I don't see a conflict here.
To say that art is an expression and/or an experience of culture, in my view, is no different than saying that art is culture.
I am merely making a distinction between creating art and experiencing art.

I think art is a way to communicate culture, but culture can be communicated in ways that are not necessarily art. — m-theory

Fair enough on all counts.

If it were the case that our ancestors that had developed cultures also had art, I would agree.
But if art does not show up until the evolution of language then I would say that it art is not strictly culture it is communication about culture. — m-theory

I hate to ask the annoying question, but - how do you define culture? I realize it's a hard word to define; I'm just asking for clarity.

Where do you get the idea that art doesn't show up until the evolution of language? Again, just asking honestly; are there studies? Maybe I'm just not aware of them. But, if so, how can culture exist at all prior to language? Language, to me, is our interface with reality and experience. Language is another element of humanity that is inseparable from things like culture and art. It's not so cut and dry that we can differentiate periods of time before/after language, and thereby before/after culture or art. This feels tangential to the topic, though. But any thoughts are welcome.

I said art can be an expression of culture but it can also be an experience of culture (the audience of art experiences culture the artist expresses culture). — m-theory

My problem is this doesn't take it far enough. Art creates culture, it's not just an expression or experience of culture. Or, more accurately...one doesn't create the other, rather...art and culture are inseparably intertwined, or at least, they were in past ages. Maybe not in our age. The lines between art and culture are not clear cut. Saying art expresses culture assumes that culture is a thing that exists prior to art. This isn't accurate. Art isn't an expression of culture; culture itself is an expression. Art is primary, not secondary with regards to culture.

Art is a way to experience and express culture. — m-theory

No; art is culture. You have it backwards; art generates what we know as culture. So far, everyone in this thread except MJA is selling art far too short; sheepishly coming up with nice-sounding platitudes to try to reason away the confusion that is art. Art doesn't avail itself to abstraction and logical analysis.

As a purpose it serves to reinforce your identity. — m-theory

I don't get it, can you elaborate?

Yes! I know the sort of experience you had. I've had experiences like that.

Ok, I do agree with you on those points, on a basic level. I do think that art being valuable because "we enjoy it, find it refreshing, invigorating" is a starting point, but I don't think that answers the question of what it's purpose is. Those aspects are just results of our experience.

Are you saying that art is valuable because the same skills it requires are useful for utilitarian purposes as well? Why not just turn it around and say, for instance, "The mind that can draw a map can also paint a picture"?

What gives art (literature, poetry, religious texts, visual art, music, etc.) its power over the human soul? — Agustino

Not to drag up Berdyaev again, but he has, to me, the best word about art. I'll find a quote later when I'm at home. He says that the creative urge isn't trying to create art, but new being. Art is always a failure in this sense, because it can't create new being. What creativity births instead are symbols of the spirit at best, and calcified, lifeless objectifications of spirit at worst. As art becomes more and more life-like thanks to technology, we can see that urge to create actual being, and we can see it fail.

So, the power art has for us is humanistic in a sense because we feel our own spiritual potential when we create and experience art. It's powerful, because it's the divine element moving in us to create new being. And the symbols we end up with instead hint at the divine element in us; they nudge us; the best art always suggests a limitless potential, and we feel as if we're a part of this potential when we experience it; we don't feel like outside observers, we participate in the art itself. The audience is always fifty percent or more of the art.

Clearly, art never helped man to survive, except in a very abstract kind of way. — Agustino

Yes, and any attempt at making an argument for this is just a juvenile projection of modern conceptions on the past.

Blasphemy! :-O I do often wonder how Mozart's music might have evolved, had he lived beyond the age of 35. — aletheist

:P Good point though!

I think I was just referring to your whole comment. I have to disagree; there are countless technically skilled artists who don't "break the mold" or do something new. As I read your other comments though, I see you're referring more to craftsmanship. I wouldn't say creativity requires technical skill. The combination of the two, though, is usually what creates new genres, etc. But I think "knowledge of boundaries" as you say can also come about from just being an outsider; you have a birds eye view of the imposed limitations and are therefore not bound by them simply because you aren't "in" the art form in the same way as insiders. But technical skill is definitely important.

