Analysis is about making sense, not nonsense. — praxis

Vague reply. Don't be shy, tell me what you think in more detail.

It is specifically self organization - mind activity is always self organization. Consciousness is an evolving process of self organization. But the next question will be - what is self organization? This I don't know exactly, but it is the thing that causes the self assembly of everything in the universe. Ultimately this is what art is expressing. — Pop

I have to disagree. The next question is not, what is self organization? It is, what is it IN self organization that makes art, art? It is not as if art AS cognition is art. Art as cognition is thought, concepts, propositions, meaning in connotation, denotation, (not to forget, deference and difference) and so on. I know my cat is on the sofa. I would claim this propositional knowing in the act of thinking it is inherently aesthetic, but AS cognition simpliciter, in the singular analysis of what a concept is, it is not aesthetic. This analytic treatment is abstract, of course, that is what analysis is: it abstracts from whole context to identify, explain, further analyze, a part.
Experience needs analysis to determine the existential foundation or art, a determination at the level of the most basic questions. I agree with Dewey in a qualified way: analyses like this look to experience as a whole. He thinks this is pragmatics, what you might call self processing information, and I don't disagree. But then he makes the critical move toward the aesthetic IN experience. You are not willing to this, it seems.

I think this point will make more sense to people who are into conceptual art. "Art" has different meanings depending on context of use, right? — frank

I think art can be anything at all. Context of use would be the context of considering the object AS art. Other contexts, like taking the object as a weapon or as a door stop and so forth, are not contextualizing as art.

The thing that everybody is missing is that a definition of art requires the identification of an attribute that is constantly present in art. There is only one thing constantly present in art, and everything else is variable, and optionally present. The constant is the mind activity expressed in the form of the art. — Pop

But mind activity is nonspecific. What, in the mind activity, is aesthetic? This begs for analysis, for mind activity is like Dewey saying it is all experience. He doesn't do this. He wrote a book about it. So what are you saying it is? Information? Obviously not, for this is more vague than "mind activity".
If you agree with Dewey, then say so, and then show how you improve on Art As Experience's essential claims. But again, Dewey had a specific idea as to what the aesthetic was.

We tend to conflate what is art with what is good art. I am fine with piles of bricks, unmade beds and urinals... it is art if it is put on display as such. But it may not be good art, which is a separate matter entirely. — Tom Storm

But what is it you are fine with? I mean, what is it about art that makes it art such that a pile of bricks can be art? This issue presses forth. I say it is affect in art. Take shitting once more. As such, it is not art at all, nor is my pen or my cat. But if we are asked to consider my cat AS art, the context changes altogether. The question that haunts this issue is this "what it is that makes the encounter one of art."

This is nonsensical. You cannot have an out-of-context experience. — praxis

No. The context is taking up a thing apart from others. Kant did this with reason. It is not that Kant thought reason could be conceived independently of context, but that putting selected contexts at bay in order to give analysis to one feature is what analysis is all about.

Also as RussellA has pointed out aesthetics do not reside in the art work itself, but in the interaction
of art work and observer - they are the result of this experience. You can not define this experience - ever. True it always exists, but it does nor exist in any constant way. Hence art that is beautiful to one person, can be ugly to the next. What is a urinal in one era, is great art in the next. — Pop

I am going to take issue with this. What you cannot define is emotion, affect. This is a given, irreducible. But even if we are willing to call the significant aesthetic affect, then we can at least rule out, not that anything can be art, but what it is IN the art that makes it art, which is, as I see it, the point. Shitting can be art, I think Dewey would have to admit, because the act of shitting and the follow through is learned, and as a young child this was a problem to solve, to work through until there was a resolution, and this resolution "wrought out" the ability to follow through with toilet tissue and so on. It is, as all things are, inherently aesthetic, the satisfaction that it was done well, completely. NOT that it is art, because art takes what is basic, like this, and amplifies the aesthetic; but rather, that it is essentially aesthetic.

The thing that everybody is missing is that a definition of art requires the identification of an attribute that is constantly present in art. There is only one thing constantly present in art, and everything else is variable, and optionally present. The constant is the mind activity expressed in the form of the art.
That is it! that is all that is constantly present. As we analyze this mind activity, we find it is to do with self organization - the artist makes art in the course of life, and the art reveals their attitude to life in it's form, broadly speaking. — Pop

No, no. The mind activity is vague. What in the mind activity is aesthetic? Reason simpliciter is not aesthetic. The aesthetic requires the full experience, and it is IN this the aesthetic is allowed to make an appearance. The aesthetic is affect, though this is not to say if one screams in contempt she is making art. It is to say that when one takes up an object AS art, the screaming in contempt can be art.

You still haven't explained (as far as I can tell) why consciousness matters here? If art is consciousness and self-organization, then what? Isn't everything? Taking a shit is consciousness and self-organization and so is Rembrandt's The Night Watch - reconcile the two for us? — Tom Storm

But then, and your example is especially telling because it sets itself apart from anything we want to cll art; I mean, shitting and Bach, together in the same category?
But this is why Dewey's thinking is strong here: Art is no longer "the beautiful" in the modern thinking. Now,maybe it should be, but the art world has a different take. It allows shit to be art, literally. It allows the artist's prestige to drive the value of an artwork. So, part of the the trouble lies in the promiscuous inclusion, and here it is just people and the concept of art in the artworld, and "art" is simply tossed around arbitrarily, giving us this intractable idea of art and trying to endlessly redefine it. Maybe we should tell the the artworld to F*** off, and just because it was Picasso who rearranged a bicycle wheel and handle bars to look like a bull does not establish a new paradigm of what art can be, Duchamp notwithstanding.
Maybe Dewey is closer to being right than the artworld's aimless mission to make money through the critic's valorations of bullsh*t. Because Dewey believes in the aesthetic as something concrete, produced IN experience and grounded in something substantive.

Right, you appear to be claiming that aesthetic experience or art is embedded in experience, which is like saying that 'good' is embedded in experience. It's like saying that everything from gummy bears to guns IS inherently good, and it's just that in some circumstances we don't realize that they're good. — praxis

Look at this phenomenologically. Take a simply matter: the gummy bears. How can gummy bears be taken up ethically at all? There has to be some original value that is at stake. Someone must want them, love them, or hate them, is revolted by them. If something of this kind is not there, then no ethical problem can possibly arise. Such "value" makes ethics possible. It is the entanglements in nonvaluative affairs, i.e., factual affairs, that make ethics problematic in ordinary experiences.Value is art is exactly the same. Art's value lies in this foundational, phenomenological "presence" the many yums and ughs of the world. Phenomenologically: take the glee Hitler experienced as he gassed Jews. His glee is as a value experience is unassailable. It is simply a fact that he experienced this glee, say, and by itself, phenomenologically, that is, it is Good. What makes it bad is the context.
One cannot deny the phenomenologically given and its manifest properties, and it is here, at this primordial presentation that we find the essence of ethics and aesthetics. This essential concrete goodness and badness is in experience itself, and it is what is in play when judgments are made. Again, judgment is a very, very entangled business, not one denies this. But to go to art's and ethics' essence is reductive to the phenomenon.

There's no "already there" structure in the universe that makes guns only good or only bad. — praxis

The good and the bad is not about guns, but about the bad or good that is embedded in experience. Before guns get our attention as being good or bad, there has to be an experiential foundation of this for the discussion to make any sense. THIS is where phenomenology finds it place, at the foundation fo the given of the world that is always, already there prior to any specifics coming under review.

... art is not some special feature, or assembly of features, but something we bring into the object as an object, Something, already there, in the structure of experience itself.
— Constance

You're making the same fundamental assumption as RussellA, that inherent value exists in all things, which I suppose is some form of idealism.

All observable things and their features can be art.
— Constance

All observable things and their features can be seen as good, or be seen as bad. It depends on what our motivation or purpose is, amongst other factors. Guns can protect us, so they're good. :up: Guns can harm us so they're bad. :down: There's no "already there" structure in the universe that makes guns only good or only bad. — praxis

So first, see what I wrote just above this posting. I pretty well know Dewey, though he is not the be all and end all for me at all.
Idealism? Is Dewey an idealist? Tricky question. Is Wittgenstein? Another.
The "already there" part of this is rather strong for art. It is Dewey exactly, and I mean it is THE central thesis in his Art As Experience. And it works well because art, the aesthetic are entirely open questions, and they are open because experience itself is open. If the aesthetic is what issues from consummatory experiences, then what it is is going lie in an analysis of this experience, and this is a very entangled affair. Art is difficult to define because of this entanglement, and this is an issue that parallels ethics.

