Does poetic mean vacuous? — Agustino

Give me a break. (Oh, look, a metaphor within the context of common usage! Must be vacuous.)

When you're making music, don't you follow a method? Don't you think about some guiding principles? About how different sounds are interconnected? What effects minor and major scales create? etc.? Clearly you must. Any craft, even poetry, takes honing, which is done methodically and deliberately. — Agustino

So do you still not understand what it means, then? I'm not sure how your questions here are related to my brief explanation of what "know" meant in the OP context.

Yeah, like that. — Agustino

Cool, so we're in agreement about the basic premise of the OP, at least.

Well, you have to specify what exactly you mean by "know"? — Agustino

Well, you need to specify what you mean by "specify", right? :-} But in all seriousness, I stated at the beginning that it was a poetic concept; that should make clear what "know" means in that context.

Well, I think the bird is definitely conscious, in that it reacts to stimuli, and probably projects a world for itself the same way us humans project a world for ourselves. What I think you might mean is that a bird lacks the self-awareness of human beings, and the reflexivity of our thought. In other words, the bird does not think about what it is thinking. It does not think about why it is singing, why it is flying, etc. — Agustino

Yes, I agree. Self-awareness is a better term, I think. I was unsuccessfully trying to distinguish between consciousness on the one hand, shared by all beings, and self-awareness on the other, something that seems unique to us. From there, the idea that we're the highest form of self-awareness is evident without any reflection, but upon reflection, it's possible that higher forms do exist. The higher form would look down on us as we look down on the bird. Then the concept of beauty comes in, which I've gone into at length.

It seems to come down to the fact that you're taking an analytical approach, while I'm not. I think your analysis would probably indicate that you're more correct from an analytical standpoint. But the whole concept that I presented is both aesthetic/artistic and intuitive (as well as open to analysis, as everything of course is); so the same goes for my intuitive approach; I've gone into detail about it from that angle, and you haven't responded within an intuitive approach at all, whereas I've attempted to interface with your analytical approach. My approach begins with intuition, not with analysis. Good discussion though, I'm not trying to shut it down, feel free to continue.

Thanks for sharing that stuff about your personal, meaningful experiences btw. — numberjohnny5

No problem. I feel like philosophical discussions often get bogged down by a lack of personal experience, yet when personal experience is brought in, it's often brought in at inappropriate times, and influenced purely by emotion; there needs to be a balance that invokes all of the different human faculties; reason, emotion, intuition, imagination, etc. I was trying to use logic thus far in the discussion, and then, at that certain point, as I was re-reading your response, I felt I needed to include my personal experience. I don't say that for my own ego (for the most part), but as an example for how the balance could possibly be achieved. But yes, I'm feeling very good about myself as I write this.

How are you using "subjective" and "objective"? — numberjohnny5

It's a tough distinction for me, because, as I said, I find it to be often an erroneous distinction. But, to me, the simplest dichotomy is this: the subject is you. You, the subject are reading this. What are you reading? Are you reading a subjective set of words? Someone else is reading them too; Tim Wood, for instance. Is he reading the same words? Presumably he's reading the same words, but he's, presumably, interpreting them not exactly the same way as you are. Now, is there an objectivity to my words? There's an objectivity to what I am trying to communicate to you. But language itself is subjective, not objective. Subjectivity, then, seems hard to get away from! But have we still sufficiently out-run it? No, we haven't. When you post on this forum, you are saying something, that to you, represents an objectivity. But the paradox and the tragedy is that you can only say it subjectively.

Is generation synonymous with causation there? — numberjohnny5

I'll tentatively say yes.

Because your "intrinsic to our experience" isn't clear to me. — numberjohnny5

I meant something both unique to and inextricable from our experience.

Note that by "mental apparatus" I don't mean some static object; rather, I mean a dynamic, mental processing structure. In other words, experience is a mental process. — numberjohnny5

The mental process is the hardware by which the software of experience is programmed. Per my view. And that is 100% a metaphor.

