"P" probably entails that I know P, just as it entails that I exist and I'm communicating and I'm speaking a language.

"P" is not identical to any of those, though, I don't think. Whether it's identical to "P is true." is another matter. I would say yes — frank

Referring back to Rödl again. He insists we acknowledge that, fundamentally, we don't know what we're talking about when we talk about P.

Even something like "P = P is true" starts to look bizarre once you let go of the standard accounts of P. If P is true, and is the same thing as P, doesn't that mean that P is a bit of language? So when I see that bit of language, I know it's true? Obviously that's not what we mean; we need some kind of assertion to go along with it. So "P = P is true" isn't right. But how do we provide the assertion? Is there a single way this is supposed to happen?

1. The cat is on the mat
2. I think that the cat is on the mat

(2) can be true even if (1) is false.

It may be that whoever asserts (1) is implicitly asserting (2), but they are nonetheless different claims. — Michael

Rödl tells us that "I use 'judgment' and 'thought' interchangeably, following ordinary usage." Let's say we do the same. That means we can render 2 as "I judge that the cat is on the mat." The subject of this statement is now a particular judgment; and as @Michael points out, (2) can still be true even if (1) is false.

What about the "implicit assertion" of (2) from (1)? Does that change if we think of (2) as being about a judgment rather than a thought? We can see how Rödl's clarification of his usage is so important, because he's telling us not to interpret "thought" as a psychological event here. "Thought" is a "Fregean thought," a content, not an event. I say this because a judgment has to be understood that way. We don't say, "I formed a judgment at time T1 but I'm no longer sure if that is my judgment; let me go back and make it again . . . and again . . . and again . . ." "Judgment" is meant to enter the Space of Reasons, not be merely a report on brain activity.

So -- producing my rather tiny rabbit here -- I'd say yes, (2) is implicitly asserted by (1), if (1) is in fact asserted. Which is by no means clear, since it's a classic instance of "P" -- see above.

Good stuff. We can't box up "philosophy" and say either that it was only done one way, or that it should be. Thus, what I meant by

this kind of philosophy. — J

wasn't the entire Western practice, but a particular analytic conception which is often quite severe about what counts as good philosophical discourse.

I took the “view from nowhere” as the requirement of a criteria of certainty (which I take Descartes to be desiring, even in bringing up “God”) — Antony Nickles

As I said to @Wayfarer, above:

One of the hallmarks of the absolute conception [or the View from Nowhere], as opposed to a local or relativized conception, would be a type of certainty. But we have to spell this out carefully: The certainty is meant to guarantee that whatever is being asserted is framework-independent, pre-interpretation, true no matter who is asserting it, in no matter what context. This has understandably been questioned as either impossible or incoherent. — J

Is this the same thing, the same flavor of certainty, as the kind Descartes sought? I don't think so. This sort of certainty is more like an argument which goes: "Well, if what I claim to know is framework-independent, true no matter who asserts it, etc., et al., then surely it must be certain. What more could I require, in the way of certainty?"

. . . a conception of the “absolute”, then we’ve reached the cliff @Banno was worried about, as that would be theology’s discussion with science. — Antony Nickles

And here's yet another way to construe certainty: Certainty is what we get when we discover we are viewing the world from an absolute point of view. This, I wouldn't hesitate to call apodictic. It is self-verifying in much the same way that Descartes' God cannot be a deceiver. Interesting question: Can this version of certainty ever attach itself to something that isn't God? There are those who believe that scientific realism is self-verifying, on pain of contradiction.

If we are talking about a conception of absolutely everything, then we’d describe justice and rocks the same way. — Antony Nickles

There's benefit in having different ways to describe different things, hence collapsing everything into one description is leaving things out? — Banno

What Banno says, would indeed be the problem if speaking from within some absolute conception implied only one type or level of description. But does that follow? Perhaps you could say more about why we'd have to describe abstracta and physical items the same way.

As Wittgenstein was trying to point out, different practices have different criteria, different standards (not just certainty)—what matters as that counting as such-and-such (pointing, apologies, a moral stance, a fact); as it were, being true to itself. — Antony Nickles

OK, but . . . does this answer my question about absolute vs. local? Sorry if I'm not seeing it. To put it another way: Is what Witt says coming from an absolute, a local, or neither viewpoint?

