferred method of folk-psychological hypothesis to the best explanation? It seems that intentions have to manifest in one of just a few peculiar ways, i.e., in just those ways which are susceptible to folk-psychological parsing; and then we'll seldom be able to rule out each and every intention that is not manifest. There is thus a danger of defining intention in terms of whatever of its epiphenomena are most readily noticeable and/or most amenable to analysis.
... A more obvious solution to the dilemma is to admit that the aesthetic definition of art, framed in terms of the affect-oriented account of aesthetic experience, does not provide a necessary condition for art status.
No argument from me on that front! But Our Man continues to show himself here.
... the aesthetic theorist ... may require only that artworks have the capacity to afford disinterested attention and contemplation. That gets rid of the incoherence, but it only questionably makes the definition more attractive, ...
For example, the shields of the Sepik and Highlands warriors of New Guinea have a fair claim to art status. ... And yet the horrific faces on them are intended to frighten their enemies, not to promote disinterested attention and contemplation.
But do the shields promote these things? Perhaps only some of the time.
Or:
Is there
such thing as "promotion" of an attitude in this sense? Perhaps that is not a coherent analytic concept and the only coherent way forward on this question is empirical, not philosophical.
Why the periodic explosive resistance to "contemplating" such artifacts as if they were of (merely) aesthetic interest? I mean, I know why, proximately; I want to know what is really so bad about doing so. Probably nothing. It's more the ridiculous things that critics and academics say after having done so that really grate on us and make it seem as if "mere aesthetic" (dis)interest has something pernicious about it. Maybe that is the answer: disinterested contemplation of formerly functional art makes people say dumb shit; and when someone calls dumb on it, they say even dumber shit trying to defend themselves.
... That we citizens of other cultures choose to peruse these objects in our museums with what is called disinterested attention does not indicate that these works were produced with the intended capacity to afford such responses.
But it does indicate that it is possible to regard these works in this way. Unless that is not actually what is happening (it probably is happening, but not nearly as much as it seems).
Nor can the aesthetic theorist drop the requirement that the capacity here must be intended in favor of saying merely that x is an artwork only if it affords distinterested attention, since that will lose the distinction between good art and bad art. That is, a work that fails to afford disinterested attention and contemplation—that fails to afford aesthetic experience—will not count as art at all.
Um . . .
Well . . .
What if properly disinterested, contemplative aesthetic experience can be good and bad, but entrainment into "interested attention" just is not art?
" "
^
{ _ }
But a definition that does not cover bad art does not adequately capture
our concept of art.
[180]
Does the aesthetic definition of art, read in terms of an affect-oriented account of aesthetic experience, supply a sufficient condition for art? No, and for reasons with which we are already very familiar. Many nonartworks are intended to have the capacity to promote the kind of attention and contemplation that the aesthetic definition of art ascribes to all and only artworks. High-priced cutlery often has intended aesthetic properties that warrant attention and contemplation, independently of their practical purposes. A Sabatier knife can be a thing of beauty-so much so that
we would prefer to look at it rather than to use it.
Uh . . .
If so, truly so, then on what basis do we deny this knife its arthood?
Apparently we deny arthood to the knife based on intention, on which point we have only folk psychology to work with, and which point we can thus pursue only as far as a hypothesis to the best explanation.
In contrast, we have the full compliment of empirical methods available when it comes to evaluating the "hypothesis" (though it is given here as a simple fact!) that we would prefer to look at the knife rather than to use it.
There's more! All of a sudden, it is possible after all for the aesthetic properties of an artifact to be independent of the artifact's practical purposes. That is an exciting development! But then, why cannot "sympathetic response" and "practical affairs" coexist in the same way when the artifact is a literary artwork as when it is a functional artwork?
Cars too ...
... the intention to appeal to the eye ... undeniably numbers among the intentions of car designers. But our highways are not jammed with artworks. That is, most cars are not artworks, but it would appear that the aesthetic theorist would have to count most of them (and not just the custom-made ones) as such.
I fail to see why the Earth would spin off its axis in such an eventuality.
Of course I can perfectly well see everything about ordinary social practice and convention (especially the implicit parts!) which militates against counting most cars as artworks, but I just can't follow this cohort of capital-Ps in according some kind of revelatory, unquestioned-and-unquestionable epistemic privilege to the conclusions towards which practice and convention drive us. It seems no less probable that cars have been artworks the whole time and that we are incoherent in our intuitions to the contrary.
(An aside: I live in Los Angeles. Famously and infamously, it isn't just easier for people here to imagine "most cars" as art, the contrary actually seems far less plausible.)
