Jim wrote :

> I had previously contrasted "fun" with aesthetic "enjoyment." 
> 
> >Chris replied: 
> >Sorry, but I'm not especially impressed, nor convinced that this has any weight . The pervert could say that he gets a 
> >"keen satisfaction" from molesting his five year old niece. That don't make it ok. 
> > 
> 
> The pervert could not say this in the same sense of aesthetic enjoyment. For one thing, there is not a fully built up body
> of aesthetic thinking and theorizing about the molestation of children. (Note that this is not to say that *if* something
> has a body of theory associated with it, *then* it's aesthetic.) 

You mean you can distinguish one man's "keen satisfaction" from another's ? How are you going to do that, in any rational
way, if all you have to go on is their statements ? I suspect there is considerable theorizing and underground literature,
re paedophilia, but I have not delved into that area to check. But I fail to see your point. I suppose you are trying to build 
up a body of work to support the killing of wild animals as 'aesthetic enjoyment' ? Why not kill two birds with one stone,
and do the same job for the paedophiles, see how the two match up together. Should make an interesting project.  

> Richard Miller writes of aesthetic experience that it promotes a "learninglike" response in us. He adds that the goal of an
> aesthetic experience is not knowledge per se; and also that the experience has to be one capable of provoking a fairly
> predictable and objective "aesthetic" response in a critically informed and engaged participant or critic. Here is what he
> says (and here I believe Miller well represents a standard sort of philosophical account of aesthetic value): 
> 
> ". . . I will identify aesthetic appreciation with the enjoyment of a learninglike response that does not aim at truth or
> practical attainments (i.e., useful interventions or virtuous choices). A work has some aesthetic value (roughly) because
> it is capable of prompting such enjoyment in someone. How much value a work possesses is determined by the highest
> such response it can sustain, on a scale determined by how much an intelligent, morally serious person would care about
> various kinds of aesthetic responses. However, what prompts a relevant response in someone might be incapable of
> prompting it in another competent critic, who may even be rational to deny that the work is ever the object of aesthetic
> appreciation conferring the value in question." (27, cite below) 
> 
> This passage helps explain the nature of the (aesthetic) response to hunting that I have been articulating. The passage
> also helps explain the fact that people of good will can still disagree over what constitutes the aesthetic merits of a
> particular activity or work of art. (Perhaps Miller has in mind Duchamp's 1917 "Fountain," which was a common urinal--the
> aesthetic value of which people still disagree about today.) But, significantly, Miller says that such disagreement can
> also be a sign of an aesthetic "blind spot" in certain observers: 

Yup. Sure. Except that we ain't discussing urinals or Mondriaans. We're discussing sentient creatures. I think you make a
category mistake. Perhaps that's the fundamental problem - an inability to distinguish between living and non-living,
so you just treat both the same. I don't much mind if you get your thrills putting bullets through urinals or inanimate
objects. I don't much like it when guys slash major paintings in galleries. It happens, but that's because in an open soceity
there will always be a few psychopaths who get some kind of reward from their compulsion to hurt and destroy.
My objection is to killing. Killing wild animals unnescessarily, for you personal pleasure.  
 
> --"On this account, aesthetic judgments, like moral judgments, are claims to appraiser-independent truth that are often
> rational. It is an objective question, independent of the individual judgment maker's response, what are the highest
> relevant responses a work can prompt in someone; indeed, the aesthetic connection between the work, a learninglike
> process, and the enjoyment of the process is not guaranteed by anyone's thought that she experiences such enjoyment.
> Yet one does have rational access to truths about aesthetic values, through standard forms of self-awareness and
> deference. Nonetheless, blind spots in qualified, informed critics prevent the epistemic universality available in
> science." (27) 

Fair enough. But in practice, there is never agreement, art criticism is an industry, and is maintained by critics who 
toss the 'blind spot' parcel back and forth to earn their daily bread. The whole thing is hype and artifice, and in no way
comparable to the environment and the killing of living creatures.
  
> Now, I would argue that the child molestation example we've seen repeatedly cited in comparison to hunting is neither
> potentially nor in reality a valid example of aesthetic experience. Note what Miller says (it bears repeating): "How much
> value a work possesses is determined by the highest such response it can sustain, on a scale determined by how much an
> intelligent, morally serious person would care about various kinds of aesthetic responses. " The imagined child molester
> who gains "keen satisfaction" is neither an intelligent, morally serious person, to borrow Miller's phrasing, nor is he/she
> an artist or an aesthete *in any real sense* of those terms. 

Jeez. The lengths you'll go too ! You're so far out on a limb, you're almost over the horizon. There are plenty of examples
of folk like high court judges, magistrates, school headmasters, eminent scientists, doctors, politicians, etc, who have
been convicted of child abuse, but some how, you're claiming that they are not 'real' intelligent serious people, while
somehow your average hunter is ? On what grounds ? I seem to recall that Caligula made the sexual abuse and murder of
little boys into an art form. Didn't he ease the tedium of many a dull afternoon by throwing children off high cliffs at
Capri ? Now, you'll say 'oh, but that's different!' In what way ? Seems to me, breeding tame pheasants, letting them go,
then shooting them dead, is very much the same thing. Social restraints tend to inhibit the budding Caligulas in our
soceity from shooting children for aesthetic enjoyment. Please hurry the day when social restraints inhibit the barbaric
killing of animals for aesthetic enjoyment.    
 
