What you do you mean by "aesthetics?" — Jackson

"Of or concerning the appreciation of beauty."

Silence and Beauty, Makoto Fujimura
— 180 Proof

Interesting choice, he was a big influence on me as an artist back in my Christian daze. I still respect him, and his art is incredible. — Noble Dust

I looked him up. I really like the paintings I saw. They all looked like book covers for dystopian science fiction novels.

True, but in classical music, for example, interpretation is so key. Especially in what I consider the golden age, the late romantic to early modern period; the music of that era is so malleable that interpretation becomes everything. A lot of the music from that era is so damn hard to play that a faithful interpretation is just rare. Pogorelich is an example of a master who, in my opinion, played Ravel properly and was able to coax out the emotional content while also being a virtuoso and able to play impossible music properly. — Noble Dust

Classical music was one of the main things I was thinking about when I started this thread. It seems like the place where skill and art come as close as possible. I don't have much to say because it isn't my music. The most I can say is "Me like. Sound purty." I was hoping someone would bring it up.

So if craft is important to you, it's probably because you already like well executed things. — Tom Storm

Can you define "craft"? I still don't understand this word. — Noble Dust

I love bridges. Well-built stone structures - Machu Picchu is the most beautiful thing in the world. 2000 year old Roman aqueducts. New England is a good place for that. I like things that are like stone walls - arguments laid out like bricks to build a wall of evidence. That's one of the reasons I loved "Origin of species." When I write non-fiction, I try to write like that. I love houses. Small towns. Big cities. Things made with workmanlike economy for practical purposes without cutting corners. Structures that grow organically and fit in with their neighbors. Things that are beautiful because they are well-made. I guess that's what craft means to me. I think this is what Pirsig meant when he said art is high-quality endeavor.

For me craft focuses on skill - a work is loosely or strictly based upon a pattern or formula (eg, song writing, journalism, ship building, making a table). Making a pair of boots is a craft - there is a pattern to follow. Some craftspeople go a step or two further and can make a pair of boots a thing of beauty. Perhaps this is high craft, some might even call it art at that level. But none of this is exact and this is only my working definition. — Tom Storm

This gets to the heart of it for me. If you believe, as I do, that art is anything made to be judged aesthetically, how do you classify things that are made to be useful, comfortable, and reliable for which aesthetics is secondary at most?

Let's see. The guy sitting in the middle back with the big wig is clearly Trump. The guy standing over him with his glass raised is Giuliani. The guy on the floor in front is Jeffrey Clark. Not sure who the rest are. I guess I don't recognize them because they all plead the 5th and didn't show up in the videos. I think this is the meeting when they were all asking for a pardon.

that would be no more a simulation of the universe than an iPhone is a simulation of an iPhone — hypericin

A simulation imitates the operation of real world processes or systems with the use of models. The model represents the key behaviours and characteristics of the selected process or system while the simulation represents how the model evolves under different conditions over time. — TWI

You can't get any better model of something than an artificial copy of it.

The unexamined life isn't worth painting. — Bitter Crank

I've thought about this. The only real skill I have is writing, but not the kind of writing that would typically be called artistic. I am not particularly self-conscious about where the words, spoken or written, come from. I feel them coming out. I reread them and see if they make sense and edit if necessary. I don't think there's much examining going on when most artists create. From what I've seen in interviews, many of them are not particularly articulate about the process.

It's not Collinwood's fault that the Greeks and Romans used media that rotted in dampness instead of baked clay tablets. — Bitter Crank

I have more confidence in Collingwood's understanding of classical art than I do in yours.

In computer science it is known that it takes more computational power to simulate a computer system than the computer system itself has; typically, much more. — hypericin

Is this true? Do you have a source for that statement? Seems to me if I could create a perfect copy of the universe, it would be a complete analog simulation of the original and would be no more complex.

I don't think so. Hampton's "Throne" looks very skillfully made to me (I was unaware of it by the way, thanks for turning me on to it). — Noble Dust

Here's a close-up of one part of the sculpture.



I don't mean this as criticism at all, but it doesn't look skillful to me. Beautiful, yes.

I think people apply this fantasy to art because they don't understand art or the creative process. If they did, they wouldn't make the mistake. People like myself have put thousands of hours of work into what we do; years and years of work. This week alone I've spent probably around 12 hours total notating a solo piano piece that's five minutes long. I'm not done yet and this is just the first draft. I'll probably spend at least 5 hours fine tuning it and redoing parts of it. This is just the musical notation, not a performance of the piece. Anyway, I hope you get the idea of my point here. — Noble Dust

As I noted in the OP, my thinking was set off by an example of what I consider a very skillful piece of music. In "Missing Vassar" my pleasure would not have been nearly as strong if it were played poorly. On the other hand, I find this much less polished performance very moving.

