Ah! You mean like a skull being the symbol of vanity? And speaking of music, there is a simple transition from tones in the theme of Interstellar, that movie. That seems to touch one's emotion. It brings tears to my eye if I hear it. Is finding these tones the secret of art? The why is a different question. Although knowing why can help in finding. Dunno how this translates to visual art. Is there a painting which makes one cry? And I don't mean tears of boredom.

Can you give an example of the symbols you have in mind? Do you have a specific set of symbols in mind? A dadaist, being against all programmed art, has a different symbolic than the conceptual formalism. Is there a common you are looking for? A common maybe between artist and public. Doesn't the public need a "training" first? Or is there a natural common, like the person in the white room, when set free, will experience?

the words aren't his art. — Varde

I think the writer disagrees. He wants to express a view or feeling or thought. He can do that by yelling in public or by using written words. Both forms of expression are art.it would be like calling an experiment at CERN not the art.

Any intended meaning comes out in the greater discussion — Varde

Doesn't this mean the writer has put meaning in his art? Like any artist has, for that matter?

Thanks, I have seen that art thread, however my interest at the moment is more around why some things make a connection with an audience — TheVeryIdea

I think modern mass media have their influence (though it's mainly quantitative). Maybe even gossip and knowledge about the artist. Banksy tried to sell his work incognito once, on a local art-market. Even after lowering his price, people wouldn't buy!

The writer is his own reader, the very first reader. The symbols can be compared with any symbols in visual art. There are a lot of different languages, and each language expresses a vision or thought or feeling of the writer (or painter, photographer, mathematician, sculpturer, collagist, physicist, etc.). Some languages can't be translated into one another (incommensurability). Anyhow, I can't see why a writer doesn't give meaning to his work.

The writer and reader both contribute to discussion but the reader is the one who inputs meaning(i.e. meaning isn't extracted). — Varde

Don't you think the writer does the same?

Is there a general philosophical concept that successfully describes why symbolic things have emotional meaning to an audience as opposed to the creator? — TheVeryIdea

That's a very difficult one. There is a thread here, on art and its relation to information theory: "the definition of art": https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/7630/the-definition-of-art

it tries, very interestingly, to capture art within an abstract formal framework. I'm not sure if that can help in explaining art. To measure if a piece of art is loved objectively or not. I'm not even sure that philosophy should only be about inventing abstract formal systems at all. Sometimes it seems that philosophy, or at least its western incarnation, is reduced to just that. And an abstract quibbling about it. The best way to approach art, I think, is by giving concrete examples. Not by giving an explanation of it in the framework of a formal and abstract system. For example: What are the similarities, if any, between cubism and dadaism? Are they defined in the same context, and if so, how does that look? Is science art? Experiments being the artwork, together with theoretical models? What expresses art? Is there a common (which in the thread I mentioned seems to be the case)? Etc..

Longfellow:

If thou art worn and hard beset
By troubles that thou wouldst forget
If thou wouldst read a lesson that would keep
Thy heart from fainting and thy soul from sleep

Go to the woods and hills
No tears
Can dim the sweet look
That Nature wears

But being insane means doing things no one in their right mind would do. For example, throwing away your iPhone 12. — Cidat

That would be a very sane decision. I'm not saying that to be contrary, but it depends totally on how you view the phone. I once saw an English member of parliament smashing his wristwatch. I could totally understand him. His motivation was Tora-based, and that is not my cup of tea, but nevertheless I could relate to the guy.

You merely state what is normal or not. In some realities it is normal, in other ones not. If iPhones replace virtually all forms of direct human contact, at the same time directing people by algorithms and submitting them to the greedy needs of global corporations, showing little respect for Nature or the people they address, under the phoney (how appropriate!) cover of the image of personal freedom and material richdom, so inescapable omnipresent in tech-and science-based society (excuses for criticizing the so beloved science in modern society, but it's just one view of reality amongst many, with an unaccounted claim to power, with a devastating effect on Nature, including people once existing in colorful cultures and having a wide variety of views about which western man can only dream), then I can understand people who wanna throw their phone away, freeing themselves from the global imperative.

I had a moment of feeling depressed when I walked with the dog. The boundaries of a pond in which she always swims, were dag away, to create more space for the water or whatever. Killing a variety of life around the pond. Broken plants, reet, were left at the borders, waiting to be collected by a garbage truck. "Big deal", you might think. But it's a good metaphor for the society we live in. I think modern society gives rise to many mental sicknesses It is thought that depression will be the number 1 sickness soon. From child age we are put in unnatural surroundings, are thought things at school in an abstract nature-detached way, leaving the education to teachers instead to the parents themselves. To make a living later in the same unnatural, programmed, Nature-detached, legoland-like, linear, almost surreal, law-directed, science-based (ooh, I curse in the church of science, which probably gets me banned here!), inflation-directed, growth-mad, (high)tech-structured, intruding, all-pervasive, nature-destructive, materialistic, reality,.

