It doesn't really differ. That's why I said from the start that all paintings can be thought of as pictures...or not...depending on the definition of the terms (interpretation).That's also why I offered the Ship of Theseus and Sorites examples as analogies.

I say there is no ontological fact that determines what it is correct to say. You said I am doing ontology in saying that...and I respond again that it depends on your interpretation of the term 'ontology'.

Exactly...now you are making my case for me.

Not at all. We can all form an idea of a black square. We don't need a separate realm where the idea lives.

Are these paintings to be considered pictures? Are they representational?
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Well, if you must. The idea that a black square only represents a black square looks a tad too platonic for my taste... it smells of perfect forms and such nonsense. — Banno

Platonism not needed; it is just the idea of a black square that is being represented, an idea which can be re-presented in countless ways, just as the form of a tree or a human face can be re-presented in countless ways.

I'd say it may be said to be one possible representation of a black square, a picture of a black square, and that it also may be said to be just a black square because squares are abstract objects.

Just as a representational, in the traditional sense, paintings are pictures of whatever it is they depict, and at the same time are just painted shapes on a flat surface. I see an intractable ambiguity when it comes to visual representation.

As I've said I see there is always an ambiguity between what a painting represents, whether it is an abstract object such as a square, circle or rectangle or a painting that depicts a landscape, person, still life or whatever, and the formal aspect of all paintings which exists regardless of the subject and which consists in some pattern of tones, textures and colors on a surface and which constitutes a strong well-realized composition or does not.

Cezanne, the Cubists the abstract expressionist painters and others all self-consciously explored in various ways the ambiguity between paintings as patterned flat surfaces and paintings as representations of three dimension space. Your definition of picture is one, but not the only one, and not so useful as it is too restrictive in my view. But "each to their own" I guess.

:cool:

It is a painting on canvas that we might say depicts a red rectangle and is thus to be considered a picture or we might say it is just red paint on canvas in rectangular configuration. If something is just paint on some surface, and does not depict anything then it is just a painted surface.

There is nothing substantive in these kinds of questions― as I've said a few times now it's all in the interpretation.

This is one of those perhaps odd consequences of accepting the institutional theory of art -- Van Gogh's paintings that were not known but found later were not art before they were found, even though they were painted by Van Gogh! — Moliere

Not merely an "odd" consequence, but an absurd one. Van Gogh's works are rich, beautiful and intelligently composed images which are markedly different than anything created before.

I'm hesitant to justify art by its purposes. If anything I think it's entirely useless, and that's sort of the point. Rather than there being functions which art fulfills it can fulfill any function we want -- so a pot, though a useful item, can at the same time be a work of art. But in judging the pot as a work of art I am not concerned with its utility -- a pot in a museum from some ancient time is interesting because of when it was made and what it might mean for the history of art and ourselves, not because it's good at carrying water. — Moliere

Things like pottery and architecture may be considered to be art, and yet serve practical purposes. An American architect called Sullivan said in an essay that in architecture "form follows function". What I think all art has in common is that it attempts to bring an idea or vision into concrete being. We might say that some modern works embody an idea or vision which is quite trivial, aesthetically speaking and that their cultural value consists only in their reflective critical relationship with what had come to be considered "the canon" in an institutionalized monolithic, linear view of art history.

What does ontology have to do with that? — javi2541997

One of a couple of central questions @Moliere asked was what is the distinction between paintings and drawings. I originally simply pointed out that the usual distinction between paintings and drawings is one of the difference between pictures produced using wet or dry mediums.

I referred to paintings and drawings as pictures and then got drawn into a side issue as to whether all paintings and drawings can be thought of as pictures, and I pointed out that it would depend on definitions of the terms, not on some presence or lack of shared essential characteristics of paintings and pictures that make it necessary that they should be thought of as either in the same category or not.

I brought ontology into it to emphasize that it is a mistake to think that there are always some essential characteristics that make it necessary that something must be thought to belong to a particular category or identity.

What is?