Are you speaking from experience?

Speaking of evolution, why did we evolve in such a way that we can be 'depressed'? Presumably, there was some benefit to either the person or to the biologically related group. — Bitter Crank

That's just the thing; I think assuming right away that depression must have a biological advantage or disadvantage is itself flawed (I have no interest in opening a can of worms about larger issues about evolutionary benefits, etc., since I don't want to derail this thread, but do what you will). But, for instance, the potential examples you give to the biological advantages of depression don't hold up with my own, and presumably other people's experiences with depression (and you acknowledge you've dealt with depression yourself; do your conjectures add up with your own experience?); "withdrawing", as you say, often just leads to new, heretofore unknown depths of depression; sure, "ruminative" thinking due to isolation can lead to "useful" realizations, but at this point, we're not dealing with biological imperatives, we're dealing with spiritual wisdom...

Depression seems to be a natural state that the body embraces when afflicted with continual stress. — Question

Are you exclusively giving depression a physical source here? That's surely misguided, if so.

What's wrong with being depressed? — Question

Well, for one, the possibility of it leading to suicide...

It's my view (perhaps mistaken), that the people who can't accept their depression are compelled to commit suicide. — Question

No; the people compelled to commit suicide have patiently born their depression to an unbearable point.

Why should anyone 'suffer' from depression? — Question

The way you phrase this suggests that "suffering" is a choice, or an action. Hopefully this is just a mistake in sentence structure.

People should accept depression first and then proceed with treatment if they feel the need to. — Question

I do agree with this. Accepting it is a huge step. An integral aspect of depression is that it abuses itself. Depression is cyclical, in connection with feelings of shame. Accepting depression is an opening of a door into a new room.

Society seems to associate the mental state of being depressed as something undesirable or a disease that should be treated. — Question

But this view of depression is an evolution from past views. Maybe it's not the end-all view of depression, but it's a step in the right direction. In our scientist (scientism-ist) culture, it's a comfort to imagine depression as being the same as a physical illness, even though it's not. It's a start.

I agree with you. It's funny, because I consider Beethoven superior to Mozart. I would venture to say a wide swath of the classical community would agree. With artists, you can see a pattern of what you describe: the importance of hard work. The same can be said for the dichotomy between Ravel and Debussy. Ravel put out a minuscule amount of music because he was such a perfectionist. And it shows. He considered himself a failure at the end of his career. In further contrast, you have their contemporary Scriabin who was one of the most celebrated composers in Russia during his lifetime, and he put out loads of music... and immediately afterwards he fell into obscurity (granted that might have had to do with the political climate at the time too). I do like Scriabin and Debussy though.



If you want another example of a relentlessly hard working artist, look at Steve Reich. Granted he's had like a 50-60 year career, so he has a decent amount of output, but study the evolution of his music from start to finish and you see how intensely he focuses in on minutiae to bring his vision to bear. This work ethic inevitably causes him to move more slowly. Compare, again, to the larger output of Philip Glass, and decide for yourself who's the greater artist. And it's literally taken Reich that 50-60 year career for his vision to come to fruition. And he's still kicking; he just moved BACK to NYC after living upstate for years. There's a great documentary on him, littfamily1 called Phase to Face that you might find inspiring.

I think it's helpful to recognize that whether you think life is "futile" or not, any response to the question is fundamentally a belief. Whether you come to a conclusion through a series of propositions, or through an experience, an emotional response, or whatever it is, we never apprehend a full knowledge of whether life has purpose. We momentarily forget the exact propositions, the experience fades, the emotions go back and forth, etc. Belief is the gap between the idea and our consciousness. I think it's good to recognize this in the climate of thought we live in, at least in the West.

Heck, even Steve Reich loved rock enough to write this...ok, I'm done ;) :

Or this maximalist pop tune written by a classically trained composer...

Or, from the other angle, some classical textures integrated into a rock structure...

