There is no universal treatment or definition of philosophical aesthetics.
Kant treated aesthetics as a “Faculty of Judgment” — der Urteilskraft — often translated as the power of judgment. Kant used aesthetics to mean a judgment that is based on feelings, especially feelings of pleasure and displeasure. It’s more complex than that, of course. There are judgments that are pure and judgments that are not. There are judgments of beauty (or taste) and of the “sublime”. Judgments about nature are pure, but judgments about art are not pure. And it goes on and on.
Schopenhauer, on the other hand, criticized Kant on many issues, especially aesthetics. He saw aesthetics as a “mode of transcendence”. Because he saw the world as basically violent and cruel, he saw aesthetics as a kind of search — particularly a search for tranquility. He believed that aesthetics was a specialized state of the consciousness in perception. In other words, the apprehension of “spatio-temporal” objects as Platonic ideals. For him the person himself is lost in aesthetic perception. The often used example is of contemplating an apple tree and thereby “becoming” the tree — but not only THAT tree, but every tree that ever was, is, and ever will be.
I could go on and on, but the point is that every philosopher has had a different, unique, personal definition of aesthetics. I am merely offering another one. We cannot discuss Kant’s views on aesthetics without using his “power of judgment” definition, and we cannot discuss Schopenhauer’s views on aesthetics without using his “search for tranquility” definition. Why should anyone demand that I discuss my views on aesthetics without using my definition? It is not unreasonable to insist that anyone who wishes to discuss my views on aesthetics accept my definition of aesthetics as “evaluation of worth”.
Since this thread is jumping all over the place, I’d like to get some responses about who is willing to discuss the matter of aesthetics using my definition. So far, the only two who have expressed such a willingness are Revenant Threshold and to some extent, Mr. Dibble. But Mr. Dibble wants to modify my definition slightly, which I don’t mind right now, but at some point his modification will cause a contradiction as the discussion moves to ethics.
So I’d like a roll call, please. No need for snark. A simple “I’m in” or “I’m out” will do. This will help me determine whether I want to spend time on this. There’s really no point in speaking without being heard. Plus, the powers that be on the SDMB tend to frown on using the board as a blog, which is what my going on with a series of witnessing monologue threads would amount to.
I scowl feircly at using the word “aesthetics” when you mean “value judgement” - what reason could there be to do that, except to prime your argument for a bait-and-switch later? ("…And thus it is aesthetically pleasing! (Meaning ‘brutally selfish’, but read it as ‘beautiful and wonderful’!")
But if you want to talk about “The Value-Judgemental Jesus”, I’m fine with such a discussion.
I’ll take that as you’re out. Feel free to use my thread to carry on whatever discussion it was you were having with whomever, or alternatively open a thread of your own about a topic that interests you.
Sure. To put it all in a tight nutshell (so we don’t get sidetracked with endless debates about Kant’s views on everything from metaphysics to ethics), I’d boil it down to this: while Kant held (very basically) that aesthetics is the judgment of whether a thing is pleasant or unpleasant, I hold (very basically) that aesthetics is the judgment of whether a thing is valuable or worthless.
Thanks for jumping in! With you, and Revenant Threshold, and possibly Mr. Dibble, we already have the basis for a great series of discussions and debates!
I’m in. I’ve already given my definition of aesthetics - emotional or sentimental value judgement (as opposed to utility value judgement), but I’m cool with sticking with your definition and seeing where it goes.
Fuck, I’m a guest now? Damn, and the $/R exchange rate was looking so favourable…I’ll have to re-up later this week.
In your abbreviated summary, you stated that Kant referred to judgments as being “… based on feelings, especially feelings of pleasure and displeasure.”
In your definition, is the value or worth of a thing also based on feelings? If so, what kind of feelings? If not, what is the judgment of value/worth based on?
(Let me know if I’m jumping the gun here. I understand that you may have to lay a foundation before these questions become relevant, or can be answered in context. It’s just that I find the whole question of aesthetics to be very curious indeed, and it’s making me itchy.)
