Sweet Jesus, no! If you think "liking" is the sine qua non of aesthetic experience, then you're living one (or two)-dimensionally in a multi-dimensional world. — tim wood
How do you get here from there?Apparently, you live in whatever world the art authorities tell you to live in. — praxis
You're not being clear about liking and aesthetic experience. Can you elaborate to an extent that what you're trying to say becomes meaningful? — praxis
:100: Worth several reads. The TPF education-in-a-paragraph.
As, for a simple example, with sonnets. There are - can be - good sonnets and bad, but before there can be good and bad, there has to be the thing itself as form, and it seems to be within the constraint of form that art arises. — tim wood
Either you already know what I mean or you do not. — tim wood
Assuming you're being candid and honest, you do not know what I mean. — tim wood
Which is to say that for you, art is what you like and not what you do not like, thus the two identical. — tim wood
And that's as far as we can go. — tim wood
But your view makes art completely subjective, which leads to someone else calling art what you don't, yet that on the basis of your own criterium you cannot call not-art (after all, they like it). Which in turn leads to absurdities such as art-for-me and art-for-you, but no art. — tim wood
Nor is there any accounting for your changing your mind. It was art yesterday, but not today. — tim wood
Further, the experience in question is either an experience of liking or an aesthetic experience. For you these must be the same thing. — tim wood
Perhaps this, the difference between food that's good for you and food that is not. — tim wood
I value knowledgeable people in general but when it comes to art I can tell if I like something, and no authority on earth can know what may offer an aesthetic experience, though they may know general principles. I'm the best authority on my own sensibilities. — praxis
An object can only have value if first defined. An object defined as a ship that sinks on first entering the water can rightly be said to be no good as a ship. The same object defined as a submarine that sinks on first entering the water may rightly be said to be good as a submarine.
With postmodernism, where anything can be art, then there cannot be good art or bad art. Then the well-known artwork A mail box in a lake is equal to the most prominent postmodernist works in the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (badly named, however)
But in modernism, where art has been defined (albeit in more than one way), there can be good and bad art. Then a child's crayon sketch of a dog can never be the equal of a Rembrandt or Matisse. — RussellA
I guess we're back to that familiar aphorism - "I don't know much about art, but I know what I like." I personally am comfortable with this even though I recognize there is a universe of contested critical assessment and theory (much of it tedious and doctrinaire) available to us to ponder over. The shorthand 'I know what I like' doesn't mean you need to limit yourself to decorative works that you find pretty. It means that you know when you are having an aesthetic experience that you appreciate - it might be confronting, exciting, shocking, captivating. — Tom Storm
Supposedly your "long story" can bridge this gap. Just as I predicted this epic tale has not materialized. — praxis
In panpsychism, consciousness is fundamental, and is the only thing anything ever expresses through it's form. Long story. So I know that if anything should ever be expressed, that it will be consciousness. — Pop
None of this is an argument against anything you've written. I think I'm trying to fit my own experience into your framework. — T Clark
There's the notion of pearls before swine. Do you distinguish yourself from swine? — tim wood
At your level - as I understand you - you like it, it's art; it's good. At mine, there's a Wow! involved. That art, as I understand it, has the power to summon in me that which is other to and better than me, to me. — tim wood
Supposedly your "long story" can bridge this gap. Just as I predicted this epic tale has not materialized.
— praxis
I gave you a link to panpsychism. — Pop
Panpsychism seems to center on 'mind' and you focus on consciousness. There's obviously a difference between being conscious and not being conscious, and you seem to accept this difference.A mind doesn't need to be conscious, does it? Naturally, art is an expression of minds. — praxis
What is consciousness?
According to American philosopher John Searle: “Consciousness is that thing that presents itself as we wake up in the morning and lasts all day until we go back to sleep again at night.” It isn’t simply awareness or knowledge – I believe Carl Jung would agree that to every bit of consciousness is attached 100 bits of the subconscious, interwoven into a mental lattice presenting as a united front. It is fundamental to us. Consciousness is personality in action, yet we are hardly aware of it. Modern science has not been able to pin consciousness down, however panpsychism and eastern philosophy agree that consciousness is a fundamental property of the universe - from this perspective consciousness takes on a much deeper meaning
The singular thing that life is concerned with is to maintain and continue itself, and consciousness facilitates this. It is the one thing we are always expressing. We express it when making art, and it seems art's function is to express our consciousness when we personally cannot - to express it at its best, express it to many, and into the future.
— Pop
Since this definition, and due to a wonder about what consciousness is, I came to define consciousness as an evolving process of self organization. But I don't know what the source of self organization is.
**In science, self organization caused life, In systems theory self organization caused order in the universe. That art also expresses consciousness / self organization is quite a big deal - I think anyway. — Pop
How is mind different to consciousness? — Pop
Being conscious is being awake and aware. A mind is more than simply being conscious. A mind requires an internal model of its environment and a model of itself itself to navigate its environment. It needs to have motivations or drives, such as the drive to feed or reproduce. — praxis
“Art is an expression of human consciousness. Art work is information about the artist’s consciousness.” — Pop
Naturally, art is an expression of minds. — praxis
Consciousness is a little more accurate, imo. As it relates to a state of mind. — Pop
It is a state of mind that is expressed in art, or anywhere. — Pop
The state of one’s mind at any particular time is one’s consciousness. — Pop
:roll:the aesthetic - the decorative aspect — Pop
Yes, it possesses information about that affair, as you put it. It is entirely information about that affair. — Pop
Anything deemed to be art is art, end of enquiry. This is because we have a long history of this being the case, and the fact that art was thought to be indefinite. — Pop
As I have explained a number of times now - we cannot predict what art will be in its form, or what the experiential reaction to this form will be. These things are endlessly variable and open ended, so can not form part of any definition of art.
Hopefully this answers your question - yes an art work is information, and it is information about the consciousness of the artist. It exists in some form, and this form by virtue of being something physical is aesthetic, so is always experiential. But there is nothing definite about the form, or any resultant aesthetic, or experience. We can not predict what the form of art will be in a hundred years, or the experience that will result from it, so can not define art in these terms. These terms are variable, they do not always exist in art, and it is unpredictable how they might exist in future. For a definition, we need to focus on the things that always exist in art, and the only thing that always exist in art is that art work is information about the artists consciousness - everything else is variable! That is why this is a definition - such as it is. :grin:
— Pop
There is a limit to art however, and that limit is the artists thinking - an artist cannot make art about something that they cannot think about. So art is an expression of consciousness, and no more. It is not an expression of something beyond the consciousness of the artist - cannot possibly be. So is information about the consciousness of the artist, including the subconscious. — Pop
for Rorty, this world is "made, not discovered" — Constance
The state of one’s mind at any particular time is one’s consciousness.
— Pop
A meaningless statement since it’s only accounting for consciousness or whether a mind is conscious or unconscious. — praxis
A mind can be in a dream state, for example, in which case the state of one’s mind is unconscious or lacks consciousness. It doesn’t account for motivation, feelings, mental representations, or anything that a mind is comprised of, merely whether or not its conscious. — praxis
Yes you have feelings, opinions, etc, and what you express is your current state of mind about these - which is your consciousness. — Pop
In a fit of rage, you are not going to express something peaceful and serene, are you? — Pop
I fail to see how this is relevant, since you are not going to be making art in your sleep? — Pop
The subconscious likewise is always an aspect of consciousness, so is not something separate. — Pop
Yes you have feelings, opinions, etc, and what you express is your current state of mind about these - which is your consciousness. — Pop
Consciousness is not merely whether you are conscious or unconscious - it is the current state of one's mind. — Pop
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