From a Deweyan viewpoint, aesthetic experience, then, has roughly the following structure. The experience is set off by some factors, such as opening a book, directing a first glance at a painting, beginning to listen to a piece of music, entering a natural environment or a building, or beginning a meal or a conversation. As aesthetic experience is temporal, the material of the experience does not remain unchanged, but the elements initiating the experience, like reading the first lines of a book or hearing the first chord of a symphony, merge into new ones as the experience proceeds and complex relationships are formed between its past and newer phases. When these different parts form a distinctive kind of orderly developing unity that stands out from the general experiential stream of our lives, the experience in question is aesthetic.

What this describes is the consummatory experience, a "real" experience as opposed to some routine, which is the enemy of the aesthetic. Here it say the developing unity stands out from the general experiential stream of our lives, the distinctive kind has to do with the way the aesthetic naturally occurs in experience in the most fundamental structural feature of pragmatism: problem solving. You have to read Art As Experience for this: see his description of the organism encountering an obstacle, bringing resources to bear, finally solving the issue (whew!), then incorporating the new affair's events into existing resources for future ordeals. This "whew" is the foundation of the aesthetic, as it is of cognition and any and all understanding.
Look especially at the temporal nature of the aesthetic experience: pragmatics is a forward looking theory, and the outcome is the meaning yielded. What is nitroglycerin? It is: IF it is thrown at such and such a velocity and impacts with such and such force, THEN there will be a release of energy on impact, etc. etc. That is what nitro IS. There IS of a thing is bound up with the event, and the successful execution both gives us cognitive meaning, what the understanding really understands is the result, as well as the aesthetic, the ????????? For the aesthetic's "what IS it" is also bound up with the event, and events do not tell us what such things are, like affect, or taste, touch and the rest. They only tell us what will happen under certain conditions.
Dewey has been criticized: when a boxer smashes his fist into his opponent's face, is THIS aesthetic? But then, this may be the real strength of this theory, because art is, after all, everything, or IN everything, for all things are events. One has to put aside the impossible ontology of presence, just like Heidegger said.
So anyway, take reading the first lines of a book: what is there? anticipation with possibilities. The writer strives for the aesthetic of literature, and as with all art, the aesthetic is "wrought out" of the work done. Here, it would be constructing a narrative of human affairs with tensions, ambiguities, and ironies and so forth, which would all play out and resolve in, you guessed it, the consummatory denouement!
Note how narratives that don't have this, but keep the reader in unresolved conflict, are inherently unsettling, the anti-aesthetic: IS THIS art? Dewey would call it anti art, I would think. Interesting to consider.

None of that explains how “the aesthetic is an integral part of experience itself.” In the etymology of the word aesthetic, it at first only meant perception. Maybe you mean it like that? Perception is an integral part experience. — praxis

Well, as with all things, if you want to get to an understanding at the level of basic questions, you have to ask, what is it that is there, in our midst that gives rise to whatever there is that wants examining? The solid basis of the thing that people are theorizing about. In art, what is it that a thing has that without it, it would no longer be art? We find that an examination of physical features will not do; it's not like asking what a violin is, say, which is easy because the observable features are so clear (though ambiguity can arise when these features are distorted, extended, whatever). All observable things and their features can be art.
Then it has to be something universal if all things can be that, and universality looks not to the particular object, but what is in being an object as such. Kant did this with reason, looking not at this example or that, but judgment itself, and this goes to the structure of experience itself. Here, it is the same: art is not some special feature, or assembly of features, but something we bring into the object as an object, Something, already there, in the structure of experience itself.

See Dewey. But Dewey fails to understand the aesthetic. This is what is underdetermined, because the aesthetic is as rich and varied as objects can be rich and varied.

How is a "self" different to one's consciousness? If art is an expression of consciousness, then art is also an expression of self. Art work is information about the artist's "self".

In systems theory, a self is an artefact of the self organizing process. All natural systems are self organizing, and the result of this organization is the production of a self. A self can be an individual, a group of people like a family, a collective of people - like the characters of this forum - when considered as a whole interactive community, or a really complex system like a an economy. All self organizing systems integrate information much like a black hole, where the information that defines a system becomes more and more dense, such as to distinguish a self.

In information theory ( my personal interpretation ) a "self" is information about the way information has organized itself.

In phenomenology, a self evolves with the experiential process, where cognition disturbs the state of a system, a corresponding emotion is felt, and the system reintegrates. A self aligns itself to meet the consequences of the experience - so is the result of this process, in an endlessly evolving fashion. — Pop

First, this sounds like some kind of information take on Hegelian phenomenology. Disturbance? Is this meant to be the negation, while reintegration is the synthesis? This is not, of course, at all what Hegel had in mind.
But really, this about the self is just a marginal point. The real point is your lack of a clear idea of what art is when your whole intention is give a definition of art. You can't say you are aligned with Dewey if you don't think the aesthetic is a concept that figures significantly into this since Dewey's consummatory experience is inherently aesthetic (as it is cognitive. But this is not to say of art that analysis does not have the aesthetic feature as its definitional aspect. Analysis talks like this because its job is to examine the whole and find its parts. Even if it is assumed that the parts as analytically considered are abstractions from the original whole. Dewey holds the aesthetic to be the essence of art. It is the consummatory affect of problem solved, which is taken up and amplified by the artist.

To see something aesthetically.

You’ve claimed that the aesthetic is an integral part of experience itself, however, which seems to mean that we always view things aesthetically. Clearly that is not the case, so once again I’m asking what you mean by that claim. — praxis

But the idea is that to perceive at all is inherently aesthetic. to put this pencil to use or operate a forklift is aesthetic in that the applied skills are motivated, interesting, valuable, and so on. Speech itself is all of this, so when I speak, I confirm an idea and this is not exclusively a cognitive matter. It is real, a meaningful, the taking up of something that was learned, and in the learning, a thing of value. Dewey held that as we live and breathe, we experience the world aesthetically, AS art, if you will.

None of that explains how “the aesthetic is an integral part of experience itself.” In the etymology of the word aesthetic, it at first only meant perception. Maybe you mean it like that? Perception is an integral part experience. — praxis

I do qualifiedly follow Dewey: To find the essence of art, one must examine experience. But since experience is an entangled affair, not given to us in parts, but as a whole, with cognition and affect, we analytically dismiss the arational parts, and miss that to do logic or math is to care about doing his, to be engaged fully interested.

In systems theory what is always there - what is common to all systems, is self organization.
In information theory, it is information that self organizes. In Yogic logic this self organizing element present in everything is consciousness.

I have said art work is information about an artists consciousness, and I have defined consciousness as an evolving process of self organization. So art work is an expression of the artists evolving process of self organization. This IS the something that is always there. There are no other somethings always there. All the other somethings are variable, and open ended - and continually emerging.

I think we just misunderstand each other rather then disagree. Perhaps disagree on expressive style. — Pop

If you want to describe what goes on in in experience as self organizing, you will have further trouble accounting for what this self is that is autonomously at work. Are you treating the self as something that is its own presupposition? I mean, something that the analysis of which does not reveal something more basic because it is already a singular basis for all other things? "Self organizing" is a strong claim, after all, where did the organizing self get is motivations and contents? There is the counterclaim that says this self is a construct and self organizing really has no self at all. And if there is a self, it is not to be identified with all it does.
When I talk about always, already there, in this context, what is meant is that art built out of experience, and an artwork is part and parcel of the structure of experience itself. Dewey's key concept is "consummation". A pragmatist, he defined art in pragmatic terms, so the essential structure of successful problem solving yields aesthetics, cognition, affect, consciousness and everything you can imagine. A self IS a pragmatic construction.

I agree, but would add that art usually has a frame around it, or a museum to hold it, a display case over it, etc. Something to hand it forward for the consideration of the audience.

You can put your own invisible frame around the lines on the highway if you like, I suppose, but then it's your own private art. — frank

The way I see it, the pothole in front of my house is a nuisance and an obstacle to my daily affairs. But then, ask me what I think of it from the perspective of art, and I will say, hmmm, let me see, the curvature of the line meets the dark middle, suggestive of mystery, and the cloudy middle a kind of abstract aquatic whatever.....; whatever. I say this is exactly what happens when we see the Mona Lisa. I know I am in the Louvre, I know Devinci painted it, and it is art, so I am there to assess what is before me AS art. But make a print of it. put it on a rug where I feet are wiped and we forget it's art. It's a rug. An intruder enters the house and I grab the rug an assault him.
The "artwork" lies in taking something AS art.