Yes, with this many high level participants (and I hope others will join as well), I believe I can flesh out my definition a bit more. Keep in mind that whole books have been written on any particular philosopher’s views on aesthetics, and even then critics have lamented that this or that iddy-biddy thing has been overlooked.
But let’s start.
For my definition, the evaluation of a thing is based on will (which at this stage, we may call “intent” or even “motive”). Let me give you an example. There is a little old lady standing at a street corner, waiting for the light so she can cross the street. When you see her, you make an aesthetical decision about her: either she is valuable, or she is worthless, or she is something in between.
And so, you react according to your aesthetic judgment. If you hold her to be valuable, you might react by offering to assist her in crossing the street. Or you might say a kind word to her. Or you might simply give her a genuine smile that picks up her day. If, on the other hand, you hold her to be worthless, you might rob her. Or push her into the road in oncoming traffic. Or kidnap and rape her. Or simply say something horrible that embarrasses or saddens her. Or just scowl at her. And maybe it’s just that you do not believe she is worthless, nor do you believe she has value — you are simply disinterested, and so you ignore her, moving along about your business, and forgetting about her the moment the next distraction occurs.
Now, looking at things more Kantian or even Randian in nature under this definition, you might look at a painting and decide that it is of great value to you. Your reaction to this could, again, be several different things. You might go to see the painting often, even every day. You might purchase the painting. You might steal the painting. Or if you hold that it is completely worthless, you might react in one of several ways. You might show a facial expression of disgust when you see it. Or you might spit on it. Or you might slash it with a knife.
There are nearly infinitely many possible physcal reactions (as many as nature will allow) to the aesthetical judgments we make.
But one consequence of Liberalian aesthetics (I’m pronouncing that Lib-er-AY-lee-un, but you can pronounce it however you please) is that we tend to pursue those things that we most value. That’s why I said that it is a matter of will — an evaluation based on will. It is my belief, and I hold it to be axiomatic, that we pursue (or at least dwell upon) that which we value most. We are drawn to it. We are practically compelled toward it. We cannot get it out of our minds. And if we value it enough, then all our will, everything we do, every plan we make, every consideration of thought and will is focused on the attainment in some form of that extremely valuable thing.
And it may be valuable only to us. That makes aesthetics a subjective thing, rather than an objective thing as Rand argues (and to some extent, as Nietzsche argues). What may be of great value to me might well be worthless to you.
We can take the example offered as a spoof retort about goat waste. It is entirely conceivable that there are people who greatly value goat waste. (In fact, it is conceivable, given the mind boggling array of human fetishes that goat waste is actually a pleasurable fantasy for some people, but that digresses.) It may be the case that the goat waste is of great value to us because it is a means to the attainment of something of even greater value. We might value it highly as a means to fertilize our garden, which was the ultimate valuable thing.
And so, in summary, my aesthetics theory holds that the evaluation of value or worthlessness or disinterest is made by the will. Rather than being a Schopenhauer-type search for tranquility, it is a search for value. We pursue (or at the very least, dwell upon and wish for) that which we value most.
Are you…throwing me out of your discussion? I have agreed to use your definition, despite not being impressed by your choice of word to co-op.
So, to be clear, when you see the old lady, you might decide she is not aesthetically pleasing, and rob her because you have an antisocial desire to harm that which displeases you…or you could decide she is aesthetically pleasing, and rob her because what pleased you about her was the fact she looked like a valuable and profitable target for robbery?
(Incidentally, I agree that aesthetic/value judgements are subjective, and made by the will - and that even when looking for the prettiest picture to stare at, it’s a search for value because the experience of looking at a prettier picture is more valuable. The only caveat I might point out is that I believe that the pirsuit of value is not the end, but the means - the actual goal is maximization of pleasure/happiness, which is served directly by seeking out value.)
Please forgive me, then. I extend you my humblest apology. I truly do not want to throw anyone out. Especially those who might disagree. I’m not looking for a room full of “Amen, brother!s”, although I do expect agreement (or at least acknowledgment of reasonableness) when I make a reasonable case.
