PHIL10003 Lecture 21: purposiveness without purpose
15 Jun 2018
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Lecture 21: purposiveness w/o purpose
Pleasurable feeling from free play
• Other ppl have the same feeling bc all of us are the same
• Universal validity of appreciating beauty
• Confident that if u have concepts and senses = u have same feeling, cognitively competent
= can appreciate beauty
• Appreciating beauty not depended on your education, social status etc but the ability to
make judgements, can appreciate beauty
Connection - purpose & beauty
• Regard this concept as the object's cause (real basis of its possibility)
• Ojet it’s the onept's ause
o Concept as the cause of an object
o The final cause notion -> Aristotelian view of causation
o Efficient cause scraped once newtonian physics came about
o Final cause: whatever something is going to become -> if humans have a final cause,
there would be something we would be growing towards -> OPPOSES IT
• Something that has a purpose would be preceded by a concept
• Judgements of beauty are often a fine example of its type
• When we define beauty this way we need to know what we're defining it as -> std. of
beauty linked to what kind of a thing it is -> relating this thing to some concept -> making
a judgement as though the thing is trying to live up to a beautiful thing
• Whateer ojet it is ouldn’t exist unless the onept as gien in adane -> useful
artefacts (tools etc) -> need to know what you're trying to build unless
• Objective purposefulness -> need concept to produce the thing is question
• Will = intelligent desire -> determined to act by concept
• Purposive -> we can explain and grasp them in the presentation of a certain rule ->
produced by an intelligent agent
Objective vs subjective
• Obj: cant separate from a purpose
• Subj: thought is separable (unfamiliar tools, foreign lang etc)
o Produt of intelligent agenies ut u don’t understand
Free play of cognitive powers
• Our imagination stimulated by out congnitive powers trying to do their jobs but havent
succeed in doing the right project
• Trying to understand a concept we have not succeeded
• Imagination and understanding activated but no concept is found, rather ongoing attempt
to find concept (reflective judgement) -> kant's 'free play' of the imagination and
understanding
• Objects that trigger 'free play'
o Role of materials
o Only role is to accentuate form
o Stiff regularity counters taste -> too familiar w the concepts -> cant admire their
beauty
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