User:Phlsph7/Aesthetics - Basic concepts

Basic concepts

The domain of the aesthetic encompasses a variety of properties, objects, experiences, and judgments associated with beauty and artistic expression. However, the exact boundaries of this domain are disputed—it is controversial whether there is a group of essential features shared by all aesthetic phenomena or whether they are more loosely related through family resemblances. Another central topic concerns the relation between different aesthetic concepts, for example, whether the concept "aesthetic object" is defined through the concept of "aesthetic experience".

Aesthetic properties and objects

Aesthetic properties of an object are features that shape its aesthetic appeal or factors that influence aesthetic evaluations. For instance, when an art critic describes an artwork as great, vivid, or amusing, they express aesthetic properties of this artwork. Aesthetic properties cover a wide range of features. Some focus on aesthetic value in general, like great and ugly, while others center on more specific forms of value, such as graceful and elegant. Aesthetic properties can also refer to perceptual qualities of objects like balanced and vivid, to representational aspects like realistic and distorted, or to emotional responses such as joyful and angry.

The precise distinction between aesthetic and non-aesthetic properties is disputed. According to one proposal, aesthetic properties require a specific aesthetic sensitivity in addition to the sensory perception of non-aesthetic properties, going beyond simple colors, shapes, and sounds. Aesthetic properties are associated with evaluations, but not all are intrinsically good or bad. For example, being a realistic representation may be aesthetically good in some artistic contexts and bad in others.

The school of realism argues that aesthetic properties are objective, mind-independent features of reality. A related proposal asserts that they are emergent properties dependent on non-aesthetic properties. According to this view, the beauty of a painting may emerge from the right combination of colors and shapes. A different position holds that aesthetic properties are response-dependent, for example, that features of objects only qualify as aesthetic properties if they evoke aesthetic experiences in observers. The terms "aesthetic property" and "aesthetic quality" are often used interchangeably to refer to aspects such as beauty, sublimity, and grandeur. However, some philosophers distinguish the two, associating aesthetic properties with objective features and aesthetic qualities with subjective experiences and emotional responses.

An aesthetic object is an object with aesthetic properties. One interpretation suggests that aesthetic objects are material entities that evoke aesthetic experiences. According to this view, if a person admires an oil painting then the physical canvas and paint make up the aesthetic object. Another interpretation, associated with the school of phenomenology, argues that aesthetic objects are not material but intentional objects. Intentional objects are part of the content of experiences and their existence depends on the perceiver. An intentional object may accurately reflect a material object, as in the case of veridical perceptions, but can also fail to do so, which happens during perceptual illusions. The phenomenological perspective focuses on the intentional object given in experience rather than the material object considered independently of the perceiver.

Aesthetic values and beauty

Aesthetic values are a special type of aesthetic properties. They express the sensory appeal of an object as a qualitative measure of how pleasing it is. Aesthetic values contrast with values in other domains, such as moral, epistemic, religious, and economic values. Beauty is usually considered the main aesthetic value, but not the only one. For example, the sublime is another value of things that inspire a feeling of awe and fear. Further suggested values include charm, elegance, harmony, and grace. Historically, pre-modern philosophers typically rejected the idea of multiple distinct aesthetic values. They tended to argue that beauty alone encompasses all that is aesthetically commendable and serves as a unifying concept of the whole domain of aesthetics. Aesthetic values are either positive, like beautiful and sublime, or negative, such as clumsy and boring. Various attempts have been made to explain why some objects have positive aesthetic values, proposing features like unity, intensity, and the right level of complexity.

The aesthetic value of beauty is often singled out as a central topic of aesthetics. It is a key aspect of human experience, influencing both personal decisions and cultural developments. Examples of beautiful objects include landscapes, sunsets, humans, and artworks. As a positive value, beauty contrasts with ugliness as its negative counterpart. Beauty is typically understood as a quality of objects that involves balance or harmony and evokes admiration or pleasure when perceived, but its precise definition is debated.

Various theoretical disputes surround the nature of beauty and its role in aesthetics. Some theories understand beauty as an objective feature of external objects. Others emphasize its subjective nature, linking it to personal experience and perception. They argue that "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" rather than in the perceived object. Another central debate concerns the features that all beautiful objects have in common. The classical conception of beauty is rooted in classical antiquity and the Italian Renaissance. Focusing on objective features, it asserts that beauty is an harmonious arrangement of parts into a coherent whole. Aesthetic hedonism, by contrast, is a subjective theory holding that a thing is beautiful if it acts as a source of aesthetic pleasure. Other conceptions define beautiful objects in terms of intrinsic value, the manifestation of ideal forms, or as what evokes love and passion.

Aesthetic experiences, attitude, and pleasure

An aesthetic experience is an appreciation of beauty or an awareness of other aesthetic features. In its most typical form, it is a sensory perception of a natural object or an artwork. However, it can also take other forms, such as aesthetic imagination of fictional objects described in literature. Internalist theories, like Monroe Beardsley's view, explain aesthetic experience from a first-person perspective, focusing on aspects internal to the experience, such as focus and intensity. By contrast, externalist theories, such as George Dickie's position, argue that the key element of aesthetic experiences comes from the experienced external objects and their aesthetic properties.