Anyway, welcome to the discusssion as we examine my usage and application of philosophical aesthetics.
I really don’t like the idea of something being “pleasing” in my view of aesthetics. Like Schopenhauer, I see a fatal flaw (albeit a different one) in the Kantian view. What you’ve stated above, while to some degree capturing the gist of my view, is still using the Kant model to express it. And I fear that there could be way too much equivocation and misunderstanding if we take that approach.
Therefore, it would be better simply to say that you rob her because you hold her to be worthless — at least to the extent that she is worth treating with kindness and respect. It then COULD be that you value antisocialism in general, and would hurt pretty much anyone you could whenever you could. But it isn’t necessary that it please you. There are people who do bad things but regret them, and wish they were better people. Obviously, they value doing bad things; otherwise, they wouldn’t do them. But they are not necessarily happy with what they’re doing.
We really do not have to wear the Kant yoke on our shoulders and talk about aesthetics in the sense of what please us or what doesn’t. And keep in mind that he had many off-shoots of that whole business. There are three kinds of pleasure. A particular kind is either pure or not pure. There is pleasure that is sublime, and some that isn’t. It’s really a mess.
So let’s just talk about, for this particular example, in terms of how much you value the little old lady. Whatever it is that gives you pleasure, frankly will be carried out based on that evaluation of her worth.
For my model of aesthetics, that is true if pleasure/happiness is what you value. You will seek out things that bring your pleasure. In my model, hedonism would be the extreme example of valuing pleasure above all else.
But though it may be surprising to think of at first, there are people who value suffering (especially some Buddhist and Christian sects). You could argue that suffering gives these people pleasure, but then the term “pleasure” begins to mean “everything conceivable plus everything that isn’t”. There are people in my model who greatly value things that do not bring them any pleasure at all. At least not in any common definition of pleasure, where “pleasure” means joy, or a state of being pleased.
I will say, however, similar to what I said above, that if a person holds inflicting pain to be pleasurable (like a sadist, for example), then it is because he values inflicting pain above all else. The masochist values humiliation and pain. It is in this model of aesthetics that the joke about the sadist and the masochist sitting on the couch really stands out. The masochist begs the sadist, “Beat me! Beat me! Oh, please!”. The sadist folds his arms, and with an evil Cheshire smile says simply, “No.” The pleasure, if any, is a side effect, unless of course pleasure is the thing of value, which brings us back to the hedonist.
So, if you don’t mind, we need to toss out all vestiges of pleasure, pleasantness, and pleasing having anything to do with aesthetics. Maybe later we can discuss Kant. But let’s not do it right now. Think of everything in terms of an evaluation on a continuum from most valuable to worthless.
Well, firstly I made a layman’s error in using the term “aesthetically pleasing” - I really meant “assessed as having a positive value on the Liberalien aesthetic scale” - only used the word “pleasing” because “aesthetically pleasing” is the common english term. (I’ve forgotten my minimal exposure to Kant and don’t know him from the hole in my rectal region, I’m afraid - I’m certianly not trying to reference him deliberately.)
Now. You say, “Therefore, it would be better simply to say that you rob her because you hold her to be worthless — at least to the extent that she is worth treating with kindness and respect.” This raises a rather notable point - the Liberalian aesthetic scale apparently isn’t a continuum, but instead an omnidimensional space. I can value the same thing a whole host of different ways; the lady may be a valuable opportinuty for me to demonstrate to myself that I am polite, but worthless as a thing of beauty, having a positively negative value as a sex object, but being moderately worthwhile as a robbery target, and of indeterminable value as someone to discuss Kant with. Which results in there being a positive pheloria of possible reactions, all of which are attributable to assessing her as having a positive aesthetic value (of some kind, anyway). This would seem likely to complicate any assessment.
Of course, the same ambiguitues apply to the simple word “value”, too, so I would be a bit reluctant to try and categorically assign specific reactions to different points along a “value continuum”, too.
