160 replies to this topic

[Orik]

I'm not saying that the technical standards for "what constitutes art" don't change frequently.

Then how seriously can I take them? Maybe Orik is right -

I told you already, it's not art and it's not craft, it's fashion.

Of course I'm right.

But it's not fashion because what's *good* changes, and it's not fashion because what's *art* changes, it's fashion because it behaves much like fashion and has an increasingly similar industrial complex associated with it.

I don't take anything very seriously but I do think answering a question such as "is food art?" from a naive/uninformed perspective is unlikely to be useful.

[Sneakeater]

1. To be clear, Orik said that cuisine was fashion. He didn't say that the definition of art was fashion (or that all academic disciplines that aren't hard sciences are fashion).

2. As I said on the other thread, if you want to opine on whether something is art, then you first have to explain what you think art is and why you think that. If you think you can do that without knowledge of the more than 2,000 years of thinking and debate on that very subject, then that strikes me as pretty arrogant.

[Orik]

1. To be clear, Orik said that cuisine was fashion.

Yes.

eta: also, the way in which intellectual property is treated is similar to fashion, not art

[Suzanne F]

This topic has come up obliquely on the Romera thread.

Much more insidious than cultural relativism, is the currently pervasive attitude of epistemological relativism: that everyone is entitled to their opinion. Well everyone isn't. I'm not entitled to an opinion on the soundness of Wiles proof of Fermat's last theorem because I don't understand it; the Sage of Croydon is not entitled to an opinion on the truth of global warming because he doesn't understand the concept of scientific evidence; Stone is not entitled to a view on restaurants charging more than $10 an entree as he's never been in one.

Discuss.

Nonsense; of course they are. However, we/I do not have to pay any attention to what they say if we/I believe they have their head up their ass. And we/I most certainly do not have to attempt to engage them in meaningful dialogue when they don't know what they're talking about.

YMMV

[LML]

Which of course has nothing to do with the question of what is or isn't art (as distinct from what is or isn't good).

Is, "What is or isn't good art?" even a reasonable question? Doesn't it presuppose too much? I mean, even if one could establish that something were art, why should it be the case that that something were gradable in terms of good/bad?

Art strikes me as participating in The Good, in which case the idea that there is such a thing as a bad participant in The Good seems somewhat paradoxical.

[g.johnson]

Sage of Croydon is not entitled to an opinion on the truth of global warming because he doesn't understand the concept of scientific evidence

yet, Al Gore won't shut his pie hole.

Al Gore's argument is:
1) The majority of those who understand climate science believe man made global warning is real.
2) I am not an expert so I cannot reasonably disagree.
3) Therefore I believe that we should do something about it.

The Rush Limbaugh (to name but one) argument is:
1) The majority of those who understand climate science believe man made global warning is real.
2) I am not an expert but I disagree and I'm entitled to my opinion.
3) Therefore I believe that we should nothing.

A difference, I think, and why Limbaugh 2) is so dangerous.

[g.johnson]

I'm not an artist, but I knows what I likes.

The Marty Feldman sketch of which that was the punch line began with him jumping on top of a callipygian blond in an art gallery.

[Sneakeater]

Art strikes me as participating in The Good, in which case the idea that there is such a thing as a bad participant in The Good seems somewhat paradoxical.

Art can be bad art or good art. Lower-case "b" and lower-case "a". As in of bad quality or of good quality.

Whether art must participate in The Good is part of the definitional issue in Aesthetics. I don't think there's a widely held consensus these days that it must -- but as I said in the other thread, I'm hardly a master of the literature.

[g.johnson]

This topic has come up obliquely on the Romera thread.

Much more insidious than cultural relativism, is the currently pervasive attitude of epistemological relativism: that everyone is entitled to their opinion. Well everyone isn't. I'm not entitled to an opinion on the soundness of Wiles proof of Fermat's last theorem because I don't understand it; the Sage of Croydon is not entitled to an opinion on the truth of global warming because he doesn't understand the concept of scientific evidence; Stone is not entitled to a view on restaurants charging more than $10 an entree as he's never been in one.

Discuss.

Nonsense; of course they are. However, we/I do not have to pay any attention to what they say if we/I believe they have their head up their ass. And we/I most certainly do not have to attempt to engage them in meaningful dialogue when they don't know what they're talking about.

YMMV

I'm not proposing that the unquiet ignorant should be strung from lampposts; merely lampooned mercilessly until they retreat into silence.

[Sneakeater]

And I'm merely saying that people should have a little humility when opining on matters that are actually matters of technical academic expertise.

[LML]

Art strikes me as participating in The Good, in which case the idea that there is such a thing as a bad participant in The Good seems somewhat paradoxical.

Art can be bad art or good art. Lower-case "b" and lower-case "a". As in of bad quality or of good quality.

Whether art must participate in The Good is part of the definitional issue in Aesthetics. I don't think there's a widely held consensus these days that it must -- but as I said in the other thread, I'm hardly a master of the literature.

Let's just agree that art can be defined as 'x'. What basis is there for supposing that 'x' is gradable? Isn't it just as likely that 'x' has similiar qualities to the definition of black as it does to the definition of temperature? If, on the other hand, you concede that you are unable to supply a working definition of 'x', then you are certainly not in a position to assert that 'x' can be good/bad, and besides, you have yet to supply an agreed definition of good/bad.

[Sneakeater]

Of course it can be gradable. How could it not be gradable?

Art isn't a Good in itself. It's just a category.

(Or are you stopping at Matthew Arnold?)

[yvonne johnson]

I got a grade for my O Level in Art.

[LML]

And I'm merely saying that people should have a little humility when opining on matters that are actually matters of technical academic expertise.

The only technical expertise in aesthetics is having the arguments well rehearsed. It may be that experimental psychology/philosophy will shed light on some of these questions in the future, but in the meantime there is no authority. These are moot points, which at once makes them so interesting and, at the same time, infuriating.

[LML]

Of course it can be gradable. How could it not be gradable?

Why can't it just be art or not art? There are all sorts of ungradable categories, why do you suppose that Art is not amongst them?