In the video “Philosophy of the Arts” the key concepts was aesthetics and how it was developed. There were many different philosophers who had some input into developing this area. Each philosopher had a little something to do with how we view aesthetics today. Plato felt that beauty was an erotic attraction while Aristotle says there has to be some rules and guidelines that must be followed. Kant placed much of his research on the how we as individuals viewed art and it was through our own thoughts and feelings that one would describe beauty. Schiller came up with what’s called Aesthetic Education and he said it’s what makes us more human. According to Schiller when it comes to aesthetics he says that it's “when we develop our aesthetic capacities we develop our moral capacities as well”. He is trying to say that our moral judgement is connected to how we veiw things.
In the video Neurobiology neurology and Art and aesthetics Changeux discussed four main points: Works of art=artifacts, human, production, distinct. From language=non verbal communication of emotional state, knowledge and experience. Esthetic efficiency staggering effects on emotion and reason mobilizing conscious. Art in constant evolution=art history and he explains that art and aesthetics may just be a product of brain evolution. Ramachandran talks about how science and art have a common interest and that is within the brain. He discusses eight universal laws about aesthetics and they are: Grouping and binding, Peak-shift principal, Contrast, isolating a single cue to optimally excite cortical visual area (attention), Perceptual problem solving, Symmetry, Abhorrence of unique vantage points and suspicious coincidences, and last Art as a metaphor. He talks how there are universal laws that cut across cultural influences and help determine art and its beauty. Ramachacdran also goes into detail with these laws that every act of perception involves some sort of judgment and choice made by the individual who is viewing the work of art.
In the 18th century a German Philosopher by the name of Alexander Baumgarten created the word Aesthetics. This comes from the Greek word aisthanomai meaning perception. Aesthetics refers to and is centered on feelings that a certain person feels such as sight, taste, touch, hearing and smell. It is one's response to the natural world and how we view it. Aesthetics also looks into a person's understanding of making art, Baumgarten says we must take a work of art and look past its beauty to be able to value the whole process and not just the product.
The philosopher's work that I feel is most important when looking into aesthetics is Kant. Kant was a German philosopher from the 18th century who placed a lot of emphasis on our interest in art rather than the art work itself. Kant wrote about Observations on the Feelings of the Beautiful and Sublime and the Critique of Judgment. In these works Kant focused not on art itself but on the beauty of art. Kant like others thought that beauty and the sublime was not the property of the object but the ways one would respond to the objects. Kant said that judgments of taste are both subjective and universal. They are subjective because they are responses of one’s pleasure, and they don't essentially involve any claims about the properties of the object itself. On the other hand aesthetic judgment is universal because it’s just not a personal interest. When looking at an artist work one does not see it for the money its worth or look at the art because it’s a piece created based off of someone they know. One must look at the art using "taste" which is to see the work for pleasure for one’s self.
When it comes to Changeux and Ramachandran views of aesthetics and science I found them both very interesting. With Changeux I liked when he was talking about and comparing pictures of a person’s prefrontal cortex. The test was about empathy for suffering and each brain did light up when they were told about something but the person who was viewing a picture of something empathetic their brain activity was greater than the person who just heard about it. When Ramachandran was talking what really stuck out for me was when he was talking about visual areas and he said that there are dozens of visual areas in our brain that deal with visual processing and that vision is a complex process. Ramachandran also says that art works by stimulating all of our visual areas in the brain and that they work together by grouping and binding to create a visual reward.
I think that the videos helped me understand aesthetics and also become a little confused at the same time. After reading the chapter I kind of thought I knew what they meant by aesthetics but then I watched the videos and they went deep into the meaning of aesthetics one through philosophers and the other through a scientific approach. I didn’t really know which one I favored because I agreed with some of what they all had to say. I have to say that after chapter 2 and the videos I did look at chapter 3 differently because I was really thinking about my feelings of each work of art.
I like the “Philosophy of the Arts” video and I learned a lot about the history of aesthetics but I thought it went a little slow. While I was watching “Neurobiology Neurology and Art and aesthetics” I thought this one was full of information and I could not take my eyes off the screen. The one thing I didn’t like was it was hard to understand them both at times. Both of these films along with the chapters helped me understand and learn about aesthetics and I feel that I would not have learned or understood as much with all the materials provided this week.
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