Saturday, November 7, 2009

Response to Blog- Necessary Connection

Response to Pro. Johnson Blog.
Recently in my Power of Words class I have studied the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy which is Latin for followed after therefore caused by fallacy. Many of us believe this and are subjected to be fooled by it. Just because event b followed event a then event a must have caused event b. This is why superstitions arise, one day someone broke a mirror and there lives were miserable for seven years, therefore breaking a mirror means that seven years of bad luck will follow.
In his blog, Pro. Johnson introduces a quote by Hume which illustrates this same concept. Hume doesn't believe that things are connected just because they follow each other. He says that "all events seem entirely loose and never separate" this part makes me question theories of art. We have been studying what art is and basically all theorists have been trying to connect it to something. Art is connected to emotion, it is connected to life, it is connected to nature. I think it is human nature to try and see the connection between things. It is this constant looking for the cause of something, constant searching for why things happen, and therefore when things happen close together, to soothe our curiosity we have to say that event A caused event B which made event C happen. So this idea that things are separate and that previous events don't cause present ones to happen is a really profound and hard thing to accept. So my question is, what would Hume say about art and connecting it to something else such as feeling or nature?

1 comment:

  1. No doubt Hume relates aesthetic sensibilities to our "common human nature," but would consider the relation explanatory, not causal.

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