Final Investigation into an Area of Knowledge

Topics: For the final investigation in ToK you will choose from the areas:

1.      Literature and Language

2.      Theology/Religion

3.      Mathematics

4.      Aesthetics (art, music, etc.)

5.      Law and Morals (see me)

 

You should produce a final product that shows your understanding of the essential questions in one or more of these areas.

 

Groups:  Your final product will be done individually.  (If you really feel you must work in partnership, be aware that this means you MUST write the final exam.  If you still want to work with someone on the final product talk to me.)  

 

How to go about researching your topic: Feel free to research your topic however you think best.  Work in a team.  Try looking up relevant sections in your textbook.  Consider the teaser and reading questions I have attached below.  Discuss with others in the class.  Talk to other teachers, parents, friends or experts in the field.

 

Final product format: You pick.

 

Exam exemption: If your final product shows a sufficient mastery of the course material -- good reasons for knowing (senses, logic, memory, etc.), brain function and structure, argumentation, and more  --  you may be excused from the final exam. 

 

Teaser and reading questions: The questions below are a starting point for your investigation.  You do not need to answer them formally.  They are there to give you some inspiration.  I want you to figure out how best to go about answering the essential questions for your chosen area.

 

How you will be marked:  Your project will be marked out of 20 on research, understanding and presentation. A further 4 marks will be assigned according to how you work on your project during class time and how punctual you are in each of the steps.

	4	3	2	1
Answers to the essential questions	I answered the essential questions fully and accurately.  I backed up my answers with good arguments.	I answered the essential questions mostly.  I usually backed up my answers with good arguments.	I answered the essential questions somewhat.  I backed up my answers with good arguments occasionally.	My answers were sketchy and incomplete.
Research (possibly based on teaser questions)	I researched my topic thoroughly and found lots of information in various formats (WWW, books, articles) suited to my level.  I used these sources to provide many good backing examples to my arguments.	I researched my topic well and found more than three sources mostly on the web. Most of my sources were at the right level  for me. I used these sources to provide some good backing examples to my arguments.	I researched my topic a bit and found three or four web sources.  A few of my sources were at the right level.  I occasionally used these sources to provide good backing examples to my arguments.	I did a little research on my topic and found three web sources which were either too easy or difficult for me.
Links to other areas of ToK	I showed mastery of most areas of ToK: good reasons for knowing, good argumentation, logic, investigations into other areas of knowledge, etc.	I showed mastery of many areas of ToK: good reasons for knowing, good argumentation, logic, investigations into other areas of knowledge, etc.	I showed mastery of a few areas of ToK: good reasons for knowing, good argumentation, logic, investigations into other areas of knowledge,  etc.	I showed little mastery of the areas of ToK.
Presentation	My format was suited to my topic. My presentation was clear and interesting.	My format was pretty well suited to my topic. My presentation was usually clear and interesting.	My format was somewhat suited to my topic. My presentation was occasionally clear and interesting.	My format was not suited to my topic. My presentation was confusing.

 Epistemology of Literature and Language

1.      You have some instinct as to what constitutes a language.  So, which do you feel are languages from the following list: body language, bird songs, whale songs, American Sign Language for the deaf, music, a computer language, Morse code, math. Come up with a useful and accurate definition of “language.”  Now apply your definition to the list and see if your results agree.  Alter your definition until it agrees with your instinctive list OR change your mind.  Look into what Chomsky says about language and what we can glean about the human mind from it.

2.      Literary criticism has been likened to a series of filters through which a reader can look at a story.  In the extreme it is said that, like a flowing river, a story is never the same from moment to moment, or reader to reader for that matter.  (Semioticians – see below – would argue that even a single word does not represent the same meaning from usage to usage.)  Some of the filters used to analyze a piece of literature are: feminist, Marxist, Freudian, post-colonial, semiotic and post-modern.  Look up some of these in the context of literary analysis to see what they mean and do.  Try a few out on a piece of literature.  (I will supply an excerpt from “Winnie the Pooh” that will work quite well.

