• Outlander
    2.7k
    Your need to isolate visual art as being of some special category of art that needs to be discussed is elusive as is your need to protect the blind from what you envision are attacks on their limitations.Hanover

    Well hey, who's to say the sighted (non-blind) aren't the truly limited ones, as far as knowledge and the true depth of the universe is concerned. Sure, it's a physical world, we need to see, to eat, basically.

    My "need" or rather point expressed is that, as a sighted, non-blind person, you don't know the world they experience. I thought that was the whole point of idea of philosophy in regards to qualia. Sure, the sighted people have overtaken the world, and so find blind people as relatively low priority, with nothing to offer, teach, or learn from. We look at them as some sort of pariah or outcast, masquerading as sympathy or pity or "right from wrong" since they are effectively more vulnerable than those who can see. But what of it?

    Also, as a fellow lawyer-in-practice let's not ignore the fact it was you who first intended to isolate visual art with your statement "a legal argument could be beautiful, but not like a sunset". I don't know what it is you're trying to do, but you're not doing it very well. Which is out of character for you.
  • Hanover
    14.3k
    My "need" or rather point expressed is that, as a sighted, non-blind person, you don't know the world they experience. I thought that was the whole point of idea of philosophy in regards to qualia.Outlander

    I'm sort of wondering why you're discussing qualia about right now, with it not having to do with anything we were talking about. I don't have a problem with tangents or even distant associations of one concept with the other, but this is entirely unrelated, like you just wanted to start arguing that the blind people are missing certain qualitative states that non-blind people are. But I'll agree, to the extent qualia exist, I would agree blind people would be missing the qualia of non-blind people, namely the stuff of seeing.

    we look at them as some sort of pariah or outcast,Outlander

    Now we're flying over the cuckoo's nest. No one is telling blind people they are pariahs, but if you know someone who is, you ought tell them to stop bullying the blind.

    Also, as a fellow lawyer-in-practice let's not ignore the fact it was you who first intended to isolate visual art with your statement "a legal argument could be beautiful, but not like a sunset".Outlander

    My objective, which is not that hard to decipher, was to point out the varying ways "beautiful" might be defined, which isn't terribly controversial because it forms the better part of aesthetics, which is to define beauty.

    I don't know what it is you're trying to do, but you're not doing it very well. Which is out of character for youOutlander

    I will try to better do what you don't know what I'm trying to do so that I can do it the way you have come to expect.
  • T Clark
    15.3k
    But seriously, I think you're using the term "beautiful" here in a pretty broad way, so maybe a legal argument could be beautiful, but not like a sunset. This issue isn't a small one because the definition of "beauty" is obviously central to aesthetics and this whole conversation.

    So, define "beauty" so that the term makes sense in claiming a legal brief is beautiful in some way as is a sunset beautiful so that the term can be applied to both.
    Hanover

    It’s a feeling I get when I read poetry or fiction. My primary aesthetic medium is the written word. I like music and visual arts, but my relationship to them is not as close. The feeling I’m talking about is the same one I get when I read anything well written—poetry, fiction, technical documents, legal documents, construction documents, philosophy, history, letters, emails, posts here on the forum. It’s the same feeling. Competence is beautiful.

    What saith Collingswood on it?Hanover

    I’m not sure what Collingwood would say about beauty and I’m too lazy to go check. What he says about art is that it is a way for the artist to express their experience and share it with an audience.
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