Causality and truth are apples and oranges. — T Clark

I don't quite see this. Aren't you saying that the statement "{some set of Xs} caused the plane crash" has to be true, in order to be of use? How then is causality an "apple" in regard to such a statement? The predication seems the same as in any other similarly phrased statement, and would follow the same inferential rules.

I understood that but I think this is stretching this idea too far, but we don’t have to agree. — Tom Storm

Sure. It's a thought experiment, really. Nothing of great moment depends on it.

is that the sort of "innocent eye" we'd find desirable? Probably not.
— J

Depends on the purpose. Obviously no good for an art historian or dealer. — Tom Storm

What about for a philosopher? Do we want to argue that aesthetic value is neutral as regards the amount of information a viewer may have access to?

Agreed, but is the explanation nonetheless true, as opposed to merely useful? We can bracket questions about how all bombs behave, and ask whether the causal explanation involving this one is correct, can't we?

I think the concept of causality can be a very useful one, depending on the situation. At other times, it can be misleading. — T Clark

I think we can make it stronger than "very useful." When an investigation determines the cause of a plane crash, this is of course useful. But I'm confident the investigators also mean it to be true. Is there any reason to withhold that designation, in such a case?

We're talking about an actual, literal written statement. Most works are without such a thing. — Tom Storm

I know, but I was pointing out that there's much less difference than at first appears, and suggesting we think about an "accompanying statement" more broadly. Because we can pose the same question about traditional art: How much information, if any, should be included as "part of" such a piece? At what point does information become necessary in order to see a Renaissance work as art? Leonardo may not have offered us a written statement, but his tradition did, or something very like it.

And then there's the name of the painting . . . part of the work?

I think there are plenty of people who are unfamiliar with artworks and have no idea how to engage with them or what they even are. — Tom Storm

No doubt. So, is that the sort of "innocent eye" we'd find desirable? Probably not.

Yes, these are good discriminations. I tend to agree that biographical knowledge about the artist, for instance (hunter or gatherer? :smile: ), might not matter much to seeing a work as quality art.

The ultimate "innocence," which I'm arguing is an impossible limit-case, would have you looking at the Lascaux painting from a kind of "view from nowhere" -- suddenly, somehow, it appears before you, and you have no context in which to surmise it might be an art object, or for whom. Moreover, you yourself have no exposure to art up until this hypothetical moment.

I think we agree this is a fiction?

So the more practical question is, how much does each particular bit of knowledge you do bring to the painting affect your ability to have a pure or semi-innocent view? You say:

I know something about the Fauve artists of the 20th C and I have a particular cultural and individual experience, but all these have no effect on my seeing an object that has great aesthetic value. — RussellA

I find this hard to understand. Are you saying that your own cultural and individual experience of art, which you bring to the Fauve painting, has no effect on your perception of "great aesthetic value"? That anyone can see it? That seems so counter-intuitive that I think we must be somewhat at cross-purposes here. Maybe you could elaborate a bit? I think you're wanting to say that the painting contains, in and of itself, aesthetic value?

I know that these images have an aesthetic and are therefore art without knowing anything about the cultures they originated in. — RussellA

Sure, so do I, but "the culture they originated in" is only one element of what I'm calling the "accompanying statement." My list of what constitutes an innocent eye was partial, but taking it as a starting point, do you feel that, when you encounter one of the above artworks (which are extraordinary, by the way, thanks!) you:
- know nothing about it? Really??
- know nothing about art yourself, from your own culture?
- are able to encounter the art in a way that is separate from a time and place?
- bring no cultural or individual experience to bear?

That would be, per impossibile, a truly innocent eye. And would we even be able to recognize art, using such an eye?

Innocence is a matter of degree, of course, but I think we should really try to notice what we already know, or think we know, when we see a work of art from an unfamiliar culture.

Is the "artwork" just the pebble or is the "artwork" the pebble plus the accompanying statement by the artist? — RussellA

"In Postmodernism, the boundary between the artwork and its accompanying statement is often deliberately blurred." — RussellA

But this is not only true of post-modernism. There is no such thing as an art work without an "accompanying statement." To suppose otherwise is to subscribe to the idea of an "innocent eye" which is somehow able to encounter an art work without knowing anything about it, or about art, disregarding the time and place of the encounter, and without bringing any cultural or individual experience to bear. Is there anyone on this thread who disagrees that this is a fiction?

