Thanks Don for his thoughts, also on the "citing business".
I guess Kant may then be a "great" reference, even from the early, pre-critique era?
"Tall oaks and lonely shadows in a sacred grove are sublime. Flower beds, low hedges and trees trimmed in figures are beautiful. Night is sublime, day is beautiful. Temperaments that possess a feeling for the sublime are drawn gradually, by the quiet stillness of a summer evening as the shimmering light of stars breaks through the brown shadows of night and the lonely moon rises into view, into high feelings of friendship, of disdain for the world, of eternity…the sublime moves, the beautiful charms…"
Kant, I. (1960). Observations on the feeling of the beautiful and sublime. Berkeley,: University of California Press.
/Lars
PS: This discussion also revokes memories of the 80ies and the "Turing test" for artificial intelligence. (A computer would be considered intelligent if a human interacting with it could not decide whether she was interacting with a human or a computer). I remember a researcher that stated in an internet forum (yes, there were such way before the web): "On Monday mornings I wouldn't pass the Turing test".
Perhaps there are those that appreciate the aesthetics of the web site better than their own judgment and that a market of competing aesthetics sites could develop, much like the market for magazines on interiors decoration?
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Lars Albinsson
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+ 46 (0) 70 592 70 45
Affiliations:
Maestro Management AB www.maestro.se
Calistoga Springs Research Institute www.calistoga.se
School of Business and Informatics
University of Borås www.hb.se
Linköping University www.liu.se
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Från: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design [mailto:[log in to unmask]] För Don Norman
Skickat: den 18 maj 2009 01:09
Till: [log in to unmask]
Ämne: Re: Emotional Theory Re: Online judgment of aesthetics
I am pleased to say that the flurry of recent posts have been delightful. I agree with them all, even those that state they are disagreeing with me.
As Chris says, the technical mathematics and programming of that nasty computer program may be fine, but their understanding of the phenomena they claim to be studying is incredibly flawed.
Did I stop Chris cold with citations? Hey -- the secret weapon! We don't need silver bullets, wooden stakes, or magical incantations: just find some random citations and throw them. Anywhere -- just throw. Hell, it works wonders on promotion committees as well. Oh, if you cite my papers I will cite yours -- that is how we boos our citation count, which is what promotion is about. It isn’t about great work, important findings or anything like that, it is like that emotion program: just give me the numbers.
And Terry is absolutely correct in stating that we are trying to fit the square pegs of old-fashioned emotion terms into the round holes of contemporary society, design, and life. Yes, Ortony, Clore and Collins struggled in their book with terminology. That book is old and barely surviving. But Engineers love it because they can program to it. It doesn’t matter whether or not they understand it -- what matters is that it is easy to write a program following it.
The problem is that we don’t have new terms to replace the old. Actually all fields suffer when they try to use a term already in the popular vocabulary to mean something precise and technical. Even new terms do not fare well: look at the horrible misconceptions that have arisen trying to maintain the purity of the concept of "affordance." (I just wrote an article using the word and the editor rejected it, saying "can't you think of a different word for this?" No, said I, in a hurt tone of voice, well, in a hurt tone of typed writing.)
As for the sublime, I don't count that as an emotion. She was sublime? I am sublime? I am sublimed with her. At her? By her? Instead of her?
Oh well.
Ciao
Don
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