I agree, but would add that art usually has a frame around it, or a museum to hold it, a display case over it, etc. Something to hand it forward for the consideration of the audience.

You can put your own invisible frame around the lines on the highway if you like, I suppose, but then it's your own private art. — frank

The way I see it, the pothole in front of my house is a nuisance and an obstacle to my daily affairs. But then, ask me what I think of it from the perspective of art, and I will say, hmmm, let me see, the curvature of the line meets the dark middle, reminiscent of a spider's web, and the cloudy middle a kind of abstract lair.....; whatever. I say this is exactly what happens when we see the Mona Lisa. I know I am in the Louvre, I know Devinci painted it, and it is art, so I am there to assess what is before me AS art. But make a print of it. put it on a rug where I feet are wiped and we forget it's art. It's a rug. An intruder enters the house and I grab the rug an assault him.
The "artwork" lies in taking something AS art. But then the final question remains a mystery: what is it to take something as art?

This could use some explaining, don't you think? — praxis

Yes, of course:

All experience, whether I am pondering a thesis,peeling potatoes or painting a masterpiece, is inherently aesthetic. The artist is the one who takes this inherent aesthetic and brings it out, showcases it, amplifies it. Picasso paints the Old Guitarist and what has he done? He augments with the lowered head, the waste of ages etched in his emaciated features. We all feel this, know this without being artists, but Picasso really laid it out there, made this empathy into a spectacle. That is what art does. Whistle a tune and it's catchy. Now let Dvorak take it to romantic heights. The art is always, already there, you could say, in the world, in the interest we take in things mundane or profound, in the tying of a shoe properly, andin the our gait as we stride down the street (but the dancer with grace and expression sets the heart aglow).

Art is not to be defined not because everything can be art (though this is true) but because everything already IS art. Even the concept and the proposition. Art IS this emotion, this ghastly reaction: Is that really a can of human shit?? (Piero Manzoni). It issues from what is always already there.

Art is an umbrella term,a flexible word for expressions that are beautiful,funny or entertaining. Inspiring racous passionate!

It's obviously subjective ( as are all things!) But there is a lot of intersubjective agreement. ( for honest people! )

To say art is information without recourse to talking about feelings and aesthetics is the height of anti artistry!

The OP is boring,banal,non artistic,the definitional opposite of art! And far worse than duchamps urinal!

Art is an overwhelming expression of desire and ideology!

Anti art AKA shit art is science most politics and most philosophical discourse!!! Banal wannabe scribbling!

Finally,for the real artists in this thread (!!!) there are two types of art. "Cruel art" and FUN Art.
Cruel art is the bible,nietzsche,Greek tragedy.
Fun Art is Karl Krauss,all great comics,all great Satirists all Love Poets.

Scientists,philosophers,linguists,political administrators,academics,keep your dirty definitional hands off art! You know shit about art!!!
Your expressions and definitions are the excrement of your Soul!!! Passionless piss! — Gogol

I rather like what you said here. I think Dewey was right, if you want a philosopher who, though not passionate at all, found out why art cannot be pinned: it is because the aesthetic is an integral part of experience itself. All experience, whether I am pondering a thesis,peeling potatoes or painting a masterpiece, is inherently aesthetic. The artist is the one who takes this inherent aesthetic and brings it out, showcases it, amplifies it. Picasso paints the Old Guitarist and what has he done? He augments with the lowered head, the waste of ages etched in his emaciated features. We all feel this, know this without being artists, but Picasso really laid it out there, made this empathy into a spectacle. That is what art does. Whistle a tune and it's catchy. Now let Dvorak take it to romantic heights. The art is always, already there, you could say, in the world, in the interest we take in things mundane or profound, in the tying of a shoe properly, andin the our gait as we stride down the street (but the dancer with grace and expression sets the heart aglow).

Art is not to be defined not because everything can be art (though this is true) but because everything already IS art. Even the concept and the proposition. Art IS this emotion, this ghastly reaction: Is that really a can of human shit?? (Piero Manzoni). It issues from what is always already there.

Please! Don't start also! I mean, Pop is a nice guy (girl?) but one pop is more than enough... :grin: — Thunderballs

You missed the point.
read on.

With the above said, I return to agreeing that Kierkegaard understood what Banno referred to as "action as meaning" but I don't have a handle on how you are presenting this view of the human condition to bear as a matter of philosophy in the register of Heidegger and others. — Valentinus

Sorry, but I am having a hard time keeping up with responses.

As to action as meaning, certainly K's analysis of Time and anxiety makes this central to his thought. Heidgger's ontology in Being and Time centers on this, and in doing so annihilates the present, for what is in the moment of apprehending an object or anything at all is the interpretative structures that we inherit in our culture. This is K, who called this our heritage, advancing a concept of sin that is twofold: there is this "brass band of loud enterprises" that is all culture presents in its distractions and indulgences; then there is Adam's sin, which is without heritage (for he was the first. Keep in mind, K only uses this biblical story to give an analysis of existential sin. He does not believe the literal take on this), which is, as I read him, the simple, primordial, and personal move away from freedom in the eternal present (presumably the existential counterpart to Eden). There is no sin at all unless one "posits" (a term K uses a lot) sin, that is, becomes aware of it by stepping OUT of the blind adherence to the world's preoccupations.
This should sound very familiar: Read Heidegger on his "das man", "the other" which is part of dasein. It is our "throwness" into the world that constitutes what is good, bad, interesting, simply "there" as a distinct and finite world of possibilities in which we find ourselves prior to any greater apprehensions at a deeper level, ontology. Kierkegaard resonates throughout this. Of course, Husserl before him, then Hegel (see how Hegel, who I think started it all, talks about the "natural" consciousness; put Husserl's "naturalistic attitude" under this, and Kierkegaard's "qualitative leap" then you have traced a major feature of existential thought: this dramatic separation from the mundane into freedom which is not simply more of the same (as analytic philosphers would have it), but deeply important and ontologically significant. (But then how to understand this freedom? Kant, Hegel are rationalists, and freedom is a rational matter. Not so for Kierkkegaard, somewhat so for Heidegger, for, for him, language is the "house of Being" and concepts disclose the world, create meanings and intelligibility. But he would never say, the rational is the real, at all.

So action as meaning: time is action, and all meaning is a temporal structured event. As I type, I recall how to type with every finger stroke, the meanings of terms in my head recalled;the past looms large in everything I can imagine, for imagining itself issues from t he past. To act is to recall. but (see Kierkegaard's Repetition) is there a way out of this, or am I condemned to be ventriloquized by history? Freedom is posited in the true present, and one is not in the sequence of events but standing apart from them, choosing. (Choosing ex nihilo? Another issue)

Oh how fresh and anew this springy information structure tickling my sensory forms, making my emotion entropy rocketing skinfo high. My emotional neuronal patterns run bezerk when I breath in these moisty misty forms. Whirlings of bloodflows inside me respond intensely to the morning magic sunlight waves entering me through my glassy eyeball spheres. Projected widely and vast over the retina in full formation. I wished I could make all other structures in formation experience the same conscious patterns I experience in-and outside me, my body structure being their willing and voluntary in-between prisinor. O jah! All formations in the world, rejoyce! And be in! — Thunderballs

Oh freddled gruntbuggly, Thy micturations are to me, As plurdled gabbleblotchits, On a lurgid bee, That mordiously hath blurted out, Its earted jurtles, grumbling Into a rancid festering confectious organ squealer. [drowned out by moaning and screaming] Now the jurpling slayjid agrocrustles, Are slurping hagrilly up the axlegrurts, And living glupules frart and stipulate, Like jowling meated liverslime, Groop, I implore thee, my foonting turlingdromes, And hooptiously drangle me, With crinkly bindlewurdles,mashurbitries. Or else I shall rend thee in the gobberwarts with my blurglecruncheon, See if I don't!
RIP Douglas Adams

Yeah, the material art form is a private ( but can be public ) language invented by an artist ( in modern art ) very similar to the words we now exchange, and also interpret.