(Another aside: It's true, I fucking hate cars. I hate almost everything about them. But "most cars" do have at least some artlike qualities; among these qualities, those imbued in "most cars" on account of the various "intents" of carmakers are among the least interesting and do not exhaust the set.)
...
... Some readers may feel that
the problems we've encountered here
are really
the result of
the limitations of
the accounts of
aesthetic experience that we've inserted into the aesthetic definition of art.
Yep! Among many other things!
They may suspect that if we just stated that x is an artwork if and only if x is intended to have the capacity to afford aesthetic experience—using our ordinary language notions of this concept—the aesthetic theory of art would have a better chance of succeeding.
I might have thought that once, but after trudging through this half-baked miasma I won't be making any such appeal until I've had a chance to cleanse my palette on some more competent Analysts.
Of course, there is a real question about whether we have any ordinary language intuitions about the phrase "aesthetic experience." The concept really seems primarily a technical one.
Is he serious?
But if we do have some ordinary sense of the notion, then it still seems that the theory is doomed. The aesthetic definition does not pick out only artworks, since
ordinary language
recognizes that
things other than artworks
can be
intentionally designed with the capacity to afford aesthetic experiences ...
Moreover, not all artworks are designed to afford aesthetic experiences in any "ordinary" sense of the phrase. ...
[181]
... Some artworks, like Duchamp's Fountain, are idea based, rather than experience based. One can derive satisfaction from thinking about Fountain without even experiencing it, ...
Thus, the aesthetic theorist of art was mistaken earlier in the first premise of his argument. It is not the case that audiences use all artworks to function as sources of aesthetic experience, nor is this the reason they seek out all artworks. Some artworks are sought for their ideas, not for the aesthetic experiences they afford.
Does thinking about Fountain really count as seeking it for its ideas?
Another generic problem with aesthetic definitions of art is that they treat art status as dependent upon the intended function to promote aesthetic experience. But whether or not a candidate has this capacity is frequently dependent on whether or not it is an artwork.
This has come up before. I don't understand it at all. He seems to be saying that the way we engage with a work is frequently a result of prompting, and that any such manner of engagement cannot then be attributed (at least not solely) to some intrisic quality or content of the work. So it is. But this could be the case even more-than-frequently and that still would prove nothing of what he seems to think it proves. If removing the prompt causes some art-object, essentially, to be de-transfigured back into a non-artwork, then so much the better for all concerned. You certainly won't find the aesthetes of the world lobbying on behalf of such a detransfigured object.
It becomes a far easier argument to evaluate, as well as a stronger and (as so often) less plausible one, if the weasel-word "frequently" had not crept in. But the hedge does weasel its way in, because even he cannot straight-facedly argue that prompting is decisive in each and every case. There would remain, we seem to agree, some irreducible minority of eye-catchers, ear-catchers, and so on, which can empirically prove their own capacity. Failing all of that, we can prompt each other in any number of ways, ranging from the subliminal to the shameless; and now, put in such ham-handed terms as I can manage here, the mere fact that we do go for this so much of the time now seems a bit stranger than it did before. TBC, as we really need to move on. But do notice that this is how we would problematize the notion that the prompt is the reason why an object has its "capacity." It seems no less fair to say that the object therefore has no such capacity if we have to be prompted to notice it. i.e. These two "capacities" are meaningfully different enough to demand to be distinguished from each other, whether or not they are fit to figure in someone's candidate for a Definition of Art; but he seems hell-bent on NOT distinguishing them.
Duchamp presented a vial of fifty cubic centimeters of Parisian air as an artwork. Called Paris Air, it is impish (and affords an aesthetic experience of quality of impishness) just because it is an artwork. ...
... It is the fact that we know that Duchamp's vial is an artwork that enables us to appreciate its impishness; indeed, it wouldn't be impish if it weren't an artwork. But if aesthetic experience is sometimes dependent on art status, then art status cannot be defined noncircularly in terms of aesthetic experience.
Many of the preceding counterexamples to the conjecture that the intended capacity to afford aesthetic experience is a necessary condition for art status have been drawn from the avant-garde. This may seem unfair, since earlier it was noted that often aesthetic theorists of art deny that works of the avant-garde are artworks.
That much isn't necessarily unfair. I'm more concerned that our unnamed-and-unnameable Aesthetics Theorists were writing before this avant-garde existed. If so, then they never even had the chance to make the denial!
...
Inasmuch as a great deal of avant-garde art is avowedly anti-aesthetic, it should come as no surprise that the aesthetic definition of art cannot accommodate it. ...
