Yeah, we don't need Sartre -- but in my ignorance at least I prefer Sartre ;)

Not with all that implies**, but the notion of not knowing yourself through immediate self-reflection is something I'd keep -- i.e. what you talk about when saying we only know ourselves through our acts rather than some attachment to being which we can reflect upon, and that, in turn, requires a certain sociality before "the subject" is able to even reflect upon "the subject", in the manner of Sartre's notion of consciousness being that which it is not.

When I think of the difference between Sartre and Heidegger I think of the questions they're posing -- Derrida is probably right that Sartre wasn't Heidegger, but Sartre is still an amazing thinker on his own (and given Sartre's popularity at the time what else is a Derrida to do but look for problems in the thinker? :D)

But the opening of each spells out how different they are, at least by the old translations I read -- one is questioning the ability to articulate the question about the meaning of being and answering it through a phenomenological analysis of language such that he makes claims about "the greek mind" to elucidate how our heritage has, in some sense, lost the original quality of the questions (itself a historical falsehood, but wonderful philosophy as an entirely unique way of thinking)

Sartre is asking, in layman terms, how the seemingly singular subject conscious of itself is able to lie to itself -- and also articulating a theory of consciousness that differs from Husserl in that it is always what it is not (at least, insofar that I understand the differences at all); which is what brings in things like bad faith and an explanation for how an individual consciousness can lie to themself.

__________

On each account I'm fairly skeptical about the ability to spell out abstract notions of consciousness, even in philosophy, that are universal -- but they also seem to capture something of the thinker and the moment better than other attempts at such philosophy, so it always remains very interesting.

I'm just a natural skeptic, what can I say.

**"All that implies" meaning something along the sense that Sartre's subject can be conceived of in the Cartesian manner -- a point-like entity which rather than thinking is deciding, or "acting", and it is always free. I can see that, but I also see a more sympathetic reading which emphasizes the ekstases (the tri-partite divison of time being not-pointlike, but rather constitutive of any consciousness -- a before/during/after that blends together in consciousness)

That helps me a lot in understanding what we've talked about before.

Especially the designation of which names go on which side of "the break" -- Sartre with Hegel/Kierkegaard/James, vs. thems who "understood" Nietzsche (I had to use the scare quotes given the topic) -- that helps me in trying to orient our conversations at least, and so I appreciate it.

Heh, fair.

Obviously, that's not my experience, but also, I don't claim a good understanding of Husserl while recognizing him as the giant that he is. Not enough years of patient reading on my part.

My comparison between B&T and B&N so far is that they're just doing different things, and his interpretations are very much his own interpretations -- but that doesn't mean it's not doing something interesting all on its own.

I'm sympathetic to the notion that Sartre didn't really understand Heidegger, but at the same time that's more because he was also a creative philosopher with a vision which may have attempted to integrate what was into what is, but was also kind of doing his own thing that is, if we take Descartes as a starting point, a very French way of doing things.

Sartre was a philosophical lightweight compared to Husserl, which is why Heidegger called his work ‘dreck’ , — Joshs

Isn't that a bit of an exaggeration, though?

I'm not sure Sartre is a lightweight compared to Husserl, at least (and thereby Heidegger, whom I respect less).

Concerned differently? Mistaken about what his priors were saying? Sure.

Lightweight? Naw.

Yup, that's my intent.

You might say that my re-write is a middlebrow petit-bourgeois deradicalized version. Maybe that describes all of my posts in this group? — Jamal

It could be... though I'm not really too concerned if it is or isn't. In some sense this would be inescapable in the administered state even by Marxist standards. The way he speaks of ideology can only be escaped, I'm guessing, through this negative dialectics, but coming to understand such a thing we can only start with what we are familiar with now which, if we're good Marxists, means that it's going to start with ideology whether we want that to be the case or not.

What I am concerned with is making sure I'm not just fooling myself, though :D -- I want something somewhat coherent to point to if I were to say, "When Adorno says... " blah, mostly because that's how I check myself and learn while reading: I purposefully attempt to restate what I believe I'm reading in my own words, which inevitably are simpler than the philosopher's that I'm reading. It's a good practice.