Information theory describes this same process of me imbuing a message with meaning, and you interpreting the message, but with slightly altered meaning. The information has to exist in some physical form in order for this to happen. — Pop

You say it has to have physical form, but does an idea have physical form? That's a loaded question; look: you set out to define art, that means talk about its essence, what makes art, art. You would need to do what holds for language: the medium is just the catalyst, the vehicle through which art is communicated. But the real event is interior, in the interpretative milieu of mind. Also, you would need to identify what this essence is. Is it form? And what is meaning as an aesthetic idea, not what language produces fit for a dictionary.
See Dewey's Art as Experience or Clive Bell's Art. Perhaps you're aware of these. Have you read Danto, or George Dickey?
The reason I am saying this is that art is certainly NOT information in its essence. There may be an informational dimension to it, just as classical music needs a score, but the score is not the art (though it may assessed on other aesthetic grounds). Sorry, but I just don't see this.

I understand where you are coming from, but strictly speaking, anybody can deem anything to be art.
It doesn't happen often, but this is a definition of art, so this needs to be taken into account. — Pop

Anything can be art, true. But what makes it art when we say, that's art? Driftwood in a pond is not art. But then, I say it is quite beautiful. This is an aesthetic judgment. What happened to the driftwood itself? Nothing. It happened in me.
When I call the driftwood art, this is not an arbitrary judgment. The reason why anything can be art is that all things possess something that evoke an artistic response. What IS that?

That is the intention. Consciousness is endlessly variable and open ended - just like art. How about that? As consciousness changes, so does art historically. A different consciousness creates different art, etc. And on the audience side, it is the same ( as described above ) So art is a meeting of consciousness, where the success of a piece depends on this relationship, rather then on any particular form present in the art work. — Pop

Grant you that. We don't know what art is in any definitive way (though, the metaphysics of art has a say here. After all, what is value, aesthetics?) But my point is that calling it information does not further enlightenment.

I, on the other hand, get so tired of the subjective nonsense I hear about art. But you see, I need to be severely logical to define something. If done successfully, then a definition can be used to predict, and I think his one can do that. It is what makes it different, what makes it interesting, imo. The world is full of romantic drivel about art, what it lacks is a definition. — Pop

One don't want to say what art is with romantic drivel, but then, romantic drivel is amind the thing the definition has to address. And what does predicting something have to do with defining art? Does this mean with your theory, an object that comes up can be measured by a reliable standard to make the determination as to whether it is art or not? How?
That subjective nonsense has to stay where it is, unless you go deeper into the foundation of art. The more your ideas rise above the particulars of cultural entanglements, the less contingent it gets. But here, the same objection comes up: The most general, foundational view of what art is, as with "art is significant form", has to be about what the aesthetic is and this is a question of value. Without talk of the aesthetic, then it might as well be talk about talk, about words, symbols, and their dictionary meanings. This is why Clive Bell insisted significant form was what evoked "aesthetic rapture" which, as you know, varies, hance that annoying subjective nonsense when you move from the general to the specific.

Art about art, creates a certain reality for art. Whereas a definition of art refocuses art to the question of "what is consciousness". And there starts a journey of self discovery, and perhaps discovery of what it is all about, such that it brings back some meaning to the question of what is art. As you have intimated, it is all consciousness, so there are no limits to this question absolutely. I have defined consciousness as a process of self organization, but I do not know what self organization is - the whole universe is self organizing. And this is also what all art is expressing. There are no limits to the form of self organization that we can take, but in understanding this we come to understand ourselves better, and perhaps also what it is all about?? — Pop

Art is a manifestation of self organizing, but so is language. And, of course, anything and everything can be art, and this is certainly true for language. But why do you think the analysis of the nature of art rests with organizing? The driftwood above is transformed into art at the immediate, perceptual level, and the receiving mind is an organized agency, but what is experienced is not organization.
You sound like a formalist, like Clive Bell (above).

Incidentally Pop, I can be pretty plain spoken and direct. Some can be offended. You handle this very well.

1.    Art is an ungrounded variable mental construct: Objects are arbitrarily deemed to be art. Art’s only necessary distinction from ordinary objects is the extra deemed art information. Art can be anything the artist thinks of, but this is limited by their consciousness. — Pop

Arbitrarily? That would mean art is nothing at all. Take a signifier in language: entirely arbitrary whether it is 'tree' or 'namu' that is used to designate that tall thing with leaves. Interchangeable, making no important distinction as a phoneme simpliciter. But when I take up an object as art, the "as art" is contingent on certain distinct features of the way it is taken up.
So no, not arbitrary at all.

Consciousness is not just awareness but all mind activity, interwoven with the subconscious. What art can be cannot exceed consciousness. — Pop

Now THAT is arbitrary, to pin art's limitations on what one is consciously capable of: Who? My possibilities are different from others'. What is consciousness if not an historically constructed agency? Thus, it is unfinished, indeterminate.

Everything is reducible to information, as it is only from information that we can create mental constructs. This is widely accepted in science, and a grounding for the definition. 

4.   If everything is reducible to information, then so is art. It is true to say: art work is information. — Pop

I can't imagine a worse word for talk about art. Plain, connotatively UNaesthetic. Like describing a fresh spring morning in terms of molecular bonding.

5.   Art work information is imbued with the artist's consciousness:  it arises out of their consciousness, and reflects their consciousness, and is limited in scope by their consciousness, in the past, present, and the future. — Pop

Why not all this, but leave the artist's consciousness out of it? After all, art is as it is perceived, and the artist is just ONE perciever.

This is best answered through information theory. It seems information is something concrete such that it changes our neurology, such that we become conscious of it. So, an artwork can not be immaterial, it needs to be in the form of something material, including sound, such that we can perceive it. The form of the artwork interacts with the form of our consciousness - this interaction creates an experience, where the quality of the experience is normally attributed to the artwork, however we ourselves play the major role in creating it.

A thought itself is not immaterial either, it has it's neural correlates. This definition is an artwork. It comes close to what you are describing. — Pop

I would put the entire enterprise of art creation in the mind. An object in the world is nothing at all until it is invested with meaning by an interpretative agency. You and I see the same cloud, but you see a camel, I see poodle. But wherein does the poodle/camel difference lie? A piece of driftwood floats by unremarkably, then I say, observe the contours, the way the shadows play on the surface, isn't the aesthetic affect interesting? The whole matter of what makes something art lies in the interpretative taking the object "as" art. The material presence is simply the medium, which is incidental.
Not sure why 'information' is helpful. Information is an affect-neutral term, and its connotative values are entirely counter to aesthetic possibilities.

Art is humanities expression of itself.

Art gives us insight into the artist,



Art is a concrete manifestation of human thought – a manifestation into concrete form, of something that is ( ungrounded / virtual / computed / experienced emotionally / believed / valued / perceived / subconscious ) - consciousness — Pop

But then, what of the part of art that is not concrete? What of conceptual art? Sure, something concrete there, but the artwork is not just this; it is a concept. Isn't thought all by itself inherently art? Why do we need the concrete?

I hope that I didn't say something bad or that offended you ... — Alkis Piskas

Not at all. I am behind in responses. Was there a question I missed?

Isolated from the world, from others. The basic myth of modern philosophy, one might say, is a version of the picture-box soul. Then one can ask whether we can be sure of anything, whether one is 'really' a brain in vat. One also assumes that words have their meanings inside, within this box where they 'really' live, infinitely intimate. 'I know what I mean, even if I can't say it.' That goes with this myth. Words are vessels for isolated self-stuff (meaning). But this picture of the picture-box is itself taken for granted by skeptics who misunderstand themselves as radical. That's there's only and exactly one of 'me' in here....that the ego is singular. Why? Because we count one body? Because the 'fiction'/artifice of 'self' is used to control this single body? Blame and praise and train this single body?

This is not to say that we 'really' have 20 'souls' or no 'soul.' The point is to point out that which is ontologically farthest as it pretends to peep from the mirror. — Zugzwang

Sorry for not getting back sooner. I am behind and it will stay that way I'm afraid.

Not sure which modern philosophy you are talking about. Brains in vats raises an epistemological issue, which is no myth. When you say "me" what do you have in mind? You seem to be saying the ego is not singular? Is the self a fiction? Words don't have meanings inside?
There are many claims packed into this.

A real question. Your real question. Not the real question. — Fooloso4

But I do think there is a real question, but is IS a question, not an answer: an openness at the level of basic questions. I think there is a real answer, too, but its substance lies in intuitions that are alien to familiar thought.

This has not been my experience. It remains my understanding, but the more closely and attentively I read and the more I am helped by other more advanced readers, the more I learn and the more my understanding is altered. — Fooloso4

As I see it, what is shared and what is hidden can be very close, as is illustrated by, say, the politician, who spends so many hours in the public conversation that there little room for truly private thoughts and experiences. Such conversation tends to be factual, statistical, perfunctory, programmatic, and so on. Step away from this agreement, and the world can become very alien, which is a motif of Moby Dick, which I mentioned earlier. This is the beginning of what I would cll enlightenment.

