AI meets the criterion which asks if it elicits strong feeling, — ENOAH

Collingwood makes a strong distinction between arousing a feeling and expressing one. I generally agree with him, although, as I mentioned, his formulation is rigid. Here's more from "The Principles of Art."

The expression of an emotion by speech may be addressed to someone; but if so it is not done with the intention of arousing a like emotion in him. If there is any effect which we wish to produce in the hearer, it is only the effect which we call making him understand how we feel. But, as we have already seen, this is just the effect which expressing our emotions has on ourselves. It makes us, as well as the people to whom we talk, understand how we feel. A person arousing emotion sets out to affect his audience in a way in which he himself is not necessarily affected. He and his audience stand in quite different relations to the act, very much as physician and patient stand in quite different relations towards a drug administered by the one and taken by the other. A person expressing emotion, on the contrary, is treating himself and his audience in the same kind of way; he is making his emotions clear to his audience, and that is what he is doing to himself. — R.G. Collingwood

So, since I assume no AI actually experiences anything, AI art does not meet this standard.

I don't really like this definition particularly because of the word "identical". I'm not being pedantic, even if the above sentence were adjusted to instead say "similar to", I think it misses the mark.

When I'm looking at a painting, I don't have any pretense that how I'm experiencing it is identical to, or in any way similar to, how the painter does. I'm having a relatively unique experience, made unique by my own relationship to the subject matter and the colours and my cultural history and etc. — flannel jesus

When we've discussed what art is in the past, we never got anywhere close to a consensus understanding, so it's not surprising you don't like this perspective. I get your point. Collingwood is a pretty judgmental hard ass who likes to take definitive positions. In the book, he stated authoritatively that Kipling's "Just So Stories" is art while Milne's "Winnie the Pooh" is not.

I came to this question with a personal understanding that art doesn't mean anything beyond our experience of it. Collingwood convinced me that we also need to consider the relationship between the artist and the audience. So, no, Collingwood and I don't agree that the artists intentions don't have to be considered. Collingwood is long dead, so I can state that without fear of contradiction from him.

Nice criteria. So it is art if the creator intended it to be; and, if it elicits a level emotion tantamount to that experienced by its creator. American Idol on the face of it is not art. — ENOAH

Some thoughts. 1) I realized that when you were talking about "American Idol" I was thinking about "So You Think You Can Dance." I think what I wrote about one is applicable to both. 2) I'm not sure if this is clear from my previous post. The criteria I described are intended to stand on their own separately. They are alternative standards. I don't propose a work would have to meet both standards in order to be considered art. 3) Thinking more about it, I don't think it makes sense to think of "American Idol" or "So You Think You Can Dance" themselves as art, but it may make sense to think of individual performances that way.

We've had a few "What is art?" discussions over the years. We came up with two criteria that answer the question for me. 1) It is art if it is presented with the intention that it be judged on an aesthetic basis. I got this from @Praxis. Hey, Praxis, I'm going to keep giving you credit for this unless you tell me to stop. And 2) It is art if it meets the criteria described by R.G. Collingwood in his "The Principles of Art." He proposes that, when we call something art (in this case a painting)...

It means that the picture, when seen by some one else or by the painter himself subsequently, produces in him (we need not ask how) sensuous-emotional or psychical experiences which, when raised from impressions to ideas by the activity of the spectator’s consciousness, are transmuted into a total imaginative experience identical with that of the painter. This experience of the spectator’s does not repeat the comparatively poor experience of a person who merely looks at the subject; it repeats the richer and more highly organized experience of a person who has not only looked at it but has painted it as well. — R.G. Collingwood

American Idol: Art? — ENOAH

I am not sure what to make of your post, but I will at least take a quick swing at your title. I haven't watched a lot of dance and I'm mostly ignorant about its technical aspects, but I did watch several episodes back in the first couple of seasons. More than once during the shows I found myself unexpectedly moved to the point that I had tears in my eyes. The human body in motion can be beautiful and exhilarating.

