ARTiculation

Tales from academia

2012-01-11T12:43:00.000Z

That akward moment when you realise that all your funding rejections are not because you're a misunderstood genius, but that you are a very well understood idiot.

Quotes worth saving (9) Heraclitus praised by Heidegger

2011-10-19T16:41:00.000+01:00

"To think is surely a peculiar affair. The word of thinkers has no authority. The word of thinkers knows no authors, in the sense of writers. The word of thinking is not picturesque; it is without charm. The word of thinking rests in the sobering quality of what it says. Just the same, thnking changes the world. It changes it in the ever darker depths of a riddle, depths which as they grow darker offer promise of a greater brightness."

Martin Heidegger, Early Greek Thinking, 'Logos'

Thirty-three, or 33 things for 33 years

2011-10-06T15:05:00.004+01:00

1. the ordinary is more wonderful than any fiction can ever be.

2. philosophy is the art of living and dying well, it is not merely a difficult academic game.

3. generalisations can be useful in theoretical descriptions, but are mostly useless and dangerous in practical situations.

4. the oppositional dichotomy employed most commonly in descriptions is naïve at best, corrupting and destructive at its worst.

5. science and religion cannot give the answer - only distraction.

6. art and philosophy cannot give the cure - only pacification.

7. how much we all owe to the randomness of existence.

8. most problems are caused by poor communication.

9. the flaws in language cannot be 'ironed out' and totally corrected, this is because the flaws are not in the system but in the operators (this poor metaphor also serves as an example).

10. a metaphorical description is an attempt to convey something grasped quite loosely, if it is not successful then another might be attempted.

11. caring-for is a devoted focus upon another object, event, or being that signifies a connection.

12. not-caring results in distancing.

13. we cannot be said to have absolute control over what we care about.

14. the focus of care is one of concern, we worry about what we care about because we care.

15. too much worry makes one ill.

16. thinking too much makes one worry about that which we cannot change.

17. thinking too little makes one an object of use for another.

18. we think that our attempted definitions of concepts are like a laser-beam of truth, when in fact it is akin to the sun's rays or rainfall upon a thirsty plant.

19. concepts tend to oscillate at an alarming frequency.

20. we live out our own judgements we make upon our own lives, there is nothing more final.

21. although categorising/theorising/storytelling is, in extreme, the epitome of falsehood it is also at the root of understanding.

22. an artwork, at its best, is an original attempt.

23. do not try and deny your mistakes, instead own them fully.

24. one should laugh as often as possible.

25. a friend is one with whom you can share laughter without pretext.

26. our perspectives are undergoing continual change and cannot therefore be described as 'final'.

27. God is only a concept and not a thing or being, but no less real for all that.

28. there are far too many people who do not care.

29. people would much rather vocalise than properly talk.

30. failure to understand the 'other' is based in the failure to understand yourself.

31. the relationships between things are mostly more important than the things themselves.

32. death, like sickness, is not to be feared. only calmly accepted. death is the end.

33. I would rather be hated than liked, I would rather be loved than hated.

Quotes woth saving (8) Camus et Sisyphus

2011-08-01T14:35:00.001+01:00

Il n'y a qu'un problème philosophique vraiment sérieux : c'est le suicide. Juger que la vie vaut ou ne vaut pas la peine d'être vécue, c'est répondre à la question fondamentale de la philosophie. Le reste, si le monde a trois dimensions, si l'esprit a neuf ou douze catégories, vient ensuite. Ce sont des jeux ; il faut d'abord répondre.

There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy. All the rest — whether or not the world has three dimensions, whether the mind has nine or twelve categories — comes afterwards. These are games; one must first answer.

Albert Camus (The Myth of Sisyphus)

Commencer à penser c'est commencer d'être miné.

Beginning to think is beginning to be undermined.

Notes on pronunciation (1) Plato

2011-04-14T10:00:00.005+01:00

Plato is probably the number one philosopher for mispronunciation. Indeed, an entire country seem to think it is correct to call him:

However, his name is not play-doh. The emphasis should be upon the T rather than flattening it. Thus:
Pl'ay-Toe

Of course, Greeks might point out that we are all mispronuncing the word and it should sound more like:

Plateau.
I'm not so sure about that myself. Not that they don't know their own language. They do.
Whatever, just stop calling him Play-Doh.

Quotes worth saving (7) Redemption

2011-04-13T13:00:00.003+01:00

Very Little... Almost Nothing
Simon Critchley
(Routledge: London, 1997)
p.12

"...[N]either philosophy, nor art, nor politics alone can be relied upon to redeem the World, but the task of thinking consists in a historical confrontation with nihilism that does not give up on the demand that things might be otherwise."

The Anarchy of Play

2011-04-11T13:30:00.006+01:00

In an earlier post I described the work of play as inappropriate to its own conceptual structure, i.e. it is not part of play for it to be put to use in such a manner, as the solution to otherwise complex theoretical disputes. In the same way the solution to political/democratic problems is not to put an anarchist in charge. This is because anarchy like the concept of play might have a structural system but it is not a system meant for governing. It is a revolutionary or reactionary system, in that, it helps to show the errors with the current theoretical approaches.

What it?

Anarchy and play separate here I’d think.

Play is a fundamental system, it is how we learn, rather how we should learn in contrast with dogmatic learning or indoctrination. Although it is a fundamental system it is still not one that governs. In a similar manner, anarchy promotes freedom and works in reaction to the more perscriptive forms of government, but it is not a replacement.

So, while play works as a system for learning, it is still not a method for getting answers in a theoretical manner and therefore although it is offered by some (example: Linda Nochlin in her lecture ‘The body in pieces’ and by some Wittgensteinians) as replacement or answer in some philosophical problematic (i.e. by Nochlin as a way to get past the objectivbity/subjectivity divide in understanding art) this cannot be anything but a displacement of the problem. It is similar to the ‘quietist’ reading of Wittgenstein, which tells us that there is no answer and that this should be enough for us to be satisfied with. Philosophy then becomes a sort of unnecessary intellectual activity that only creates its own problems that ultimately may as well be set aside.

1. I don’t believe Wittgenstein held this quietist view in his philosophy.
2. I don’t believe play is a conceptual system capable of answering problems.
3. I don’t believe anarchy and play start from the same grounds, but have similar outlooks and (potentially) similar ends or goals.
4. I do believe play is a fundamental system for formulating understanding, but it is not a theory. It is an approach.
5. I do believe anarchy is a revolutionary theory based upon reacting against perscriptive or dogmatic systems of government.

Quotes worth saving (6) Active Nihilism

2011-04-10T13:18:00.001+01:00

"Creativity plus a machine gun is an unstoppable combination." --- Raoul Vaneigem

History of Aesthetics (2) Baltasar Gracián y Morales

2011-04-04T13:20:00.003+01:00

[The previous empty post has been removed, this is a rewritten and much longer post]

Balthasar Gracián (1601 – 1658) was a Spanish Jesuit Priest and Moralistic Writer whose influencial work Oráculo manual y arte de prudenica (1637) was translated into many other languages, most famously into German by Schopenhauer, and became an important starting point for many of the discussions upon the nature of aesthetics in the 18^th century. It was in The Oracle (alternatively The Art of Worldly Wisdom) that the first conceptual description of taste (it is believed, e.g. Kivy in ‘The Seventh Sense’) was first set out. However, the style of the book is somewhat ‘labyrinthine’ in that it tends to ‘orbit’ a point without directly making it. This makes his writing rather easy to take as flippant or else as a misanthropic pithy saying without any deeper or more rigourous grounds to them, but, much like one of his later admirers Nietzsche, to take him at this surface level is to do a disservice to his work.

The Oracle is undoubtedly meant as a moral guide to life, much like the earlier stoic work Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, but within its pages is also a delicate aesthetic theory, one that will reoccur with the development of the ‘man of fine taste’ in post-Baumgarten European Aesthetics. Good taste in the Oracle is not merely a concept related to our critical or aesthetic behaviour but is a constituant part of what we are; it represents the faculty of liking or disliking in a wide range of situations and towards a variety of objects and so forth, and thus it represents the first attempted construction of taste as a mental faculty. A further insight that Gracián elaborates is that this taste is not an innate function of manking, but that it is must be honed through the correct education. We might say, therefore, that although we all have the capability for exhibiting good taste in our lives it is only those who make the correct efforts and with the appropriate dedication that may be called a ‘person of good taste’ or in Gracián’s words “a saint.” I believe he means this (in the final aphorism) to be taken as a near impossiblity, rather than sainthood being something that most could achieve, the total achievement of Virtue is a task that is almost endless. However, no less worthy for that, that it is rather a life’s work and when do we know when it is complete? Well, like the saint it is only once dead and another can pass judgment upon our life. For saints are only sainted postmortum, which may be seen as a final misanthropic witticism of Graciáns, but I prefer to see this as a humourous aside to those that feel they could not get any better. Your life is never complete, Gracián is saying, it is a constant education to better one’s self and follow the path of Virtue and Virtue is synonymous with good taste in this reading. [Note: Although, under some readings 'saint' = Christian, as Gracián was a Jesuit priest, I'm using the 'saint' = canonized model.]

Following is a small selection from the Oracle of various fragments of aphorisms that deal with taste, either directly or indirectly, and are divided into the; original Spanish, Walton’s translation, and my interpretation.

14.

Un bel portarse es la gala del vivir: desempeña singularmente todo buen término.

A gracious deportment is the adornment of life: it provides the best way to the attainment of every worthy end.

If you behave well then your life will go more smoothly towards the Virtuous.

22.

Es munción de discretos la cortesana gustosa erudición.

The armoury of the discreet is polite, tasteful learning.

I take the emphasis on learning here to be the vital point.This is what the ‘discreet’ have as their advantage over all others.

