art and philosophy

Response to Mary

2010-05-09T20:29:00.000-07:00

will there be a point in which art ceases to grow

I really doubt there ever will be a stop in Art and its growth as long as we as human beings do not ourselves become stagnant. Nowadays a lot of Art comes from advances in technology, which itself is ever growing. We already dream of the future when we can have holograms of movies and stories, interactive game play rooms like in star trek and other innovations. The boundaries really are limitless and we can only wait and see what will happen.
Perhaps, one day, when and only if we ever reach some kind of state of omniscience and equilibrium we will have no need for it anymore, or perhaps then it will be the center of our lives.
I think, I'm trying to say, at the moment I really can not picture a scenario where Art stops as long as humans are cognitive and emotive beings.

How important is Art to the progress of human beings as a species?

Art inconclusive...

2010-05-09T20:13:00.000-07:00

So, after weeks of being in this class I have come to the final conclusion, I really have no idea what constitutes Art. When this class started, I thought I had a pretty good idea, but it's been pretty much demolished. I would like to take the easy way out and say "I know it when I see it." but that is neither satisfactory for others nor for myself.
I think the problem is that I go through so many what-if scenarios, think of all the exceptions and then I can't really make a rule. But doesn't one sometimes have to make a rule in order to be able to show exceptions? I mean, the moment we DID have a definition, we would be creating boundaries which would doubtlessly be stretched and broken at some point. However, being all-inclusive will just not do, because if everything is Art, then nothing is Art.
But perhaps we also need the back and forth between Artists pushing the boundaries others have established in order to progress and thus defining it is only necessary.
Most of the time I like to think, Art starts in the mind, looking at a field of grass and seeing aesthetic beauty in it and meaning will establish it as a work of Art in your mind, although you may be the sole audience yourself. The true Artist is the one who with hard work, practice and perhaps some innate talent is able to procure onto canvas, music, pages, etc.
We have often said nature itself cannot be Art, as it is not made by humans, but at the same time we said beauty and emotion, anything we derive from appreciating artifacts is not a physical quality of the thing itself, it happens in our minds. In which case, Art, no matter what evoked it, is solely in our heads. The manifested form of Art as a painting or novels is a way of sharing and having other people have a view at what we feel and see in our minds.

Any comments or objections to this idea?

Response to Katherine

2010-05-02T18:26:00.000-07:00

Question: What conditions would have to exist to turn an individual's work from "this is art" to "this is not art"? (In other words, can the art-ness of something be completely destroyed?)

The only way the Art-ness of an object can change is if our views of it have been radically turned around. I agree with you that an a work of Art stays this whether or not people view it as such, as changing its qualities and attributes would necessarily be combined with the very essence of an object (for instance by burning it to complete ashes). I do think however, we can from one moment to the next change our opinions from "It is Art" to "It is not Art". For example, if someone writes a book and everyone loves it and calls it a work of Art, but a while later it is discovered to be plagiarism pure and simple, in this case it is no longer considered Art.
In summary, our view of an object may change through time, however, the main attributes of an object can not be changed simply by our thoughts. See correspondence theory of truth :)

Can we ever be sure of the Art-ness of an object?

What difference does one persons opinion make?

2010-05-02T18:06:00.000-07:00

So, the main problem with Dickie seems to be his all-inclusive idea of who the Artworld consists of. Because, if everyone belongs in it, then we don't even need the word, technically, you'd only need to define the person who can decide whether or not something is Art as a cognitive being. But besides the many loopholes in this, he brings us no closer to understanding what Art really is. An artifact which anyone can dub Art? This seems rather counter-intuitive... not to mention it gives us no hints on which basis a person should call something Art. On account of appreciation? There are many things which I appreciate, but not aesthetically or in any meaningful way. I appreciate good food, a soft bed and clean clothes, but I wouldn't call any of these things Art unless there is something extraordinary about them (eating and preparing food can be made into an Art form under some circumstances, for example). Some would say to this "But no one WOULD call that Art and thus it isn't." Exactly this brings me to my point, he doesn't tell us what exactly moves us to call something Art, where is the boundary between my cup of earl gray and Japanese green tea which is its own Art form? Dickie very simply is telling us that humans are capable of determining what is Art, which is not new to me, without giving us any new information about the nature of Art itself.