Anyway, the point I was going to make before I went on a rant is that I think even art that appears to not require much skill requires more than you think. Simplicity is often harder to pull off than complexity. Simplicity requires a different skill set. — Noble Dust

What are your thoughts on the Woody Guthrie video?

Thinking out loud here (sorry for the spam), I think what's missing is that creativity itself is a skill. Skill isn't just technical competence; the ability to look at the world from a specific viewpoint in order to bring something creatively unique into existence is absolutely a skill; so whether the result is something complex or simple isn't important. — Noble Dust

Sure. That's sort of my point, or at least my question. How much does vision and creativity make up for lack of technical skill

Picture looking around, art is the heat of that moment if, you, the looker, is thinking creatively; so what I ask is the art of looking around?(it can be different). — Varde

I don't understand.

Luck is also an attribute, such as having a good idea ~pop into your mind. Have many artists drew something without prior experience with art/craft? — Varde

I have ideas all the time. I'm pretty good at putting them into words, but normally I could not express them musically or visually. Even when what is in my mind is visual I can express it better in words than in images.

It takes a lot of practice, practice, practice to get to Carnegie Hall--to perfect one's artistic performance to a level where expert musicians and connoisseurs will say, "Well done!" What is true for music is true for other arts; no great novel is a first draft; no great painting is the first sketch; one's home videos will never make it to Cannes or the Oscars. — Bitter Crank

Expert artists and connoisseurs are not the only or the primary audiences for most art. Technically perfect art without vision and feeling are sterile. Collingwood again:

What is meant by saying that the painter ‘records’ in his picture the experience which he had in painting it? With this question we come to the subject of the audience, for the audience consists of anybody and everybody to whom such records are significant.

It means that the picture, when seen by some one else or by the painter himself subsequently, produces in him (we need not ask how) sensuous-emotional or psychical experiences which, when raised from impressions to ideas by the activity of the spectator’s consciousness, are transmuted into a total imaginative experience identical with that of the painter. This experience of the spectator’s does not repeat the comparatively poor experience of a person who merely looks at the subject; it repeats the richer and more highly organized experience of a person who has not only looked at it but has painted it as well.

I agree with Collingwood on this. I think art tries to convey one person's experience to another. I guess good art succeeds in that effort. To make good art, you have to have an experience worth conveying.

As for this Collinwood ("the best known neglected thinker of our time"), I tend to be suspicious of statements like "The Greeks and Romans had no conception of what we call art as something different from craft." Perhaps, but what the Greeks valued as "craft" was pretty damn great. — Bitter Crank

For what it's worth, Collingwood was a philosopher as well as a practicing historian and archeologist. Skeptical or not, I think what he says is worth listening to.

Besides, we go round and round trying to decide what we will call art. — Bitter Crank711962

As indicated in the OP, I don't intend this to be a discussion of the definition of art.

As an artist, skill, craft and technique are crucial to what I do. Skill helps me realize what I want to create. Craft is a bit of a vague word to me, but technique is an aspect of skill. They're all very important. This is true across mediums and skill levels; to say that these things are important in making good art doesn't mean that only artists with an advanced level of knowledge and experience are good. — Noble Dust

Yes, I'm sure skill is important to you as an artist, but is there art you would call good for which not much skill is needed? I point back to my post on visionary art.

"I can splash paint on a canvas," does not make you an artist. — Jackson

On the other hand:

The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations’ Millennium General Assembly is a complex work of art created by James Hampton over a period of fourteen years. Hampton made the array based on several religious visions that prompted him to prepare for Christ’s return to earth. His reference to the ​“third heaven” is based on scriptures citing it as the ​“heaven of heavens” — God’s realm.

Hampton created his masterpiece in a rented carriage house, transforming its drab interior into a resplendent world. He hand-crafted many of the elements from cardboard and plastic, but added structure with found objects from his neighborhood, such as old furniture and jelly jars, and discards like light bulbs from the federal office buildings in which he worked. Hampton selected shimmering metallic foils, purple paper (now faded to tan), and other materials to evoke spiritual awe and splendor. — Smithsonian American Art Museum

I find this beautiful and moving.

Materialism was the view that the universe consists in bits of matter banging into each other in a void. It was rejected after Newton made such effective use of action at a distance. What is being defended here might be better called physicalism - the notion that the laws of physics are adequate to explain the way things are - than materialism. — Banno

This thread is not for discussion of the validity of materialism. You guys all know that but you’re doing it anyway.

