So are rings -- the bit of jewelry we wear on our hands -- holes, in your book?

But when you consider the sense in which holes (or absences) exist, then you're asking a question about their real nature, and that is what seems to me they don't have. — Wayfarer

Yes, this is the sense in which I am asking.

So it's an unexpectedly deep question, I think (although maybe you did expect it!)

I suspected it :D

I heard some philosopher talking about it once, and once they did (i forget who it was....) I began to see the contours of a philosophical puzzle.

Yes I understand that. It's just that I've heard that particular saying before, and I genuinely don't understand it. — fishfry

Oh, it comes from Quine's On What There Is, if you haven't read it. I have a hand-wavey understanding of it in the sense that I've read a bit of and about Quine.

No, I think holes exist, and so do shadows. There are things that exist and that only appear along with more substantial things. Holes and shadows being the two that come to mind. Ontologically parasitic, what a great phrase.

I think holes exist though. I haven't had a chance to read the SEP article yet. But there's too much math around the question of identifying and counting holes for me to doubt their existence. — fishfry

See, for me at least, the mathematical part is a little less convincing. That would mean that holes exist in the same way that numbers do, and I am less confident when it comes to my beliefs about the ontology of abstract objects.

But the things I see, so I believe, exist.

But, like you said, holes are weird in that they are an absence -- there's not really a property of holes, is there? Maybe size, for any individual hole. But you can make a hole out of anything. And it certainly isn't a thing.

I confess I have never understood this in the least. Bound variables are part of symbolic representations, not the things themselves. A cat is the value of a bound variable as in "Exists(x) such that x is a cat," but I find this very unconvincing. The cat is a cat long before there are logicians to invent quantified logic. I just don't understand this kind of thinking. Must be me. A lot of this kind of philosophical discourse just goes right over my head. — fishfry

I'm just leaping from that point, more than anything. Similarly so with the argument I'm presenting -- I think it's an interesting puzzle. I don't mean to dig into Quine.

Is the question whether holes exist? They most definitely do. Mathematically, if you poke a hole in the x-y plane, then loops around the can no longer be contracted to a point. The hole has changed the topology of the plane. Holes are a huge area of study in math. In algebraic topology they try to find clever ways to count the number of holes in an object. Holes are a thing, not just an absence of a thing. — fishfry

Yes, exactly. I'll try to edit it to make that clearer.




It seems you've changed your stance after your exchange with Wayfarer?

So does that mean they don't exist, or do? Philosophically, say.

Harlem
BY LANGSTON HUGHES
What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore—
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over—
like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

I guess I'd just ask if what Langston Hughes is doing with these words gets at the meaning of the poem or sentences. The very structure of the poem, where the sentences are broken up, changes the meaning I'd argue -- try it one for size:

Does it dry up like a raisin the sun?


Compared to:


Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?




I have respect for the notion that the use of a sentence is what we should look to in order to determine meaning because it gives me a picture of an investigator, searching for clues, context, things outside the individual sentence -- a speaker, a history, the sentences surrounding it, the physical book or -- in this case -- digital encoding on the poetry foundation's website.

So the picture of meaning I get is one that encourages reading the words and making guesses based upon context, rather than having something in my head, some intensional something.

But perhaps it's still the wrong picture. But if it were the wrong picture, then I'd argue there's a falsity somewhere -- and that truth and meaning ain't strictly pragmatic, even though said theories conveniently solve a lot of philosophical problems.

I don't think I'm following the metaphor.

Or ,maybe I'm getting caught up in the metaphor.

***

I want to say that reason has limits, that philosophy necessitates reason, and so philosophy also has limits. However, I don't know that noting the limits of reason is really the same as twilight in your metaphor, because you seem to be indicating that there's something more to be known when there is no reason -- as if we must, in some sense, block out (or bracket?) reason to know whatever the night or dimmer stars represent in the metaphor.

But then is it really called knowing if it's unreasonable? Or something else?

Or, given that we're thinking about the subject at all, is the very thought really thinkable? Or are we just getting carried away with metaphors? After all, in Plato the light of reason doesn't bare any analogy to the sun, but is in relation to shadows that we perceive. We mistake the shadows for the forms, when the forms are actually behind the appearances, and when we turn to the light(do philosophy) we witness the forms. It's not an astronomical metaphor, as yours is.


What's your metaphor doing for you? What does it illuminate, or ask? What is the night, the small stars? Or is it all just a kind of something that you're not sure of?

Yes, and the interesting bit here, imho, is that we are discussing bacteria. They have no brain, no nervous system. And yet, they learned how to do CRISPR type operations maybe a billion years before a Nobel Prize winning scientist. And so we might claim that intelligence existed long before the evolution of higher life forms — Foghorn

So did the moon learn to smile, or something?

