Meta-Aesthetics and Meta-Methodology: A Response to Andy Sanders Review Essay

I had a strange dream the other night. Two elderly gentlemen were sitting on a park bench engaged in a philosophical discussion. I came on the scene long after the discussion between the two had started. I started taking notes, but the notes were incomplete. Suddenly the two men departed from the scene and I had nothing to go on but my partial rendering of a discussion that I had come upon long after it had started. So, I was faced with the decision whether to discard my notes altogether or reconstruct the debate. On the one side, if I were to discard my notes, I would lose for myself what I thought would be an enlightening and intellectually crucial discussion. On the other side, if I were to reconstruct their discussion from my incomplete notes, I would create a somewhat fictional and false account of their discussion. I chose the latter course of action: perhaps my misinterpretation might shed some understanding on a rather complex but fundamental problem.