I should have addressed this more thoroughly:

They are not all pictures but can all count as pictures. — Banno

You are putting words in my mouth. I'm simply saying that all paintings can count as pictures on reasonable definitions of the terms. On more restrictive definitions all paintings may not count as pictures. I haven't anywhere said that not all paintings are pictures.

On your definition of ontology, perhaps. Ontology is usually understood to be concerned with what exists, and what exists is usually considered to be not a matter of opinion or interpretation. Do you think there exists a fact of the matter as to whether all paintings are pictures? Of course I'm not denying that there might exist different opinions dependent on different interpretations of the terms.

Take the "Ship of Theseus': there is no fact of the matter as to whether the ship with all its parts replaced is the same ship or not, so not an ontological, but a semantic, matter. What does exist is the ship: that's ontology.

Right it's like the 'Ship of Theseus' and 'Sorites'...just a matter of definition not ontology.

How would you know about it other than by observing purposeful behavior? Of course it isn't substance like...although that said, neither purpose nor substance are observable.

I'm not about to trust your judgement as to why Wittgenstein said what he did.

1. Teleology does not exist — Leontiskos

This is a strawman. I'm not claiming teleology doesn't exist. A teleological explanation is an explanation in terms of purpose rather than causation, and teleological explanations are better fitted to understanding and explaining human and some animal behavior.

The idea that the universe as a whole has a purpose―that it was brought into existence on purpose rather than that it just came into existence either without cause, or from some unknown cause, is not supported by any evidence. It seems reasonable to think the universe could not have brought itself into existence on purpose. The other possibility is that it always existed.

Current scientific consensus seems to be that the universe did come into existence, but we cannot say anything about how it came about, because observational data cannot come to us from anywhere but within the already existent universe.

It seems to me you are clutching at straws attempting to confirm something you want to believe.

I was editing my previous post so there is more there for you to address now.

Why quote an ambiguous passage from Wittgenstein instead of answering directly and in good faith? Perhaps Wittgenstein just means that the human interpretations of human experience, replete with all the values and meanings inherent in those interpretations is not to be found in the physical world. Again, hardly controversial.

1. Modern science long rejected teleology, even among plants and animals — Leontiskos

Science has long since gone beyond such a mechanistic view of animality. It's obvious that (some) animals ( including humans) can respond to their environments in novel ways. Such a thing is not possible for simple mere mechanisms. It doesn't follow that there is any overarching purpose behind animal behavior.

3. Given that this conclusion about plant and animal teleology turned out to be unsound, do we have any reason to believe that the conclusion about teleology more generally is sound? — Leontiskos

It was the overwhelming evidence found in observational data and being unable in the face of it to cling on to entrenched prejudices that enabled biologists to see purpose, and even intelligence and reasoning, in animal behavior. What imaginable kind of data is going to provide the evidence to allow us to see universal teleology.

The question is, "What is the rational basis for an anti-teleological view, given that the anti-teleological view as applied to plants and animals turned out to be baseless?" — Leontiskos

The analogical reasoning from one case to the other is not valid. The argument against holding the veiw that there is an overarching purpose to the universe is simply that there is no evidence for such a thing. We don't have to outright deny the possibility, but without evidence that is what it remains; a mere possibility.

They certainly thought they had good arguments in the past, and the current state of science sees most of those arguments as faulty. — Leontiskos

Those arguments were not so much arguments as prejudices, if you are referring to intentionality in animals. Some, perhaps much, of that prejudice came form religious views that propounded the idea that humans are not animals and that animals did not have souls. Luckily good observations of animal behavior exploded that myth.

Of course you won’t see anything like purpose or agency in the data that these instruments collect - but as I said, this is red herring. — Wayfarer

Why is it a "red herring"? We see purpose or agency in the data collected by observing animal behavior. Are you claiming there is purpose or agency there in the inorganic even though we cannot detect it? If you are claiming that, then on what grounds?