By innocence I don't mean to question your sincerity! Far from it. Only that there's a lot to unpack and while it seems a simple question, it's actually complicated and requires more than a simple answer.

I don't even know what would count as evidence for either physicalism or whatever-else. When it comes to claims like "Everything is. . . ", well... if such a sentence is true, then literally everything that exists counts as evidence for it.

They aren't really the sorts of claims that a strict evidential calculus can decide answers to, since literally everything counts in its favor -- another way to put this that people seem to like is to say they aren't falsifiable, while keeping in mind that this term is interpretable in multiple ways and I'm just meaning it more colloquially here.


I don't know if there's an example of intelligence that must exclude physicalism. But if you don't have a theory of physicalism -- which I don't exactly either -- then wouldn't it be difficult for anyone to come up with an example which counts as either physical or not?

Just something to think about in trading some examples... I'll try to give some to see what rattles around.



Sticking with the idea presented here as a basis for understanding intelligence:

Bacteria defend themselves from viruses by grabbing a bit of DNA from the virus and storing it in the bacteria's own DNA. This allows the bacteria to recognize the virus the next time they see it, and provide the appropriate defensive reaction.

Bacteria are selecting particular information, storing it, and then referencing it as needed. — Foghorn

So bacteria and people do some of the same things. Bacteria and people defend themselves from viruses, bacteria and people recognize viruses, and bacteria and people react to their environments. There is an entity and an environment, and said entity prioritizes itself in some manner over the environment, and intelligence is this capacity to store information and change future behavior in similar circumstances based upon said information.

Minimally speaking we have perception and memory as a bare-minimum for counting things intelligent. The bacteria, upon re-encountering a threat it has met before, will recognize it and defend itself, and this is all pretty well understood in physical terms.

And humans, too, have perception and memory -- among other things, but perhaps these are not counted as "intelligence" per se but are categorized otherwise.

But where are the anti-bodies in the brain that count as our memory of. . .. well, our memory, too, requires emotion, so I think I can claim that emotion must be part of intelligence as we understand it here too -- and that bit is very different from the bacteria. The bacteria's memory is a protein created which will bind to a particular sequence that identifies a threat with a high degree of accuracy. But where are our memories? We presume they are in our brains, somehow created through the bundled up interaction of neurons -- but we certainly don't know how all this works yet, scientifically. SO, at present at least, we're still working on a physicalist understanding of the mind.

At least as far as I understand things. I am by no means an expert, but just a random guy on the internet.

The laws of physics are not a property of any particular thing within reality, but a property of reality itself. These laws are expressed in a seemingly infinite number of varied circumstances. So bouncing a ball might seem to an observer to be an entirely different phenomena than the orbit of a planet, but the same laws govern both.

What if intelligence is like this? What if it's not a property of this or that thing, but a property of reality which is expressed in many different ways in many different circumstances? — Foghorn

What are some of the phenomena you would propose as being governed by this property?

So far I gather you mean primates like ourselves, and bacteria.

But couldn't the activities you specify -- the analysis, recording, reacting to information through genes, etc. -- also just be the activities of life?

Life eats, shits, reproduces, dies. There are different functions a particular organism must perform or fulfill in order to be counted as life.


And it's not like, say, the moon's smile is caused by intelligence.

Can you provide examples of intelligence in operation that can't be explained by physicalist answers? — Tom Storm

That's a meaty question. :D It's also not quite innocent, though.

Wouldn't a person whose against physicalism already consider the uncontroversial examples of intelligence as needing something other than a physicalist answer?

And, similarly so, a physicalist would see examples of intelligence as bolstering their viewpoint -- that clearly these examples are explained by physicalism, or compatible with physicalism.


But you're asking for that example which clearly cannot be explained by physicalism -- something that's necessarily not-physical. And in order to even hope to answer your question with any kind of possibly satisfactory answer I'd have to know what might satisfy you that something is not-physical?

Or, the other way around, what is your physicalism?

I've said as much a long time ago. If it could be proved that moral realism is correct and that the proposition "it is wrong to murder children" is false or even that the proposition "one ought murder children" is true then I still wouldn't murder children. My actions are motivated in part by my wants/feelings and in part by what's pragmatic; they're not motivated by some reasoned understanding that there are something like moral facts. — Michael

I suppose it just depends on the person. The Holy Book is still at least claimed by people as a moral guide, which is certainly more ambiguous than the book of moral propositions, but pretty close in comparison I think. Abraham was already mentioned in this thread, but he was good because he bowed before God's will in faith. I asked the question rhetorically, but it's not too far from what people do sometimes.