Dispensing with all underlying metaphysical assumptions is not the issue though. The issue is the consequences of science proceeding from false metaphysical assumptions. So it is not a matter of removing all such assumptions, and proceeding with none, it is a matter of subjecting them all to a rigorous form of skepticism, and proceeding only from those which pass. — Metaphysician Undercover

Seems I misunderstood what you were trying to say.

PS__Why do you limit this discussion to Classical Physics? Do you have an agenda? Just asking. — Gnomon

Have you read the OP? Have you read the rest of the posts on this thread? If you don't want to play by the terms of discussion I set down, you should go to another thread or start your own.

[2] is at the root of most of our interminable debates. Disagreements on the other items may depend on degree of commitment to Materialistic or Spiritualistic worldviews — Gnomon

As I said in my original post, the validity of materialism is not the subject of this discussion. It's purpose is to try to identify the absolute presuppositions of a materialist view point, i.e. materialism is assumed for the purposes of this discussion.

2] The universe consists entirely of physical substances - matter and energy.
Note ---Since the advent of Quantum & Information theories in Science, the physical foundation of the world was been undermined. What was classically presumed to be absolute, now seems to be indeterminate & uncertain. — Gnomon

As the OP indicates, this discussion is based on classical physics, in particular what was known in 1905, before quantum mechanics had been discovered.

Again, remove (6) and there is no need for a first cause. (2) says that there is stuff, so the issue is resolved. — Banno

As we have discussed, you and I share an understanding that the idea of causality may not be a useful one. But still, causality has been an important metaphysical principle and I think most people believed it is valid in 1905 and probably still today. I'm reluctant to take it off the list. As for my new item on the list - Something can not come from nothing - it may be that, if I keep causality, I don't need it. But I still want to, even if only so I can have an even 10 items on my list.

Anyway, we seem to disagree. I've had my say and if I hop in again I focus on something else. — Bylaw

I feel guilty not responding in detail to your post, but, consistent with what you've written, I'll leave it at that.

How can you discuss the viewpoint of materialism without discussing it's validity? In discussing materialism you are inherently discussing its validity. — Harry Hindu

The "Is there an external physical world" thread is in the middle of a discussion of the validity of materialism right now. I suggest you take your issues there.

You missed the point. In discussing materialism you inevitably get to the point of realizing it has no merit. — Harry Hindu

As I've written many times in this thread, this is not a discussion of the validity of a materialist viewpoint.

continue to live our lives as if there is one. — Ciceronianus

I'm with you. "Acting as if" is metaphysics. It let's us keep going instead of spending all our time arguing.

When I was a Christian, I didn't seriously think about the view of being a Christian. I just was, and accepted the idea that God exists without seriously thinking about what that meant. Once I began to seriously take on the view and asking deeper questions about this viewpoint in an attempt to better understand and defend this viewpoint did I come to understand that what I believed simply didn't fit with more objective observations. So it was only in delving deeper into the view that I began to reject the view. — Harry Hindu

Absolute presuppositions can change with changing knowledge.

Right. So for the purpose of this discussion, we accept the view that macro-sized "physical" objects are the interaction between smaller "physical" objects, and that those smaller "physical" objects are themselves composed of the interactions of even smaller "physical" objects. If "physical" objects are really the interactions of smaller objects, then it seems to me that it doesn't make any sense to say that it's "physical" all the way down. It appears that using a pre-relativity physicists viewpoint actually shows that the world is not "physical" but relational all the way down. — Harry Hindu

This is not a discussion on the merits of materialism.

The problem is, that ideas such as this, "there is an infinite number of points between any two points", are very useful principles, which are not true. Work done at the Planck level demonstrates the falsity of that principle. So useful principles, when not true, tend to have their limits, and when employed at those limits, are counter-productive, producing misleading and deceptive conclusions. — Metaphysician Undercover

This is a discussion of metaphysics before the discoveries in physics of the 20th century were known. Any absolute presupposition has the potential to limit the kinds of things we look for and can see. That's why they change over time.

We can take the position, that these fundamental principles, absolute presuppositions, need not necessarily be true, (which they are not in actuality), and we can also hold that the laws of physics which follow from them need not be true as well, (they just require a predictive capacity), but we will suffer from the consequences of such a choice. — Metaphysician Undercover

I disagree. It is both Collingwood's and Kant's understanding that you can't dispense with all underlying metaphysical assumptions. I agree with them. Science cannot proceed without them.

I don't see why. Hey, let's learn as much as we can. I don't think we need to assume that all can be known by sentient creatures. If we found out - how I don't know - that there was a limit, would we need to stop? — Bylaw

I don't agree. As we approach any problem, ask any question, we have to act as if it's solvable, answerable. If we reach an impasse, we just recalibrate and continue on.

