"Donald Trump calls off meeting with Kim Jong-un due to North Korea's 'open hostility'" Telegraph

Confirming how much of a nincompoop Trump is. I guess he will have to wait for his chance for the Nobel Prize :rofl:

I think @apokrisis is right about social construction.

I would go on to say that individual intention is derivative of collective intention but collective intention is not reducible to the sum of individual intentions. Intentions are normative they can be shared, like joy or grief.

I saw something about society/god, and perhaps god might be considered the shared
intention of a community of believers with their faith, their collective intention, their god evolving as the community evolves.

:up:

Yes, because Marlowe apparent;y met with Giordano Bruno in 1880s when Bruno visited London. Bruno was kind of a nut, but a well informed nut.

Just kind of a side note:

Oxford University Press drew attention last year for deciding that, in the New Oxford Shakespeare, the plays Henry VI, Parts 1, 2, and 3 would no longer be listed as having been written by Shakespeare alone. Instead the title pages will say: “By William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe.”

And they hurt :rofl:

Is a dollar bill just a piece of paper or is its value based on our consensus, which is not abstract, it is the product of mutual agreement. A person, I think is in a some what a similar way constituted (or say instituted) by the consensus of associations we interact with.

Abstractions aren't hidden. They're in plain view everywhere. Aren't you yourself an abstraction?

No, I would say that I'am a particular social construction, not an abstraction.

Dreamworld/Truth, no I don't think so.

Phenomenal/Reality getting closer.

I don't believe there is a hidden reality, I think that what's phenomenal is reality and everything else is an abstraction from that.

Isn't he one of your home boys?

The way he flows freestyle is quite amazing, perhaps I bet the most difficult part of the America video was picking which of the lines....Donald looks like he can live in his freestyle in real rhyme.

It reminded me of recent cognition studies involving people who were born blind and then come to see. The question was: would they be able to recognize shapes they could only feel prior to obtaining sight. I recollect that they could not do this immediately, it took them days to adjust to what they were seeing.

It dates back to Molyneux's problem which John Locke mentions and agrees with in his An Essay Concerning Human Understanding 1689.

Not sure how Shakespeare came up with the question, Henry VI P2 estimated at 1591, Molyneux born in 1656.

An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, §4
Where he expounds on the tenuous nature of Induction whose knowledge depends on experience..."the influence of custom, that, where it is strongest, it not only covers our natural ignorance, but even conceals itself, and seems not to take place, merely because it is found in the highest degree." 4.24

"What is the foundation of all conclusions from experience?"

We look at the past and we assume the future will repeat its past. "From causes which appear similar we expect similar effects. This is the sum of all our experimental conclusions." 4.31

His argument brings into question the uniformity of nature, why should we suspect that nature is ceteris paribus uniform.

This the point that Quentin Meillassoux discusses in 'After Finitude' in his chapter "Hume's Problem page 91.

I take rap to be a form of song, "a short poem or other set of words set to music or meant to be sung", it is essential different than Philosophy which is typically a prose style. Music brings an emotional spectrum to the words which are sung along with a rhythm, a meter, a structure who's meaning is recursive on itself.

Language in Philosophy is primarily instrumental. Philosophy rely's on meanings that are contained within statements or phrases, even if these statements may also make metaphorical or analogical sense. Plato's dialogues, are both cogent and poetic at times, I guess you could say the art of his dialogues serves his philosophic interest.

The poet uses words the way an artist uses color, not to drive understanding (not instrumentally like Philosophy) but uses them to drive our imagination to the right pitch (which in turn could drive our understanding but this is not its primary purpose). Words are the content, and the music, the structure of the song are its form. A rap video is multidimensional work providing auditory and visual complexities (like the distortion of his movements to the flow of the rhyme) in service of meanings meant to drive how the song affects our personal flow. Duke Ellington said it best "It Don't Mean a Thing If It Ain't Got That Swing"

Rap is a growing style, now outstripping rock sales (Nielson) and now with much more complex rhythms styles, embracing (or eschewing) whatever comes in its path. It is a powerful medium which enables the conveyance of all kinds of strong emotions. It is a unique medium in this respect, it enables venting the way 'America' vents, with violence interspersed with rhyme and jive.

Childish Gambino's 'America' has been analyzed to death, it's a great rap song and video.

Yes, I think Meghan Markle's decision to give herself away is a bold feminist gesture.

It feels like Michael Jackson

If the only thing in nature that is naturally reasonable is man, then what right do we have to declare that the rest of nature must follow along and be reasonable? We know a very little of what is in nature, maybe there are areas in nature where the PSR does not hold, how would or could we know, unless we say reality must conform to our understanding.

If you are becoming an ordinary language philosopher you may have to modify your moniker :razz:

Do his distinction between reason and cause mean the PSR is not an empirical principal?

I think the idea that North/South Korea peace in the bag is questionable. North Korea has a very long history of negotiating with the SK and Washington, and it has never gone far, except to embarrass SK & Washington.