3.      Some difficulties with modern literary analysis (especially post-modern, or pomo) were pointed out when a physicist, Alan Sokal, published hoax article int eh post-modernist journal Social Text.  Investigate the Sokal affair and discuss what you think it tells us.     

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_Affair a good description of the Sokal affair with links.                           

http://www.elsewhere.org/cgi-bin/postmodern/  A computer program that generates post-modern essays       

http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/bogdanoff/ describes what some call a similar hoax perpetrated on physics journals

1.      Compare the following quotes:

 

The first law is that the historian shall never to set down what is false; the second, that he shall never dare to conceal the truth; the third, that there shall be no suspicion in his work of either favoritism or prejudice.

                                                                                                                                                                     Cicero

 

History is written by the victors.

 

Read pp. 252-253 of The Demon-Haunted World by Carl Sagan and discuss which quote you think is most applicable to history as it is practiced. What role does choice of sources play in the writing and interpretation of history? What are the sources of history?  Discuss the question of the authenticity and completeness of historical sources. Illustrate your discussion with examples (actual examples or imagined possibilities).  Research the following terms and discuss them briefly: oral history, history from below and the Annales School.  Why are oral histories important?  Is there any hope for a science of history?  What alternative does the “narrative/linguistic turn” offer to the scientific model? 

2.      What is semiotics? Define, and explore, some of the main ideas of the field. What is its purpose, and how did it come to exist as a field of study? How do semiologists define the purview of their field?  Some have suggested that words are not the best medium for representing some aspects of human experience. Discuss this notion. What is a sign, as defined by semiologists? Make a collection of signs.  Your collection should be extensive, and should explore the current boundaries of semiotics. You may use text of your own, or others, creation.

3.      Discuss the theories of Saussure and his definitions of langue and parole. For a Saussurean, what is the difference between  meaning and valeur?  How does Pierce differ in his approach? What do semiologists mean when they talk about icons, indexes and symbols? What are Umberto Eco’s thoughts on semiotics? Discuss the nature of the recent shift away from Saussure. What are some of the current aims of semiotics?

4.      What is the golden legend of semiotics?  Why do some now lament “the end of the semiotic venture?”  Do you think that, because of its very nature, semiotics will remain, “...a vast construction site inhabited by the nomads of the mind?” Semiotics seems to be a field uniquely free of boundaries, which has caused some thinkers to dismiss the field entirely as pointless academic nonsense.  What is your own opinion of the matter?  Is semiotics a reasonable study? Is there a future for semiotics? If so, in what direction does it lie?

 Semioticians (also known as Semiologists) are positively wedded to the internet, and you will have no trouble at all finding hundreds of intriguing sites.  Check out Daniel Chandler, “Semiotics for Beginners,” at http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/S4B/sem01.html for a very useful start.

 Epistemology of Law and Morals

1. Read the section from Carl Sagan’s Demon-Haunted World on the law.  How is the law like science?
2. Read the sections of Epistemology on science, morals and religion.  How are these (especially morals) related to the law?

Epistemology of Mathematics

1. Read the sections in the course text on mathematical knowledge.
2. What are Chaos Theory and Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem? Using examples, explain what Chaos Theory and Gödel’s theorem suggest about the limits of mathematical knowledge.

3.      Why do some call mathematics a language? What is a language?  What does the language of mathematics have in common with other languages? How is it different?

4.      Illustrate how mathematics can reveal knowledge that could not be gained through common sense.  Look at the Monty Hall Paradox and read some of Sagan’s Demon-Haunted World (p. 372+, or 88-89) about sports stats and our inability to grasp their relevance.

5.      Discuss the role of axioms, theorems, deduction and induction in mathematics. Explain how mathematics produces a unique kind of knowledge using axioms and deductive reasoning. How supportable is the claim that mathematics is infallible? Does 1 + 1 = 2? 

6.      What are Fibonacci numbers? Give some examples from nature. What did Fibonacci numbers suggest about mathematics and nature? What is the golden ratio? Relate the golden ratio of Fibonacci to beauty.