I’m interested in a perspective based on phenomenology - that the appearance of organisms IS the appearance of intentionality. It is how intentionality manifests. It’s not panpsychism, because I’m not saying that consciousness is somehow implicit in all matter. The fact that inorganic matter is not intentional in itself is not particularly relevant to that. — Wayfarer

That intentionality, at least in some "proto" sense comes into being with organisms (well at least with animal organisms) is hardly controversial. You are not saying that consciousness (and intentionality?) is somehow implicit in all matter, so that leaves me wondering what you are saying.

Why don't you answer the question in my last post? My first paragraph there explains what I found in your OP, that I can actually agree with.

OK, I'll play along:

However the question of purpose, or its lack, doesn’t always require invoking some grand ‘cosmic meaning.’ Meaning and purpose are discovered first in the intelligibility of ordinary life—in the way we write, behave, build, and think. — Wayfarer

You say "doesn't always require"―does it ever require? I agree that meaning and purpose would be impossible without our experience being intelligible to us in the ways it is, just as meaning and purpose for animals presumably could not be possible for them without their experience being intelligible to them in the ways it is.

Furthermore, the belief that the Universe is purposeless is itself a judgement about meaning. — Wayfarer

It's a judgement based on critical thought. The human notion of purpose presupposes agency. and agency presupposes perception/ experience. If the universe as a whole has no agency, no perception/ experience then how could it have a purpose?

Even the most rudimentary organisms behave as if directed toward ends: seeking nutrients, avoiding harm, maintaining internal equilibrium. Nothing in the inorganic realm displays these (or any!) behaviours. This kind of directedness—what might be called biological intentionality—is not yet consciously purposeful, but it is not mechanical either. — Wayfarer

Who ever said that the basic nature of life is mechanical? Mere mechanism doesn't allow for change based on feedback other than degradation. 'Intentionality' is a slippery term. We think of human behavior as intentional. We also think of some animal behavior as intentional, but it seems a stretch to call the behavior of simple organism, or even plants or fungi, intentional. You agree that the inorganic universe is not intentional or purposeful, and if the vast bulk of existence is inorganic, then how do you reconcile that?

I'll leave it there for now, because if you won't answer the questions already posed, I don't want to waste any more time.

"Your just a positivist". The usual lame response when you have no comeback that actually addresses my questions. Your OP says there is purpose and meaning for organisms. I can agree with that as a way of understanding animal, and perhaps plant, behavior.

Do you want to say something more than that? If so, what? I couldn't find it in your OP beyond some vague intimations.

It was realized that the old idea that the universe was created for a purpose was an anthropomorphic/ anthropocentric projection. Modern philosophical analysis has exposed the idea as incoherent.

Your "just-so" history is not factual, but merely one among many other possible interpretations.

It can reasonably be said that it strictly has nothing to do with science except generally insofar as part of the scientific method consists in not believing anything without evidence. Since all and everything we can know is within the universe, i.e. immanent, not transcendent, could there ever be definitive evidence that the universe was created for a purpose, or any reason, other than wishful thinking, to believe that it was?

Are you actually willing to claim that the Universe has an overarching purpose or are you just trading on the ambiguity, the conflation, I pointed to?

i.e. a composition fallacy. — 180 Proof

Exactly.

You misunderstand entirely then. Perhaps it's my fault for not expressing myself clearly enough. I've not been claiming that all paintings are pictures, as though there were some context-independent fact of the matter, but that all paintings can count as pictures, given certain interpretations of the terms.

The way a lack of intent affects meaning can be seen by imagining that you see a handwritten note with poem written on it, stuck on a wall in a bar. You ponder the meaning of the poem, but then someone tells you it was computer generated. That's when you realize you have a reflexive tendency to assume intent when you see or hear language. You may experience cognitive dissonance because the poem had a profound meaning to it, all of which was coming from you.

The problem with using ChatGPT is that it's processing statements that were intentional. It's not just randomly putting words together. — frank

In your first paragraph you seem to be saying there is no intent there, and in your second paragraph you seem to be saying there is intent there.

It's easy it seems to conflate the true and obvious idea that there are purposes and meaning within the universe, with the incoherent idea that the universe has an overarching purpose.