After the US and South Korea started joint military drills last week, North Korea canceled a planned meeting with South Korean officials on Tuesday and even threatened to back out of the historic summit between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un scheduled for June 12 in Singapore.

It remains to be seen if the summit will occur, and exactly what if anything will come out of it.

The word ''art'' is very vague but I think art is a medium of expression. The message may be everything under the sun and the medium too has a similar range.

What you want to say and how you want to say it.

The oldest works of art are estimated at around 40000 years old preserved in caves in various parts of the world. The most famous are at Lascaux in France, but they are also in Indonesia. Many of these paintings are fabulously stylized. I especially like the hand stencils that appear in these caves.



It is almost like they are waving at us, 'we were here'.

So, yes art is a medium of expression and expression is an essential characteristic of man from the get go. Understanding this "vague" term is the challenge. That challenge goes beyond, painting, music, sculpture...into our virtual world, where new concepts (or transformation of existing concepts) of what comprise art art are emerging.

These are all aesthetic considerations of the loaf. Is that what you're getting at? If so, I'd say the parts serve the whole, when it comes to the utilitarian artisan. The parts still have value in themselves, though.

But it's not clear to me when it comes to a painting, or a piece of music. What is the "whole" here? I don't know. The artwork doesn't have a clear utility (nutrition). Nutrition of the spirit, maybe? An attempt to create "actual being" that fails?

I agree that "the parts serve the whole", that the parts are the means to an end, that their utility is only realized by the whole or end. In a similar way, water, yeast and flour are essential parts for making a loaf of bread. These parts at the immanent level of composition are purposeful. These parts, again similar to a loaf of bread, are transformed in the process of composition into a whole which is categorically different from the parts.

But it's not clear to me when it comes to a painting, or a piece of music. What is the "whole" here? I don't know. The artwork doesn't have a clear utility (nutrition). Nutrition of the spirit, maybe? An attempt to create "actual being" that fails?

At the level of the whole, a loaf of bread sustains life, utility at this level is different from the composition utility that made it, yet it retains some of the essential characteristics of what and how it was made (almost like a dialectic). A work of art does not have the same kind of utility as a loaf of bread. We can compare loaves of bread for texture, moistness, aroma, flavor and so on, as well as how or if it sustains our body. A work of art also can be described in the terms of color, hue, saturation, or cadence, pitch, meter...but in the case of art what is sustained, broadened, or enhanced is our spirit..."Nutrition of the spirit"

[reply="Metaphysician Undercover;178892"

My point is that in the phrase "it is certain", "is certain" is not attitudinal. Is this not obvious to you?

No.

In the expression "It is certain", what does 'certain' add to the statement if not some attitudinal report, otherwise what's the utility of word 'certain', you could just say 'It is'.

You appear to have proceeded with faulty logic. You say, Kant has convinced me that how things are cannot be known. Therefore when people talk in a way in which they claim that how things are is known, they cannot actually mean that how things are is known. So, you conclude that what they really mean when they sat that how things are is known, is that how things are to them is known. In reality though, they really mean that how things are is known.

Do you see the problem? People are claiming that how things are is known. You say that it is impossible that how things are is known. So you conclude that they are not really claiming that how things are is known. But just because it is impossible that how things are can be known, this does not mean that it is impossible for people to claim that how things are is known. And despite your false conclusion, people go on claiming that how things are is known, though this itself might be a falsity.

I think your position is untenable. We are talking about certainty and uncertainty. How things are in themself can't be known, no objective viewpoint is possible. People generally talk about reality as they experience it, how it is for them, " sunrise is at 7 am tomorrow', they may be aware that the earth rotates so really the sun does not rise, but they typically don't talk that way because it is not the way they experience it. All experience is reported from someones point of view, we do not experience of anything as it is in itself, because such a view point does not exist.

Yes, that's my point. What's your answer ND?

Sorry missed the utility part...does the whole exist for the benefit of the parts or do the parts exist for the benefit of the whole, where is the utility?

So the butcher, the baker, the cobbler, the culter, the chef...don't have an aesthetic?

Quoted in my opening post and you quoted in your response to me.

The difference I tried to point out is that this inability that "no paraphrase ever does justice." is an effect and not a goal. Harman said:

The goal of art is not to create paraphraseable imagery, but to create something to which no paraphrase ever does justice

I didn't deny this only that I don't think it is art's goal.

You said art's goal is to "To communicate feeling/value/meaning.", and I wonder how such a goal differentiates it from other human endeavors which also attempt to communicate feeling/value/meaning?

Infinite chains are truncated at the level of appropriate meaning.

If so then truncation is perhaps "good enough for government work" or some lame epistemology :smile: , but not for any metaphysics because there is no stopping the question 'why?', which is why the principle of sufficient reason is so problematic.

Yes, US's opening of its diplomatic embassy in Jerusalem, which I think puts to an end the two state solution, leaving only the one nation or bi-national solution.