And given what Adorno said about how language is the only way to objectify thought, and that what is poorly written is poorly thought out, I think it makes a good deal of sense for the student to try and think it out in the manner we're able: we're still trying to figure out this beast negative dialectics, we can't be expected to "think dialectically" before finishing the book!

Alright, this is where we left off last. Because of the pause I reread everything up to Portrayal and it was heartening because it read much faster and more smoothly this time -- which means we're making progress. And I think I've figured out the reason for Portrayal or expression is so important, and different, from the representation. I think I'm reading it like you do here where the representation is the fact itself, whereas the expression of a fact is an interpretation: And how this occurs follows from the previous section on the speculative moment.

I was wondering what he was going on about when talking about how reciting a philosophical text does not make you profound -- there's not a profoundness sitting within The Republic before anyone reads it -- but rather the expression of some text in the proper moment that leads to profundity, or by analogue, the goal that philosophy is aiming at: to express correctly is to move beyond the representation -- beyond the facts as he said in the speculative moment -- and speak freely about this unfree (factual) state of affairs fully dominated by things.

Your explanation of "thingly" helped me wrap my mind around that sentence. The "thingly bad state of affairs" -- a state of affairs dominated by the thing where expression does not exist but merely converges with science is this thingly state of affairs, and it is bad because there is the speculative impulse of philosophy which is being ignored by such an approach (or, perhaps, it's simply too dominating in the world Adorno finds himself in, where people sort of refuse to speculate on the basis of it not being worthy) ((Though I am also finding myself asking after a better explanation for why it is bad -- I feel like I'm doing some handwaiving to make sense of the text rather than referencing something he said))

I'm still reviewing "Portrayal" and intend on finishing "System" today. But there's something of a report (without an answer to your question you posed)

EDIT:

That final paragraph is a doozy.

To think is, already in itself and above all particular content,
negation, resistance against what is imposed on it; this is what thinking
inherited from the relationship of labor to its raw material, its Urimage. If ideology encourages thought more than ever to wax in
positivity, then it slyly registers the fact that precisely this would be
contrary to thinking and that it requires the friendly word of advice
from social authority, in order to accustom it to positivity. The effort
which is implied in the concept of thinking itself, as the counterpart to
the passive intuition, is already negative, the rejection of the

31

overweening demand of bowing to everything immediate. The
judgement and the conclusion, the thought-forms whose critique
thought cannot dispense with either, contain critical sprouts in
themselves; their determination is at most simultaneously the
exclusion of what they have not achieved, and the truth which they wish
to organize, repudiating, though with doubtful justification, what is not
already molded by them. The judgement that something would be so,
is the potential rejection that the relation of its subject and its predicate
would be expressed otherwise than in the judgement. Thought-forms
want to go beyond what is merely extant, “given”. The point which
thinking directs against its material is not solely the domination of
nature turned spiritual. While thinking does violence upon that which
it exerts its syntheses, it follows at the same time a potential which
waits in what it faces, and unconsciously obeys the idea of restituting
to the pieces what it itself has done; in philosophy this unconsciousness
becomes conscious. The hope of reconciliation is conjoined to
irreconcilable thinking, because the resistance of thinking against the
merely existent, the domineering freedom of the subject, also intends
in the object what, through its preparation to the object, was lost to this
latter.

Mostly in the various justifications and explications rather than the thesis of the statement -- that thinking is negative rather than positive. The analogy between worker and "raw material" as the Ur-image makes sense, though. The part that really throws me is the very end: Where thought does violence upon its subject but with the ability to "restitute" what thought has done to its object.

What is this "hope" about? Does the proper expression always hope to reconcile its violence to its object in order to restitute it? Is this what it would mean to reach the non-conceptual?

Mostly thinking out loud about the difficult parts, though I'm tracking well enough to keep reading.