More may be dreamt of than in our philosophy, but that’s not to say we can’t acknowledge, say, how science is important to us — Antony Nickles

I think Williams' problem, and mine, would be: "More may dreamt of than in our philosophy, but that's not to say we can't acknowledge how philosophy is important to us." -- is that true, W and I are asking? What form does that acknowledgement take? Is it the same sort of discourse that allows phil to speak about a discipline outside itself, such as science?

You are right that my equating greatness as an artist with an aesthetic of form and shape is personal to me. — RussellA

OK, that's how it seemed to me, thanks.

all the while allowing us the knowledge that we don’t know how it works. — Mww

Snake swallows tail again . . . but you're right.

I went back and reread the OP and your response to my comment, as well as all the other posts on this thread. But I don’t get it. — T Clark

I feel bad about this, and will try to think of other ways to clarify what we're talking about. For now, please do keep following along, maybe someone else will do better than I.

*

There are a number of other interesting points that people have raised, thanks. I look forward to responding, but I'll be out of cyberworld all day and evening. Carry on!

That is philosophy’s claim*, but it neither claims it “absolutely”, nor “locally”, as these are predetermined, created standards. — Antony Nickles

(* the claim is: "as long as I don't claim knowledge about what the [absolute] conception is, my talk about it can remain "local.")

I was with you all the way, until this. Maybe I'm not understanding you. Let's grant that both "absolute" and "local" are predetermined, created standards. How does this exempt philosophy from nonetheless speaking from one or the other? What would be the third alternative?

So if it’s a philosophical claim, then how is it to be adjudicated? Surely that would require some framework within which the expression “philosophical absolute” is meaningful. I suppose when Williams asks whether, if we were to possess such an insight, we must know we possess it, he’s invoking the Cartesian expectation that a genuine absolute insight would be, as Descartes claimed of the cogito, apodictic — self-certifying by virtue of its subject matter. — Wayfarer

This may be helpful:

There are two demands which the absolute conception of reality seemed to make: that we should at least show the possibility of explanations of the place in the world of psychological phenomena such as the perception of secondary qualities, and, further, of cultural phenomena such as the local non-absolute conceptions of the world; and of the absolute conception itself . . . No one is yet in a position to meet those demands. — Williams, 300-1

So yes, this is spinning off from Descartes' project, and we see this particularly when Williams first names "secondary qualities" as needing explanation (something Descartes understood) and then links this with "local non-absolute conceptions," which probably would have been meaningless to Descartes but is very much of concern to us.

I'm not sure if Williams' framing of "absolute knowledge" requires that it be apodictic. This is one of the puzzles about what absolute knowledge, should such exist, would look like. Does math count as absolute knowledge? It is arguably self-certifying.

As for certainty:

the Cartesian anxiety: the fear that unless we can affirm an absolute with certainty, we’re condemned to relativism. — Wayfarer

Yes. One of the hallmarks of the absolute conception, as opposed to a local or relativized conception, would be a type of certainty. But we have to spell this out carefully: The certainty is meant to guarantee that whatever is being asserted is framework-independent, pre-interpretation, true no matter who is asserting it, in no matter what context. This has understandably been questioned as either impossible or incoherent.

But is it the kind of certainty that says, "This very statement [about the grounds and limitations of the absolute conception] is certainly true"? That goes to the heart of my discomfort with Williams' "move."

philosophical reflection can meaningfully trace the limits of conditioned knowledge without pretending to stand outside of it. — Wayfarer

Agreed, and I think Williams is trying to show a way for this to be legitimate.

But if we never say more than “here’s what an absolute would be like if there were one,” have we said anything of consequence? Or would it have been better not to have asked the question? — Wayfarer

Good statement of what I meant by

But don't we want to say more? Or can the "more" only happen from some version of an absolute conception? — J

Do you have an opinion about this "more"? How would you answer your own question? I'm guessing you would point to a wisdom-tradition response that "gestures beyond" this kind of philosophy. . . ? (as suggested by your subsequent post, from which I quote below) My own answers would be similar.

Maybe what’s needed isn’t absolute knowledge but an orientation toward the limits of conditioned thought—a recognition that philosophy, at its best, gestures beyond what it can fully capture. — Wayfarer

What I like aesthetically does not depend on any judgment. I make no subjective aesthetic judgements.

As objects don't have any intrinsic art value, my aesthetic likes cannot be objective but only subjective. — RussellA

But how does this fit with "Derain is a great artist and Banksy is not"? That's what I meant about an aesthetic judgment "cashing out" as merely a matter of likes and dislikes. So I guess that is what you mean? "Great artist" = "someone I like a lot".

