AESTHETIC PERCEPTION IS ATTACHED OR DETACHED TO

AESTHETIC PERCEPTION IS ATTACHED OR DETACHED TO
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By Marsigit, Yogyakarta State University, Indonesia
Email: marsigitina@yahoo.com
Byrne, P., 2004, notified that many examples of theoretical arguments for God's existence start from the fact of ethical normativity in which human beings are aware of actions as being right and wrong, obligatory and forbidden, in such away that such awareness carries with it the thought that they are bound to do some things and bound to avoid doing others. According to him, moral qualities have a bindingness attached to them shown in the force of the moral ought and the moral must. Byrne claim that the imperative is not what Kant styled a “hypothetical” one; it is rather “categorical” and it binds no matter what our particular goals are, that is linked to its universal dimension. He concluded that the obligation created by the promise holds independent of our particular goals because it reflects a universal rule, holding at all times and places and applying to any human being as such.

Randall, A., 1998, explained  that an intuition is that which is presupposed in any experience, but is preconceptual; it is the innate "hard-wiring" through which all sensory data must be filtered before it can be conceptualized in the understanding. He perceived that an intuition is "pure" insofar as it is detached from all empirical content; in which, in the "Transcendental Aesthetic", Kant argues that the a priori pure forms underlying all sensory intuition are space and time; while, space underlies our intuition of "outer sense", and time underlies our intuition of "inner sense". Randall, from Kant,  persisted that in order to perceive an object in the world, or even conceive of one in imagination, we must presuppose the three-dimensional Euclidean infinite singular. Further he said that time is an even more basic intuition, since it underlies any kind of cognition at all, even those in which we introspect, looking inward at ourselves, ignoring the outer world; and an inward sense of ourselves must presuppose a notion of an infinite progressing continuum of moments in time.

Randall, A., 1998, accepted that all experience has an empirical component and the intuition filter removes all trace of dependence on dimension by treating the empirical object before the imagination as if it were free of dimension. He refused that it ever can be literally experienced without being attached to some particular empirical object. According to him, the objective intuitive representation is abstract and detached from experience, but it is still dependent on intuition, and thus is bound up in presuppositions about three-dimensional Euclidean space and one-dimensional of time. Randall claimed that if, however, we were to further detach our experience from human intuition as well, we could run our representation through yet another filter; accordingly, just as pure intuition was required to completely filter out the empirical component, a pure concept of the understanding will allow us to filter out both the empirical and the intuitional component, leaving us only with what flows directly from the concepts themselves. He then concluded that the cognitive filtering that detaches the object from the pure forms of intuition is called "analysis" and it is contrasted with "synthesis", because it allows us to treat the object of our experience as if it were a more general object not subject to the innate restrictions of our cognitive machinery.

Zangwill, N., 2003, clarified that Kant makes various points about pleasure in the beautiful, which fall short of what we might call his “deep” account of the nature of pleasure in beauty, according to which it is the harmonious free play of imagination and understanding. According to Kant, all such pleasures are “interested” that is they are bound up with desire. Zangwill then described that normativity attaches to judgments of taste themselves and since judgments of taste are based on a response of pleasure, it would make little sense if our judgments were more or less appropriate but our responses were not and the normative claim of our judgments of taste must derive from the fact that we think that some responses are better or more appropriate to their object than others. On the other hand, Chignell, A., 2004, insisted that, for Kant,  an idea of reason is a concept which has something to do with "the supersensible" realm outside our phenomenal experience, and thus it outstrips the conceptual ability of the understanding; therefore, he persisted that ideas are identified as the concrete presentations of particular themes that are offered us by individual works; consequently, whatever interest they have for us attaches to the particular work or object that embodies them. Chignell, A. then maintained that while the aesthetic attributes are of the object in question in that they are linked to its logical attributes by chains of association, they are also produced freely; according to Kant, in this process we feel our freedom from the law of logical association which attaches to the empirical use of the imagination and it is this feeling of freedom that contributes to our aesthetic experience of the object and the imagination’s running through the seemingly endless set of aesthetic attributes engenders the peculiar feeling of mental attunement or harmony that is aesthetic pleasure.

Meanwhile, Kant, I, 1790, exposed that the beautiful contains merely a reference of the representation of the object to the subject; because it still bears this resemblance to the logical judgement, that it may be presupposed to be valid for all men. But this universality cannot spring from concepts. Kant  further claimed that for from concepts there is no transition to the feeling of pleasure or displeasure it save in the case of pure practical laws, which, however, carry an interest with them; and such an interest does not attach to the pure judgement of taste. He then concluded that the result is that the judgement of taste, with its attendant consciousness of detachment from all interest, must involve a claim to validity for all men, and must do so apart from universality attached to objects, that is there must be coupled with it a claim to subjective universality. For Kant    there are two kinds of beauty that are free beauty or beauty which is merely dependent; in which the first presupposes no concept of what the object should be; and the second does presuppose such a concept and, with it, an answering perfection of the object. Kant  then summed up that those of the first kind are said to be self-subsisting beauties of this thing or that thing; the other kind of beauty, being attached to a concept or conditioned beauty, is ascribed to objects which come under the concept of a particular end.

