Freddy Purcell offers a much delayed summary of our crafty collaboration with Art History society.
A long time ago in the month of February (more innocent times for many of us), Tom Roberts treated us to an aesthetics talk accompanied by some collaging. It was great to have Art History Society along to collaborate on this event.
For the talk itself, Tom introduced (or reintroduced) us to the classic hard problem of consciousness within the philosophy of mind. In basic terms, the problem suggests that even if we did all the possible research into the workings of the brain, we would still not understand the kind of conscious experiences we have or exactly why we have them. If this problem exists, then it would also suggest that we could not hardwire consciousness into a robot. The reasons behind the elusiveness of consciousness remain much discussed, with philosophers generally relating the problem to brief experiences like headaches or simple visual phenomena. However, Tom suggested that it is even more difficult to imagine the sort of hardwiring required for conscious aesthetic experiences. Hence, the even harder problem of consciousness.
Tom’s suggestion of the even harder problem of consciousness rested on a few intuitions, put in terms of how you would hardwire a robot to have aesthetic experiences. Firstly, aesthetic experiences seem to have a necessary element of authenticity as we feel that they are happening to us and we form aesthetic judgements based on how we value that experience. Secondly, the culmination of such experiences and judgements then forms an aesthetic sensibility as we develop aesthetic taste with time. Finally, a felt interconnectedness with others is often an important enhancing factor in aesthetic experiences, including live music or theatre. Here, it seems that the atmosphere generated by being with others can make an aesthetic experience feel more intense or exciting, but also that we can feel connected to a crowd of strangers through shared experience.
Taking this all together, Tom’s suggestion is that it is hard to imagine the hardwiring necessary for simple conscious experiences like self-awareness or sensory perception. However, the formation of authentic aesthetic judgements, development of taste, and ability to connect with others through aesthetic experience appear reasonably to be more complex features of consciousness. This suggests both that we are unlikely to see any convincing robotic art critics or audience members any time soon, but also that we should value our unique ability to have complex aesthetic experiences. They are undeniably a large part of what makes our lives as rich as they are!
After some great questions, we all finished off our collages with hopefully enough show of aesthetic taste not to be accused of being a robot. I think it is fair to say that the attendant art history society members out-performed philosophers on the artistic front, but it was a great time, nonetheless. So, thank you Tom and Art History Society and apologies for the delay in publishing this summary!