Except I was not the one offering restrictive definitions―you said not all paintings are pictures, as though there were some fact of the matter, and not that it is merely a matter of how 'picture' and 'painting' is defined as to whether all paintings also count as pictures or not.

The idea of a transcendent meaning is incoherent ...
... like e.g. disembodied mind. — 180 Proof

:up: A prime example!

The meaning of the idea of the transcendent is an immanent one too―we don't know anything transcendent, and this is so by mere definition.

A painting is a picture
— Janus
Why?

Kazimir Malevich, Black Square (1915) explicitly does not represent anything.

Also, note that "picture" does not occur in the OP.

A painting captures a moment in a narrative.
— BC
I like that.

Not all paintings, then, are pictures. — Banno

PICTURE | English meaning - Cambridge Dictionary
https://dictionary.cambridge.org › dictionary › english › picture
picture
uk/ˈpɪk.tʃər/ us/ˈpɪk.tʃɚ/
noun
a drawing, painting, photograph, etc.
an image seen on a television or cinema screen
a film
the cinema
...
verb [ T ]
to imagine something
View full content

You are working with a restrictive interpretation of the word 'picture'. Malevich's work depicts a black square. It is a depiction of an abstract object rather than a physical object.

From Wikipedia:
In his manifesto for the Suprematist movement, Malevich stated that the paintings were intended as "a desperate struggle to free art from the ballast of the objective world" by focusing solely on form.[4]

Not all paintings capture a moment in a narrative either. Paintings may do that as may drawings.

In any case the OP specifically asked what criteria make something count as a painting, asking what is the difference between a painting and a drawing.

I don't think that's true.
— Janus
This is not true either
— Janus

Fair points, honestly that post was half-baked. — hypericin

:up:

I think your notion of "picture" needs clarifying here -- you've stated that a picture need not be representational, and others have mostly taken you to task on "picture" because it seems to indicate a kind of representation? I think?

Either way if this is how you'll differentiate paintings from drawings -- dry and wet pictures -- it's fair to ask "So how do we identify a picture?" — Moliere

I hope what I've written above answers the question. I realize there is a conventional distinction between representational and abstract paintings and drawings, but as I said earlier I think abstract paintings and drawings are representational in a difference sense in that they represent abstract objects or images.

@javi2541997 failed to answer my question as to why he didn't think the Dali picture he used as an example is representaional. Perhaps Moliere, your notion of "picture" needs clarifying in order to identify just where it conflicts with the picture of the meaning of 'picture' I have been presenting.

A painting is art by definition, a drawing may or may not be. — hypericin

I don't think that's true. Watercolours and gouaches are generally considered to be paintings and they may be used for example in architectural design as depictions of what projected buildings or landscape gardens will look like. Are they to be considered art or not? Of course a sketch may be either a painting or a drawing depending on mediums.

Drawings are 2d and represent something other than the literal markings themselves. Paintings are a certain kind of drawing. — hypericin

This is not true either―there are abstract drawings that are all about mark-making and composition, just as there are abstract paintings.

If I am not mistaken, I think you use the word 'picture' thinking of the way of representing real life. — javi2541997

You are mistaken and I think that should have been clear from what I've written.

So, you don't see differences at all. — javi2541997

The difference between painting and drawing, as I've said, is predominately one of mediums.

What could it mean to say the universe is inherently meaningful? Nothing other than that it was created for some purpose.

Of course the things we and other animals experience are meaningful to us and to them, insofar as we and they have needs we and they strive to meet.

Spinoza used the term 'conatus' to signify a natural tendency of things to persist― to survive. Nietzsche, who considered Spinoza to be a kindred thinker, expressed a similar idea with his 'will to power'. If life has a meaning beyond mere survival it consists in the volition to thrive, to reach one's potential (by 'one' here I include animals).

If there is a good we all strive for it is potence. Potence is naturally desirable (considered good) and impotence is naturally undesirable (considered bad). This is not to say that all animals ( or even humans) think consciously about such things.

The idea of a transcendent meaning is incoherent (unless there be posited a creator). All meaning is immanent and relative to life as lived, at least for animals. Humans who posit gods and spiritual realms of course do create, and may live in accordance with, dimensions of imagined meaning.