As a result, the use of drugs increases, to escape the system. The last means possible to escape. As a result, people suffer from psychoses. I had one; I felt free, but in hindsight I was indeed mentally no good: I thought the world was 100 years later and tried to drink water from exhaust pipes, thinking only clean water came out, because all cars were hydrogen-driven. I thought the Earth was pure again. I was isolated physically, the usual approach, and given medicin, all without me wanting! And maybe the best, but they took my sense of liberty away. Labels were sought to put on me. I indeed had a psychosis. And maybe luckily I was picked up from a nightspot by the police. I could have ran under a car (which can be considered a just as mad invention as the iPhone, if you wish). It is always "to protect yourself and others, we put you in a cage". Yeah, my ass.

Now, mental illness can be seen in every culture, within the confines of every worldview or reality. You can be born with an tendency for madness (and science is oh so busy trying to find out if it's Nature or nurture, without really trying to understand the people who are suffering). Of course. But aren't we all? Aren't we all the same in that tendency?

Can you give some examples of megalomanic thoughts? I have them too once in a while, merely as a reaction of that sometimes nagging feeling of impowerlessness. A feeling more present than ever before. Do you feel depressed? My depressions are gone, I hope, because I thought that before and then the beast roared its ugly head again. Many times after a time of feeling free and wonderful. Talking with every one, no matter what anyone thought. To be labeled manic. One day the feeling bad subsides! Let's hope it subsides for you! It can't be otherwise! You are a freedom loving spirit, and your brain will surely give you that divine gift of true freedom! Which is not some abstractly defined one. We can talk more about freedom if you like. I surely don't wanna impose my truth or reality upon you!

I had many talks with people who are specialized, so-called. Mainly they asked me questions about my relations to other people and they even asked me if I like bin-Laden! I have the feeling they try to put me in a psychological category. I had my fair share of depression. Gone now, luckily. It hase gone away on its own. I don't care anymore what others think. I'm happy with my own reality. I try not to be rude to people, not to offend them, while accepting their reality. Of which there are as many as people. And animals. In fact m, Bo, our dog, is barking right now. I come back later. Modern society has put a constraint on people as has never been done before in the history of mankind. Making susceptible minds bleed. I have the feeling you and I are its victims...Later!

This is the burden of freedom. Many ignore it and suffer as a consequence, some don't ignore it and suffer actively. Choose the later if you have the fortitude. — I like sushi

I could be the impact of power also.

I had a depression many times. Felt the same detachment from Nature. The society we live in only stimulates this feeling. What a world we live in... A big artificial LEGOland, with power structures trying to force people to live in it. Not truly inspiring for the natural mind to develop. Tell me if you want me to continue.

The big bang needed a whole lot of energy to happen. A negative gravitational energy. It pushed matter away from each other, in the blink of a blink of a blink of a blink of an yeye. In a tiny fraction of a second the whole universe came into being, filled with charged particles scattered all over.

At the very moment of the triggering of the bang, all particles were part of a virtual matter field, fluctuating around the singularity. The truly elementary and massless rishons then became real by the force of the negative gravity pushing them apart.

Two universes emerged. One with matter and one with anti-matter only, though both comprised out of the same particles, but in a opposite combinations. So in both of them equal amounts of rishons and anti-rishons were present. During the bang, all matter was pulled into real existence from its virtual state, that was fluctuating in time.

Massless rishons were forced to form quarks and leptons, in our universe and anti-quarks and anti-leptons in the mirrored one.Because this it is that our universe is left-hande (all leptins and all quarks were left-handed back then, the only one of them still showing this being the neutrino. After the bang, lasting about 10−36 seconds (!), all quarks and leptons were distributed over the vast space, which had already a considerable size.

The universe stopped accelerating on dope, after this tiny time, Most parts were casually disconnected. The size was about one third of the size it has today! So indeed, a BANG!!! All quarks were already forced to become protons and neutrons.

A huge virtual photon field filled the cosmos, including a virtual graviton field to pull ordered mass structures into existence, at the same time fighting the negative energy, which was present, and will always stay present. It was (and still is) the virtual graviton field that stopped inflationary expansion. Ordered structures developed when the virtual interaction fields pulled ordered states into existence. Turning them real to compensate for the decreasing entropy going hand in hand with the formation of structure, be it gravitational or electromagnetic. Which makes our Sun radiate, giving rise to a welcome heath reservoir with the help of which, and the cold of the void ordered dissipative, self-organizing structures could grow, while real photon fields could take away superfluous entropy.

How it ends is obvious.

Entropic time is needed to define time with. Entropic time is just the time it takes for irreversible processes, as measured against a periodic background. These periodic processes in the background are clocktime, and these are measured. Their pace can vary. Time stands still in a black hole, and runs max in empty flat space, and it's pace is relative. If I say that time stands still in a hole then that is relative to our own pace. Entropy increase doesn't influence time. It merely serves as a basis.