The problem of the author's intention should not close you off to listening to the author. Listening cannot take place when the reader assumes that the author cannot be understood, when the reader assumes that the real questions are the ones she asks, that there foundations that must be built on rather than toppled. — Fooloso4

Or listening occurs when the reader observes a failing of understanding within, and the ideas presented address this. And I disagree, in a qualified way, about "foundations": Reading others builds foundations, clearly, but in philosophy, these foundations reveal their own finitude, if you will. I mean, the question always remains open in all lines of inquiry when basic questions come to light. One is made to simply continue thinking and resign oneself to the building enterprise, or put it down and allow philosophical insight to do its job, which is disillusionment in foundations. This, I argue, is what Hindus had in mind with jnana yoga, an exercise in apophatic philosophy. After all, it is not ideas we are trying to understand here; it is the world.

Quite the opposite. It is a matter of practice, of allowing a text to open up, of learning to read a text on its own terms. — Fooloso4

Put it like this and what you end up with is "on its own terms" which sounds apart from your terms. I am saying all "terms" find their mark only in what receives them. Is philosophical knowledge to be treated like information?

The practice itself is cultural heritage. — Fooloso4

It is discovered IN cultural heritage, true. You could say I am an historical construct made of this heritage and I am inclined to agree. But then: there are two selves, the one so constructed and the one that second guesses all of this in philosophy, and the basic level. This latter self, I argue, is discovered apophatically. As to its nature, it is Other than culture; it is the existential grounding of ethics.

Or perhaps it is being captivated by a picture of liberation. The dream of being free of presuppositions — Fooloso4

But the confirmation lies in embedded in ordinary experience. There is the metaethical argument, the phenomenological reduction argument (reduction to presence, givenness), the argument based on a general materialism, and others.
Being free of presuppositions acknowledged as a given within the context of inquiry into basic questions.

The activities of life. The experiences of life. Being alive. — Fooloso4

But language gives you these utterances. Is there something language gives you that is not language?

Based on what you said about the inability to understand an author, perhaps you have misunderstood his intent. Or do you think authors write without intent? But it looks like you think you understand him better than he understood himself. — Fooloso4

That is not impossible, to understand what someone writes better than they understand it. Kierkegaard admitted as much when he described the knight of faith as someone beyond his own powers to live in faith beyond principle.
I want to say that when we look closely at the process of understanding something, it is one's personal resources that are in play. My ability to draw on my interpretive assets gives me the "intent" and when I see things set well together in a given interpretation, I call this right. My position seems to be that the more ideas lack objective prima facie clarity, the less authorial intent is authoritative.

Right. Seeing is not simply passive reception. What does this have to do with the metaphysics of presence? — Fooloso4

Passive reception is misleading. The real question is, once a typical perceptual encounter has been analytically exhausted in terms of all possible predicative aspects, is there not an existential residuum that remains, and can this be acknowledged a such?

My intent is to understand the author, to resist imposing the understanding I bring to the text when trying to understand the text. It is never a completed task but one that can begin. — Fooloso4

Then I claim you will be disappointed. I suspect the matter goes like this: In trivial matters, like analytic constructions or simple facts like the moonlight being reflected sunlight, agreement is easy, and it is likely there is in my mind a strong analog to what is in my interlocutor's mind as we discuss this or that. This is evidenced by ready agreement and pragmatic contingencies being worked out free of disagreement. I may not have access to the other's world, but agreement makes a compelling case for sameness, and the incidental (yet constitutive if Derrida, or his predecessor, Saussure, have it right) affairs that attend my affirmation would be similar as well. If we talk about numbers succeeding one another, the other's "regionalized" associative matrix about numbers and their sequences would well line up. Agreement here is not absolute, and just because we agree that modus ponens is correct, it doesn't mean we live in parallel worlds on the matter of the terms and their logic. It does mean analogical agreement.
But understanding complex affairs is a very different matter. Interpretations bound with systems of meaning that are only accessible subjectively are brought into play. The first paragraph of, say, Moby Dick, nay, the very concept of being Ishmael, is massively indeterminate in its connotative meanings (to educated readers) in communicative practice. Kierkegaard? The point is that even if you think you've got it, because you've read Plato in the Greek, and the many many dated references, and Hegel and, well, everything Kierkegaard has read, you will still stand outside what K has in mind. Why is K a Christian? Have you experienced his "long nights of dark inwardness"?
I will not say that your effort understand the author is for naught at all, but that in the end, you will have understood mostly yourself and your own advanced understanding.
In philosophy, I never try to understand the intentions of another. That sounds too abstract, good for the classroom perhaps.

Words have definition, but the boundaries, depending on the word, may be more or less elastic. The term 'geist' it can be translated as spirit or mind or ghost, but when Hegel uses the term we are bound to misunderstand him if we intend Casper the friendly ghost. — Fooloso4

Yes. Sounds like the above. But I go much further it seems. I think of Virginia Woolf: A single line spoken, then the dramatic affair is revealed inwardly. Language made public is the tip of an iceberg.

The practice itself is part of your cultural heritage. — Fooloso4

This is a difficult matter for me to discuss. The reduction removes cultural heritage. If taken to its logical and existential end, it is revelatory. And matters like how cultures carry meanings, and how these meanings are constructed differently, fall away. I think getting to this point is the purpose of philosophy.

Language games need to be viewed within a form of life. A form of life included but is not reducible to language. — Fooloso4

Fine. But what is that-which-is-not-reduced?

The later Wittgenstein eschewed theory. Ethics does not require a theoretical foundation. That is exactly the kind of philosophical assumption he wants to overcome. — Fooloso4

Which is why I don't think about Wittgenstein very much. But it is not theory I am interested in. I am with Kierkegaard in that I think there really is this qualitative leap. Kierkegaard confesses he is no knight of faith. Frankly, I don't think he understood himself all that well because his "positing of spirit" is over intellectualized (the curse of genius is you can't keep yourself from endlessly expressing your genius. Addictive). However, his analysis of time in the Concept of Anxiety is eye opening, but did he really understand the eternal present? I think a meditating Buddhist or Hindu just might.

This bolded part is more of that good 'nonsense.' It can't be proved as a theorem, IMV, but it's a gesture, a poem, an aphorism...that tries to get at something. Language is fog with claws. Humans are amusingly sure that their barks are stuffed with mining. Chalk is cheep. — Zugzwang

Language CAN BE a fog with claws. It can also break through ambiguity and uncover essential things. There is a great deal of value in seeing what is NOT the "truth"; such an approach leads to apophatic realization. When a Buddhist sits quietly doing nothing, she is cancelling the world, but in this, the world steps forward that was previously obscured by "fog" of many stripes: family, work, entertainment, and so on. Claws are terrifying, for what is this in light of the discussion before us? It is an awakening to human suffering, but without redemption. Nothing imaginable is more terrifying, but one has to learn to see this.

Sorry for the delay. I am a bit behind on things these days.

Meaning, value, actuality, etc is then attributed as we are embodied in the system. — Possibility

But then: System? An inherently rational concept. Any system you can conceive is structured by the terms and thinking you already possess. The matter here is to take the affairs of philosophy to their threshold, and then not impose more thinking, more metaphysics, but to embrace the indeterminacy. This is liberating.
The only system that services this end is phenomenology and the Husserlian epoche. See his Ideas I.

Wittgenstein explored the dynamic between thinking and logic within a language system, and recognised that just as there is more to the structure or logic of reality than language, there is also more to the quality of ideas (aesthetics) than thinking (within language). What’s missing from his system description is also energy - much like the Tao Te Ching - rendering it only pragmatically meaningful. It’s not just language and its logic, but an embodied, practical awareness of their limitations, that realise meaningfulness in interaction with the world. — Possibility

I would need an example of the Tao to make this clear, that is, this correlation between energy and the Tao. Energy is a science term, connotatively packed, so I don't see how it works well here. Word choice matters a lot. This is why Heidegger had to construct his own, to be free of a long history of bad thinking. I don't think empirical science's "history" clarifies the Tao.

