They are not right or wrong about what they like, and what they like is probably what they judge to be better, more artistic. — Bitter Crank

Yes, but throughout this thread we have been discussing more than personal taste - potential objective criteria (you suggested effort and quality) by which to assess a work. It's even been suggested that bad art isn't worth calling 'art'.

I agree with you about Grant Wood. It's unfortunate when a work becomes over exposed and exploited. It is almost impossible to see properly.

I would say that the music academic probably doesn't like pop music and is a musical snob besides. — Bitter Crank

The question is how do we decide this is the case or if he is correct about pop's artistic merits?

Hey, very interesting! Not-art, though. — Bitter Crank

On what basis are you saying it is not art - personal opinion?

Quality and effort shows whether it's Mozart's Requiem or the latest chart topper, and so do a lack of quality. — Bitter Crank

I disagree. And firstly you'll have a devil of a job explaining what 'quality' and 'effort' mean and how you can tell when they are embodied in a work. Effort? Mozart wrote most of his pieces with almost no effort - he was a genius (let's not count his unfinished requiem, he was sick). My dad put a huge amount of effort into his painting and he still sucked. So effort means zilch.

Quality? What do you say to the music academic who says that all pop music is junk, a debased musical form? How is quality revealed in painting? There are many people who think Norman Rockwell is a better artist than Picasso - how do we establish if they are right or wrong?

How do you, or Dreyfus, explain why Nazism is so evil?

If you want to set yourselves up as judges over Heidegger's enlightenment status, then surely you should have the words to explain Heidegger's involvement with Nazism. — baker

Since I don't really accept the idea of an enlightened person in the first place, I have nothing to explain. People are flawed and support ideas and do things that cause suffering. I can't speak for Dreyfus.

'm not sure we're on the same page here. — baker

Maybe we aren't. So your enhanced proposed question is:

quote="baker;638847"]do I just want someone who will provide me with another fancy layer of denial and delusion?"[/quote]

Often people end up following paths by accident or without planning to. The questions you pose (which are highly self-aware in a particular way) would make no sense since they are not locating themselves as searchers of truth. In other words, if you are not shopping, you won't have a list.

There's a second group who are consumers of truth. From what I have seen they do ask those questions already and these are generally buried inside the question 'Is the teacher a charlatan'. When you drill down, which I have sometimes done, they generally will say things like - "I don't want to be deluded by false ideas or by a teacher who is misguided or a hypocrite who just tells me what I want to hear.'

There's always been the inherent problem that if you are not enlightened yourself, how do you, a flawed creature, have the capacity to wisely asses what path to follow in the first place? Surely it is bound to go wrong (sometimes horribly so) for most.

None taken.

Ah yes, my favorite past time. Making claims with no justification. — Noble Dust

Is it? Do you not see my point? So far what you seem to have done is provide an example from personal taste using an appeal to self-evidence.

I guess we don't have anything further to say then. You're making claims with no justification.

I could have put Taylor Swift or the Rolling Stones up there too, What's the difference? That's the key issue at stake here? Or are you suggesting there are Platonic forms we access intuitively and as a consequence we just know what is bad and good?

All I'm saying is that people seem to conflate bad music with no music. — Agent Smith

You seemed to be saying more than this. My mistake. Well, yes as I have said, people conflate bad art with non-art. But bad art must be also be a thing if there can be good art. Hence my question - how do we determine good from bad?

wtf? — Noble Dust

A poetic rhapsody on your handle.

I asked you first. — Agent Smith

No, you did not ask me that. You asked is bad music bad? A very different question. You made an assertion that there is bad music. How did you make that assessment and can you provide an example?

Oh, there's bad music! And how! And how is it established? Well, a standard has to maintained, despite the constantly changing musical landscape. And the standard has to be maintained by gate keepers who are smart enough to understand how music is changing. — Noble Dust

What you have done here is make some somewhat random assertions. Give us an example of bad music and why.

And then once this is established for certain we can then go to Agent Smith's second question as to whether it counts as music.

Yep - those are the questions. Anything is assessed as good or bad in relation to some kind of criteria.

Is bad music music? — Agent Smith

Is there bad music? If so, how is this established.

These kinda "art" are precisely what art philosophers have been wondering about; the question "what is art?" remains unanswered. — Agent Smith

The hard part; the part that causes real dispute is the answer to the question, is it any good? Someone on the forum once said that aesthetics is meaningless if you are not an idealist. The Transcendentals, the truths by which one might assess art really depend on a metaphysics such as Plato's forms.

I guess it is also possible to develop a shared agreement of objective criteria within a likeminded community (like the Pre-Raphaelites did) and establish some key criteria that determine greatness. The question there might be why?