Post-modernism perhaps is more deliberate about bringing this to our attention.

Do you think they use "learn" and "teach" inappropriately in this article? — Patterner

That's a really useful question. Let's see . . .

But this exercise would, at least theoretically, only teach the computer to be on par . . . etc. — Scott R. Granter, MD

Yes, this is inaccurate. Teach "the computer"? Which computer? Surely they don't mean some actual piece of hardware. So what or who is being taught?

AlphaGo then played against itself millions of times, over and over again, learning and improving with each game — Scott R. Granter, MD

On the fence here. Do we require learning to be something the so-called "AlphaGo" is doing under that description? In other words, can something be learned according to a 3rd person point of view, but not from the 1st person PoV of the learner? I don't think there's a right answer to this. If we decide to say that we can recognize learning even though a program cannot, then yes, AG can be said to be learning.

AlphaGo literally learns by teaching itself. — Scott R. Granter, MD

No. Nothing like this could be "literally" happening. A computer program is running, and responding. Where do we find the "itself"?

we have created machines that truly think and, at least in some areas like Go, they are smarter, much smarter, than we are. — Scott R. Granter, MD

You didn't ask about "think," but my 2 cents is: Yes, we should be generous and agree that an LLM program simulates algorithmic human thinking so successfully that, if we use this metric for what "thinking" means, thinking is indeed happening.

I'm interested in how you see this issue. Are you more inclined to grant an agent-like status to the AG program and others of similar sophistication?

Yeah, probably a losing battle on my part. But I'd like to see more pushback against the easy acceptance of the fiction that a program is an entity or even an agent. With a name! Who starts sentences with "I . . . "!

Or if we insist on some such description, then we're talking to the humans who invented the program.
— J

not really. The programmers gave them only the framework to learn, — Ulthien

I'm actually happier with leaving out the whole "talking to" description, partially because if we try to stretch it, as I did, to generously include the human programmers, then your point becomes relevant -- it is a stretch, considering how the program runs. (Notice my careful avoidance of the term "learn"! :wink: There is no entity here that can learn anything.)

Sorry, our math contemplations do contain a lot of fine qualia that are not so maybe prominent as other stronger qualia, but can still very much be sensed: i.e. rapture, elation, insight, direction, similarity - all of these are qualia feels, too. — Ulthien

A quale is usually defined as a sense perception, not a "feel," so that's how I used it.

Bit of an odd reply on my part perhaps, and for that I apologize, — Outlander

Not at all. You'll be hard pressed to find any two philosophers who agree on how to discuss consciousness!

The main point here is that I'm recommending making a distinction between consciousness and the contents of consciousness. (How firm and/or clear such a distinction will turn out to be, remains to be seen.) So qualia and other objects of thought or perception are in one bucket, and subjectivity or consciousness is what thinks or perceives them.

As you point out, consciousness itself can also be an object of consciousness -- "thinking about thinking," self-consciousness. I myself don't believe that's a necessary element of subjectivity; probably very few animals other than humans have it, whereas consciousness is surely widespread throughout the animal kingdom.

would the rules of the game be somewhat analogous to a form in the Platonic sense? — Wayfarer

Interesting. "Form" does seem to be in the neighborhood somewhere. We could perhaps give an ideal description of a particular instance of a game, noting exactly what happens. It could be perfectly accurate. We would then have something in addition to "the players" and "the field," namely an account of events. But without the rules, we're still unable to give even the crudest story of the game. This somewhat resembles the notion of form, which can encompass both organization and intention.

Is "qualia" not fundamental to what is considered to be defining, if not relevant, to the "Hard Problem of Consciousness?" — Outlander

Yes, in a way, but it's misleading to think that qualia somehow are consciousness. The Hard Problem asks how consciousness, or subjectivity, arises from the physical, and why. One result of this emergence (according to Chalmers and others) are qualia -- how sensations present themselves to consciousness. But you can have consciousness without qualia. My contemplation of a math problem involves no qualia, but would be impossible without consciousness.

