Not Art

[Hughsmith23]

(Nested quote removed.)

I've tried to consider your strongly held point but I'm not making much progress. Weren't belief in the four humours and the geocentric universe also archaic necessities? I haven't had much experience with the word truth used as a stand alone concept, and I'm having trouble getting a handle on it now. Can you talk more about truth or give me a link to what you mean by it? Does it refer to a reliable system of knowledge about reality?

I can see beauty as an attribute of art but not a requirement. It may even indicate a slide toward prettiness. We've all seen beautiful artworks, ok, but what about Anselm Kiefer? I see beauty as referring to such a wide and subjective spectrum of qualities, who can say? It's a useful word, but always qualified and personal. cultural, it doesn't seem rigorous enough to stand by itself.

When you talk about truth and beauty I don't know what you mean.

The premises of my argument

There are certain essential features of human consciousness, the way we organise and interpret experience, which are common to all cultures across all times. Variations of 'truth' and 'beauty' are two of these; 'god' is a variation on both. I don't mean that experience is the same across cultures, but the presuppostions of experience are; this amounts only to 1. accepting the influence of 'nature' as well as 'nurture' in human life; 2. positing that nature can have potential conceptual content.

The 'proof' of this, is that there is always a foundation underlying people's thought;

"If I have exhausted the justification, I have reached bedrock and my spade is turned,. Then I am inclined to say 'This is simply what I do." - Wittgenstein.

The problem with Wittgenstein here is that no one is really inclined to say 'This is simply what I do', and that is where the categories of truth and beauty emerge; at the 'bedrock' of human experience.

So I am not saying 'truth' and 'beauty' are essential categories in themselves, but that the bedrock of human consciousness depends on some conceptual content, and 'truth' and 'beauty' are the general names for those concepts.

The proof for truth here would be the paradox of skeptical knowledge claims; 'Do you know nothing' - 'Yes' (there is no way to avoid positing truth).

The four humours are clearly cultural specific - that is why they seem odd to us; we feel the cultural distance, the cultural specificity. But all cultures have concepts of god, beauty and truth, though they are manifested in different ways. There are enough parallels to call them the same thing; if I have lots of apples of different shapes and sizes, I call them all apples. It is true that everyone experiences beauty in a different way, but by the same argument, everyone experiences beauty.

[Belinda]

3uGH7D4MLj wrote:

Aren't truth and beauty archaic concepts? I'm not used to seeing them talked about in this way as if they existed.

Not for me. I set them just under good in the hierarchy of values. Values exist as human concepts. Values exist with other animals too although they cannot articulate them. Values relate to life and its maintenance.

Values do not exist as things that can be measured as entities with mass can be measured .They exist as mental events.Mental events are relevant to causes and the effects of causes.

Human ideas are motivators for reasoned human actions, and values are ideas.Reasoned human actions

[3uGH7D4MLj]

There are certain essential features of human consciousness, the way we organise and interpret experience, which are common to all cultures across all times. Variations of 'truth' and 'beauty' are two of these; 'god' is a variation on both. I don't mean that experience is the same across cultures, but the presuppostions of experience are; this amounts only to 1. accepting the influence of 'nature' as well as 'nurture' in human life; 2. positing that nature can have potential conceptual content.

The 'proof' of this, is that there is always a foundation underlying people's thought;

"If I have exhausted the justification, I have reached bedrock and my spade is turned,. Then I am inclined to say 'This is simply what I do." - Wittgenstein.

The problem with Wittgenstein here is that no one is really inclined to say 'This is simply what I do', and that is where the categories of truth and beauty emerge; at the 'bedrock' of human experience.

So I am not saying 'truth' and 'beauty' are essential categories in themselves, but that the bedrock of human consciousness depends on some conceptual content, and 'truth' and 'beauty' are the general names for those concepts.

The proof for truth here would be the paradox of skeptical knowledge claims; 'Do you know nothing' - 'Yes' (there is no way to avoid positing truth).

The four humours are clearly cultural specific - that is why they seem odd to us; we feel the cultural distance, the cultural specificity. But all cultures have concepts of god, beauty and truth, though they are manifested in different ways. There are enough parallels to call them the same thing; if I have lots of apples of different shapes and sizes, I call them all apples. It is true that everyone experiences beauty in a different way, but by the same argument, everyone experiences beauty.