7.      What is Euclidean geometry? What role has the “self-consistent beauty” of Euclidean geometry played in the development of Western thought?  What is the relationship between beauty and mathematics?

8.      Galileo said, “The book of Nature is written in Mathematical characters.” Is there a correspondence between mathematical knowledge and the real universe as described, for example, in scientific theories and economics? If so, is this significant?

9.      Find the most beautiful equation you can.  Explain why and how it is beautiful.

10.  Scientists are currently searching for extra-terrestrial intelligence.  What impact could such a discovery have on science and on other epistemologies?  Consider aesthetics, history, mathematics and theology in particular.

 

Epistemology of Religion/Theology

1. Read the section of the the book Epistemology on religious knowledge.
2. What role does logic play in religion?  Consider such logical arguments for the existence/non-existence of God as: Pascal’s wager, argument by intelligent design, the Prime Mover, “if god is all good and all powerful why is there evil in the world?” 
3. Read the appropriate sections of Sophie’s World to find out what the following thinkers had to say about religious knowledge: Descartes, Kant (p. 248+), Kierkegaard (p. 290+, and a book in lib.), Aquinas (p. 139+) and Augustine (p. 136+). 
4. All humans would appear to participate in the other areas of knowledge (linguistic, mathematical, logical, ethical, musical, etc.) other than religion but there are those among us who eschew religion and claim to have no relationship to it.  Can this really be so? Does this make religion different from these other areas of knowing?
5. The Catholic church has had historical struggles with Giordano Bruno, Galileo and the other participants of the scientific revolution, who were labelled as heretics by the church.  In today’s world there are still battles between science and religion.  Why must this be so?  Is it all one-sided  (church vs. science)? Or does the antagonism go both ways?  In some ways, the controversy appears to have settled down some since the burning of Bruno at the stake in 1600. But has it really?  If so, what accommodations has the church learned to make to coexist more peacefully with scientists?  In what ways have scientists adapted? Make sure not to make any easy dichotomies; remember that most of the scientists of the scientific revolution were devoutly religious (Descartes, Newton and Copernicus to name a few). Check out the image at www.pbase.com/mr2c280/image/10592412 pages/k-brasill_jpg. What do they suggest about the evolving relationship between church and science?
6. Religion is the cornerstone of most of the ethical systems we use today.  However, people without religion still have ethical systems to guide them.  What is the relationship between religion and ethics? Investigate the links below on ethics and religion.
7. What is the fundamental claim of reformed epistemology? What are Plantinga’s thoughts on evidence and religious belief? What is a properly basic belief? What do you think of Sennett’s conclusion that, because there are so many kinds of properly basic belief, that it would be arbitrary to rule out belief in God?
8. What is the sensus divinatus?  Describe the experiments of Michael Persinger and his God Machine. How do you interpret his findings? Do these findings have a serious impact on our understanding of the sensus divinatus? There are those who claim to experience a feeling or “religious awe” in the presence of great art or great music.  How could this be so?  Is there any real connection between music and religion?  Consider Pythagoras and the music of the spheres.
9. The social ecologist Murray Bookchin claims that religion in tribal societies formed the basis for the first institutionalized hierarchies in human societies.  In ToK terms we can get a glimpse of why this may be so if we note that, from the mediaeval church to modern day cults, there have been those who claimed to have a monopoly on “true” religious knowledge.  Are there examples in other areas of knowledge (linguistic, aesthetic, scientific or ethical, for example) where individuals or groups have made a claim to absolute authority?  Describe some. If this phenomenon is more prevalent in the realm of religious knowledge, in what way do you think this relates to the nature of religious knowledge?
10.   Karl Marx describes the economic basis of societies as the infrastructure and all else as superstructure in his description of what he called “historical materialism.”.  Research these terms and find out what Marx meant.  (Check out the extract from Marx on p. 30 of Social Change.) How does it relate to one of Marx’s most famous quotes: “Religion is the opiate of the masses?”  Are there non-Marxist economists who have similar beliefs?  Name a few of them and describe their arguments?  What does all this say about the relative importance of economics and other social sciences, religion, ethics, etc.?  Can you fit this in with what you know about reductionism?
11. Scientists are currently searching for extra-terrestrial intelligence.  What impact could such a discovery have on science and on other epistemologies?  Consider aesthetics, history, mathematics and theology in particular.
12. Max Weber, in “The Role of Ideas in History” (Social Change, p. 40), discusses the influence of IDEAS, specifically scientific and religious ones, on developments in society.   What does Weber say?  Marshall McLuhan (author of The Gutenberg Galaxy and best known for his aphorism “the medium is the message”) and Neil Postman (author of Technopoly and Amusing Ourselves to Death) go further and discuss the impact of communication technology on ideas.  Give a brief description of what each of them say.  Tie it all together and come up with your own statement on the impact of communication technology on history.  Try it out by discussing the printing press, TV or the internet.
13.  Read the chapter on “Liberation Theology” in Contemporary Political Ideologies and discuss the relationship between politics and religion suggested by liberation theologians.
14. Discuss the Psychology of Religious knowledge.  How do psychologists/ psychiatrists differentiate between authentic religious visions and delusions? Consider the findings of Michael Persinger and his God Machine.  What do you think about his findings?