It might just be that I am hung up on the thing in something. — Banno

That's a possibility. We've noticed before how hard it is to come up with neutral, "place-holder" terms in philosophy. Of course there no "thing" involved in being a bat, or a human, if we're taking "thing" in the same way we take it when we point to a rock. But what else should we substitute? "An experience that could be reified and quantified over"? That doesn't seem much better. And "what it's like" is an English idiom, often untranslatable into other languages. Still, I think we should let Nagel's point stand, even if we're not satisfied with the phrasing: A living creature of sufficient complexity is going to have an inner life as we commonly think of it, and a water bottle isn't.

A possible reply to this is that "ineffable" may be one of Chalmers' "temporary" obstacles, as opposed to a permanent one like biological composition
— J

Another of Karl Popper's promissory notes, I'm afraid. — Wayfarer

That's why it would be striking and significant if a philosopher could show that the promise was impossible to keep, not just "possible in the future." As you know, some promising (sorry!) lines of thought here would focus on subjectivity as necessarily inaccessible from the 3rd person PoV, or necessarily untranslatable via algorithm-like instructions. Do you know of an argument along those lines that seems watertight to you?

In fact, what we should do is tell it all the things it ought do for a good existence and hand those rules down from a mountaintop. — Hanover

Good one!

We never thought we'd be talking directly to machines like we do today, so you never know. — Hanover

At the risk of being a monomaniac, I have to say again: This is an illusion, cleverly encouraged by the programmers of the "machines." We do not talk to anything when we talk to a chatting program. Or if we insist on some such description, then we're talking to the humans who invented the program.

Expert chess players are able to play with no physical board. — Wayfarer

Right, but we don't even need to concede that much. Even a game like football, in which physicality is not optional, cannot be said to be "identical" with the players and the field. There is a mental or conceptual element involved, without which no one could understand what a football game was.

So, analogically, mental activity can't be called identical to physical activity. It might depend upon it -- supervenience, anyone? -- but a purely physical description of brain processes will not get you to the content of a thought. The challenge for a philosopher is to explain, if they can, why this has to be the case; in other words, why this isn't simply a limitation of our current technology. "Imagine what we'll know about brains in 100 years!" the physicalist urges us. "Why, we'll be able to 'read off' any thought you have by analyzing the neuronal activity." But does this make neurons and thought identical? The scientist needs the philosopher to clarify, at this point.

the insuperable obstacle to such an idea is that the nature of life and of mind are inneffable, and, as such, it can't be defined. So you can't even know what it is that you're trying to synthesise. — Wayfarer

A possible reply to this is that "ineffable" may be one of Chalmers' "temporary" obstacles, as opposed to a permanent one like biological composition. Even your chatty friend only goes so far as to say "ineffable at least in part." We should acknowledge the possibility that, in the future, this will become effable :smile: . I know that right now "irreducibly first-personal" seems like the end of the road, but let's wait and see.

Another reply is that consciousness will "just kinda happen," along the lines of a sketchy emergent property, if we put together the right ingredients. Therefore we don't need to know what it is or how to synthesize it -- it'll happen on its own.

Both these replies are respectable, but my money is still on the "no consciousness without life" hypothesis. If biologists find a way to create non-carbon-based life -- and can demonstrate beyond doubt that they've done so -- then we might get conscious "silicon systems," but they would be alive.

I don't see what is added by "life," which is not always well defined. — Hanover

Perhaps not always, but children learn at a young age the difference between living and non-living things they encounter, though of course they love to pretend. It seems an important question to me whether a conscious LLM is alive, biologically. Do we then, for instance, have some obligation to interact ethically with it, prevent unnecessary suffering, etc.? Can it die?

just a matter of figuring out how that happens biologically for us to synthesize the process. — Hanover

Oh, is that all?! :wink:

https://philpapers.org/archive/CHACAL-3.pdf

It basically says watch. — Banno

Yes, though as I read it, Chalmers is inclined to grant that an LLM+ could be conscious -- within the next decade, "we may well have systems that are serious candidates for consciousness."