I appreciate your trying to help me with this, and I'm aware that I've interrupted the conversation, thanks for excusing me. But now you put these concepts together with god, which to me is just superstition. The comments from Wittgenstein and the skeptical knowledge paradox are incomprehensible. There is no way to avoid positing truth?

Nature nurture, you are saying that the ideas of truth and beauty are inborn? I think they are, beauty anyway. We chose mates and food according to attributes like strength and symmetry, color, rightness and that's powerfully coded. But when you use the word as if it is some kind of ideal standing in the void, it goes right by me, seems anachronistic, superstitious. Do art scholars talk about beauty as it attaches to an art object? It would be different for every culture, and every neighborhood and class, every individual. How could you use the word?

Truth is even harder for me. Truth would have to refer to knowledge, some kind of unassailably correct knowledge, which we know now doesn't exist. Again, to put truth out there in the void as an idealized feature of our cognitive environment seems pretty outdated. If I come across someone using the term truth in this way, it's as if they've said god or godliness. I can't go further. I guess my worldview is just fundamentally different. That can happen.

-- Updated February 11th, 2013, 10:47 am to add the following --

Not for me. I set them just under good in the hierarchy of values. Values exist as human concepts. Values exist with other animals too although they cannot articulate them. Values relate to life and its maintenance.

Values do not exist as things that can be measured as entities with mass can be measured .They exist as mental events.Mental events are relevant to causes and the effects of causes.

Human ideas are motivators for reasoned human actions, and values are ideas.Reasoned human actions

I do have the concept of truth meaning trueness, or something being authoritatively correct, I could make the statement, This is the truth. But truth as an idealized entity? as a tuning fork of knowing? this is not in my toolkit.

When I am making art I want truth as a way of judging, over beauty. For me I guess, truth contains beauty. But I know that I am on thin ice saying truth -- that it is only real, it is only the facts, for myself, and maybe just for that time, no universals at work whatsoever. Maybe the closest I can get to truth is "the way things are." I would never say that I was after truth or beauty. I just don't work in that grand arena.

[Hughsmith23]

(Nested quote removed.)

I appreciate your trying to help me with this, and I'm aware that I've interrupted the conversation, thanks for excusing me. But now you put these concepts together with god, which to me is just superstition. The comments from Wittgenstein and the skeptical knowledge paradox are incomprehensible. There is no way to avoid positing truth?

Nature nurture, you are saying that the ideas of truth and beauty are inborn? I think they are, beauty anyway. We chose mates and food according to attributes like strength and symmetry, color, rightness and that's powerfully coded. But when you use the word as if it is some kind of ideal standing in the void, it goes right by me, seems anachronistic, superstitious. Do art scholars talk about beauty as it attaches to an art object? It would be different for every culture, and every neighborhood and class, every individual. How could you use the word?

Truth is even harder for me. Truth would have to refer to knowledge, some kind of unassailably correct knowledge, which we know now doesn't exist. Again, to put truth out there in the void as an idealized feature of our cognitive environment seems pretty outdated. If I come across someone using the term truth in this way, it's as if they've said god or godliness. I can't go further. I guess my worldview is just fundamentally different. That can happen.

-- Updated February 11th, 2013, 10:47 am to add the following --


(Nested quote removed.)

I do have the concept of truth meaning trueness, or something being authoritatively correct, I could make the statement, This is the truth. But truth as an idealized entity? as a tuning fork of knowing? this is not in my toolkit.

When I am making art I want truth as a way of judging, over beauty. For me I guess, truth contains beauty. But I know that I am on thin ice saying truth -- that it is only real, it is only the facts, for myself, and maybe just for that time, no universals at work whatsoever. Maybe the closest I can get to truth is "the way things are." I would never say that I was after truth or beauty. I just don't work in that grand arena.

To clarify a little (I think we are simply using words differently), I have no faith whatsoever and am as skeptical as I think I can be about the possibility of truth. When I say truth, I am referring to a function of language. To take an example from your response

"The comments from Wittgenstein and the skeptical knowledge paradox are incomprehensible."

Although perhaps you could argue this is not a truth claim, it takes the form of a truth claim - if I was an alien learning the English language, it would seem to me like you thought you were saying something true; it is true that 'the comments from Wittgenstein... are incomprehensible'.

