An artist can create a piece that’s about art, ways of looking at the world, or he can create a piece about the subject. Sometimes the subject is not even apparent or there is no subject. Abstract art has no subject except itself. Sometimes it’s only about the subject, and the technique, the work, serves the subject. Sometimes the work is only about the artist; their feelings, their life, etc.

What purpose does “Piss Christ” serve? What was the artist trying to say? Was it a failure in the attempt to say something?

Was it about asceticism? I don’t think so, I think it was about an idea, of the artist. Are ideas art? If so why not just write the idea on a piece of paper? And was there anything new or relevant in the work that we had not already considered, something that opened our eyes to the world? I don’t think so.

So it wasn’t necessary to produce this work. So why produce it?

I think the work makes the artist immoral in terms of art. He’s pretending to produce something of value by the fact that he creates a response that attacks the work that creates its value through the work becoming a victim. So now the work is the subject of a moral divide. What’s achieved? A discussion? A discussion about something already totally understood that was predictable and pointless.

Can't argue with that. Of course your right.

I hadn't realised that controversy was the point of being here.

Nor did I make a claim, I asked a question.
I was alluding to the idea of past, present and future existing right now.

But Archetypes and Forms are "things" (ideas) that are assumed to have always existed. Yet we only have access to them in imagination. — Gnomon

This is a problem, isn’t it? Things of the imagination are not real. Real things are temporal. Only unreal things can exist externally and because they don’t exist they don’t count.

That’s fine as long as you’re happy to always feel that you do not need to chose.

I put up the quote because it elaborates on the meaning of autonomism.

We, here, all of us, are incredibly well-informed experts on things we've never heard of before. — god must be atheist

It was the word I was unaware of, not the practice.

Radical autonomism holds that it makes no sense to evaluate artworks ethically. It is rejected by arguing that ethical evaluation of an artwork is equivalent to evaluating ethically what the artist(s) did in the artwork, the artistic acts performed therein. Moderate autonomism holds that the intrinsic ethical merits or demerits of artworks are never aesthetically relevant. (Oxford Scholarship Online)

I’ve never heard of the Autonomism either. But the idea that art need have no morality is probably related to statements made by artists in the past. The portrait of a nude woman, not as a metaphor or representing Greek myth but as a real woman, showing her age, her personality, her attitude, her body exposed, would have gone against the imposed morality of its time.

But it can be taken a step further when Matisse went and painted his wife with a green streak down the middle of her face, or Picasso painted Dora Maar as a shrieking demented creature. These are all challenges to how things “should” be.

When art is to be judged by moral standards and values you get the work of Soviet Russia extolling the virtues of the Revolution. That is immoral to me.

So art, which is not just the visual arts, challenges standard ways of seeing the world. Unfortunately some artists make use of the shock value to promote themselves, and of course it gets harder and harder to shock so more shock is required.

Some people believe in Archetypes, while others believe in Platonic Forms. The problem is how can we access those abstractions in the real world. — Gnomon

I’m not sure what you mean in relation to that post.

Why, then, do we experience 'becoming'? Somehow, we are traveling through the Everything Block along some particular path. — PoeticUniverse

By this do you mean ‘becoming’ as a linear event and so of time?

So in summary, two people in the same spacetime location have different interpretations of what 'now' is. This is clearly contrary to presentism and is therefore supportive of an eternalist / 4d spacetime interpretation of time. — Devans99

If passenger ‘B’ (trackside) sees the light pulse on the left hit before the light pulse on the right does that mean the pulse on the left is the present and the pulse on the right is the future if there is a difference in time between them for ‘B’ ?

Of course we all have a worldview, but we're also fallible and I think we should value truth. You won't get to truth simply by seeking out reinforcement for what you already believe. One should challenge his own beliefs, and this is best done by seeking alternative perspectives and trying to understand them. — Relativist

Of course. But does that mean you never reach a point where you think the conclusions you’ve made are correct and you’ll act on them. Or do we sit around all day over a cup of tea agreeing to disagree.

What’s the point of challenging our beliefs if it’s not to find a truth? Of course you challenge your beliefs, that’s how you reach a truth.

t I am unclear how you are getting from the fact that we seem to have some information about reality imprinted on our souls, to the conclusion that therefore everything exists at once. That doesn't seem to follow at all - it's a crazy leap. — Bartricks

That was a mistake of mine to begin with Socrates and has created a false idea of where I was going. I had meant that everything already exists, like maths, not that we have information about reality imprinted on our souls.

It doesn't imply that I am the same as the objects I seem to be experiencing.

Also, I had not claimed that, someone had mentioned it. So I’m not claiming that we are all one.

Things that are created, like ideas or an iphone. It depends on what catagory of things you are getting at. — DingoJones

I had contemplated the idea of things that exist and always have, and things we invent. It seems to me that when we invent we apply the knowledge we have if things that always existed, like maths. So those things you mention we invented. My other thought was that the things we invented, man-made, turn out to be problematic.

I don’t necessarily see fate as deterministic. By that I mean I don’t think our life is already set up for us with an intention or objective. When I say fate I mean that our end will take place at a specific place and time. We can zig zag as many times as we chose, it’s not our fate that determines those actions, though when we look back from that moment at the end we will see how we got there. Different actions will lead to a different fate, but it will be our own whatever it is. This is free will in action, isn’t it?

So I don’t know if determinism is true.

However, if I accept determinism then our fate is definitely set in stone and most certainly must exist.