Read: www.wired.com/wired/archive/7.11/persinger_pr.html

and Carl Sagan, Demon-Haunted World, p. 110.

15. Scientists are currently searching for extra-terrestrial intelligence.  What impact could such a discovery have on science and on other epistemologies?  Consider aesthetics, history, mathematics and theology in particular.
16. “La mathematica e l’alfabeto nel quale Dio ha scritto l’universo.”  Galileo Galilei

Discuss the quote.  What does it say about the interrelationships between math, theology and science?  Where do you feel the alliances and the conflicts among these fields lie?  You should consider some of the clashes between scientists and various churches.  Some examples of controversial issues are/have been: heliocentrism vs. geocentrism, the Big Bang, evolution, genetic engineering and reproductive technologies.

 

Epistemology of Religion,

useful links

 

The following is a short list of useful sites and links.  There are many more, whose authors or author organizations operate from a variety of perspectives, but this will give you a start.  Remember that our class discussions are unlikely to develop from one perspective only; perhaps even more than other groups you will need a broad-based understanding of the field.

 

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/religion-epistemology/

The Stanford University Dictionary of Philosophy.  Excellent, with many relevant links

 

http://www.theologywebsite.com/internet/Philosophy/Religion/

Internet resources index. Many useful links.

 

http://www.philosophyofreligion.info/

An excellent site offering, “...discussions of all of the central topics in the philosophy of religion, including attempts to prove the existence of God, arguments for atheism, discussions of controversial Christian doctrines, and religious ethics.”

 

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/7.11/persinger.html?pg=5&topic=&topic_set=

An interesting gonzo-journalistic description of one journalist’s experience of Persinger’s God Machine

 

 

 

Epistemology of Aesthetics

 

“All Art is Useless.”   Oscar Wilde

 

1.      Read the course text chapters (21 and 22) on art and creativity.  What does linguistcs (read some Chomsky) say about creativity and the human brain.

2.      Read Sophie’s World (p. 338+) about the artistic school known as surrealism. What does it have to do with Freud?

3.      Read Sophie’s World (p. 266+) about the movement known as Romanticism. What does it have to do with art?

4.      Read Sophie’s World (p. 294+, and the book in library) about Kierkegaard’s ideas about the meaning and significance of aesthetic knowledge.

5.      Choose a work of art, by any artist, and study it carefully.  Describe how it makes you feel. Why should art cause us to feel anything at all? In other words, what are the cognitive, physical and social forces that allow us to experience something as art?  How is it that a mathematical formula, a song or the face of someone we love may all cause us to experience the same emotional/physical response?

6.      What is beauty? What are the cognitive functions that allow us to appreciate beauty, and how do we measure visual appeal?  What is Birkhoff’s formula for measuring aesthetics? Do you consider this a valid process for determining beauty? What are shape grammars, and to what do they apply? Do you think that it is reasonable, or useful, to try to measure how beautiful we think something is? Make a collection, as varied as possible, of beautiful things.

