Dear Mike, Chuck, Keith and all,
I enjoyed reading both your posts.
Mike: you seem to be suggesting the basics of pattern attractiveness are outside of learning, and also that they eye and visual system and its pleasure sensing operates independently of the rest of the body?
Chuck: Going down a similar path to you, I find it much simpler to make theory about it if one assumes the body makes all the decisions and then later creates an illusion in consciousness that the conscious self has agency. The simplification in thinking and theorising this offers is like that from realising the earth goes round the sun. It has an additional benefit that it fits with the evidence.
Best wishes,
Terry
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Dr Terence Love
Love Services Pty Ltd
PO Box 226, Quinns Rocks
Western Australia 6030
Tel: +61 (0)4 3497 5848
Fax:+61 (0)8 9305 7629
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-----Original Message-----
From: [log in to unmask] [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Paul Mike Zender
Sent: Thursday, 22 October 2015 9:21 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [SPAM] Re: Aesthetics
Keith:
You wrote:
<SNIP>
That is, pre-conscious events in
the brain are affects of a kind but they only become affects as states of mind when they enter consciousness. Hence, they are not directly related to the object of perception (they are mediated by the act of
consciousness) and hence we are talking about ³aesthetics². Does the eye take its own pleasures from what the eyes perceives? Quite possibly but not in any way that makes sense to consciousness. When the eye looks away because of strong light, is it expressing displeasure?
<SNIP>
In the following I am limiting myself to functional aesthetics, the kind I teach in undergraduate design classes, NOT the field of Aesthetics and associated philosophical concepts going back to Plato.
In teaching I have been replacing the words "aesthetics" and "beauty" with the words "perceptual engagement" and defining that as "you want to look at it, you want to keep looking at it, and you enjoy looking at it." I believe "aesthetic engagement" is a part of the pattern finding process of perception, and as such it is like the visual processes itself both bottom-up (preconscious) and top down (conscious).
Our perceptual thinking "enjoys" (is engaged by) finding patterns and solving form puzzles based on them. "Engaging" pattern finding is the simultaneously finding of similar patterns that are also dissimilar - linked and discontinuous - with surprises, new visual knowledge discovered, along the way. Total pattern unity is boring, ugly, unattractive, not engaging. Total pattern chaos / lack of any pattern is boring, ugly, unattractive, not engaging. Unity with diversity is perceptually beautiful, attractive, engaging.
Thus I agree with your comment above, the eye (metaphorically speaking, more precisely the visual perceptual process from eye through V1, V2) in part takes its own pleasure in what it sees when there is pattern unity with pattern diversity. It engages our perceptual processes and when unanticipated/new patterns are discovered/decoded it is pleasurable/surprising/engaging. This preconscious process also becomes conscious and can be discussed rationally, as I have tried to do here. There are of course many other dynamics in this unity and diversity of pattern: entry points, power of some forms, the length of the process of discovery, but this is a list post not a book, moreover, these ideas are my own and not proven empirically. As Chuck says so well, or so I believe...
Mike Zender
University of Cincinnati
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