Kant, I, 1790, furthermore delivered the question how a judgement possible which, going merely upon the individual's own feeling of pleasure in an object independent of the concept of it, estimates this as a pleasure attached to the representation of the same object in every other individual, and does so a priori, that is without being allowed to wait and see if other people will be of the same mind? Kant  then explained that it is easy to see that judgements of taste are synthetic, for they go beyond the concept and even the intuition of the object, and join as predicate to that intuition something which is not even a cognition at all, namely, the feeling of pleasure or displeasure; however, although the predicate or the personal pleasure that is connected with the representation is empirical, still we need not go further than what is involved in the expressions of their claim to see that, so far as concerns the agreement required of everyone; and then they called as  a priori judgements, or mean to pass for such.

In term of the universal communicability in which Kant  argued that every one expects and requires from every one else, just as if it were part of an original compact dictated by humanity itself; and thus it becomes of moment in society and attracts a considerable interest;  and at this stage the idea of its universal communicability almost still  indefinitely augments its value. Kant  claimed that this interest, indirectly attached to the beautiful by the inclination towards society, and, consequently, empirical, is, however, of no importance for us here. For that to which we have alone to look is what can have a bearing a priori, even though indirect, upon the judgement of taste. Further, Kant  claimed that the interest in the beautiful of art gives no evidence at all of a habit of mind attached to the morally good, or even inclined that way; however, Kant maintained that to take an immediate interest in the beauty of nature is always a mark of a good soul; and that, where this interest is habitual, it is at least indicative of a temper of mind favourable to the moral feeling that it should readily associate itself with the contemplation of nature; it must, however, be borne in mind that he meaned to refer strictly to the beautiful forms of nature, and to put to one side the charms which she is wont so lavishly to combine with them; because, though the interest in these is no doubt immediate, it is nevertheless empirical.

Kant, 1781, said that internal intuition in which one existence can be determined, though preceded by that purely intellectual consciousness, is itself sensible and attached to the condition of time; therefore this determination of the existence, must depend on something permanent which is not in the existence, therefore, only in something external to which one must look upon himself as being related. Kant  argued that necessity and strict universality, therefore, are infallible tests for distinguishing pure from empirical knowledge, and are inseparably connected with each other; however as in the use of these criteria the empirical limitation is sometimes more easily detected than the contingency of the judgement, or the unlimited universality which we attach to a judgement is often a more convincing proof than its necessity, it may be advisable to use the criteria separately, each being by itself infallible. Kant  claimed that space does space does not represent any property of objects as things in themselves, nor does it represent them in their relations to each other; however,  space does not represent to us any determination of objects such as attaches to the objects themselves, and would remain, even though all subjective conditions of the intuition were abstracted.

Kant, 1781, also claimed that for the certainty cannot be found in an a posteriori proposition; and due to the conceptions a priori of space and time are mere creations of the imagination that having their source really in experience, imagination has made up something which contains general statements of these relations, but which no application can be made without the restrictions attached thereto by nature. Kant  insisted that we could only arrive at a complete cognition of our own mode of intuition in which this always under the conditions originally attaching to the subject. Kant  specified that we make use of a great number of empirical conceptions; and consider ourselves, even without any attempt at deduction, justified in attaching to them a sense. Kant  concluded that so long as the object of our rational conceptions is the totality of conditions in the world of phenomena, and the satisfaction, from this source, of the requirements of reason, so long are our ideas transcendental and cosmological; however, when we set the unconditioned in a sphere which lies out of the world of sense and possible experience, our ideas become transcendent. Kant  ultimately summed up that they are then not merely serviceable towards the completion of the exercise of reason, however they detach themselves completely from experience and construct for themselves objects, the material of which has not been presented by experience, and the objective reality of which is not based upon the completion of the empirical series, but upon pure a priori conceptions.

Kant, 1788, further contended that in as much as the reality of the concept of freedom is proved by an apodeictic law of practical reason, it is the keystone of the whole system of pure reason, and all other concepts which remain in it unsupported, now attach themselves to this concept, and by it obtain consistence and objective reality; that is their possibility is proved by the fact that freedom actually exists, for this idea is revealed by the moral law. Kant  claimed that freedom, however, is the only one of all the ideas of the speculative reason of which we know the possibility a priori because it is the condition of the moral law which we know. Kant  further notified that it was possible to effect the verification of moral principles as principles of a pure reason quite well, and with sufficient certainty, by a single appeal to the judgement of common sense, for this reason, that anything empirical which might slip into our maxims as a determining principle of the will can be detected at once by the feeling of pleasure or pain which necessarily attaches to it as exciting desire; whereas pure practical reason positively refuses to admit this feeling into its principle as a condition. Kant  claimed that if pure reason of itself can be practical and is actually so, as the consciousness of the moral law proves, then it is still only one and the same reason which, whether in a theoretical or a practical point of view, judges according to a priori principles; and then it is clear that although it is in the first point of view incompetent to establish certain propositions positively, which, however, do not contradict it, then, as soon as these propositions are inseparably attached to the practical interest of pure reason, it must accept them, though it be as something offered to it from a foreign source, something that has not grown on its own ground, but yet is  sufficiently authenticated; and it must try to compare and connect them with everything that it has in its power as speculative reason.

Note:

  Kant, I., 1790, The Critic of Judgment, translated by James Creed Meredith
  Ibid.
  Ibid.
  Ibid.
  Ibid.
  Ibid.
  Ibid.
  Kant, I., 1781, Critic of Pure Reason, Translatedby J.M.D. Meiklejohn
  Ibid.
  Kant, I., 1781, Critic of Pure Reason, Translatedby J.M.D. Meiklejoh
  Ibid.
  Ibid.
  Ibid.
  Kant, I., 1788, The Critic of Practical Reason, http://www.google.search
  Ibid.
  Ibid.