7.      How far can art go? Make a collection of art that explores the current boundaries of artistic expression.  Your collection may take any form that seems appropriate to you, and may contain works of art that you have created yourself.

8.      What is the golden rectangle?  Draw some. Is there some relationship between the math and the beauty of the golden rectangle?  Look for some other examples of beauty in math.  Consider, as a starting point, Fibonnaci spirals, and fractals. Does it seem to you that there is a deep, necessary relationship between beauty and math?  Or is there some more prosaic explanation? What do other thinkers say?  What might evolution have to do with all this?

9.      What do Aristotle and Plato have to say about artists and the arts?  Briefly place each one’s ideas on art within the larger context of his ideas.  Why did Plato, and Tolstoy, for that matter, argue for censorship of the arts? What did John Dewey say about art? What are the romanticist and expressionist theories of art? Who said, “Beauty is Truth, and Truth Beauty?” What did he mean? Can a piece of art be sad?  Or is it that art is the expression of the artist’s sadness? 

10.  Is art a human universal? What cultural functions does art serve? Is art essential to survival? Briefly explain Kaplan’s research into aesthetic preferences.  What are his conclusions?  Find a piece of art that seems to you to embody each of the four “preferences.”  What aspects of human experience are best articulated through art?  Find some examples.

11.  Discuss the following statement.

The art object is a presentation of a possibility felt and imagined by its author; it is not a representation of a form or essence – given, complete, timeless. The art object is more than an imagined possibility; it is itself the presence of the possibility.

Then, read the paper by Stephen Dubov.  What is his assertion about the timelessness of art? Do you agree with his idea?

12.  Find the most beautiful equation you can.  Explain why and how it is beautiful.

13.  “I have deep faith that the principle of the universe will be beautiful and simple.”  Albert Einstein

Discuss

14.  Scientists are currently searching for extra-terrestrial intelligence.  What impact could such a discovery have on science and on other epistemologies?  Consider aesthetics, history, mathematics and theology in particular.

15.  Discuss the poem below.  (You may also want to discuss the answer to question 1 in section 1 above with the people working on it.  Think “aesthetics.”)

Sonnet: To Science

Science! true daughter of Old Time thou art!

Who alterest all things with thy peering eyes.

Why preyest thou thus upon the poet's heart,

Vulture, whose wings are dull realities?

How should he love thee? Or how deem thee wise,

Who wouldst not leave him in his wandering

To seek for treasure in the jewelled skies?

                                                                                                                            

Edgar Allan Poe, 1829

 

 

 

 

 

 

1.      How do we come to perceive music?   How does music become meaningful? What is the relationship between our perception of music and music's meaningfulness? (i.e. between music perception and music cognition). Consider the perspectives on Hume and Descartes on perception and reality. Louis Armstrong once said, “Lady, if you have to ask, you’ll never know.”  What comment was he making on the nature of musical knowledge?

2.      Discuss the following statements:

Musical activity is the inevitable result of humanness and not arbitrary or a random 'extra'. It grows out of fundamental cognitive processes, as does language, and they are both to a large extend essential to survival.

 

and...

 

There are aspects of human experience and understanding that are best articulated through music.

Is music a human universal? What cultural functions does music serve? What are the cognitive processes that allow music?  How is it that music is essential to survival? What aspects of human experience are best articulated through music?  Play some examples.

3.      Listen to Henryk Gorecki’s Symphony No. 3 Opus 36, 1976 “Symphony of Sorrowful Songs.” How does it make you feel? How does it make the other people in your group feel? Could you imagine this music making anyone feel deliriously happy?  Comic?  What does this say about the knowledge content in music? One proposed property of knowledge is that it can be shared.  In what sense does music lead to knowledge? If the experience of  music isn’t only personal, is it nevertheless culturally bound?

