Qualia & Art: My Definition

QUALIA - “THE MOLYNEUX PROBLEM”
What defines art as art is the ongoing question we wrestle with. How do people react to it, and why do they react in the manner that they do? What senses do they use to experience art? What are they inwardly processing and projecting onto the artwork? Finally, what can, or can’t, they perceive? These are significant and ambiguous questions. Some of these queries can be answered to some extent by the theory of qualia. And if you research this concept, you might be able to potentially apply it to your work. At least in some indirect way.

The first time I heard about qualia was in a story about a girl called Molly. She was born blind. She never saw a shape or color in her life. For years, she carried around a die and a marble. She thought they brought her good luck. When she was older, the doctors performed corneal lens surgery, and she was able to see.

The die and marble were placed before her, and she wasn’t able to identify either one. She had never seen these objects before; she only had the internal experience of feeling and touching them. It sounds strange that the shapes weren’t obvious to her; she had carried these objects for years. If you are sighted, you would have never experienced this phenomenon. It shows that what we perceive internally versus externally can be very different. This is the age-old question of qualia and how we know what we know.

Qualia: n. ( sing. quale) 1. characteristics or qualities that determine the nature of a mental experience (sensation or perception) and make it distinguishable from other such experiences, so that, for example, the experiencer differentiates between the sensations of heat and cold.

Plate #124 - “Ute Lodge” whole-plate wet collodion negative.

Qualia are the subjective or qualitative properties of experiences. What it feels like, experientially, to see a red rose is different from what it feels like to see a yellow rose. Likewise, hearing a musical note played by a piano and hearing the same musical note played by a tuba. The qualia of these experiences are what give each of them their characteristic “feel” and also what distinguishes them from one another. Qualia have traditionally been thought to be intrinsic qualities of experience that are directly available to introspection. However, some philosophers offer theories of qualia that deny one or both of those features. (Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

This is a very interesting topic as it relates to art and photography specifically. As I said above, the question we’re always asking is what makes art, Art? How do people respond to it and why do they respond a certain way? Qualia can start to answer some of these questions. And, if you study these ideas, you may be able to incorporate them into your practice, at least theoretically.

What is the qualia argument?
It rests on the idea that someone who has complete physical knowledge about another conscious being might yet lack knowledge about how it feels to have the experiences of that being. It is one of the most discussed arguments against physicalism.

Qualia as phenomenal character. Consider your visual experience as you stare at a bright turquoise color patch in a paint store. There is something it is like for you subjectively to undergo that experience. What it is like to undergo the experience is very different from what it is like for you to experience a dull brown color patch. This difference is a difference in what is often called ‘phenomenal character’. The phenomenal character of an experience is what it is like subjectively to undergo the experience. If you are told to focus your attention upon the phenomenal character of your experience, you will find that in doing so you are aware of certain qualities. These qualities—ones that are accessible to you when you introspect and that together make up the phenomenal character of the experience are sometimes called ‘qualia’. C.S. Peirce seems to have had something like this in mind when he introduced the term ‘quale’ into philosophy in 1866 (1866/1982, para 223). From the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

INTROSPECTION
Introspection is the process by which someone comes to form beliefs about their own mental states. We might form the belief that someone else is happy on the basis of perception—for example, by perceiving their behavior. But a person typically does not have to observe their own behavior in order to determine whether they are happy. Rather, one makes this determination by introspecting.

When compared to other beliefs that we have, the beliefs that we acquire through introspection seem epistemically special. Though the term “introspection” literally means “looking within” (from the Latin “spicere” meaning “to look” and “intra” meaning “within”), whether introspecting should be treated analogously to looking – that is, whether introspection is a form of inner perception – is debatable. Philosophers have offered both observational and non-observational accounts of introspection. Following the discussion of these various issues about the epistemology and nature of introspection, the third section of this essay addresses an important use to which introspection has been put in philosophical discussions, namely, to draw metaphysical conclusions about the nature of mind. (IEP)

APPLYING QUALIA TO ART (PHOTOGRAPHY) - TRANSCENDENT ART
What does this all mean in terms of looking at and experiencing photographs? This is where words really do fall short. You can’t write about something like this very well. It’s a very personal, intimate experience that you “feel” more than you see.

Think of the feeling of love or the private pleasure of watching a sunset as examples of qualia that make their way into the domain of our conscious awareness. We try to describe them even if we can't. When words fail us, we turn to making photographs and prints, painting, sculpting, creating musical compositions, and a variety of other artistic mediums to express ourselves.