Or, perhaps, the bolded phrase above is the way out? Derain's painting doesn't have any intrinsic art value, but somehow acquires it? How might that happen?

Apologies if I'm still not getting it.

Sure. Williams assumes that the "absolute knowledge" problem is real. If one has already settled that satisfactorily for oneself, then this is merely an interesting argument to look at.

The claim that science seeks a "view from nowhere" is a misrepresentation. Science seeks a view from anywhere. — Banno

Fair enough. "View from Nowhere" has gotten entrenched, via Nagel, but maximal contexts makes sense. And Nagel didn't mean science in particular.

But then philosophy does lead to at least this little bit of absolute knowledge... and so philosophy's having allowed that some other discourse is the source of absolute knowledge is itself an absolute knowledge...

But then the "very original move", that even if philosophy provides a conception that includes the idea of absolute knowledge, this doesn’t entail that philosophy knows that the conception is itself true in an absolute sense. It's still presumably the science or religion or revelation or mysticism that performs this task...

How is that? Is that close enough? — Banno

Very close. I bolded in an absolute sense to make it even clearer. Philosophy is going to talk about some other inquiry's absolute conception, and talk about it in a way that remains tied to non-absolute conceptions. The things phil says about these absolute conceptions are not put forward as true beyond the historical or cultural context of the philosopher -- they are not "known to be true" in the same way that the absolute conception knows things to be true.

I think that is what Williams is suggesting.

Then this seems to me very close to what we have been discussing concerning philosophy as plumbing. — Banno

Interesting. I'll reflect on that. You may be right, precisely because I'm not happy with that conclusion, and want more from philosophy! Which leads me to view Williams' move with suspicion. Can the mere avoidance of self-reflection or self-appraisal still leave philosophy able to say what it wants? Well, I guess that very much depends on who's doing the wanting. :smile:

To be continued . . .

added: or
"what if we accept the idea that revelation aims to provide that knowledge"
or
"what if we accept the idea that mysticism aims to provide that knowledge"
and so on. — Banno

Right. Williams' question is about the idea of an "absolute conception," not any one in particular.

Looks like you are not going to get the science toothpaste back in the tube. — Banno

I know! It's a perfectly valid and interesting topic -- what to make of science and its defenders as an absolute conception -- but not the one I was hoping to address, picking up from Williams.

I agree with a great deal that you're saying. I think Williams might too, because as @Joshs pointed out, he does not espouse a scientific View from Nowhere, and as I was trying to explain, he mentions it only as a convenient point of reference to help locate what he's really asking about.

Maybe I can phrase Williams' problem using this:

the natural sciences cannot be complete in principle, — Wayfarer

Let's grant that. Williams is asking, If philosophy asserts this, is it asserting a piece of absolute knowledge? It's certainly a striking and important assertion, if true; the question is, what is its claim to being knowledge, and of what sort? Is it "merely local" -- that is, the product of a philosophical culture which cannot lay claim to articulating absolute conceptions of the truth?

I don't think Williams much cares whether science, or scientism, would agree that the target truth claim is indeed absolute knowledge. What he wants to know is, Does philosophy say that it is? And isn't this self-contradictory, if we stipulate that local news is the only kind you're going to get on the Philosophy Channel?

As you can see, Williams suggests a solution that involves rejecting the claim to knowledge: "we would need some reasonable idea of what such an [absolute] conception would be like, but we have not agreed that if we have that conception, we have to know that we have it." And I'm asking, is this legit? By remaining agnostic about the absolute truth of "The natural sciences cannot be complete in principle", have we succeeded in saying something about an absolute conception ("a reasonable idea of what it would be like") without claiming to know it, or affirming it to be absolutely true? In a way, yes, but don't we want to say more? Or can the "more" only happen from some version of an absolute conception? We can see how the snake swallows its own head . . .

One might, somewhat redundantly, further assert that one asserts that the cat is on the mat. If the need arose. — Banno

Does it seem less redundant if it read, "I assert that I've made the judgment that the cat is on the mat"? This formulation tries to bring in "making a judgment" as a 1st-person activity, not just a semantical stance. And you couldn't just lop off "I assert" because "I've made the judgment" doesn't quite say the same thing as "I assert". Unless you think Frege would just replace that phrase as well with a judgment stroke?