28.

En nada vulgar. No en el gusto.

Be vulgar in nothing. In the first place, not in your taste.

The importance of taste, that is, its preeminance above all other ‘qualities’. The vulgar is in opposition to what is Virtuous.

32.

Estar en opinión de dar gusto.

Cultivate a repution for being pleasant.

I would see taste (gusto) here as being worthy of cultivation in that your dealings with other people will be all the better for its development, as he goes on to say “those who behave in a friendly way make friends.” Thus, those who are ‘tasteful’ will further develop their taste.

33.

Tenga, pues, libertad de genio, apasionado de lo selecto y nunca peque contra la fe de su buen gusto.

Maintain, then, freedom of spirit, be zealous in pursuit of what is choice, and never sin against the verdict of your good taste.

Do not presume too much, extremes are to be avoided, taste deals with wise moderation.

39.

Es eminencia de un buen gusto gozar de casa cosa en su complemento: no todos pueden, ni los que pueden saben.

It is high privilege of good taste to enjoy everything in its perfect state: not every one is capable of doing this, and not all those who have the ability know how to do so.

It is not just a natural endowment, taste must be ‘cultivated’ that is it must be educated in the appropriate manner.

41.

Son las exageraciones prodigalidades de la estimación, y dan indico de la cortedad del conocimiento y del gusto.

Exaggerations are excesses of the judgment and indicate limited knowledge and taste.

Exaggeration is “an offshot of lying” and is damaging to your own [reputation for] wisdom. The wise prefer understatement to overstatement. Although it should be pointed out that Gracián himself is normally to be found overstating the case...

51.

Lo más se vive de ella: supone el buen gusto y el rectísimo dictamen; que no bastan el estudio ni el igenio.

Most things in life depend upon right choice: it implies good taste and the most accurate judgment, for study and intelligence are not enough.

An argument for free will is also within the pages of Gracián’s Oracle. Also, it is not by study alone that a man might exhibit taste, i.e. one cannot just read books (like Gracián’s) one has to be about to put this knowledge to use and know how to act correctly through practical and not just theorectical application.

65.

Gusto relevante. Cabe cultura en él, así como en el ingenio; realza la excelencia del entender el apetito del desear, y depués la fruición del poseer. Conócese la altura de un caudal por las elevación del afecto.

Good taste. There is room for cultivation here, just as in the case of the mind; the excellence of the understanding enhances the appetite of desire, and, later on, the enjoyment of possession. The extent of a man’s capacity is to be known by the loftiness of his taste.

The “loftiness of taste” is, again, not a ‘limit’ that we are born with, but one that may be extended by our cultivation.

If there are any Spanish speakers who could offer a different translation to Walton’s and help out with any cultural nuances that seem to have snuck past me then I’d be truly grateful.

The Ontological Cut

2011-03-29T15:40:00.007+01:00

The Ontological Cut

McGinn’s Version

For Marie McGinn the ontological cut that is made manifest in our language-games reveals that the important distinction is not between the philosophical myth of the inner and outer realm (something the private language argument is meant to dissipate) but, instead, between bodies whose form of life makes them accessible to psychological description and objects that are out of play to psychological concepts. She continues:

One important aspect of this fundamental division between categories of phenomena that make up our world is the qualitative difference in how we experience them: the words and cries, the gestures, movements and facial expressions of other living things have a significance for us that enters into our experience of them and figures essentially in our descriptions of what we see and hear. (McGinn, 1997, pp. 177-8)

My Version

Zettel §225. "We see emotion."--As opposed to what?--We do not see facial contortions and make inferences from them (like a doctor framing a diagnosis) to joy, grief, boredom. We describe a face immediately as sad, radiant, bored, even when we are unable to give any other description of the features.--Grief, one would like to say, is personified the face.

This belongs to the concept of emotion.

There is no great difference between mine and McGinn’s position, but perhaps my ‘cut’ is less deep. There are distinctions but not final divisions. I consider my cut to be the dotted chalk line (on the tailor’s pattern) marking the space between what is to be kept and what is to be discarded, which could also be thought of as a marking out of what is valued. At any rate this is merely an analogy, if it is not successful then I can offer perhaps another.

What I want to draw attention to here is the experiential quality, a distinction between qualitative and quantitative experience. Here’s a quote from Cussins:

Experience presents the world as coloured but a physicist’s atoms have no colour. We perceive the world as beautiful or ugly, sweet or salty, happy or sad, brave or cowardly, intelligent or stupid; yet none of these properties figure in the world of the physical sciences. In the scientific world-view, the universe is an arrangement of atoms in a four-dimensional void, where the properties of sentience have no place. (Cussins, ‘The Limitations of Pluralism’)

What then are these properties? Ways of describing? At any rate there does seem to be a divide, which becomes apparent when a neuroscientist attempts to explain happiness by reference to particular brain states. There appears to be a ‘leap’ involved in their description, which highlights the difference in description and hence in the language-game to use the McGinn/Wittgenstein phrase. Describing one in terms of the other seems destined to failure or, at best, require the kind of logical ‘leap of faith’ previously suggested. I doubt that this is something we would want to accept. Neither of these ‘worlds’ are totally distinct, but neither can one be reduced one into the other without falling into error.

References:

Wittgenstein, L., Zettel, (Basil Blackwell, 1967)

McGinn, M., Wittgenstein and the Philosophical Investigations, (Routledge, 1997)

Cussins, A., 'The Limitations of Pluralism'
http://www.haecceia.com/FILES/limitsofPluralism.htm

The Work of Play

2011-03-28T17:38:00.000+01:00

Play is becoming an overused phrase in philosophy and, indeed, throughout the humanities. Its latent ambiguity allows it to be 'put to use' in a variety of explanatory mediums. For example; it is taken as the main goal of the philosopher Wittgenstein, as the aim of modernist art, as an explanation that mediates between subjectivity and objectivity, and so forth. Now, while I might not object to the outcomes of play used in each of these areas, I do find it more than a little disconcerting that play can be such a conceptual multi-tool. Indeed, that it can apparently carry such a heavy weight of theoretical responsibility seems in opposition to the constitutional description of play as a concept.

One should always pay attention to the descriptive language one uses especially when a particular phrase seems to be an especially handy 'catch-all'. Perhaps the worry isn't there and we are really talking about play simply as an analogy for a better description which does not yet exist, i.e. it's the best word we currently have for capturing a certain dispositional feel that is trying to be (indirectly) communicated.

"Today is the tomorrow, I was so worried about yesterday."

2011-03-15T12:51:00.001Z

Quotes worth saving (5) Horace's consolation for the PhD student:

2011-02-28T18:14:00.001Z

Molliter austerum studio fallente Laboren. 

Where the interest in the activity beguiles the hardness of the toil involved.

- Horace, Satires, Epistles and Ars Poetica.

Questions to ask yourself before an undertaking

2011-02-25T11:10:00.001Z

Note: Replace 'say' with 'do' or 'make' or 'enact' where appropriate.

What do you want to say?

Why do you want to say it?

What will the saying of it achieve?

Fitted-ness in the Lecture on Aesthetics

2011-02-21T12:00:00.002Z

The beginnings of this concept can be seen in lecture one and section 8 (L1, S8) where Wittgenstein says that, “it is remarkable that in real life, when aesthetics judgements are made, aesthetic adjectives such as ‘beautiful’, ‘fine’ etc. Play hardly any role at all... The words you use are more akin to ‘right’ and ‘correct’...”

Aesthetic words are used first only as ‘interjections’ it is later on, in learning, that we start using them rarely to describe experiences. Is this just a culturally depend ‘turn-of-phrase’ then? In one sense perhaps, but there is here the first sign of the sense of a word ‘fitting’ its purpose and this too can be culturally significant in many ways. Indeed, how else would it be significant? Unless we mean here that words extend beyond their cultural usage and into some metaphysical realm of use, which I hardly think is the right choice of phrase here.

Gestures of approval (L1, S12) only enter into our discussions when we start to speak of a ‘right’ way to read a poem or interpret a painting etc.

The Tailor

If you haven’t learnt the rules you won’t be able to make an aesthetic judgement. What could you make? An aesthetic guess. The example of the tailor (L1, S13 & 15) seeks to highlight this. When cutting out a suit, for it to be a good suit, one must know the rules of how long, how wide the cuts must be. “In learning the rules you get a more and more refined judgement. Learning the rules actually changes your judgement.”

Although, Wittgenstein then makes a bracketed claim that possessing neither the appropriate nature nor education might not stop one from making a correct claim. Rather than simply a lucky guess we might interpret this as an example of concepts seeping into/through culture. Especially one as far-reaching as music where a lack of specific training doesn’t stop one understanding misplaced beat or rhythm and so forth, it is not then all a matter of rules or simple human nature.

There is also a distinction made (L1, S15) between an attitude which strictly follows the rules, “I say: No. It is right. It is according to the rules.” And an attitude that develops a ‘feeling’ for the rules, i.e. one in which I actively interpret the rules.

Rules of harmony: It is not the interjections one uses to show appreciation, but the way one chooses, selects, etc. (L1, S19) Being able to see how it will fit shows both knowledge and appreciation of the material. To properly describe what appreciation consists in we must also describe the complete environment, thus making it an impossible task. “There is an extraordinary number of different cases of appreciation.” (L1, S21) Limits of knowledge? I could always know more. This isn't a limit as such. However, it just isn’t reachable. We don’t start from the basis of absolute knowledge before making judgements, with start with simplistic or naive judgements and develop these.