Question: Where is the subtle difference that discerns the trivial, ordinary from Art?

A haiku-poem I wrote

2010-05-02T18:03:00.000-07:00

Our green refuge

Drops of sunlight flow
into our eyes, yours and mine,
smiles turn to kisses.

Fragile saplings grow,
while falling leaves softly chime
in tune with voices,

of nights, come and go.
In this place we keep no time
between seas of trees.

Response to Shawna

2010-04-25T18:38:00.000-07:00

So how do you determine the difference between art and real objects then?

I think it is interesting that you question the difference between "art and real objects". Are paintings, books, musical scores, etc. not real? I would think they are as real as any of us, although they access things which seem more lucid and less tangible in our minds.
But that is just it, a real object, as far as I can see it, has no other purpose than to be tangible in this world and help us in daily life. Like a fork or an apple, we use or eat these things and they have no other meaning to us but their usage. However, put an apple in a painting and you have meaning, some kind of subconscious activity going on, etc.
But yes, nowadays it does seem almost too easy to just pick up the original apple, stick it in public view and say "it is art!". But I don't believe it is that simple. I do think there must be some kind of artistic intention behind and some reaction in the observer. If the artist, or whoever, does not believe in the apple and is just doing it as a joke perhaps, and no viewer is moved or somehow influenced by it, it cannot be Art, to me.

If Art must be open to the public in some way or fashion in order for some kind of theoretical approach to take place, how open must this venue be?

Imagination vs Knowledge

2010-04-25T18:25:00.000-07:00

So, in class, we approached the idea that children are more apt at using their imagination, thus being able to see the world as they would have it and have a much richer experience of life.
However, someone also brought up the point that knowledge can also enrich your experience of the world and especially of Art.
Personally, I think the best way to approach the world and Art is with a mixture of both. Taking both paths too far will only lead you away from a well-rounded view of the world. If you only look at things the way you have been taught to see them, a tree being a tree, an ant being an ant, you will really only see the world the way everyone else before you has as well, not to forget, they way you have been told to see it. A child on the other hand looks at a tree and can, for example, see a fort, or a monster, can look at an ant and see a pirate or a horse. Obviously, seeing the world in only this manner would prove to be a hindrance in daily life, but taking the time to see the world this way could help you see and understand things from a completely different perspective. I mean, besides this being fun (I remember days after days of my childhood being spent with turning my living room into a world of magic and demons) it can also help to gain insight or be able to think outside of the box.

Can you think of possible benefits/deficits either views of the world may have?

2010-04-19T21:36:00.000-07:00

Is it morally right to advocate for a standard language? Or would be considered too ethnocentric?

I might as well start off by explaining that I am bilingual, I speak both English and German fluently and I think that mixing the two into a single standard would be horrible.
So, I get the idea that it would be simple, efficient and perhaps good for globalization, but what gets lost in the process? I mean, do we really want to merge everyone from all ethnicity's only in order to terminate or minimize the threat of certain diseases? Think of the rich cultures which would be lost forever.
Don't get me wrong, adopting single words and phrases from other languages is a very awesome thing to do, but you simply cannot mix all languages into one and hope you have captured the essence of each. For instance in English and German, the grammar with verbs is basically the same, past, future, present and all that jazz, but the way these are used and how they are formed are so completely different and beautiful in their own way, I would be sad to lose either. The great German poets simply do not sound right in English and vice versa, because the intrinsic value and subtexts of the strings of words are lost. And I'm sure this is the same for each language.
I do agree that enriching our knowledge through language is a good thing, though, but I think the goal should rather be to learn multiple languages and understand them as individual and whole entities. There is no end to how many languages a human being can learn, there are people who know more than 6 or 7 fluently and I can only wonder how they must see the world.

However, sometimes I feel like our language is stuck, somehow, there are whole thought processes which everyone is acquainted with, which always need such dreadfully long time to explain, and could be explained in perhaps single words or a single phrase. What I want to ask is, perhaps our own language, English, needs to evolve on its own for a while?