What answer should I have known? — bongo fury

Oh, sorry, from your post I thought you acknowledged that "all sentences assert" can't be quite right. I didn't have anything more esoteric in mind.

Good. That sets out the issue quite clearly and simply. Some of us around here, following Kimhi and Rödl, want to make "thought" more complicated, but it's by no means obvious that this must be correct.

A sentence is already an assertion sign. (I assert.) How does it end up needing reinforcement? — bongo fury

:smile: You know the answer to that. But for the record: I seriously doubt if your use of the sentence "The cat is on the mat", above, genuinely asserted anything. And when T. S. Shmeliot uses the sentence in a poem, it's even less likely to be an assertion. And when I scream it in a crowded theater . . . it's art.

That said, the "proposition solution" is somewhat enigmatic to many of us.

"My thought of judging that things are so is a different act of the mind from my judging that they are so." - J

Just to be clear, that's Rödl, not me, though I think he's right. And @Banno's paraphrase is also right if we agree that both "I judge" and "my thought of judging" can be captured by the judgment stroke, in the later case by simple recursion. Complications can ensue about exactly how to understand "my thought of judging", if it isn't understood as a type of assertion.

But if she had made a pile of pebbles, with the same patience and focus, complete unto herself, the resulting pile would be the vehicle, and I would feel the same looking at it as I do the crayon spots on paper. — Patterner

Yes. So we only need to ask whether your experience falls under the aesthetic, or something closer to the heart. I'm happy seeing it either way.

I didn't tag anyone, but did you see my last post? The paper with crayon spots is entirely inconsequential. — Patterner

Sorry, just saw this. I love that story. Do you mean that the physical thing, the paper and crayon, just happened to be the vehicle chosen to deliver the "origin story" which is one of sentiment, innocence, and personal connection? (or something like that, pardon me if my words are clumsy)

You might come to understand it all, and be able to do the analysis on your own. But you might never come to like his music — Patterner

But then again you might. Would the tutoring have had a bearing, do you think?

There may be an absolute reality but we don’t have to claim that our philosophical accounts of this absolute can themselves be known absolutely in order to make progress in our understanding of reality. We can do this through local, embodied and situated practical inquiries. — Joshs

Good. That's how I read Williams' position as well. But the question remains: Does the move he makes in the material quoted from p. 303 suffice to show how this is possible? Williams says that we don't have to know either 1) that there is an absolute conception, or 2) what it is. Short of such knowledge, philosophical statements, including this very "piece of philosophy", are exempted from self-contradiction; as long as I don't claim knowledge about what the conception is, my talk about it can remain "local."

In short, I can be right about this, but not assert it as a piece of knowledge. As long as I don't say I know that I've got it right, I've avoided the trap.

Do you think this works, or is it only clever?

The presupposition that a view from nowhere, absolute knowledge, objective reality, exists is the foundation of the orthodox view of what you are calling "natural science." It is metaphysics, philosophy, not science. Is this what you have called "one piece of philosophy which has absolute status?" The problem is that this is just one metaphysical view among many. — T Clark

I kinda wish Williams had left natural science out of his argument about the absolute conception, because I can see it's distracting several posters. But let me try to reply.

Williams has set this up as a "what if". What if we accept what you're calling "the orthodox view"? He's well aware that this is all it is, he's only pointing to it as the view (he was writing in the 1970s) most likely to garner support from those who think an absolute conception, a View from Nowhere, is available. It is, as you say, philosophy, not science.

So no, the "one piece of philosophy which has absolute status" -- or seems to; this is Williams' question -- is the one that would declare what does or doesn't have absolute status. Science may or may not figure in this. And it doesn't matter whether you think science has that status, or not. Either declaration, yea or nay, is going to appear as a philosophical statement claiming to demarcate an important area of human inquiry.

Apologies if my OP didn't make this sufficiently clear, though as I say, by starting with the so-called orthodox view of science as a potential absolute conception, Williams may have made the issue more confusing than it needs to be. I hadn't realized that until reading your, and others', responses.

If there is or could be such a thing as the View from Nowhere, a view of reality absolutely uninterpreted by human perspectives and limitations, then scientific practice would produce this view, not philosophy.
— J

This is exactly backwards. — T Clark

So, same response here. I have no idea if Williams believes this. I certainly don't. He's giving us a way to frame his question about absolute conceptions that he hopes will be familiar to his readers. His question -- and mine, in this OP -- is not about which absolute conception, if any, is correct. The question is about whether the argument I quoted succeeds in removing the onus of "absolute conception" from the "piece of philosophy" that claims to know that there is an absolute conception, yet presents itself as "merely local."