Okay, this time I meant, not aesthetic ‘pleasure’, and not Kantian pleasure, but instead ‘begbertian’ pleasure - which I (as of this moment for this discussion) formally define as the satisfaction of a need or desire. (Darn english language, lacking separate words for every possible shade of meaning.)
Based on that definition, to people who actually value the experience of themselves suffering (as opposed to just claiming to), then yes, to them, suffering is begbertian pleasure/the satisfaction of a need. This doesn’t make begbertian pleasure mean “everything conceivable plus everything that isn’t”; it just makes it subjective and varying depending on the individual. In this respect it is exactly the same as your aesthetics; everything presumably has aesthetic value (of some sort) to somebody, but to a given person not everything has aesthetic value.
I prefer to causally link human behavior to begbertian pleasure/satisfaction of a need or desire rather than Liberalian aesthetics/value becuase I feel that there’s an implicit admission that needs and desires are much more fluid and volatile than value is. A sandwich would seem to have a particular amout of value, but how much it will satisfy your desire to eat depends on a host of factors including how hungry you are (which impliclty builds in the concept of diminishing marginal returns). It also implicity underscores that the actual motivation in question is a momentary thing; something’s value in any particular respect presumably remains reasonably constant unless the object itself is in flux, but a person’s needs and desires change moment-to-moment (correlating to how humans do not behave in a constantly consistent manner all the time.)
Now, the “implicit” considerations in the above paragraph may in fact be moot, if Liberalian aesthetics includes the properties of volatility and momentary assessment. (It’s kind of hard for me to tell at the moment if it does or not.) But there is one difference which I’m fairly certain I’m not imagining, and that that Liberalian aesthetics attaches the value to the physical subject (‘the old lady is worthless/valued’), whereas begbertian pleasure assigns the value to the action in question (‘robbing that old lady would make me feel more confident and more wealthy/sympathetic to her and more guilty’). In addition to removing some of the ambiguousness by tying the ‘pleasure’ to a specific action or response, this also, in my opinion, more accurately models the way humans make decisions - by comparing the effects of actions, not the assessments of subjects.
Which is not to say that assessments of subject are left out of the equation; as I said (or ambiguously tried to say), assessment of values of objects is a means to the end of assessing the value of actions. Clearly one’s opinion of a person or thing will greatly effect how they will respond to different sorts of interactions with that person or thing; someone might happily rob an old lady they consider worthless, but would never rob their beloved grandmother. I’m just saying that the reason for this doesn’t spring from the value assessment directly, but instead indirectly because the robbing of a valueless person effects only the ‘wealth’ desire, but the robbing of one’s loved ones effects the ‘protect loved ones’ desire as well, and moreso.
In my opinion, people don’t really pursue things that they do not feel satisfy a need or desire. (It helps to keep in mind that “conforming to my self-image” is a common need/desire.) Not to say that everything a person does does contribute to the satisfaction of a need/desire, but people make mistakes in judgement and take risks that don’t pan out, which I feels explains a fair bit of the aberrant behavior.
I’m not sure I agree with the last bit that I bolded. In some people, the thing they pursue or, more correctly, dwell on (spend their energies on, at any rate) is* not* what they value, but what they devalue(disvalue? unvalue? antivalue?). We’ve all met them - people driven by fear, by paranoia, by hatred. Not just mentally ill people or Neo-nazis, either, but otherwise-ordinary members of society too. This is not the same as people who value, say, fear. To them, fear of e.g. injury, is not a positive thing, but still something that dominates their thoughts.
Now, it’s possible to frame this as them simply having perverse standards of value, but that’s merely defining the problem away and would require a relook at what we mean by “value”. At any rate, I think it challenges the generally axiom you established about the things we pursue being those things we value most.
I have a slight disagreement, which may not even be a disagreement. I think it’s worth saying that the will in this case isn’t an active decision - we don’t get to select what we value (nor would I say we get to select that we pursue it, but that’s a whole other debate). We can’t choose to value a painting more or less.
