• Jackson
    1.8k
    So the impressionists were beginning to take seriously the contribution of the perceiver to what is perceived.Joshs

    Art has always been about how things are perceived. No one invented that.
  • Joshs
    5.6k
    Art has always been about how things are perceived. No one invented that.Jackson

    Once upon a time art was conceived as mimesis , imitation. There wasn’t really a concept of perception as interpretation as we accept it to be today. if you go back far enough in time, art was thought of as just the direct impressing of the world upon the mind. So yes, the modern concept of perception is an invention.
  • Jackson
    1.8k
    Once upon a time art was conceived as mimesis , imitation. There wasn’t really a concept of perception as interpretation as we accept it to be today. if you go back far enough in time, art was thought of as just the direct impressing of the world upon the mind. So yes, the modern concept of perception is an invention.Joshs

    It is in Aristotle. Mimesis means both invention and copying. I have the exact passage if you want it.
  • 180 Proof
    15.3k
    I think the history of philosophy can be understood as a development (although not causally linear or cumulative) in which newer philosophies subsume the essence of earlier ones. And I think that this is true of all creative modalities. The philosophy , arts, literature , politics and sciences of an era are variations of a theme , a series of interconnected worldviews, and that theme evolves. It a not a question of a philosophy or worldview being right or wrong (they are all ‘right’ initially to the extent that they are pragmatically useful, and then found to be ‘wrong’ when they are superseded by the next era of thinking).Joshs
    :100:
  • Jackson
    1.8k
    Once upon a time art was conceived as mimesis , imitation. There wasn’t really a concept of perception as interpretation as we accept it to be today. if you go back far enough in time, art was thought of as just the direct impressing of the world upon the mind. So yes, the modern concept of perception is an invention.Joshs

    "art in some cases completes what nature cannot bring to a finish, and in others imitates
    nature." (Aristotle; Physics, 199a15)

    By mimesis Aristotle means both imitating/copying and producing/creating.
  • Tom Storm
    9k
    When I say "Kantian" I usually mean either 'brain-in-a-vat deontology' (narrowly) or 'epistemology-constrained ontology' (broadly). edit: Also, any deductively proposed 'solution in search of (a) problem(s)'.180 Proof

    Just getting back to this - would you mind providing an example of 'epistemology-constrained ontology' and a deductively proposed solution in search of problems?
  • 180 Proof
    15.3k
    ... an example of 'epistemology-constrained ontology'Tom Storm
    Transcendental idealism.

    and a deductively proposed solution in search of problems?
    Transcendental arguments.
  • Jackson
    1.8k
    if you go back far enough in time, art was thought of as just the direct impressing of the world upon the mind. So yes, the modern concept of perception is an invention.Joshs

    Going back to ancient world. For Aristotle, sense perception (aesthesis) cannot take place without the imagination (phantasia).(De Anima). So we can imagine things without sensing them, but cannot perceive things without the imagination.
  • Hillary
    1.9k
    In the modern world, with a lot more science at our disposal than Kant ever had in small-town Köningsberg, it's hard to remain Kantian.
  • Tom Storm
    9k
    n the modern world, with a lot more science at our disposal than Kant ever had in small-town Köningsberg, it's hard to remain Kantian.Hillary

    Sure. Hence my initial question, can it be a slight - a reference to a superseded and rigid epistemologically constrained ontology?
  • praxis
    6.5k
    if you go back far enough in time, art was thought of as just the direct impressing of the world upon the mind.Joshs

    There are of course modern concepts of perception and they continue to develop as we learn more about the world and ourselves.

    It's unclear what you mean by "direct impressing of the world upon the mind". It seems to mean that ancient people could only record their perceptions and therefore their art could only be representational. If I'm not mistaken, some of the oldest art known is thought to be depictions of some kind of mother-earth spirit. Sculptures of a subject that they didn't actually perceive with their senses.
  • Jackson
    1.8k
    There are of course modern concepts of perception and they continue to develop as we learn more about the world and ourselves.

    It's unclear what you mean by "direct impressing of the world upon the mind". It seems to mean that ancient people could only record their perceptions and therefore their art could only be representational. If I'm not mistaken, some of the oldest art known is thought to be depictions of some kind of mother-earth spirit. Sculptures of a subject that they didn't actually perceive with their senses.
    praxis

    Religious relics used for worship, for example.
  • Joshs
    5.6k


    Going back to ancient world. For Aristotle, sense perception (aesthesis) cannot take place without the imagination (phantasia).(De Anima). So we can imagine things without sensing them, but cannot perceive things without the imagination.Jackson

    Art for Aristotle is a representation of ideals, but artists must accurately portray reality to be successful, so overall it is mimetic, and that attitude toward art remained up through the 1700’s.
  • Hillary
    1.9k
    Sure. Hence my initial question, can it be a slight - a reference to a superseded and rigid epistemologically constrained ontology?Tom Storm

    I not only think it can, but it is. Kant's rigidly constrained epistemological ontology lies at the base of his equally rigid moral imperative. His metaphysical transcendent reality feels inert and unshakable, like the bridge in Köningsbergen over which also the rigidly classical Hamilton walked when he had his quaternion eureka moment. Too classically rigid and absolute...
  • Jackson
    1.8k
    Art for Aristotle is a representation of ideals, but artists must accurately portray reality to be successful, so overall it is mimetic.Joshs

