Aesthetics and neurology

In the movie Aesthetics: Philosophy of the arts I learned that many philosophers had different opinions of what art is, and what is and is not acceptable art. For instance Plato had argued that the manifestation of something beautiful attracts the person who sees it, and that the philosopher leaves behind the apprehension of what is beautiful, transcending the sensible world to achieve contemplation of the idea of pure beauty.  This is to say that Plato believed that only a philosopher can know for sure what is and is not beautiful.  Plato did not take into account art and aesthetics and held a low opinion of artists and poets because of this flaw.  Plato had 3 criteria of why art was a bad thing which include the facts that art confuses authentic with fake, art is suited only for portraying violence, and art is capable of influencing even the best of normal people to act in shameful ways.

Carta: neurobiology neurology and art and aesthetics taught me that people see things such as art and nature in certain ways because of the way the human brain is wired.  Things like symmetry and pattern are what most people call essential for art however its deeper rooted than that, they are things that are aesthetically pleasing to the brain.  The fact that taking a woman's shape or figure and distorting it so that her breasts are bigger, her hips are curvier, and her waist is thinner are all examples of how art is aesthetically pleasing to how the human brain perceives it.  The fact that a rat can be familiar with the bad meaning of a square versus the good meaning of a rectangle and be drawn to a rectangle that is more extreme than another rectangle is also a fascinating example of how something that is aesthetically pleasing can be so influential on a brain.

In the article What the brain draws from art and neuroscience I learned the concept of color versus luminance.  The fact that most people have three cones in their retina red, blue, and green to recognize what color they are looking at was something that never occurred to me. Another phenomenon that happens is that the cones activities are compared by the brain to determine the presence of luminosity, or how much light is passing through a specific area of what a person is looking at.

I really thought Friedrick Von Schiller's theory was most important, which basically said that when we develop and hone our aesthetics, that we also develop and hone our moral capacity so much that we can come to the conclusion that aesthetic education renders moral education unnecessary.

In the movie Aesthetics: Philosophy of the arts I thought that Changeux was difficult to understand, and therefore didn't gather any information out of his entire presentation.  I thought that Ramachandran was interesting, funny and above all informative with his part of the presentation.  I thought the most interesting part of his lecture was that he compared people from different countries views on how they interpreted art and aesthetic, but also showed slides with proof of what he saw when he looked at certain examples.

The videos and articles relate to the text in that they elaborate more on the ideas of the text.  Although I thought that the textbook was a bit more informative with the photos and examples, it was nice to see something interactive that covered similar material.

I thought the first video overall was very monotone and hard to keep my attention, and the same feeling was apparent for the first lecture of the second video, I guess you could say they weren't aesthetically pleasing!  The second lecture in the second video was excellent, as well as the article.  They had interesting information that pulled me right in and kept me engaged.