Philosophers only like truth. — Fire Ologist

I think this is a misunderstanding of philosophers that can be remedied by looking at Plato. Truth is important, but the triumvirate between the good, the beautiful, and the true is important to Plato -- he likes all three.

What does that make of your OP placing the aesthetic as prior to the ideas one is attracted to? — Fire Ologist

Hrrm, not prior. Only in the frame of. My suspicion is that there's more significance, but ultimately I don't think that insisting on truth is a very tractable solution to comparison since all philosophers claim truth. They all care about it so this doesn't serve to differentiate the reason for emphases.

I think the examples that are particularly interesting here are one's that aren't necessarily talking about the same thing. Sure, all philosophers are interested in truth and being. So why do some talk about epistemology, some talk about metaphysics, some talk about ethics, and so forth?

Or is it just willy nilly?

Philosophers only like truth. — Fire Ologist

I only like philosophies of the real.

I don't mean it in terms of expressing their personality, but there's a reason that thinker or researcher is there. . . . There's someone that has to do the interpreting and thinking. It's a creative process, rather than something read off the evidence. — Moliere

Yes, that makes sense to me.

that choice to pursue some line of thought or deeming some evidence as relevant to the topic at hand -- that takes interpretation, which in turn takes standards -- i.e. aesthetics. — Moliere

I was with you till the final word. Sometimes the standards purport to be more than, or different from, aesthetics, no? Plain old pragmatics, for instance. To say that all standards come down to aesthetics requires some justification.

Sometimes the standards purport to be more than, or different from, aesthetics, no? Plain old pragmatics, for instance. To say that all standards come down to aesthetics requires some justification. — J

They do, and mayhaps my recent reply to Srap in the Williamson thread goes some way to bridge a gap here.

Yes, classically aesthetics is about the beautiful and the sublime, works of art and their judgment and so forth. But in the broader sense aesethetics is about value judgments which are non-moral, and yet still binding on others in some sense -- i.e. not strictly personal preference in the manner we say "I like vanilla ice cream, but you don't have to"

Basically,yes it's an extension of the category -- but it's reasonable on the basis that we make value judgments which, while there's no fact to the matter, and it's not really something that reflects on one's character or actions, we still hold it to be valuable for others in some sense, or choose to be binding to it.

How do you do away with bad ideas, and how do you identify them as bad? Is it just that they don't provide a non-religious theodicy?

I'm guessing not because you go on to say "tragic/sensual/empirical" as something good whereas "spirituality, metaphysics, over/mis-use of dialects or reason" is bad -- in the aesthetic sense.

If no further answer then cool. We've reached the aesthetic terminus. — Moliere

I guess it's about the basic assumptions a philosopher makes and the way they use langauge because of those assumptions. Certain ideas and ways of thinking hang together more or less coherently and give rise to distinct worldviews depending on the basic assumptions one makes.

If for instance one doesn't view the Forms, Ideas or the Logos as the fundamental underlying reality, one would have to view reason, and the use of the dialectical method for instance, with a lot more scepsis.

I think the way one leans vis-à-vis those basic assumptions typically colours the rest of ones philosophy.

I think that's a common experience for people who read philosophy. Eventually you start to focus in on the couple of things that really interest you because there's just too much out there to be able to read it all.

But I like to wander around, still. I'm uncertain that much philosophy is truly bad, but only appealing to some other aesthetic. Not quite -- there are times where I don't think this -- but it's the idea that I'm thinking towards. — Moliere

For me it's not so much that there is too much out there, but that I have decided on some basic assumptions and want to progress in a certain direction from there. Coherence is typically also one of the goals of philosophy, and I feel like you can't progress if you leave everything open. These assumptions have consequences.... and so that means you try to do away with ideas that don't work with them.

I think the examples that are particularly interesting here are one's that aren't necessarily talking about the same thing. — Moliere

Thinking about this OP again, I realized something about myself that might speak to an aesthetic analysis between philosophers.

What questions intrigue you, first? What is your gut instinct when making inquiry of something? How do you carve things up when wondering how things are carved up? Why do I notice something to question?

When I confront a mystery, I ask “what” first.

I seek a sense of ‘what there is’ first. Not exactly what, or entirely what, but I have to see some distinction there, something that purports to declare itself, something to ask “what” of, what of it, before, in my view, the more painstaking “how” and other questions, become valued and needed. I just, do.

‘What’ instinctually piques my interest and is the basic tool I use to carve things up, to dig into things.

Someone else might be more moved when first seeing the question “how” before any “what” is worth entertaining.