Further, I'd say there's a difference between what your actions are motivated by and what is the correct thing to do. Like, one is a psychological fact about you, and the other is just what people should do or something -- and in general I don't think anyone here is espousing some kind of bare-bones Pure Rationalist Being or something. But it's still meaningful to ask if your actions should be so motivated.

After all, there are people motivated by all kinds of things. But that doesn't mean that just because Richard Nixon wanted to lie that Richard Nixon should have lied, even if it were a pragmatic thing.


So moral facts could, for all the lack of motivation to think of morality in these terms, still exist. This is only to say that while you wouldn't change, your refusal to change wouldn't demonstrate that there are no moral facts or that there is such a fact.

Hopefully, given the content of my previous reply, you can make an accurate presumption with regards to my answer. — Cartesian trigger-puppets

Quite the opposite! :D I am lost at times, I'm afraid, but I'm trying to follow along.

I will state what I think I can understand from your post.

It seems to me you're saying whether your believe in moral facts depends upon certain variables whose values change or vary, and depending upon the value of those variables your belief with respect to moral facts also changes. And, if I read you correctly, you're stuck between deciding whether the entities to which moral statements refer are either psychological or in some sense a property that is, at least in some sense, independent of psychological entities.

I want to note that I could not tell you what a fully-functional, internally consistent and subjectively self-contained metaethical theory is, or why it is a desirable end such that it would convince me to use referents as pragmatic truth-makers in the particular manner you're espousing. This is not to say that I am against it, even, but that I am noting where I am not grasping. Honestly I get the sense that I am out of my depth. But if you're still getting something out of replying, then I'll respond in kind.

This is a guess on my part but I'm wondering if your focus on reference is because of me mentioning moral error theory? -- that moral error theory would be incorrect as long as you could identify a way of parsing moral sentences into ones which have a definite reference which are, thereby, truth-evaluable due to their being entities we can check.

Am I right about that?


............................


I take a fact to be a true statement.

A statement is any sentence within our language which follows the form of a proposition. It is this form which makes a statement truth-apt.

Moral statements, then, are sentences that follow the form of a proposition that are also in some way meaningfully related to morals.

By "the form" I only mean the subject-predicate form, where some subject has a predicate attached.

The main predicate that comes to mind here for me is ". . . is wrong" or ". . .is right" -- with any successfully referring name ". . . is wrong" forms a sentence that is both moral and truth-apt.

Keeping things general you may pick any event you feel is not controversial to evaluate with the ". . . is wrong" or ". . . is right" predicate. Whether the analysis is correct is not here interesting.

To me what's interesting is that there's simply an obvious difference between --

Richard Nixon was wrong when he lied
Richard Nixon was right when he lied.
Richard Nixon lied.

And whether the first or the second is true differs from whether the third is true.

Meaning, sure, we can start to parse all this ethical-talk into a logic of truth. But the difference between sentence 3 and sentence 1 or 2 remains, and should even be apparent, regardless of using the same predicate ". . . is true".

For many circumstances it can even be rational for a person to hold either 1 or 2, in spite of them being contradictories, insofar as they at least believe 3.



I guess I'd gauge to see what you feel about there being a difference between these sentences, and whether or not that difference is apparent -- because that's sort of the whole crux right there. If you don't think there's a worthwhile difference then that's where'd I'd be stuck.

I disagree that there are moral facts.

There are two thoughts I can't quite decide between.

Thought 1 was a defense of moral error theory, but I'm not sure if I have anything more to say on that than I've already said in other threads before... (also tempted to fuck around with Moore and the naturalist fallacy)

Thought 2 is to criticize the notion of moral facts from an orthogonal direction -- to say that the framework sort of misses what's more interesting in ethics. I mean, if someone were to point to some moral fact, say in a book of all moral propositions, that said something you disagreed with would you really change your mind? Aren't we committed to our ethics more than we are convinced of them through the evidence? We shouldn't care about what the true moral propositions are, but concern ourselves with how to live a good life -- the good, not the true, is the aim of ethics.

I mean, science is good for me.

But even in the most recent example of its goods, the production of a vaccine, the goods have been distributed unevenly. Looking at the world here, not locally.

Many of the goods of science are like that.




I suspect one would reply to this by saying that this isn't against science as such but rather the current application of science, or to relegate this contention to a specifically political problem.

But I don't think science can be separated from politics. It is a thoroughly political(-economic) entity. It gets by on funding both from the government and the private sector -- so even in a more non-theoretic sense, science really is a political-economic entity!

Uhhh..... dude. 5/10 bucks a month is not a lot for most of us. And regardless of jamal's politics, he's keeping the sight running. So just... decide i guess? The money just keeps the sight up.

I feel like you're getting close to my criticism of rights, in general.

With your ending I suspect we're closer in mind than the language of rights would predict.