So, the preservation of the artist's own qualia must come first in their artistic endeavors. Inspiration comes suddenly and transcends time and space. It must be honored and kept in order for the location of its origin to be visited in the future, even if it will never happen again. I try to keep qualia at the forefront of my mind when exploring ideas for an image. I try to stay conscious of when I experience this and then act on it as quickly as possible. In the end, I know I only share a shadow of the qualia I experienced, but, to some extent, it is preserved in the images that I make. It is, in fact, second-hand qualia. That’s all it can ever be.

It’s up for debate whether or not some qualia ought to be retained. The question of whether art is successful or "good" is unaffected by whether it is enjoyable or unpleasant to experience. For instance, all it takes is a quick glance at one of Vincent Van Gogh's self-portraits for someone to feel what it feels like to be so depressed that they amputate their own ear.

Immortalize your qualia, that’s the goal. Transcended art is what qualia refers to-getting the closest we can to the most intimate experience in creating art and showing it the best way we know how. That’s the definition of qualia to me.

Plate #124 - “Ute Lodge” whole-plate toned cyanotype from a wet collodion negative.

Death Reminders & Terror Management Theory

DEATH REMINDERS
Albert Camus said, “The day when I am no more than a writer, I shall cease to be a writer.” Those words sit solidly with me. I can really feel what he meant by saying this. I feel the same way. I think we should always strive for our work to be more than just what it is. Whatever medium we work in, we should go beyond the medium itself. Art should transcend the materials, in other words. That’s why the concepts are so important; they carry the work to a bigger and more important place.

If you follow my blog, you know that my project (“In the Shadow of Sun Mountain”) is based on the human response to death anxiety. Specifically, what the European colonizers did to the indigenous people (Ute/Tabeguache) in the 19th century in Colorado. My photographs hold these places, plants, and objects as reminders of the behavior of the colonizers. The colonizers had a common worldview, or set of beliefs. This allowed for the justification of killing the Native Americans and stealing their land. You’ll read about Manifest Destiny in a couple of paragraphs. This is death anxiety and the denial of death played out and acted on in the worst way possible.

Ernest Becker’s theories are clear about why people do these kinds of things to “the other.” There are many reasons to feel threatened by people who are different. It can be as simple as physical appearance or as complex as what “god(s)” you believe in, or not. Or a combination of things.

Cultural worldviews drive these beliefs. Politics, socioeconomic status, and all kinds of cultural standards can provoke these threats. A person will feel secure in his/her/their environment if they’re sharing the same beliefs and acting on the same worldview—all shared experiences and beliefs. They find meaning and significance in common cultural activities. Look at the holidays—any of them. People find a great death anxiety buffer in participating in these kinds of things (see TMT below). If someone doesn’t participate or believe in the same kinds of things, this presents a problem. It’s a threat. When a person’s worldview is challenged, it provokes either conversion or confrontation. If the person that feels challenged can’t convince the “challenger” to come to their beliefs, bad things can happen. In the words of Sheldon Solomon, “My God is better than your God and I’ll kick your ass to prove it.” This is death anxiety acted out.

The colonizers thought that “God” had given them not only the right but had actually commanded them to take this land by force and kill the people here (“the other”). Manifest Destiny, a phrase coined in 1845, is the idea that the United States was destined—by God, its advocates believed—to expand its dominion and spread democracy and capitalism across the entire North American continent. That meant committing genocide on the Indigenous people here and stealing their land and resources. The Indigenous people that survived were moved to prisoner-of-war camps, also known as reservations.

This isn’t the first time this has happened. It’s been going on since the beginning of humanity. And it’s not the most recent instance of this kind of behavior either. It happens all of the time, all over the world. It’s our human condition that drives us to commit these atrocities and to believe that we’re justified in doing so. It’s our denial of death, our death anxiety that’s at the root of it—the driver or motivator for it. We are so terrified of not existing, we make up stories, hide behind material stuff, try to gain status and money, we try anything and everything so that we can quell the anxiety of mortality salience—or the knowledge of our impending death.

Susan Sontag wrote in her book, “Regarding the Pain of Others,” ”Compassion is an unstable emotion. It needs to be translated into action, or it withers. The question of what to do with the feelings that have been aroused, the knowledge that has been communicated. If one feels that there is nothing 'we' can do -- but who is that 'we'? -- and nothing 'they' can do either -- and who are 'they?’-- then one starts to get bored, cynical, apathetic.”

I want my art to evoke these feelings in the viewer. I want to encourage them to consider their own existential crisis—their own death anxiety. This is the purpose of my work: to offer some “food for thought" on these concepts.