4.      Music can be experienced both as performance art and through observation. In some way, we expect to be able to participate in music, whether we ourselves are making the music or someone else is.  Unlike the visual arts (some might argue), music allows us to observe the artist at work, while simultaneously allowing the artist to observe the perceiver (us.) Furthermore, the listener may actually participate in the art by singing along, clapping and so on. Historically music was necessarily a shared experience, as it still is in some societies. How does its shared nature affect music, in terms of meaning, content, style? Since the advent of recorded music, music has become, in general, an increasingly solitary activity for both listener and artist. Postmodenists  would call this a both a consequence and a contributor to the fracturing of popular culture. How has this changed the nature of music?

5.      In earlier times, music was in fact studied as a sub-area of Mathematics.  Liebniz wrote that music is “an unconcious exercise in arithmetic  in which the mind does not know that it is counting.” Pythagoras attracted a devout following on the strength of his theory of the “Music of the Spheres.”  Discuss the relationship between Music and math. Is there music without mathematics?  Consider in particular what Douglas Hofstadter has to say about the music of Bach. 

6.      Music has often been called a language.  How could this be so? What is a language?  Does music satisfy this definition in whole or part?  How?

 

 

1.  Esthetic Objects Express Eternal Forms

Plato and Aristotle held that artists create an imitation, or representation, of reality. They were not advocating the naive idea that artists strive to mirror natural objects as exactly as possible. Rather, the artist seeks to represent the essential nature (essence) of objects, the rational forms on which they are patterned (Plato) or which are inherent in them (Aristotle). For Plato, objects of art are twice removed from the Eternal Forms, since they are only images of copies of the Forms; that is, natural objects are imperfect copies of Eternal Forms, and works of art are only "imitations" of natural objects. The idea that esthetic objects represent or symbolize an ultimate Reality that is eternal, perfect, and complete (the True, the Good, the Beautiful) recurs frequently in the history of esthetic thought. Keats and Hegel refer to beauty as truth in sensuous form. Music, says Schopenhauer, gives us an intuitive grasp of ultimate reality (timeless forms of the Will to Live). Santayana refers to beauty as an eternal, divine essence suffusing a material object. Tolstoy conceives beauty as a quality of perfect goodness. The art object, says Goethe, is a sensuous embodiment of a spiritual meaning. Clive Bell defines an esthetic object as significant form that reveals ultimate reality as a divine, all-pervading rhythm. In the Hindu tradition, esthetic objects give intuitions of the ultimate as pure being, which, in contrast to the view of the Greek philosophers, is beyond all conceptions and distinctions accessible to reason. To summarize, the metaphysical idealist insists that art objects point beyond themselves to a realm where the True, the Good, and the Beauti- ful already exist in completed form. When representing a human body, for example, a painter or sculptor quite rightly creates an idealized figure whose proportions are perfectly symmetrical. The proposition that esthetic objects express eternal forms usually carries both an epistemological and a moral implication. We can "know" or grasp the ultimate nature of things intuitively. Since ultimate reality is morally perfect, artistic productions can be judged good when they accurately depict the moral and bad when they represent the immoral. On this ground Plato and Tolstoy argued for censorship of the arts.

 

2.                         Esthetic Objects Express Suchness

The most notable achievements of Western civilization are science (dealing with the cognitive, theoretical aspect of reality) and technology (a highly practical activity). The esthetic dimension of experience has been neglected in both achievements. Western religions, by and large, have also subordinated esthetic concerns to theoretical and practical ones; they have devoted themselves to the development of complex theologies and to moral improvement. The esthetic dimension is more prominent in Eastern philosophies and religions – Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism – where the thrust is not to understand (conceptualize) experience or to perfect it morally, but to accept and celebrate it. This characterization applies emphatically to Zen Buddhism, the subject of the following discussion. If the esthetic experience means to appreciate something as complete in itself, then all Zen experience is esthetic. If the Zen person travels, it is to travel, not to arrive somewhere else; he is already there. He does not strive for anything; he is goal-less. This is the art of artlessness. "When hungry, eat; when tired, sleep." The priority of the esthetic element is revealed in the testament of one of Zen’s most ardent and scholarly proponents. D. T. Suzuki, in trying to explain an Eastern perspective to a Western audience, says, "Zen naturally finds its readiest expression in poetry rather than philosophy because it has more affinity with feeling than with intellect; its poetic predilection is inevitable."’ That uniquely Japanese literary form, the haiku, makes the case. A haiku poem, so brief with three lines of 5, 7, and 5 syllables, simply points to the thusness of things; it seems to say, "Just so, just as it is." The poem offers no commentary, no interpretation; it expresses a simple childlike wonder.