Misplaced Art

2010-04-19T21:17:00.000-07:00

In Goodman we discussed the question "When is Art" and he proposed that it is only Art when we put it in the right circumstances and the right use. However, modern Art tends to stretch these boundaries on a daily basis. There is no longer a correct arena for Art to be displayed, no longer a right time for it or anything of the sort.
As an example: I was at a train station one night, plenty of people rushing by as they always will, and I seemed to be the only one who noticed this trashcan. There was a sticker on the side which read "There are a thousand stories in here". Now, the sticker had actually been an ad for some phone company and originally had nothing to do with the can; two objects with no correlation found each other in some sort of ironic harmony. The sad part was, the sticker was illegally on the can and a few days later, would be scratched off. All of this an unnoticed occurrence but for me and a few others who cared to look, but that does not make this any less of a work of Art in my opinion. For just a moment in time, somewhere between bustling businessmen and faded graffiti, there was Art.
I do not think there is a specific time or place for Art to exist, an object simply IS Art or not. Some might say that it is only Art when it is perceived as such, but, for instance, a cat is still a cat when no one is there to watch it, so any piece of Art surely must still be such without being seen. Shouldn't the mere 'potential' to be everything Art is suffice?

Teehee

2010-04-11T15:44:00.001-07:00

Response to Jen

2010-04-11T15:28:00.000-07:00

Q: Do you think if the audience does not receive the same aesthetic emotion that the artist intended the art work is a failure?

Well, first of all, I disagree with the idea that the artist has everything all laid out in their heads before starting an Artwork. The process of creating something is a whole act of discovery by itself and the more a painter draws or a writer writes, the closer they are to uncovering their aesthetic goals.
But getting to the question at hand: Is the artist not an audience to his own work? And who else is the audience? Many great artists were laughed at and cast aside in their time, only after their deaths did anyone appreciate the genius they unfolded. So was the artwork a failure until someone recognized it?
I also do not think the aesthetic emotion has to be the same kind. The artist may be trying to convey hatred or anger but then the audience sees sadness and regret which the former never thought about, nevertheless it is artistic and beautiful.
I think the only person it really matters to, is the artist themselves. They might feel misunderstood and as failures if people, despite liking it, constantly misinterpret what has been made.
As long as people can get something out of a work of Art, does it really matter (disregarding sympathy for the artist) whether the intended meaning was conveyed?

Snow White

2010-04-11T15:14:00.000-07:00

I was thinking about how the aesthetic qualities can affect the ethics of something and at first I really couldn't see how, but then I started thinking about various fairy tales which to a certain extent point this very thing out.
Take Snow White, the only reason the poor girl has to suffer is because she is pretty. Her stepmother is supposedly the second most beautiful woman in the country, which most people would be happy with, but it's all gotten to her head and she wants to be THE most aesthetically pleasing madame ever, so she goes down a very unethical path for these means.
To top it off, the only reason the prince wants to marry her is because she is pretty as well, yummy arm candy... I mean how can you fall in love with the actual person when she is in a coma? So, I think that part is rather unethical as well.
But one might also notice, as much as her beauty invoked bad behavior in other people, the girl herself never really did anything bad and she's described as a really sweet gal, so the things which invoke this aesthetic pleasure in us cannot in and of themselves bad, can they? Rather, it must be how the person reacts to beauty. Or doesn't.
Think about it, even the Hunter, who lets the girl free, because he pities her, only feels so inclined because she is pretty... had she actually been ugly, would he have killed her then? Probably, and isn't such a justification amoral in itself?

response to skyla

2010-04-04T16:20:00.000-07:00

What characteristics do critics have that make their opinions superior to ours when pertaining to art? Why do we trust the opinions of people we don't even know when it comes to different forms of media like music, books, and movies and how often do you agree with the critics, anyways?

