It is not possible to make art without expressing your consciousness.
Something I keep repeating every few posts, but not many seem to get it. — Pop
We are not, of course IN the situation above, but to conceive it honestly shows that ethical nihilism is foundational inadequate to "totalize" what it is all about.
The final trouble is metaethics. — Constance
IE, in discussions about art, as with philosophy in general, communication can break down when different contributors attach different meanings to the same words. — RussellA
We get it, we just don't think it is a useful way of characterizing or defining art — T Clark
means art can't be — TheMadFool
IE, the aesthetic and Uniformity within Variety are both innate parts of the structure of the brain as Kantian a priori knowledge. — RussellA
The color is not in the object but on the object.
— Khalif
Supposing that humans didn't exist, would the colour red still be on the object ? — RussellA
This is true regarding the violinist, but notions such as art about art are so dim witted! :grimace: Similar to philosophy saying - life is about life, no more needs to be said! — Pop
With the one caveat that a term like "mind" we have in itself an open question — Constance
One should look at the artwork as the outward manifestation of an actual consciousness, and its value reducible to palpable consciousness. — Constance
If you are going to call something information, then it has to information ABOUT something. — Constance
It is rather that there is one, final context, and that is at the basic level, and this is phenomenology. On ethics and aesthetics: take lighted match and apply it to your finger. Now, there is a lot one can say about this anatomically, motivationally, psychologically, and any other context you can imagine; but put those aside and consider only the pain itself, pain simpliciter, qualia-pain if you like, or, the phenomenon of pain eidetically free, or context free. Forget about whether you think this is possible (Dennett doesn't, but that is another argument) for it being there AT ALL is a context, you can, and many do, including myself, argue. But IN this most foundational context of observing the pain just as pain and not of or in this or that, the pain can be seen most vividly for what it is, and not for what something tells us it is.
This presence is, I argue, pure, or close to pure. Entangled, yes, but here in this "reduction" it stands before one as a pure presence, what it IS as presence prior, that is, logically prior, for you can't even think of Hitler's genocidal cruelty without know what pain is to begin with that makes the whole affair so horrible.
This is what I have in mind. — Constance
We can make art about art and philosophize about philosophizing, or make art about philosophizing and philosophize about art. Use your imagination.
— praxis
So if I was to say the comment you just made is words about words - you would be satisfied? — Pop
It wasn't about words, so no, I wouldn't be satisfied with that erroneous assessment. I could post something about words and then you could accurately say that I posted words about words. — praxis
But I have defined it. You have to invalidate the definition, or otherwise accept it. — Pop
It means art for arts sake. — Pop
All the rest is noise and opinion. — Pop
You want to develop a criterion that includes everybody in the room but then you don't have to develop a criterion; you could simply say all people in the room. — TheMadFool
There's a couple of issues, I'm afraid, that prevent your 'reductionist' theory from rising above the level of nonsense. I already pointed out the first issue in my previous post. Using our imagination we can take a concept or general mental representation of something like aesthetic or pain and do whatever we want with it. We can associate pain with hot burning coals, for example, and that's relatively easy to do. It's a bit harder to associate pain with distant billowy clouds, but we can still do it. Anyway, jumping to the point, the point is that what we can imagine doesn't always correspond to reality. I suspect that you already know that, but in any case, a practical example may help to elucidate the point further.
Offhand, pain/panic is the most unaesthetic kind of experience that comes to mind. If I understand your reductionist theory rightly, we can 'reduce the context' of any situation where pain and panic are experienced and the experience will then be that of aesthetic experience. As I've pointed out, we can easily dismiss context with our imagination, but how do we do this in real life? How do we reduce or turn off context? For our purposes, it doesn't matter because reducing is changing, and we already know that changing a situation (context) can change our perception.
The second issue has to do with the basics of meaning. If everything is aesthetic then nothing is aesthetic and the concept loses all meaning.[/quote
Don't know why you want to talk about hot coals or billowy clouds. It isn't to the point. The reduction is the phenomenological reduction, which moves away from explanatory accounts that are merely factual, and this is important because facts are, as such, ethically arbitrary. In a typical ethical case, the facts are what they are, like you owning the gun I borrowed and wanting it back under, say, dangerous and suspicious circumstances. The gun ownership, the circumstances and so on, these are facts that have no ethical dimension to them as facts. As Wittgenstein put it in his Lecture on Ethics: in all facts of the world, were they laid out in a great book, there would not be a mention of value at all. The sun is further from earth that the moon: a fact, and as such, nothing ethical about it. Then what is it that makes the case ethical (or here, aesthetic; same applies here) at all? it is the value: the injury and pain that is at stake, also my breaking the implicit promise to return the gun that could undermine confidence that thereby undermines friendship and comfort, and so on.
So. you see the point being made here is to try to analyze an ethical case, any one at all, to find how its parts work, and what they are. This should be clear. Keep in mind that I am not the author of these ideas, but I do put them together as I see fit.
Not clear why you talk about panic. I don't want to muddle things with what is not at issue.
If all things are aesthetic, than nothing is aesthetic? If all things are in space, then nothing is in space? Are you kidding? — praxis
There's a couple of issues, I'm afraid, that prevent your 'reductionist' theory from rising above the level of nonsense. I already pointed out the first issue in my previous post. Using our imagination we can take a concept or general mental representation of something like aesthetic or pain and do whatever we want with it. We can associate pain with hot burning coals, for example, and that's relatively easy to do. It's a bit harder to associate pain with distant billowy clouds, but we can still do it. Anyway, jumping to the point, the point is that what we can imagine doesn't always correspond to reality. I suspect that you already know that, but in any case, a practical example may help to elucidate the point further.
Offhand, pain/panic is the most unaesthetic kind of experience that comes to mind. If I understand your reductionist theory rightly, we can 'reduce the context' of any situation where pain and panic are experienced and the experience will then be that of aesthetic experience. As I've pointed out, we can easily dismiss context with our imagination, but how do we do this in real life? How do we reduce or turn off context? For our purposes, it doesn't matter because reducing is changing, and we already know that changing a situation (context) can change our perception.
The second issue has to do with the basics of meaning. If everything is aesthetic then nothing is aesthetic and the concept loses all meaning. — praxis
I don't think this follows. Art was thought to be indefinite, but it is definite as per the definition, and then beyond this it is indefinite, for now at least. :smile:
You are not objecting to the definition, but to its utility. I have given my reasons, now several times, about how a definition is potentially useful. — Pop
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