Also on Witt: Logic structures all thought (speaking of the Tractatus here), but it itself cannot be put in this structure to understand what logic is. One would need a third analytical perspective, which would need another to analyze it. There is no way "out" of this, for even the term"out" is nonsense in this context. From whence does logic "come"? What is its generative base? A terrific read along these lines is Eugene Fink's Sixth Meditation. Anyway, it is here philosophy reaches it end. I find the new post Heideggarian theories the right direction. The French I mention above. they don't systematize, but follow the simple logic of the basic principles of phenomenology to their logical conclusions. The result is an encounter with the impossible, which is where we really are.

Not that Kierkegaard thinks like this, but that his system description is rendered complete only in relation to an embodied existence of eternal rationality, a position he necessarily assumes by omitting it from his description. — Possibility

But you sound like Hegel. Read the First chapter of K's Concept of Anxiety. See he is not with this at all. He argues explicitly against it.

The aim of philosophy is to ultimately embody the logical methodology or ideal relation between inner and outer system. If we are to accurately describe this using language and logic, then we need to include in our description, as Wittgenstein and the TTC have done, a purely practical method for embodying an inner/outer relation to the ‘impossible unutterable noumena’ assumed by the description. Without this practice, any understanding of the methodology is incomplete.

From Kierkegaard’s perspective, the assumption is that God already occupies this non-alienated, original condition, and that we merely dance around it. Any embodied relation we may have to this ‘impossible, unutterable noumena’ is subjective, affected and illogical. He relies on Hegel’s description, with its assumption of the open-ended progress of time/energy (a device Heidegger also relies on in his own way), to demonstrate the anxiety of our condition. Without this temporal relation, Kierkegaard’s description lacks directional attention and effort, rendering our condition eternally absurd. — Possibility

How does Witt provide a practical method for embodying inner and outer?? what is inner and what is outer? Time /energy in Heidegger? He doesn't talk like this. As to the embodied relationship, what do you mean by embodied? K is very aware that one has to think and reason to conceive anything at all, but he does not think like a post modern: in the discussion about actuality and reason, actuality is not conceived as a rational noumenon. Love is not rational, nor is suffering, hate, bliss, ecstacy and so on. Reason encounters these, reduces them to its terms, and this is K's objection, developed later by Levinas and others: We conceive of God out of our Totality of reduced world, and in his analysis it is faith that is the leap out of this totality, out of e.g., the principles of ethics, into something entirely irrational.

Do you believe we can talk about pain as an unconditioned term? Pain is a quality, as I described, but alternatively it’s a logical relation between attention and effort, or a motivation to alter relational structure. There’s no one way to interpret pain, but perhaps there is a correct methodology to align our condition with an ideal origin, and in doing so unconditionally understand pain. — Possibility

Yes, in fact I do.You have to look at this phenomenologically, as a metaethical issue. What is the Good? The Bad? Put a lighted match to your finger and wait. Ask then, what is the ontology of this phenomenon? What IS it? This begins the argument.

To me it's more about being aware of how much clarity is possible or appropriate in a given context. The naive metaphysician does a pseudo-math with words without realizing that s/he does not and cannot sufficiently fix/govern the so-called meaning of those signs (hence 'pseudo-math'). From this perspective, one can grok deconstructive/Wittgensteinian critical gestures without losing the ability to write poetry, talk with Mom about God, etc. What does become difficult is to ask blurry questions naively, as if the signs had a clear enough sense for a relatively objective answer. The difference is basically something knowing when one is being a poet and when one is being a mathematician/scientist --which is not to say that this distinction can ever be perfect (this distinction is more of that illuminating nonsense that puts itself in question without erasing itself completely.) — Zugzwang

But then, does this toss the earnest quest for truth at a foundational level into the mix of meaning indeterminacy? I mean, as long as one knows a context well and can move through its language game, does this language play exhaust the content of its possibilities? Or, is there something in the world that is not a language game that issues forth and beckons, something impossibly profound, but the impossibility of it is a measure of the deficit of one's totality of understanding.
This is where some think postmodern thought goes, for in the undoing of confidence in language to seize meaning, there steps forward a resignation that opens up meaning in ways not assimilated by language.
Getting into very interesting thinking: apophatic philosophy.

I am not sure how you get from the duck-rabbit to the metaphysics of presence in a single paragraph. — Fooloso4

The metaphysics of presence is what is denied by your position, and mine mostly, that seeing a duck, and taking up what is before one AS a duck is contextual, contingent, deferential, a thing of parts. The metaphysics of presence takes something to be its own presupposition, with no need to rely on anything but its own presence to affirm that it is.

Culture is more general, context more specific. Within the same culture there are different contexts. How I see the man in a trenchcoat watching children at the playground might be influenced by reports that there is a pedophile in the area. — Fooloso4

I suppose. One could say within the same context there are different cultures. Say the context is murder. Different cultures have different views.

The baby reaction seems to be hardwired. — Fooloso4

One would think. But there are societies where family structures of mother, father, brother sister are very confused by our standard. Hard to say really what an infant would do if natural fixtures like smiling were turned on their head at that age. Marx thought we were utterly malleable, could take on any conditioning, and Skinner thought fathers and mothers were conditioned role playing.

The badness is not presented to us. That seems to be an odd way of talking as if removed from the immediacy of what is happening. A twisted arm hurts. Pain is bad. — Fooloso4

It is the immediacy I have in mind: The pain is immediate, and the twisted arm is incidental. I don't know what pain is, is my point; and I don't know what it is in an extraordinary way: I certainly know the pain, but I can't put the badness of the pain in any totality, that is, context, of usual knowledge, for I can't "see" the badness of the pain. I mean to say, there is something that attends the occasion of pain that is not observable, like a star's light or a mountain's height. the pain exceeds the properties of plain facts.

You made the connection between philosophy and language. What the words might mean to someone
and what he means when he uses the words are not only an important part of it but an essential part. — Fooloso4

But then there is that whole issue about authorial intent. Kierkegaard's intent, of course, is as plain as mine when I read him. But when I read him, it is my "intent" that receives and understands and interprets. Once I take up meaning, meaning is localized. Not that I cannot speak to others about it, for clearly I can, as did Kierkegaard, but the public world is a tip of the iceberg.

Are ideas to be so open that they can mean anything and everything? — Fooloso4

But are they so closed they can only mean one thing? My thought is that single ideas are fluid, indeterminate., yet pragmatically functional. I say, look at the rabbit; you look and we are communicatively satisfied. Yet, the occasion is simplistic. Rabbits in my world share with and differ from yours.

Does this mean that it is not, as you suggested, a matter of suspending one's cultural heritage? — Fooloso4

It means familiarity is suspended, though it is a difficult matter to pin, because when one "does" the phenomenological reduction, all that would otherwise claim the event loses footing. Odd as it sounds, the "presence" of phenomena becomes more deeply manifest.

The transcendental conditions of the Tractatus are not about where you think Kant went wrong. — Fooloso4

No, not exactly. But both draw a line between what can be meaningfully said and what cannot, and the line separates where logic can and cannot go. Where I think Kant went wrong is clear to me. As to Witt's Tractatus, it is, I say, prohibitive of the same, or close to the same (only analysis can tell) kinds of discussion.

Perhaps the assumption of a core question is symptomatic of the problem. The later Wittgenstein does not attempt to ground things theoretically or absolutely. I think it worth considering whether the notion of epistemological 'hinges' in On Certainty finds its correlate in ethical 'hinges'. For example, murder is wrong. So too, the metaphor of the river and the appeal to relativity theory or the absence of an absolute, fixed ground. In other words, the recognition that ethical standards change over time. — Fooloso4

But such things changing over time, the relativity of ethical judgments, these are not the core issues. Not is meaning yielded out of language games. Metaethics is the foundational issue in ethics. Here I refer you to Mackie's Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong for the view I oppose. No wait; that's rude if you haven't read it. I can defend my thinking if you wish to go into it.

I like deconstruction, and in general like what you say here. But does 'ultimate skepticism' keep one from successfully ordering a cup of coffee? Perhaps 'ultimate skepticism' is 'skepticism about the ultimate'? always keeping in mind that the very language that is used here is infinitely deconstructable. Ultimate??? Reality?? What can these mean?. That part speaks to me. I connect it to Wittgenstein. There are thinkers trying to slap us out of our complacency. Not sleepwalkers but sleeptalkers. Babbling inherited strings of tokens, thinking we know what we mean, that it's right there, glowing and whole and present, if we could only spit it out. Along with that the whole sacred fiction of the isolated interior. But, as you say, keeping in mind that the very language that is used here is infinitely deconstructable. Like W calling the TLP 'nonsense.' Even if his view kept evolving or changing, that gesture continues to resonate for me. It's as if the point is to start a fire. No particular phrase need be cast in a starring role. Are we ever liberated from the tyrant? 'History is a nightmare from which I'm trying to awake,' but often it's a game, not a nightmare. Anyway, what is 'escape' or 'freedom' like? Is that another impossible Ultimate? Another vague promise of rounded and fluorescent presence? — Zugzwang

Interesting thoughts, and very close to where I think things go. To me, if a person is not puzzled, if the world is not one big intellectual and existential antagonism, then just put the matter aside and go on your way.