I’d also agree with MrDibble. Just as we don’t get to choose what we value, we don’t necessarily get consumed by our thoughts by that which we value. I’ve got mild OCD, so that’s a more extreme example of being consumed by thoughts of things that have little value, but even without that really i’d say a better summation would be that we dwell upon those things that are affecting, even if we value considerably higher the ability to not do so.
begbert2, I’m curious as to why you assign (aesthetic) value to actions. From your description, it seems that any given action is moot; that actions have no intrinsic value and are merely a potential means of pursuing an underlying (aesthetic) value or values. Robbery is one of a zillion actions one could take to pursue an underlying value of “feeling confident and wealthy”, and for some, robbery will not leave them feeling confident and wealthy in the slightest degree.
Assigning the value of “feeling more confident” to a robbery would be like me assigning the value of “feeling satiated” to the act of opening a bag of pretzels; I don’t value “bag opening” per se, it’s just how I get to the damn pretzels.
(The above assumes, of course that I’ve read you correctly. Which I may not have.)
Yes, and very observant of you. At this point in the discussion, it is true that you could value her in many ways and hold her to be worthless in many other ways. And that’s fine for now. The complications will disappear once the discussion moves on to ethics (and in particular, morality).
Not to beat a dead Kant, but part of the problem with his aesthetics treatment — and let’s be fair to him; his treatment of metaphysics (and ontology in particular) was extraordinary, and wasn’t debunked until the mid to late 20th century — is that he built into his definition the very things he anticipated would (or might) disturb his treatment of ethics. And again to be fair, he had to do this because he had already written on ethics, and aesthetics was an afterthought, and had to be molded to fit his ethical frame. (Including his famous “moral imperative”.)
Well, the little old lady and the goat waste were just examples given with limited reactions. I believe I even acknowledged that the possible reactions were nearly infinite, limited only by what the universe would allow. (You couldn’t, for example, turn the little old lady into a frog. Or at least, the probability of doing so is extremely small.)
Heh. I don’t mean to gloat, but now you understand better, perhaps, why disciplines borrow from the common vernacular but then redefine the terms for their particluar usage. There’s no point screaming at the PGA that a driver is a person who pilots an automobile, and where do they get off calling a stick with a big head on it a driver?
If I understand you correctly, then I agree. Since the advent of the Internet especially, I have learned (often to my chagrin) that there are unheard of actions and fetishes and tastes that bring people “begbertian pleasure”. When talking about the goat waste, for example, we could have mentioned people who actually derive a sexual charge from defication, be it from man or beast. But let’s not go there.
A begbertian treatment of aesthetics would make a wonderfully interesting topic for discussion, and I would willingly enjoin it. At this time, however, let’s stick with mine. In the case of the sandwich, I’m going to describe it for now in terms of a sickness or disease and a symptom. If a person is hungry for a particular sandwich, it could mean not just that they value sandwiches — and as someone who absolutely LOVES sandwiches made with home grown tomatoes, I can attest to assigning them great worth — but that they value eating in general. Whatever sandwich they happen to desire at a given time is only a symptom of their greater aesthetic.
As I explained before, given that you have assigned great worth to a particular thing, then other things that lead you to that wonderful thing are themselves wonderful (but less so) if only as a path to the wonderful thing itself. If you value going to movies above all else, then naturally, you are going to value tickets someone gives to you. But if you value only certain movies, say romantic comedies, then a ticket to the Exorcist might be trash as far as you’re concerned.
It is important to identify, if at all possible, the thing that is of greatest value to you. All other choices you make are merely a subset of it, or a means to it.