Except Thomas Kinkaid... — Bitter Crank

I just looked him up. Fuck me dead with a lunchbox! I now have the aesthete's version of PTSD. This is a new category of extreme kitsch I was not aware of until now. How dare you!

In general I don't think it is useful to ask if something qualifies as art. If it is presented as an object of aesthetic experience it is art. It's interesting how often if someone doesn't like a work it is either 'not art' or 'something a 6 year-old could do'. The more useful questions are, do I like it or not and why. And are we brave enough to say a work (for instance a Rembrandt painting) is a masterpiece, or is this the kind of metanarrative pronouncement we tend to frown upon in the post-modern era? :joke: :gasp:

I don't have any issues with this work of art. I'd rather see this than some mawkish effort by Norman Rockwell.

It also meets my criteria - It is clearly presented to elicit an experience from viewers. — T Clark

Exactly right.

Violence is a behaviour involving physical force intended to hurt, damage, or kill someone or something. How can it be ethical??? — Alkis Piskas

When it is done to prevent something worse from taking place. Who are you, Gandhi? :wink:

There are a few lengthy threads all about qualia and the hard problem already. Most of the issues have been answered (but not resolved) in these. Some of these threads were very active in recent weeks.

We've been declaring people and places sacred for most of human history I don't think we are about to stop this practice. Sacred digital space? If it can be done, it will.

Architecture was and is considered of great importance to express state power and give people a sense of being submitted to the system. In modern-day cities, the dominance of global corporations and economy is expressed by huge towers baring the names of companies. They are usually created by architects without an milligram of fantasy, and mainly impress by size and a basic mathematical structure as the expression of an overwhelming power and mathematical efficiency, giving the individual a sense of utter unimportance. — Raymond

Of course. State/religious power has been expressed in buildings for much of known history, even before there were architecture and construction industries. You can see why Hitler wanted to be an architect. I was always struck by architect Albert Speer's observation that in building Third Reich structures they be made robustly, with the right materials so that even the ruins in 1000 years would look good. That's taking a vision right to its totalising climax.

Here's one my favorite German architectures: — Caldwell

Seems to be a matter of taste and timing. This minimalist, anti-ornate, geometric style has been a widely celebrated retro fetish for some years now. Almost every public building and school built in my town in the mid-century was inspired by Bauhaus or by Le Corbusier. Many torn down in the 1980's as they were widely hated as ugly, unsentimental, anti-human edifices. They have looked cool again for a couple of decades now and, like prostitutes, politicians (and Victorian buildings) seem to grow venerable with age. They photograph beautifully and in the right light almost makes them appear numinous.

It is close to Kierkegaard's insistence that when rational systems approach actuality, it is a train wreck, and Heidegger's ontology is, after all, a readable, rational presentation. — Astrophel

There's a thread in this juicy morsel.

Yes, they are making a claim, and yes that claim can be critiqued, but that doesn’t make it a meta narrative. It works differently than this. It is self-reflexive in it’s core, grounding intrinsicality in movement and transition. It isn’t claiming to do away with truth or objectivity , but to set these concepts in motion and talk about them from within this transit. — Joshs

Thanks for this. I guess what I see is an approach to being that privileges itself above all other approaches and possibly with good reason. I find this fascinating but have come too late and don't have much time.

Your destined to have a failed concept or hypothesis when you use the simplistically ignorant and seemingly impossible to truly know the answer to it word called "nothing — MAYAEL

Nice. Well don't just sit there, M, make something of this claim so we can see it work. :smile:

Are you ‘in’ this world or do you form and re-form this world ( and yourself)? — Joshs

I have no idea Joshs.

I can see the relativist’s take on this … that all our best current assumptions of objective reality are narratives. But I don’t concede to there being no objective reality in actuality on account of the logical contradiction previously mentioned that this brings about. (Yes, here upholding the law/principle of noncontradiction.) — javra

Nice. Yes, I think what we have learned by now that the difficulties inherent in trying to establish an objective reality/truth isn't the same thing as making a claim that it does not exist.

Personally, all this makes little substantive difference to me in as much as the moment I wake up I am in the only real world I have access to, whatever it is.

Well, you did always maintain you were an idealist... :joke:

If they prevail, then America really is going down. — Wayfarer

I think this may be inevitable. People despise the system (for good and bad reasons) and Trump the Wrecker is a case of 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend', this and people don't seem to know how to determine what is significant anymore. I know I struggle. :death:

Just seems to illustrate what I initially affirmed: phenomenology does not address meta-ethics. — javra

I wonder that if in some way a phenomenological approach and its wholesale 'dissolution' of totalizing metanarratives is not in itself a form of metanarrative. Can one make the claim that what we experience are intersubjective agreements between localized communities of narrative (and the personal, subjective location), without this coming from a totalizing viewpoint?

