Experts on whether a god exists or not are metaphysicians, for it is a topic in metaphysics.

Not all metaphysicians are experts on whether a god exists, but all those who are expert on whether a god exists are metaphysicians. And that does follow logically because, like I say, to be an expert on whether a god exists 'just is' to be an expert on a metaphysical question.

Take a course in any subject to you like, you won't deal rigorously with the question "does a god exist?" until or unless you take a course in philosophy. Specifically, philosophy of religion or 'western philosophy' or something like that.

It isn't studied in biology. It isn't studied in physics. It isn't studied in engineering, or architecture, or food science. Philosophy alone deals with it.

I didn't say it was true of all definitions, for some concepts we have created by creating a definition. But there is no philosophical debate to be had about those. Debates - such as 'what is art' arise when what we are dealing with is a concept that we have sought to define, rather than a concept that we have created by a definition.

Yes it does. Who else is an expert on it, then?

You think a biologist is an expert on whether a god exists?

Have you read The God Delusion? If you have, and if you thought the one chapter in it dedicated to the question of whether God exists was a good chapter, written by an expert in the area who fully understood the arguments he was talking about, then I bet my house and everything in it that you are not a metaphysician.

Okay then - Gauguin: "art is either plagiarism or revolution". False, of course, but the point is that now we know that Gauguin sought to define art and was an artist, your claim that it is owners, not artists, who define art is false.

Although to be fair, Gauguin did own some art. So perhaps you're right. Only you're obviously not. So there.

Because some people here are trying to formulate definitions of art, and I doubt they all own art.

And many artists are philosophically minded and have written things about art, including trying to define it (though don't ask me for names).

It's a bit gibberishy because this collection of words "ability to project reflect instantaneously their time, which can only be cultural" doesn't make sense to me. I have no idea what it means.
And some of what you said is false, because you went from what causes something, to what that thing is 'about', and these are not necessarily the same. For example, if I take a drug and it causes me to believe I am a god, then although the cause of my belief is a drug, my belief is not 'about' a drug - no, it is about me and my status as a god.
So you cannot validly conclude that art is 'about' X, even if every instance of art has X as a cause.

You should defer to experts as a general rule, so long as they are talking within their area of expertise.

But when they're not, then you shouldn't.

So take the creationist and the scientist. Well neither is an expert on metaphysics. Yet whether creationism is true or false is a metaphysical matter, not a scientific matter.

For example, reading 'The God Delusion' would be a big mistake if you wanted to find out whether a god exists or not. It is written by someone whose expertise is in biology, not metaphysics.

And reading Sam Harris's 'The Moral Landscape' would be a big mistake if you wanted to find out about the nature of morality, as he has no more than a BA in philosophy and no peer review publications in relevant journals in the area.

And so on.

Second, what the hell is a cultural mirror? — Bartricks
Art. — Brett

So when you said "art is a cultural mirror" you meant 'art is art'. Well, I think we can all get on board with that.

Definitions are created by owners, not artists. — Brett

And that's false too.

Of course. But they themselves and their ability to project reflect instantaneously their time, which can only be cultural. Post WWll art reflected the trauma of the war, the tearing apart of reality. — Brett

Just false (and a bit gibberishy).

I still don't know what a cultural mirror is. And I don't know what this sentence means either "their ability to project instantaneously their time, which can only be cultural", but it did trigger my gibberish alarm.

What about a hermit - could he/she create art?

Well someone's doing a media degree, aren't they!

First, you're confusing what causes something with what it is 'about'. Art is not caused by culture, but by artists, but even if it were caused by culture, that would not make it 'about' culture.

Second, what the hell is a cultural mirror?

You're repeating the same mistake. You don't need a definition of consciousness to know what it is.

You are conscious right now, yes? That - that - is consciousness. It's a state of you - and you're in it right now. And you knew you were conscious before reading Piaget, yes?

It's wrong too - consciousness is not a logical construct. That makes no sense at all.

How else to differentiate between art and a sunflower? — Artemis

We differentiate first, then we search for the basis upon which we differentiated. And so we know what is art prior to having a definition. Thus thinking that the business of understanding is the business of formulating and then living by definitions is a profound mistake.

I'm afraid I am unsure how I know that about Gainsborough - I think I must have read it in a book somewhere or heard it in a documentary or something. But I am sure Wikipedia - which I refuse to use - will probably confirm it.

But anyway, the fact is whether I am right or wrong about Gainsborough himself, it is implausible to think that whether we classify his portraits as art or not should depend on it.

