The fact that it's been remembered and celebrated for centuries is evidence, if not absolute proof, that it's better than most at whatever it does. — Baden

That's only evidence of some combo of a lot of people liking it and/or the way that things become entrenched and socially transmitted due to certain endorsements, including academic entrenchment, and including the fact that people like you put more weight on works that have become socially entrenched--that becomes a self-perpetuating cycle.

None of that amounts to it actually being better, since there is no actual better/worse.

This is not a relevant point on its own. Cats are not dogs, that doesn't mean they're not both hairy. The fact alone that we're not talking about race doesn't make any equivalence I draw automatically false. — Isaac

No, but your lack of establishing what the "hair" is does.

If race is an objectively poor measure by which to judge the worth of people, then why did so many people used to think it wasn't — Isaac

That's a complex issue, but basically because slave labor is so gosh darn cheap and convenient.

That he didn't reach the same conclusion as you? — Isaac

Which conclusions are you talking about?

I've seen little in your responses along the lines of guiding Zhou through a process of looking at the objective measures used to judge art. I just see a lot of bluster and bare declarations. — Isaac

I did. I repeatedly explained that there is more philosophy in one Shakespeare play than in anything Bay ever did. Is this your somewhat awkward way to ask for more specific examples?

I presume this is meant to be ironic? — Isaac

You would presume wrongly. I try to refrain from such crudeness as you're inclined to exhibit.

None of that amounts to it actually being better, since there is no actual better/worse — Terrapin Station

Begging the question.

However, once convinced of their superiority, the elites are happy to force their tastes on the rest of us — ZhouBoTong

I think, looking back on history, the elites have always owned the art, whether it’s the Vatican or the rich. I imagine the individual, or individuals, who made the cave drawings of Lascaux weren’t your average tribe member and possessed something the others did not.

For some reason the elite are drawn to art for their own purposes. The fact that they pay attention to something then enhances the artefact. For a long time they were very traditional in their preferences, until Impressionism came along and upset things. But once again it was a new elite that picked it up and gave it cache. The movements that followed broke up that elite approach to art through the idea of ‘The Artist’, though I imagine this idea began a lot earlier. Their actual rebellion became the thing to have, so once again the elite took ownership. But it was no longer the establishment but money that became the new elite, and their actions defined art once again. Even if an artist refused to come out of his garret to take part it only added to the mystique of the artist.

So the elite have always owned art. Even street artists like Basquiat were eventually swallowed by the elite. Art today is a managed career, so we can no longer look on it as we have in the past. We might even ask, Is it still art?, have we gone past the point of what art is? There are more artists and art around than there have ever been, art is more affordable, so we get more consumer driven art.

Consumers often forget that they drive the market. The public get angry at the greed of businessmen then go and buy their products. So today, at a level below the elite, consumers feel confident enough to say what good and bad art is, or that there is no difference. Everyone has an opinion. Until we reach a point where someone believes that Michael Bay creates art.

The films a Michael Bay makes are nothing like the work of a novelist. A film is a commercial venture. The length of the film is chosen according to how long someone will sit through it, not how long is needed to tell the story in depth like the novel. There are so many compromises I’m not even sure if it can be called his film. It’s not uncommon for producers to take a novel, film it then change the ending. Some writers don’t even recognise their story in the film.

Sorry, this is long. I’ll stop and continue later.

Begging the question. — NKBJ

No, because that wasn't an argument. The part after the comma simply explains the part before the comma. Question-begging is an argumentative fallacy. You can't commit an argumentative fallacy sans an argument.

The term elitist seems to be defined by those who don’t like them. I don’t really know who they are. I have some idea of who you think they are. So who are the people who are non elitist, is it people like yourself? If so then all you are doing is trying to claim the ground the elitists hold and say, ‘No, that’s not art, this is.’ You can do that because of the proliferation of art and artists, the growth of consumer power and the vast entertainment industry, which ironically enough you can see filtering through elite art as ‘the spectacle’. It’s like a war between the aristocracy and the peasants. So if you believe the elite should not define good art then why should you able to do it? Unless it’s because you simply don’t like them?

Actually, I was referring to the post-comma statement. Which IS question begging.

No, but your lack of establishing what the "hair" is does. — NKBJ

No, that's not the way categorisation works, we continue to divide things by their differences. Believing that the majority must be right about race is the same as believing the majority are right about art because they are both cases of believing the majority are right. If you think they differ in some way that impacts my argument it is up to you to explain what that difference is, not up to me to list all the potential differences in advance and explain how each one does not affect my argument.

That's a complex issue, but basically because slave labor is so gosh darn cheap and convenient. — NKBJ

Right, and there's absolutely no complexity to why the majority of people think Shakespeare is better than Michael Bay? That's just simple and without any other factors involved than this elusive objective measure which no one seems capable of defining. Terrapin, in one of his posts above, has already given a list of the complex exterior reasons why a majority might reach a conclusion about Shakespeare other than some single mysterious quality, so I won't re-list them here.

Which conclusions are you talking about? — NKBJ

The conclusion that Shakespeare is not necessarily 'better' than Michael Bay.

I did. I repeatedly explained that there is more philosophy in one Shakespeare play than in anything Bay ever did. — NKBJ

Really? That's what you call 'explaining'? A series of hostile and condescending assertions? You do realise this is a philosophy forum?

You would presume wrongly. I try to refrain from such crudeness as you're inclined to exhibit. — NKBJ

Really?

try using your brain and formulating an actual argument before just dismissing others crudely. — NKBJ

That says more about you than it does about Shakespeare. — NKBJ

Do I have to explain irony to you?

Actually, I was referring to the post-comma statement. Which IS question begging. — NKBJ

Question begging occurs when premises assume the truth of a conclusion. A single phrase after a comma in a sentence can't do all that.

