Exploring the Nature of Beauty, Aesthetics, and the Human Experience

BEAUTY AND AESTHETICS

What is beauty?: The human capacity to feel something or have sensations. In philosophy, AESTHETICS refers to a particular type of sensations: those related to beauty and ugliness

Philosophers and Beauty

The Greek philosophers believed that beauty is real by itself

Realists think that beauty is part of something else

Modernists believe that beauty is something we create

AESTHETICS-The study of beauty or the philosophy of art

THE AESTHETIC EXPERIENCE-When an encounter with beauty occurs, whether it is the product of nature or art

1. Feeling that time has stopped
2. Lightness in the perception of reality.
3. Forgetting self
4. Symbolic.
5. Ephemeral.
6. Pleasurable

The definition of beauty (according to aesthetics)

1. PERFECTION OF FORM
2. NEATNESS
3. AN ATTRACTIVE QUALITY
4. NATURAL and/or ARTISTIC
5. Does not EXCLUDE UTILITY

Imagination -The mental state which allows us to consider situations apart from the present one.

REPRODUCTIVE IMAGINATION- Our ability to produce images of objects that are not present, which has a lot to do with visual memory

CREATIVE IMAGINATION- Ability to produce new images that do not have to correspond to reality but can be invented or created, modifying the neural networks built to make synoptics.

Thought -A mental process which allows humans to interpret or model the world they experience.

Thoughts can be:

Belief

Desires

Intents

DIRECT or CONVERGENT THINKING: It is analytical and logical. It is a form of finite thought, as it seeks to reach a conclusion that puts an end to a process. It is necessary to evaluate any discoveries made

LATERAL or DIVERGENT THINKING: It is free and associative. It is a form of Infinite thinking, as it does not aspire to reach a fixed conclusion or solution in advance. It is necessary to generate new ideas.

How do thoughts have power?

Creativity - is the capacity to produce things that are original and valuable

4 Stages of Creative Process

1. Preparation
2. Incubation
3. Illumination
4. Verification

Creativity development techniques are procedures that seek to foster lateral or divergent thinking.

The objectives are:

• Break the rigid diagrams of convergent thinking.
• Encourage the creative search for new possibilities

TECHNIQUE 1: INVERSION. The ancient Stoic philosophers like Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, and Epictetus regularly conducted an exercise known as a premeditatio malorum, which translates to a "premeditation of evils.

TECHNIQUE 2: BRAINSTORMING.

• A topic, a fact or situation is proposed and written on the blackboard.
• For a certain amount of time, group members write short words or phrases that occur to them.
• The ideas pointed out are assessed, either by voting, by assigning points or by any other system.

Justice and Freedom

Freedom is when a person has to decide, when faced with various options, which one is the best for his/her life, and to take responsibility for Types of Freedom-Internal and External

• Free will It is the capacity to be able to choose at a specific time between different options that are presented to us
• Freedom of Movement or Action--It is the freedom to make decisions without the influence of any factors outside of ourselves

Social Contract -Is giving up individual freedom useful for society?

A social contract is the forfeiting of some freedom for the benefit of inclusion in the group.

• Locke thinks in the state of nature, man is free; but man needs to interact with other people to fulfill all of his needs for survival. Therefore, man needs rules to govern these interactions so as to prohibit injustice in these interactions.

External Freedom

• A. Freedom from physical aggression or moral damage: guaranteed the right to life and physical and moral integrity, so that no one can be assaulted, detained or harmed without a legally established motive.
• B. Freedom to choose marital status: No one has the right to force anyone to marry or remain single against their will.
• C. Freedom to privacy, without interference in private life: the right to secrecy in communications, the privacy of the family home, the confidentiality of personal data
• D. Freedom of movement and residence: Allows the possibility of travelling within the country itself, of going out and returning to it, to decide where to live where one wants, etc.
• E. Freedom of expression: The possibility of publicly expressing one's own thinking without fear of being punished for it.
• F. Religious Freedom or freedom of worship: Being able to practice, change or not practice any religion
• G. Freedom of trade or economic freedom: To be able to buy, sell, create companies, intervene in economic activities, etc.
• H. Freedom of Assembly and association: Possibility of meeting, creating and participating in associations without fear of reprisals.
• I. Political Freedom: to have the opportunity to participate actively in the government of a country

Does freedom exist?

Determinism--Our behavior is subject to fixed scientific laws, so human beings are not free.

Indeterminism-Claims that human beings are free and responsible for their decisions

Stoics- Being free is to be at peace with one's own conscience

Libertarians (Kant)- Freedom is a necessary element to explain why people feel responsible for their voluntary acts and to make sense of their moral, police and religious experience Marxism--Changing the economy of a society will achieve the liberation of the oppressed

Metaphysics

THE ABSOLUTE

• Pantheism: God identifies with nature.
• Theism: Belief in a God who transcendent to the world, the creator of the universe. He can be accessed through revelation.
• Deism: God is the cause and the foundation of the world, but He does not interfere in the world. You can access Him through reason

EXISTENCE

The meaning of life

• Life has no meaning (Existentialism)

Life is meaningless: every person's life as a sequence of projects that are thwarted by death.

• Life has an immanent meaning (Vitalism)

Human beings gain meaning in their lives while developing and carrying out vital projects

• Life is transcendent

The meaning of our existence is beyond death, because life gains meaning from the consideration of a promise of future, full and definitive happiness

The meaning of death

• Death is definitive: Death is the final ending of all life
• Death is a transition: death is a loss of life, but only in a biological sense. It is thought that the soul, or the mind, continues to live despite the death of the body

REALITY

• Ontology- The study of being
• Physicalism-Only physical objects exist
• Idealism- Reality is fundamentally immaterial

UNIVERSE

• Space
• Forms of matter and energy
• Everything that exists
• What is possible and what is imagined
• The past, time, etc

Theories

1. The Universe is eternal: It has no origin or end

2. There was a time when it did not exist and then it existed

• Scientific: The Big Bang Theory: The Universe was generated from a large explosion.
• Religious: They think God or a higher being is the cause of everything there is
• Philosophic: Metaphysics. They take into account scientific data but they raise questions for which there is not, for the moment, a scientific response. An enigma is posed for which there is no solution, only interpretations

Purpose: Immanent: Internal to the universe itself. The purpose is to continue to exist and not to disappear and be annihilated in nothingness.

Transcendent: It goes beyond the universe itself. Example: Christianity, Judaism, Islam...

Organization:

1. IT IS ORDERED: There is some kind of guideline or principle that produces order, a series of laws that govern the universe (DETERMINISM)

• Claims that the universe functions as a machine that obeys laws that regulate everything that will happen
• Assumption on which science is predicted
• Events do not just occur at will
• Events are related in systematic ways

2. IT IS NOT ORDERED: There are no guidelines that produce order.

• Chaos Theory / Indeterminism-Claims that one must take chance into account because it is part of the universe, and that it is not possible to accurately predict its movements