Wittgenstein wanted to slap us out of metaphysics, and this gave rise to a separation of the profound questions that haunt us and the places where philosophy can genuinely go. I never appreciated that, encouraging positivism and its insistence on clarity at the sacrifice of meaning. But he was right in that he brought attention to the place where bad ideas go to die, which is in critical analysis, and when he drew a line between sense and nonsense he made me look regionally, to the areas where sound thinking exists. I think that is very important because it takes one to foundations, which is why when I read Existential thinkers, and postmoderns, I find Wittgenstein everywhere, implicitly, for these guys talk about the "that which cannot be said" but from a distance, lest one fall into the trap of bad metaphysics.

A break with complacency? Yes, and this is Kierkegaard, Hegel, Heidegger, Sartre, Husserl, and so on. In fact, one can say that this one thing is the most salient feature of their thought, because breaking away like this brings one to the world of phenomenology, and this, Kierkegaard tells us, is a qualitative leap (as a disclaimer: one has to put aside the explicitly Christian content. You read K and you discover, Heidegger here, Sartre there; I mean, the famous things they said are lifted from Kierkegaard).

As to the isolated interior: Isolated from what? There are places Witt goes that I do not. But it depends on how this isolation matter is stated.

Calling the TLP nonsense takes one to exactly the place where post moderns like Derrida and post Derridaians elaborate. Witt's nonsense lines up with Derrida's erasure. And this erasure takes one to the very interesting French theological turn toward apophatic philosophy: Jean luc marion, Jean luc Nancy, Michel Henry and others. It is not that they write about nonsense, but that this nonsense, like Kant's noumena, issues analytically (and ultimately existentially) from the sense making that is here before us. Take noumena: Kant said rather grudgingly that we have talk about this because it had to "be" there otherwise representation would be of nothing. But where does the limitation placed on proper talk begin and end about this? He is very much in Witt's corner, with the Dialectics warning us that metaphysics is empty wheels turning, but then telling us that there is this....something out there, which we really can't talk about, being beyond time and space and the categories. But the question is begged: how can one draw a limit on noumena? How can it be all things, yet not there before me, in my computer, my shoes, my cat?

There is only one way to go: it IS there before me, for my phenomenological gaze is thoroughly noumenal, even in the gaze itself. My perceptions of this phenomenological presentation of objects, thoughts and feelings is utterly noumenal. Which is like saying language doesn't work here, but the "here" is right before us, in the perceptual act, and this actually supersedes, cancels even, the regularities of common experience.

That the entire world is deconstructable puts one face to face with the impossible. This Book on the desk is utterly epistemically without a foundation. Not that, a good empirical scientist might say, we are getting closer and our theories are some kind of Hegelian partial apprehension (though Derrida is very Hegelian. Am watching Slovaj Zizek on youtube. He is a staunch if qualified Hegelian and he stated this about Derrida. Never came to me till then. Now I read Phenomenology of Spirit from a whole new perspective), but that language is structurally not capable of foundational truth. But then: we live deep in meaning and caring and all the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. What can this be, to live on these terms of engagement, yet to acknowledge the emptiness of understanding. I think a Buddhist might have a clue or two...but she couldn't tell you; or could she? Another issue.

this goes to the isolation you mentioned. One thing one has to do is drop common tongue of interpretation, the endless talk about everything in our everyday lives as the basis for understanding the world. That is isolating, for the more one does this in earnest, the less the world's common interests have a hold, and then, instead of alienation being on the outside of these affairs, these affairs becomes the alienating cause. Eventually culture will come to this, after it is done with pragmatic technology infatuations.

Wittgenstein often made use of imaginary tribes. Suppose there is a tribe that has never seen a duck or a rabbit, but has seen images of what we call a duck and a rabbit. When they look at an image that combines the two their experience would be the same as ours, seeing first the one image and then the other — Fooloso4

Well, not quite the same, for if one grows up in a world where rabbits and ducks have an established presence, and are both brought into poetry, metaphor and irony, and there is a wealth of idiomatic playfulness, and they are witnessed, photographed, etc., then this makes a richer context of meaning. But the richness, the augmentative, and as Kierkegaard would put it, quantitative measure of things really isn't the interesting point, for me. When he talks about the qualitative movement, he refers to what today, by some, is called, pejoratively by Derrida, the metaphysics of presence. Only here does it get philosophically interesting. Here, I claim, really is an encounter with something that "possesses its own presupposition". One has to put away the arguments long enough to actually have such an encounter.

That is another aspect of it. A tribe that knew nothing of Christianity or Christian iconography would not look at a cross and see what Christians do. What we see is to some extent culturally conditioned. In some cases it is more a matter of context. — Fooloso4

I don't see the difference between cultural conditioned and context. The former is certainly the latter. Is the latter not the former? Can context be free of culture? By the time I am mature enough to ask this question, I am already thoroughly embedded.

How we see the look on someone's face: is it a matter of understanding the expression? Babies react differently to smiles and sad faces, smiling in return or becoming upset. Adults may react to the look on someone's face as a smile or a smirk or a sneer. Is the response a matter of understanding? Does how we take it or understanding follow from how we respond or determine how we respond? — Fooloso4

Interesting idea: If those very early years conditioning of a counter intuitive sort, and smiles were signs of disgust, e.g., associated with witnessed adult behavior that was negative and smiling, then the smile would have an altogether different meaning. Such things are not fixed, but contingent. It does seem that physical gestures are as arbitrary as language's signifiers. But what is not arbitrary is the mood, the pain or joy, the value experience, in its presence. Put aside the way language makes a thing sit still and be counted, and observe the presence of, say, love, or ice cream, or having one's arm twisted: What IS this presence?
There is no saying this (though one can refer to it just as much as any other thing) which is why I always thought Wittgenstein right and wrong. The "badness" of a twisted arm is "presented" to us and one cannot talk about pure givenness. (Big argument on this, I know.)

Yes, but arborist does more than classify. The arborist might see the tree and picture how it should be pruned. How the tree is to be pruned is not a matter of linguistic analysis, although such an analysis can be given. — Fooloso4

I guess I agree with this. as long as it understood that language's relation to that which it is about does not relate apart from what the thing yields descriptively, pragmatically, or whatever is there. Language is always about the world. But there is a question begged here: What is language? I believe language is, just like the pruning of a tree, pragmatic. To say it is more than this is to open up what is NOT language. Love is not language, nor is a twisted arm, nor is desire or yearning, the Good or the divine or the horror.

Is there more to philosophy than what is said? — Fooloso4

But what is said? In the saying there is more than what is acknowledged; hence, the question.

Is your question about what Kierkegaard means or about the terms? Whatever it is he might mean it may not be what someone else might mean. — Fooloso4

Is this an important part of it? Take it as a matter of the openness of ideas, which was available to Kierkegaard is ways we obviously share. Then there is my own receptive possibilities, indeterminate, but pressing for understanding. What happens in each of us will never be pinned, and there is a lot of philosophy on this, but the pinning never was about this kind of agreement. Ask better: is what Kierkegaard meant, what Kierkegaard meant? Such questions' analyses throw a wet blanket over all answers. It is, in my thoughts, a red herring that keeps philosophers busy exercising their talents.

For some this is meaningful, although perhaps in different ways. For others, a culturally embedded desire for some kind of transcendence. — Fooloso4

Yes, I know this. But I am unwilling to throw the matter like confetti into the air. I am taken by Husserl's epoche and the French theological thinking that sees an apophatic, theological turn in this. Michel Henry, for example. There is a lot of Kierkegaard in this, and Husserl provides the "method". I think this is where philosophy finds its end, in both sense of the term.

What might this mean? To be more or less than human? To rebel against being human? To attempt to escape being human by leaping away? Therapy or denial? Perhaps the leap is to nowhere. Are such challenging questions part of or antithetical to philosophy? — Fooloso4

This question is literally too big to answer. But then: yes, I think being human, comprising all of the institutions and history and evolved concerns and interests, is inherently something to overcome. I think the essential Buddhism and/or Hinduism right. And philosophy leads only to this.