One thing I learned is that most people can not tell the difference between good and cheap wine. Those who can are few. — Warren

Yes, this enters into 'having a good eye' and the notion of good taste versus bad taste and do we believe in such transcendental narratives anymore?

If you haven't explore it already, you may find that phenomenology deals best with understanding the embodied experience of architecture (and anything else).

Having worked with Aboriginal Australians I can agree that the notion of a family home is very much tied to Western cultural norms and capitalism

I personally have always hated the family home model and the idea of segmenting the experience of living into discrete rooms with a specific purpose. Life is not an Ikea catalogue.

I enjoyed that.

I think the kinds of suppositions that would make a ‘meta’ useful or even coherent have been unraveled by phenomenological approaches. — Joshs

A layperson's question here. Is it the case that the idea of 'meta' has been unraveled (and I understand the notion of reality and truth being constructed and perspectival, from Nietzsche through Derrida) or is it the case that the method and choices made by phenomenology by-passes the old approaches to truth and objectivity (Platonic forms, etc) in order to privilege an experiential method or framework?

Over time, architecture has the ability to transform society or communities. Society transforms architecture over time. If the subject and object impact each other to effect change, what would this relationship be called? — Warren

Can you expand upon what you mean but the first two statements? It's not necessarily clear. How does architecture transform society over time - examples? Brief dot points are fine. And how does society transform architecture - examples? Are they analogous processes or different phenomena, with little or no relationship?

Digression - all over my town perfectly decent Californian Bungalows are being demolished to make way for vulgar 'French Provincial' style McMansions. The especially gaudy ones are McMansions with Cheese. Is it the case that people's self-esteem is so low that they need to take over an entire building block with a piece of crass overstatement to demonstrate their prosperity and taste (or lack there of)? It is certainly affecting the way I see my local area and it's like we're back in the 1880's. Will these garish Frenchies become attractive to the broader community over time, the way the overstated mansions of the Victorian era have?

Just like a broken machine that hurts its operator is not commiting violence. — Tzeentch

Yes, that's it. I think violence is sometimes like a broken machine. Certainly that's what post trauma states seem to indicate. :up:

Not lying because generally it's what I have observed. Sounds more like you are struggling to imagine what might be happening in these instances. Me too. And by the way, extreme violence directed towards inanimate objects (trees, walls) is a common anti-social characteristic too.

Between what is said and not meant, And what is meant and not said, Most of love is lost
— Kahlil Gibran

What does this mean? — Raymond

It means that relationships are often lost because of poor communication. People fail to tell their partner how much they love them and they only hear the grumbles. Pretty common.

Did you ever examine those people who "simultaneously loved and hated him"? Did you, for example, ask them to perform what is a miraculous feat in thinking (believing a contradiction) with a simple apple, one that's not red and red at the same time and in the same sense? — Agent Smith

I did - although I didn't put it in your theatric style. The answer was simple. We love him for his big spirit, we hate him for his cruelty. The example doesn't entirely compare to existing and not existing - my example is more about incorporating the shadow side of a personality (for good or ill).

However, I can't think God exists & God doesn't exist. It's impossible! My mind goes blank as if someone struck me on my head with a baseball bat. — Agent Smith

Aristotle has a lot to answer for.

I know this is a recurring theme in some of your philosophical rumination (not a criticism by the way) but when it comes to some notions I think contradictions are rather lovely. The Tao Te Ching (although I can't understand it) seems to be full of these ideas.

I knew a man once who made his money trafficking drugs and selling women. Sometimes he hurt people. He also took care of his gang and his family. He donated generously to charities (anonymously) and took a great interest in supporting the welfare of disadvantaged people. He provided money and resources to many people, often strangers, in need. I personally think this man is both bad and good. Some people simultaneously loved and hated him.

Kahlil Gibran's quote is apposite to the extent he states that there are things that can be said/written (language) but not meant (thought). — Agent Smith

I thought the quote translated meant - to those we love, bad things are said we don't really mean while we forget to say the loving things we really feel. I think this well worn notion is the plot of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. :cool:

You love these conundrums Fool/Agent.

I'm not sure how the Gibran quote informs this - it simply talks about how we mess up our public utterances.

As for loving and not loving someone, I think you can love/hate someone. Emotions are complex things. Words are often attempts at capturing how we feel but in making the commitment to verbalizing, we can trap the idea in language and apparent contradiction.