However your point about time I have to think about, because it makes sense. So there is a question over ‘no time’, or of what time is. But doesn’t ‘Einstein’s train’ allow for time be perceived differently than your seed analogy?

The ‘laws of nature’, does that mean acts that are inevitable?

Stream of consciousness is an ecstatic state, — Punshhh

No, that’s not stream of consciousness. Nor is he claiming to do it. It’s something @ArguingWAristotleTiff mentioned in a post.

What’s the difference?

I’ve just scanned some material on eternalism which I’ll read a bit more closely. That may clarify my thoughts a bit more.

because no one really knows if it was the right thing to do and if they think it was they are being deceitful in some way.
2 hours ago — Punshhh

And yet you argue against what Johnson has done. With what knowledge do you do that?

That is not stream of consciousness. — Punshhh

What is it if not?

Are you taking a roundabout route to talking about determinism? — DingoJones

Really, I’m just going on a journey.

Some things by their nature cannot exist prior to our Ability to “see” it. — DingoJones

What sort of things?

Baden, President Trump is a personality that I think you misunderstand. If you listen closely you will hear that he "streams of conscious" when he speaks. — ArguingWAristotleTiff

I missed this. Such an interesting comment. If people could get over their bias they might be able to observe a very interesting historic figure in their own time.

The idea that everything already exists, that everything that could ever exist is already out there awaiting our ability to see it. (See my OP).

disagree. There IS something wrong with that. As individuals, it reinforces confirmation bias. — Relativist

Unless you live without a view on things at all, or oddly enough believe you are wrong, what else can you do and why?

Knowledge isnt something that can be discovered, it is something you have as the result discovering something. — DingoJones

Okay. Then let's just talk about the thing discovered. Forget the word knowledge.

But does everything already exist or not? Or can, in a dynamic universe, things come into being that had not previously existed? Or are the elements that created this new thing already, and always are, on the way to creation, like our moving towards our fate.

Yes, I appreciate that. I had used it, probably unwisely, to introduce the idea of everything already existing.

Yes, I personally also think that inventions are problematic while discoveries are commendable. — alcontali

I have a sneaking suspicion that you say discoveries are commendable because they are the work of God. And then it becomes a conversation circling the idea of God, which just kills everything.

True knowledge, argues Socrates, is knowledge of the eternal and unchanging Forms that underlie perceptible reality. — SparkNotes: Plato

True knowledge, then, would be discovered.

The exercise only proved that the human brain works with an inherent logic : a mathematical logic, including basic arithmetic. — Gnomon

Yes, that’s the argument against the exercise, which is hard to refute. So does that deny the possibility of everything already existing?

an economy with at the core a usury-infested fiat bankstering system — alcontali

I think that’s more of a description than a meaning. But my interest is whether our inventions, compared to our discoveries, are problematic. Has Capitalism, for example, as an invention, been successful or problematic?

Because I assume it's a metaphor. It's as-if. — Gnomon

I don’t think he does mean it as a metaphor. The exercise he carried out wasn’t a metaphor.

Okay, I get it. Paganism equals depravity. So back to the beginning; is Capitalism an invention?

I don't pretend to know what Socrates meant by that assertion, but I don't take it literally. — Gnomon

Why not?

Paganism is the strong belief in counter-natural behaviour. — alcontali

Of which period in history are you referring to?

Edit: this sounds more like a Christian point of view.

Therefore, it is merely a byproduct of rampant paganism. — alcontali

I can’t be sure how you’re using the word “paganism”. Do you mean it in its original sense, or in a perjirative form condemning modern times?

Edit: by the way, this is how I regard the meaning of capitalism: an economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state.

We should make ourselves aware of the bias in the media we consume — Punshhh

I think surveys indicate that to be true already. Faith in the media is very low. The problem is that we have our own take on things and seek information that contributes to that view. There’s nothing wrong in that, unless you think that view is wrong, then the news source one has is either leftist or right wing.

One can invent an unlimited number of different economics — alcontali

This raises an interesting point for me. Is a Capitalist economy invented, or is it a natural evolution of existing ideas?

But if it’s an invention, and claimed by many to be unworkable and unfair, then are our inventions inferior to discoveries? This sort of winds back to Darwinism, I guess, in that the natural evolution of things, survival of the fittest (idea), is the most successful.

May I suggest that you re-read what I've written? Nothing you've said about me and my so called 'embarrassments' make any sense in light of the fact that I am talking about the failings of American government on a whole...

Your continued slogan based defense of Trump would be excusable had you not just been shown it's shallowness in it's understanding...

Pay attention to what's being said here. Re-read. — creativesoul

I said, “ People claim he’s an embarrassment”, not yours personally, and where I did say ‘yours’ I meant the feelings of the country in their feelings about how the world views America and Trump. Now these feelings have been reported many times so I’m guessing you understand what I mean. However, knowing your views I would guess that you do personally regard him as an embarrassment.

If you’re only talking about “ in light of the fact that I am talking about the failings of American government on a whole...” then I guess you might also consider that an embarrassment to the world, which of course it is. And my post is addressing that very point.

This is what I said; “ What the world is watching is the exposure of America institutions to the light and it doesn’t look good.“

I reread my post and I can’t see any examples of “slogan based defence”. Rereading it I also see that I was sympathetic to your feeling on Trump’s election.

Quite possibly I could have avoided using the word “you” when I should have used “America” and avoided personal insult, if that’s what I’ve caused?

You’re very good at missing the point. It doesn’t matter what the newspaper was, it’s the photos that were important, which you completely ignored, and what Iran was once. It was about the people of Iran. Did you bother to look at them?