[182]
And yet we expect definitions of art to track our practices of classifying art. Anti-aesthetic art has existed for over eighty-five years, and it has been classified as art by art historians, critics, collectors, and a great many informed viewers. ... This is not to say that there are no dissenters. But they have not deterred the unflagging interest in anti-aesthetic art among impressively large numbers of artists, experts, historians, critics, and art lovers. That presents a prima facie case that anti-aesthetic art warrants inclusion under our operative concept of art. It is difficult to explain the practices of modern art, unless our concept is inclusive enough to countenance anti-aesthetic art.
Is it difficult to explain why a vial of air can be thought by Our Man, prima facie, to be art, but a car cannot be?
Is this really our practice?
It seems that the existence of anti-aesthetic art is a fact of the artworld and has been for some time. The aesthetic theorist of art cannot define it away. If that is a consequence of the aesthetic definition of art, then it seems that the definition's proponent, not the critic, is begging the question. A comprehensive theory of art must accommodate the facts as she finds them
revealed in our practices.
Where, indeed, should we look for our facts, except in our practices?
We should look at the results, not the practices themselves. I hope that's what is meant here, but the preceding pages suggest it's not.
As Becker notes, our practices have been wildly irrational and ineffectual for most of human history: as long as humans lived in isolated small groups with little technological or cultural change, there was only so much that could go wrong all at once; now, in a radiply advancing, growing, and interconnected world, the irrationality of practice has severer consequences, at least quantitatively. Or, we might as well say: The irrationality of practice has been revealed by a certain raising of the stakes in and by modernity.
"reality rarely tests a culture on salient points of its hero-system . ...man seems to have been permitted by natural bounty to live largely in a world of playful fantasy. Whole societies have been able to persist with central beliefs that bore little relation to reality. About the only time a culture has had to pay has been in the encounters with conquerors superior in numbers, weapons, and immunity to certain diseases. ...
"One of the terrifying things about living in the late decades of the twentieth century is that the margin that nature has been giving to cultural fantasy is suddenly being narrowed down drastically.
(The Birth and Death of Meaning, p. 128)
Thus practice has been subjected to a quickly escalating series of impromptu stress tests, and mostly it has failed. This is, of course, the only way to make it better! But if the goal is simply to improve practice without killing or maiming or deculturing large numbers of innocent people, then we have to conclude that the uncontrolled and uncontrollable manner in which this stress testing has proceeded has been a disastrous mistake. It is possible to believe in progress at all only by conveniently ignoring these failures, by seeing them as externalities, as bugs rather than features; or perhaps as outright unforeseeable; or, most cynically, as the eggs that must be broken in order to make the omelet. But as the "margin that nature has been giving to cultural fantasy" continues to be "narrowed down" ever more "drastically" with each passing day, it becomes ever more difficult to simply internalize the progress and externalize the carnage in these ways. It is now fully irrational to think this way, but this is indeed the very basis for any number of "our practices," among them many of the most salient, visible, prestigious, and yes, some of the very most progressive, too.
(As I write this, undoubtedly one of the many blindspots of the myriad self-styled Tech Optimists and YIMBYs currently flooding platforms like Substack is an ignorance of the fact that deculturation is death, a point which is at the very heart of Becker's thought.)
So, to the anguished question: Where else should we look? it can only be answered: Look at what works. Do not look at what doesn't work.
If you simply look at "our practices" writ large, you will gather far too much bunkum to permit of any such conclusions as Our Man here seeks to draw; you will only think you've established some basis for drawing such conclusions; and if this is all that you do, then you also (so far) have no standards or method by which to ferret out the bunkum. We can actually feel just this kind of skew, page by page here, in negative as it were, the imprint of an overbroad relativism required of the Capital-Ps in a mere introductory textbook, however they might "really" think and behave as private citizens. In this case it is a relativism which takes all "practice" to be epistemic, whether or not any given practice has ever once worked. This is people-watching, not philosophy.
And so, finally, to learn from practice, you must have values. i.e. You must first have determined what works. You must take the position, if only implicitly, that certain (other) things don't work. And if you are the only one who thinks so, then you will have plenty of extra-practical difficulties, it is true, but convincing yourself instead that everything works will not solve them. If everything works for you, nothing will work! That's where we're at!
The aesthetic theorist cannot stipulate what she will count as facts in the face of massive amounts of countervailing evidence, which continues to grow daily. We have every reason to believe that anti-aesthetic art is art on the basis of our evolving practice, which, in turn, gives us compelling grounds to deny that the aesthetic definition of art is a comprehensive theory of all art.
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