But this is not to say “what first” thinkers and “how first” thinkers don’t need to ask all of the questions. It’s just ‘what’ or ‘how’ sort of sets their initial tables, to ask anything at all, to start the effort and struggle for any knowledge.

We all ask three questions at least. And we give any one of them top priority at any given moment. All of them are necessary tools to carve up and refashion experience into knowledge of experience. But we all ask:
what it is,
And how it is,
And seek whether it even is.

We all have to ask all three questions. To even conceive of and conceptualize “what” you’ve already decided and now assume “whether” it is; and if it is moving at all you must immediately wonder “how” what it is changes and came to be what it might be. And it is the same no matter how you start or with whatever you start - we ask all of them.

What lends itself most easily to metaphysics. How is epistemology, and whether is ontology. But again we need all three questions in all areas.

So I’m wondering if there might be a sort aesthetic difference carved into one’s thinking based on what strikes you as the first question, or what strikes as the starting point, or goal - the sort of shape your question makes of your answer to come.

“What” first thinkers, like me, end up fixing things still against the motion. The ‘what’ as in, ‘the what it is to be.’ Aristotle, Aquinas, Descartes, Socrates, Plato. Systematizers or categorizers. Truthseekers. Certainty fashioners. What is there to know, and what are we to think about. I see change, defeating whatever was, but I already saw ‘what’ever was, now changed, and I look for what again.

“How” thinkers notice the movement itself, the process, with initial intrigue. How is that even possible, before I care more about whatever it might be. These are as diverse as Heraclitus, Democritus and Lucretius, to the Existentialists, and the Analytics and Logicians. They become mathematicians and physicists (biologists, neuroscience-scientists, etc.) as well. These folks take whatever is done and first ask how it is done.

Those who ask “whether it is” first are just people living their lives. We all need to answer whether that car is going off the road and about to hit us here on the sidewalk. But thinkers who focus first on “whether it is” end up sounding more like mystics. When you ask “whether” and answer it, the answer is a belief, an opinion you hold in your heart that even if you don’t know what, and you don’t know how, you know more deeply because you know whether. Just like when you cross the street and avoid being killed.

What is a cat, and what is a mat, and what is a cat on the mat? What is the meaning of “on” in this sentence?
How is there a cat independently of the mat when there is a cat on a mat? “On” is a process and relationship - but how is that?
Is that a cat there? Whether or not the cat is there, there is a mat there with what could be a cat but we don’t know whether it is or is not.

Why do I like the philosophy that I do? — Moliere

Maybe because of your initial question, the way in that we choose, our sort of favorite or most comfortable tool we grab first.

So now the aesthetic question just becomes, “why do I ask ‘what’ as if I don’t need to ask ‘how’ first?” Or I could ask ‘whether’ there is anything to this notion of an aesthetic difference forged by the form of our first instinct. I could ask ‘how’ is an answer to this going to work? But for me, for some reason, I get started wondering what is this notion of the aesthetics of philosophy?

I skipped the question “why” but it must have its own aesthetic, its own flavor. I would assume some philosophers ask “why” first. I think “why” can actually mask “what” (as in ‘why, what is the purpose,’ and ‘why, what is its function?’). Or “why” can mask “how” (as in ‘why - what causes that’ or ‘why - how does that come to be?’). So “why” might not be a precise enough tool for the philosopher; although they may ask it first, I think they immediately break it down into what, how, or whether, and use these questions to inform “why”.

Maybe?

This question of the aesthetics distinguishing philosophers might beg for a more psychological analysis than it does philosophical. Because if you really want to do philosophy, you ask all the questions, and you need to “like” or at least respect, all of the philosophers. I think. And the end result of doing philosophy should not look so vastly different as we take Thales to be different from Russell. If they are both philosophers at all, they are both saying the same thing in some respects. Although I may just be sliding into my “what” box again…

This is a great reflection. So, yes, this is the sort of thing I'm thinking through. What I'd call your two different thinkers are two different aesthetic attitudes -- that is, the sort of attitude one adopts in coming to judge what is to be judged. I'd been avoiding the term up until now because I wanted to make sure we were all on board with the notion that "aesthetics" is a legitimate philosophical domain in this more general sense than the classical sense.

At least, legitimate enough to think through.


Upon doing so my thought was to try and introduce aesthetic attitudes as a means for distinguishing ways of doing philosophy.

And you went right out and gave a full fledged theory with that thought all on your own, saving me all the work. Thanks! I enjoyed reading through your reflection!

Though something to add to that -- I'm wondering if people are familiar with the idea of a disinterested interest?