On the 'correctness' of the tailor’s judgements. (L1, S23) However, we don't talk of correctness here, merely being 'too short' or 'too long' or whatever. “The words we call expressions of aesthetic judgement play a very complicated role, but a very definite role, in what we call a culture of a period.” (L1, S25) “What belongs to a language game is a whole culture.” (L1, S26) “In order to get clear about aesthetic words you have to describe ways of living.” (L1, S35)

Expressions

Aesthetics cannot be thought of as a science for saying what sort of things are beautiful, it is far too hard to find boundaries in these descriptions, would it also tell us “what sort of coffee tastes well.” (L2, S2)

The realms of 'utterance of delight' and that of Art, which are quite different but seem similar.

'Causes' seem to imply an addition of something else. Fitting or clicking (see below) doesn't seem to require this extra dimension. If we say that we 'know the cause' we are misleading if we consider this to be the explanation for our action. 'Why?' and 'because' are used when we are explaining our (aesthetic) discomfort, but hardly ever 'cause'. Knowing a cause is akin to tracing a mechanism. The explanation is a grammatical one.

“We have the idea of a super-mechanism when we talk of logical necessity.” (L3, S25) There is no 'super' there are only mechanisms of connection.

An aesthetic explanation (impression) is not a causal explanation. (L2, S 38) and it is “not one corroborated by experience or by statistics as to how people react.” (L3, S 11)

The 'fit' is something like a criterion, which indicates that e know the right thing has happened in the correct place/time (fit here called 'click'. L3, S2) The fitting or clicking is one satisfies one.

And finally,

“We are again and again using this simile of something clicking or fitting, when really there is nothing that clicks or fits anything.” (L3, S 5)

References:

Wittgenstein, Lectures and Conversations on Aesthetics, Psychology, and Religious Belief, ed. Cyril Barrett (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1966).

Some initial notes on the faculty of taste.

2011-02-18T13:00:00.003Z

This is my own take on taste. It is a preliminary sense that will see what relation it has with the eighteenth century conception. I feel that here is an ever present danger of reading into an older philosophical text something like a false perspective that is part wish fulfillment and part anachronism. Thus, I want to be able to describe the eighteenth century debate but without an attempt 'find' something that was never quite there. Indeed, for all my trepidation of advancing theories there was nothing like that concern present at that time. Rather, it was the growing desire to advance a particular theory of art or beauty or some such that would give us a complete picture of how to 'properly' describe art that was one of the primary causes for the discussion of taste dropping out of the philosophy of art. This focus upon trying to pin imagination down as a specifically identifiable mental faculty and one that is therefore capable of a rationalised reduction into its strict practice is one that I believe deviates from the original conception of taste. With the description of taste as found in the eighteenth century there is more than enough to develop a worthwhile and elucidating discussion upon of relationship with art, artists and their work. However, as these worries can only be fully explained in light of a discussion of the theoretical work of the philosophers writing around Hume's period, I will therefore leave further elaboration on this rejection of theory until their work is under more focus.

What then do I mean by taste? I want to describe something here that is to be seen as part of what it means to be human. That is, something that is a fundamental constituent part of how we interact with the World and with each other. It seems uncontroversial to say that when we experience certain things we take pleasure in the experience. Whether it be seeing a sunset, or hearing a piece of music, or eating food, or any of many other things. Also, that we distinguish between these objects of our experience calling them; beautiful, lovely, good, and so forth. As well as finding certain experiences to be displeasing and these also involving various distinctions. The account of taste is one of the many ways in which philosopher's have attempted to describe these experiences and their objects. It is one that attempts to give something like a description in what I take to be a non-theoretical manner. The immediacy of the judgement of taste is still one that can become more refined by a process of learning the rules. So, we have something like an immediate natural response to an occasion or experience in some way and it is in this sense an individual reaction. We might say that the physiological could play a part here as well as the application of reason, but that this aesthetic judgement that taste makes is also one strongly influenced by the 'surround', that is, by the cultural 'rules' for understanding it is also something shaped by the outside. A further point here would be to not readily emphasise any causal direction of taste, that is to say, to see taste as being primarily beginning with the individual or from the external World (internalist or externalist).

Rather, I would instead characterise the judgement of taste as only being possible due to a merging of perspectives. A judgement of taste cannot be a judgement of taste unless it is subjectivity individual in some way and thus it is your judgement, however, it must also be one that is informed by external cultural practice and the possibility of description to others. There need be no first, or initial starting point, this mainly because a starting point always seems to imply the existence of an end point. In a further distancing from the idea of a theoretical completeness, the judgement of taste is never one that ends. By this I mean that another description can always be given of the experience, it is not ever a final description. If my experience is not directly communicable to others then all I can do is offer more attempts at description, perhaps this will bring the other into an understanding of my insight. To use an architectural analogy, this is akin to what is called 'top down construction'* where they build up and down simultaneously. Building up before the foundations are complete, but obviously never going too far or else the structure, the understanding, would topple.

So, taste can be seen as immediate in a certain regard, but that it must also require this intervention of rules into the process. I do find myself being lead by my intuitions to say that the type of judgement made in taste and the type of knowledge required in making this aesthetic judgement is of another type that there must be something special about the case of art and therefore about taste. However, I think it might be possible to say that and yet still not fall into the trap as seeing it as something especially different, in that it cannot be talked of in the same way to other experiences and methods of description. For in talking about the results of science or in ordinary everyday discourse there could be said to be a similarity, but in these cases as compared to our discussions about art objects there seems to be a greater deal of transparency especially when discussing science. There is most often a very definite way of describing such and such a formula or the results of an experiment. The methodology of science is rarely up for debate in the same way that word-use in the descriptions of ordinary life or of art objects seems to necessitate. Of course, various example could be raised here to show both the actual opaque-ness of some scientific descriptions and the transparency of some art works, where the meaning is just there, however, I would consider as these views are most common (science is transparent and art is opaque) that, for now, it is worth simply accepting them at face value (although further investigation into this might be worthwhile).

I believe that apart from the apparently necessary ambiguity to the language of art that there are as many similarities with ordinary language and, indeed, scientific language than there are apparent distinctions. The potential danger of subjectivism in aesthetic judgements, “well, I can't be wrong because it's how I feel”, is denied by the fact that we can judge these judgements. Not all sentiments are created equal. There is a normative character to how we use our aesthetic language, but it is not exclusive, there is more in common with our language use and development and yet, for all that, I still want to say that there is something special about the character of the aesthetic debate.

* Specifically I'm thinking of the construction of the Shard currently taking place in London.

Why god-free morals?

2011-02-17T11:11:00.003Z

Depends on what you mean...

Why god-free morals and not God-free morals?

The main reason is because I'm not singling out the Abrahamic before any other 'type' of god.

How can your morals be god-free?

Well, in a certain sense I suppose they're not. The ethical codes of the various religions have seeped into most aspects of my homeland; f.e. the majority of British law has its basis in Christian ethics. So, in that sense my own personal morality is certainly god-influenced. However, there is another sense (that I've heard) that I'm certainly refuting. That the very basis for human morality resides in god, i.e. that we are moral means that there must have been a god for us to have moral thoughts at all. This strikes me as somewhat odd reasoning to say the least. So, in answer to the question, because I don’t believe it follows that to have moral inclinations implies a Creator of the ability to have these thoughts. Indeed, it’s not just a matter of belief; it’s a matter of reason.

Why are your morals god-free?

As might be expected from the above the main reason is I don’t believe in an interventionist diety, which is what the creation of an individual’s morality by god must amount to. I’m not totally god-free myself, it’s just my morals that I consider untouched, as they a wholly of this realm and not subordinate to some transcendental cause.

Isn't it just a pun on your name?

Yeah, pretty much, but I like the implications too.

Thomas Reid : On Liberty

2011-02-16T11:30:00.004Z

Thomas Reid was a Scottish ‘common sense’ philosopher and theologian from Aberdeenshire who was born the year before David Hume (1710) and was part of the Scottish enlightenment. In his moral philosophy (but perhaps less so elsewhere in his work) we find some distinct parallels with Immanuel Kant’s own work on freedom. However, Reid’s work is not as hampered with the complex structure that Kant had built for himself in the Critique of Pure Reason and that put sections of his work on freedom under sense entirely of his own making.

Thomas Reid, in his ‘Essays on the active powers of man’ (1788) argued that “if we have moral duties it must be possible for us to fulfil them… If the will were not free we would have no use for such terms as praise and blame”[1] etc. But he does not conclude from this that there is a phenomenal will (Willkür) that is subject to the necessity of nature and a noumenal will (Wille) that somehow affects the natural will from the intelligible world. It is only Kant’s conception of nature that leads him to argue this way.

Indeed, Reid’s ‘common sense’ philosophy does seem to yield similar conclusions with Kant without the complex architectonic. There is a shared thread of individualism in both men’s works, for example this section of Reid’s is much like Kant’s insistence that positive freedom through reason empowers man as a person, “the first cause in the chain of action is not an event but a person.”[2] This humanist aspect and with it the beginnings of Romanticism are surprisingly strong in Reid, “my free action may be the outcome of rational motives, but motives do not cause my action, I do.”[3] Although both men were strong believers (Reid held parish in Newmachar Aberdeenshire) this self-governing aspect of human autonomy present in their work could be seen as threat (and in Kant’s case was) and worse still as an affront to their faith.