My feelings: We should be able to be craven, jealous, etc... because those are human emotions that need to be expressed and felt. Even acted upon.

But, to express my own sentiments, property rights are a bad place to express those sentiments.

I am not a stoic at all. I'm a bad epicurean. I just hope this is an invitation to talk about, as your title says, what is wrong about rights.

cuz I think rights are bullocks. lol. Just so you know where I come from.

Through twitter i got a new pluhar translation of kant's "critique of judgment"

my old copy broke at the A side of "On the Mathematically sublime" and was falling apart.

Gonna prolly start rereading that when i get it.

Kinda makes me wonder if people who just like Kant like to give his books away?

I have not read the replies, but in reply to your initial question...

I suspect that Biden will continue Obama-precedent imperialism.

And it is a bad thing.

The problem with inviting everyone to the table, including the police, the businessman, etc., is that not everyone is effected the same by police targeting black people. The policeman, the businessman, the politician -- those are the people that have been in charge, and we all already know the results of them being in charge.

It seems to me that governors are actually quite concerned with the demonstrations. Hence the curfews and police repression. They wield a big stick, but in doing so they lose more legitimacy in the eyes of the people they serve.

Hence why there have also been concessions in direct response to the rebellion -- to placate the people into going home and returning things to a normal order. But the concessions so far haven't been structural changes -- they have been the sorts of things which the government should have already done, if it were applying the law fairly: indicting the police officers on criminal charges.

As small a victory as that is -- who really wants to have to destroy businesses and loot them just to make the state do their job every damn time a cop kills someone unjustifiably? That is madness. -- there are structural changes which as being brought up by black-led organizations. After all, unless you plan on using the stick, these organizations are likely the ones that can placate the crowd without using the stick.

It seems to me that it'd be better to implement those as concessions if they want everyone to return home.

Heh, it's ok. It's just the myth handed down that needs to be dispelled. No need to feel like you need to know the myths of other countries that should go away anyways. :D

My impression is that alot of Americans think that black issues came to an end after reconstruction and it's been more or less hunky dory ever since. What say the Americans here? — StreetlightX

I'd say the school book story is that after MLK racism was solved, more or less.

That has nothing to do with the fact of systematic racism. Just because an officer is black that doesn't mean he's not an officer. The race of the police officer doesn't matter for the claim that there is systematic racism -- the race of those effected by the criminal justice system does. And that is disproportionate.

One study stripping away history and using statistical methods on a database covering a single year while denying the "benchmark method" because of a supposed assumption does not throw doubt on the whole claim of "systematic racism" among police shootings, especially when said database is primarily focused on fatal shootings alone, when a gun isn't the only method police use to kill.

I'd say this is cherry picking. Maybe something interesting in there, but I can play that game too by traveling down your articles citations, which I did take a gander at, but figured it was better to just point out what it is we're doing.

is there "systematic racism," absolutely not — Sam26

One can affirm each instance that goes to support the notion that there's systematic racism in the country, and yet deny the inference at the end of it all.

What would motivate such a denial?

It's not like George Floyd's case is unique in the most important way for a belief in systematic racism -- that he was killed when he should not have been killed because he was black. And it's not just the unjust and racialized treatment of the criminal justice system to supports the notion. It's a social fact -- so we don't need to look into the intents of individual officers or ideologies propogated, though those are bound to also be there. But we don't need to. We need only look at the social treatment of blacks vs. whites in the United States, and the inference is supported. At the very minimum we cannot just declare that there is absolutly no systematic racism, like it's a fairy tale to be dismissed and disgusted with.

I think there is an interesting discussion to be had on what social functions the current police fulfills, what functions it should fulfill, and which ones should be transferred to other kinds of institutions.

I don't know enough about American beat cops, in my experience with the police, they're mostly on beat so they can respond to calls from the area quickly. Not sure what else their job is besides "making people feel safe", which obviously doesn't apply to many black communities in the US. — Echarmion

https://plsonline.eku.edu/insidelook/history-policing-united-states-part-1

I think this is well trod territory. It's not so much a discussion as much as dispelling actively believed myths about police.

I don't think it's the only way. After all, plenty of police forces around the globe perform much better. Unless by "defund" you mean essentially "demilitarise", i.e. stop throwing more guns at the problem. — Echarmion

Nope, I mean "spend less money so there are substantially fewer persons playing the role of police officer" - get rid of beat cops. Make it a service you request rather than one that shows up to keep "order".

There's a line that's been well orchestrated in the media about good and bad protestors, with examples of the poor people effected by violence, usually shop keepers and mayors and the like. It's so well orchestrated that I see it here, during family dinners, at work, on twitter. . .