SVO/SOV and inflection, as the main problems I see. :rofl: And so it would seem that the project is severely hampered and severed from the outset. The translated material we are working with is mostly analytic and not dialectical, as it has been mediated through the english language. This poses an additional challenge, as english readers can't be helped by language, the dialectic is neither immanent nor immediate in it. But I guess this is the whole point, mediation, which even in a highly dialectical language such as german, cannot be avoided. As to our own style and presentation, tone or syntax tricks must be employed, at the peril of making one sound like Yoda. Yet another challenge we brought ourselves against, who wouldn't love a challenge anyway, what else is there? — Pussycat

But what if we formalize dialectics into the one Final System.... :D

Yeah, the language barrier is already there -- though I think there's enough similarity between English and German that with a comprehension of both you can give "the idea", if not the strict meaning of a text. I liked the analogy which the translator had of the photo-negative or the depictions of planets that we see on NASA's website and the like: These aren't the images an astronaut looking from down on orbit would see, but they are also not-false, exactly, but bitmap recreations that have a sort of negative relationship to what would be seen. Whatever this negative relationship between say what the astronaut sees and what a picture of the Moon shows I might term "the conceptual" -- that which can be translated, but only through familiarity with the particulars of both and only in this negative way. i.e. there won't be some easy 1-to-1 substitution one can do between German and English such that "the meaning" would be expressed -- if the original is in German then the meaning, as meant, is German meaning, not English meaning. (but, luckily, there's an absurd world to keep us in check from getting lost in meaning)


Anyways, catching up with everyone now. Summers over, schools back in session, and I'm reading again.

Maybe. I'm not opposed to these notions on their face, at least.

The importance of incoherence, contradiction, and falsity preoccupies much of my thoughts.

Also recall that in Superman III, corrupted Superman physically expels Clarke Kent from his body, who then proceeds to strangle him to death along with the de re/de facto distinction. — sime

:D

We can't disagree about everything...? — Banno

Perhaps not, but I will. ;)

Just to see where it goes.

There's a sense in which I wonder if Davidson is comforting after all... at least for me. I tend to see the incoherent, the absurd, the contradictory as more important than the coherent. Mostly because "the coherent" looks overly imaginative to me in comparison to "the real", but an absurdist would say that.

Hrm. Not only fair, but insightful.

Adorno and other Frankfurt School writers complain endlessly about the spirit of positivism, but they are complaining about scientism, not science. — Jamal

Yes, that's how I understand it too.

But whereas Davidson uses charity to reach an understanding between speaker and interpreter, Adorno delights in the uncharitable, in the failure of translation, a difference such that the interpreter can never reach a coherent account of the utterance. And Adorno sees this as worthy. — Banno

"Delights in the uncharitable" is too far a step, as well as "the failure of translation" with regards to their worthiness.

"a difference such that the interpreter can never reach a coherent account of the utterance" is nothing like what I'm getting from Adorno so far, at least.

"utterance" can be read as whatever Adorno wrote, for instance. I think that'd be fair. So we must be able to reach some kind of a coherent account of an utterance, tho it may be dialectical at times (or even wrong).

As regards this topic, I see things differently to you, and we are both English speakers.

We don't need to speak a different language to see things differently. — RussellA

I agree that we don't need to speak a different language to see things differently.

I still think that the distinction mentioned shows how others see things differently from us.

At least to a point that we cannot say something as silly as "English is more extensive than Russian"

And so, for purposes of this discussion on painting and color, I will accept the example of Russian distinctions being different from English ones -- color is something we construct together.

I know it's been a minute since I've updated this thread.

But I've been mulling all the thoughts together and thinking about them. They are rich, and I am thankful for all the interactions. I'm still jumbling through the thoughts and sorting them in order to reply and continue towards an answer to the titular question.

I don't see the sense in a strong Whorfian hypothesis, where language determines a speaker's perception of the world. — RussellA

I think this is a boogeyman -- @Jamal has not claimed a strong Whorfian hypothesis, but noted how Russians speak of blue differently from English speakers.

And I said how, with respect to this topic at least, this is enough to say they see things differently.

To answer:

Could you say again what point you feel I have missed about the effect of language on perception. — RussellA

Works well enough. You have a list of colors that Russians listed, but not an answer to why they distinguish different blues as something other than "blue" -- as @frank noted, "pink" is a good analogue here.

By "singular way" I only meant that although art is an end in itself, nevertheless knowing this does not enable us to distinguish art from other things that are also ends in themselves (e.g. pleasure, friendship, etc.). — Leontiskos

Okay. Then, yes, we're in agreement.

Are you saying that we want to be able to say what art isn't? — Leontiskos

Naw. I was catching up on my replies and that's what I thought of.