Yes, I am describing his likely conscious states at the time he created his portraits. But his portraits themselves do not express those conscious states, and nor does it seem plausible that their status as 'art' should depend on us being able to infer something about his conscious states from them.
So, the idea that it is essential to something qualifying as art that it report something about its creator's conscious states seems false. Some art may qualify in that way, but it doesn't seem to be either a necessary or sufficient condition.

Too cheap to be art then. Art is expensive.

How much do you want for it?

But you say time is unreal, that time is completely incoherent. You'll have to own that yourself. Make your case. After all, your opponent is only a wristwatch. — tim wood

I also didn't say that. So again, well done for paying no attention whatsoever. I think time is real. I don't think it is relative. I think the idea that it is relative is incoherent. But I think time is real (unlike McTaggart). I mentioned McTaggart because contemporary philosophy of time begins with him, and I think you haven't read him. (Yet you seem to think that you're up on the subject and that it is I who does not know his stuff).

But I am not going to explain why 'time is relative' doesn't make sense to someone who wouldn't know sense from his elbow.

I do not know what

Art is an expression of human consciousness

means.

An art work is information about an artists consciousness and subconsciousness'

That's not necessarily true - take my Gainsborough example. He didn't like painting portraits, and so there's a decent chance that most Gainsborough portraits were painted by a grump who resented every brushstroke. But you can't tell that from the portraits plus it is grossly implausible to think that whether or not they qualify as art turns on whether we can reliably infer anything about his mental states from them.

But he did not intend to engage them aesthetically (anticipating that they may be engaged aesthetically not being the same as intending that it happen). Plus why are you so sure about that? What if he gave no thought at all to why people were willing to pay him large sums of money for them, he just wanted the cash? That could easily have been the case - probably was the case, given the contempt he had for most of his clients - yet Gainsborough portraits are still works of art and it is fanciful to think that whether they retain that status depends crucially on what we discover about Gainsborough's intentions when he created them.

Intention to create something that is aesthetically engaging in some way. — Artemis

What if my intention is purely to make money - I couldn't care less if the work is aesthetically engaging, I just know that people like my drawings and are willing to pay me large sums of money for them?

Take Gainsborough. That was the case with him. He hated painting portraits - he didn't like them and wanted to paint landscapes - but he knew others really liked his portraits and that he could bang them out quite easily, so that's why he did them. But a Gainsborough portrait is clearly a work of art, despite him having no intention to aesthetically engage anyone by painting them.

You have not answered mine about the what time being relative means. — tim wood

er, yes I did. Here:

Here:

tim woodAs for what I understand relativity to mean in this context: well, someone who held that time was relative would deny that there is an absolute now. That is, there is no 'now', there is just 'now-for-x'. — Bartricks

And this is exactly correct. — tim wood — Bartricks

And why are you pointing me to a Stanford encyclopedia entry? The question is have YOU read McTaggart?

You don't know your stuff, do you? You haven't even read McTaggart. All you've done is watch some youtube videos made by physicists or wannabe physicists who are as ignorant as you are about the philosophy of time.

Look, anyway, you're too ignorant to be worth discussing this matter with any further. Tara.

I do not follow your meaning. I think we do indeed know art when we see it. Or rather, we know it when archaeologists see it.

So, some seem to think you only know something when you can define it, as if somehow reality were made of definitions.

I think we already have - via our reason - the understanding that the definitions are seeking to capture.

You are thinking, it seems to me, that the options are either that there is some definition of art, or art is whatever the king says is art, or what a majority say is art.

We only have one way of recognising what is real and what is not: our reason. Our reason is our guide to reality. And it is via our reason that we recognise that some acts are right and others wrong; that some things are good and others bad; and that some things are art and others not.

It is 'definitions' that are human inventions, but it does not follow from this that 'that which we are seeking to define' is a human invention. We have not invented the concept of art, rather we are seeking to understand it. And we have to use our reason to achieve that understanding, for it is from our reason that we are aware of art in the first place.

The problem is that our reason is a faculty and as such it can - and often is - corrupted by the age in which we live (for to date no age has 'the truth' as its overriding goal, and thus any age will to some extent seek to corrupt the reason of its denizens so that their reason delivers verdicts conducive to achieving that age's goals).

How do we overcome such corrupting forces, given that they have operated on the very instrument we use to investigate reality?

Well, in the case of art we overcome it by burying putative works of art in fields and asking archeologists to dig up the field and then we see how they classify it, that's how!

In any society it is theKing who decides what is art. We get a bit off topic if we define who the king currently is. — Pop

But you don't seem to appreciate that overcoming the prejudices of the age is 'precisely' what my test is designed to do.

You also don't seem to understand that the concept of art transcends our definitions.

