[MD] Static latching & faith

[Platt Holden]

Hi Ham, 

> And while I
> can appreciate the MoQer's need to convince 'physicalists' that reality
> is more than atoms and energy, it is pushing the line a bit to call
> something as ineffable [to use Ant's term] as esthetic quality "raw
> empirical data".

If you have ever experienced beauty (and I'm sure you have) what else 
was it than raw empirical data? As the art critic Clement Greenberg put 
it:  "Esthetic enjoyments are immediate, intuitive, undeliberate and 
involuntary and leave no room for conscious application of standards, 
criteria, rules or precepts."  In other words, esthetic quality is 
directly experienced (empirical) and pre-conceptual, pre- intellectual. 
The recent quote from Northrop (no philosophical slouch) that Ant 
provided made the same point. Here's a bit of what Northrop said:

 "And clearly, all that the senses convey are colors and
 sounds and odors, pains and pleasures. These are not external material
 objects.  They are ineffable, aesthetic qualities, the kind of thing
 which the impressionistic artist rather than the physicist gives one.
 Thus again we come to the same conclusion. Pure fact is a continuum of
 ineffable aesthetic qualities, not an external material object.”

So, there's something to be said for the aesthetic quality of raw 
empirical data.

Best regards,
Platt