TERROR MANAGEMENT THEORY (TMT)
Terror management theory (Greenberg, Pyszczynski, and Solomon) holds that people specifically feel threatened by their own mortality, so to allay their anxiety, they subscribe to meaningful worldviews that allow them to feel enduring self-worth. TMT is a dual-defense model that explains how people protect themselves against concerns about death (mortality salience). According to TMT, the specific manner in which people respond is dependent on whether the concerns are conscious or unconscious. Conscious concerns about death are combated by proximal defenses aimed at eliminating the threat from focal attention. Once this goal has been accomplished, distal defenses become the primary method of protection. Distal defenses diminish unconscious concerns about mortality via a sense of meaning (i.e., worldviews) and value (i.e., self-esteem). Such defenses are also activated when death concerns are primed outside of conscious awareness. (J.K. Thompson, ... S. Chait, in Encyclopedia of Body Image and Human Appearance, 2012)

Plate #122-”Fringed Sage (Artemisia Frigida)” whole plate cyanotype from a wet collodion negative.

Plate #121 - In the Shadow of Sun Mountain

Morning walks with Jeanne get me to reflect on topics I've been reading about and researching concerning my project. I always come across things that make me think or motivate me. The cool mountain air and the beauty of the changing seasons are lovely; it’s a great environment to meditate on what I’m trying to do. If there’s something that really hits me hard, when I get home, I’ll head to the darkroom and begin the process of making a photograph. Today was one of those days.

It works well on some days and not so well on others. Regardless, I enjoy the entire creative process. It's challenging trying to make visuals that support the concepts or ideas I have in my head and heart. Symbolism is my staple for this work. Yes, the content is "real" and represents what it is, but my desire is to take it to a deeper conceptual level. We’re symbolic in so many ways, and we create lives that symbolize something they’re not. I’m fascinated and intrigued by these kinds of ideas.

I love the painterly quality and color of the cyanotype (below). I’m going to explore some other organic compounds to tone these prints. I used tannic acid and gallic acid on this one. A lot of people don’t like how the tannic acid stains the paper. I like it. It adds a sense of age to the print. It feels like something else—and it kind of transcends photography.

Plate #121-Whole plate toned cyanotype from a wet collodion negative.

Homo aestheticus: where art comes from and why.
All human societies throughout history have given a special place to the arts. Even nomadic peoples who own scarcely any material possessions embellish what they do own, decorate their bodies, and celebrate special occasions with music, song, and dance. A fundamentally human appetite or need is being expressed—and met—by artistic activity. As Ellen Dissanayake argues in this stimulating and intellectually far-ranging book, only by discovering the natural origins of this human need of art will we truly know what art is, what it means, and what its future might be. Describing visual display, poetic language, song and dance, music, and dramatic performance as ways by which humans have universally, necessarily, and immemorially shaped and enhanced the things they care about, Dissanayake shows that aesthetic perception is not something that we learn or acquire for its own sake but is inherent in the reconciliation of culture and nature that has marked our evolution as humans. What "artists" do is an intensification and exaggeration of what "ordinary people" do, naturally and with enjoyment—as is evident in premodern societies, where artmaking is universally practiced. Dissanayake insists that aesthetic experience cannot be properly understood apart from the psychobiology of sense, feeling, and cognition--the ways we spontaneously and commonly think and behave. If homo aestheticus seems unrecognizable in today's modern and postmodern societies, it is so because "art" has been falsely set apart from life, while the reductive imperatives of an acquisitive and efficiency-oriented culture require us to ignore or devalue the aesthetic part of our nature. Dissanayake's original and provocative approach will stimulate new thinking in the current controversies regarding multicultural curricula and the role of art in education. Her ideas also have relevance to contemporary art and social theory and will be of interest to all who care strongly about the arts and their place in human, and humane, life.
Source: Publisher
Dissanayake, E. (1992). Homo aestheticus: where art comes from and why. New York: Free Press.

Taking A Deeper Dive Into My Concept - The Denial of Death

“Art is crucial for transforming death and pain into forms that can in some way enhance the life that remains.” 
- Robert Jay Lifton

Making Art is difficult. It’s a moving target. No one can just sit down one day and write out a concept, plan, and execute it all without changes, transformation, etc. And sometimes there are major changes to the ideas and concepts. Maybe even to the work. How it’s made, what it’s made with, etc.

As you make work, it reveals something to you. It reveals direction and purpose. But the heart of the work revolves around meaning.

“Deer Antlers” Plate #102. Whole Plate Palladiotype from a wet collodion negative.