You don't need a definition to know what is or is not a work of art. Our attempts to define art are attempts to describe the contours of a concept that we already have. So, we don't actually need the definition.

I know a work of art when I see one, as do most people. Yet I have no definition of art.

Our understanding does not come from definitions, and a successful definition achieves nothing more than to give you back an understanding that you already had.

What my archaeologist example is designed to do is access a pure form of that understanding.

No, I don't think that makes it circular. It's not like saying a dog is a dog. I've added the stipulation that it has to be intended. — Artemis

Intentions have content - so an intention to do what? If it is 'to make a work of art' then it is circular in the same way as 'a dog is something that thinks like a dog' would be.

If we remove the word 'art' from the content of the intention, then I'll wager we'll find counterexamples.

No it doesn't. Just needs to use shape and color in a manner to communicate some thought or feeling. Again, you can get more strict about good vs bad art. — Artemis

So now you're abandoning the 'suitably technically demanding' as a necessary condition, for some work is not technically demanding yet seems nevertheless to be art. Why not just let 'seems to be art' be the evidence, rather than 'satisfying this definition'?

I guess there would be an assumption that it must be manifest in the world somehow at some point, no matter how briefly. — Artemis

But now you're revising or refining the condition in light of a counterexample. So we already have the concept of art - or have an awareness of it via our reason - otherwise how do we even begin to give a definition? And how do we test proposed definition, apart from by seeing whether things that appear clearly to those possessed of reason to be art, qualify according to the definition?

If that's correct, then we do not need a definition and can appeal directly to rational appearances instead.

But again, on what basis do they decide this? — Artemis

They see if it seems to them to answer to the concept of art.

We already have the concept of art. It doesn't come from definitions, rather we try and capture it using definitions - but the concept itself transcends those definitions.

We recognise art without definitions, then. It is therefore the height of silliness to allow a definition - which should always be provisional and open to revision in the light of real cases - to dictate matters.

Any age we live in will have its own ideas about what does and doesn't qualify as art. To overcome those and get closer to the pure concept, we can look to produces of ages whose ideas we are unfamiliar with. If something from that age seems to us to qualify as art then there's a decent chance that it is art.

Oh, and Van Gogh was one of those who "learned the rules to break them" types. I think that some of his work looks a little childish, but apparently his technique was educated and sophisticated. — Artemis

No, not really. First, one does not need to know anything about Van Gogh the man in order to be able to recognise his works as artworks (indeed, very great ones).

Also, he was almost entirely self-taught and was never a great draughtsperson. His technique is not educated or sophisticated - it is very original and distinctive, but it is not very sophisticated and not the product of a formal education.

Intentional refers only to the objective that it was my intention to create art. — Artemis

So it is circular - you've referred to the concept under analysis. The word 'art' needs to be removed, otherwise the definition is circular.

Suitably technically demanding is a pretty low bar. — Artemis

My point, however, is that either 'suitably' means just 'so-as to qualify as art' (in which case it is circular) or we'll have counterexamples. Much art doesn't require much technical ability at all to create.

Take a van Gogh, such as night sky over the Rhone. It is unquestionably a work of art (and a very great one). But it is not very technically demanding. And compositionally, it is a copy of a Japanese print. Yet it is a work of art.

And the audience of an art piece can be an audience of one: the artist. It can be more, but not less than that. — Artemis

What if Rembrandt just imagines a work of art, but doesn't paint it on anything? Is the imaginary painting a work of art? Surely not.

But it also poses an epistemological dilemma: how can we ascertain what such an archeologist would say of our art? It seems that then we get back to square one, in which we have to forumalte some objective criteria for distinguishing art. — Artemis

We just use contemporary archaeologists and either see, or imagine, how they might classify what we're looking at if they dug it up. That way we see what the reason of an impartial - or maximally impartial - investigator says about the product.

It can be applied to modern pieces of art. We just imagine that an archaeologist digs it up and that it gives every sign of belonging to an earlier age, and then we see how they classify it.

So, Tracey Emin's bed probably wouldn't pass this test, whereas a contemporary landscape painting would.

yes the artifact would provide information about the creator and the culture -we cant predict specifically what information it would provide except to say it would give us clues to the 'consciousness' of the creator. We then would use our 'consiousness' to to build an imperfect picture of the culture they lived in. — Pop

I don't follow your point. Why would it not be a good test?

There are five necessary and jointly sufficient conditions:

1. The activity is intentional
2. The activity is suitably technically demanding
3. The activity is suitably creative
4. The product exists in a publicly accessible medium
5. The product primarily embodies aesthetically engaging thought or emotion (or some combination of the two). — Artemis

The problem with giving necessary and sufficient conditions for something that answers to a concept that has not been created by stipulation is that it is only a matter of time before counterexamples emerge (or the definition turns out to be circular - defining art as 'that which is art').

