(PM) A Colorful (Noisy, Odoriferous) World?

Here's an interesting defense of a position Levitin rejects; namely, color realism:

http://mit.edu/abyrne/www/ColorRealism.html

(PM) Musical "Genius" or Practice?

An article from Psychology Today relating musical ability, general intelligence, and hours of practice:

http://blogs.psychologytoday.com/blog/beautiful-minds/200806/musical-genius-is-practice-enough-0

An excerpt:

Musical achievement = general intelligence + domain-specific skills + practice

[researchers] tested this model using a statistical technique called regression and found that general intelligence (as measured by a test of abstract reasoning), music ability (as measured by a test of tonal and rhythmic differentiation), and time devoted to musical practice and lessons significantly accounted for more of the variance in music achievement than practice alone. In other words, even with practice entered into the equation, both general intelligence and domain-specific music ability added to the prediction of the variance in musical achievement above what would be expected by chance.

The End of Philosophy?

From the NY Times:

As money tightens, the humanities may increasingly return to being what they were at the beginning of the last century, when only a minuscule portion of the population attended college: namely, the province of the wealthy.

That may be unfortunate but inevitable, [one theorist] said. The essence of a humanities education — reading the great literary and philosophical works and coming “to grips with the question of what living is for” — may become “a great luxury that many cannot afford.”

By all means; let's entrust the "wealthy few" with that, too. (And hope that some of their hard-won insights will trickle down to the rest of us!)

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/25/books/25human.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&em

(AP) Bell and Circularity

According to “formalist” Clive Bell, all and only those objects with significant form are art. But what makes some forms (combinations of lines, shapes, and colors) significant? Here. as I understand it, is Bell's answer:

1. We know significant form by its effect on us: it evokes (in the ideal observer), a “peculiar” aesthetic emotion. Yet,

2. We know these aesthetic emotions only as those triggered by our observation of significant form.

Unfortunately, Bell’s tight little circle brings us no closer to an appreciation of the difference between significant and insignificant (artless?) form. We might decide on Bellian grounds to leave significant form undefined (or defined only in terms of an equally ill-defined and “peculiar” aesthetic emotional reaction). But then his central thesis that all and only those objects with significant form are art reduces to one of two apparently insignificant claims:

All and only those objects with some unknown property are art. Or

All and only those objects that evoke some unknown aesthetic emotional reaction are art.

(AP) Frank's Place

Artist Frank Galuszka's homepage:

http://arts.ucsc.edu/faculty/fgaluszka/index.html

(AP) Freud and Art

Here's a summary (from David Huron) of Freud's account of art as sublimation:

The major tenets of Freud's theory can be summarized as follows:

1. There exists an unconscious mental life that remains largely hidden from our conscious awareness.

2. The unconscious manifests desires and instincts that may be in conflict with social norms of behavior -- norms that may be accepted at a conscious level.

3. The unconscious nevertheless affects our conscious thoughts and actions. Even when we think we are being our most logical, controlled, rational, and dispassionate self, unconscious motives and instincts continue to underlie our thoughts and actions. Our biological origins and animal desires are not far from the surface of thought.

4. Mental conflict between the conscious and unconscious is both a part of pathology and a normal part of human development.

5. Mental conflict arises when instinctual tendencies are either excluded from consciousness and action (repression), or are modified (sublimation).

6. Repression can or will lead to phobias, inhibitions, obsessions, or neuroses. For example, sexual repression for a celibate priest might lead to depression. Dreams and mistakes (slips of the tongue) are examples of how these occur in everyday life.

7. Sublimation is the process by which mental conflicts are transformed into positive expressions. For example, sexual conflict may lead to artistic expressions.

8. Accordingly, the engine of artistic creativity is the psychic conflict of the artist. The difference between the artist and the mental patient is that the artist has succeeded in sublimating what the mental patient has repressed.

(LII) Immediate Inferences

A quick summary of immediate inferences in categorical logic:

http://www.philosophypages.com/lg/e07b.htm

(LII) Diagrams and Cognition

This entry to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy outlines the power of various (elementary) diagramming techniques in sorting through formal inferential processes:

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/diagrams/

(AP) Arts Come Last (as usual)

Senate Republicans insist on stripping a paltry $50 million for NEA from the $800 billion stimulus package:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robin-bronk/stimulate-the-arts-and-ke_b_164731.html

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Updates:

And the arts are right behind that other wasteful "liberal" cause -- education:

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/02/14-3

And no mention, of course, of any alternative to bailing out, propping up, kick-starting, or otherwise "fixing" Wall Street:

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/02/13-6

(PM) Silent World?

Levitin (with little or no argument) sides with those philosophers and scientists who claim that sound (like pitch, color, and scent) is a "purely subjective fiction," rather than a mind-independent property of the world (like shape, size, motion, and number) (p. 24). The suggestion is that falling trees aren't noisy (or colorful) in themselves; rather, we impute these properties to objects as we create mental representations of vibrating molecules (sound) or experience subjective reactions to the capacity of objects to reflect light (color).

But the question of the objective, observer independent reality of these so-called "secondary properties" (color, sound) is not so easily (or rightly, in my view) dismissed. In the parlance of the debate, Levitin is a "subjectivist" with respect to these properties. "Realists," in contrast, claim that that the world would remain a noisy, colorful place were all observers suddenly to disappear. Take a look at the entry for "color" in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy for a summary of the arguments on both sides.

First Deadline for Essay Writers

Reminder:

To all multi-stage, persuasive essay writers: Today, February 2, is the deadline to submit (on first class email if not beforehand in hard copy) all thesis statements. Please refer to handout on essay-writing for details.

Late thesis statements will receive less credit toward the final project.