Chalmers says that all the challenges to LLMs being conscious appear to be "temporary rather than permanent," except one: biology. This is worth dwelling on. Chalmers articulates the challenge as "the idea that consciousness requires carbon-based biology. . . [On this view] consciousness requires a certain sort of electrochemical processing that silicon systems lack." Chalmers' opinion is that "silicon is just as apt as carbon as a substrate for consciousness," but we can see why this would represent a permanent barrier to LLM consciousness if it turned out that carbon is required.

What isn't clear to me, reading Chalmers on the biology challenge, is whether he sees this challenge as claiming that the putatively conscious LLM has to be alive. He never uses the words "alive" or "life." Suppose consciousness does not require carbon-based biology, as Chalmers thinks possible. Suppose what he calls a "silicon system" will do just as well. Is the silicon-based system alive? If not, why is it being discussed under the "biology" challenge? Is "silicon-based biology" a candidate?

I can't tell whether Chalmers is trying to discriminate between possible kinds of biology -- any one of which would presumably produce life, not just consciousness -- or only saying that carbon-based biology is biology, period, but there's no reason why a silicon (nonbiological) system can't do the trick.

This matters because I would put the "biology challenge" a little differently myself. I would suggest that the biggest unanswered question here is whether only living things can be conscious.

Also worth noting: Chalmers reminds us that "one major gap in our understanding is that we don't understand consciousness. . . . [We need to] develop better scientific and philosophical theories of consciousness. These theories have come a long way in the last few decades, but much more work is needed."

There is no 'mental' reality that exists apart from the physical. — Philosophim

Oh, OK, so you're assuming this. I thought your post was aiming to demonstrate it.

Mental actions are physical actions. You cannot have a mental action that exists apart from some physical reality like the brain. It is a mistake of category to believe that 'mental' is divorced from physical reality. — Philosophim

But . . . hold on. Let's rearrange.

"You cannot have a mental action that exists apart from some physical reality like the brain."
OK (so far as we know).

"It is a mistake of category to believe that 'mental' is divorced from physical reality."
OK, if "divorced" is a synonym for "exists apart," above.

"Mental actions are physical actions."
Does not follow at all. How do you get an identity statement out of the first two? Compare:

You cannot have a football game that exists apart from the players and the field.
It is a mistake of category to believe that "a football game" is divorced from the players and the field.
Therefore: A football game is the players and the field.

? - I don't think so. At best, you might conclude that the actions comprising a football game are made by players, on a field, but that's not nearly a good enough description.

Or is “cause” the wrong word? — Fire Ologist

This would be a key question when it comes to mental events such as thoughts. Our usage is such a mish-mash that it's difficult to find a place to begin an analysis.

Do I have a reason for thinking X? Let's say the answer is yes. OK, does that mean I have been caused to think X? Well, maybe. Reasons are often referred to as causes of actions, so why not causes of thoughts? But whatever their causative power may be, it isn't much like what happens when a bat strikes a ball -- or so we tend to believe. What the bat does to the ball is going to be seen as necessitating what happens next, and in principle a full account could be given of what the ball's trajectory must be, given the force of the bat's contact. Usually, that's not what we say about the causative power of thoughts, if any. A possible exception is the one I brought up, about modus ponens. Here, it is tempting to say that I'm caused to think the conclusion in much the same way that the ball is caused to do its thing by the bat. But should we resist that temptation?

Yes, we're on the same page. And there are probably a number of even further "outside-art" ways to get in the game, which is good, because we don't want the artworld to become calcified into a list of institutions.

A fair amount of work, but not everyone gets to see their very own pebble in one of London's most prestigious Postmodern Art Galleries. — RussellA

:grin:

It was in an email. — RogueAI

Any chance you could share the relevant parts with us? I'm also going to read the paper @Banno cited.

The idea that there is such a thing as Mental to Mental Causation — I like sushi

I read this as homing in on a special problem within causation-talk: Whether my thoughts of, e.g., "If p then q" and "p" can be said to then cause the thought "q". But perhaps this isn't where you want to focus? You seem to be addressing mental-to-physical causation, or vice versa, not mental-to-mental.

The context of the object is relevant. A pebble on a beach never seen or imagined by anyone cannot be a Postmodern artwork. For someone to take that pebble off the beach, display it in the Whitechapel Gallery, and accompany it with the statement that the pebble represents the anguish of the individual within a capitalist society, then it has become a Postmodern artwork. — RussellA

Good, so we need to consider context. But is your example literally possible? I noted this earlier in the thread, but it's worth repeating: If "someone" does -- or tries to do -- what you're suggesting with the pebble, they would a) probably not get past the security guards, and b) if they succeeded, they would be judged a vandal rather than an artist.