Art has one intention, to be appreciated for itself. Sex has one intention, pleasure — hypericin

I ought not to have mentioned sex as an analogue now, I think. Two contentious topics can't clarify one another when they're both contentious.


My thinking in the comparison was to point to art has more than one intention -- it gets along with various "uses" and all that.

Sex is the same at least in the way that sometimes people do it for fun, and sometimes people do it for fun and kids. Two different intentions.

I am curious what you think about my thoughts in the OP regarding the difference between painting and drawing? Where do you agree and disagree? Do you see much of a difference? — I like sushi

I feel overwhelmed at the amount of responses, and flattered. I've been reading along with everyone else, but would you mind re-expressing the thoughts?

It may be worth pointing out that recognizing that art is an end in itself does answer this current question of "use", but it does not provide the essence of art. After all, plenty of other things are ends in themselves, such as for example pleasure and friendship. By learning that aesthetic appreciation is not a means to an end, we have a better understanding of the phenomenon, but we have nevertheless not honed in on it in a truly singular way. — Leontiskos

I'm tempted to say a "double" way -- at least if negation is allowed.

Still, if people agree that art is an end unto itself that's progress. Something aside from "use".

@RussellA, tho replying to @Jamal as a fellow in conversation whose saying things I agree with.

Well, you have two detractors of a sort. I've appreciated your creative efforts in proposing formalisms, but I think you've missed the point a few times now about the effect of language on perception, and even missed the point that I don't care if there's some difference between concepts/language with respect to this topic -- That Russians distinguish such and such means they see something different from us.

Perhaps their language is more extensive than English?

The point he's leading to is that the perception and appreciation of art are not separate, that art is meaningful all the way down. — Jamal

Yeah, I think that follows -- it need not be explicit or clear, which I imagine is usual, but I can't think of any other way we can distinguish a painting from simply painting a wall some color because that's the color walls are (off-white).

Frescos might be a better example there -- surely there's a difference between the wall before the Fresco and after the Fresco, and we see the artistic difference even though the picture on the wall is not a painting on the wall hanging in a frame, but a Fresco (a kind of painting).

What the eye does with light of varying wavelengths and intensities is none of our business—unless we're doing physiology or optics.

Yes, that's the gist of what I'm trying to get at with the idea of an aesthetic attitude -- looking at an artobject is to look at it as something aside from its presence, and aside from whatever role it may play within our own equipmentality. Something along those lines.

It seems that the Russians don't have one word for blue but have one word for pale blue голубой and one word for dark blue Синий. However, in English, we also have two distinct words, ultramarine for dark blue and cerulean for pale blue.

It seems that English is more extensive than Russian in that we also have a word for "blue", which the Russians don't seem to. — RussellA

Sorry, but I think that's a stretch in relation to the other explanation that our upbringing, which includes the language we speak, will influence our perceptions and conceptualizations thereof rather than judging one language-group as having "more extensiveness", whatever that might mean, from the perspective of some pre-linguistic conceptual perception.

I’m not keen on formalism. — Tom Storm

I like formalisms not for the traditional reason (somehow describing a universal experience due to our cognitive structures), but because they are ways of explicitly differentiating traditions. Though I think one must be careful not to confuse the formalism with what's being formalized -- which is to say that there are going to be counter-examples to any given formalism; in the manner of family resemblances, rather than universal conditions of beauty, this is not a fatal flaw, though. It's to be expected.

But this view of formalism is definitely different. In some ways I just mean it as "strict and clear attempted articulations of a tradition within the form of or towards the universal"; the attempt is usually for something others can see as something, if not necessarily beautiful at least not boring.

Kant's pure intuitions of time and space and pure concepts of understanding (the Categories) are not linguistic. The article is about linguistic discrimination. — RussellA

Ehhhh... yes, but no. But more importantly I'd say I'm persuaded to treat linguistic expression of the form "A is B" as a possible candidate for categorical language. It's one of the uses of the copula.

For purposes of this discussion it's fine to equate linguistic discrimination, like the Russian use of blue, with categories of distinction. At least I find it persuasive and any distinction which rests upon a difference between language/concept which rules out the study seems like special pleading.