Not a popular idea at the water cooler in the philosophy department.

There is a difference between maintaining an attitude of something mystical and his rejection of Kant's transcendental conditions. — Fooloso4

Kant's transcendental conditions? Where he went wrong is here: noumena is meant to be all inclusive, subsuming phenomena, just as eternity subsumes finitude; therefore, to say we are bound to the latter and the former is untouchable is a logical error. My cat IS noumenal as it sits here on the couch.
To make sense of this is difficult, however. After all, to "see" a thing AS noumenal--what could this mean? But I don't mean to argue this. It would be like arguing Buddhism. Yes, I am saying there is a revelatory dimension to this.

This is not something I have looked at closely, but I think there is a connection between the rejection of a private language and a rejection of the solipsism of the Tractatus. Ethics for the latter Wittgenstein is not about the solipsistic world of the happy or unhappy man. Ethics is not private. It is about what we do and how we live. — Fooloso4

The latter Witt is not as interesting. I think the private/public discussion not to be close enough to the core question. Why does Witt say in his Lecture that ethical claims are absolutes, value claims absent from the great book of facts. What is it that is absolute? It is value. "In (the world), there is no value, - and if there were, it would be of no value.”
This matter goes to metaethical Good and Bad. I will only discuss it if you are so inclined.

Point taken, but isn't it language that also freaks us out, slaps us awake? And isn't philosophy a social enterprise, offering a subculture's Zeitgeist? I agree that part of its thrill is seeing one's little world from the outside, gazing on it as a relatively amoral and detached alien. — Zugzwang

Of course, you are right about language being both suppressive and enlightening, liberative. To discuss something like this, I think it would require a reading of Heidegger's Being and Time. And Hegel. Hegel holds that language possesses the terms of its own dialectical evolvement, since every affirmation contains the seeds of its own destruction, that is, to affirm X, as an affirmation, is bound up with its own denial because this is not, after all, absolute knowledge: contingencies hover all around, one can question (the piety of thought, the question!). In this questioning, things are torn apart, then resolved. Such is the movement of logic and life. Hegel thought this is all happening in the dialectic between the infinite and infinitude. I actually think he was right, though it is a strange thing to get into.

I like the way you are connected these concepts. One might first say that we are thrown into sin but then decide that having-been-thrown is itself the sin. This is to say that sin is inherited...not through baby talk but as baby talk and all the talk that's grown on top of that baby talk. But, as you say, this only makes sense if culture, any culture, offends or obscures something that precedes it. This I don't find plausible, personally. I suggest we're cyborgs through and through. Wipe away the cultural layer and we're just like the other monkeys with less hair and better fingers. What's more plausible but still difficult to credit is the notion that an inherited culture can be transformed, at least within the individual, into something higher, purer, better. Isn't the 'nonalienated original condition' the old fantasy of the garden before expulsion and consciousness of our nakedness? It can be read as the desire to return to an infantile state. And in many other ways of course. — Zugzwang

Lots of interesting here. First, compare Luther's (there are, of course others. Kierkegaard goes through them in his Concept of Anxiety--a VERY worthy read, if difficult) popular but absurd concept that Adam really pis*** off God, and do what K does: put aside literalism altogether and take the notion as a vehicle to understanding what I consider the most elementary question that a person faces: why are we born to suffer and die? It is just as you put it: "having-been-thrown is itself the sin." Of course sin is a badly connotated word and best off the table; but then again, others have stepped forward, like Heidegger and Husserl, and tried to humanize the concept and in doing so divest it of its deeper underpinning. Our "throwness" is the moral question given to metaphysics, the final recourse once one has exhausted all possible accountability in the world. Science cannot go here at all, for the ethical is foundationally metaethical: what is the Good and the Bad ethically speaking? Put the question to its instantiations: a small child, born into some wretched condition, lives a life of innocence yet suffers constantly, ends up with the black plague and dies a horrible death. Or the like, since such constructions come to me in multitudes, all very real, for they have all happened historically and now over and over.

Anyway, consider sin per the above as the truly profound question of being a person in the world. the affair goes to "invisible" value, the badness of pain is never witnessed. The pain certainly is, but it being bad is not. This badness (not to forget Goodness, what Wittgenstein called divinity) is utterly transcendental. My argument can be more fully spelled out if you care to read a paragraph or two.

So K's sin is not Biblical sin in the popular sense. It has to do the way we are existentially constructed, which K takes as dialectic between body and soul. Now we are talking about souls, eh? to go into this, forget about this term, again heavily connotated. Can't really defend the whole idea without a lot of writing. Suffice to say, the "facts" of the world must include the impossible, eternity. Impossible for obvious reason, but generally speaking, to conceive it at all, one must break logical rules, like, space is necessarily defined by its boundaries; infinite space has none; therefore, infinite space in nonsense. Arguing this here is really not the point. The point is this: that ALL of the assumptions that underlie our affairs of any kind rest on unconfirmable assumptions. That is eternity. Intuitive, logical eternity is a radical impasse to the understanding. And yet, we are not computer programs that have reached a limit, like an absence of ones and zeros. We reach OUT, beyond the ideas and desires, and this beyond is an unyielding "presence".

I better stop here. Stepping over the line, a bit.

As to cyborgs through and through, this biological reduction and being cyborgs I don't understand. As to the infantile nostalgia, yes, of course. But this begs the question, what was THAT?-- in infancy, the question about what it is we are alienated from sustains, for in infancy, we are prior to the pleasure priniciple's sublimation (to borrow from Freud), prior to inherited culture. This IS Adam, and sin's analysis begins here: the infant is thrown into a world free and innocent, only to be tossed around by the world's dreaded contingencies.

Finally, sure, about the monkeys. the "purer, higher, better" fist requires an affirmation that some like this even exists. What is love, joy, happiness, bliss, ecstasy, and so on?

When you look at the picture of the duck-rabbit what do you see? The picture does not change but what you see does. This is not a matter of understanding. — Fooloso4

Isn't it? I don't want to quibble about what the understanding "does" but it seems clear that to "see" a rabbit requires a rabbit concept. It doesn't mean that this concept is explicitly learned or that behind the acknowledging, there is some discursive "rabbit" interpretative process, but that the registering of rabbit in the moment of apprehension requires an underpinning of a language culture that talks about rabbits, what they do and look like and so on. even if one were a feral agency, the concept of rabbit would be an historical necessity to the recognition, concept here being exposure to the phonemes of "rabbit" paired with that fuzzy animal. To understand is more than what the optical part reveals, of course. I thought this was your thinking.

Right, but that contextualization need not be linguistic. The furniture builder and the arborist may see the tree differently. The contextualization is here not a matter of what is said but of what is done. — Fooloso4

Did you say the arborist's contextualization need not be linguistic? This is a scientist whose classificatory speciality is taxonomically complex. How is this not language? Of course, when she reaches for the ax she is not giving a lecture, and these are different matters. But I don't see it as, say, preconceptual, reaching for the ax, for the ax's familiarity is bound up with language in a conceptualized, socialized person.

The difference for me has to do with one thing language does that simply ready to hand cannot do: philosophy. What does it mean for spirit to posit soul and body, as Kierkegaard put it? To suspend one's cultural heritage in a qualitative leap of affirmation of one's existential condition? This is where "therapy" (the OP) is at its finality: to overcome the human condition altogether, if you will.

The early Wittgenstein was explicit in his identification of ethics and aesthetics. In his Lecture on Ethics he refers to his own experience of absolute value. Here again, he connects ethics to what is experienced. For the later Wittgenstein ethics as well as logic are no longer regarded as transcendental but part of a form of life. How one looks at things and what is seen when one changes the way they are looked at remains central. Just as the meaning of words is related to their use, the meaning of ethics is related to what we do, to how we live, to what is meaningful. — Fooloso4

His own experience? But I don't see this in the lecture. I'll read it again. I don't think he ever dropped the religious, mysticality of ethics and aesthetics (in Culture and , not did he explicitly take on ethics. I always read him to be saying that metavalue (Tractatus) cannot be affirmed. Language games never undercuts this, but perhaps you know something I don't.
In Culture and Value he writes, "What is Good is Divine too. That, strangely enough, sums up my ethics.
...... the good lies outside the space of facts. MS 107 196: 15.11.1929
This ws 1929, but I don't think he changed his mind. Added the language games concept, but maintained a healthy distance from putting ethics in theoretical play.