A rebellion is not surgical. Good people do, indeed, suffer. As good people have suffered before rebellion, it should be added. I just want people sympathetic to understand that this is a line being fed, orchestrated, to prey on your otherwise good moral sensibilities. No, good people shouldn't suffer. But the suffering began before even George Floyd was casually murdered while his friends watched. And all the marching, voting, hugging, and talking has already been done -- more times over than the usual highlight of events counts, too. The reason rebellion spread so quickly at George Floyd was because of the number of similar stories that locals are so very familiar with. These talking points about anarchists and outside agitators and what-not -- they are just talking points. If anarchists had the power to instigate this kind of rebellion they would have already done so long ago. You can find black faces that counter this because, as with any human group, not everyone agrees on the right way of things -- but life is more chaotic than that. Some, even if it counters a news narrative, choose to rebel by means outside of the usual peaceful protest, voting, marching, etc.

What does it matter that you have the people on your side when, after all that having been done before, the police continue to grow in funding, numbers, and continue to kill without repercussion?

I'm tempted to be more base, but instead will just say that defunding the police is the only way to have fewer killings -- because at least then there will be fewer cops doing the killing.

And since no one is voting for that -- after all, it is a minority position, yes? -- how exactly was voting, marching, and so forth supposed to effect that change anyways?

But surely we can agree that the police murdering people is wrong, and should be changed. So what then?

In a sense, yes you listened to the whole piece. However, you did not listen to it in the way the composer designed it to be heard as. You listened to it in pieces to get to the whole instead of listening to it in one piece. Music is made in a way to absorb the whole rhythm, style,etc as a whole to see the full beauty of it. — Julia

I agree.

I'm wanting to finish this Goodman stuff before posting next, but I think I'd say that though one could be in a position to form a rudimantry judgment on a first listen, even with maybe a single pause in the middle, that listening depends upon hearing the whole piece in one sitting -- actually hearing what the score sets out as the identity of the piece.

Hang on, though... not to be ungrateful but, is "the above" the OP? So you are agreeing after all with the suggestion that an instance of an artwork can be served up in two halves and still be an instance of the same artwork? :grimace: — bongo fury

The above was the OP, but like I said I'm still meandering and it's entirely possible that I'm conflating things or just saying something stupid without realizing all the implications. Thanks for the patience you've had.

I think I'd like to accept the distinction between hearing and listening, and try to be more rigorous from now on with it. Hearing refers to the physical sound-events, and so the identity, so I should say that I did not hear the same artwork -- introducing a pause causes me to hear something very similar, but not the same, because it introduces a sound event to the set of sound-events. (should probably introduce some sense of ordered sets, too, considering the joke that actually made a good point in the video you linked).

Whereas, say I am reading a book but the recording goes on un-interrupted, so I do hear the same work of art -- it retains its identity -- but perhaps I did not listen.

However, maybe we could say that we still listened to the artwork in spite of hearing something different -- listening, at this point, remaining vague but is in some way related to our ability to judge a work aesthetically. Or, maybe, more just related to an audience's experience of sound events. Not sure, as that is exactly the vague somewhere I'm still trying to puzzle through! :D

Still?? Despite the preceding? But I'm totally on board with you and the TheMadFool for that preceding paragraph. So, what's coming?... — bongo fury

Sorry, chalk it up to the meandering style. I think the above is clearer. Hopefully?

Well, in the sense that the artwork is still either the set of continuous plays of the recording or the set of complete realisations of the score, whether or not you facilitated one of those plays or realisations on this occasion, yes. But in the sense that you got both halves and therefore all of one of the continuous plays or realisations that multiply instantiate the artwork, no. — bongo fury

Cool. I think that does clarify your position. Sorry for being unclear on my part! I'm very much a novice here, so I'm bound to conflate things or miss implications without even realizing it.

I did get drawn into your thread, but on reflection, it seems rather a contrivance to me now. Why should the word 'listening' actually have meaning at all if we interrupt a piece of music to do something seeming more important at the time? — ernestm

I'm not sure I'm following here. I mean I might have to go do something else but everything I was doing before having to do something else was still what I was doing, regardless. The verb still has meaning.

So if I'm hammering nails from nine to noon "Hammering" still has the same meaning even though I went to lunch after that.

Or by "meaning" do you mean something like "significance"?



Cool.

What if, as jamalrob said before, our mind happens to drift during a large performance for a moment but then we're right back, attentive. Still the same as a pause?

And if so, when do we hear it?

It does grab me, because I've had the same thoughts, and my post was almost a reproach to my own tendency towards essentialism. — jamalrob

No worries. Nothing wrong with beating down essentialism. :D

This might be an unwelcome spanner in the works, but I feel like asking, why is this about listening? The complete appreciation or absorption in a piece of music is just as often represented by dancing. Thinking of it like that puts a different light on the question, I think. Unless we want to restrict the discussion to art music.