At any rate, nothing in my comment was presented as an argument, so fallacies can't apply. Fallacies are validity problems. Validity pertains to the truth values and relations between premises and conclusions that supposedly follow from each other. But I wasn't stating premises and a conclusion. I was simply explaining.

No, that's not the way categorisation works, we continue to divide things by their differences. Believing that the majority must be right about race is the same as believing the majority are right about art because they are both cases of believing the majority are right. If you think they differ in some way that impacts my argument it is up to you to explain what that difference is, not up to me to list all the potential differences in advance and explain how each one does not affect my argument. — Isaac

So you have no idea how the two are related. Okay, good.

Right, and there's absolutely no complexity to why the majority of people think Shakespeare is better than Michael Bay? That's just simple and without any other factors involved than this elusive objective measure which no one seems capable of defining. Terrapin, in one of his posts above, has already given a list of the complex exterior reasons why a majority might reach a conclusion about Shakespeare other than some single mysterious quality, so I won't re-list them here. — Isaac

There may be, but then, as I've repeatedly explained, there's millions and millions of pages in which people explain all of the ways in which Shakespeare is deep and complex and artistically great. I'm afraid it is simply outside of my powers to list all of those things and give them their due explanation in a post on an internet forum.

But if you're actually interested, and not just blustering because you've already formed an unmovable opinion, maybe you should read some of the theses, dissertations, and books found here:
https://www.worldcat.org/search?q=shakespeare&qt=results_page
Or any of the articles and book chapters here:
https://www.jstor.org/action/doBasicSearch?Query=shakespeare&filter=

You see, all these papers and articles and books are page after page and word after word of evidence. These are people who have meticulously documented Shakespeare's greatness. If even half of it is true, he's much better than Bay. By the way, I'm still waiting on anyone offering such evidence in Bay's support?

Really? That's what you call 'explaining'? A series of hostile and condescending assertions? You do realise this is a philosophy forum? — Isaac

Yes. And you're trying to turn it into an "everyone's opinion is true" forum, which is just bunk.
You call it condescending. I call it pointing out an unbelievable display of hubris on the part of people who think their own opinion matters more than the educated, experienced opinions of thousands who have dedicated their entire lives to these subjects.

Do I have to explain irony to you? — Isaac

Do you understand the word "crude"? Because I was certainly not that.

In any case, I am STILL waiting for anyone to explain the ways in which Bay's movies are anywhere near as deep as Hamlet? Or are you just gonna hang your hat on the "entertaining to me" peg?

None of that amounts to it actually being better, since there is no actual better/worse. — Terrapin Station

Flipping the statements for coherency's sake:

No A is B/C.
Therefore A is not B.

You turned it into an argument by using the word "since."

You turned it into an argument by using the word "since." — NKBJ

Again, it was an explanation. I wasn't saying that I was presenting premises and a conclusion where the conclusion logically follows from the premises. In fact, I explicitly said that I wasn't doing that.

Maybe you read it as an argument. Okay. Nothing I can do about that. But I wasn't presenting it as an argument, as premises and a conclusion.

Maybe you read it as an argument. Okay. Nothing I can do about that. But I wasn't presenting it as an argument, as premises and a conclusion. — Terrapin Station

Same dif.

It's still circular and needs a more adequate explanation.

How you read something and how I was thinking about something are the same thing?

It's still circular and needs a more adequate explanation. — NKBJ

Arguments can be circular. It wasn't an argument.

Geez, it's like talking to a wall.

Geez, it's like talking to a wall. — Terrapin Station

Ditto

You mean that you're saying that I may have been forwarding an argument even though I didn't think I was forwarding an argument?

Or are you saying that fallacies apply to things that aren't arguments?

You mean that you're saying that I may have been forwarding an argument even though I didn't think I was forwarding an argument? — Terrapin Station

I mean that what you said was an argument whether you want to accept it or not.

Doesn't that simply amount to insisting that your interpretation is correct, and contra what the author intended, because . . . well, I guess because it's your interpretation?

Doesn't that simply amount to insisting that your interpretation is correct, and contra what the author intended, because . . . well, I guess because it's your interpretation? — Terrapin Station

It's simply the structure of your sentence which is pretty obvious.

If an author says "the cat ran up the tree" and I say, "oh, there's a cat, and a tree" and then the author insists "no, no, by 'cat' I meant 'monkey' and by 'tree' I meant 'piano'" then my interpretation was more valid than his intended meaning.

Structure is identical to meaning in your view?

Structure is one of the many vehicles of meaning within the English language.

Consider:

The boy dropped the ball.
The ball dropped the boy.

A minor rearrangement of word order changes the entire meaning.

A minor rearrangement of word order changes the entire meaning. — NKBJ

Not necessarily.

We don't at all have the same view about what meaning is or how it works. So appealing to me agreeing with you isn't going to work.

And hence why I'm asking about your view of meaning. So if meaning isn't identical to structure on your view, then you can't just appeal to structure in your argument that I was stating an argument despite not at all thinking about it that way.

What else would you say it's dependent on?

Meaning is conveyed through many elements of the English language.

But hey, you go ahead and scramble word all you like. See how far you get with that. :)

Meaning is conveyed through many elements of the English language. — NKBJ

Maybe you could be a bit more specific, especially given that you're attempting an argument that I stated an argument despite not at all thinking about it that way?

Maybe you could be a bit more specific, especially given that you're attempting an argument that I stated an argument despite not at all thinking about it that way? — Terrapin Station

I already was specific enough. I'm sorry you don't seem to be able to accept it.

lol okay

:kiss:

On your view, by the way, you wouldn't be able to make sense of me saying "That's not what I meant." That's a pretty common thing for people to say, which makes it problematic to not be able to make sense of it.