[lit-ideas] Re: When you're hot you're hot, when you're not ...

  • From: Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Sun, 6 Sep 2009 22:29:04 +0000 (GMT)

Just thoughts (of course): but both Mike's and Eric's responses are by-the-by 
to the kind of "objectivist" view of art I would maybe defend (and ditto re 
their status re Popper's approach, which is "Kantian" but a big re-write). 

One question is reductionism and determinism: _if_ our aesthetic responses are 
open to _entirely_ reductive and determininistic explanation {whether it be 
DNA, emotional attachment etc.} then we have no genuinely aesthetic responses 
in a Kantian/Popn./Wittgensteinian sense. (Anymore than if our so-called 
"rational" behaviour can be so explained, can it ever be properly "rational").

But who can adequately defend this reductive/deterministic view? 

The mere fact that DNA and/or emotional attachment might be a _partial_, indeed 
_mostly important_, indeed _unavoidable_ explanation falls short. Unless they 
are reductively and deterministically true explanations. This is where it gets 
interesting. Because they are not reductively and deterministically true as 
explanations.

Saying Mozart's DNA and emotions played an important, indeed vital, role in his 
work is saying very little unless you mean the greater claim that his work is 
_entirely_ due to either (or both). And that claim is false.

Of course, neither Eric nor Mike suggested otherwise: but their comments fudge 
the issues and a proper approach to them (imho etc, etc).

D
Sceptical of trendy new branches and old deadwood 
Back to Popper
Indeed maybe to Wittgenstein (insofar as he is taken to be on board the same 
train)



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