Can't fucking stand rock, that shit should of died in the 80s. — intrapersona

Ahh, but I disagree...if you appreciate the structure of classical music, surely you can appreciate this beast of a song:

"The elements of every concept enter into logical thought at the gate of perception and make their exit at the gate of purposive action; and whatever cannot show its passports at both those two gates is to be arrested as unauthorized by reason." — aletheist

That holds up for logic itself, but I could replace the word "logic" with "intuition" here; in other words, I still see logic as a member of a set of methods, along with intuition and creativity, even emotion (the horror!). So if Pierce means that logic is the only gate for perception to first go through in order to arrive at purposive action, then no, I disagree, and I don't mean the same thing as him.

Logic is actually an expression. It's intuitive and creative. Not a rule that necessitates or means of knowing regardless of anything else, but an expression all of its own, found nowhere and defined by nothing else. Every logical truth is born from nowhere and dies all on its own. Logic reasoning functions not by determining rules, but in understanding expressions themselves.

In this respect, it is far more powerful (or weaker, deepening on what you are looking for) than an arbiter. Rather than a force which commands, it is an expression of the living. Logic is "undoubtable" because it is always an expression itself. Commanders can be defied. Each moment, itself, cannot be. — TheWillowOfDarkness

None of this is coherent. Can you explain it differently?

Perhaps the wise would not look to Internet forums as the depositories of wisdom. — Thorongil

...I was cracking a joke about the etymological definition of the word philosophy...

Logic is not a source of knowledge; it is the set of methods by which we obtain, organize, and communicate knowledge. — aletheist

I agree it's not a source, I've made that clear in my definitions, I think. I'm not clear on what you mean that logic is a set of methods, though. I think of it as being one method out of several, but maybe I'm not thinking of it properly. But creativity, for instance, is not part of a set of methods called logic. Not by how I understand the terms at least.

If your critique is actually aimed at scientism, then your target is not logic — aletheist

Well, scientism is part of what my critique is aimed at, which I didn't make clear. It's not the whole aim though. But one of the assumptions scientism seems to make is that logic is primary, or that it is, in fact, a source of knowledge.

If you agree with Pierce that "nothing is in the intellect which was not previously in the senses", then do you understand what I'm trying to say about experience being primary? Do you agree, or no?

Having a philosophy about x, y, or z is different from the actual doing of philosophy. Does this make sense? — Heister Eggcart

Sort of. Having a philosophy involves some sort of mental activity; "having" assumes a prior activity; I have cake by eating it. This is how I "do" cake; I eat it. Once that's done, I've had my cake. So, it makes sense, but I don't see why it's important. If you're trying to make a distinction between how everyone at least passively has some beliefs (a "philosophy") versus people who consciously study and build up philosophies, I would partially agree, but the binary distinction you're making is in reality just two points on a spectrum of human consciousness.

I find there to be a difference between having knowledge of having an experience, and having knowledge of what you experience. — Heister Eggcart

So, memory versus content? I'm having trouble seeing why this is important as well.

I think lots of posters here "love wisdom." This doesn't mean that everyone has knowledge of what wisdom is in practice, however :-* — Heister Eggcart

True, and perhaps my comment was a bit harsh, especially since I'm new.

This makes no sense. — Heister Eggcart

Extra-physical is a pretty clunky word. I think the point I was making is that Meaning isn't a physical object that's subject to scientific scrutiny. So the application of scientific scrutiny to Meaning is a misuse.

I am still trying to figure out what you mean by "the primacy of experience." — aletheist

Just that everything is experience, including logic. Just like Pierce and Aristotle are saying in your later comments. But what did Pierce mean when he said he was first and foremost a logician, then?

Well, we cannot think about everything in the universe all at once; so in that sense, we have no choice but to engage in abstraction - neglecting some aspects of reality in order to focus on others. — aletheist

I agree. The same can be said for other faculties like intuition and creativity.

