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works of art, well-cooked meals with all the usual courses, and the
like.
II
I cannot claim to have shown decisively that there is no effect
of an aesthetic object which is an equilibrium or is coherent and
complete, but only that the existence of such an effect has not been
established by Beardsley. This conclusion, if correct, at least
establishes a presumption against the causal view. A look at the
possible ancestry of the causal conception might be enlightening.
If a plausible pedigree can be constructed, it may be useful in
seeing the difficulties in the view and how they were generated.
I suspect that the causal view has its roots in the philosophy of
idealism which makes the concept of experience a central doctrine.
No doubt quite a number of routes could be traced from the con-
ception back to idealism, but perhaps one will suffice, namely, the
way back through John Dewey's Art as Experience.4 Beardsley's
account of aesthetic experience explicitly relies on Dewey, Rich-
ards, Bullough, and Kant (527). No attempt will be made here
to give a complete picture of Dewey's aesthetic theory; only those
aspects directly related to the subject at hand will be noted.
Consider the following passage from Art as Experience, in
which Dewey compares aesthetic perception to academic, pedantic,
and sentimental perception: "But if he [the spectator] perceives
aesthetically, he will create an experience of which the intrinsic
subject matter, the substance, is new" (108). Dewey's writing
suggests that reading a poem or looking at a painting is similar to
creating (producing, causing, and so on) an artifact. Dewey tries
to explain further:
A new poem is created by every one who reads poetically-not that its raw
material is original for, after all, we live in the same old world, but that
every individual brings with him, when he exercises his individuality, a way
of seeing and feeling that in its interaction with old material creates some-
thing new, something previously not existing in experience (loc. cit.).
Now it seems to me what Dewey is saying, restated in simple lan-
guage, is that Jones's reading of the poem is Jones's and Smith's
reading is Smith's and, thus, that Jones may understand or notice
some feature of the poem that Smith misses because Smith lacks
Jones's training, sensitivity, or intelligence. On viewing the same
painting Jones may notice the composition and appreciate it, while
Smith merely notices that it is a portrait of a king. Dewey talks
about cases of understanding and noticing as if they were cases of
causing, and uses the term 'experience' as if it designated an effect.
Dewey's notion of aesthetic experience as "an experiencee"
4 New York: Minton Balch, 1934; Putnam (Capricorn), 1958.
which is unified and marked off from the rest of experience is too
familiar to require a more detailed statement. The phrase 'the
unity of experienace' abounds in Art as Experience. I suspect
that it is through the persistence in the language of aesthetics of
such expressions as 'the unity of experience' that idealistic con-
ceptions persist in present-day aesthetic theory. "Experience lan-
guage," trailing its idealistic implications, ensnarls our theories.
No one should conclude that 'experience' is a forbidden word
or that its use necessarily leads to confusion. 'Experience' has
ordinary uses which are easy enough to understand and which do
not lead to confusion. "It was a great experience" simply means
"It (the game) was thrilling" or "It (the play) was exciting or
moving," and so forth. "It was an experience that I shall never
forget" simply means "I shall always remember the game (paint-
ing, play, or whatever) " and so on. But Dewey, caught up in
his idealistic vocabulary, italicizes the 'an' of the ordinary ex-
pression 'an experience' and gives the expression a metaphysical
twist. The harmless expression 'the experience of unity', which
is used as a general way of referring to the seeing of the unified
design, the hearing of the sound pattern, and so on, is somehow
inverted and becomes 'the unity of experience'.
In a Kantian context or in the context of a complete idealism,
the, unity of experience has a meaning. In such contexts every-
thing is ideal or experiential in nature: thus, the unity of a
perceived object is an experiential unity, i.e., a unity of experience.
Of course, the unity of the perceived object is not the unity of
experience of which Dewey and Beardsley write. They are talking
about a unity which is an effect of perceived unity. But how one
is to construe the unified effect is a mystery. I shall not attempt
to draw any conclusions as to whether Dewey holds that works of
art produce unified effects in the sense discussed. His terminology
does seem to commit him to such a view. It is clear, however, that
Beardsley holds a version of the theory.
One might pose the question: Do critics ever talk about the
kinds of effect that are under discussion in this essay? They talk
about the features of works of art ("It is a whole," "It was
confused," and so on), about the effects of works of art on us
("It is moving," "It brought tears to my eyes," and so forth),
but I do not think they speak of unified effects. Remember that
the design of the causal conception of aesthetic experience is to
enable us to evaluate a work of art by reference to its unified
effects. But it seems to me that the theory of unified effects is
subject to a charge that Max Black brought against Richards'
theory of impulses in equilibrium-it is not clear how one gets at