How does a Last Supper differer from a coat of off-white? — Banno

If a coat of off-white is presented on a surface as an artwork, then the only difference is that the former is clearly a representational work. I say both are pictures in that they are both designed to depict something. I suppose you could say they are both representational in that one represents a gathering of people at a meal and the other represents an idea, but I think that would be stretching it.

...unless it was painted using Microsoft paint. — Banno

Sure but I don't think Microsoft paint is really paint, but is rather "paint", just as Microsoft pencil, charcoal or pastel is not pencil, charcoal or pastel. Digitally produced works do not count as one or the other, but as prints (if they are printed out that is).

↪Janus The story we tell about the painting is different to the story we tell about the wall, even if the medium is the same. The Sistine Chapel ceiling might have had a couple of coats of nice duck-egg blue...

Further, not all paintings are pictures... — Banno

I'm not seeing the relevance of your comment about the painting and the wall.

All paintings and drawings are pictures on my definition (which is not to say all paintings are representational in case that was how you read it).

In any case I was answering the questions "What is a painting as opposed to a drawing?". Both are applications of some medium or other on some surface or other, and I was pointing out that generally 'painting' refers to works which use predominately wet mediums and 'drawing' refers to works which use predominately dry mediums.

A picture? Tell this to surrealist artists such as Salvador Dalí. — javi2541997

Why would you say that is not a picture?

Isn't painting the way we express our dreams and hallucinations, while drawing is a simple technique? — javi2541997

'Painting' as a verb signifies the act, and as a noun the product of the act. Same with 'drawing'.

A painting is a picture whose predominant medium is paint. A drawing is a picture whose predominant medium is pencil, charcoal, pastel, chalk etc.. There is no hard and fast distinction...it's basically a somewhat loose distinction between wet and dry mediums.

However, the SEP article seems to want to say that a proposition is what is in common between a number of sentences or statements. That's what I don't get.
— Ludwig V

That's exactly the standard analysis. The bolded part that follows the word, "that" is a proposition.
— frank
You're offering an ostensive definition, and your problem is that when you point to a proposition "the bolded part", I see a sentence. If you think about it, it isn't possible to "bold" a proposition - it's like trying to italicize an apple. Wrong category.
Not sure whether mine is the standard analysis, but it may be. It's a work in progress, anyway. — Ludwig V

I can't see a problem with the idea that propositions are the conceptual content of assertive statements or sentences, or in other words propositions are what is being asserted (proposed). Sentences and statements obviously may take many different forms, even in the one language, not to mention different languages, while conveying the same ideas. So the propositional content is simply the idea or ideas which are conveyed. Where's the problem?

It merely depends on what we mean by "subjective." If we mean by it "subject-relative," then such things are subjective. — Leontiskos

The most common usage of "subjective/ objective" means "matter of opinion/ not matter of opinion" and that was, of course the usage I had in mind. So whether one feels cold or not is not a matter of opinion, and hence there is an objective fact of the matter.

Is it hot or cold? Or is it undecidable? Or is it just shit we made up?

None of these quite work. — Banno

:up: She feels cold, you feel hot. Not merely subjective, but a fact of the matter about how different bodies feel. So, not undecidable or "made up shit" either. But also not metaphysical speculation, which was what I was talking about with "undecidable".

As always, trying to shy away from universalization. — Moliere

Good policy!

Is it possible to offer an aesthetic justification, rather than a causal-historical-preference justification, for what we read and say in philosophy? — Moliere

What if the aesthetic justifications we offer are such as they are on account of our culturally/ historically conditioned intuitions and preferences? I suppose genetics may also be in play. Anything else?

Certainly they made sense to them. But they don't make sense to us. Now, are we going to worry about whether they made sense simpiciter or in a non-relative sense of making sense. I hope not.

