Abstractions aren't hidden. They're in plain view everywhere. Aren't you yourself an abstraction?
After the US and South Korea started joint military drills last week, North Korea canceled a planned meeting with South Korean officials on Tuesday and even threatened to back out of the historic summit between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un scheduled for June 12 in Singapore.
The word ''art'' is very vague but I think art is a medium of expression. The message may be everything under the sun and the medium too has a similar range.
What you want to say and how you want to say it.
These are all aesthetic considerations of the loaf. Is that what you're getting at? If so, I'd say the parts serve the whole, when it comes to the utilitarian artisan. The parts still have value in themselves, though.
But it's not clear to me when it comes to a painting, or a piece of music. What is the "whole" here? I don't know. The artwork doesn't have a clear utility (nutrition). Nutrition of the spirit, maybe? An attempt to create "actual being" that fails?
But it's not clear to me when it comes to a painting, or a piece of music. What is the "whole" here? I don't know. The artwork doesn't have a clear utility (nutrition). Nutrition of the spirit, maybe? An attempt to create "actual being" that fails?
My point is that in the phrase "it is certain", "is certain" is not attitudinal. Is this not obvious to you?
You appear to have proceeded with faulty logic. You say, Kant has convinced me that how things are cannot be known. Therefore when people talk in a way in which they claim that how things are is known, they cannot actually mean that how things are is known. So, you conclude that what they really mean when they sat that how things are is known, is that how things are to them is known. In reality though, they really mean that how things are is known.
Do you see the problem? People are claiming that how things are is known. You say that it is impossible that how things are is known. So you conclude that they are not really claiming that how things are is known. But just because it is impossible that how things are can be known, this does not mean that it is impossible for people to claim that how things are is known. And despite your false conclusion, people go on claiming that how things are is known, though this itself might be a falsity.
I didn't deny this only that I don't think it is art's goal.The goal of art is not to create paraphraseable imagery, but to create something to which no paraphrase ever does justice
Infinite chains are truncated at the level of appropriate meaning.
What you seem to be worried about in my position is the view that science and philosophy do not provide the same thing. Science is supposed to provide knowledge, of course, replacing vague proper names with lists of properties truly possessed by things. One fails as a scientist if one cannot not replace a name such as ‘Pluto’ with increasingly accurate properties of what we now call the dwarf planet Pluto. But this has never been the case in the arts. We do not understand a painting by Picasso by discovering an ever-lengthening list of true facts about it. The goal of art is not to create paraphraseable imagery, but to create something to which no paraphrase ever does justice. The same goes for history. Here, factual research in the archives is only one part of the work. To understand Napoleon or Suleiman the Magnificent requires going beyond the verifiable facts and understanding an object that lies somewhat beyond knowledge. The same holds for philosophy. Socrates gives us no knowledge about virtue, friendship, or justice. Philosophy is not a proto-science from which the sciences are spin-offs. The reverse is actually the case: the pre-Socratics are certainly scientists, but in my view not quite philosophers. They speculate about the ultimate physical root to which everything can be reduced— this is a scientific aspiration, and not a philosophical one, as shown by Socrates’ jail cell remarks distancing himself from Empedocles’ naturalism.
I am not sure I understand here. Is it because he is imitative in the way Plato suggests in the Republic or do you mean that Picasso always founds new ways of presenting what he had previously presented.Some art may be hard to paraphrase, but its meaning has finite strokes. No, study of a single Picasso does not reveal ever increasing detail because the Picasso itself is a limited study of something else.
Yes, I wanted to bring that up, I don't agree with Harman that there is a finite interpretation, in fact I would strenuously argue against any finite limit, as long as there are humans there will be arguments about what is the correct way to interpret. I think the reason why masterpieces are masterpieces is because they continue to strongly affect their observers.The on-going creation of art does in fact reveal an ever lengthening list of (sometimes) true facts about the subject matter it captures...
What reveals more about the world and is harder to paraphrase, a photograph of a person or Picasso's portrait of them?
They may have worked alone, but no one can fully isolate themselves from society, they have to be raised by someone, go to school and learn. Yes they can become eccentric, and perhaps by in being so isolated they can see further and clearer than those who are so fully enmeshed in society that it is impossible for them to have such a point of view.artists who worked alone throughout their lives
I don't see what you mean by "propositional attitude". An attitude is the property of an individual. My attitude is different from your attitude. On this premise, I assume that my attitude toward any given proposition is different from your attitude toward that proposition. If "how things are" is a matter of propositional attitude, how do you jump to the conclusion that there is such a thing as "how things are for us"?
I agree with you here, because this is the point I am arguing. What we refer to as a certainty, something which cannot be doubted, is something non-attitudinal. Whether there is anything which fulfills this condition is another question. However, if there is nothing, then what justifies the attitude of certitude? And if this attitude cannot be justified, then the attitude of uncertainty is the justified attitude.
The "goal" depends. The conscious goal of the artist? Sometime's there isn't one. The metaphysical telos of art in general? Big shoes to fill, no? I like what Berdyaev said about art, paraphrasing: "art wants to create actual being, but fails." Art has the divine creative urge, to create being itself. Laughable or controversial, maybe, but real.
Even for myself, my motives for making art depend. I will say, in leu of the Witty quote I just posted to the TPF Quote Cabinet, that the music I've made that I found to be the most personally satisfying and cathartic was the work that was the most personal and honest, as cliche as that is. The personal goal, for me, of making music is to go deeper and deeper, both into myself as I evolve (or devolve), and also into the medium that I have available to me. To explore my own being concurrently with exploring the medium, and to explore how the two interact, and how they interact with the world. All of this is a product of the world around me; the world and the life I find myself in dictate how I respond to the medium, and to what extent I can go into myself to pull a piece of myself out and transform it into something.
It is very important for the artist to gauge his
position aright, to realize that he has a duty to his art and to
himself, that he is not king of the castle but rather a servant
of a nobler purpose. He must search deeply into his own soul,
develop and tend it, so that his art has something to clothe,
and does not remain a glove without a hand.
By "contingent" are you trying to say that there is no such things as how things are? I don't think that word serves this purpose.
If this is your understanding, Cavacava, can you explain why art is not paraphrasable?
To communicate feeling/value/meaning.
As much a something as anything else.