Does that make it art?

Aha, that actually made me laugh out loud for several minutes. — Apustimelogist

As I noted, that was written in about 1974. They probably wouldn't have been able to print it now. For that matter, very little of what was in the National Lampoon would be suitable for 2024.

The Horde: How the Mongols Changed the World — Maw

That's something that has always fascinated me. I'll take a look.

That's great. — BC

I first read that in about 1974 and I still laugh every time I say, or write, it.

Just watched "Patterson" with Adam Driver. A sweet, understated, lovely little movie. I can't remember when I've watched another I enjoyed more. I haven't seen Driver in anything else, but he was wonderful in this.

There are presumably 'non-goofy people' who refer to "pregnant persons", "persons with vaginas, cervixes, uterus.", rather than saying an (apparently) unspeakable gendered term like "woman" or "man". — BC

The National Lampoon used to call them "vagino-Americans."

What makes sense to a normal person may not make cents to an insurance company. — Vera Mont

True.

Diseases are cured or prevented, not carried to term. — Leontiskos

I'll say it one more time, then I'm done. Medical care does not include only treatment or prevention of disease or damage. It also includes promotion of health. Pregnant women are not sick, but they still need care. I think it makes sense that that care is provided through the medical care system.

I'll give you the last word.

The motivation for making pregnancy a disease is primarily practical, not speculative. — Leontiskos

I'm not sure what you mean. Are you suggesting that pregnant women shouldn't go to Ob/Gyns for care while they're pregnant or that the care shouldn't be covered by insurance? What about my annual physical? What about well-baby checkups?

Those who want to construe things like abortion and contraception as forms of traditional healthcare are eventually forced to claim that pregnancy is a disease. — Leontiskos

Not true. Ideally, medicine is about keeping people from getting sick and helping them to be healthier. The fact that I'm overweight and out of shape is not a disease, but it could lead to one.

Thanks.

Are there really non-goofy people who propose calling pregnancy a disease? If so, can you give us a reference. If pregnancy is a disease, then so are normal digestion, respiration, circulation of blood, and urination.

I write what I do for two reasons 1) I generally don't know what I believe till I put it into words and 2) I want to test my ideas by opening them to criticism. Maybe three reasons 3) I am a recreational rhetorician. Ok, ok, four reasons 4) The people here are the only ones who will talk to me.

For me, philosophy is all about intellectual self-awareness.

Welcome to the forum. This general subject is something I've thought a lot about. Some thoughts:

Calling knowledge "holographic" seems a bit highfalutin to me. It gives the concept a veneer of exotic science that I don't think is needed.

This gives me a chance to bring out my favorite quote from Franz Kafka:

You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait, be quiet, still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet. — Franz Kafka

When I've posted this quote before, people respond that obviously you can't know about Newton's laws sitting alone in your room, but that's not the point. What you can learn is how the world works, how we know what we know, how we fit in the world. I think this is the kind of thing we learn "holographically." Not something specific, but an awareness of our own thinking process and how to use it to know things.

The other thing we get from small bits of knowledge is bricks for our wall. In my experience, I have a mass of connected knowledge that builds a model of the world I live in. Each small piece of knowledge is connected to others to make a structure of interconnected pieces. I have a vivid visual image of this model as a cloud, lit from within, which contains everything - dogs, cats, protons, love, poundcake, values, Donald Trump, and oxygen. Areas where I have a lot of knowledge are more in focus than those where my knowledge is lacking. As I understand it and experience it, this model is the source of my intuition. I can make judgments about ideas based on how they fit into my model, even if I have relatively little knowledge. That doesn't mean I don't have to go back and verify things with more formal methods of justification, but it helps tell me where to get started and what is worth worrying about.

It is generally held that below a certain age the student simply cannot "grok" a lot of math. — tim wood

Not in conflict with anything you've written, but it brought to mind some studies done by Karen Wynn and others that show that even infants have a sense of quantity and some very basic "arithmetic" skills.