As I make prints and live with these images my mind is changing the course of the concept of the work. I’ve been thinking about my project in terms of death anxiety lately. If you ever get a chance, watch my YouTube show called, “Dr. Sheldon Solomon, Death Denial & Artists, Terror Management Theory - Death Anxiety, Ernest Becker“. I was fortunate enough to have Dr. Sheldon Solomon on as a guest and we talked about all of this stuff. He co-authored a book called. “The Worm at the Core: On the Role of Death in Life”. It’s a book about Terror Management Theory (TMT). It’s basically Becker’s theories put to the test. In other words, Solomon and his colleagues test Becker’s theories in real life. Do we act differently toward people who are different when we are reminded of our mortality? What’s the driving force behind all human activity? Why do we start wars? Why do we commit genocide? Etcetera, etcetera.

This is what my project is slowly bringing forward. The more I think about these ideas and re-read the books I have, the more I move toward this as a main theme of the work.

I’ve studied Becker and Solomon for a few years. I first read, “The Denial of Death” by Ernest Becker a few years ago. In it, he argues that “the basic motivation for human behavior is our biological need to control our basic anxiety, to deny the terror of death.” (Keen 1973). Becker suggested that a significant function of culture is to provide successful ways to engage in death denial. Becker also noted that the root of evil lies in the selfishness of human beings seeking to protect their own existence in the face of their mortality, which he regarded as an essential aspect of human nature. Recognizing such evil within human beings gave Becker concern about the future of human society.

It had a big impact on me. It influenced my photography in major ways. I realized the question that I had been asking for over 30 years was, “Why do people do the things they do?” I was asking the question specifically as it applies to marginalized communities and how they are treated. Graduate school helped a lot but Becker put it all in perspective for me.

I quickly learned that the knowledge of our impending death is the reason we treat the “other” (anyone different from us in any way) the way we do. Anyone who threatens our “hero systems” either needs to conform to our belief system or be eliminated. Becker describes the human pursuit of “immortality projects” (or causa sui), in which we create or become part of something that we feel will outlast our time on earth. In doing so, we feel that we become heroic and part of something eternal that will never die, compared to the physical body that will eventually die. This gives human beings the belief that our lives have meaning, purpose, and significance in the grand scheme of things.

If our system that keeps death anxiety at bay is challenged (our hero systems), we lash out and can do horrible things. Ernest Becker said, “Man cannot endure his own littleness unless he can translate it into meaningfulness on the largest possible level.” Some of these “systems” are good, but most are bad. Becker argued that the conflict between contradictory immortality projects/hero systems (particularly in religion) is a wellspring for the violence and misery in the world caused by wars, genocide, racism, nationalism, and so forth, since immortality projects that contradicts one another threaten one’s core beliefs and sense of security.

As a vehicle for the masses to act out their urge for heroism, Becker went as far as to characterize society as a “codified hero system, which means that society everywhere is a living myth of the significance of human life, a defiant creation of meaning".

I feel like I have a good grasp of these concepts. I believe them to be true and accurate too. They answer questions (and ask) about the human condition in ways that I’ve never thought about. These are some of life’s very big questions. And these topics are dense and sometimes disturbing to deal with.

Currently, my project is dealing with the Ute, specifically, the Tabeguache band that lived on the land where I live now. It’s about my process of dealing with what I feel about living on stolen indigenous land. I’m trying to connect the landscape, rock formations, medicinal plants, and symbolic objects to the people that once occupied this land and were dispossessed of it. What I’m really dealing with is the question of death denial and death anxiety.

Ernest Becker said, “What man really fears is not so much extinction, but extinction with insignificance. Man wants to know that his life has somehow counted, if not for himself, then at least in a larger scheme of things, that it has left a trace, a trace that has meaning. And in order for anything once alive to have meaning, its effects must remain alive in eternity in some way. Or, if there is to be a ‘final’ tally of the scurrying of man on earth—a ‘judgment day’—then this trace of one's life must enter that tally and put on record who one was and that what one did was significant.”

My work isn’t about history. It’s not even about the Ute/Tabeguache. It’s about the denial of death, our immortality projects, and how we act these beliefs out.

This history is just one example of death anxiety. I could spend the day with you and show several small (or large) examples of this psychology playing out in our lives. This is what this work is really about. The questioning of human motivation, activity, and behavior; this history, this land, these places, and these objects, are simply ideas or metaphors to communicate those questions. I’ll continue to work on it.

“Meadow Barley” Plate #88. Whole Plate Palladiotype from a wet collodion negative.