What then is the ‘common sense’ in connexion with Reid’s philosophy? Well, and we may well find another connexion with Kant here, it is not the everyday term but rather a philosophical position that distinguishes Reid from Hume and others. It could be put thusly, “the first principles of morals like the first principles of science, are self-evident.”[4] However, as we might remember Kant did attack the Scottish common sense philosophers, so what might seem like a connexion here is only to be rebutted by Kant himself. Still, I believe that there is some similarity in that Kant states that the rational ‘fact’ of reason is immediately apparent to us, with how Reid justifies the acceptance for his doctrine of liberty. He argues thusly, and this may remind us of the refutation of consciousness’ possible illusory nature, “it [the ‘fact’ of the doctrine of liberty] is justified as soon as it exists and requires no reasoning on its behalf.”[5] Reid likens it to our belief in an external world; if we are to deny liberty then we must also throw our entire existence in radical scepticism. “The assumption that we act freely is one we have by our natural constitution, and it is implied by our moral conceptions.”[6]

How then does Reid define ‘Liberty’ and in what regard is it similar or different to Kant’s Freedom? “By the liberty of a moral agent, I understand a power over the determinations of his will.”[7] This account of liberty supposes that the agent has understanding and will. Liberty requires understanding in addition to will because will requires conception of the thing, and, therefore, an understanding adequate to supply such a conception.[8] Will in this conception, of Reid’s, does not seem to have the more complex and possibly more subtle description of Kant’s but its more everyday or ‘common sense’ use it hold no less merit.

“The liberty of a moral agent implies, not only a conception of what he wills, but some degree of practical judgement or reason.”[9] The difference between Kant and Reid here might be said that Reid does not go far enough, for Kant ‘some degree’ of reason would be a weak claim. Although we can well understand Reid’s point, that the willed result is not enough that there must also have been a motive from reason, for Kant pure practical reason is fundamental throughout the process it is not merely a ‘part.’ “The effect of moral liberty is; that it is in the power of the agent to do well or ill.”[10] Here Reid moves further from Kant, and in a surprising direction. Whereas Kant wanted to suggest that the force of the voice of the moral law should not, but could, be ignored here Reid describes it in a much more matter-of-fact manner, where the agent can choose to act well or ill, without it being depreciating to his character. Kant’s moral agent may act ill sure enough but if he does he negates his rights as a subject. Reid’s description of liberty then, seems to hold a less complex structure (for reasons given) but for all that it is no less penetrating in its description of freedom (liberty).

References:

Acton, H.B., Kant’s moral philosophy, (London: Macmillan, 1985)

Lehrer, K., Thomas Reid, (London: Routledge, 1991)

Reid, T., The works of Thomas Reid, 2 vols, ed. Hamilton, (Edinburgh: James Thin, 1895)

[1] Acton, p. 48.

[2] Lehrer, p. 23.

[3] Lehrer, p. 24.

[4] Lehrer, p. 221.

[5] Lehrer, p. 24.

[6] Lehrer, p. 270.

[7] Reid, p. 599.

[8] Lehrer, p. 256.

[9] Reid, p. 599.

[10] Reid, p. 600.

Quotes worth saving (4) Thin Red Line

2011-02-15T11:00:00.011Z

This might seem a little odd to quote from a dramatic production rather than a philosophical text, but I consider some of the more aphoristic statements that various characters make to be worth noting. Not sure whether I should credit screenwriter/director Terrence Malick of the excellent film version for the text or the original author James Jones, so I'll just give a hefty nod of acknowledgement to both. A film review forthcoming in a few days.

Japanese Soldier: Are you righteous? Kind? Does your confidence lie in this? Are you loved by all? Know that I was, too. Do you imagine your suffering will be any less because you loved goodness and truth?

Private Edward P. Train: Where is it that we were together? Who were you that I lived with? The brother. The friend. Darkness, light. Strife and love. Are they the workings of one mind? The features of the same face? Oh, my soul. Let me be in you now. Look out through my eyes. Look out at the things you made. All things shining.

Private Witt: This great evil. Where does it come from? How'd it steal into the world? What seed, what root did it grow from? Who's doin' this? Who's killin' us? Robbing us of life and light. Mockin' us with the sight of what we might've known. Does our ruin benefit the earth? Does it help the grass to grow, the sun to shine? Is this darkness in you, too? Have you passed thro this night?

First Sgt Edward Welsh: Everything a lie. Everything you hear, everything you see. So much to spew out. They just keep coming, one after another. You're in a box. A moving box. They want you dead, or in their lie... There's only one thing a man can do - find something that's his, and make an island for himself. If I never meet you in this life, let me feel the lack; a glance from your eyes, and my life will be yours.

Private Jack Bell: Why should I be afraid to die? I belong to you. If I go first, I'll wait for you there, on the other side of the dark waters. Be with me now.

Old Post #3 'Seeing Beauty'

2011-02-14T13:00:00.006Z

[I thought this was quite interesting just to see how much I changed my views since writing this and it appears that 'not a great deal' is the answer. If anything has changed then all I can do now is give a more nuanced answer. So, although this is somewhat clumsy (due to its brevity) there is a kernel that still seems correct. And it is Valentine's day afterall...]

The rose is traditionally seen as a symbol of beauty

[The rose as the symbol of beauty prompts the question...]

Is there something ‘in’ the rose which prompts our reaction?

I find this idea objectionable, that aesthetic qualities might be inherent in an object seems wrong. We come to understand something as beautiful (for example) in that we learn to attach a certain meaning (in this case beauty) to the thing. It is in how we first apprehend the thing (that is, the context and how others describe it) and in how we ourselves relate to the thing (an object, situation, or other condition).

Mathematicians describe complex equations as beautiful, or simply the operation of mathematics itself. For many the idea that maths can be seen as beautiful can be as bewildering as those who find cars things of beauty. What is it for the car-fancier or the mathematician to finds beauty in something so mundane to others? The beauty resides ‘in’ their interaction, the activity becomes more meaningful and they appreciate the better functions of the operation now with an aesthetic judgement. The mathematician finds the unity that mathematics provides beautiful in that it simplifies, complicates and explains life. The mechanic finds the smooth fast engine and sleek body of a design of car beautiful in a similar manner, i.e. it is part of an understandable practice (whether it be mathematics or automotive design).

The rose is the most recognisable symbol of beauty (originating from the Greeks most likely) in that it is culturally imbued with this meaning. Cross cultural identification of beauty can be difficult; the first step tends to be a mythologizing exoticism before we can identify with the art of another culture (even with their idea of beauty) as being understandable as a beautiful object, e.g. consider how African art was first introduced by Victorian ‘explorers’ or how the ‘Far East’ has been portrayed.

We only ‘see’ beauty (or hear it, or…) we do not find it already there. Does this mean then that I am saying that beauty is solely in the eye of the beholder? Well, mostly, but remember that this is a human activity and it is from our cultures that we get the idea of beauty from.

Sep 08

History of Aesthetics (1) L'abbé J-B. Du Bos

2011-02-11T13:00:00.001Z

Jean-Baptiste Dubos’s main work ‘Les Réflexions critiques sur la poésie et sur la peinture’ published in 1719 and widely read throughout that period. Indeed, it was to become influential on the philosophy of David Hume as can be seen in his earlier essays and especially in the seminal ‘On the Standard of Taste’. Dubos was a colleague of Pierre Bayle, with whom he shared a similar sceptical philosophical outlook, but it is mainly Dubos contribution to the debate between the ancients and the moderns that was of interest to Hume.

At this time there was an avocation for a total rejection of the methods of the ancients, which Bacon and Descartes most strongly cites as being unfounded, that is, based on their own reason rather than by observation for their claims and that their failure to amass any significant data left their general laws as simply a matter of speculation. However, much of Hume’s motivations led him to pull in opposite directions. In some regards he was aligned with the ancients and in others, a reluctance to appeal merely to authority, this led him to advance the case for the moderns. In Dubos this moderation was to be found also.

One of the greatest of which is man’s need to remain occupied, that is, to dismiss the occurrence of ennui - the gripping boredom that renders all activities worthless. However, Dubos is reluctant to describe art as a creation whose (sole) outcome is the removal of ennui; instead he considers that most useful discoveries, whether they are of science or art, might have come about by pure chance. In thus dissuading us from the idea of a view of art as potentially an activity with a sole practical outcome, it seems that Dubos has removed the ‘natural’ origin certain human activities. Indeed, when he then goes on to describe the pleasures that art raises as being artificial (passions artificielles) it occurs that this description might be seen as motivated by his original description of discoveries being made possibly without a constructive hypothesis, by pure chance, so that their apparent weakness is founded is their separation from (pure?) reason. At any rate, Dubos wants to describe the passions raised by art as being weaker in three specific areas; that they are less serious than real passions, that they have no effect upon reason, and are of a much shorter duration. However, despite this they still can have the effect of satisfying our natural need for removing the onset of ennui.

“For Dubos, natural pleasures are always the satisfaction of needs, and the greater the need, the greater the pleasure in its satisfaction.” (Jones, p.95)

Dubos also makes a distinction in our approach and reception to poetry and painting (as might be expected from the work’s title). Works of poetry are mostly only studied in any critical depth by fellow practitioners and academics, all others read poetry merely as an entertainment, that is, for amusement. Therefore, we do not read poetry to receive a ‘lesson’ and if any lessons might be drawn from a poem it is not for the sake of such lessons that poetic works are read. Dubos considers words as ‘arbitrary signs’ which arouse ideas that our imagination can order into affecting pictures. However, in contrast, painting gives us these objects as representations of natural signs in a quicker and more immediate fashion. The mechanical system of creating images that is present in poetry renders poems as more artificial than the more affecting painting.

Reference:

Jones, Peter (1982). Hume's Sentiments: Their Ciceronian and French Context, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press

Context Dependency: A Conversation

2011-02-09T13:00:00.006Z

This is the transcript of a conversation between myself and Ent about the topic on Context.

[Ent]
Isn't philosophy context based, no matter how hard people try to bypass the human in search of human questions?

[GFM]
1) Depends what you mean by context, conceptual analysis might not be timeless or ahistorical, but it isn't context dependant in the same way some practices are. 2) I suppose you'd have to read some philosophy to find out. I've not noticed an attempt to bypass the human, we're not physicists after all.