I see. So what determines levels of hierarchy is priority and generation? Is generation synonymous with causation there? — numberjohnny5

Nothing determines levels of hierarchy per se; what would be the thing that actually determines them in the first place? If I said "yes, priority and generation determine hierarchy", that would assume that priority and generation have some kind of agency in the way that we anthropomorphically think about agency. But if generation has no agency, no cause, no beginning, then generation is a process without origin, per se, through which the non-physical gives birth to the physical. So there's no determinate function; there's only generation.

So if the physical generated the non-physical, would you then say that the physical would be at the top end of the hierarchy? — numberjohnny5

No, because I'm not conflating "non-physical" with "consciousness".

Of the mind. "Objective" or "extra-mental" would refer to everything that is not of the mind. — numberjohnny5

What is not "of the mind"?

Hmmm it seems you are introducing the concept of overarching narrative into the procedings. — Jake Tarragon

How is that a narrative? Because it's not strictly logical? I'll take a narrative over banal logic any day.

The mega-meta narrative bothers me. — Jake Tarragon

What is the mega-meta narrative? Why does it bother you?

Which is why I've been interested in finding out what "beauty" is ontologically for you. It seems that to you beauty is both subjective and objective. Well, what is objective beauty, ontologically? Is it the actual properties of things that we perceive? So objective beauty (external-to-mind beauty) exists in the objects themselves independent of any observer? Or is it a mixture all at once between subjective and objective beauty? — numberjohnny5

It's hard to parse through, but I do think of it as both subjective and objective because that dichotomy tends to be misleading. The fact that beauty is a subjective experience and that we all have disagreements about what's beautiful is just one aspect of a unified whole; after all, many experiences of beauty are shared, even deeply personal ones. As an example, I remember my aesthetics prof reading a paper written by a student (he would ask for permission to anonymously read papers in class that he really liked). It described the student's experience of re-visiting the church he grew up in; the student was no longer a Christian. But tactile, sensual sensations of being in the same building again, combined with the nostalgia connected with all sorts of memories, caused him to feel a deep sense of beauty, despite still having no religious interest anymore. Our prof choked up and had a hard time reading through the paper; it clearly resonated with him as well, as he was also a former Christian. I was a Christian at the time, but as a former Christian now, the experience has a deeper meaning for me too, and even at the time I felt that I was experiencing the same thing as the two of them. Then, something that elicited the same feeling in me years later was this quote from the American composer Charles Ives:

"In the early morning of a Memorial Day, a boy is awaked by martial music--a village band is marching down the street--and as the strains of Reeves majestic Seventh Regiment March come nearer and nearer--he seems of a sudden translated--a moment of vivid power comes, a consciousness of material nobility--an exultant something gleaming with the possibilities of this life--an assurance that nothing is impossible, and that the whole world lies at his feet. But, as the band turns the corner, at the soldier's monument, and the march steps of the Grand Army become fainter and fainter, the boy's vision slowly vanishes-his 'world' becomes less and less probable-but the experience ever lies within him in its reality.

Later in life, the same boy hears the Sabbath morning bell ringing out from the white steeple at the 'Center,' and as it draws him to it, through the autumn fields of sumach and asters, a Gospel hymn of simple devotion comes out to him--'There's a wideness in God's mercy'--an instant suggestion of that Memorial Day morning comes--but the moment is of deeper import--there is no personal exultation--no intimate world vision--no magnified personal hope--and in their place a profound sense of spiritual truth--a sin within reach of forgiveness. And as the hymn voice dies away, there lies at his feet--not the world, but the figure of the Saviour--he sees an unfathomable courage--an immortality for the lowest--the vastness in humility, the kindness of the human heart, man's noblest strength--and he knows that God is nothing--nothing--but love!"

I was brought to tears reading this, as my prof was when reading the student's paper. And having a knowledge and understanding of Ive's music certainly helps, as it gives context to what he's describing (the quote is very clearly a personal anecdote couched in a third-person perspective). These experiences are all subjective, and yet, through the experience itself, the possibility of something objective being experienced through the lens of subjectivity becomes apparent. Your abstract reasoning won't bring you to this conclusion, so if you rely solely on that faculty, you won't arrive at the same conclusion. The experience of beauty is like mysticism, or sex, or grand cru Burgundy; you have to experience it to know.

