THESISxii
A Philosophical Review
Volume 10 • Number 1
April, 2003
Inside this Issue:
Rachel Dayton
ART AS SOCIAL PRECEDENCE
Andrew Briggs
ART AS INDEFINABLE
Matthew Silliman
PROPOSITIONAL POVERTY
Shane Babcock
FREEDOM AND SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS
Art As Social Precedence
Rachel Dayton
In our time of instant information and small-world communication, social precedence, more than talent, determines the immediate qualification of art as such. The constant flow of information makes each individual subject to the mass media and the mass media, in turn, subject to the acceptance of individuals. Though its purpose is to make statements, demonstrate skill, and instigate contemplation, art finds appreciation only in media that are directly connected to humans as individuals and as a social body. Where there is no appreciation for art, there is no art, despite technical merit or artistic intent.
Art must evoke some sense of pleasure beyond admiration of skill, in order to have the acceptance of the masses. During any given season, year, or decade, the artistic factors (colors, technique, subject, etc.) that universally evoke subjective responses in the audience are subject to change. These qualities are present in art of all eras, but the twentieth century in particular has very distinct art forms, including paintings, music, and fashion, that can generally be separated by decades. There is a clear progression of popular acceptance of art from, arbitrarily, 1920 to 1980, and the art of each decade is specific to the time and the people of it.
Unique to the twentieth century is the progressively rapid communication of ideas and information. Unlike Leonardo DaVinci’s paintings, there is an instant broadcast of the work of every modern artist to the masses throughout the world. The availability of new pieces gives the public (as opposed to scholars or the economic elite) more weight in the make-or-break status of an artwork’s success. The media can contribute to the general public’s anticipation or contem-plation of a piece through reviews and conferences, and thus the general assumption of mass acceptance dictates how the media will manipulate individuals to like, on most any level, a particular piece of art. Furthermore, artists are more aware of public opinion and, to some degree, create art within that realm. (Benny Goodman would never have played Bob Dylan, let alone written anything like it.) This is not to say that they follow particular “rules”: sometimes what makes the art, especially contemporary art, acceptable is the simple fact that it breaks the rules.
One may argue that great works of art have been objects of appreciation throughout the centuries, and, therefore, while public opinion changes -- as in fads -- the definition of art does not. There is no destruction or depreciation of the masterpieces by Michelangelo, Raphael, Donatello, or Leonardo (it just so happens that the pop classic Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles enshrines all of these men). Historical precedence, having the acceptance of the media that, essentially, writes history, maintains the “great” works of art throughout the changing eras. What emotions masterpieces evoke and what ideas and messages they send to people of different ages keep certain “objective” masterpieces timeless.
Those works of “art” which fade away into the basements of museums may no longer be art, at least, not “great” or popular art as was the consideration at the height of their public appeal. Furthermore, what was not acclaimed in its day may find sanctuary in a new media outreach. Specific pieces of art -- even whole art forms -- go in and out of ‘fashion’ today, not necessarily with an underlying purpose or logical judgment. This ebb and wave of social acceptance demonstrates, in part, how modern humans are not fully able collectively to pinpoint objectivity where forms of subjective thought or intrigue dilutes decisiveness.
Rachel Dayton is a student at MCLA
~~~
Art as Indefinable
Andrew Briggs
I perceive art as a phenomenon that simply cannot be defined. As Morris Weitz writes:
[the] attempt to discover the necessary and sufficient properties of art is logically misbegotten for the very simple reason that such a set and, consequently, such a formula about it, is never forth-
coming. (1)
Many notable theorists of art, including Clive Bell, Monroe Beardsley, and Arthur Schlesinger define as art anything capable of producing an aesthetic experience. According to Beardsley, for example, “an artwork is something produced with the intention of giving it the capacity to satisfy the aesthetic interest.” (2)
This definition has two serious problems. First, Beardsley suggests that there must be an intention involved in the creation of the artwork. This cannot be the case, since some art objects seem to be unintentional creations (the personal correspondence of Freud, for instance). Secondly, Beardsley claims that artwork must satisfy the aesthetic interest. Douglas Dempster easily defeats this claim by arguing:
Q: Can’t you see that this is an art work?
A: But it isn’t.
Q: Yes it is. I just had an aesthetic experience which proves it.
A: No it isn’t. I had no such experience. (3)
It is clear that aesthetic experience is not central in defining art, since not every person experiences aesthetic emotions, or the same aesthetic emotions, when viewing a piece of art.
More promising, in my view, is Morris Weitz’s characterization of art. He writes:
Art is an open concept, one resembling the concept of a game, which too entails no essential characteristics shared by all games. Games at best possess what Wittgenstein has called a family resemblance: every member resembles one or another member, but none resembles all of them. (5)
Weitz suggests, through the use of this analogy, that while all art may possess similar properties, no two pieces of art will be precisely the same (or share all of any one set of properties), and, therefore, that it is
impossible to create an explicit definition of art.
References
(1) Morris Weitz, “Art as Indefinable.”
(2) Monroe Beardsley, “Art as Aesthetic Production.”
(3) Douglas Dempster, “Aesthetic Experience and Psychological Definitions of Art.”
(4) George Dickie, “The Institutional Conception of Art.”