[Ent]
I would say conceptual analysis was context dependent - but then you are right - I have read very little philosophy. Since I would see being human stemming from the context of this conscious node of relations with individual human biology, the surrounding universe and human cultures then I would see all questioning dependent on context, including physicists. If you say something is not context dependent you are in my perspective bypassing the human...

[GFM]
Your view of context is so wide-spread that in being everything it might as well be nothing. It says nothing about the World, only that we live together in a shared World.

[Ent]
We can't experience the world without experiencing it, so to say anything about the world we draw on these relationships and the ‘us’ that they have created.

[GFM]
I can't really tell what you're trying to say about context. It doesn't fit with any use of context at all. The historical context (that archaeologists and historians are interested in) isn't what you describe.

[Ent]
You cannot disassociate thought from the world it arrived in.

[GFM]
Yes, and? I can't see how this changes anything. We are a Worlded being and so start from being this type of being, one within a World. Right, that's where we all start. So? I'm missing something.

[Ent]
Historical context is part of that - the relationships with people and space and sensation

[GFM]
What do you mean by, "relationships with people and space and sensation"?

[Ent]
It forms the person, the person forms the thought, and the thoughts do not exist without the person.

[GFM]
And?

[Ent]
So, context (historical context) is important to fully exploring a thought.

[GFM]
This seems to imply that to fully understand (explore) a thought we should know everything about everything. So, knowledge is fundamentally unknowable as we cannot ever complete the ‘entire’ environment.

[Ent]
Well yes, but that isn't my main point... we can make a good guess with the tiny amount we know. When looking at a thought and looking for its truth without also looking at the person(s) who presented the thoughts and yourself and your own context you are getting part of a picture - you might wish to see more.
How we understand varies between people and massively between culture - our reference points and emotional understanding.

[GFM]
If absolute knowledge isn't the point (it is for some physicists) how can you talk of truth? Indeed, are you positing a type of absolute subjectivity then? My truth is mine because I see it this way in this context and therefore can't be wrong; you have your own context too.

[Ent]
Yes, but I don't think that truth is one thing - I am fairly convinced it is not.

[GFM]
But truth must equal context on your view. Therefore there must be a conceivable, but not necessarily existent, 'God's context'

[Ent]
No - part of my way of seeing my truth - and I think probably part of our shared cultural understanding of truth

[GFM]
Also, how do we guess?

[Ent]
We decide how

[GFM]
Decide based on what?
Internal reasoning?

[Ent]
An internal reasoning created and adapted by the gestalt hegemony of other's ideas and our own personal history of actions and reactions

[GFM]
So, truth really means how it fits in with standard usage in a culture then?

[Ent]
Quite probably. That's not a very easy way to see the world though, hence why most of the time I can't and many others don't... I may of course be wrong! (Otherwise my theories fall down!)
Any way - historical context - and your own context - worth bearing in mind...

[GFM]
How does the context of Socrates then affect me, if what actually affects me is the prevailing culture?
Because the prevailing culture already includes Socrates in it someway.

[Ent]
He is part of that prevailing culture - a historical myth

[GFM]
So a story about Socrates’ life changes what? Why choose him and not a medieval peasant?

[Ent]
Because it is his thoughts that I thought you might be dwelling upon - I spend a little while dwelling on the existence and stories of medieval peasants!

[GFM]
So a story about how someone lived their lives helps to describe their thoughts?

[Ent]
The whole bundle of how his thoughts reached you might be interesting as well. It might explain why they thought some things and not others you come up with, or how your interpretation across the seas of time and language and climate etc may be uniquely your own and not anything to do with what Socrates was trying to talk about

[GFM]
But it's not HOW he has his thoughts, but WHAT his thought were about that is important.

[Ent]
How can you understand how or what without knowing why and where?

[GFM]
The how is already involved in investigating the what. It plays no further part.
Because, on your view, we are already embedded in the world and can thus make a 'guess' which is enough (apparently)

[Ends...]

Part Two, coming soon?

Context Dependency: Introduction

2011-02-08T11:00:00.007Z

What is context?

Three main choices:

Worldly: That we are human beings embedded in a World with interconnected human cultural structures.

Historical: The set of facts of circumstances surrounding a certain historical event that might further enliven the description of said event. (Note: there is a radical distinction between facts and circumstances, but more on the Historian's failure to distinguish these later.)

Linguistic: How a particular word (language unit to linguists) is used within a larger discourse.

There are other uses of context, i.e. in Biology and Computing (picture below from a computing project, which seems oddly accurate and relevant) to name just two, but these three are for now our main considerations.

Problems with the Worldly.

It is certain that most things happen as the result of earlier actions and that if we were to see the context in which they happened then we would gain a greater understanding of how things occur. Seems obvious, but it has several problems.

Just how inter-related is it all? This doesn't seem to matter at close quarters but comes to be increasingly more pressing as our 'distances' increase. These distances are linguistic and historical, but could be thought to be surmountable in that there must a similar relation at some point to allow a connection.

Do these connections maintain sufficiently over time and cultural shift? Because if they do not always maintain then the prospect of making a false connection is introduced. Of course they cannot maintain indefinitely, this would be nonsense (as it would imply absolute determinacy and knowledge) but we might not need to worry about falsity. If we don't mind abandoning Truth that is. Wasn't the primary impetuous that there was a Worldly truth?

If our perspectival view is one from a being that is embedded in the World does this mean we are embedded in ALL Worlds? I don't mean this astronomically, but in terms of possibility. All possible Worlds. Certainly not we might say, but if we are happy to abandon absolute certainty what level of certainty are we left with?

Problems with the Linguistic.

Well, we have linguistic certainty. I can communicate with you; I am doing so right now. This can sometimes go wrong (crossed words, mistranslation, etc) but that it doesn't always go wrong and that we can discuss these differences (even without a proper conclusion) surely shows that we have linguistic certainty at any rate.

Language then must be a structure whose construction we can examine and adjust to make it completely, rather than partially, successful. This we only carry if we allow that language is indeed something a structure, like a building or a mathematical formula, it can be certainly made to appear to be so.

We are able to deconstruct the use of certain words at certain times and in certain cultures. So, while our use of language might be cultural/historical that nonetheless it might still be said to have some fundamental structure we might investigate. As we are all interconnected and potentially capable of communicating in some manner (as we are Worlded beings) then it must follow that there must be some similar linguistic root.

Aren't we capable of rebuilding the Tower of Babel in a sense? We might be able to build the 'Tower' in that we could all learn the same language, but it doesn't follow that we must have started from the basis of the 'Tower'. Although surely it does if we believe the formulation of having a necessary pre-existent context of use for language, indeed we might all the learn the same language but this does not need to imply a meta-language, just the capability to learn language at all and this might be explained by our being creatures with a basis in community. This might be the only contextual certainty we have with the linguistic.

Problems with the Historical.

This is a much larger area (problem) and will be further detailed in its own post. There is also coming (tomorrow) a conversation between myself and the Ent about the need to use context in philosophical understanding.

Old Post #2 - Aesthetic Appreciation of Murder

2011-02-07T13:00:00.006Z

[Originally written for and published on the old version of this blog]

In art we are able to appreciate the presentation of matters that we would otherwise find horrific or morally objectionable if they were encountered in real-life. We might say of the brutal death of a character in a film, play, or novel that it was particularly realistic or moving. What is it that finds enjoyment in these situations, are either of these descriptions why we come to call the depiction of murder or torture beautiful?

Mercutio's Death in Zeffirelli's Film

It doesn't appear that realism is a quality that we can have a substantial claim to, at least not for the basis of appreciation of violent fiction. If we take the death of Mercutio as a famous death in fiction as our example, it is not the realism of the depiction that we take pleasure in. If the actor is terrible we might find our enjoyment of the play hindered, but what right do we have to make this claim? From a large audience perhaps it is imaginable that several people might have seen someone stabbed and die in a similar way to Mercutio, but we do not need first-hand experience of any given event to appreciate it aesthetically. Indeed, too much realism may have a similar effect that too little has. Realism here does not have to directly correspond with nature, rather it is whether it is imaginable as the sort of thing that would happen in the narrative we are observing. So, while realism, of a sort, is partially what we look for, it is only ever as a secondary quality (one that, in its absence or abundance, becomes more apparent).

If realism is not the cause of our appreciation then perhaps it is emotional effect of the event. However, the emotional reaction we take from the fictional depiction of murder is distinct to that of a murder in real-life. We don't call the police to arrest Tybalt for example. Is this then the pleasure we experience, that we are able to vicariously experience another's suffering without moral comeback? That the kind of 'cultivated' emotion we experience with the viewing of art, in contradistinction to real-life events and situations, is an opportunity to purify ourselves of these emotions of 'fear and pity' what Aristotle calls Katharsis. Some might argue for this, but I believe this to be too simplistic a theory, we are seeking for the cause of artistic pleasure not some kind of juvenile emotional thrill (whether it is purified or not). Although this too can accompany the experience of viewing art, indeed, I do not wish to deny the emotional pull of witnessing great artistic depictions of death, but that greater still is the 'need' to experience art.

Judith Beheading Holofernes by Caravaggio

We call these artistic depictions of death beautiful, but unless we were a sociopath we would never say the same about the death of a proximally close person to us. (I feel that I have to add the proviso of proximal closeness, as the constant media coverage of the deaths of soldiers, celebrities, and various victims have distanced our engagement with these otherwise real events.) Unless confused by context one can grasp these images of death as a purely artistic creation, but one that must 'fit' within our already accepted structures. However, art is also about pushing both creative boundaries and our boundaries as an audience, that is, the very social norms they must operate within to be intelligible or acceptable. Can an image of a gruesome murder (e.g. Judith Beheading Holofernes) be considered art? We consider Caravaggio's painting as art precisely because it is not only emotive, realistic or technical. All these form part of the construction of a contextual frame which sets the work in the scale of value we might impose on it, but greatest of these is aesthetic experience, for if this is lacking then the work is merely a depiction without merit. A work that depicts a subject as strong as murder without artistic merit is one that immediately falls into a form of moral bankruptcy, in that it sensationalises a subject for cheap returns. Whether it is its 'realism', 'technicality', or 'shock'.

