Well, Noble Dust, some people are smart bookworms, and others are wise. There is a difference there, since wisdom cannot be gained merely by the accumulation of 'knowledge'. It's also something to be skeptical of that reading alone can produce knowledge.Almost all of what I know in philosophy or elsewhere is what I've cobbled together from others, and I certainly don't have the hubris to even try and pass it off as my own. — StreetlightX
I am traveling but I recall Adorno`'s statement in his Aesthetics where he asks who could fail to be moved by the song of a Robin after a rain in the spring. He suggested that the bird is caught in the spirit of its song which we oddly find beautiful. — Cavacava
There have been a number of studies of the song of song birds. They indicate that baby birds learn their songs from their parents and birds that don't learn (there is a specific time period) will not be able to attract a mate. Other studies have followed how these songs have changed over several generations. — Cavacava
I read a recent study of Finch`s song, apparently the male Finch has brain structure the enable its vocalizations these structures are not found in the female Finch. The study suggested that the female Finch chooses a mate based on their appreciation of the song of competing males. — Cavacava
So yes, I think animals like these birds make choices based on their instinctual reactions to what is aesthetic available to them. This is an instinctual process and it may have some relationship to what is described as the aesthetic effect in humans (note some cave paintings in Europe now dated back 64,000 yrs), however no animal paints images like man. — Cavacava
That's such a poor response. What evidence did you give to site your statements that "birds - and other animals - discriminate between potential partners on the basis of aesthetics", and, again, where in the Prum quote is any actual evidence presented that suggests that animals experience aesthetics? Come on man, I know you're way smarter and well-read than me. — Noble Dust
Non-argumentative, I suppose. It does not try to refute or prove something, it describes and narrates, it offers an alternative way of looking at things. — Πετροκότσυφας
Always, I'd say. To the point that different pieces of art suggest different understandings of something, the work is done. — Πετροκότσυφας
I would still worry that it would be an anthropomorphization. It just seems so obviously, intuitively, absurd to me, to imagine birds experiencing their own beauty in the way in which we experience their beauty. — Noble Dust
What do you think about the idea that music is higher than wisdom and philosophy? — Noble Dust
I think there is appropriate anthropomorphism and inappropriate. The fact is, we're animals. We're like other animals more than we're different. Our DNA is the same and, for those close to us on the bush, our evolutionary pathway is too. — T Clark
I look at animals and I find it hard to imagine they don't feel things; some things, not all things; the same way we do. — T Clark
Because the truth of art is a transformation of the individual's life, aesthetic experience contracts an indissoluble link with ethics. It is itself an ethics, a 'practice', a mode of actualizing life. The internal connection between the invisible aesthetic life and the ethical life is what Kandinsky calls the "spiritual".
I disagree; to presume that a bird's experience of aesthetics is the same, or even similar to ours seem just as inappropriate. What leads you think that might be so? — Noble Dust
I look at animals and I find it hard to imagine they don't feel things; some things, not all things; the same way we do.
— T Clark
Yeah, epistemologically, I surely think knowledge is a continuum. But that doesn't mean the knowledge of a dog, vs. the knowledge of a human, is anywhere close to being similar. — Noble Dust
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