(Y)

I just want to clarify something: For me, "experience" is synonymous with "conscious experience". Do you agree? — numberjohnny5

I'm not sure; why is the distinction important for you?

I'd prefer to say that the properties of a bird (which includes things like colour, movement, etc.) cause us to experience something that we feel and refer to as "beautiful". — numberjohnny5

So we don't experience beauty as something external to us, is that the distinction you're making?

I take it you're only talking about those individuals who experience and label such birds as beautiful, since not all individuals will feel all birds are beautiful...? — numberjohnny5

As I mentioned to Jake, the fact that the experience of beauty is subjective doesn't mean there isn't an objective reality of beauty external to the experience.

By "intrinsic to our experience" are you referring to something intrinsic in our minds/mental apparatus? — numberjohnny5

No, because I don't conflate experience and mental apparatuses.

Yeah, that could work. It's true that beauty is subjective in the sense that it's viewed through the subjective view of the individual, which means the experience of beauty is not uniform (not objective), but it doesn't mean that an objective beauty does not exist. It's like we see parts of the beauty, but it's difficult to see the entirety of it.

True, it's contradictory. The second statement is my view.

Ah right. So the non-physical is what...superior to/better than the physical? — numberjohnny5

In my view the physical is generated by the non-physical. I'm not sure how one being superior to the other would obtain in any meaningful way. Consciousness isn't the basis for the hierarchy because consciousness is in some way superior to the physical world; it's just prior to the physical, in my view. Consciousness is the ocean we're swimming in.

Would you say that the assertion that "consciousness/non-physicality determines relative levels of hierarchy" is subjective? — numberjohnny5

What do you mean by subjective?

I disagree. But it's just a subjective aesthetic judgement, I guess. Beauty is there if you're willing to see it.

Perhaps consciousness is on a spectrum, but why would you think birds have any of it? — tom

Because they're animals that have brains. Obviously I don't know for sure if they have limited consciousness, it seems impossible to know. But what makes you assume they don't have any of it?

The question of whether birds have limited consciousness isn't a major factor of the OP. For instance, if animals have no consciousness, that doesn't effect the idea of there being a being with a higher consciousness than us. It could be possible that we're the lowest organism on the chain of consciousness.

If consciousness is a spectrum, then animals would have some sort of limited consciousness. I'm not sure what's sentimental about that.

Ok, so if "beauty" is not an entity but requires an observer, then what, ontologically, is "beauty" in your view? — numberjohnny5

Ontologically, beauty is first an experience. The combination in the bird of color, movement, and song, cause us to experience beauty. But moving outwards from experience, the way I'm using beauty in this thread is as a fundamental aspect, an identifying characteristic, of a being. It's not the colors themselves, the movements themselves, or the songs themselves, that specifically make the bird beautiful. Even a flightless bird, a bird with a broken wing, a molting bird, or squawking crow is still experienced as beautiful. There is something intrinsic to our experience of the bird that is beautiful, regardless of the specifics of the characteristics.

Ok. Why is that particular quality/aspect the determinant of relative levels of hierarchy? Why not, say, limbs or mass, for example? — numberjohnny5

Because it's not a physical aspect like limbs or mass. Consciousness gives birth to reason, imagination, etc; the things you're using to discuss in this thread. It's the backdrop of you're entire human experience. The bird clearly doesn't have a consciousness as developed as you because it can't reason through arguments the way you can, just as one example.

Capricorn

(Y)

Why, because a hypothetical massive bird the size of you would kill you? So that hypothetical situation that will never exist nullifies the beauty of the bird in actuality?

Two songs at once? Who are you, Charles Ives?