I think there are definitely instances where a critic may be a better judge of a work of Art than I, simply because, for instance, I would call myself musically impaired. Although I can appreciate music and like certain genres and artists more than another, I cannot, like I could in literature, take apart a song, dissect it's chords and rhythms and instruments and somehow understand the deeper connections and meanings that come when understanding how something is made. So in the instance of music, I need critics and those more knowledgeable than I to tell me what I am missing. And even in writing and the written Arts, as well as I can move around between sentences, metaphors and stylistic methods, I still appreciate having impute from people who might have seen what I missed, or simply captured it from a different angle. So, critics are good in order to gather a deeper understanding for something.

However, one should not just read what a critic says and mold one's own opinion to theirs. They are only human after all and what they say can be biased or not as well researched and thought-out as it should be. Before actually accepting the critics opinion, one should consider whether it really reflects the truth or what one can accept as such.

I have my own vendetta against critics, simply because midst all of them out there, it is hard to find one who is unbiased and actually knows what she or he is talking about. Anybody can give their own two-cents about something and more often than not I find critics are useless, pointless and rather irritating in how little they actually know about a subject. I find it particularly annoying in this day and age, where research is more than easy and a prerequisite for any form of opinion.

question: Where is the fine line between elitism and democracy in Arts and art-criticism that we must find?

Paul Auster on creativity and the pleasures of reading

2010-04-04T16:14:00.000-07:00

(...)In other words, art is useless, at least when compared, say, to the work of a plumber, or a doctor, or a railroad engineer. But is uselessness a bad thing? Does a lack of practical purpose mean that books and paintings and string quartets are simply a waste of our time? Many people think so. But I would argue that it is the very uselessness of art that gives it its value and that the making of art is what distinguishes us from all other creatures who inhabit this planet, that it is, essentially, what defines us as human beings.(...)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2006/nov/05/fiction.paulauster

Drugs and creativity

2010-04-04T15:46:00.001-07:00

So, in class the question whether drugs inhibit or help with being creative and recognizing creativity came up. Hume would obviously say drugs modify your state of mind and thus your ability to comprehend Art, but what if Art was made through the usage of drugs?
I am not advocating drug use of any kind, but I would say each and every person has a (though legal) drug of their own. And yes, I am also referring to having a caffeinated drink before and during philosophy classes. Any one who drinks coffee on regular basis knows that it helps concentration. Smokers also know that nicotine helps with anxiety and alcohol loosens your inhibitions. So why wouldn't stronger drugs be helpful for creativity? And why would their usage deduct from the artistry of a painting?
Besides the fact that certain drugs can permanently damage you, they do open up new ways of thinking and help stimulate parts of your brain which would otherwise lie dormant. And isn't part of being an artist trying to access something, anything which goes beyond the normal? Which looks at things, even the most mundane from a completely different perspective?
Also, although it may be a stereotype, artists do have to be a little "eccentric", or at least, they usually are. I mean, the little bit of craziness is how they access the world from a different vantage point. Although, one might also argue whether they were able to make Art because they were insane or whether the pressure of making Art pushed them into it.
Whatever it may be, I think that in some cases and sometimes, being crazy or drugged can help with creativity and have helped producing the greatest works of Art to date.

question: Is the crazy-drugged artist actually just a stereotype, are there artists and works of Art which prove the opposite and are more than just mere coincidence?

Response to tyler

2010-03-28T18:45:00.000-07:00

Can art be produced by a farmer or an arborist or a machinist or a blacksmith?

This is a thought of mine which has been challenged multiple times this semester. Can Art be such without the artistic intent of the creator?
I'd like to think that Art is not what the artist intends it to be, it is what the viewer, reader, listener takes out of it. Many authors have noted that they merely write down the words and it is the reader who is making the story come alive in their minds. Going through the world, I know there is Art and artistic beauty everywhere. Simply how the lamplight outside my window shines through the yet-leafless trees is a sight to behold, a whole orchestra of all the properties of the world coming together which we as humans have yet to imitate in anyway.
Many times I hear people who have read a poem or story say that they had been thinking the exact same thing, the exact idea, yet had never figured out how to say it, draw it or transform it into the notes a piano makes.
This makes me think, we all have the capacity to see the artistry in the world, but it is the artist who can put it into words, on canvas, or anything else. The point is not to create something completely new, I feel like it is more to take all of the emotions and moments in life and somehow get others, perhaps people who do not look for them on their own, to see what the world actually has to offer.
So, I think if a farmer can stack wheat and smell the world, see the aesthetic qualities in it or have someone else see it through this, he has created some form of Art. Perhaps not fine Art, or even the kind of Art that would ever be seen in a museum or Art book, but it is the very basic kind which the artist himself must first learn from in order to create.

