[New-Poetry] and yet it remains undefined...

[Bob Grumman]

> I agree that it's as easy to define a poem as it is to define a meal. 
> It only appears to become difficult when you start trying to express 
> those things that aren't really expressible in plain language. The 
> problem is that people often try to express publicly things for which 
> there are no public criteria for the meaningfulness of. I disagree 
> that the effects of aesthetic experience will be detectable in the 
> brain. I'm sure though that we will some day find analogs of the 
> aesthetic experience in the brain just like we have with motor 
> function and whatnot. The aesthetic experience is private and the only 
> ground we have for believing other people have them is that other 
> people often report having them in relation to the same things that 
> make us have them. you can't go any deeper than that, grammar won't 
> support it.
>
>
If I'm following you correctly, I agree that actual consciousness (like 
matter/energy) cannot be defined, just labeled.  So a person's awareness 
or internal experience of beauty or anything else is outside anything my 
theory of psychology can deal with.  But I was referring to what you 
call (I assume) the analogs.  I claim some portion of the brain will 
light up--or cause a detectable effect in some kind of brain-scan 
device--at the same time that the subject says he is experiencing 
aesthetic pleasure.  Just the way an experience of sound, for instance, 
now can be.

--Bob G.