I don't know what birds see in each other. It could be that what the bird sees is the same thing that we see--that is, the female cardinal clearly sees a red male cardinal. Some birds do, anyway. — Bitter Crank

But again, as I'm re-reading you here, the point that I'm making has to do with conciousness. The experience of red might be the same for the female cardinal as it is for us, or it might not, but regardless, the concept of red does not exist for the bird; the bird experiences physicality in an immediate way, unmediated by conciousness. Instinct is what drives the female to acknowledge the red male; for the bird, the color just interacts with her instinct; she's not free to overcome that instinct, or to fight against it, because she's not a consciously aware being. And that's just about the color red. When it comes to the complex apprehension of the male cardinal as a creature of beauty that we humans experience, that red color is just one variable in a fairly vast sea of variables of every kind that lead us to the conclusion that the bird is beautiful. To say that this could possibly be true for the bird as well would be nonsense, because the bird doesn't possess the level of consciousness required to apprehend things in the way that we apprehend them. That's what I'm getting at when suggesting a macrocosmic hierarchy of consciousness.

Their level of development of consciousness.

Our identification of beauty in birds doesn't inform them of their beauty. It's a bridge too far. So, perhaps "we are to birds as God is to us" still holds, but oppositely since

God may be as distant from us as we are to birds

So, God's vision of us may do for us what we do for birds, which may be something, or nothing. — Bitter Crank

That's possible. But we have conscious awareness; the ability to train our minds with spiritual disciplines like meditation or prayer; we can have religious awakenings and atheistic awakenings where our conciousness apparently shifts pretty substantially. Domesticating a bird can lead to it developing a higher intelligence than the wild bird might have, but there seems to be a clear limit. That limit seems to be precisely the lack of conscious awareness. If our consciousness is something unique to h. sapiens, then whether there's a limit to the evolution of our consciousness is not so clear.

Exactly. (Y)

So "beauty" in the sense you're using it in this thread entails some entity/process/X/?? which involves

(a) perception of the bird (first concept of beauty?);
(b) a second (abstract) concept of beauty that refers to the first concept (perception), and that which then is possibly creatively applied to "a form of being which is higher than humanity".

Have I got that right? — numberjohnny5

Not quite, beauty doesn't entail an entity in the sense of it being an entity itself, but it does require an entity in the sense that it requires an observer. But if you take the second sense, then your (a) and (b) descriptions would be right, yeah.

My response is that I would have to understand what "Divine Being" actually is? I take it it's not material and therefore immaterial? — numberjohnny5

All I'm positing in this thread is that it's a being of a higher order than us, in the same sense that we're a being of a higher order than the bird. And yes, in my view, the higher being would not be strictly material, since we appear to be the highest order of material being.

"Higher" is a quantitative term (conventionally speaking). So I'm asking in what sense "higher" are we than birds per that definition. You might be using an unconventional definition of "higher" though, so you'd need to share that with me in order for me to grasp what you're getting at. — numberjohnny5

Higher in the sense of hierarchy, not in the sense of higher number.

Ok, but I see the "scale" as subjective, fyi. We could use scales for many purposes; in other words, there is not one "true" or "correct" purpose for using/applying scales to things. — numberjohnny5

If a macrocosmic hierarchy does exist like I'm describing it, then it would not be subjective.

It depends on the individual tasting the ice cream and the amount of properties that produce sensations/perceptions of "sweetness" for that individual. There might be a limit as to an individual's taste budes being able to make distinctions of sweetness once they taste things that are intensely sweet. One could still compose some product with whatever properties makes something sweet to an individual with an excessively large amount of those sweet properties to ensure that it's relatively one of the sweetest products to taste. — numberjohnny5

Or you could feed them pure glucose or pure fructose. The point being, the "god higher than god" problem is non-existent. Unless you're suggesting something like Tillich's God above God.

Good god, dude. I've had some spates with the mods, and with TimeLine, and with yourself, and I can honestly say that I'm just about as much phased by any of you as I am by anyone else. Keep puffing out those cheeks, and you'll have plenty of lung capacity to out-post us all in perpetuity.

Quick tip, highlight the text you want to quote, then click "quote". That way, the people you respond to will get notifications that someone has responded. I noticed your responses because I'm watching my own thread. :-O

In that case, I don't think that animals that are relatively dissimilar to us perceive qualities as "beautiful" apart from them being able to do so for evolutionary purposes. — numberjohnny5

But how does "beauty", aesthetically speaking, obtain evolutionarily? How would Adorno respond to you, for instance?