> I'm going to take the liberty of quoting Miller from one other location in his essay, regarding his idea of a "scale of
> aesthetic response." His analysis of a scale of aesthetic appreciation helps illustrate how such morally problematic and
> aesthetically complex activities like bull fighting, boxing, and a variety of other "blood sports" (hunting, in our
> continued example) *might* appeal to the appreciative aficionados (a word of Spanish origin typically associated with
> bullfighting) whom Miller labels less "intellectually sluggish" than the tendentiously unsympathetic critics of these
> activities. The passage relates as well to some of my earlier comments about hunting yielding a type of "tragic
> pleasure." 
> 
> Miller writes: 
> "In aesthetic appreciation, the learninglike response one enjoys can be more or less sustained, complex, or surprising.
> One's enjoyment can be more or less intense or prolonged. Finally, one can enjoy the learninglike response in an
> emotional way, enjoying it sadly, perhaps, or with pity and terror. In more or less obvious ways, these varieties of
> aesthetic appreciation correspond to the terms of serious critical appraisal. One can rank these responses in value
> (leaving much appropriate indeterminacy in the ranking), by asking what specific kinds of aesthetic appreciation an
> intelligent, morally serious person with relevant background knowledge--that is, someone meeting Hume's
> prescriptions for critical competence--would care about more if special limits to leisure and energy were no problem
> and if she did care about aesthetic value. If someone enjoys the richer, more sustained, yet more unpredictable
> structure of Beethoven's op. 131 quartet as compared with his op. 18, no. 1, but doesn't care _more _ [emph. orig] about
> the former response, then either he is too tired for the more strenuous delights or he lacks interest in the solution of
> large problems, which marks him as intellectually sluggish. Here the cognitive helps to rationalize our aesthetic
> assessments. Similarly, if an appreciator isn't especially interested in the combination of terror and pity that Aristotle
> describes, he is not a morally serious person. So the moral also helps to rationalize our aesthetic assessments. The
> interests that move someone who functions well intellectually and morally organize the specific, autonomous kids of
> aesthetic appreciation into a kind of normal scale. The highest point on the scale at which a response that someone could
> have to a work is located determines its aesthetic value." (40-41) 
> 
> Note that Miller does *not* state that aesthetic experiences are valuable only in terms of moral and/or intellectual
> benefits that accrue as a result--the question of their specific or overall value is best left to a case-by-case
> assessment. But he does emphasize the importance of the viewpoint of informed, sympathetic critics in making those
> judgments. "The relevant perspective is that of intelligent, morally serious people who care about aesthetic
> appreciation for its own sake," Miller insists (41). This is why the close-minded dogmatism (exemplified by Krutch
> perhaps) of hunting's less thoughtful and more self-confident critics quite possibly disqualifies such critics from
> serious consideration in any thoughtful discussion of the subject. Karl Mannheim referred to the "ideological taint" of
> knowledge which pretends to a level of certainty it has not earned. Some (not all) opponents of hunting seem to me
> guilty of such an ideological taint in their critiques of hunting. 
> 
> As an aside, Miller also notes that aesthetic experiences can be "fun" as well, but that fun is simply not the overall "goal"
> of the activity--rather, it is the aesthetic appreciation that yields the genuine enjoyment: 
> "An intelligent, morally serious person will have nonmoral, nonintellectual interests (e.g., an interest in amusement) just
> in virtue of being human. In virtue of being intelligent and morally serious, she will enjoy certain processes in ways that
> draw her to purely formal achievements of art as well, enjoying those aspects of intellectual and moral life
> independently of their payoff in truth or moral value" (41)--i.e. enjoying those aspects of art for their own sake. 
> 
> Likewise, I have argued that in similar ways hunting should be considered as (a) an aesthetically rewarding activity,
> often enjoyed for its own sake apart from any extrinsic value it may yield in the way of food, exercise, etc., and as (b) an
> activity whose formal structure, rituals, and rule-bound practices qualify it as a type of art. 

Sure, you've argued your case. I give you full marks for sophistry. But I find your arguments so contrived, that it is almost
no longer possible for me to take you seriously at all. Look, any well educated individual, if put upon to do so, should be able
to put forward a case to support any situation. The world of public affairs and corporate PR is full if folk who are first
rate practitioners when it comes to trying to convince us that 'toxic sludge is good for your health' or whatever. 
You've stretched my respect for your integrity as far as it will go, Jim. There is only one further step you can take - and who 
knows, perhaps your next post will take it ? - when you propose that the animal actually participates in the exquisite enjoyment
of its own death throes.

As I see it, a person can stand before great paintings, or listen to great music, or read great literature, and feel a
communicated sense of deeper insight into the human condition. The greatest art is the examples which enoble us most,
which lift us above the general grottiness and grunge of daily life. Now, you're trying to tell me that inflicting pain
and deat, for no good reason other than your own self-indulgence, is a similarly elevating pursuit ? 

No thanks. I don't buy it.

Chris.
http://easyweb.easynet.co.uk/~chrislees/tao.index.html



%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%