Isn't it interesting that they have two distinct words for what we'd call "the same"?

That "the same" indicates some kind of categorization going on. Somehow these are related to us -- one is merely a relationship to another of the same underlying "blue". So they are "the same" -- that's the categorical use of "is"

And actually I think get gets along with my viewpoint so I'm rather inclined to accept it over a distinction between concepts and language.

I flatter myself that I'm getting a good feel for it. But maybe the best way to understand how to apply it or use it is to read Minima Moralia and Dialectic of Enlightenment, as well as the “Models” section of ND.

As for who could be said to have done ND after Adorno, the closest I think would be Fredric Jameson and Zizek, though the latter is far from explicitly Adornian. — Jamal

In relation to my ability now I'd say your flattery is warranted. I'm still looking to your reading for guidance through this.

I feel like I might want to read his Aesthetic Theory after ND. Since it was written after ND, it might actually be a conscious application, whereas MM and DoE are negative dialectics in action before Adorno had formally theorized it. And since the art and aesthetic angle is so important in ND, Aesthetic Theory seems like it might be ideal.

Until now I've been a bit put off by what I expect to be his exclusive avant garde and modernist preoccupations—where Adorno goes for Schoenberg and Berg, I go for Stravinsky and Messiaen, not to mention the dreaded jazz—but I've seen enough interesting quotations from AT recently to catch my attention. — Jamal

Well, you know I like aesthetics :D

Also, thanks for the heads up on where to go for that line of thought.

Woke-gang crap doesn't fly in corporate settings. A group of disgruntled employees trying to bully the boss are likely to find themselves on the sidewalk without jobs, and persona non grata. — BC

:(

I, for one, would rather it worked and didn't result in homelessness.

Because who practiced negative dialectics, who did put emphasis on style and content as critique, who gestured towards the non-identical, who did all this, in all, who played the game? Nay, Adorno stands alone. — Pussycat

At the moment, sure.

I think what'd be interesting through this reading group is to understand "Negative Dialectics" well enough that we could carry on in that capacity -- at least as well as we are able to understand it (and perhaps others have done so as well, but here we are talking about it). ((And really I'd be fine if we simply have a collective understanding of a complicated text -- use be damned))

I'm attracted to Adorno so far. It feels familiar and challenging at the same time. I want to understand how to do "Negative Dialectics" for topics other than negative dialectics itself. It looks like a promising avenue to pursue for lots of my interests (which, to be honest, means that in the long run I'll find something wrong....)

Mass shootings aren't a real problem. Well, not compared to all the other shootings. If you wave a magic wand and end all mass shootings in the US once and for all, you will hardly make a dent in the gun death statistics. — SophistiCat

Sure.

But the "magic wand" I'm pointing to is abolishing the 2nd amendment, which would take care of those other things if it were done in accord with the Australian model.

"Mass shootings" are what persuaded me, however -- not that just because people could, but would continue to perpetrate such madness is what persuaded me that it's worth giving up a right to weapons like firearms, at least as we do it in the states.

M'kay. So the reason conceptual art is not-art is because it lacks the essential characteristics of moving the subject?

"We have sex because it feels good. We do art because we like it." In what sense is this supposed to be philosophy?

We have sex for all sorts of reasons beyond "feeling good", such as, to strengthen bonding with a partner, to affirm a claim upon a partner, for social status, to explore sexual identity, because it is socially normative to do so. But most crucially, you speak of the drive to reproduce as if it somehow stood outside of the way sex feels good, and the way we feel impelled to have sex? When in truth, these are two facets of the exact same phenomenon? — hypericin

They may be two facets of the exact same phenomenon -- granting that what I want to focus upon is the non-purposive, the "useless", the "reason why something is attractive" beyond merely "feeling good" or "it serves reproductive functioning"

Mostly because I think those aren't the only reasons why art is attractive, or why we can see a painting as a painting: it's not just that the painting feels good, it's good for this or that reason.

EDIT: Or even bad for this or that reason, but still a painting for all that.

A project supervisor holds an Armalite rifle during the 1996 Australian gun buyback. — Wayfarer

Australia's success in buying back firearms is a large part of what convinced me that it's possible to do within a liberal democracy.