Yes, classical and also with the metaphysical baggage, I would argue, from taking a stand against dualisms and transcendant 'things'. So we are left with an ism that seems to be taking a stand on ontology, when really science at least is taking a stand on methodology. — Bylaw

We are talking about metaphysics, not science.

I think slowly we will end up with something like scientific verificationism and drop the seeming ontological stand of physicalism/materialism. Neutrinos and even massless particles, fields particles in superposition or even whole entities in superposition, and even some physicists beliefs in mathematical realism run counter to substance type claims. — Bylaw

This is not a discussion of the merits of materialism or physicalism. It's an examination of what the underlying assumptions of materialism might be.

Is a scientist hampered if the don't assume that the laws have held since the Big Bang (or before ?! that) and if they don't assume it must hold everywhere (deep in black holes, far away across the universe, wherever). — Bylaw

For the purposes of this discussion, we're talking about classical physics before quantum mechanics and relativity. Before knowledge of an expanding universe. Even if we weren't, I think scientists today still need use this same presupposition. We study things billions of years old and billions of light years away. When we find something that doesn't fit our expectations, we rewrite the laws, but we still expect the new laws to apply everywhere.

But once the ship appears in the other galaxy, being open to rules being different seems like a positive idea. — Bylaw

As I noted, we already study things further away than galaxies. I think it's reasonable to expect conditions to be different in different places and times, but not laws of science.

But I would assume people were at least open to if not leaning towards irreducible levels pre-QM because it seemed like there were fundamental particles to some, even Democritus. — Bylaw

People certainly knew that some things came in small pieces rather than continuous substances. I always assumed this was talking at a more fundamental level. That space and time are continuous. This was one of the presuppositions that Kant identified. I wonder if it was a reaction to Newton's and Leibnitz's invention of calculus, which depend on things being infinitely divisible.

I've read about some scientists today who are speculating that space itself might be quantized. But that's a different discussion.

I can handle tough, I think. — Manuel

Then go for it. She is a wonderful writer. I keep wanting to read more of her books, but I can't bring myself to do it. I have two on my shelf my traitorous daughter gave me.

But not boring — Manuel

Not boring, but intricate. Probably the best police procedural I've read. The interrogations are tough too. I don't know if it's accurate, but it has what my 11th grade English teacher called verisimilitude. It seems very real.

Also, the description of the Irish location and culture are absorbing and convincing.

Dublin Murder Squad — Manuel

French is a tough writer. Hard to read. Here is an Amazon review I wrote for her book "The Secret Place."

"The Secret Place" is about two Dublin detectives, Stephen Moran and Antoinette Conway, investigating the murder of a student at an upper-class boarding school. The focus of the story is on the friendship of four 16-year-old girls. Here is the message I left for the author, Tana French, on her webpage:

Ms. French:

Your books are wonderful, but you are ruthless – to your characters and your readers. I’ve just finished “The Secret Place,” and I am heartbroken. I called my daughter and cursed her for recommending your books and swore I will never read another one. She laughed, not unkindly, and told me she will accidentally leave “The Witch Elm” on my table next time she comes home.

I am grateful to you for sending Stephan Moran to lead me into the lives of those four girls. He and I are kindred spirits; grown men - I’m almost 70 – who still know, have always known, that girls are magic. He would understand my grief.

Thank you.

A line by line response. My responses in italics.

1 - to some degree. As written it sounds like we know we can figure it all out. I guess it probably does, at least at some level, but it doesn't mean we ever will. It seems like a good presupposition to me - We can't show it's true, but we have to pretend it is.

2 - what is a physical substance and does this mean if we discover 'something' that is real but has qualities different from what we considered physical before we would drop physicalism? I ask because this has already happened. What is considered physical has opened up over time. IOW it sounds like physicalism is making a substance claim, but I don't think it is. I tried to keep this simple by putting limitations on us as described in the OP. One limitation is that we look at things from a materialist /physicalist point of view. Another is that we look only at classical physics.

5 - I disagree with what you said elsewhere. I think we could do science without this assumption. If other galaxies have different laws, we can still use science to figure out this galaxies rules and then theirs. If the laws change over time, and there is some evidence this is the case, we can still try to keep up. And if the laws are changing slowly, well, then the research results are relevant for significant periods of time. Yes, it is possible we will someday find things going on far away and long ago that are inconsistent with how we currently see things. But the only way we'll be able to figure that out is by assuming that the rest of the universe operates on the same rules we have here until we run into a contradiction.