It's easy to dismiss their theories. But some of their questions survive to this day, in the form of logical paradoxes. (It's just that we don't draw the same conclusions from them.) They weren't idiots. — Ludwig V

They make sense to us insofar as we can see why they would have made sense to them, and that's about it, I'd say. The point was only that, absent empirical evidence or logical necessity, the plausibility of metaphysical speculations can only be assessed according to the degree to which they may or may not make intuitive sense, and of course that will vary somewhat from individual to individual.

Thus in saying that there can be no certainty regarding the truth of metaphysical speculations, I am not claiming that people cannot feel certain about them, but that whatever certainty they might feel is underdetermined.

Yes, I was wrong. There are things other than God that can apply goals - humans and some higher animals. The examples @SophistiCat were the results of human planning. — T Clark

I don't think you were wrong but that you and @SophistiCat were thinking about different things―namely local purposes and global purpose.

Since, therefore, it does not befit the first mover to be diffused throughout an orbit, but rather to proceed from one certain principle, and as it were, point, no part of the world, and no star, accounts itself worthy of such a great honour; hence by the highest right we return to the sun, who alone appears, by virtue of his dignity and power, suited for this motive duty and worthy to become the home of God himself, not to say the first mover. — Johannes Kepler quoted by Burtt, E. A.. The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science

That seems a remarkably anthropomorphic "just so" kind of statement.

But that doesn't answer why we're attracted to what we're attracted to -- there are so many philosophical questions out there that you have to make choices about what to read or think about. I'm asking after philosophical justifications for this aesthetic choice. — Moliere

It doesn't seem to me there are that many philosophical questions. Or maybe it would be better to say that what appear to be many questions are all variations and/ or elaborations on a few basic questions. As Heidegger said, we are the beings whose very being is an issue for them.

The categories of philosophy seem to show the basic questions. Epistemology is concerned with the question what can we know and how can we know it. Semantics with the nature of meaning and reference. Logic with the nature of truth. Metaphysics and ontology with the nature of being―of what is. Aesthetics with the nature of beauty, harmony, unity and so on. Ethics and moral philosophy with how best to live. Phenomenology with the nature of experience.

We are probably each attracted to a different mix with different emphases on the main categories. I understand that there are people who want to believe this or that when it comes to metaphysics for example. As @Tom Storm noted some dislike science because they think it disenchants the world. Others like science because to them, on the contrary, understanding how things work makes the world more interesting and hence more not less enchanting.

I have always been constitutionally incapable of believing anything that does not seem sufficiently evidenced. I was once attracted to religious/ spiritual thought, and I tried hard to find various religious ideas believable, but I failed the task. So, you could say I would like to believe the world has some overarching meaning, but I just don't see the evidence. Probably a lot depends on what ideas and beliefs one is exposed to, perhaps inducted into, when growing up.

Well, yes. In a way. But in case like this, you may find that people will infer that metaphysical speculations are always uncertain. But that's misleading. Better to say that metaphysical speculations are neither certain nor uncertain. But that doesn't mean that it's an open house. Interpretations do have to meet standards before they are acceptable. You can't interpret the duck-rabbit as a picture of a lion. That's why one talks of interpretations as valid or invalid, (or plausible or not, etc.) rather than true or false. — Ludwig V

What you are saying seems to me to boil down to an assertion that metaphysical speculations must be coherent and make intuitive sense in order to be judged valid and plausible. If so, I agree.

So, it seems reasonable to me to think the Presocratic speculations about cosmic constitution made sense to them in terms of what were thought to be the basic elements and the everyday experience of finding things to be made of different materials.

I agree that it's not a question of new information. But that doesn't mean that new ways of thinking about the problem, especially new ways of interpreting what we already know, are ever entirely impossible. I tend to see what are labelled metaphysical questions as questions of interpretation. So the developments that started the analytic tradition bring a new perspective to old questions and enable debates to radically change. Questions of interpretation don't have closure in the way that questions of information or even rationality sometimes do. — Ludwig V

Right, not new information, but new perspectives based on new interpretations. I agree that metaphysical questions are questions of interpretation. Just as with poetry there can be no closure, and that is not a bug, but a feature. It is the impossibility of closure that leads me to say there can be no certainty in relation to metaphysical speculations.