For example, take 'intentional'. What if my intention is just to make money? Does that mean that what I produce no longer qualifies as art? Or do we have to refine the intention so that it is an intention to produce, well, a work of art? (In which case we have circularity).

Or take technically demanding - what about a van Gogh? They're not particularly technically demanding, yet they're works of art. And what about those for whom drawing and painting accurately is not demanding - such as, say, John Singer Sargent (he could just sit down and bang out a breathtakingly accurate and spirited charcoal portrait in just a few minutes - it was his party trick)?

What about a work of art that is not creative, but brilliant nevertheless? Again, like a John Singer Sargent portrait?

As for 'publicly accessible medium' - well, what about a Rembrandt that has been painted on a material that disintegrates if anyone looks at it? Surely it is still a work of art, even though no-one can access it.

Yes, it applies to that which can be buried. However, 'performance art' could be captured on film and the film could be dug up. Would they think it was art or someone having a breakdown?

But you're still assessing the arguer, not the argument. Presumably if a creationist makes an argument for creationism, you're going to dismiss it because you think - ahead of investigation - that they're not an expert and thus their argument has no authority.

That's completely the wrong approach (if creationism is true, you'll made yourself blind to it). Forget who's making the argument and just assess it on its own merits.

Gibberish. You've not answered my questions. You haven't read McTaggart, have you? So you don't know about the philosophy of time (for philosophy of time really begins with his famous argument). You can't show me why it is no less stupid to conclude that the twins paradox implies that relativism about time is true than to conclude that relativism about size is true, or to conclude that time flows more slowly in fridges (here's the simple reason for that: there's no difference in the reasoning, and those who think time is relative on the basis of the twin paradox are being stupid).

Here's a rough and ready test for art that I am simply putting out there for discussion: if future archaeologists dug it up, would they consider it a work of art or just an artefact?

Defence: art is supposed to transcend culture - transcend the time and place in which it was created, and speak to the ages. Therefore knowledge of the culture in which it was created should not be essential to recognising it as a work of art (if it was, then it would not be speaking to the ages, and thus would not be art). As such simply digging the item up and viewing it while ignorant of the culture in which it was created should provide a fairly reliable (though not perfect) guide to whether we're dealing with a work or art, or something else.

Obviously Rembrandts would pass this test. And Van Goghs, and Picassos. But Damien Hirst's shark in a tank? No, probably not - they'd just think it was a shark in a tank.

The test is not perfect, because the archaeologists will themselves be members of a culture and that culture may have affected their judgements about what is and is not art. But they will be aware that they are members of a culture to which the dug-up item's manufacturer did not belong, and so this should - in the main - operate to prevent them from applying their cultural aesthetic norms to the product they've uncovered.

Thus what I shall call the 'archaeologist test' provides, I think, a fairly reliable test of whether we're dealing with art or something else. And we can apply it as a thought experiment - we can ask of a work we are looking at "if an archaeologist dug this up, would they classify it as 'art'?" And if necessary, of course, we could actually run the test by simply burying the said work in a field and then asking some contemporary archaeologists to investigate the field and see what they subsequently classify it as.

Some experiences here on these forums, however, have made me doubt that opinion, because there are some people who seem far more knowledgeable than me in some areas, and yet clearly and completely wrong in other areas, but claim that their position in the latter areas can be justified by things I just don't understand in the former areas. And I'm not sure how to handle that. — Pfhorrest

Why not just stick to assessing arguments rather than worrying whether the arguer is an expert or not? That is, why not just consult your reason? I think the problem is that you're focussing on the arguer, not the argument.

You've yet to present a single argument for your position. Clearly the content of the OP doesn't interest you - you don't address anything in it. And you just blankly state your view as if the fact it is 'your' view has some kind of evidential value.

this is a philosophy forum - so you're supposed to 'argue' something, not just express a view. And you're also supposed to read the OP and actually address something in it, not just think "oh, this is about sex change, so I'll just assert my view on sex change regardless of the nuance of the thread".

Thank you for the much-needed sanity. — leo

Likewise!

As for what I understand relativity to mean in this context: well, someone who held that time was relative would deny that there is an absolute now. That is, there is no 'now', there is just 'now-for-x'. — Bartricks

And this is exactly correct. — tim wood

Oh, thanks for confirming that for me! (What you actually mean, by the way, is 'phew - now I know what relativism means - thank you Bartricks for clarifying it for me').

Er, you realize that concept of time is completely incoherent?