Hrmm, I think it just started there with me because of the original song that inspired the line of thinking, and then also because listening is related to quietism.

But, no, I don't think we have to restrict ourselves purely to music. And I like the idea of including dance, and just being absorbed in some work of art -- though I'll admit that I'm much more versed in musical appreciation than dance appreciation.

Then it might seem like the whole idea of the "entire piece" is a historical artifact of the development of music alongside visual art since the Renaissance: the work of art as a neatly delimited thing of special value. Maybe a great piece of music can be a living, changing thing, hardly just a thing at all.

I wonder, though I am sympathetic to this line of thinking too in my intuitions, if we might call lateer iterations of the same artwork different from the original? Or is it better to call them the same, but organic?

Maybe just a terminological preference.

Your example of Coltrane's My Favorite Things is a good example of a living work of art though. And it is very much his own.

EDIT: RIP McCoy Tyner

:(

May he rest in peace.

Well, all. Please forgive the meandering. Thanks for the input so far, it's helping me to at least express something and not just get stuck in an intuitive yet unspoken rut.

Did you find the article on his aesthetics, specifically? — bongo fury

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/goodman-aesthetics/

Sure, but for me the crucial insight is that musical artworks are sound-events: or, usually, sets or classes of sound-events, identified either through notation or recording or both. — bongo fury

Let's go along with this. The identity of a musical artwork is a set or class of sound-events identified through notation, recording, or both. This will allow us to differentiate between the work of art and our appreciation of the work of art, or as @Outlander put it :

Often people differentiate between hearing and listening. — Outlander

So we could say, in the above that we heard the entire peice, at least. And avoid something along the lines of @jamalrob asserting that we never hear the entire peice, which seems pretty absurd too.

I've never experienced a musical piece aired on TV being interrupted by ads. Maybe they're too short or maybe the producers intuit that any interruption to a piece of music amounts to altering it. :chin: — TheMadFool

You know YouTube has the audacity to intersperse ads into long orchestral recordings? Heathens, I tell you.


I like how you point out that when we push pause we're introducing something to our experience which the composer also uses in the artwork. That would be why the visual division served as analogue -- because the artist uses space in the case of paintings.

Still, I think I'm being won over by the identity theory posited by @bongo fury, for now at least. Whereas pausing it does introduce a significant difference to the work of art, the identity of the work of art is unchanged by my pausing it and starting it back up again.

Yeah, you heard the entire piece but not in one setting, so it's different if you heard it in one setting. It's probably an irrelevant distinction, but I suspect if you took 800 breaks so that it was so disjointed and so much time elapsed that you couldn't formulate it as a single piece in your head, it'd be relevant.

It's like if I watched the entire Game of Thrones over a few days versus if I watched 20 seconds a week for several years and then declared I had seen the whole thing.

I knew a guy who told me he hiked the entire Appalachian trail, which seemed less impressive when he explained he had done it over the course of many years, taking a different section each time. It was still a feat, but much less than someone who set out for many months and finished without a break. — Hanover

I think this gets along with what @bongo fury is saying. We hear the entire peice in any instance, but our aesthetic appreciation -- or the impressiveness of the hike, in the other case you mention -- *can* differ depending on how broken up it is.

What if you didn't hear the entire piece, and yet you loved it, you were able to analyze it and understand it and be inspired by it and other good things? I'd say in that case that you did appreciate the piece aesthetically. — jamalrob

I think I am inclined to agree, now, against my former intuitions. I think the distinction between our aesthetic appreciation and the identity of the artwork is useful here. While there is something to be said about listening to the whole thing with that intention, or even in being absorbed in a work of art -- like what you mention about dance being just as good an example for absorption -- it probably shouldn't define the identity of the work of art, or be some sort of necessary condition for aesthetic appreciation.

Taking this to its natural conclusion: we never listen to the entire piece. What then? — jamalrob

Decide whether the question is about whether or not we have encountered a complete and genuine instance of the artwork, or is instead one of any number of related questions about our processing of and response to whatever it is we have actually encountered. — bongo fury

I think, given the eventual focus on listening, I like the idea of deciding that we have heard a genuine instance of teh artwork, but that the identity of the artwork differs from our appreciation of the artwork. So, define the stimulus as such-and-such to explore our response and processing of the stimulus.

I'll tell you what I was more interested in for this topic...

I listen to a song once, it leaves a different imprint than twice, but the second time makes a pattern, subsequently third and fouth are different but still make a pattern, and then a different pattern emerges in tries 5 - 8, after that a pattern is possible but it's not as strict as 1-8.