In short, it takes more than "someone" to successfully place a pebble as art in the Whitechapel Gallery. Who else is needed, and what is that context? This is where so-called institutional theories of art start to gain traction, I think.

Postmodernism
It only becomes an artwork if the human responds to the object as a metaphor for social concerns — RussellA

Are you proposing this as context-free? Or does the object need to be presented in some way as to invite such a response? If so, what might be the context?

(I think this question applies to conceptual art as well -- not sure what you're including with "post-modern")

I feel like we might be going off track. I am willing to keep this going elsewhere if need be? — I like sushi

Actually, I'm trying to get an OP together that might be a better place. Let's hold off till then -- thanks!

My view is based on the artists intent, the audience, the effect on people who view and produce art, and looking upon items with an artistic eye. — I like sushi

A one view only perspective is a terrible approach when it comes to understanding anything with any reasonable depth. — I like sushi

If a work is not emotionally moving it is absolutely not art. There is no exception.
— I like sushi

There has to be a line drawn somewhere,
— I like sushi

?

I hope it's clear why the 1st two statements seem to contradict the next two.

Decor serves no pragmatic function, it is perfectly possible to live in an abode with no decor at all. Decor serves only to modulate the emotional state of the inhabitant; this is thoroughly, unproblematically art. — hypericin

I can see it that way. "Pragmatic" can be understood in a variety of senses.

Frankly, Im ready to abandon all this talk of "artworld" entirely, and institutional theories of art. It seems oriented around the question of "what is fine art" rather than "what is art". Perhaps this was the interesting question in Danto's day, but today, to me at least, it seems far too elitist. What separates "fine art" from everyday art frankly doesn't seem as philosophically interesting as what separates art as a whole from non art. — hypericin

This is really interesting to me. I'm going to try to write an OP that will go into some of this in more detail; we've already hijacked @Moliere's thread for too long! Been rereading a lot of Danto and have noticed some nuances in what he's saying that might make sense of the whole "fine art" question. For instance, in his essay "The Art World Revisited" he disavows a strict "institutional theory" interpretation, which he calls "a creative misunderstanding of my work by George Dickie." And he says we need "a set of reasons" for why something is art, not merely a baptizing by some in-group.

I am not at all interested in talking about some abstract Art World. — I like sushi

You raise the same concern here as @hypericin: Are we being too parochial in caring what a designated artworld might think?

In general, I read you as wanting to set up some criteria to divide art from non-art, based on audience response. This is a different strategy from using criteria based on the object itself (what is it made of, who made it, how difficult was it, etc.) but shares the idea that art can be discovered. This idea is what Danto and others question, as do I, but maybe I'll go into that some more in another post.

Hopefully that sketches out roughly what I think about the historical aspect? — I like sushi

Yes, roughly. Is it appropriate for me to ask into some specifics? (You don't have to pursue this with me if it's a pain in the neck.)

The difference in the current era [about where lines are drawn between art and non-art] is likely more about the rate of change due to the numerous factors briefly outlined above. — I like sushi

I'll take "current era" to mean the era in which something like Fountain, or the plant-and-email piece, could be considered art.

Some did see [those lines], some didn't. Some did disregard them, some didn't. — I like sushi

To me, this implies that there's a sort of counter-artworld, or shadow artworld, in which works like Fountain are not considered art. Is that what you mean? My question was meant to focus on consensus, on why conceptual art, understood in the broadest terms, is now accepted by the artworld as an important type of art. On your view, this would have been a mistake. So how did this mistaken consensus carry the day? I guess I'm asking if you could be more specific about "rate of change" and the other factors you mention. What do you think actually happened when, say, Warhol offered his "Brillo Box" as art, and the artworld, at first reluctant, came to agree?

I'm assuming that neither of us would be satisfied with the "My kid could paint that" response. You don't think that gullible gallery owners were hoaxed by mischievous and rapacious loft-dwellers wearing berets -- or so I assume. So what did happen?