Okay, but you are slip-sliding juuuuust a bit into ethics here, for which I prefer to wait until my treatment of aeshetics is fleshed out to everyone’s satisfaction (i.e., those who wish to participate in discussing them). But let me just say this for now: if your reponse to the little old lady is triggered by how it would make you feel, then by Liberalian aesthetics, it is feeling that way which you value greater. You could achieve the same feelings perhaps by doing something else. Even by playing games in which you get to rob and kill virtual people. So, if you don’t mind — and I do believe we’re almost done with this part of it — hold off just a bit longer for the ethics side of things. Let us say for now that aesthetics is ethically neutral (even though it’s not). It’s kind of like people solving physics equations pretending, for convenience’s sake, that there is no wind or turbulence or other weird factors that might complicate their calculations.
You probably despise me by now for seeming to be so picky, and I will deal with your example, but let’s please steer clear of words and concepts like “desire”. For our purposes, desire is nothing more than a predicate of the general aesthetic. In other words, I desire what I value most. I also desire things that will lead me to what I value most. But in your example, we cannot overlook the people, more numerous than we’d like, who do rob their beloved grandmothers — even rape and kill them. And as well, their wives. And even their children. But quite honestly, that’s neither here nor there at this point. Such people are valuing something so much that for them, killing their children is a means of pursuing that thing, whatever it may be.
For a bit if insight into this, let’s digress for a moment to discuss Austrian economics. (Strange, I know, but bear with me.) Just in case you don’t know, we aren’t refering to the country of Austria (although the concepts originate by people who lived there); rather, we are discussing the School of Austrian economics — using “school” as in “school of thought”. This will be very simple and intuitive, so don’t glaze over just yet.
Ludwig von Mises, the father of modern Liberalism and the Austrian Economic School, explained in very plain terms the nature of an economic transaction. Here’s what he said in a nutshell:
For there to be an economic transaction between two people, there must first be, on behalf of both persons, willingness and freedom. That is to say, they must both — both, now…not just one or the other — enter into the transaction with full and free consent. That is, no one is forcing them, pressuring them, or what-have-you. Government is not stopping them with laws. The wife isn’t threatening to leave. Whatever.
So now, let’s say that you have a dollar and I have a pencil.
Von Mises deduced— and this is very important to read carefully — that for an economic transaction to occur, I must hold that your dollar is worth more than my pencil AND you must hold that my pencil is worth more than your dollar.
If all the conditions are met, then we will trade with one another, and what von Mises called an “economic praxis” will have occured.
Clearly, his first requirement is self-evident. If someone is holding a gun to your head forcing you to buy my pencil for your dollar, even though you don’t want or need it, then it is not an economic praxis. Likewise, if my willingness to sell you my pencil is being thwarted by a law that makes pencil selling illegal, then it is not an economic praxis. (Underground economies are dealt with differently.)
But especially important is the fact that we won’t trade with one another, even if we are completely free and willing to do so if you believe your dollar is worth more than my pencil OR I believe my pencil is worth more than your dollar. Naturally, I will just hold onto my pencil, and you will just keep your dollar.
And finally, and most importantly to our point, there will be no economic praxis if you believe your pencil is worth exactly the same as my dollar AND I believe my dollar is worth exactly the same as your pencil. Why trade for something that you believe has no more worth than what is already in your hand?
You use the same sort of judgment when you go to the Wal-Mart. If there is an item you’re looking at, you’re evaluating it pretty much this way. “They want 20 bucks for that gadget. I have 20 bucks in my pocket. Do I think that trading my 20 bucks for the gadget favors me? If so, I’ll do it. If not, I’ll move on.”
Okay, so why the diversion into microeconomic theory? Because it closely relates to the topic at hand. You wrote, “In my opinion, people don’t really pursue things that they do not feel satisfy a need or desire,” and that mistakes in judgment or failed risk accounts for much abberant behavior. While that may be true (and I’m not sure there is an actual sequitur there), it is beside the point since, in Liberalian aesthetics, aberrant behavior is explained not by any needs or desires, but by the pursuit of (to us) strange and weird things that they value, or else strange and weird things that will help them attain what they most value. And they value them more than they value whatever it is they have at hand. Obviously, if they already had what they most valued, their pursuit would be ended.
I regret to inform you that I’m going to do exactly that.
