Ierrellus

We consider plants to be esthetically pleasing (a rose), edible (an onion) or useless (ragweed). We admire animals that are cute and cuddly, but not those that may protect themselves with venom (spiders and snakes).

To what extent is the meaning of what is other than ouselves (pretty rocks, etc.) merely a matter of personal evaluations?

Ierrellus

pax vobiscum

[ June 14, 2002: Message edited by: Ierrellus ]

[ June 14, 2002: Message edited by: Ierrellus ]</p>

John Page

1. Why restrict it to other than ourselves?
2. Pretty == good/nice? Thus personal preferences in general are those things that are not nasty/bad?
3. Exceptions would be those things that are nasty but pretend to be nice i.e. to catch prey, or are nice but pretend to be nasty (to scare of the nasties).

Interesting... is this the origin of beauty - survival awareness? (In addition to the mating game which is perhaps most cited).

Cheers, John

Ierrellus

John,

I'm looking for a narrower framework of discussion than what the sociobiological funnies (the Charles Atlas ad in the back of my old comic books that provoked a good deal of misery among us boys in the 1950s) would provide.

In UTOPIA (More), the toilet seats are made of gold. The Sioux, who had been promised their sacred Black Hills for as long as the sun rises and sets, were baffled when white settlers
stormed into the hills, ripping the hills apart for minerals.

So, restricted to other animals, plants and minerals, do humans place values on these things
in order to give these things meaning? And if
so, can one broadly say that esthetics is
assigned value? And is this value a necessity
for humans?


Ierrellus
Pax Vobiscum

[ June 15, 2002: Message edited by: Ierrellus ]</p>

Mr. Sammi

Ierrellus, Can it be possible, that some things signal their purpose, or emit information, which may or may not affect our representation of them, and hence influence our evaluation of them.

A rose smells.
Other things also smell.

My take on this would be to what extent does the information from the other object derail our natural expectations of the object. So do objects themselves have some say? If they have a say, then are we taking notice of what they are saying?

Sammi Na Boodie (food for thought)

Ierrellus

sammi,

Good questions. Philosophers seem to tell us that we cannot know what these objects are emitting except through a filter of human senses that seems to distort what is out there. Scientists seem to tell us that if we had no accurate idea of whats out there we could not make buildings and bombs.

So, I'm asking a question about human thought as it relates to meaning and value. Why the gold rock and not another?

Ierrellus

pax

excreationist

Ierrellus:
As far as aesthetics goes, evolutionary psychologists believe that we instinctly feel pleasure when we see symmetrical well-proportioned faces and bodies(?). And maybe it partly has to do with the patterns we see... e.g. plants, etc, have patterns - we like finding patterns. And with natural variation (rather than boring repetition in many modern things) we find new patterns (patterns within patterns).
Our reasons for admiring cute animals could be because we liked cuddling when we were a baby and still have this urge a bit. (There's also the "mothering instinct")

Anyway, you're basically saying that some things are good or bad (desirable or undesirable) - or useless... this would have to be in relation to something else.

Ierrellus

excreationist:

Good insights! I have also heard of theories about a preference for liking certain animals because they remind us of babies. Even cartoon animals have the baby physique of large heads, smaller bodies, no viable sex organs. The words cute, cuddly, useful, bad, etc. are human terms for describing plants, animals, minerals. In what sense is meaning defined by value, which is a human criterion for worth? Is, as John pointed out, esthetics a survival tool for us?

Ierrellus

PAX

snatchbalance

Ierrelus,

I think in ceratin cases we are atracted to things because they have certain exceptional qualities, are in some way novel, or are relativly rare.

Gold is inert, very maleable, and relatively rare.

flowers, by nature, stand out from the background foliage.

If diamonds were laying around on beaches, like sand, who would care about diamonds?

Good hunters are atracted to anomolies. Anything that makes potential prey stand out from the heard will attract attention. Gatherers will pick out an edible plant from a tangle of growth.

Details are important to sucess.

sb

fwh

Originally quoted by Irrellus:
"To what extent is the meaning of what is other than ourselves (pretty rocks, etc.) merely a matter of personal evaluations?"

Are you saying that a rose, an onion, and ragweed as part of nature exists independently of the human mind? In otherwords, are we onlookers looking at an independent outer world-tabula rasa?

Or do 'primary' qualities (extension and mass) inhere in matter(nature) and the human mind (observer) then assign various 'secondary' qualities (color and aesthetic judgements)?

Or does the whole world of nature as we actually experience it, depend on the mind and senses of man, for its configuration?

Or can we go a step further and say, that man is participating mentally and physically in inner and outer processes of nature?

Does man and nature have any meaning? Some would answer with a resounding NO! Some may say otherwise. Obviously, how we view man's place in the cosmos is of utmost importance when discussing meaning. I think you are well aware of that.

excreationist

Ierrellus:
I see what you mean by value in your examples... but I'm not sure that the term "meaning" fits in very well. e.g. onions are edible... being edible is a property of onions (with respect to humans) but I'm not sure how meaning comes into it... and we might admire cute and cuddly animals (small ones with flat faces and large heads and eyes, etc)... but what does that have to do with "meaning"?