Extract

Sherri Irvin's recent and bold attempt to use itches as a limit case in exploring our notion of the aesthetic left me scratching my head—puzzled as to what was at stake in her inventive arguments.1 Irvin thinks that our experience of particular itches can be properly termed ‘aesthetic.’ The “stalwart opponent” she occasionally invokes—let's call that person me—disagrees. How might we resolve this issue? More importantly, what reasons might prompt us to do so?

Irvin and I do not disagree about what we experience when we itch, though things would be easier if we did. A difference in our phenomenological descriptions of itchiness might have explained away our larger disagreement. If itches provided Irvin (as wine does to the connoisseur) a more complex experience than I have ever enjoyed, we might see why she finds them aesthetic and I do not. But I want to accept everything Irvin says about the phenomenology of itches. I think, though obviously do not know for sure, that she and I mean the same thing when we talk of itching and scratching. When she complains of poison ivy, I think I understand her pain.

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