Again, what do you mean here by "the primacy of logic"? — aletheist

I guess there's some different shades to what I'm trying to talk about here...because when I say the primacy of logic, I'm more referring to a general trend in Western society to assume that logic is the ultimate tool for apprehending reality. The demand for rigorous argument and rejection of rhetoric that John mentioned is symptomatic of a society that places logic as the ultimate source of knowledge. So perhaps those people don't think of logic as "primary" in the same sense that I think of experience as primary. It's more just modernism's material optimism trickling down into the popular vernacular, and therefore the zeitgeist of the times (reference pop science articles with titles like "science just explained why you hate the word 'moist!'") As I think about it, I think part of the problem is that scientism is by and large the dominant way of viewing reality for the liberal progressive side of the general public, on a popular, everyday scale. Science is the arbiter of truth. Clearly scientism isn't a philosophical position claimed by anyone on a philosophy forum (or anyone at all; it retains it's pejorative sense), but it's noticeable in the popular, general public consciousness. This is an important part of my critique, and maybe I didn't make that clear yet.

I asked you to define your terms in an effort to understand better what you were saying. — aletheist

Fair enough, I appreciate that. I think of "outer" and "inner" by way of this analogy: the engine of a car is made up of various components. Studying the components can lead you to the conclusion that it is, in fact, an engine. Maybe even that the engine is for propelling a car. But it won't lead you to an understanding of the various reasons why we drive cars, the countless different places you can go in a car, the rules of driving a car, etc etc. Engine knowledge tells us what the car is, but not why the car is used. Studying the engine components is "outer" knowledge. Learning why a car is useful is inner knowledge; we only fully learn the usefulness (and dangers) of cars through experience; through using them.

Why would I bother trying to invalidate an "argument" being offered by someone who rejects logic — aletheist

I don't reject logic.

In what "simple" and "self-evident" sense do you believe that experience is primary? — aletheist

How do I even answer this? You need to extricate yourself from abstract analysis to grasp the primacy of experience. It's grasped through experience. I keep saying the same thing over and over here. You're playing with a limited set of rules when everything has to be subjected to abstraction.

What happens when different people have different experiences? — aletheist

How is this relevant? What happens is a wealth of different experiences accrue in the consciousnesses of countless people. Your question again assumes that an objective standard (presumably the first proposition of a logical hypothesis) has to be given before experience can be talked about. We can't talk about it first; we have to experience first, and then talk about it. Actually, things always happen in this order, we just aren't aware of it if we insist on the primacy of logic. It sounds like you're worried about the vast variety of different experiences that might conflict with each other. That's a very real reality, but it's not an argument against the primacy of experience. But you're beginning with the intuition that logic is primary, so it seems like an argument from that intuitive starting point.

Why would we use a fundamentally different method to study "the inner" than what we use to study "the outer"? How exactly would the two methods differ? — aletheist

I think my analogy covers this. They are fundamentally different aspects of the same reality. Imagine reality as a sphere; it's a perfect, continuous surface, but we can never see all of it at once. Apprehending the entire sphere requires that we shift our perspective. In this analogy, shifting perspective is analogous to using a different method; method's of investigation are perspectival in that way; there isn't one method that suites all aspects of reality, just as there's not one perspective that apprehends the entirety of the sphere.

How exactly do you distinguish "outer" from "inner"? — aletheist

Again, through intuition. It's interesting to me that when I bring up this topic, the arguments against it all have to do with defining terms. This seems to be an important part of forming logical premises. But the meanings of words are always fluid and changing. Definitions are useful, but they don't need to be the starting point of an argument. In fact, they shouldn't be precisely because of the fluid nature of terminology. Again, it's a prime example of the attempt to treat language and concepts like scientific specimens under a microscope. They're not, precisely because language and concepts are spiritually alive, they aren't dead specimens for dissection.

There isn't a logical argument against the argument that logic isn't primary; there's no logical argument for the primacy of logic. Like John is saying, thinking of logic as primary is an intuition; it's just a given state that many (logically-minded) people accept. Similarly, there's no logical argument against the primacy of experience; the primacy of experience just is. An appeal to defining terms in an attempt to invalidate this argument just distracts from the simple, self-evident truth of the primacy of experience.

How and why would the best method of study...be different between the two? — aletheist

I'm not sure what you mean; I don't understand the sentence.