I could be wrong, but while "Abolish the 2nd Amendment" would not sound popular it's basically what would need to happen. The fancy arguments about "A well regulated militia" don't mean anything when we've decided the private ownership of firearms is what's up, especially in a conservative supreme court.

Roe v. Wade was overturned thru a sway in the court because it was a court decision, but an amendment takes something else and is almost impossible. (almost like the document was written to force people to not be able to accomplish things collectively)

Instead I'm arguing against the idea that art somehow stands on its own, intrinsically meritorious, disconnected from human need and purpose. The very fact that so many are driven to devote their whole lives to art's creation, and the fact that we are seemingly driven to saturate our environment with art, speaks instead to its deep connection to human purpose, instead of an inexplicable obsession with useless things. Even if we are not always explicitly conscious of what that purpose is. It is our job as philosophers to make the implicit explicit, only then can we actually understand what we are investigating. — hypericin

I'd only note that "making the implicit explicit" doesn't need "use" to describe a value. It's not for-this or for-that, but rather for-itself.

Similarly, we have sex because it feels good. We can find a purpose, like reproduction, but that's not why we do it. We do it because it attracts us, it feels good, and we want it. We have sex because we want to rather than for some purpose.

I'd rather say that the very fact that so many people decide to devote their whole lives to art's creation means that it's a human activity devoid of purpose outside of itself -- we do it because we like to.

What if it were not Oscar Wilde, but a 19th century schoolmarm, or a Trump appointee, saying "art is useless". Or, a friend says "that movie was useless". The meaning would be pretty clear: art, the movie, has no value. Plenty of things are 'useless' in this sense, it is not so broad a meaning as to be useless. — hypericin

That's the very thing that I'm speaking against in saying art is useless at its best -- it has value, though the schoolmarm or friend doesn't understand it.

I rather think they don't understand it because "use" is so often appealed to that they can't understand why something might be valuable aside from its "use".

I've switched my stance over time on gun control, basically because it works to prevent mass shootings from happening as often.

Originally, I was skeptical because I thought "mass shootings" wasn't a real problem: i.e. I thought "Do people really just want to go out and shoot people they don't know, or was that 1-off?" and I grew up with weapons.

Well, it's not a one-off. People really do want to do that.

So some kind of gun control is warranted if we care about life enough to curtail our freedom to firearms.

That mass shootings continue to occur is a good reason, IMO, to abolish the 2nd amendment. Not that that'll happen in my lifetime, but if gun control advocates want to be serious about controlling guns that's a good target, even though it's immensely difficult to amend an amendment.

Of course homicides aren't the same as mass shootings... there's sense in which if guns are available of course homicides using the better weapon will increase relative to places where that's not the case.

But, really, if we can prevent mass shootings with such a simple fix I don't really care about any other argument for firearms.

On the canard of an argument that an armed populace keeps a government in check: If you're a revolutionary and can't even smuggle firearms, but rely upon Bass Pro Shop to do your munition logistics, that might not work out when you decide to fight. (also, since fascists have taken over, it seems like that whole line of defense is beyond over -- we didn't "rise up" just cuz we could buy weapons)

That said, the statement that art is useless is intentionally provocative, since in modernity we are so used to justifying our practices according to their pragmatic utility; I believe people instinctively want to push back against it because they think it's a devaluation. What I like about Wilde's aphorism is that it challenges this instinctive (I would say ideological) association of value with utility, reversing it to imply that the higher the value, the less intrumentally functional something becomes. (It's no coincidence that the aphorism seems very Adornian) — Jamal

You understand me aright. I generally see the fetish of "use" as a sort of philosophical shrug -- oh, it's useful, so that'll do as far as reason is concerned.

When I think art, in particular, invents new values for itself -- in order for something to be useful it has to have some end, as @Leontiskos points out, and it has no end. Art is an end unto itself to the point that it judges itself bad or good on criteria it invents itself.