Is it possible for the artist to convey feeling and meaning to someone who has never experienced what is being portrayed?

Art definiable or not?

2010-03-28T18:28:00.000-07:00

This whole week I have been happy to finally read and talk about someone who doesn't propose to know exactly what the essence of Art is and try to impose it on everyone else. I appreciate the new approach to creativity and giving it more room to breathe and grow instead of putting it in chains that not everybody may agree with. However, I somehow cannot come to terms with Art being completely open or undefinable.
We can look at a painting, hear a musical score or read a poem and we know it is creative, artistic and sometimes even a masterpiece. There is the technique, the forms, colors, emotion and thought behind it which makes it one of a kind, special, simply Art. But we cannot really seem to find an all-encompassing quality with which we can pin point this. Still, everything that is, has attributes which make it unique, with which we can tell it apart from everything else. Like the emotions hate and love, I never have met anyone who could adequately describe to me what these things are, what they entail and thus help me understand what they are, only because I have experienced them myself, am I capable of knowing, and there is some quality in the two that makes them different from any other emotion, which tells me the difference between the two.
I think it is also dangerous to say "I know it when I see it", because that would somehow impose me or any singular person as some kind of omniscient being that can somehow see the artistry. I recognize that I see certain pieces of Art and fall in love and hate and somehow can be touched by it, but sometimes with certain works of Art it doesn't happen, although another person might have an intense experience with it.
I am also not inclined to say it is subjective, because there are certain points in an individuals life where a certain painting or song will touch them and other times when it will have no effect whatsoever.
At this point, I guess, I simply do not know how to explain this quality in Art, but I think there must be one, or else we would never have come up with the term to begin with, we would not keep producing any form of it and we would not care to look at it.
I would like to know if anyone else thinks they have found this quality in Art which supersedes mere technique, form or anything of the sort which Art itself has proven to challenge at countless times in history?

Response to Shawna

2010-03-14T17:27:00.000-07:00

So where do you determine which experiences are good and which are bad?

First of all, I'd like to say, I do not really believe in the terms "good" and "bad", to me this seems like a very black and white view of things which oversimplifies pretty much everything and I simply do not think anything is purely one or the other.
As far as evaluating experiences goes, maybe it is just my personal belief in equilibrium between order and chaos, but every good experience entails something bad and (thankfully) vice versa.
Even if you are having the worst experience in the world, like being betrayed or left or something, you can either look into it and find out how this can make you a better person, how it can help you grow, how it will help you make decisions in the future or you can wait for things to turn around and find something good come out of it. It all goes along with on o my favorite mythical creatures, the phoenix, which lives, dies, falls to ash and is reborn out of the ashes.

Q. Have you ever encountered something, anything at all, which was/is purely good or bad?

animals and art

2010-03-14T17:14:00.000-07:00

I think it's a little funny how we simply assume that animals are incapable of consciously appreciating art and making it, somehow I feel like we are being too radical and elitist.
Although an animal might not be capable of the same intellectual feast to the extent that we are, I like to assume that my experiences with and observations of non-human creatures proves, at least to me, that they are not simply driven by instinct.
I have very often heard that plants grow better with music playing and I doubt it is simply for the sake of noise, instead, the composition of aesthetic sound must have some influence. Also, my cat is rather picky about music and will either flee or stay depending on which musician I play on my stereo.
However, we must understand that how animals perceive the world is inherently different than what we see. For instance, how could cats and dogs appreciate art and movies when they can only see black and white? So their scale of which art we can see a reaction of is limited.
Also, most Art is playing off of human emotions, like romance, and animals do not really perceive relationships they way we do.
In any case, I find it silly to assume Art is such an "obvious" creation of human beings, when we simply haven't found anything like it as of yet.

Question: Do you think the way humans view and create Art is really the ultimate accomplishment or should we be open to other options and expansion?