I'm hesitant to justify art by its purposes. If anything I think it's entirely useless, and that's sort of the point. — Moliere

Concerning purposes involving other people, I agree that most art doesn't have to be understood that way, though many artists value communication as a goal very much. But "entirely useless"? That seems to say that if I create an artwork, it's useless even to me, even as a process. Do we have to be that rigorous about it?

The difference is that [art] has no pragmatic purpose. Take a piece of purported art, and subtract away the pragmatic purpose: what remains, if anything, is the art. — hypericin

OK, sort of what I meant above about "purposes for other people." And I think it's 99% true. But as always, we can find interesting exceptions. Satie claimed that his "furnishing music" was strictly pragmatic -- it was meant to add to the decor (great quote from him on Wikpedia: "Furnishing music completes one's property"). This sounds like he wanted it understood as non-art, but no one agrees!

I have a large collection of music I wrote but never did anything with. Is it still art, if no one else ever hears it? I think so; despite being unheard, there is an artworld it readily plugs into, were it heard. It would unproblematically be accepted as art (good art is another matter). — hypericin

Yes. This intuitively reasonable position has to be accounted for by an institutional or artworld theory of art, and it's not easy. I think we need some discrimination between the artworld's role in "baptizing" individual works within a recognized tradition, versus its role as a consensus-builder around new approaches and problematic examples, like Fountain. I haven't worked out anything like this, though I think it's on the right track. We want to be able to say confidently that your un-listened-to music doesn't require a listener (or an artworld) for it to count as music -- which already counts as art. The artworld's function here came earlier, so to speak.

Maybe a good question is: Is there a risk of some art being a private language, something only the artist speaks? Or are we just frightening ourselves with extreme hypotheticals?

If a work is not emotionally moving it is absolutely not art. There is no exception. — I like sushi

There has to be a line drawn somewhere, — I like sushi

So do you have a story, or explanation, for what happened to (so-called, in your view) art in the 20th century? Why were the lines not drawn where you clearly see them? Are you suggesting that the artworld did not see those lines, though they were clear, or that they saw them but disregarded them? Just trying to understand how to fit your view into a historical narrative.

There was nothing about a random plant and several printed emails stuck on a wall that I find emotionally moving in any way shape or form. — I like sushi

I would likely have the same reaction, if I saw this work. But are you open to the idea that emotional response is not criteriological? That objects aren't divided into "art" and "non-art" based on whether they are emotionally moving to someone?

I guess this connects with this as well:

Artwork is not primarily focused on the intellect — I like sushi

What I learn from 20th century art is that general, semi-definitional statements like this can't hold water. There's simply too much artwork doing too many different things, in endless combinations of visual, intellectual, conceptual, and emotional dimensions! It's the Wild West! -- and enormous fun.

The only way we can make categorical judgments about what kind of thing can be art, or what kind of experience art must engender, would be to challenge the description I just gave as a description of art. We could declare war, in effect, on the artworld, and offer an explanation for why it has been so misguided for so long in what it deems art. I know there are a few critics willing to try this, but the collateral damage is immense, and I've never found the conception convincing anyway.

Again, none of this is about quality. It seems quite possible to me that the plant-and-email artwork is simply poor art. But I'd have to see it.

a philosophical sortie into the world of Art. — I like sushi

That sounds to me like a new type of art! But I know what you mean. Interestingly, Danto talked a lot in his later writings about art within a particular culture as "discovering its own identity" or meaning. He compares it to Hegel's Spirit. He blurred the line between art and philosophy. For him, a work of art can be a piece of philosophy as well, it can teach us something specifically philosophical -- so a philosophical sortie, if you like.

I've gone to plenty of modern art museums out of curiosity, and some of the installations/videos/etc. really just left me mystified. I was willing to look just to see, but sometimes I sort of just shrugged.

Which usually means I'm missing something -- what is it about this that so many other people like that I'm not seeing? — Moliere

I've had this experience too. Part of me wants to put on my Philistine hat and say, "Enough is enough! This looped video of a woman sucking her toes simply isn't art. The artworld is wrong about this." If I resist that impulse, as I believe I should, I could also say, "Yes, I'm able to engage with this work in the Space of Art, I'm willing to accept the invitation to that special sort of seeing that art requests. Having done so, I judge it to be not very good or interesting art."