Just to be clear, what I've been discussing is the artistic depiction of what would otherwise be considered a 'morally' shocking event. The further elaboration of a real-life event being treated as art is not worth considering as it falls into the realm of the sociopath again (although we can imagine a situation were the audience believes the actor's performance unaware that he has suffered a fatal heart attack, for example, but this is only due to a context failure). My claim then is that we are not 'duped' by art, willingly or not, into reacting in some quasi-psychological manner (as has been suggested by some philosophers) but that our reactions are very 'real'. However, it is the status of the 'realness' that is being questioned, I consider it a real experience of art, but it is not a real experience of murder.

Quotes worth saving (3) Wittgenstein on Taste

2011-02-04T13:00:00.002Z

“I am not able to judge whether I have only taste, or originality as well. The former I can see distinctly, but not the latter, or only quite indistinctly. And perhaps it has to be like that, & you see only what you have, not what you are. Someone who does not lie is original enough. For, after all, the originality that would be worth wishing for cannot be a sort of trick, or an idiosyncrasy, however marked.”

Taste is refinement of sensibility; but sensibility does not act, it merely assimilates.”

“The faculty of ‘taste’ cannot create a new organism, only rectify one that is already there. Taste loosens screws & tightens screws, it doesn’t create a new original work.”

(Hence, I think, a great creator needs no taste: the child is born into the World well formed.)

“Taste can delight, but not seize.”

All quotations from ‘Culture and Value’, Wittgenstein, p.68e

Reply to the argument #1 - "Timeless experience is not experience"

2011-02-03T13:00:00.007Z

[Before reading this, please read yesterday's piece here]

Although it is argued that the timeless experience is not "merely a gesture", but that it is indeed a "fuller experience", it is the intent of this response to show that this is all it is and could ever be under the framework of description offered.

Rather than offer one way in which we might define art (as historical) instead we are given another definition as the one correct manner (or, at any rate, the ‘best’). Indeed, it becomes obvious by the end that this definition of experience is nothing so solid, but is rather merely a vague gesture towards what an artistic experience might comprise of. Hence, the acknowledgement of our own ‘historicity’ and the odd image of the historical and the timeless ‘mixing’ in some part, greater the amount of timelessness the greater the art work, or the experience possible from the art work. However, here is clear point, where is the timelessness to found? By this description it would seem that it is a ‘thing’ that a good artist can implant within a work and thus stimulating a greater or fuller aesthetic experience in us the viewer. This seems misplaced although it is an understandable mistake if we follow the standard trail of aesthetic reasoning as it has developed from the enlightenment until present day. This trail and the misplaced route I place at the door of ‘aesthetic concepts’ as defined most elegantly by Frank Sibley in his same titled work of 1959.

Let me just define where I see the problem before I go on to attack it. Firstly, the placing of the aesthetic concept ‘timelessness’ in the object is problematic itself even before we consider how it is placed there by the supposedly historical being of the artist. Next, having placed this experience as reliant on an external quality of an object, the question of interpretation of art objects is merely dismissed as being an unknowable. Thus, what we are left with is merely a gesture towards some sort of ‘mystical’ experience. An experience that we might conclude is certainly capable of being totally subjective, but not problematic for all this. “Well, it’s MY experience of the object that is of importance and anyway if it’s a timeless experience then can’t we all be said to be experiencing the same sort of thing, in a round-about manner?” Well, perhaps, but then perhaps this timely experience of the timeless aspect of art is rather a sort of mental confusion. The sort of paradox suggested by Zen masters to lead the thinker towards enlightenment, however, this particular koan is an empty gesture, although if the intended outcome what seeing ‘this’ then its complexity was rich indeed. And this then is my main worry, that what we really want when we experience art is some sort of mysterious feeling, as if the point of art is not to feel connected with something but to feel bewildered by the inability to say anything at all. That it is this that is the connecting feeling we must be aiming for. We are all one in the World means we are all so absolutely confused that we accept this all together.

If this were the point of art then surely the majority of films, music, paintings, sculptures, and so forth would instead be a chaotic mass of swirling sound, colour, form, and motion with the strict intent of inducing this kind of pseudo-mystical rapture. I say pseudo here because this sort of conception is exactly that, a sort of ‘quick fix’ mysticism for the pretentious. The mystic, if they are to be a mystic in my understanding, does not engage in something so quick and easy, but neither are they engaged in something solvable by a great deal of hard thinking. Ultimately they might seek refuge in the realm of the beyond (as I would see it) but I would suggest this communion comes about from an acceptance within one’s whole life and is not a simply transportable experience available to all (or, rather, available to all without much effort).

Although an effort is made to suggest that art should be without the evidence of history, it is admitted that this cannot be so, for then it would be outside of human agency, instead we are offered the image of an art work created with intent of it being communicable to all humanity ever. A bold claim. Although the basis of this perspective was to avoid the levelling down of the institutional art experience (that we must know the historical context to understand or to even experience the art object) the outcome has ended the same. An art experience must be an experience that communicates some vague abstract of human experience for it to be an art experience that is worth having, but why must it be an experience of a certain type?

We cannot get round the fact that we are historical beings and that the things we create (be they art objects or not) necessarily ‘live’ with us in time as well as being solid formations of a certain cultural time. It is also true to describe the process of art as an attempt at expressing something fundamental about human experience, that it is an articulation of that experience of the artist. Well, why not just acknowledge these facts? What is challenging about art is not to be found in how we define art, but in how (and WHY) we approach it at all.

Grounds for argument #1 - "Art is best experienced viewed timelessly"

2011-02-02T13:00:00.011Z

[This piece and its reply are steps along the way to building a larger conception]

Pablo Picasso’s Guernica (above) is a painting that can be taken as being in response to a particular event; the Nazi bombing of said town during the Spanish civil war, and indeed in a solely historically defined, or timely fashion, this can be said to be completely correct, but in ‘reducing’ the painting to only having this sort of historical attachment removes what is its deeper more expansive force. In a sense, I want to say and this is my addition, that a true work of art and therefore a fuller aesthetic experience is one that is timeless (to use a Wittgensteinian phrase[1]). That is, that we can appreciate Guernica not because we can relate in some way its historical value but that it speaks to us (that is, it shows us) about things that are of primordial importance to the experience of human existence. The images of horror, pain and suffering without a direct cause show us something of the conflict we all face; against faceless power, against convention, and against our own historicality, that we cannot escape: The war of existence. Thus, we have here a distinction between art (timeless) and propaganda (only timely). The key point here is that propaganda is only timely, that it communicates nothing but present circumstances in an attempt to influence public opinion. Therefore, the more an artwork has of the element of timelessness the closer it is to being true art. However, I do not believe that such a work would ever be completely possible as we are always already within our own historicity. That is, there is always something attaching us to our present circumstances and that this ‘expression’ of the timeless cannot be a true expression in any categorical sense, but that it is attempting to show us something beyond.

This brings forth another point, a distinctly Wittgensteinian one, that of saying and showing (this is how Richard Shusterman in his Pragmatist Aesthetics describes it – in so many words – without referencing the obvious influence). As Shusterman says quoting Dewey, “the particular quality which unifies and thus constitutes aesthetic experience, can only be felt… and cannot be described nor even specifically pointed at.”[2] Any attempt to describe or define the aesthetic experience in words, which goes beyond just a pointing out, is an impossible task. As the aesthetic experience is an ‘immediate experience’ then this is inadequate as grounds for a justificational standard for critical judgement. That is, defining art as aesthetic experience, is defining something comparatively clear (art) by something obscure and indefinable. Thus, there is no measurement here, but if it cannot be properly described how can we define art in this manner? Shusterman answers, “a good definition of art should direct us toward more and better aesthetic experience” and “redefining art as experience liberates it from the narrowing stranglehold of the institutionally cloistered practice of fine art.”[3]

However, what of a foreign visitor viewing Picasso’s Guernica who does not have any of the Western cultural conventions of art that we all do, and for that matter what of our viewing of an ancient art from a ‘lost’ civilisation how can either make any sense without an understanding of the history? Well, this may be true and I would agree with this but then to make this all that the artwork is[4] seems to miss the point of the artwork. We do not need to know the artist’s intent (indeed, there is a strong case that we cannot ever know the artists intent) to interpret an artwork, but to ‘correctly’ interpret it? That is another matter[5].

The question should still remain, how exactly am I using timelessly as a concept? For it seems to suggest some sort of transcendent experience, that is to say, one outside of human agency. However what I am suggesting is nothing like this, perhaps it would be best to say that I am using this notion of timelessness more in a poetically metaphorical manner than philosophically conceptual, I am not suggesting something transcend of human experience. Rather, something that is timeless as ‘we’ are timeless, that is we as Humanity. Thus, the primordial experience shared by all, the experience of experience, but I do not mean this in such a vague and nebulous fashion. At least not in the context of defining art, although to call this notion a concept would be suggest that I have (like many have mistakenly done before) taken an abstract and made it a ‘thing’. Of course, I have no such intention, but I have something like this in mind, “one who lives not in time but in the present is happy” and “in order to live happily I must be in agreement with the world. And that is what ‘being happy’ means.”[6] Therefore, art when viewed timelessly (rather when it exhibits this timelessness and is thus capable of being viewed timelessly) is showing us our fundamental experiential natures that is our constant running up against the ‘limits of the world.’ This could be expressed thusly, “feeling the world as a limited whole – it is this that is mystical.”[7] Moreover, we might substitute mystical for an aesthetic experience quite successfully here.