What is "beauty" in the sense that you're using it? And would you also have a view per what beauty is ontologically? — numberjohnny5

In this particular case in this thread, beauty first refers to our perception of the bird (view the attached photo for context), and then secondarily refers to an abstract concept in which the first concept of beauty is creatively applied to a possible form of being which is higher than humanity.

As to an ontological view of beauty, I love that stuff, but at this point...it's tough ground, and a lot of the ground feels tough because of language.

I would say Divine Being is primary, and Beauty might possibly be secondary. Beauty might be the generative outgrowth of divinity. That's not very good, though. Go easy on me. Or not.

I'm confused. Let me try to clarify something of my position in case it helps further the discussion.

Any perception/appraisal is going to involve some mind (human or non-human (including something like a god)) observing some other (or some mind perceiving/appraising aspects of itself). That's necessarily the case. — numberjohnny5

Well, I agree with your clarification. So I'm not sure why you're confused. It must be a miscommunication between us.

In what sense "higher"? — numberjohnny5

Higher in the sense that we are higher than the birds. Who's higher than us? No one/thing?

Well, I am a physicalist. ;) — numberjohnny5

Bingo! :P

I don't view things as intrinsically "superior/inferior/valuable, etc.". That's all I'm saying; and it seems that you do. — numberjohnny5

But I don't know what you mean by "superior/inferior/valuable". I get "superior/inferior" from my suggestion that we see something the bird does not, and maybe something/someone else sees something in us that we do not (superior/inferior here, for clarity, has no moral connotation). But I'm not sure how "valuable" plays into that.

So, I'm entertaining the possibility of a macrocosmic hierarchy in which various beings grade along the scale (slugs, birds, humans, angels??? God???), but any sense of inferior/superior is just a sense of ontological scale. If that make sense.

Would there be a higher being higher than the higher being, btw? — numberjohnny5

:-} Would there be a sweeter ice cream sweeter than the sweeter ice cream, btw?

Ok; just responding to your comments.

But I can’t quite make the leap from there to the second paragraph. — Wayfarer

The leap is just a simple metaphorical leap; we see a beautiful aspect of the bird which the bird cannot see; what's to say that something else sees a beautiful aspect of us that we cannot see?

I suppose one answer might be, that the sense of being loved is in some way to ‘feel beautiful’. At a very basic level, your mother’s love for you as an infant instils a sense of self-worth in you which might, at a stretch, be a kind of beauty. (The sad testimony to this is the pathologies of infants who are raised with an absence of all maternal love.) — Wayfarer

Love is, in a way, the next question to ask about after coming to some conclusion about this fundamental question, I think.

So I suppose, within the Christian framework, the sense of the Lord as a ‘loving father’ and indeed the sense in which the sacrament of marriage recapitulates that love, is also a source of something very life beauty. — Wayfarer

I guess that might be true. I will say, with all honesty, that as a former Christian, I didn't consciously intend to ask this OP question with that as a possible outcome. In good faith, I started the thread because this is a metaphor that I've found to be incredibly powerful in my own thinking, so I wanted to flesh it out.

The problem is, I can’t see how it constitutes any kind of proof. — Wayfarer

Well, maybe I should change the thread title, but as I mentioned in the intro paragraph, I don't mean to argue for proof necessarily.

Do you mean a hierarchy in which certain animals that have evolved particular capacities to evaluate qualities (like beauty) in other animals that have not evolved such capacities? — numberjohnny5

No.

Apart from humans, I do think that some animals can evaluate such qualities in other animals insofar as what is "beautiful" to them might serve different evolutionary functions (e.g. avoiding or falling prey to predation). — numberjohnny5

I agree, but I'm not talking about evolutionary functions.