At this point, the questions about "What am I missing?" become relevant. Can I honestly say that I know enough, am experienced enough, in the particular milieu or conversation in which this art-object exists, in order to be entitled to an aesthetic judgment? If my answer is yes (as it often will be in an artworld I have a lot more expertise in, such as music or literature), then so much the worse for the art object -- but again, this doesn't jeopardize its status as art. If my answer is no (as is likely with conceptual and other post-modern visual arts), then it's on me to get educated, if I care enough.

And one more factor: Do I like it? This is a dimension where I've really noticed changes over the years. Perhaps because I have tried to better understand and experience some of this unfamiliar artworld, I more and more find that there's a sort of primitive, pre-judgmental delight I feel when exposed to (some) conceptual art. It is not at all the same delight I associate with Monet. But once I get over the "hermeneutics of suspicion," and allow the object to just suggest whatever it suggests -- call it a charitable intepretation! -- it's a lot easier to get a kick out of it.

If you take a Campbell soup can and repeat it 50 times, you are not interested in the retinal image. What interests you is the concept that wants to put 50 Campbell soup cans on a canvas. — Duchamp, 1964

Yes, this is insightful on Duchamp's part.

the story behind the artwork, the motivations around it, the whole context of the chosen/found artwork -- [these] offer the difference between art/not-art. — Moliere

As you say, this sounds like a good expansion of the "artworld" idea. There's room to include the artist themselves, too. As long as we agree that what makes something art is a way of seeing, not a way of making, all these further interpretations can be on the table. (Clearly the main point of contention is: Whose seeing?) And we can further insist that "seeing" retain its metaphorical meaning, that it doesn't have to be retinal, but can instead be the kind of seeing we mean when we say, "Ah, now I see!"

It's that act of judgment that seems to me to differentiate art/not-art -- but, in being an act of judgment, it seems just as conceptual whether I'm asking "Why 50 campbell's soup cans?" or "What does Monet mean by his water lillies?" — Moliere

OK, let's call that special way of seeing an act of judgment. And let's agree that there's no "innocent eye," no "brain-off" way of looking at paintings. Still, we need to explain the important difference Duchamp is pointing to. If I understand him, he's saying that the Warhol exists in order to stimulate thought, whereas the Monet is an object of contemplation in its own right -- or something like that. Now we need a lot of conceptual apparatus to see either of these paintings in the right way; that's not in dispute. But conceptual art uses the image in a way that traditional painting does not. The soup cans have to function as a bridge to the concept, otherwise the artwork fails. Whereas the water lilies don't insist on this kind of move.

Maybe? Just thinking out loud . . .

I think this is precisely because the sunny Popular-Mechanics style realism doesn't fully eliminate teleology or teleonomy; it just sort of lets the issue float out there, unresolved. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Sure. It's not a "Pop-Mech" kind of question, and we can do science for most practical purposes without having to engage with it.

From this perspective, it is natural to call Duchamp's Fountain non-art. It has deviated so far from the form of art, that it has lost all "art function": it isn't pretty or enjoyable to look at. It required no technical skill, anyone could have done that. It doesn't depict anything beyond what it literally is. — hypericin

This is a great exposition of how and why Fountain was first seen as non-art. Watching how the conversation has evolved on this thread, I want to add something: What turned it from a urinal to one of the most talked-about and influential artworks of the 20th century was not Duchamp's intention alone. By persuading a gallery to grant it what I'd call provisional status as art, he in turn offered Fountain to the larger artworld. This offering was meant to be provocative: I say this can be seen as art. If you disagree, explain why. And as we know, the argument was resolved in his favor. Conclusion: a "ready-made" can be an art object.

Here's a similar example, to reinforce the point I want to make. John Cage's "4' 33'' " makes a similar claim about what counts as music. Beyond the amusing set-up -- "can be performed by any combination of instruments" -- Cage was really asking his audience to reconsider what silence is supposed to be, musically. There's a lot of detail I could go into, but the idea is that silence in traditional music fulfills a structural function only: It's the place where, by agreement, there is no music, such as during a whole-note rest. We're not meant to consider what might in fact be audible in the so-called silence, because that doesn't fall under either the category of "music" or the category of "composer's intention." Cage asked the audience to spend 4 minutes and 33 seconds listening to ambient sound. Seventy years later, the consensus is fairly strong: Such sound, within that "frame," qualifies as art, though perhaps not music, just as Fountain qualifies as art, but perhaps not any previously known category of visual art.