8 - I didn't think there was consensus on quantized vs continuous. I think in a classical universe there would be. That's why I included that limitation in the OP.

Mostly murder-mysteries, with some exceptions. — Manuel

I like books that take place in other cultures. I just finished the "Night Watch" books by Sergei Lukyanenko translated from Russian. I have also really liked the Dublin Murder Squad books by Tana French and the Hamish MacBeth mysteries in Scotland.

This has been a very useful thread. — Tom Storm

Yes. I'm having a really good time. In particular these last few posts about which of the items on the list are presuppositions and which might be facts have brought some of my own doubts into focus.

[1] We live in an ordered universe that can be understood by humans.
— Clarky

well, at least 4% of it, anyway. — Wayfarer

And that's why Collingwood says it's an absolute presupposition. We can't prove it's true, but we have to act as if it were in order to do science.

I think science is an extension of ordinary everyday lived understanding. The world is intelligible, "makes sense", to us, and to animals; if it weren't we could not survive. I think science is the endeavor to extend that basic comprehensibility. — Janus

I agree. I just went back to look at what lead up to this comment. A few posts back I misunderstood something you wrote. I thought you said the universe was not comprehensible. What I think you really said was that it is comprehensible, we know that because of our experience, and because of that it's not an assumption. That's a good point, and it's something I've thought about.

Let's go through the listed candidates for absolute presuppositions. I've added a couple at the end.

[1] We live in an ordered universe that can be understood by humans.
[2] The universe consists entirely of physical substances - matter and energy.
[3] These substances behave in accordance with scientific principles, laws.
[4] Scientific laws are mathematical in nature.
[5] The same scientific laws apply throughout the universe and at all times.
[6] The behaviors of substances are caused.
[7] Substances are indestructible, although they can change to something else.
[8] The universe is continuous. Between any two points there is at least one other point.
[9] Space and time are separate and absolute. This from @Manuel.
[10] Something can not be created from nothing. I added this, but I'm not sure it's different from 6.

I've bolded four items we might be able to say we know from experience. I guess, based on that, you could say they are not absolute presuppositions. I'm pretty sure Collingwood would disagree. I want to come down with Collingwood, but the argument seems nitpicky - "Well, you haven't seen all of the universe. You don't know what you'll find." That's in conflict with one of my favorite quotes from my favorite scientist, Stephen Jay Gould - In science, “fact” can only mean “confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent.

I suppose we could ban Clarky just to meet quotas and so on. — Baden

The Kimono Tattoo — Manuel

I checked on Amazon. Turns out the book was praised by the International Pulpwood Queen and Timber Guy Book Club. No, I'm not joking.

The book sounds interesting though.

T Clark was banned? — DingoJones

Sorry, it was a joke. I am the Philosopher Formerly Known as T Clark.

Philosophers like Nietzsche , Foucault ,Heidegger , Derrida , Deleuze and Merleau-Ponty argue that the notion of the nothing as lack is the result of grounding difference and negation on identity and Sameness. They instead ground concepts like identity and sameness , which are the basis of the notion of the empirical object , in difference. Identity is an effect of difference. From this vantage , talking about the ‘nothing’ as a lack of identity is incoherent. — Joshs

Yes, I took the concrete path to the goal. You and those philosophers took the abstract path. We all seem to agree there can't be nothing.

It seems instead to me that materialism is an idea which can never be verified... — Hello Human

This is true. Materialism is a way of looking at things, a point of view. It isn't true or false, it's useful or not useful. The same is true for all the other isms.

Philosophers like Nietzsche , Foucault ,Heidegger , Derrida , Deleuze and Merleau-Ponty — Joshs

Are those guys outside the universe or do you have a point?

I was just reading through the "Does Nothingness Exist" thread. It got me thinking maybe we should add this to our list of absolute presuppositions - Something can not be created from nothing.

Or is that the same as "Everything has a cause?"

In my experience, the subject of nothingness comes up most often when someone asks whether or not something can be created out of nothing. I think the consensus is that it can not. I'd argue with that, except the argument always becomes circular when I say "what about" and the other guy says "that's not nothing."

So, here I am in space, as far from anything as I can possibly be. Let's designate a cubic meter as our volume of interest. Now, even way out here there are particles and radiation, even if at very low levels. So I build a box around my volume. The walls are made of material that blocks all radiation and particles. The inside of the box is lined with material that absorbs all radiation and particles. So now we have a box full of nothing. Ok, ok, we'll get a waiver for neutrinos. So... nothing. But what about gravity waves, what about the curvature of space. And even if I could argue my way out of that, then there'd be the quantum field and virtual particles.

So, I guess that means there can't be nothing inside the limits of our universe. What about outside?