I don't think that hierarchies are objective things, btw. They are just ways that minds organise things. So there is no intrinsic "superior/inferior" "valuable" differences in things apart from minds thinking about things in that way. — numberjohnny5

But I'm talking about a hierarchy within which "minds thinking about things in that way" are just one level of the hierarchy. Plus the only minds thinking are human minds; no other minds are thinking, presumably.

It depends on the person, since beauty is subjective. — numberjohnny5

If you re-read that section of the OP, you'll see that beauty there is metaphorical and not literal in a physical sense.

Again, beauty is subjective. There is no objectively "beautiful quality" that exists in things apart from some mind judging qualities to be beautiful. — numberjohnny5

Again, you're missing the metaphor of this entire thread, which is in the title of the thread.

It could be true that someone/thing observes a quality in us that we aren't aware of and judges it as beautiful. But that judgement belongs to the mind of the observer judging that quality. — numberjohnny5

That's vaguely close to one aspect of what I'm asking here. But it sounds like you're just talking about people observing people. Again, if you re-read the OP, I'm using the bird as a metaphor for imaging if a similar scenario of us observing the bird applies to some higher form of being observing us.

I'm not sure what a "higher form of being" means. — numberjohnny5

A form of being higher than humans.

I'd put it like this: we are capable of perceiving and appraising aspects of non-human animals that other non-human animals cannot perceive and appraise (based on our biological apparatus). But it's probably also true that some non-human animals are able to perceive and appraise aspects of humans that humans cannot perceive and appraise (e.g. infra-red perception, sonic detection, etc.). — numberjohnny5

I agree, but it looks like you're thinking within a physicalist/materialist framework; I'm not. I agree that what you say here is true, but it's not an argument against the possibility of a higher form of being existing above the being of humanity; a form of being that apprehends a different view of humanity in the same way that we observe a different view of the bird.

I realize I'm confusing the terms. I see it like this: experience -> theories, models

(obviously that's incomplete, it's just within the terms we were discussing).

That's what I'm saying.

I don't know; maybe we can; but the question is whether we can know that we can; and I'd have to say 'no' to that. — Janus

Well, "we" might not know that, but maybe there are some that do know that. The Buddha, the Christian mystics. My view includes the possibility that they know that.

Fundamental to what? Terms are defined in the context of specific theories or models. So, if such a model or theory fails to give us something good, then some other might. — Πετροκότσυφας

Fundamental to experience. Likewise, theories and models themselves exist only within experience.

Birds prefer--choose--beauty in their mates, he thought. A male cardinal does not need to know that he is beautiful, but his selective mate does. — Bitter Crank

But the point I want to make, and probably didn't really make, is that "beauty" is something different for the bird than it is for us. Our very conciousness, our place within the world, is a perspective from which we see the bird in a specific way, and we see it as beautiful. Our experience of the beautiful male bird is not the same as the female's. The female, when she see's the brightly arrayed male, doesn't see beauty as such as we humans see it; she sees some sort of bright colors, and, whether because of just how bright they are, or some pheromone situation, or the male's shear force of determination, she chooses a mate. She doesn't see the male the way we do. That's my entire argument; we see an aspect of the bird which the bird is not capable of seeing.

But to assess one's appearance as "handsome", or "beautiful" and identify the degree of loveliness requires an accurate assessment of one's appearance from the POV of others. — Bitter Crank

Why can't I see my face in the mirror and decide that I'm beautiful (the word handsome is so overwrought; all people are beautiful) based purely on what I see, not on my projection of how others see me? It takes a lot to look oneself in the eye and call oneself beautiful.

There is a New England shape note song--or maybe the Southern Harmony tradition which speaks of the longing to see God — Bitter Crank

Thanks for sharing it.

Well, yes, it is the experience of the world in itself; but, by mere definition it cannot be experience of the world as it is in itself. The 'for us' and the 'in itself' is a logical distinction that circumscribes our epistemic limits, according to Kant. — Janus

I get that that's what is according to Kant, but I'm saying, in disagreement with Kant, why can't we experience the world as it is in itself?

Edited for clarity thanks to Kant's thorny wording.

Edit: and actually, if we can't define the most fundamental concepts, then how can we define the less fundamental ones?