Suppose this "provisional offering" of silence/ambient sound as art had been roundly rejected. And suppose Fountain was laughed out of the gallery. Some on this thread want to say that this would not have changed either work's status as art. Duchamp and Cage knew what they were doing, they considered themselves artists, so it's the artworld's loss if these works were not appreciated as art. I know that's an attractive position, because it privileges one of the traditional components of making art: that art is an individual thing, and expresses something about the maker, and we admire originality and vision. All true. But can art really be a private language, something that only the maker can speak?

How we answer that may depend on a related question: What is/are the purpose(s) of art? On the spectrum between self-expression (personal) and communication (collective), can it "go too far" in one or the other direction? If a poem falls in the forest and there's no one there to read it, is it still a poem?

I'll stop here before I die the death of a thousand profundities! :smile:

Also note, "This crap isn't art in the first place, but if you really insist on asking me to call it art, then it's terrible art." doesn't work in other contexts. "This apple isn't a house in the first place, but if you really insist on asking me to call it a house, then it's a terrible house." No, it's just not a house. — hypericin

Good point. What should we say, then? You go on to note

Since the distinction [between non-art and bad art] is not clear in most people's minds, they can be expected to substitute one for the other. — hypericin

Perhaps that's good enough; the distinction isn't clear, usage-wise, and it's no wonder people use them somewhat interchangeably. We could imagine more and more cases like this, using the "house" example, the closer we get to a comparison that's "in the 'house' neighborhood" -- for instance, "This hovel made of detritus isn't a house in the first place, but if you really insist on asking me to call it a house, then it's a terrible house."

If this isn't good enough (for us philosophers), then we need to recommend a more precise set of terms. I vote for something along the institutional, Danto-esque lines we've been discussing.

But . . .

Is it still art if no one sees it that way (except the creator)?
— J

I think so. It is still an object created for aesthetic, not practical, use. — hypericin

This would be an objection to an "art as consensus" model. I can't remember if Danto addresses it; I'll try to look back at some of his work and see if I can find it.

Maybe it helps if we frame the question like this: Is it possible for me to create (taken as loosely as possible) something for aesthetic use, only to discover that the "we" who generally look at such objects do not consider it art at all? That would be rare, but possible. This gets to the heart of one of the difficulties with the "artworld" model. Exactly how many "I's" does it take before we get a "we"? Presumably "consensus" doesn't have to mean 100%, but what does it mean? Evidently it needs to stop short of "only one person (the artist)," though -- and that's what you're questioning by asking if intent alone is enough to do the baptizing.

Your Rite of Spring example of a change in "community vetting" is also relevant here. And the confusion between non-art and bad art returns: That 1913 audience did not, as far as I know, castigate Stravinsky and Diaghilev for not being artists at all. The audience thought it was outrageously bad art, but they knew it was music and dance. A better example might be the reaction to Duchamp: "You've got be kidding! This is a urinal."

(BTW, there's considerable evidence that a big part of the audience's reaction to the Rite can be explained by its being such a bad performance. That score is well understood and appreciated now, but can you imagine mounting a performance for the first time?! None of the players would have heard, literally, anything like it before. "What is this supposed to sound like?" Very plausible, then, that as a performance it barely held together.)

This [framing the feather] is consistent with art not as some innate ontological status some objects have, but as a social context around some objects. — hypericin

Good, glad you see it that way too. We have to emancipate "creation" from necessarily meaning "moving around physical stuff."

I am inclined to say that art is intentionally created as art by a creator. — hypericin

Is it still art if no one sees it that way (except the creator)? Should we say, "intentionally attempts to create art"?

Also, the verb "create" is very fraught in this circumstance. If we agree that the status of something as an artwork is not dependent on its physical nature, then "creating" an artwork can mean simply a consensus that declares the object to be so. Putting a frame around it, in other words. Are you OK with that construal of "create"?