Diverse features are associated with aesthetic experiences, but it is controversial whether any of them are essential. Aesthetic experiences usually appreciate an object for its own sake because of its sensory properties, resulting in aesthetic pleasure from a positive evaluation of the object. This pleasure is typically said to be detached from practical concerns and can involve selfless absorption, allowing imaginative freedom or free play of mental faculties in addition to sensory perception. Some theorists associate this free play with an absence of conceptual activity. Aesthetic experiences may also be normative, meaning that certain responses are appropriate, like the positive appreciation of beauty, but others are not, such as the positive appreciation of ugliness.

A central aspect of aesthetic experience is the aesthetic attitude—a special way of observing or engaging with art and nature. This attitude involves a form of pure appreciation of perceptual qualities detached from personal desires and practical concerns. It is disinterested in this sense by engaging with an object for its own sake without ulterior motives or practical consequences. For example, the experience of a violent storm through the aesthetic attitude may focus on its intricate patterns of lightning and thunder rather than preparing for its immediate dangers. One characterization understands the aesthetic attitude as a natural form of apprehension that occurs on its own in certain situations. Another outlook holds that the aesthetic attitude is a voluntary stance people can choose to adopt towards any object. There is debate about the extent and type of emotional engagement a disinterested stance requires, for instance, whether fear during a horror movie can be disinterested.

The aesthetic attitude is sometimes contrasted with other attitudes, such as the practical attitude, which is interested in usefulness and seeks to utilize or manipulate objects to achieve specific goals. Similarly, it differs from the scientific attitude, which aims to explain phenomena and acquire factual knowledge about the world. Some philosophers, such as Arthur Schopenhauer and Martin Heidegger, suggest that the aesthetic attitude can reveal aspects of reality obscured in other attitudes.

Aesthetic experience is further associated with aesthetic pleasure—a form of enjoyment in response to natural and artistic beauty. It is typically characterized as disinterested pleasure. It contrasts with interested pleasure that arises from the satisfaction of desires, such as the joy of achieving a personal goal or indulging in a particular type of food one craved. Another difference is that aesthetic pleasure does not depend on the existence of the enjoyed object, like enjoying the beauty of a sunset in a dream. The joy in achieving a personal goal, by contrast, would be frustrated if one discovered that the achievement was merely a dream. Philosophers like Immanuel Kant argue that aesthetic pleasure is pre-conceptual, meaning that it arises from a free interplay between imagination and understanding rather than from cognitive judgments or conceptual analysis. Some theorists distinguish refined from unrefined aesthetic pleasures based on whether the pleasure is evoked by a cultivated taste or an immediate, instinctual response.

Aesthetic pleasure is central to the characterization of various aesthetic phenomena, which are said to involve or evoke such pleasure. However, the view that aesthetic pleasure is the defining characteristic of the entire aesthetic domain is controversial. It faces challenges in explaining phenomena such as the sublime, drama, tragedy, and various forms of modern art, which may evoke diverse emotions not primarily linked to pleasure.

Aesthetic judgments and taste

Aesthetic judgments are assessments of the aesthetic features and values of objects, expressed in statements like "this music is beautiful". They can apply both to natural objects and artworks. Aesthetic judgments also include assessments about how or why an object has aesthetic value without explicitly determine its overall aesthetic worth, as in the statement "this music is balanced". Many debates in aesthetics concern the nature of aesthetic judgments, in particular, whether they can be as objective and universal as empirical judgments made by natural scientists. Subjectivists argue that aesthetic judgments express personal feelings and dislikes without universal validity. This view is contested by objectivists, who hold that aesthetic judgments describe objective features that are independent of the particular preferences of the judging individual. Intermediate views suggest that the standards of aesthetic judgment are grounded in stable shared dispositions rather than variable individual preferences, resulting in a form of subjective universality. This position is reflected in Kant's view, which identifies four core features of aesthetic judgments: they are subjective, universal, disinterested, and involve an interplay of sense, imagination, and understanding.

Philosophers such as Francis Hutcheson and David Hume argue that there are general aesthetic principles or universal criteria that are applied when making aesthetic judgments. Particularists, by contrast, assert that the unique nature of each aesthetic object requires a case-by-case evaluation that cannot be fully subsumed under general principles. A related debate between rationalism and the immediacy thesis concerns whether aesthetic judgments are mediated through concept application and reasoning or emerge directly from sensory intuition.

Aesthetic judgments rely on taste, which is a sensitivity to aesthetic qualities, a capacity to feel aesthetic pleasure, or an ability to discern beauty and other aesthetic qualities. Taste is a type of preference expressed in immediate reactions and is sometimes understood as an inner sense or cognitive faculty. Differences in taste are often used to explain why people disagree about aesthetic judgments and why the judgments of some people, such as art critics with extensive experience and a refined sense, carry more weight than those of casual observers. Taste varies both between cultures and between individuals within a culture. However, there are also some cross-cultural agreements. Various philosophers argue that taste can be learned to some extent and that the judgments of experienced observers follow similar standards, suggesting the existence of social norms of right and wrong aesthetic assessments.

The term "aesthetic universal" refers to aspects of taste and other aesthetic phenomena that are shared across different cultures and societies, indicating common features of human nature underlying aesthetics. Suggested general tendencies include the dispositions to engage in artistic expressions or to derive aesthetic pleasure from appreciating these expressions. The existence of more specific shared tendencies is debated. An example is the idea that humans generally find savanna-like landscapes with open grassy plains and scattered trees pleasing.

References

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