1. The First Imprint.
2. (with partial memory)The Imperfect Judge.
3. (with a semi good memory)The Crossing.
4. (with good memory)The Perfect Judge.

Without going on to 8, I just want to highlight again that the 2nd listen is a different resound than the 1st and subsequently 3-8, and there's a rather strange pattern to it.

I have called this previously, mathematically, a nexus but I won't build on that just yet.

Any clue what I'm on about? Anyone? — ztaziz

I agree that the 2nd time I listen to something it's a different experience from the first time. Even more than that -- the more I listen to a particular genre the more I'll hear on a first listen of songs in the same genre, or sometimes even just having more conceptual tools will enhance my ability to pick out different meolodies, instruments, or harmonies as I listen.

Something that really surprised me when I first got into classical music was this phenomena -- the more I read about classical music, the more I heard when listening to both well-worn musical pieces and new ones that I hadn't heard before. There was a definite conceptual element to my direct hearing of the music, at least in producing my experience of the work of art.

And I think this iteration continues on. Some works of art can be listened to so many times that it goes on even greater than 8, and is probably relative to both the listener and the work of art.

And each listen seems a little different from the previous, I'll agree.

I guess I don't understand the significance of the question to you. So I'll offer a deflationary response.

If it is required to hear the entire thing in one go to count as listening, you didn't listen.
If it isn't required, you did.

I can see a few intuitions regarding continuity of the piece in the background, but I dunno how they relate. — fdrake

The obvious question is: why is this important? — jamalrob

Still wanting to loop back around to @TheMadFool, and also more of what you post @jamalrob -- but it's taking me more time to formulate thoughts there so I wanted to quickly address the question of significance.

First, this is more of an errant thought on my part -- a musing. Maybe it'll go nowhere, maybe it'll just trip me off into something that's already well explored that I just hadn't thought of before, and maybe it'll come up with something interesting.

Second, the concept of listening is something that I think is pretty well unexplored and directly relates to quietism. Further, aesthetics is one of those areas that I think is pretty awesome for philosophy -- it's not as trapped by all the intuitions about truth and knowledge and seems to be able to work more freely because of this. So there are some other interests that pursing this question relates to, but it's also just kind of interesting unto itself.

But, again, I want to emphasize that this is very much in errant thought territory, and not well-thought out or historically grounded or anything like that. Just something interesting to think through and about, if it happens to grab you.

Still by far my favorite things to come from the internet is the wealth of references I never would have stumbled upon on my own, or would have done so at much slower speeds. I took a peak at the SEP Nelson Goodman article, and started to read the entry on identity, but this in turn went back further into the article. So I thought, before just reading the whole thing, I'd at least ask if I was on the right track in finding this bit on print-making and photography?


Not that it's necessary for me to read it all before responding. I'm more collecting there. In response:

It's interesting to me to think of music in these two different categories - the notational vs recorded (or perhaps even live as another category? Jazz improv without recording comes to mind)

In a way it's like we're trying to match something. Not that there can't be small differences -- such as the small differences between different conductors or musicians when playing from the same score. You mention this -- it's a matching that doesn't have to be exact, it just has to fall within some limits. Limits that are likely imposed by the listener, to an extent -- someone who has an ear for a particular orchestra or conductor likely has more narrow limits to someone who is just passingly familiar with some orchestral work.

With recorded music I don't know if matching is as easy. What makes a "small" difference? A few pops at the beginning of the recording that weren't there in the master don't seem to make much of a difference. We begin listening when the instruments begin, not in the dead space around the recording.

Hrm hrm. Still more errant thoughts on my part, I'm afraid.

Oh, OK!

I may have misread @TheMadFool then, or just read him into your response too. My mistake.

I guess I'd say that you did not hear the entire peice then, and for some reason I read you as saying you had -- but you stated that the listener heard something different from the original score. OK.

This makes common sense to me when I look at examples.

But I wonder if there's some conceptual dimension here -- like, is there something that spells out what a complete work is? When do you stop listening? And what are these levels of commitment to listening? To what extent is the listener a part of the listened (for a work of art, at least)?

That sort of thing.

And I find it hard to give much of an answer, but it's something I'm thinking about -- hence the thread, to see if others have thoughts on the same matter.

This was the piece of music I was listening to when I formulated the question. It's something that really only works when taken as a whole. Other examples would be movements in a symphony or even very pronounced melodies within symphonies -- like Beethoven's 5th and 9th, which have very distinct and remembered melodies that everyone recognizes, but which require at least many different parts to be heard in full.

Let's try it like this.