[1] Perhaps a moment to explain this mention of Wittgenstein here, in using ‘timeless’ I am referring to section 6.4311 namely, “If by eternity is understood not endless temporal duration but timelessness, then he lives eternally who lives in the present.”

[2] Shusterman, Pragmatist Aesthetics, p. 57

[3] Ibid.

[4] The shadowy figure I refer to here is Hegel, but this may be an unfair characterisation.

[5] That is, what is a correct interpretation?

[6] Wittgenstein, Notebooks, pp. 74, 78.

[7] Wittgenstein, Tractatus, 6.45. [my emphasis]

Old Post #1 - Is Finnegans Wake a novel?

2011-02-01T13:24:00.000Z

This is an old favourite of mine. It's just a simple description of anti-essentialism in aesthetics as described by Morris Weitz. Written sometime in 2008 I think.

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When we begin with aesthetics the first question any theoretically-minded person will be tempted to ask is the ‘What is art?’ question. This sort of question one imagines will lead us to identify the ‘necessary and sufficient’ conditions of art. However, art is not such a factual discipline; indeed, beyond mathematical formulae (the foundation of those who look at art in this manner) it is impossible to see quite where is the factual problem that is solvable in this way (we might think of cognitive psychologists here in the same regard). This is what the philosopher of aesthetics Morris Weitz meant when he said that there is no essential answer, that philosophers are merely approaching art incorrectly, asking the question ‘what is art?’ is itself a flawed and hopeless task, but yet still this temptation remains (it is not only in art that the temptation is found and nor here alone does it cause us problems and confusions). Weitz (influenced by Wittgenstein) wants us rather to consider in what context do we understand and use the concept of art; that is, the question should be rather not ‘what is art?’ but ‘how do we understand and use the term art in language?’

If we are to look at the profusion of art theories that came about during the early 20^th century (especially mid-World Wars) that was matched by the amount of art movements, all of them attempted to give an answer to the essence of art. For it was felt that without this answer that we could never get close enough to even understanding what art was, for ‘how can we talk about it, as good or bad, if we cannot give a definite answer of what it comprises of?’ Formalist, Emotionalist, Intuitionist, Organicist, and Voluntarist theories of art all came to give a description of this hidden essence, but although there are still some who hold with a particular theory, for the most part it has been agreed that none of these theories gave a final answer to the question.

Weitz’s claim then is that art cannot be subject to this sort of essential factual definition, as it is an ‘open concept’. Briefly, Weitz believes that art is akin to what Wittgenstein calls ‘family resemblances’, that while we might find some similarities between some examples of art (or games, or what have you) that there is no one unifying ‘something’ that is common to all, but rather similar things or ‘family resemblances’. So, questions like ‘is Finnegans Wake a novel?’ are not factual questions (answerable with a yes or no), but are decision problems. One that is dependent upon a set of conditions, which are always variable (within certain parameters). A concept is an open concept if it is always amenable to change, the concept of art is an adventurous one, as there are always new ideas and movements coming forth (indeed, this might be taken as a defining characteristic, but art is not one thing). Once an art movement becomes ‘closed’ this is normally the death knell of the movement, it is named and constrained, doing this with a wider field, i.e. art, literature, theatre, would be a ridiculous step to deny art its creativity.

What is at stake here is the realisation that there are no necessary and sufficient properties available by a factual analysis but an evaluative decision of not intrinsic but extrinsic or relational properties. However, this takes us from Weitz’s conception and towards that of later philosophers of aesthetics like Stephen Davies, Arthur Danto and George Dickie. To quote Danto from The Artworld, “To see something as art requires… knowledge of the history of art…” This new angle of aesthetics is concerned with the ‘institutional’ nature of art, namely its historical and social properties.

To conclude this short piece on Weitz’s anti-essentialism, I would summarise his main position as against the incorrect use of aesthetic theories. That is, when they are taken literally, i.e. as an attempt to answer conceptual questions (like ‘what is art?’ or ‘is Finnegans Wake a novel?’) in a factual manner, they lead to errors of circularity or, worse, the confining of creativity. Aesthetic theories are not useless however; they are arguments (or recommendations) for looking at a certain criteria of art in a certain way.

New title & apologies

2011-02-01T13:22:00.000Z

So, I've changed the title but not yet the web address, which I may well do.
Reason for title:
1. articulation - the shape or manner in which things come together and a connection is made
2. articulation is also a coherent expressive utterance (mostly, but not always, verbal)
3. It's a bad pun :-)

Hopefully this is a return to regular writing also.

My reasons for absence in the form of an essay entitled, 'on the perils of writer's block'.

2011-01-20T13:19:00.000Z

Accidental Christmas break

2010-12-21T14:17:00.001Z

Whoops!

One day turned into one week and then some...
I missed a day's post and then never really got into the swing again. In my defense I've been busy with end of term appointments, being ill, and then travelling through the snow back to my Mum's for the Christmas holidays.

I will resume regular blogging in the new year and will attempt to keep it as regular as I started with. Also, I might move my blog to a more appropriate web address, as this will now be mostly about art and philosophy of art with litte of myself included, it seems unreasonable to keep the 'god-free morals' domain. Instead I might switch to a more arty sounding title, which might attract more readers and not confuse any who do find their way here expecting something else.

Have a great holiday yourself and see you in the new year.

Some notes on the nature of Art... (5) Art and Education

2010-12-07T13:00:00.001Z

The problem such as it is comes with attempting to give them what they want. And who are they 'they' in this case? Funding bodies, MPs, Vice-Chancellors, and all the others who look to higher education that is not strictly vocational as a luxury.

If the current generation have been raised to look at university education and ask 'what's it worth?' or rather 'what job will it get me?' then the answer to the problem lies not in giving them a quantitative answer (“Philosophy is, in commercial jargon, the ultimate ‘transferable work skill”) but a qualitative one.

It (the arts and the humanities) has a value intrinsically, but this gesture of value can never be enough. Instead there should be a detailing of the value of the arts in a way were value itself is shown to be undermined in the accountant's sense of value.

Some notes on the nature of Art... (4) Phylogeny & Aesthetic judgement

2010-12-06T13:00:00.002Z

There are problems with evolutionary accounts for beauty or aesthetics, mainly it is an attempt to define in reverse, a backwards reading of the situation. The sense of beauty is reduced to a peahen's choosing a mate as being one and the same. There is no need to attribute a peahen with a human aesthetic choice.

Does the peahen find the peacock's feathers beautiful? Why would she think this? Is the beautiful then a thought rather than simply an aesthetic experience (whatever that might mean). Isn't the thought the experience?

Are we not really hungry unless we think 'I am hungry?' - no.

I am hungry, the sensation, the thought holds no further meaning, the experience does not stand for the thought. The experience is enough.

Does art do this, or is it something else? That is to say, something unique.

(This should induce cold shivers)

There is nothing 'special' in this unique sense, art cannot be a different case of family resemblances (Wittgenstein) anymore than truth or any other philosophically dense concept can, but art is not a philosophical case, although asthetics makes it one.

What then is it fundamentally? - Why ask for fundamentals here, this only takes us backwards.

What is fundamental about aesthetics is that it is not grounds for anything, i.e. it isn't truly fundamental at all. It is a simple activity rooted in our natural seeing or elsewise in our natural use of resemblance.

Saturday Essay (1) Knowledge of Illness

2010-12-04T13:00:00.011Z

Initial notes: (1) Herman is no longer in pain and fully recovered, (2) This was written in August of this year, (3) I'm going to try and write at least 1000 words for every Saturday on different topics (will follow any useful suggestions)

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My dog, Herman, is today very ill.

This has made me think about how we treat those with illness and how the perspective on mortality cannot ever be a permanent one. Firstly, whether our patient is human or not, it is the inability to communicate what is troubling them that causes more pain to the carer of the ill. The ill suffer anyway, although perhaps knowing that there are others to care for you helps eleviate some of this other angst, which in turn might make their suffering less. Can a dog understand or know that they are cared for?

Certainly, we are given this impression from their behaviour and what else can we go on?

Well, returning to the original example, this can be helped by communication. However, neither a dog nor a baby can exactly tell us what is wrong. They can only communicate their pain and discomfort. This leaves us the carer feeling the pain of powerlessness, our inability to help a person or creature we care for induces a kind of guilt.

However, if we are unable to eleviate the other's pain or help in some way or else disuade ourselves of this apparent guilt then we can ourselves become sick. This sickness is not physical in the same way a broken bone is, but it is a stage into the kind of self-pity that comes with depression. This can described as a chemical inbalance in the brain. What are we to make of this? That being unable to help the sick (due to communication) makes us more unable to help.

Is the correct response to ignore the others pain as being lesser pain in that it cannot be targetted by their communication? Certainly not, I would hope.

This 'failure of communication', which is itself an exception, could be taken as a wider example of communication or such like. However, this temptation to level or generalise all things into a pre-exisiting schema must be avoided. When must investigate these occurances in life with a clear mind, albeit an entirely human one; one always effected by context, emotion and other influences, but in doing this or rather accepting this need not collapse our investigation into baseless claims or nonsense.