Response to Shawna

2010-03-07T19:51:00.001-08:00

Do you think abstract art or perhaps even art provides a lot of room for interpretation of the emotions and the meaning behind it?

I think the interpretation of an Art work depends entirely on how much effort the viewer is willing to put into it. At first, one might think abstract art can be interpreted many more ways, because it does not have that definite symbolic meaning ingrained in it, but leaving out details and clarifications can also hinder and reduce the interpretations possibilities.

Here we have a version of cubism, which due to its colors and shapes could have many interpretations, however, there is a limited number of lines and colors...

And here we have a painting from the renaissance, ages before abstract paintings were ever thought of... The intricate details, the sheer amount of possibilities is endless, we have so many colors, lines and parts of the picture to distinguish... it can also be interpreted on many levels.

In both pictures a very detailed or a very superficial interpretation could happen, depending on the viewer, and each picture has variations of understanding what is to be seen.

Question:Do you think a picture is worth it, when the viewer must know many obscure references and spend a lot of time and effort to even grasp what is shown?

Significant form in words

2010-03-07T19:34:00.000-08:00

We discussed in class how, according to Bell, aesthetic emotion can only be found in significant form, however, I had to question where this could be found it literature or poetry.
Literature relies on a person reading it being able to understand the meaning. In order to appreciate even the great poets like Shakespeare or Yeats one simply must understand what they are saying. There is no way around meaning in what is written.
One might say that spoken words can sound nice, beautiful even and thus have their significant form, but spoken words, if meaning is taken away, are very simply music. The ring of words, how they sound, how they roll across the tongue, are a form of music. So in spoken word we find the significant form of music and not poetry.
One may even go as far as saying the words can look nice on a piece of paper. To western people, Asian written languages may look amazing, but we most likely are unable to decipher them. Again, this is not a significant form for literature, it is visual Art.
The problem with any kind of written Art form is that it first and foremost must convey meaning before it can convey artistry. Only when one understands the words Juliet and Romeo say, can one be swayed by the aesthetics in the language. So, I think without looking at the representational value of words, we cannot find either significant form or aesthetic emotion.

Question: How would significant form and disregarding representation fit into theatre?

Response to Katherine

2010-02-28T18:16:00.000-08:00

Do you believe that there is a difference between texting on your phone and texting on the computer as far as communication and socialization are concerned?

First off, I have to say that I do not think human social interaction will cease just because of electronic methods. It would for instance, even nowadays, be easier to just sit in one's room and simply chat to everyone... but we don't do that, we go out and hang out with other people, because it is much more FUN. We have an inner gratification from interacting with fellow human beings, a feeling that cannot be satisfied by words on a screen.
In any case, I think there is a tremendous difference between how people talk via phone or internet. While writing to someone on the internet, it is much more communicative and you can keep an actual conversation up. It also brings people together across long distances. Without the internet, I for example would have a very hard time talking to friends and family from home and would miss them much more. Plus, my mum would probably get a heart attack every time I wasn't in the room to answer a phone call. Texting is also a good way to keep in touch with people and have quick and easy access to making arrangements and sending information back and forth at a moments notice. However, I do not like or believe in texting conversations. It is simply annoying to have your phone go off every ten seconds and have intervals between each person's response.
My main problem with both forms of communication, although it focuses more on texting, is the loss of proper language. As an English major, I love words and language, but more and more often people come up with silly to nonsensical abbreviations. When it started out with a simple replacement of "you" with "u" that made sense, but then came "nite" instead of "night" and other incidents that are just useless. It's gotten to the point, where I will read a real email or help a friend with an essay and find these things in there... I'm not exempting myself from the usage of text abbreviations, but I do think it has gone too far when one cannot find the difference between internet language and actual English.