*
*
***
*****




We have here two parts of the old guitarist. Together as a whole:




Now, by your reckoning, all we would need are the first two images and we could say we have seen the old guitarist. Break it up however you might imagine, too -- we can imagine it broken into hundreds of squares and triangles by some randomization algorithm, and by your reasoning if we have seen each of the hundreds of pieces then we have seen the entire painting. Hopefully you'll excuse me for not carrying out the demonstration, and you're able to see why someone would object to that.

We need to see the whole painting. Sometimes we need to see the entire painting hanging on a wall, and not just pictures of them on the internet, to get the whole effect. To stay with Picasso, Guernica is very much like that: its size has an effect on the viewer which is missed in looking up images of it.



I'd like to posit, at least, that the same holds for music. I can put music on in the background and hear it while focusing on something else, I can pause it and then go to work and come back hours later and restart where I was at. But there is also something to be said for listening to the entire work in a single session while concentrating on it. And I don't think the analogy is perfect -- I think there really is a difference between the visual and the audible, in terms of art. But it's close enough to hopefully highlight that there is something about continued listening which is important in evaluating music.

I, for one, am very appreciative of historical methods. You've given me a lot of good thoughts to chew on @Snakes Alive, and for that I am appreciative -- especially in times such as these where I have time, and find myself continually returning to philosophical quietism in my own loop of thoughts.

In the interest of the historical method I decided to look up whatever happened to be published in Nous. I'm not sure where to get a copy of the article, but they at least post abstracts. Two abstracts popped out for me.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/nous.12259
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/nous.12272

In the first we have some of the tools you identify as philosophy. And we also have useage of other concepts. A lot of philosophy of science, and related, is like this in my experience. So, for instance, we have the author asking after an analysis of biological function -- which is a conceptual request on a discipline. What is wanted is the form you posit -- "What is X?" -- however we can arrive at some concept and have it be productive. We can, of course, say what is productive is definitionally not philosophy. But then I'd say we're not staying true to our historical roots -- we have an artifact of philosophy, a philosophy journal, and what we see are the use of classical tools being put to use.

The second link is an example of what I'd say is something of the normative dimension of philosophy that your account misses. Even Plato had normative concerns. One can even fairly read his ouevre in that vain -- that the death of his teacher at the hands of sophists was the monumental injustice that spurred on his philosophy, and that all other concerns are tertiary to his desire for justice in the world. I thought of bringing up late antiquity to highlight this too, as they emphasize this element much more strongly, but the concern is right there in Plato. Which isn't to say your account his wrong, here, since this is actually a through-line back to Plato -- but that drive for knowledge of what is good is a major part of a lot of philosophy, and is missing from your account. It is, in part, a kind of literature dedicated to wisdom.


Second, and others have noted this too, I'd say that as interesting as your account is it might be more local than you're putting out, and that philosophy -- while it may not follow the usual lines put forward -- may also have a more general impulse. I'd say that I'm inclined to think in this direction, simply because philosophy as arisen in other parts of the world other than Greece. So, like money, religion, art, and politics philosophy comes about seemingly spontaneously, and this is even confirmed in everyday sorts of conversations on philosophical topics -- such as "how do you know?", "Do we have freewill?", or "Does God exist and what is he like?". There's one particular story and pseudo-lineage we call Western Philosophy that draws from Greece, and it likely picked up, along with that influence, the blind-spots from which that tradition draws -- in your thesis, the litigious aspect of ancient Athens. And it would be a very interesting historical exercise to see in what sorts of conditions philosophy finds itself -- does it find itself in similar circumstances, where argument in court is given such importance, and then these same language-games then get applied more generally to other subjects? Or does it arise in times of despair, such as when Plato despaired humanity? Or is it merely the mark of powerful and great civilizations, employing artisans and priests and philosophers to demonstrate their superior civilization, thereby giving them empirical proof of their right to conquest?


Third -- I'd hesitate a little in putting too much stock into historical methods. Not because I don't prefer them. I do. But because they also end in aporia! :D The same with art. The same with religion. The answers are ambiguous and always will be, in these disciplines. Yet, somehow, they mutate and become something different along the way, they add on new creations while assimilating the old.

Yeah. I have some drafts thus far, but that's the kind of thing I'm actually focusing on right now with occassionally looking up sources to see where the previous authors came from. But for the most part I'm just trying to improve the brass tacks writing of the thing! :D

Dooo eeeeet.

One thing I think I'd stand by is saying that while rigor and clarity are defining features of analytic philosophy -- even values commonly agreed upon -- that doesn't mean that these values are exclusively analytical, just definitive for analytic philosophers.

The page is kinda a spaghetti mess and I'm trying to untangle it bit-by-bit as I go about all my things in life, but I was going with the approach that analytic philosophy can be characterized without reference to other traditions since I don't think there's a good distinction to be made between the usual suspects -- i.e. continental or existential, etc.