Evening rain.

The banana leaf

Speaks of it first. 

Zen painting in its spontaneity does not represent nature, but is itself natural – a work of nature., The Zen artist portrays asymmetry, disequilibrium, and imperfection because these, as well as harmony, characterize individual suchness. The famous dry garden of Ryoanji illustrates esthetic objects as the expression of suchness. Fifteen uncarved rocks are arranged in five groups in a large expanse of raked sand – just there. Zen art is an expression of a living moment in its pure "suchness"; it is an awakening to the present instant as the only reality – but the instant is itself timeless. The favorite subjects of the Zen artist are natural, concrete, everyday things. Zen masters are portrayed as aimless, going nowhere in a timeless moment; and art echoes the moment. Zen art is a yea-saying to life as it presents itself – "empty and marvelous."

3. Esthetic Objects Express a Unified Experience

John Dewey developed a theory of art as the enhancement of common experience. Experience involves a constant interaction between live creatures and their environments in a series of doings and undergoings. When we are conscious of an ordered movement of experience from a beginning to a culmination, the experience is unified, and we say that it was an experience. When we pay attention to the pervasive, integrated quality of an experience, our experience is esthetic. It may be noted that some educators, focusing exclusively on this aspect of Dewey’s esthetic theory, have concluded that exposure of students to objects of fine art is unimportant, since esthetic appreciation can be sufficiently developed as students experience the ordered movement from the beginning to the conclusion of any problem-solving activity. Esthetic objects and events elicit a quality of experienced wholeness, of an experience complete and unified in itself. Thus objects of art focus and enrich qualities found in our everyday experience. Consider the earliest known examples of art: paintings of animals on the walls of caves to commemorate the success of a hunting expedition. Objects take on meaning when we discover their interrelationships and interact with them in new ways. The moon is still a shining disk in the sky, but now it has the added meanings of men having walked on it and returned with fragments to decipher. Science takes objects out of isolation by showing us their causes and effects, thus providing us with instrumental meanings. Art is a direct expression of meanings that are not translatable into ordinary language. Poor landlubbers, we yet participate in Ahab’s relentless search for the white whale. The artist has the imaginative capacity to see things whole, thus enlarging and unifying the quality of the perceiver’s experience. The artist does not reveal some ghostly "essence" of things, but rather their essential meanings in and for experience. The religious feelings that may accompany an intense esthetic perception stem from arousal by the work of art of a sense of unity and a sense of belonging to the all- inclusive whole that is the universe. The more an esthetic object embodies experiences common to many individuals, the more expressive it is. A work of art means not the artist’s intention, but the unified quality of experience that, through time, it can evoke in perception. Ideally, the art object is the vehicle of complete, unhindered communication, enabling us to share vividly and deeply in meanings to which we had been blind or insensitive. Who, for example, can live through a performance of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? without acquiring a new and poignant sense of what it means to hurt others and in turn be hurt? People in all walks of life – the assembly-line worker, the agricultural laborer, the computer programmer – can become creatively involved in the products of the artist’s imagination and emerge with a sharpened and heightened awareness.