(5) Morris Weitz, The Role of Theory in Aesthetics
Andrew Briggs is a student at MCLA
~~~
Propositional Poverty
Matt Silliman
As Dave Johnson notes (Thesis XII, 9.2), the late Australian philosopher David Stove calls a "gem" any attempt to derive a substantive conclusion from a tautology. Johnson alleges that I make such an error in deriving "something substantive about the contents of words or thoughts from a truism about the unavoidably intentional context of thoughts or utterances." A tautology is, of course, an analytic or a priori truth that rests upon its self-referential character ("a = a," "what will be, will be"). By contrast, my observation about the intentionality of human utterances, their rootedness in complex social and purposive behavior and thus their propensity to mean more than they say, is not a tautology. Nor, I think, is it properly dismissed as a truism. I take it to be an a posteriori fact about all (or most - perhaps some mathematical statements are exempt) significant human utterances. If I can show this then I utter no gem, precious or otherwise.
In general when I say something, the reasons behind the choice to say it (rather than something else or nothing) make non-trivial contributions to its substantive meaning. Common linguistic practice illustrates this: the question "Why do you say that?" is naturally and sensibly synonymous with "What do you mean?" Though the first sentence emphasizes reasons and motivations (intention) while the second focuses on denotation (propositional content), the two questions have similar results in conversation, since in practice the distinction is only approximate, only a matter of emphasis.
This example may seem to rely on a culpably accidental fact about current English usage fostered by inadequate general training in logic. So to be fair, let me use Johnson's own example, the banal observation he makes that "My cat is black and white," which "appears to be entirely descriptive." Of course, in normal parlance it is indeed a simple description; I wish to show that no such description can ever be as simple as it appears or as normal parlance assumes, for each of its terms (and all of them together) insistently evoke a vast universe of meanings and (most importantly for the is-ought problem) relationships.
Allow me to pose only a few of the obvious questions: In what sort of community does "my cat" have meaning? Does the phrase signify a property relation (as in "my toothbrush"), a relationship ("my daughter"), or what? Is the verb an "is" of identity, of naming, of description? What is worthy of comment about the cat's coloration, as opposed to its many other features? Why are you telling us this - because your cat is missing and you hope for assistance? Because you find its coloration attractive? Such questions go on and on, of course; some of them have fairly obvious answers, while others are arcane or even obtuse. We can distinguish the sensible from the absurd so reliably in such cases (that is why we think of it as a simple description) only because the world of our experience (language, relationships, intentions) overlaps so thoroughly with the speaker's.
If I am correct that a selection of background interpretive assumptions of this sort underlies any and all interpretations of such a statement, then any inference in which it occurs as a premise will quite legitimately already contain normative elements sufficient to warrant a non-fallacious normative conclusion (though by custom and for good reason we are wise to spell out such elements as explicit premises). Thus the is-ought problem arises only when, instead of making statements in the sense of actually saying things to one another, we re-state or quote their mere denotative content for use in a formal exercise.
Johnson's critique of my argument relies on an attempt to maintain distance between what literary critics call content and context. He avers that the term "proposition . . . refers to the actual content of statements" when in fact he means only that it refers to their denotative content. We can only exhaustively confuse denotative with actual content when a statement is (partly) removed from the connotative and intentional context within which it functions as a statement. I say "partly" here because were we to remove a statement completely from its context – send it to Mars without a dictionary or a parachute -- it would no longer even be a statement (except from a god's-eye view, perhaps).
Thus content/context is a useful distinction, but it will not sustain the metaphysical weight Johnson needs it to hold, and frankly I am surprised that he insists on it - I would expect him (as a naturalistic ethicist) to welcome a solution to the is-ought problem that leaves intact the analytic usefulness of the notion of propositional content, while merely indicating its somewhat limited practical importance.
Matt Silliman teaches philosophy at MCLA
~~~
Freedom and Self-Consciousness
Shane Babcock
In “The Bicentennial Man” Andrew the robot says, “It seems to me that only someone who wishes for freedom can be free. I wish for freedom.” I think that this captures what it is to be free, even if one’s actions are truly guided by deterministic forces, as Andrew is by the “Three Laws of Robotics.” For instance, we human beings go about living as if we are free; we live self-consciously of ourselves as beings that make free choices about what we do. We do not go about doing things from day to day thinking of everything we do as merely actions that are just happening due to physical causes.
The self-consciousness of doing something (being self-conscious of oneself as both a body and its consciousness) presupposes that one perceives oneself as doing something freely. If one were conscious of one’s actions as being determined, one’s own self-consciousness would be radically different. We would merely feel as if we were a disconnected, bodiless consciousness observing a separate body that is doing things on its own; it would be like observing an unconscious object such as a machine. But our self-consciousness involves a perception of our own consciousness being something participating and being connected to the bodily actions as they actually happen by making choices about what the body does, even if reflection, or knowledge gathered later in retrospect, might show that this is not actually the case.
With strong evidence pointing towards us truly being beings who are determined causally in their actions, this state of mind is the closest thing to making us free despite the implications of this evidence. Since we wish to be free we are self-conscious of ourselves as free and this is turn has an effect on the way we actually do things. Perhaps this mental state is an self-delusion. If we are truly causally determined, this state of mind still has an effect on the causal chain which causes us to act as if we are free even though we are not because it has a corresponding physical state in the brain and hence has an effect on how our body functions and how it appears to function to our consciousness.
Shane Babcock is a student at MCLA
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