Firstly, I'm not getting your distinction between logic and intuition. Could you try and and differentiate them another way? — Heister Eggcart

Logic - Arriving at knowledge through a linear series of 'if/then' statements. A systematic study of concepts. An emphasis on organization of concepts in a proper order before a conclusion is drawn. Fundamentally passive: requires abstraction away from participatory experience.

Intuition - Beginning with an inner conviction or feeling (not in the emotional sense) of a truth, initially acquired through experience. Studying the concepts in a non-linear, non-systematic way. Beginning with a 'gnosis'. An emphasis on experience. Fundamentally active: begins with participatory experience.

These are working definitions that I'm happy to be flexible on. I'm less well-read than most of you I'm sure, so I'm working through different concepts.

How exactly can an intuition be misguided? — Heister Eggcart

That's not really an important part of what I'm talking about, but I concede the inconsistency.

It isn't philosophy's fault that some people treat philosophy as a science. — Heister Eggcart

Right, it's the fault of those who treat it as such. ;) Or, fault is too strong. There are a lot of historical factors that go into that tendency.

How have you decided this to be true? — Heister Eggcart

Through intuition. My aim personally is to search for truth. I'm happy to use a different word than philosophy to signify the search, if that seems necessary. The meanings of words constantly change. Is philosophy still "the love of wisdom"? I'm still looking for any evidence of wisdom in the discussions on this forum...

What do you mean by this? And is spirituality necessarily natural? — Heister Eggcart

Meaning is extra-physical. It's the inner life of experience. Meaning is tied up with the development of language, the evolution of consciousness, the constantly shifting world of ethics...all of these things are primarily experiential, and as such, meaning is best apprehended directly through experience, not through abstracting concepts away from experience via logic. As to 'natural' I could have also used the word 'therefore' in that sentence. I appreciate your sensitivity to inconsistencies of language, though.

And seems self-refuting.

This thing of beauty

Life is definitely without objective meaning — Jeremiah

Quite an objective statement!

Your concept of science seems too broad. It's true that the scientific method is applied to things like ethics, metaphysics, etc., and this is exactly the thing I'm arguing against. It's a misapplication of science. Science studies the outer, philosophy should study the inner. The problem is modern society has no inner spiritual life for philosophy to study.

Your concept of logic seems too narrow. It encompasses not only deduction (explication), but also retroduction (conjecture) and induction (evaluation). Intuition (or instinct) and creativity are essential to retroduction, the formulation of explanatory hypotheses; it is the only way that new ideas are generated. We then employ deduction to work out the necessary consequences of each hypothesis, and induction to test experimentally whether those outcomes indeed occur under the appropriate conditions. — aletheist

The problem I have here is that philosophy is treated as a science. Philosophy should be a search for meaning. Meaning is not an empirical physical object or force that avails itself to scientific inquiry. This has always seemed self-evident to me. Meaning is spiritual, so naturally logic isn't the primary faculty for apprehending it.

Overall you appear to be making an appeal for flawed 'experience' to take precedence over testable 'logic' in our examination of the world. What is there to prevent that becoming a free for all for every possible belief in which credibility is judged only by the fact that someone believes it? What safeguard is there against the grossest of error? — Barry Etheridge

Experience isn't flawed, it's just subjective. Logic is testable but still subject to flaws, as the constant bickering over logical arguments for any given topic on this forum demonstrates. Most importantly, logic itself is a part of experience. Nothing exists outside the realm of experience. Many things exist outside the realm of logic. Again, logic is a useful tool. Experience is the entire backdrop to the picture.

And experience isn't about belief; acknowledging experience's primacy is a passive act, a simple opening of the eyes.

I disagree, I think populism is marked more by an overemphasis on emotion or even a misguided intuition. As you say next, being a good artist involves a balance of intuitions, which I agree with, as a songwriter/composer myself. Or maybe I'm misreading you? By "sum of intuitions" are you talking about logic, emotion, creativity etc. etc.? All of the human faculties? That's what I took it as.

I don't see intuition and logic as contradictory either, I just think that in philosophy the emphasis is on logic, which I think is misplaced.