I think it could do work with respect to distinguishing between when a layperson does philosophy and when a trained philosopher does philosophy -- i.e. @Srap Tasmaner what you call the real work of philosophy.

disinterested interest — Moliere

Yes. All people ask what, how, whether, and why, but the way a philosopher asks them might have something to do with disinterested interest. (You raise a “how” question about the philosophic.)

This is related to (but not the same as) why I tried to emphasize that all philosophers should strive to ask all questions in all areas. We may start with a particular instinct and particular question (first asking what or how), and feel we cover more ground in a particular area (metaphysics, epistemology, mysticism, or even physics), but, as a good philosopher, we need to ignore our own gut from time to time. We must allow things to come to us and try not to bring anything to the table so to speak. Our own aesthetic pleasures should be held out as repulsive at least once in a while, if the metaphysician is to truly appreciate the physicist, and the physicist is to truly discover what the mystic is saying.

Your process of looking at pleasure as repulsive is a good exercise in thinking through aesthetics, I think.

It'd take the attitude of disinterested interest to be able to judge that way, I think?

But I'm specifically asking after if you or everyone else reading along have heard that term in the philosophical sense. By "that term" I mean "Disinterested Interest"

It has a specific meaning in aesthetics due to -- you may be shocked here ;) -- Immanuel Kant.

Isn’t that in Kierkegaard too?

Schopenhauer too... and Nietzsche wasn't to happy with it.

Could be. I'm invoking Kant's use, as I understand it at least.

Ultimately it wouldn't matter who where what when as long as we understand one another.

In that spirit -- as I understand Disinterested Interest it's obviously paradoxical on its face.

Another way to put it might be a trained interest. So dis-interested in the sense of "I hopped off the left side of the bed today rather than the right side" as not being relevant at all, amongst other more controversial claims, and interested in the sense of "I know this or that is what they are looking for and in that interest I shall apply my talents in this or that way"


"Applying my talents" it's a bit of a stretch with respect to aesthetic attitudes, but I just mean that the judger of art applies their knowledge in judging the art-work. So it goes with any profession -- you wouldn't believe how much shit I've heard talked by one tradesman on another, whereas most of the world wouldn't care at all if the blahpideebip was bent krongy or left-Burly.

In my understanding of the idea of disinterested interest it has something to do with:
- letting the muse inspire the art, where heart drives the interest but mind does not judge, disinterested in itself and only interested in staying absorbed in the passion.
- like improv, where there is no time to deliberate,
- like not letting yourself get in your own way,
- an earnest openness.

Seems like a meditative, more eastern way of approaching activity.

Interesting Kant developed this a bit. He wasn’t much of a mystic or an artist. Was this where he talked about beauty and the sublime?

Interesting Kant developed this a bit. He wasn’t much of a mystic or an artist. Was this where he talked about beauty and the sublime? — Fire Ologist

This is what I have in mind: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aesthetic-judgment/#Disi

The "interest" is "beautiful" or "sublime" -- but the judgment is somehow disinterested, which as I understand it means we hold the judgment to hold for others.

I tend to think of disinterested interest as untheorised interest, a term I've often used. Untheorised means responding to something without frameworks or training, intuitively for pleasure and, I guess with disinterest - if by this we mean minus theoretical investment. But maybe I'm on a differnt track.

Oh man, then I'm in trouble. My thought is it's highly theorized interest, in the sense that I know what I'm interested in and I know what other people are interested in and I can separate the two.

Though.... I can see a place for untheorized interest using the same locution, now that I think of it. The first time I watch a movie because a friend recommended it is untheorized interest: let's see what this is about, then.

The notion I have in mind, in order to keep with the idea that professions do in fact learn something, is the interest a person learns over time in order to help others' problems. I know this, that, and the other thing about (whatever), and so can say "if you want this then you might want to..." with reasonable confidence.

Disinterested interest is the sort of thing where I'm interested in the outcome, but I've learned a thing or two about how others judge and can see what they're getting at. Or something like that in trying to make a distinction.

I think I have the concept wrong.

It seems Kant was trying to get at critiquing art, and not generating art. Does that sound right?

It takes a certain disinterest to be able to compare and universally judge art, while the art itself remains of interest. Like the critic is only interested in sculpture and not painting (the “interest” part that makes things specific and particular), but when discussing various sculptures, the critic is best when being disinterested in what the criticisms (more universal judgments) may be.

Maybe? I read the SEP stuff and got lost (lost interest :razz:).

Yeh, basically speaking that's right.