The whole thing is an attempt to see whether this house of conceptual cards can stand -- whether Williams has saved it, or only saved the appearances.

Maybe read the quote from his p. 303 again, in the light of all this?

So if that weird microtonality is part of the appeal, it's the production that should get the credit, not John Lennon (if I don't misremember the story, or fell for a biased one). — Dawnstorm

I believe the story's true. But I think Lennon was the one who realized he wanted to splice them. As you say, technique-wise, he didn't know how, but George Martin did. Collaboration again.

Current production techniques seem to have made snapping things to pitch and beat via software routine: it's not bad that you can do it. Correcting a "mistake" to save an otherwise great take isn't so bad. But a routine rule-setting can get rid of a lot of expression. — Dawnstorm

Yeah, welcome to (a big part of) my world. The praxis question, if I can dignify it with that word, is what counts as a mistake. Making all the pitches and beats perfect is, for many kinds of music, including the kinds I mostly like, quite deadly to the musical effect. Being "a little off" is not a mistake, unless you're a robot. (Ah, but how much is "a little"? Taste, again.) If I record drum samples, using a quantizer to keep them precise, I generally then have to go back and fuck them up a little, in the way a real drummer with feel and style would. (Unless I'm doing a Steely Dan cover! :wink: ).

In contrast, sometimes a mistake is just . . . a clam, as jazzers say. And those you want to fix if you can. I personally think it's fine to do this; Jimi Hendrix did it frequently, back in the day. But if I'm doing it all the time, every time I play a guitar solo (which given my skills on that instrument is quite likely), you gotta wonder just how great the great take really is. Time to bring in the guitar genius who lives up the road?

Recording technology has, I think, muddled the earlier difference between composition and performance. — Dawnstorm

Absolutely. Technology will change, artistic practice follows.

. When did we get the concept of a recording artist? I'm not entirely sure. We've had it by the fifties, certainly. It goes hand in hand with concepts like "live performance" or "cover version". — Dawnstorm

Great book to read on this subject: Greg Milner, Perfecting Sound Forever.

Basically, I think even the aesthetic experience you're aware of is already a complex composite and not independent of the way the social institution you might title "music" propagates. Your aesthetic experience is part of and permeated by the flux. — Dawnstorm

This is a huge topic, and one I enjoy nattering on about, but I'll just say that I don't believe there's such a thing as an "innocent ear," a way of listening to music that can separate it from your culture and your own individual experience. And this leads us back to the idea of traditions, styles, and practices as the guidelines for understanding how to appreciate music, or any art.

As regards the objective, the object in the world that causes an aesthetic experience in a person is not in itself aesthetic. — RussellA

OK, I don't mean to be imposing a terminology on you. I'm trying to circle back to your example of knowing without question that the Derain is great art:

"Within the tradition of painting, Derain is a great artist and Banksy is a mediocre artist"

This is a value judgement that I know to be true. — RussellA

I'm not disputing it, or your experience. (I love Derain.) I'm just trying to understand what it commits you to. Let me try to ask my questions a different way:

If I have the reverse experience, is that because I am having a different "sting" experience than you? Or are we both experiencing Derain and Banksy the same way -- you say it's not a matter of judgment at all, and the "sting" is not in itself aesthetic -- but for some reason coming to different aesthetic judgments?

I think you must mean the latter.

So then I want to know, Is an aesthetic judgment objective in the same way that the sting is? Can one of us be right, the other wrong? Or does it simply cash out to "what I like" and "what you like"?

Likewise if we say there's more to the art-object than the product, but includes the process as well, you could tie that to the similar sentiment people have with respect to great works of art: At some point it's the particular history of the art-object that's part of the art-object. — Moliere

Right, that is one promising way to challenge Danto's conception: We have to include some kind of origin story as part of the work of art. This leads to a lot of questions, especially whether it's possible to properly appreciate a work without the origin story. And, of course, whether such a story can be perceived at all, in the same way that the artwork is. It's a rich, ongoing discussion, especially around conceptual art.

just as we think replicas of great works of art aren't the "real deal", and there's no property of the object that differentiates them (let's say it's a very good forgist who uses chemical techniques to replicate the exact places of the atoms in a painting) we still differentiate them on the basis of the art-objects process of production. — Moliere