4. Esthetic Objects Express Feelings

The theory that esthetic objects express feelings is known as expressionism. Expressionism can be interpreted in three quite different ways. The feelings expressed may be those of the artist, or those inherent in the art object, or the feelings aroused in the perceiver. Thus we may say: (1) the composer is sad and communicates his personal feeling; or (2) the music is sad; or (3) the music makes me feel sad. Obviously, these are not mutually exclusive alternatives – either or both of the second and third conditions may result from the first one. Croce, an Italian philosopher of history and esthetics, interpreted art as an expression (manifestation) of the artist’s state of mind, giving us "intuitive knowledge" of mental states (see discussions of subjective idealism). Note the striking art sometimes produced by the uninhibited expression of so-called mentally ill persons. Plato and James Joyce suggested that the artist’s feelings are a divinely inspired ecstasy. The idea that art expresses the artist’s personal emotions is exemplified most fully in the movement known as romanticism. The romanticists valued sincerity, spontaneity, passion. The role of the artist is to feel deeply, and then communicate those emotions in order to stimulate imagination and enthusiasm in the audience. The romanticists were intensely interested in Nature, which they interpreted as a manifestation of Spirit. Artists should immerse themselves in Nature, approaching it with longing and a sense of identification; in this way artists would relive the experiences of the creative Spirit and be able to re-express them symbolically through their works of art. In this vein, Teilhard de Chardin interprets art as an expression of a universal life force, reminiscent of Henri Bergson’s notion of an elan vital, the dynamic source of causation and evolution in nature. Art may express the artist’s feelings in a very different sense if it symbolizes a sublimated sexual impulse (Freud), or primordial images (archetypes) from the unconscious (Jung, Herbert Read), or a playful, make- believe escape from reality. Does it make sense to say that music is sad? It can be argued that the music (or some other variety of art object) has a gestalt quality (perhaps a mood) so that the perceiver recognizes (does not read into) the emotion as a felt quality of the object itself. Music is sad when it has the properties and features of people’s sad feelings. Some music is iconic, that is, has a structural similarity to what it symbolizes – such as the clattering of horses’ hooves.

Susan Langer and Ernst Cassirer describe art as the creation of forms that symbolize (articulate) the structure of human feelings. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? again provides an illustration. An art object does not assert any propositions about human feelings; it is a symbolic pointing toward them. A major function of art, in this view, is to clarify the inner life. Aristotle held that the portrayal of fearful and pitiable events in tragic drama provides a catharsis, a purification of the emotions. The third view is that art expresses feeiings in the sense of evoking them. It is undeniable that we experience sadness, joy, and other emotions while in the presence of esthetic objects. The question is whether our feelings tell us something about the artist’s intentions, about the art object itself, about our emotional state at the time, or about the meanings and expectations we project onto the esthetic object. We may approach the question by posing another question: When two persons attend to a work of art, without paying attention to their own inner responses to it, will one of them experience joy and the other sadness? The hedonistic interpretation of feelings aroused by esthetic objects is that, joyful or sad, they are pleasing. Beauty is objectified pleasure (according to Santayana).

5. Esthetic Objects Express Existential Possibilities

We have reached the opposite end of the continuum from Eternal Forms. The existential view is that an art object is a sheer (pure) possibility. The art object is a presentation of a possibility felt and imagined by its author; it is not a representation of a form or essence – given, complete, timeless. The art object is more than an imagined possibility; it is itself the presence of the possibility. The work of art, like the existing individual is not an expression of fullness; it is a thrust of spontaneity from lack of being. The art object is a spontaneous utterance, an enactment, of what an individual feels and imagines existence to be. The utterance, if authentic, is novel and original. It is "truthful" in the sense of being sincere and of revealing the vision to which the person is committed. This is not an abstract kind of truth and is not subject to any empirical test. The artist creates by willing into existence some value in an inherently valueless existence. The only test of a work of art is the originality and sincerity that mark its creation. Genuine art merges authentic feeling and imagination into an object whose meaning is completely clear. This authenticity and clarity sensitize us to cowardice and fakery of every kind. On the positive side, art helps us to taste the infinite variety of ways in which it is possible to be human. Such tasting is an incipient time bomb to explode the status quo. There is no single style of "existential" art. For Nietzsche, art is Dionysian, celebrating human passions that overflow all civilized restraints. On the other hand, a painting in which human figures are conspicuously absent may symbolize the impersonality and dehumanization of modern existence.