Question: Do you think this change is language is a justified and natural progression that has happened through out time and will go on? (Shakespeare himself altered the English language permanently)

Freud

2010-02-28T18:04:00.000-08:00

One thing that strikes me as a bit funny about Freud, is how many holes there are in his argumentation. For instance, if he openly admits, that he is not an artist and therefore has no idea how the real artists are able to make their dreams and wishes pleasurable to other people as well, how does he know that his assumptions are correct? He just imposes how he feels and what he thinks his patients are feeling, on the rest of the world instead of taking into account that he is human and therefore fallible and perhaps he is not seeing the whole picture.
Also, just assuming Freud's theories ARE correct: He says that our subconscious is not openly accessible to us, but he for some reason knows perfectly well what is going on in there, plus he is able to convey to other people what happens in childhood and how it affects us. But, I would assume, once a person is aware of the fact that childhood issues are influencing them, they could take the time to face these and deal with them, thus being free of subconscious drives. But somehow Freud seems to assume we are not able to do so and everything we say and do is derived from our pasts. But Freud obviously thinks he HAS overcome his subconsciousness, so I have to ask:
Why does Freud assume we are all driven by past occurrences and inner drives, when it is obviously an option to face these and work through them? Wouldn't that mean that these are not the only things driving us in our actions, dreams and decisions?

Response to fraggle

2010-02-15T19:51:00.000-08:00

Does that fact that you can never have the same experience again with certain things( like concerts), make them more appealing to society?

I think the movie "Avatar" was a good example of human greed and wanting things that are a)difficult to come by and b)rare and c)have any sort of value to anyone else. The basic gist of why the whole battle started in the movie, was because humans found something rare and shiny and pretty much thought "Ohhhhh, shiny! I have to have it!".
But Like I said above, something being rare is only one of the reasons people want something. Take a concert, most music we listen to is influenced by out friends and who else enjoys it, so we only really get excited about going to a concert because we will have many other people to share the experience with, there will be many people envious of us, and a major socially psychological factor: we will be able to brag about it afterwords. I mean, if nobody cared about our trip to see such and such musicians, then it wouldn't mean have as much to us. We base value mostly on how much other people want it as well and how it impacts our social lives. This is of course excluding the possibility of being short on things one needs to survive... when starving one probably doesn't care how much someone else wants the food, you have regressed to an egocentric worldview.

Why is it so ingrained in our beings to want what other humans want? Why are we biologically and psychologically greedy and envious creatures?

Words and truth

2010-02-15T19:37:00.000-08:00

In his essay, Ian Johnston uses words as an incomplete method of imitation and points out how they can never really be used to depict the truth because their very own meaning shifts and changes through out time. He uses the saying "In warfare the first casualty is the truth". Yet somehow I feel this is an incomplete assessment of language and words and yes, also the truth. According to Plato, the truth must be eternal and unchanging, but there are somethings that are true for a certain time and then disappear. Such as actions or feelings. It is for example true that Alexander the Great conquered Persia, however that is not true anymore, not in this time and date. He conquered great lands once upon a time but not in the present day. The fact that these actions have come and gone does not make them any less true.
Also, it is the great attribute of language to be able to change and thus grow. Imagine a language where we were still stuck in ancient Greek, no new words evolving to fit new inventions and ideas. Plus, even if words get ambiguous meanings and connotations that is certainly not a bad thing. It just means that we are integrating our history and societal experiences into our speech and can therefore access this information more readily and learn from it.

Question: In France they have a government committee which ensures that the language will no change through out time, which pro's and con's can you think coming out o this and should we have something similar?

Cannibalism

2010-02-07T15:56:00.000-08:00

I liked the reference to cannibalism in Katherine's blog, as it was kind of the sort of offensive and superficially grotesque thing I was trying to point out in my previous post.
Cannibalism is a very ambiguous matter. In our western, industrialized society it seems we are disgusted by it... but Catholics do eat Christs' flesh and drink his blood, don't they? At least figuratively.
And the small tribes and cultural groups who still do eat human flesh do it mostly out of very beautiful and spiritual reasons. Cannibalistic cultures tend to eat the flesh of their own deceased kin, they do not do this out of reason for survival, at least not primarily. Indeed, it would be considered a great disgrace NOT to eat the body of the dead, because then their flesh and soul could not go on. To eat your kindred is to ensure that they live on inside of you, they become a part of you and it is a symbol of eternity and the interconnectedness of all beings.