This is the very example Danto uses. He calls them "indiscernibles." What he says about the masterpiece and the perfect forgery, however, doesn't involve the process (or story) of production. He says that we decide which counts as art. Our hand isn't forced. Some traditions place a very high value on the concept of an "original art work." Others do not. Again, Warhol's work forces us to look at our own traditions and institutions: Are these "originals"? Or Sol LeWitt -- is it a LeWitt original if the whole point is that he gives you instructions and you make it?

electronic music has its own technique. It could include trying to emulate the most "dirty and real" sounding recording out there, but it would not, for all that, be a recording of that. — Moliere

Yes, and that's how many of us working in digital music-making try to think of it. Who says we don't have technique?! :grin: It's a specialized technique called "writing, performing, recording, and editing using MIDI keyboards and digital samples." (Of course some of us can actually play an old-fashioned instrument pretty well too.) Yeah, but . . . . if what I'm recording is meant to sound like a superb bass guitar, and I achieve this using my dozen post-production devices, the fact remains that I'm representing myself as having the technique of Paul McCartney when I really don't. That's uncomfortable. It's also uncomfortable because it makes me lazy. Rather than practice the damn part till I get it right, I know I can fix it in post.

One consolation is that, in a certain sense, McCartney's technique is a "representation" too. Recorded music has been edited and improved via production techniques long before there was digital tech. A good player sounds good on record in part because it's a collaboration with a guy with my kind of technique -- knob-twirling, etc. But still . . . no amount of edits will make you Coltrane. It's almost embarrassing to use the same word, "technique", to describe what an excellent producer does, and what a genius musician does.

I see. Yes, we can certainly just reject his premises and standpoint. I wonder, though, whether you're able to accept them for the sake of argument, and help us see whether the argument goes through? If that doesn't interest you, no worries.

Suppose you are stung by a wasp and say that you feel pain, but I don't believe that you actually feel pain. Is it possible that you can prove to me that you do in fact feel pain? — RussellA

When stung by a wasp, I feel pain. I don't learn how to feel the pain.

When "stung" by a Derain, I feel an aesthetic, I don't learn how to feel the aesthetic. — RussellA

You can certainly make that analogy to the wasp sting, and claim that aesthetic appreciation can't be either taught or debated. But which of these positions would you say that commits you to?:

A). Aesthetic judgments are strictly subjective -- not only felt subjectively, like a sting, but also comprising personal preferences solely (unlike a sting).

B) Aesthetic judgments are partially subjective -- they are known subjectively or intuitively, like a sting, but what is known is objective, hence everyone will have more or less the same reaction (again like a sting).

I don't mean to limit it to these two, but just to highlight the difference in terms of why someone might not be stung by Derain in the way that you are. Is it because they're "missing" what is aesthetically valuable, or because they just don't share your taste?

Well, this is a whole other approach. I'd begin by questioning how "painting" constitutes a tradition, but since you wind up with a purely subjective basis for judgment anyway, it doesn't matter. If you "know it to be true," regardless of demonstration or argument, enough said.

All I’m saying is that if you invoke “better” about any thing or as any concept, you have invoked “best” and “worst” as well.

Does that help? — Fire Ologist

No, sorry. You seem to be simply restating your position.

I suggested an example -- the battle of the bands -- in which we don't appear to need a constitutive idea of "best" in order to choose a winner. (Remember, we're both agreeing to reject that other reading of "best" which simply defines it as "top choice." That's not constitutive. That would be like saying that piety is what the gods love. It provides no content.)

I said that I thought there were probably some cases in which having an articulated, constitutive version of an "ideal" or a "best" would be helpful in inquiry. I suggested you might want to construct such an example, so we could compare it to the band example.

Was the "13" example meant to be this? If so, you'll need to say more. How does an abstract number analogize to "the best"?

This all to say that things like marketing (propaganda), access, appearance, in-group considerations and many other things contribute to what seems like an objective standard of "This many people enjoy this artist". — AmadeusD

OK, I see. I hope not too many philosophers are fooled by the equation of "popular" and "aesthetically valuable." We have to seek objective standards, if there be any, elsewhere.