However, this also resolves to me the trouble of an "end goal" to a moral system. — Jerry

As I see it, "moral" behavior does not have a goal. Our path is not to "behave as optimally as possible." It's to act in accordance with our authentic selves, from our hearts if you will. That requires that we have faith in your our spontaneous action. In my understanding, the foundation of all this is our nature as social animals with family feeling, community feeling, and empathy. All "rational" moral systems are intellectual and ideological overlays we use to justify our actions after the fact.

Beyond that, I think some of what we call moral actions are behaviors we are socialized to perform as a form of social control - useful in making society run smoothly and to minimize conflict.

Moral systems are very old. They come from humans living together and depending on one another. For the group's and the individual's long-term survival, it is necessary to establish trust among the members of the group. You establish trust by sharing the same values and goals; by being available to help when another member is in trouble; by living up to your obligations and keeping your promises. It's not all that complicated: people need other people, but the only way they count on other people is by proving that other people can count on them. — Vera Mont

A good summary.

Instrumentality is the translation of an abstract into a concrete idea, I think. Ultimately, the instrument does not create the desired outcome so much as it comes to embody it. — Pantagruel

As I was reading this part of your text, it struck me it was similar to Aristotle's ideas about causation - the 3D printer is the efficient cause. Teleology comes in with the final cause.

Then you went on to say:

Aristotle characterizes the soul as the end of this body. So, although it is not so much the concept of function that is at stake here (although entelecheia seems to be associated with energeia and therefore with functioning), in the background teleology still plays a role. — Pantagruel

I think all these ideas are related.

You've never been called a bellicose bumpkin? — Janus

I'm sure that someone must have.

Loser 1's Money Dominos Are Falling! — 180 Proof

Yes. It has come as a surprise to me to recognize the significance.

hurt him in the pocket book, — GRWelsh

I think you're right. As I said, it just had never struck me before.

I hadn't paid much attention to the Trump Organization civil trail in New York. Seeing how it's going now, I think the consequences might be even greater than those potentially coming from the criminal trials. It never struck me before how big a blow this could be, financially, politically, and psychologically.

Welcome to the forum.

The moderators frown on providing links to your own website. Frown with extreme prejudice. They will likely contact you. I suggest you summarize your understanding in a post and give us something to work with.

In that case, your models are not much different from imaginations either. Because you are rejecting metaphysics under the ground of the imperfect knowledge which is beyond your experiences, which you think as imagination. — Corvus

Yes. Well put.

That's fair. I distinguish the two to separate two mindsets: the former being just one who wants to be able to predict experience, and the other thinks they are actually getting at knowledge of the world in-itself. — Bob Ross

As I noted, these discussions of metaphysics generally fall apart on the question of what metaphysics is and what it isn't.

Let's leave it there.

Kant, as can be seen in your quote of CPR, was making most of his arguments from the model that we represent the world; — Bob Ross

Instead, it just notes that we ‘experience’ with two possible forms: space and time. Whether, in our model of reality, we attribute those forms to our representative faculties is irrelevant. — Bob Ross

You say "modeling," I say "ontology."

I would go for a more Kantian view that space and time do not pertain to the world as it is in-itself: there’s no noumenal space and time. — Bob Ross

I do agree with this.

From CPR

Space is not an empirical concept which has been derived from outer experiences. For in order that certain sensations be referred to something outside me (that is, to something in another region of space from that in which I find myself), and similarly in order that I may be able to represent them as outside and alongside one another, and accordingly as not only different but as in different places, the representation of space must already underlie them [dazu muß die Vorstellung des Raumes schon zum Grunde liegen]. Therefore, the representation of space cannot be obtained through experience from the relations of outer appearance; this outer experience is itself possible at all only through that representation...