I'm good with saying it's an "end unto itself", i.e. that art has intrinsic value. To define intrinsic value I'd compare it to extrinsic value through the question: would you do it if money were no thing? If money is (EDIT: not) a part of the reason you care about something that's an intrinsic value. Blah, still confusing. I want to say "If money is the only reason you do something that's extrinsic value, and if you'd do something even if you're not paid money that's intrinsic value"

That's not to say that doing something for money annuls its intrinsic value -- the question is about what motivates the action, predominantly. If money were not an issue would you still do it anyways? If not, then that's an explicitly extrinsic value -- i.e. work. It's done for something else rather than the thing itself.

But I think "end unto itself" is about as vague as "family resemblance" -- so in either analysis, be it ends-means or family resemblance, there's still the question of "What makes a painting a work of art, in this analysis?"

Vietnamese propaganda posters are considered Art by some -- including myself. I think propaganda often makes use of art to portray a message. This point may make it easier to see where I am coming from in terms of conceptual art not being art. It is not that ALL propaganda and ALL conceptual art is not art, it is about the intensity of the Art elements -- one key aspect I refer to as 'moving' the subject.

Anyone dedicated knows that there are techiniques they use, intentionally or not, that play on human perception. There is always an element of 'deceit' (maybe too strong a word) in this. An instance of this woudl be how horror movies use low frequency sounds that cause all humans to feel like they are being watched. This is obviously useful if you are trying to induce a certain emotional response to the film they are viewing. An artwork has to draw the eye or ear and -- primarily -- the feelings of those exposed to it. If there is an area of sensory experience I am unsure of when it comes to Art it would be cookery. This I find hard to place within the realm of Art in the sense of Artwork. I think it is in areas like this that we have one term 'art' and another 'Art,' where the former is more in lien with the ancient Greek 'arete' rather than referring to something liek a painting. Of course, the problem is we can talk about the arete of the Art, or art of the Art. This is where I think the mongrel language of English causes confusion. — I like sushi

So, to put it in a phrase -- that which is art is that which moves the subject.

You seem to use "use" in a way that excludes aesthetic use. This seems unhelpful to me, neither humans nor any other animal behave in ways that are useless, that don't meet needs or serve any purpose. If from the start you presume the behavior is useless it will be impossible to understand. How can you understand a useless, meaningless behavior? — hypericin

Not a useless, meaningless behavior -- but a useless meaningful behavior, or whatever else might substitute for "behavior"

If we are clear that the use of art includes , for instance, making us feel certain ways, then the use and attraction of art are inseparable. That we are so strongly attracted to art is powerful evidence that art is useful, that it meets needs and serves a purpose. — hypericin

Heh, I'm afraid I sit on the other side here. That people find uses for art is not what makes art, art. Even if art serves some purpose, and there's some evolutionary/sociological purpose that explains this -- that's not what I'm talking about. That'd be the space of causes, rather than reasons for attraction.

The use of art includes making us feel certain ways -- but that's also the use of propaganda, for instance, which we'd not call art.

I agree with @Jamal, tho I didn't reply cuz it's a big question to address -- it's interesting and good, but not easy to answer on many levels: mostly cuz there's the part I agree with and the part I disagree with, but this being a philosophy forum I'd have to specify why and which way. Further the question requires a lot of knowledge to give a good faith answer: both in Marxism and in modern psychiatric practice which complicates my ability to give good answers to the "why" question.

It's something I've thought about and heard before: My short opinion is that they're not related exactly, tho I hear bosses use the language of therapists to get people to do what they want so there is something creepy going on.

It seems a very dour usage to call everything unpragmatic "useless". All these things may be unpragmatic, but they all serve needs. — hypericin

I'd rather say that it's dour to insist that what serves needs must be "useful"

I'm doubtful of the aesthetics of use as a justification for why to include this or that artwork. "serving needs" is OK enough, but I'm hesitant due to it looking like the same structure of justifying art due to it being useful for this or that.

By "art industry" I was mainly referring to the entertainment industry, which is exclusively in the business of producing art (I'm assuming we are past "mass art isn't art"). It seems odd to say that a multi trillion dollar global industry consists in creating useless things. Games are useless? Novels are useless? Music is useless?

Not really -- they have uses. I want to separate those uses from their aesthetic value, though. At least in order to consider something aside from use in evaluating something as a work of art.

I'm all for the wider artworld -- games, novels, music, whatever -- I just don't think it's valuable due to its use, or would rather shy away from the uses of art towards the reasons we're attracted to it.