The investigations of philosophy are of the everyday in a way that seeks to make sense, not in order to widen the mystery. This is not simply problem solving, problems are easily solved if one wishes to remove them, rather, it is ongoing clarity that we seek. Thus, we might equate this to the lack of permanent closure or understanding of illness, or deathliness, in that neither can we always be suffering nor can we find a final answer. There is no cure for death as there is no cure for life, both are to be understood in their connection, that is to say, life would cease to be life if death were not in some sense part of it. This understanding itself can only be accepted temporarily. Much as Heidegger says for all his talk of 'authenticity' it is not some drive for perfect understanding of Being beyond the lesser They, indeed, we can only come to these conclusion through these generalised public views. One which attempts to see life instead as endless possibilities (eternal youth) or countless other fantasies. No one is above this, is what Heidegger says, but this doesn't mean we should blindly give in. Authenticity is a good pursuit not that he would wish to use such ethical terminology. However, it is only good in that it does not exclude all else. A good man must live in the World with others afterall.

What does it exclude? That which is evil. Ignorance at any cost (but also accepting that not all ignorance is evil), blind assumption, infliction of suffering, failing to act, attempting to summarise a master concept at all.

Herman's pain, like that of a baby is not merely a thought experiment, it is an actual occuring event. We can see it.

It is, however, a pain that will cease. My pain at my uselessness will also cease, or at least diminish, once the Vet diagnoses the condition for then I'll know what I can do to help (if anything). At least, my place will be made clear and perhap this is the fear – being uncertain – being without knowledge – not knowing one's place etc.

Can knowledge only be proved via (spoken) communication? Isn't being in pain communicating something? That they are in pain. How can they (dog or baby) know this? Why must they know it in the same way we do? And in what sense do we know it ourselves? In that we can communicate the location and/or type of pain, but this comes in reflective hindsight. It is a narrative story we tell to others.

Do I tell myself “I'm in pain” and must I do this to know I'm in pain? The yell of pain is not an acknowledgement but an outburst, an outburst built first on our social communicative approach, not that the occurance of this pain is the pain and nor does it stand in for it.

Why must we talk of knowledge here? Surely this is not the same knowledge of; I know what this sign means, I know what the capitol of Scotland is, I know were I was last night, I know what her name is, I know what the artist was saying in that painting, I know what the ending of this film will be, I know she loves me, I know how to finish this sentence. Knowledge means different things in different contexts.

If we say that there are types of knowledge then we are immediately in trouble, because all these 'types' (scientific for example) are then capable of further division until the point where we have multitudes of cross-overs and eventually something that is unclassifiable by the current system. So much so that it warrants (or seems to warrant) a further classification. This process continues on and can seem therefore to be accomplishing something. Scientists once spoke of the recording of everything and one would hope that this talk is less prevalant nowadays (although apparently not). However, this classification as a means to represent knowledge seems to fail in that its conclusion seems to be the opposite from that which was originally intended. Rather than us having true knowledge or firm foundations for knowledge, we have the reverse, knowledge as an ongoing process. One without a conclusion (although some still aim for one) but we are still capable of apprehending, thus we seem to be able to know in a manner that defies traditional thought. Our knowledge then is a make-shift construction, one that we are constantly altering or upgrading. So, instead of truth we are left with a kind of social relatvism it seems. That true is true in context or true in its practical use. That is to say, it is true because in its current use it is accepted as true, but here's the trouble. Who does the accepting?

It seems to be partially socially and individually defined without making one the final arbiter of the other (and thus advocated a formula for knowledge). However, it seems true enough to say that we cannot learn except from others. However, as this seems to be leading me towards a wider discussion of rule-following practice then perhaps it is best left for another essay.

Why is it only death (the experience of another's deathly illness) or its proximity that gives us an understanding of life? Rather, why does this experience give greater insight in a more visceral manner? Could it simply be because of the stark contrast?

Quotes worth saving (2) David Hume

2010-12-03T13:00:00.002Z

A Treatise of Human Nature

David Hume (1739-1740)

Book 1, introduction, p. 5, ¶2

...tho' we must endeavour to render all other principles as universal as possible, by tracing up our experiments to the utmost, and explaining all effects from the simplest and fewest causes, 'tis still certain we cannot go beyond experience; and any hypothesis, that pretends to discover the ultimate original qualities of human nature, ought at first to be rejected as presumptuous and chimerical.

Some notes on the nature of Art... (3) Definite Gesture

2010-12-02T13:00:00.003Z

This relates to some earlier comments.

Attempts at definition, be they of art or love or friendship, all ultimately seem to flounder and fail. We can say what they are not in a large number of cases and provide examples which show this as clearly distinct (although this may be harder in the case of art than any other) but providing a complete definition seems to fail on the use of the word, i.e. it is too well used, or perhaps, we could say it is used too often in situations were it should not and instead merely gestures towards a 'something like...'

However, the fact that this 'gesture' is understood at all shows that there is something being communicated.

What then does art communicate? That here there is something of value.

Quotes worth saving (1) von Wright on Wittgenstein's reading

2010-12-01T13:00:00.004Z

"Wittgenstein"

Georg Henrik von Wright

(Basil Blackwell, Oxford: 1982)

P.33

Wittgenstein had done no systematic reading in the classics of philosophy. He could read only what he could wholeheartedly assimilate. We have seen that as a young man he read Schopenhauer. From Spinoza, Hume, and Kant he said that he could only get occasional glimpses of understanding. I do not think that he could have enjoyed Aristotle or Leibniz, two great logicians before him. But it is significant that he did read and enjoy Plato. He must have recognized congenial features, both in Plato's literary and philosophical method and in the temperament behind the thoughts.

A common false assumption and its reversal.

2010-12-01T11:00:00.009Z

That being a member of a religion or of a country means that whatever another member or group of said religion or country does that we are individually responsible. i.e. That all UK citizens are responsible for the actions of the UK Government, Army, etc. (overstating the power of Democracy, strangely enough)

And reversed, that the actions of a few represent the actions of an entire larger group. i.e. A small group of extremist radicals equals the actions of every other Muslim. (overstating the influence of religion on individual action)

This rage is the impotent rage of ineffectual people against what they see as an 'evil' controlling force. One that they feel they do nothing against but throw themselves screaming at.
MAC = EDL
Their failure highlights the larger failing of World society via Religion, we are told that we are individually important and responsible (we are) but feel unable to act in the manner we feel we must (we imagine ourselves as more important/influential than we are).

Some notes on the nature of Art... (2) Thoughts on Poetry

2010-11-30T13:00:00.009Z

The poem as occasioning the question of meaning rather than giving the answer or the meaning itself.

Novels are stories or a work. Poetry, however, offers fewer occasions to be naively read, that is, as simple stories.

Question of meaning comes about from an imaginative stance taken towards a poem, even a syntactically rebellious one, that is primarily linguistic. Not a literal reading, not simply 'messages' or folk-tales in poetry. These tend to be bland anyway.

Meaning (the meaning of a poem) in the sense of signification. Its relation to a wider cultural story. No sense in talk of 'finding' meaning, it was already there.

Musicality of poetry. That 'these words' cannot be replaced by other words. The sense of finding the correct 'fit'. Poetry as a technique that must be mastered, it is not merely playing with words, in the sense that almost anything will do. Far from it, it is akin to building a very complex structure and trying to keep its balance.

Critical practices require more than simply imagination and the poem. A sophisticated critical reading would include many other aspects. The musicality, the cultural context, and so on. Indeed, the critical reading as being a work inspired by the former, in a sense the 'child' to the poetic 'parent' or at least have these connections in a familial manner.

Suggestion #2

2010-11-30T11:00:00.000Z

Having an excellent memory and being entirely realistic about future events seems to be the ideal recipe for making one utterly utterly neurotic.

Some notes on the nature of Art... (1) The Rules of Art

2010-11-29T13:00:00.008Z

Many practices can be considered normative, but that doesn't mean that they all rely on explicit rules.

A normative activity is normative because it is first a social activity. These systems of conventions are assigned normative powers by cultures/society and there cannot be these 'rules' in art, otherwise they would be repeatable 'facts' (presumably).

Art work as a gesture* of the surrounding culture. Thus, intransitive, for how could I describe all the rules that apply to the work?

Even if we accept that rules must at some level go to form its basis.

Understanding could be considered as training in rules. Art not only a question of feeling. You only like what you understand. Can this always be right? What of absurdist art? The surprise of art. Showing us a new way of seeing something we already understand. Not new origination (potential impossibility) but new invention of use/seeing/synonym.

The artist, the critic, and the spectator share the same 'form of life' (Wittgenstein).

An artist's work isn't explicitly a following of rules.

Knowledge of rules of art available only after in hindsight, before they are only implicit/potential. The paradox of rules.

Rorty. 'We don't interpret art works, we use them.'

* [Gesture theory? No theory at all. Does thinking of art as a gesture help in any way? It shws us that here is something worth looking at. Something of VALUE.]

Suggestion #1

2010-11-29T11:00:00.004Z

I have a distinct impression that Baroque music just seems to fit with a Winter snowscape scene better than any other.

Note: This is my Mum's garden in Scotland. There isn't nearly as much here in Mercia. In fact, there's hardly any.

I got better.

2010-11-25T15:33:00.001Z

Well, I suppose this is a return of sorts.

You might notice that everything previously posted is gone. So, perhaps fresh start is a more appropriate description than a return. At any rate, I intend to return to blogging. Although I'm not really sure what I'll blog about.

A diary about life as a PhD student (and all the inevitable whinging) is possible but probably dull, as would be an academic work diary (publishing the things not good enough to get 'published').
Haven't really been writing much 'poetry' recently and don't feel like sharing what I have.
Current political climate tends to reduce me to bellowing and there are more than enough tub-thumping blogs out-there already.
I have no intention of using the blog as self-advertising, mainly as I've nothing to advertise, but also because there is always facebook if I'm feeling especially vain.

This is mainly why my 'short break' has been a year or so.

If anyone has any suggestions for blog topics I'd like to hear it, otherwise it'll most likely be more of the same rambling social criticism and general philosophical-aesthetic belly aching that I used to inflict. But more so.

Love & Peace.