My aesthetics model frames the (subjective) aesthetical ideal as that which you value most. And indeed, there are people — I think this was discussed earlier, but you might not have enjoined by then — who do value things that many of us would consider to be perverse. Take the serial killer, for example, who shoots people at random, passers-by who just happen to be unlucky that day. While it is true that he likely values the thrill or whatever emotion he gets from killing strangers, I think it is safe to say that he also holds human life (except maybe his own … and maybe not) to be worthless. In other words, their lives may be worth something to him as targets at which to shoot, but they are worth nothing, in his view, in terms that matter to them, to the targets themselves: what they are worth to their families and friends, etc.
I don’t recall off hand which philosopher held this, (it might have been Schopenhauer — God, I wish he wouldn’t crop up so often) but aesthetic evaluations to him are like coins with two sides: one thing might be both beautiful and ugly at the same time. I do believe that there are elements of my aesthetics model that are similar to that in a sense. I do think you can say that on the one hand a man values a person as a target for something or other, while at the same time holding him worthless in any other regard. But for my model, one overrides the other, or more precisely, one is a symptom (or effect, or whatever term you prefer) of the other.
MrDibble, I think under the OP’s definition of value (Lib, correct me if I’m wrong here) someone who is (to use your example) obsessed with a fear of injury greatly values safety. The fact that their pursuit of the value “safety” has manifested as an obsession or paranoia that causes them personal discomfort or social problems is a reflection of their pursuit, not of the underlying value. Someone else pursuing the same value might just go and get a bunch of Red Cross certifications.
I’d say this is possible, but I don’t think it’s always the case. There’s a difference between someone who constantly dwells upon the need for safety and someone who constantly dwells upon unpleasant things occurring. It’s quite possible in fact that they might consider safety not an option - that there is no way to increase their safety, no value in increased carefulness, yet think about the unpleasantness anyway.
I believe you’re exactly right, and as the discussion moves to ethics in Part II (and especially metaphysics in Part III), that’s exactly the sort of thing we’ll discuss.
I have extreme OCD, although it is under successful treatment, so I can sympathize.
But let’s be clear about something — and I blame myself for very poor exposition — it is not always the case that we necessarily pursue, in the literal sense of chasing after or driving toward that which we value most. It may be that circumstances actually prevent us from doing so. Consider the man who values music above all else, but has gone deaf. Even though he might still be able to “feel” rhythm and volume and such, he cannot really pursue his highest valued thing. Not just now. And there are many other (and probably better) examples as well.
Nor does it mean that you will spend every waking hour in pursuit of what you value most even if you’re able to. However, it can easily be said that these are cases of people who don’t actually value, say, a nursing career. They’re just people who value valuing a nursing career. We see these people all the time. “Oh, God I’d give anything to go back to school.” Well, sorry, but obviously they wouldn’t. Otherwise, their asses would be on campus. What they value is wishing they could go to school. They value the dream. And the actual fulfillment of getting into school would might likely lead to their dropping out so that they can continue to dream about it.
I’d actually say that’s true of all cases. Humans being what we are, we don’t have perfect recall, so really even in cases where we truly value something, to the extent of immediate desire to go and experience it, we’re not actually thinking about that experience in its entirety. If we could do that, we wouldn’t need to go seeking. Very much like a dream, we have a vague notion of the experience in question, which is what we value.
And in a sense we can add another layer of dream to it. The experiences we have are as much a product of ourselves as they are of an object - a painting may move you when it does not move me because, being different people, our perspectives on it differ. And even the experiencing of something for the first time changes us into a new person, arguably the more affecting experience creating a more different person. So in effect what we value is a vague notion seen through the eyes of a someone else. In that sense, we are all prevented from truly achieving what we desire to experience.
I don’t mean to gloat, but now you understand better, perhaps, why disciplines borrow from the common vernacular but then redefine the terms for their particluar usage. There’s no point screaming at the PGA that a driver is a person who pilots an automobile, and where do they get off calling a stick with a big head on it a driver?