...Space is a necessary a priori representation that underlies all outer intuitions. One can never forge a representation of the absence of space, though one can quite well think that no things are to be met within it. It must therefore be regarded as the condition of the possibility of appearances, and not as a determination dependent upon them, and it is an a priori representation that necessarily underlies outer appearances. — Kant

He says similar things about time. Is it your position that space and time are illegitimate concepts?

Metaphysics is rational, at best, and itself is never theoretical (i.e. explanatory of nature). E.g. 'interpretations' of QM are metaphysical (re: ontology), not epistemological (i.e. predictive, or conclusive)³ – in Aristotlean terms they 'come after (i.e. categorical generalizations from, or (as per Collingwood) absolute presuppositions of)¹ the physics'. This is why Spinoza's scientia intuitiva¹ follows from common ideas³ which in turn follow from imaginary (inadequate) ideas² (the latter two e.g. as per Peirce/Dewey). Of course, there are other 'interpretations of metaphysics' but I find them less rational (i.e. unsound, anachronistic)² or irrational (i.e. invalid, faith-based / idealist / subjectivist). — 180 Proof

How do people arrive at metaphysical conjectures if not via imagining them? — Janus

The same way they do any other ideas - thinking, using intuition, or reasoning.

On my end, I am using the definition used in the Kantian tradition, as well as Leibniz and many before him. — Bob Ross

I'm not a Kant scholar, but I've read "Critique of Pure Reason." I don't remember it saying anything like "metaphysics is, in fact, indistinguishable from human imagination." I doubt that it did and I doubt that Kant thought it. I can't speak to Leibnitz, but I would be surprised if he felt that way.

If you have a different definition, then let’s hear it: I am more than happy to entertain other definitions. — Bob Ross

I'm not interested in discussing my or anyone else's definition of "metaphysics" except to point out that you are basing your argument on a non-standard definition of the word.

Nuff said.

Really good post. I especially like

And it doesn't make much sense to say "what does the world look like without eyes," or "how would we think about the world without minds." — Count Timothy von Icarus

I hadn't thought of it in those words before. I save that to use when I'm talking about Taoism.

In this view, only the higher, noumenal realm can be causally efficacious, or at least there is only downwards causality from the noumenal onto the phenomenal, not the other way around. To my mind, this creates an arbitrary division in nature that many don't really want to defend, but which it is nonetheless easy to accidentally fall into. — Count Timothy von Icarus

In Taoism, as I see it, the relationship you describe between noumenal and phenomenal is made explicit as the fundamental basis of reality, although rather than "arbitrary" I'd say "human."

Making sense of “what is there” seems to me paramount, and not entirely fruitless. — NOS4A2

Agreed. As I noted, for me, metaphysics, along with epistemology, is what really matters about philosophy.

I think you’re right insofar as metaphysics is an exercise in imagination and intuition. But I also think metaphysical inquiry can help other forms of inquiry by eliminating the inpossible from our questioning, serving to constrain the scope of empirical studies to a reasonable domain of inquiry, and tempering the mind for such a task. — NOS4A2

Thinking some more - I've come to the understanding that talking about metaphysics at all is a fools errand. When I do, I try to be clear about what I mean when I'm talking about it and focus on that while avoiding a more general discussion. Those always degrade into confusion and conflict. Again, not criticism.

I think you’re right insofar as metaphysics is an exercise in imagination and intuition. But I also think metaphysical inquiry can help other forms of inquiry by eliminating the inpossible from our questioning, serving to constrain the scope of empirical studies to a reasonable domain of inquiry, and tempering the mind for such a task. — NOS4A2

I think that just highlights the point I made earlier - that everyone has their own understanding of the meaning of "metaphysics." I don't consider this a criticism of what you've written.

I said it was interesting. I didn't say it was better or that I even liked it. It's mildly interesting in how it kind of lost the plot and confused the 3d impasto technique with the still-life elements.

Should I have expressed fear and loathing to be more in the cool kid camp? :snicker: — praxis

To clarify further, as I noted, it's fun to mess around with this. I can see how a real artist would enjoy it. I enjoy messing with Chat GPT writing.