[Fis] Art as human practice

[Marcus Abundis]

Mark,

In considering all this (well stated by the way!) . . . it seems worth
keeping in mind that the essence of ‘art’ is ‘to be creative’, to
produce/seek novel effects in the world. But then how is this seemingly
erratic creativity (and/or seemingly erratic emotions) not mostly a means
of mirroring or matching (or racing against) Nature’s own creativity
(purely adaptive logic)? But Nature creates without benefit of emotions?

Marcus

On Thu, 15 Jan 2026 at 00:35, Mark Johnson <johnsonmwj1 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Dear Katherine, Francesco, all,
>
> If the discussion about art turns to the question of emotion, then it must
> further turn to the question of emotion and logic.
>
> I would suggest that the artist's intuition which drives the creative
> labour to find form and expression is driven by a "logic" which does not
> work in the way we conventionally reason.
>
> It's not just that "the heart has its reasons that the reason cannot
> perceive" (and don't we on FIS give it a good try!🤣). It is that Hume's
> "secret springs of the universe" work in a way which we cannot fit into a
> conventional logical scheme but which are coherent, and whose coherence
> finds expression if the artist does their job well. But our logical schemes
> (from Aristotle to Spencer Brown, Luhmann, etc) are deficient in
> apprehending this. There are plenty of artless logical descriptions of art
> to demonstrate this. We need instead an existential logic...
>
> We may respond to the coherence of art with feeling, but the feeling is an
> epiphenomenon. Scholars like Panksepp and his giggling rats tell us
> something about the emotion and cognition. But it mistakes the
> epiphenomenon for the mechanism. The giggles are "assenting" to something.
> What? Why?
>
> If we could imagine at the moment of our death what art and logic and
> emotion are all about, and thought backwards from that moment to the
> creative moments of living, we would have a better chance of apprehending
> an existential logic. What would we see? It's a pattern of assent - a giant
> "yes!". I don't think that's an emotion. It's more like a movement.
>
> Best wishes
>
> Mark
>
>
> Dr. Mark William Johnson
> Faculty of Biology, Medicine and Health
> University of Manchester
>
> Department of Science Education
> University of Copenhagen
>
> Department of Eye and Vision Science (honorary)
> University of Liverpool
> Phone: 07786 064505
> Email: johnsonmwj1 at gmail.com
> Blog: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://dailyimprovisation.blogspot.com__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!SmfS_WnX11H-_BuaAwnA2tBX8drcXGjKlBuftidHfP99nu0Nt_KQFQktkkAp7QBrxRD0RfxznNcN9u-EEOrsEmJq1Yo$ 
> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://dailyimprovisation.blogspot.com__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!VxO1fzqrt33fEhVguijWuQ6yjcfDURMHwUy3bP5IXhO2kWkQAVjGL_4usEK-oK_p9qPMRHPaoq43xubDEWt_1ks$>
>
> Onento en que lo desee.
> http://listas.unizar.es 
> ----------
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listas.unizar.es/pipermail/fis/attachments/20260115/009875a8/attachment.html>