I'm not sure I understand the showing you describe, though: That we can no longer equate art with any physical substrate, any thing which art must be in order to qualify. The latter part makes sense to me, it's the "any physical substrate" that has me wondering what that means, or if it's not that special and just a turn of phrase. — Moliere

Right, more a turn of phrase (mine, not Danto's). It's meant to suggest the usual circumstances under which someone will point and say, "That can't be art because it isn't made of the right stuff, or made correctly." Danto argues that Duchamp and his ready-mades began the demonstration against this view, and Warhol put it permanently to bed. Conceptual art, too.

This conclusion deeply annoys people who equate art with a craft or skill. And it leaves a serious question -- what is techne, in the arts, if it can't be equated with art itself? I've written about this in various posts, relating to my practice as a musician. I think Danto is right and I'm upset that I can now make music without mastering skills that used to be de rigueur. My "art object" is not "made of the right stuff," according to the old view. It may be indiscernible nonetheless, compared to something that is made of the right stuff, and isn't that enough? But the difference in process, in the act of creating, is damn well discernible to the artist, and I don't like it.

Yes, within the aesthetic tradition that Banksy is a great artist, then the non-relative judgment may be made that Banksy is a great artist.

But within the aesthetic tradition that Banksy is not a great artist, then the non-relative judgment may be made that Banksy is not a great artist. — RussellA

This unfairly makes it sound as if the judgment is just redundant. Let's instead say, "Within the aesthetic tradition that Banksy is a great artist, then the non-relative judgment may be made that Jimmy Wannabe is not a great artist."

In any case, wouldn't it be more accurate to say that the tradition simply names Banksy as an artist working in that tradition, with the "great artist" judgment as a second consideration? I don't think any tradition automatically lays out who must be the best.

Consider Derain's tradition. Do you want to say that to understand that tradition is to understand that Derain is a great artist? Does the tradition also generate rankings of artists both better and worse than Derain? I'm not convinced, though you're getting at something important, which is that a description of a tradition or a practice is incomplete without an explanation of how to make value judgments within that tradition. But that's different, I think.

when I make up my mind about X, I generally know it, and if I change my mind, I know that too,
— J
So you say... but as Wittgenstein points out, what if it constantly changes, but that you do not notice the change because your memory constantly deceives you? — Banno

I'll grant the remote possibility; I don't know it for certain. But this is on a par with Descartes's evil demon, isn't it? A chance so unlikely that it's not worth worrying about.

Was my mind actually made up? It was. And then it wasn't. So was it ever? The only way to decide this is if you go to the shop... — Banno

That's one way. Another method is to fine-tune what "making up one's mind" means. Having done that, I'll know what to say, no matter if I go to the shop or not. With this method, the arrow goes the other way: I don't find out from going to the shop whether I'd made up my mind. I find out from a certain construal of "make up my mind" what not going to the shop means, in that regard.

TBC . . . my eyes are closing.

So sans action, have you actually made up your mind? Or is there still the possibility of your deciding otherwise? — Banno

I'm surprised to see you use a phrase like "actually made up your mind"! :wink: What can I say? I don't know how actual it is, but when I make up my mind about X, I generally know it, and if I change my mind, I know that too, but it doesn't retroactively show that my mind wasn't in fact made up.

Unless you want to fine-tune what "making up one's mind" amounts to? I was using it to refer something pro-tem. I can make up my mind to go to the store tomorrow, then decide not to. Was my mind actually made up? Yes, on my usage. And then it wasn't. But I'm open to other terminology.

Practical usage often doesn’t require the best: When choosing between two apples, you don’t need to know the best apple in the world; just which one tastes better. — Banno

This was my "battle of the bands" example too. I think it even goes beyond a question of practical usage. For many types of comparison, "the best" makes no sense -- apples and bands, for instance.

But not for all. @Fire Ologist, I think you can make a case that knowing an ideal type or goal is important in some kinds of inquiry. Why don't you try to construct such a specific case? -- it'd be worth doing, I think.

how is it shown that one's mind is made up? That's seen in what one does, and so is public. — Banno

Yes, but as I've often averted to in past discussions, there's one exception to this -- namely, when the audience who is "shown" is myself. It simply isn't credible that I don't know whether I've made up my mind on some subject unless I do something in public about it. Do I need to construct some obvious examples, or would you allow this?

On Danto -- yes! That's a sort of "beginning" for my thinking on the categorical question of art. — Moliere

You probably know that Danto, in addition to promulgating his theories about the artworld, offered a frankly Hegelian picture of what art is. It involves a move which is philosophical -- a process by which art comes to understand itself, to eliminate all the things that art is not. He showed, I think convincingly, that we can no longer equate art with any physical substrate, any thing which art must be in order to qualify. Art is a way of seeing; we declare what is art, we don't discover it. The "we" here is the subject of much debate, naturally.