Do you think rituals and traditions of other cultures should be tossed aside because we find them amoral? Or is our perception of morality simply too rigid?

Response to Jenna Haley

2010-02-07T15:39:00.000-08:00

Can something be considered an art just because it involves creativity?

Let me start with an example:
So you went to Ikea and you got, say, a bed and of course Ikea is the land of putting together your own furniture, so you get home and you have to follow the directions and assemble the pieces into a bed... technically, you have made a bed... but the key point here is, you followed the directions. There are plenty of people who MAKE things, but following instructions has nothing to do with creation. Any crafts-person who makes objects like chairs, plumbing, computers is not really a creator until they somehow have come up with their own unique method, which involves creativity, to make something, somehow altering the result.
create - "to cause to come into being, as something unique that would not naturally evolve or that is not made by ordinary processes." (dictionary.reference.com)

Some people persist in saying that we can not truly create something, because the things we make are an ensemble of things we knew prior, but if the result is unique, I think it is still new and unique and a creation.

Where do you think creativity stems from? What is muse?

fed up with "aesthetic" art

2010-02-07T15:25:00.000-08:00

It always irritates me when people look at something that does not match their views of what is "pretty" or "aesthetic" because most of the time when you can attribute a painting or anything, for that matter, with "pretty" there is not much more to say. One can rest assured that it has no deeper meaning and will not force one to evolve in anyway. Why? Most likely because what we find visually pleasing is something we already know, we have grown accustomed to it and know it poses no threat. Something foreign and unknown is at first glance rarely beautiful, it's just strange and weird. The catch is, that when we look at the foreign, intricate and perhaps, at first revolting, up close, examine it, give ourselves room to accept it, I think one can find much more beauty in that... plus meaning. I also think that what we have, through society come to believe as beautiful, can under deeper scrutiny, become very horrible indeed.
Maybe I just have aesthetic-A.D.D., but I get bored rather quickly with simply accepting and viewing the things I already know over and over again.

my question is: can you think of times in your life where at first something seemed detestable and you then found, you just hadn't been looking at it correctly?

response to katherine

2010-01-31T12:59:00.000-08:00

Does the the truth-ness of mathematics shift depending on the level and type of math being dealt with?

This is something that we touched in our class discussion. And I think the question can not be dealt with in terms of apples, at least the explanation would be more complicated. Let's take drops of water then. If you have 2+2 apples, you get 4... but 2+2 drops of water? Then you have a large drop of water that mixes and merges until the original drops will never be able to be separated again.
The mere fact that the decimal system is at least debated shows us that not even what we conceive to be simple math, is really all that simple. We have a completely different system before us every day: the Babylonian 60-based system is where our concept of minutes, hours and geometric degrees (60x6=360) comes from.
To me, the imaginary number (i) is a real clue to the flaws in our mathematical system.
So, realizing how flawed and really vague our math still is today, I doubt we can really say anything about truth and math.

2010-01-31T12:41:00.000-08:00

In class we have been discussing two different theories of truth, two different versions of how to define truth and how we can know what truth is. Although I have to say, I agree with Prof. Johnson in the statement that one is the description of truth and the other a description of how we come to believe something is true, how we prove that (at least to our perceptional extent) something is real.
But what about different levels of truth? It is an easy example to talk about an apple or a cat on the mat, because these are tangible things. But in a philosophy class we shouldn't limit ourselves to the tangible and obvious, what about the not so obvious and most likely debatable? As an agnostic, I will not go into theories about the existence and concepts of god. But when thinking about a concept like good and bad, we come across inconsistencies. We know that to kill another human being is bad. There are certain times and places where it is acceptable, where it can be justified, but nevertheless it is bad.
Hurting other creatures is something that we in our cores feel as something we don't want to do, unless we have a psychosis, hurting something (in full comprehension that it is a human and on our level) is almost painful to us.
One could argue, that it is the tangible consequences that attribute an action with the word "bad" or "amoral", when we kill a human, other humans are sad and mourn, we get punished, we destroy anything that person could have done, etc. But is it really the outcome of this that makes it bad? Or is it some higher essence of truth and morals that makes us understand what is good and bad?

How do we define truth when linked to concepts?