The critic isn't just saying "My name is Moliere, and thereby this statue is beautiful!"

They have reasons and such they're referring to.

In my understanding of the idea of disinterested interest it has something to do with:
- letting the muse inspire the art, where heart drives the interest but mind does not judge, disinterested in itself and only interested in staying absorbed in the passion.
- like improv, where there is no time to deliberate,
- like not letting yourself get in your own way,
- an earnest openness.

Seems like a meditative, more eastern way of approaching activity. — Fire Ologist

It does seem to have a lot of similarities with the ideal of wisdom put forward in the east, but also with for instance Heraclitus.

The waking have one world in common, whereas each sleeper turns away to a private world of his own. — Heraclitus

What I think they are pointing to is yes, a letting go of fixed ideas of what you want to world to be, so that you can see it like it is and be inspired by it... becoming like a mirror of the world, or letting the world flow through you.

Nietzsche would see something problematic in this process of 'objectification' or 'disïntrestedness', I'm not entirely sure, but I guess because he just saw the perspectival (which is necessarily interested?) as essential for art and life.

h man, then I'm in trouble. My thought is it's highly theorized interest, in the sense that I know what I'm interested in and I know what other people are interested in and I can separate the two.

Though.... I can see a place for untheorized interest using the same locution, now that I think of it. The first time I watch a movie because a friend recommended it is untheorized interest: let's see what this is about, then. — Moliere

Most of my interests are untheorised. This is simply a personal disposition. :wink:

So if you had to summarise what disinterest is in relation to art, can you do it in two simple sentences? I am assuming you have an openness and no commitments to influence your appreciation?

So if you had to summarise what disinterest is in relation to art, can you do it in two simple sentences? — Tom Storm

Disinterested-interest (I feel the need to combine the terms for emphasis) is the attitude one takes towards a particular work of art such as the Mona Lisa. The judgment is meant to apply to more than your individual reaction to the Mona Lisa.

Here's AI on the subject: For Kant, disinterestedness means that when we judge something as beautiful, our appreciation is free from personal desires, practical motives, or any interest in possessing or using the object. The interest is “pure” because it’s not tied to anything outside the experience itself—no stake in its utility, no emotional attachment, no pursuit of gain.

Does that work?

Does that work? — Tom Storm

Sure.

But why these ideas and not those ideas?

Surely you see we gravitate towards different philosophers. — Moliere

Perhaps for the same reason I love Bach, but Mozart doesn't do much for me. Or why I love chocolate, but don't bother with strawberry. There is no "why". I just do. I assume it's the same for philosophers. What one talks about fascinates, and what another talks about is meh.

Perhaps for the same reason I love Bach, but Mozart doesn't do much for me. Or why I love chocolate, but don't bother with strawberry. There is no "why". I just do. I assume it's the same for philosophers. What one talks about fascinates, and what another talks about is meh. — Patterner

If so then I'd say it's the same as random creative impulse, whim, and "I like vanilla, but you don't need to"

I.e. not subject to philosophical thought at all.

I tend to believe it's possible to reason about these matters of taste, rather than say "Well, I like Mozart, and you like Beethoven, and that's all there is to it"

That is -- there is a "why"; or if you just do, then you don't bother to say "just do" -- just go ahead and do.

But even the "why" doesn't help. Take Bach. I love counterpoint. I love how he weaved the voices in and around each other, yet the harmonies were always beautiful.

Why does that resonate so strongly in me? No idea. I didn't choose to like it. Piano teachers gave me Mozart all the time. As far as classical goes, I didn't know anything else. But then one day I heard Bach, and my world changed.

Why doesn't it resonate in everyone else? Lots of people don't want to hear Bach.

Does it have to do with how my neurons are set up?

Why doesn't it resonate in everyone else? Lots of people don't want to hear Bach.

Does it have to do with how my neurons are set up? — Patterner

It could.

But that would not be the sort of "why?" I'm asking for. I'm asking for an aesthetic justification -- which would basically be a way of answering your question "Why doesn't it resonate in everyone else?" -- or at least a way to answer it.

Rather than saying "My mother played Bach and so I like Bach", in the causal sense this is a question asking after a rational reason for the preference.

Some sort of "This is what art ought be and so I like this" or something else -- something other than a causal explanation ,or whim.

I'm asking for an aesthetic justification -- which would basically be a way of answering your question "Why doesn't it resonate in everyone else?" -- or at least a way to answer it. — Moliere

I don't believe any of the questions have answers that don't ultimately come down to "That's just the way it is.". And I suspect most of it is just the wiring of our brains.