    So art, tragedies, copy an action and is imitative that way. Not ideals, but actions or plots. You're not imitating something that happened, you're constructing purposes for why they happened that way.
  • Joshs
    5.6k

    In the modern world, with a lot more science at our disposal than Kant ever had in small-town Köningsberg, it's hard to remain Kantian.Hillary

    The modern scientific world was Kant’s world and the world of Einstein’s physics. The postmodern world is led by philosophy , with the sciences being slowly dragged into it kicking and screaming.
  • Jackson
    1.8k
    The postmodern world is led by philosophy , with the sciences being slowly dragged into it kicking and screaming.Joshs

    Can you say more about that? Led to where?
  • Joshs
    5.6k
    So art, tragedies, copy an action and is imitative that way. Not ideals, but actions or plots. You're not imitating something that happened, you're constructing purposes for why they happened that way.Jackson

    I’m saying the approach to art up through the 1700’s was based on mimesis, even when constructing purposes and ideals. The concept of mimesis was brought into question as philosophy and art stopped believing that perception is correspondence of the mind with an independently existing world.
  • Jackson
    1.8k
    I’m saying the approach to art up through the 1700’s was based on mimesis, even when constructing purposes and ideals. The concept of mimesis was brought into question as philosophy and art stopped believing that perception is correspondence of the mind with an independently existing world.Joshs

    I don't agree with that about art. Seriously, artists always knew what they were doing was fake. If people wanted to commission portraits they wanted a realistic likeness. As I was saying, perspective used by Renaissance artists was self-consciously fake precisely because it was a mathematical/systematic structuring of space.
  • Jackson
    1.8k
    I’m saying the approach to art up through the 1700’s was based on mimesis, even when constructing purposes and ideals. The concept of mimesis was brought into question as philosophy and art stopped believing that perception is correspondence of the mind with an independently existing world.Joshs

    Alberti defines painting as a "projection of lines and colours onto a surface", (On Painting, Alberti, 1435).

    http://www.visual-arts-cork.com/old-masters/alberti-leon-battista.htm
  • Agent Smith
    9.5k
    epistemology-constrained ontology180 Proof

    I want to run something by you. It's been troubling me for a long time.

    The Unanswered Questions

    So legend has it that the Buddha refused to answer the following questions:

    1. Does the Tathagatha exist after death?

    2. Does the Tatagatha cease to exist after death?

    3. Does the Tathagatha exist & cease to exist after death?

    4. Does the Tathagatha neither exist nor cease to exist after death?

    My question is this: Does the Buddha know in the sense that post-death these categories are N/A or does the Buddha not know what happens post-mortem? In other words is Buddha's stance (Noble Silence) ontological or epistemological?
  • 180 Proof
    15.3k
    Does the Buddha know in the sense that post-death these categories are N/A or does the Buddha not know what happens post-mortem?Agent Smith
    N/A – irrelevant to addtessing dukkha pre-death.

    In other words is Buddha's stance (Noble Silence) ontological or epistemological?
    IMO, ethical/psychological.
  • Mww
    4.8k
    .......it's hard to remain Kantian.Hillary

    If he left metaphysics as he said....

    “....by this critique it has been brought onto the secure course of a science, then it can fully embrace the entire field of cognitions belonging to it and thus can complete its work and lay it down for posterity as a princi­pal framework that can never be enlarged...”

    ....then why couldn’t one remain Kantian in his thinking, no matter the advances in empirical science?
  • Agent Smith
    9.5k
    Does the Buddha know in the sense that post-death these categories are N/A or does the Buddha not know what happens post-mortem?
    — Agent Smith
    N/A – irrelevant to addtessing dukkha pre-death.

    In other words is Buddha's stance (Noble Silence) ontological or epistemological?
    IMO, ethical/psychological.
    180 Proof

    :ok: Arigato gozaimus sensei.
  • Hillary
    1.9k
    then why couldn’t one remain Kantian in his thinking, no matter the advances in empirical science?Mww

    One can stay Kantian, obviously. Kant had a wrong view on spacetime though. You could incorporate all scientific progress, spacetime being relative and left-right asymmetric (he offered Leibniz the glove left example to refute his relational concept of time), but in his view space is no material, which is the question.

    But in the empirical sciences that would make no difference.

    That the noumon can't be known is questionable.
  • Jackson
    1.8k
    One can stay Kantian, obviously. Kant had a wrong view on spacetime though. You could incorporate all scientific progress, spacetime being relative and left-right asymmetric (he offered Leibniz the glove left example to refute his relational concept of time), but in his view space is no material, which is the question.Hillary

    Leibniz was a relativist about space and time and severe critic of Newton.
  • Hillary
    1.9k



    Yes. He considered space as the relation between objects only. Which would make a left glove the same as a right glove. Which the aren't. Left and right are fundamentally different.
  • Jackson
    1.8k
    Yes. He considered space as the relation between objects only. Which would make a left glove the same as a right glove. Which the aren't.Hillary

    I never understood the glove and left and right thing in Kant. Seems trivial.
  • Hillary
    1.9k


    It is trivial. But it was used to show Leibniz was wrong. All relational properties of a left hand and a right hand are the same. Still they are different.
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