Creativity, art and forgiveness are not special religious insight. Countless people have experienced the creative urge, experienced or given forgiveness (on an everyday scale), and made art. Nothing I'm talking about here is "special religious insight".

Frankly, the sweeping generalization that all people who claim to have had spiritual experience of some sort are making some bizarre plead for authority is utterly absurd.

Anthropomorphism that you are trying to validate with special insider knowledge, the same song and daces told over and over. — Jeremiah

How are you equating an inward spiritual experience with anthropomorphism?

I am going to suggest you have to step outside the bubble of your religious belief to truly understand them. — Jeremiah

Absolutely, I've done this. I "lost my faith", as they say, a few years ago. Again, you're not really addressing my comments, just trying to turn them around. Do you disagree that it's healthy for someone to step outside of the bubble of logicism, if it's a bubble they're in?

At least atheist understand that they are not all knowing, and that there is a limit to what they can know — Jeremiah

Many religious people understand this as well.

Your depth of vision is skewed when you start making up crap as well. I love how people always think their silly religious belief makes them better than everyone else; but then religion is all about the ego. — Jeremiah

This isn't a response to my comments. I'd be curious to hear if you have any actual thoughts about them.

Please define and prove the existence of this supposed divine element. — Jeremiah

The divine element in humanity is something experienced inwardly, but it manifests outwardly in the world in different ways. Art and the creative urge in general is, to me, the purest form of the divine element breaking through into the world through humanity. But forgiveness is the most powerful manifestation of the divine. The oppressed forgiving the oppressor is a manifestation of the divine in humanity. There is no "proof", only experience. Again, you're using the wrong faculty to try to apprehend the divine when you ask for definitions and proof. It's the fundamental flaw behind fundamentalist fads like the new atheists. You have to step outside the bubble of logicism to understand this.

We're derailing the thread, though.

The problem of determinism vs. free will disolves once you recognize the divine element in humanity itself. It's not a master/slave relationship or a father/son relationship, but an artist/artwork relationship. Neither the artist or the artwork exist outside one another; they're interdependent, and they shape one another equally; the artist shapes the art and yet the art shapes the artist. Freedom is a complex, primordial aspect of divinity, and so it exists in humanity as well. Consequently, concepts like God's ominipotence, his "all-all"ness are aspects of the divine that we participate in, not math problems outside us that we have to solve.

I realize I'm basically speaking a different language than a lot of you in this thread. As to logical arguments against God's existence, you're viewing things through one eye; your depth of vision is skewed when you only use one faculty in your attempt to see.

if you limit yourself to causative explanations for everything, you necessarily foreclose the possibility of purpose. — Hanover

hear ye, hear ye

If it weren't for us creating language, we wouldn't be able to conceptualize meaning. Meaning is just a word in a language that we created. Therefore we created the concept of meaning. — MonfortS26

I think the notion that we "created language" is a serious flaw here, and the implications for "meaning" one way or another are pretty significant. The level of development of consciousness needed to "create" such a complex, dynamic thing as language from the ground up would be a level that would already include language itself. In other words, the notion that we created language is a brash projection of our current level of consciousness unto the past. Owen Barfield describes in Poetic Diction and other books of his how most words have metaphorical origins:

"One of the first things that a student of etymology...discovers for himself is that every modern language, with its thousands of abstract terms and its nuances of meaning and association, is apparently nothing, from beginning to end, but an unconscionable tissue of dead, or petrified, metaphors. If we trace the meanings of a great many words - or those of the elements of which they are composed - about as far back as etymology can take us, we are at once made to realize that an overwhelming proportion, if not all, of them referred in earlier days to one of these two things - a solid, sensible object, or some animal (probably human) activity. Examples abound on every page of the dictionary. Thus , an apparently objective scientific term like elasticity, on the one hand, and the metaphysical abstract on the other, are both traceable to verbs meaning 'draw' or 'drag'... epithet, theme, thesis, anathema, hypothesis, etc., go back to a Greek verb, 'to put'..." - Poetic Diction, p. 63-64

So, language evolves along with consciousness, by way of metaphor. The meanings of actual words evolve in relation to this process. Language, meaning, and consciousness are all inseparably linked.