In the
first semester I look into the idea of panpsychism; a theory of mind
that believes that mind is innate in the basic constituents of the universe.
To cut a long story short, I produced an essay (which can download from the following link http://alturl.com/erxby) that exclusively dealt with the theoretical notions of panpsychism while suggesting how it might have an effect on ethical consideration.
This might strike the reader odd that I submitted what was an essentially a philosophy and ecology paper on an art degree course; I swear it wasn’t my original intention, but the research seemed to direct me to the written monstrosity that eventually was born from it.
The original impetus was to look at the panpsychism in the context of aesthetics, which I did attempt but failed miserably in doing so – the foundations of my knowledge of panpsychism were not firm enough and what I wrote on the subject was confused.
So in essence I want to reacquaint myself with my original failure and attempt to create an aesthetic of panpsychism.
To do this I’ve set myself three questions that I believe link together to answer ‘what is a panpsychic aesthetic?’ these are:
1) What do I define
panpsychism to be?
2) What are they key ideas in panpsychism that are applicable to aesthetics?
3) What would this panpsychic aesthetic look like in the context of my practice?
In the upcoming post I
shall attempt to answer them and figure out what in fact they entail.