There is a quote from Hans-Georg Gadamer which might make what I am saying make more sense; he says 'It is very difficult to believe that something which is written down is false'. To write something down is to claim it is true. If I write a letter to my dad saying "I've spend all my money", those words presuppose that "It is true that I've spent all my money". If that is true, it suggests that language itself has the form of apparent truth.

My understanding of the god concept ties back to language (and probably to Jacques Derrida); if it is true that language itself has the form of apparent truth, then one would reason that the truth has a source; and the name for a source of truth is God.

Anyway, fair enough if you don't think we can find any common ground, but some usually emerges after a little bit of discussion in my experience. I am playing with concepts rather than trying to make claims about the existence of truth and god.

[3uGH7D4MLj]

To clarify a little (I think we are simply using words differently), I have no faith whatsoever and am as skeptical as I think I can be about the possibility of truth. When I say truth, I am referring to a function of language. To take an example from your response

"The comments from Wittgenstein and the skeptical knowledge paradox are incomprehensible."

Although perhaps you could argue this is not a truth claim, it takes the form of a truth claim - if I was an alien learning the English language, it would seem to me like you thought you were saying something true; it is true that 'the comments from Wittgenstein... are incomprehensible'.

There is a quote from Hans-Georg Gadamer which might make what I am saying make more sense; he says 'It is very difficult to believe that something which is written down is false'. To write something down is to claim it is true. If I write a letter to my dad saying "I've spend all my money", those words presuppose that "It is true that I've spent all my money". If that is true, it suggests that language itself has the form of apparent truth.

Anyway, fair enough if you don't think we can find any common ground, but some usually emerges after a little bit of discussion in my experience. I am playing with concepts rather than trying to make claims about the existence of truth and god.

I was just surprised to hear you guys talking about art and there was Truth and Beauty, it just surprised me, and I made that "as if they existed" comment. Now you're saying it's not Ruskin or Keats' idea, or Aristotle's, but the simple truth claim of ordinary language that's carried by every post on this forum. Do I have that right? Thanks for my first Gadamer reference.

[Hughsmith23]

(Nested quote removed.)

I was just surprised to hear you guys talking about art and there was Truth and Beauty, it just surprised me, and I made that "as if they existed" comment. Now you're saying it's not Ruskin or Keats' idea, or Aristotle's, but the simple truth claim of ordinary language that's carried by every post on this forum. Do I have that right? Thanks for my first Gadamer reference.

I am thinking of truth as an experience and function of language, rather than a knowledge claim, but yes.

[Belinda]

3uGH7D4MLj wrote:

I would never say that I was after truth or beauty. I just don't work in that grand arena.

None work there. Truth is a state that we long for . Longings exist, and remain existential even when they' re unfulfilled.

Truth as in logically or empirically true is a different text.

[Hughsmith23]

3uGH7D4MLj wrote:


(Nested quote removed.)


None work there. Truth is a state that we long for . Longings exist, and remain existential even when they' re unfulfilled.

Truth as in logically or empirically true is a different text.

Yeah I think I am on the same page as Belinda regarding use of the word 'true' without making 'truth claims'. It would be absurd to stop using the word 'truth' if it turned out nothing was true, since the word was born out of human experience rather than what philosophers have used the word for.

[3uGH7D4MLj]

3uG: I would never say that I was after truth or beauty. I just don't work in that grand arena.

Belinda: None work there. Truth is a state that we long for . Longings exist, and remain existential even when they' re unfulfilled.

Truth as in logically or empirically true is a different text.

I just can't get truth as an abstract, something that an artist strives for, for instance. I've always dealt with big issues in my work, but I can't understand truth as a state that we long for, or "a value" as you posted before.

[Fleetfootphil]

How is it possible to get out of this forum? No one seems willing, through normal communication, to tell me. Is there a button or icon I have missed?

[Zoot]

If I like all music, I really don't like any music. If I like all recipes, I really don't like any recipes. If I like all art, I don't really like any art. N'est pas?

I have no idea why you would think is. It seems to me that all it takes to "like" something is to respond positively to it, and I see no reason why somebody shouldn't respond positively to all music.

If it's the case that "if I like all music, I really don't like any music", why not "if I like all music by Frank Zappa, I don't like any music by Frank Zappa", or "if I like all music on this album, I don't like any music on this album"? (I assume you acknowledge the absurdity of at least one of the latter two.)