(This applies to all the arts, not just visual arts, so substitute "way of hearing" for music.)

Why these people, and not the butchers of the same time period? — Moliere

This is key, I think. Trying to compare the relative beauty of Bach and Vivaldi may not get us very far, since "beauty" is notoriously hard to pin down. But my local classical station has an unfortunate penchant for playing all the latest "early-music discoveries" and I promise you, I can explain why both Bach and Vivaldi were better composers! Within this tradition, to be sure.

I expect their conversations to be much more rich and complicated than my toy example of a standard. — Moliere

Indeed, the more you know about a given musical heritage, the better you can make aesthetic discriminations within that practice. And in doing so, you can name the criteria that count.

Is this an institutional argument like Danto? — AmadeusD

That's a good question. I don't know what @Moliere would reply, but I would call it more an appeal to expertise and scholarship. That doesn't always overlap with the "institution"!

I'm trying to understand how we could have a standard, rather than an amorphous, temporal agreement about what's good without naming it... So, the standard would just be the actual reactions, in aggregate, of listeners.

That said, I see all the problems with this when it comes to modern music and how it's sold. — AmadeusD

I'd be interested to hear more about this.

Within the tradition that agrees paintings such as Banksy's "Girl with Balloon" has aesthetic value as works of art, then Banksy's "Girl with Balloon" has aesthetic value as a work of art.

Within the tradition that agrees paintings such as Derain's "Drying the sales" have aesthetic value as works of art, then Derain's "Drying the Sails" has aesthetic value as a work of art. — RussellA

Sure, but my point was that, within each respective tradition, non-relative aesthetic judgments can be, and are, made. The reason you've heard of Banksy and not "Jimmy Wannabe" (I'm making him up, since no one's heard of him!) is because there is widespread agreement within this tradition that Banksy is better. If it was "relativism all the way down," the relativist art critic would compare Banksy and Jimmy and say, "Whatever. There's no aesthetic distinction to be made." But we know that's not what happens -- and the same for Derain's tradition, of course.

The question is, is there such a thing as aesthetic value over and above each tradition. — RussellA

Yes, that's what I was trying to get to. If someone denies this, would you say they are a relativist about aesthetic value tout court?

Also interesting: Suppose we agree that Derain and Banksy can share a tradition. After all, they're both European painters, very broadly. How could a tradition develop its aesthetic criteria in such a way that D and B can both be given a fair look? I'm not saying this can't be done; the "how" is what interests me.

I think I am saying for 1 that we show an understanding that there indeed IS an ideal. — Fire Ologist

Well, but tie that back to the Battle of the Bands. Aren't you saying that we can't compare the two bands meaningfully without a commitment to there being an ideal "best band"? I'm not worried about the ontological or Platonic aspects here; I just don't know how to make sense of it. Can you sketch a use of "best" here that captures your meaning? Doesn't it just collapse back to that other sense of "best" which simply references "top choice out of X choices"?

“Better than” doesn’t work, has no use, means nothing, without the baggage (or bonus) of “best”. — Fire Ologist

Yes, that's the question under discussion. Don't draw a line under it yet! We're just getting started. :smile:

The problem with relativism is that Derain's "Drying the Sails 1905 has an aesthetic value equal to that of Banksy's "Girl with Balloon", which is clearly nonsense. — RussellA

I don't get that. Are you saying that a relativist is committed to claiming that all aesthetic judgments are equally valid? I don't think that's how the argument usually goes. Rather, the idea would be that, within a tradition or a practice, we can unrelativistically distinguish better and worse examples, while remaining skeptical about any overarching, tradition-independent standards about "beauty," for instance.

So the interesting question would be, are Derain and Banksy creating within the same tradition? If not, does "clearly nonsense" mean that you do see a tradition-independent criterion for aesthetic value?

I am right to avoid agreeing we can compare or speak about objects without an understanding of ideals and superlatives. — Fire Ologist

Ah, and this can be given a good, sensible construal. Let me paraphrase and see if you agree:

We can't compare items in terms of qualities they may share unequally without 1) understanding that there indeed may be an ideal amount/kind/degree of said qualities, even if we don't know what it is; and 2) understanding how to use superlatives.