Harman is expanding on the notion of difference between the scientific image and the manifest image, he breaks this down into a difference in knowledge provided by science and by philosophy, while recognizing that there are those who move between the two. Here is the full paragraph and citation for interview

What you seem to be worried about in my position is the view that science and philosophy do not provide the same thing. Science is supposed to provide knowledge, of course, replacing vague proper names with lists of properties truly possessed by things. One fails as a scientist if one cannot not replace a name such as ‘Pluto’ with increasingly accurate properties of what we now call the dwarf planet Pluto. But this has never been the case in the arts. We do not understand a painting by Picasso by discovering an ever-lengthening list of true facts about it. The goal of art is not to create paraphraseable imagery, but to create something to which no paraphrase ever does justice. The same goes for history. Here, factual research in the archives is only one part of the work. To understand Napoleon or Suleiman the Magnificent requires going beyond the verifiable facts and understanding an object that lies somewhat beyond knowledge. The same holds for philosophy. Socrates gives us no knowledge about virtue, friendship, or justice. Philosophy is not a proto-science from which the sciences are spin-offs. The reverse is actually the case: the pre-Socratics are certainly scientists, but in my view not quite philosophers. They speculate about the ultimate physical root to which everything can be reduced— this is a scientific aspiration, and not a philosophical one, as shown by Socrates’ jail cell remarks distancing himself from Empedocles’ naturalism.

Some art may be hard to paraphrase, but its meaning has finite strokes. No, study of a single Picasso does not reveal ever increasing detail because the Picasso itself is a limited study of something else.

I am not sure I understand here. Is it because he is imitative in the way Plato suggests in the Republic or do you mean that Picasso always founds new ways of presenting what he had previously presented.

The on-going creation of art does in fact reveal an ever lengthening list of (sometimes) true facts about the subject matter it captures...

Yes, I wanted to bring that up, I don't agree with Harman that there is a finite interpretation, in fact I would strenuously argue against any finite limit, as long as there are humans there will be arguments about what is the correct way to interpret. I think the reason why masterpieces are masterpieces is because they continue to strongly affect their observers.

What reveals more about the world and is harder to paraphrase, a photograph of a person or Picasso's portrait of them?

Picasso's mistress Marie-Thérèse Walter



The photo and the portrait are both mimetic, in a photo time is frozen as it presents a reality which as you indicate presents much more detail and more information. Yet it is still a simplified reality, since it presents a 3D object in 2D. The portrait distorts her face providing an overt commentary (to use your word) prior to any interpretation. Simplifying it as you suggest. While the figurative elements in the artwork may be simpler than the photo, the art work presents a much deeper view of the character in the portrait. It goes beyond the surface to the invisible in a way that is very difficult to replicate using a camera.

So then perhaps a goal of art is the communication of a way of understanding/experiencing by means of simplification and stylizing of its object.

I don't know that much about Hilma Klint, however looking at her works, all those circles, reminds me of all those squares Mondrian painted.

Kandinsky wrote a theory of his work published in 1912 "Concerning The Spiritual In Art"
Unlike most abstract artists Kandinsky did not look to nature or the universe for inspiration, he looked inside himself and gave expression to his interior feelings, emotions, what he suggests is the pure or essential pictorial plane, and he did this by means of the figurative, the external, which for him is the non-essential plane.

artists who worked alone throughout their lives

They may have worked alone, but no one can fully isolate themselves from society, they have to be raised by someone, go to school and learn. Yes they can become eccentric, and perhaps by in being so isolated they can see further and clearer than those who are so fully enmeshed in society that it is impossible for them to have such a point of view.

Manic music

I don't see what you mean by "propositional attitude". An attitude is the property of an individual. My attitude is different from your attitude. On this premise, I assume that my attitude toward any given proposition is different from your attitude toward that proposition. If "how things are" is a matter of propositional attitude, how do you jump to the conclusion that there is such a thing as "how things are for us"?

Propositional attitudes are reports using attitudinal verbs like believe, hope, is certain, in 'that' sentences. I tell you that I am certain or uncertain can you deny my report? Sure you can deny the "that" part of it but not the attitudinal part, no? How things are as they are, can't be known, Kant showed this, so then reports of this type have to be how they are for the reporter.

I agree with you here, because this is the point I am arguing. What we refer to as a certainty, something which cannot be doubted, is something non-attitudinal. Whether there is anything which fulfills this condition is another question. However, if there is nothing, then what justifies the attitude of certitude? And if this attitude cannot be justified, then the attitude of uncertainty is the justified attitude.

Yes, that's my point, the only certainty we can have is that we cannot be absolutely certain.

I like your analogy, Do you think that inspiration is independent of the artist that becomes inspired; that perhaps the artist's insight is already shared in the artist's community and that the artist through his/her sensitivity and skill enables a synthesis of existing ideas which are presented in a novel manner in the work of art.

Of course Trump took all the credit but Nigel Farage is the Nobel trouble maker.

The "goal" depends. The conscious goal of the artist? Sometime's there isn't one. The metaphysical telos of art in general? Big shoes to fill, no? I like what Berdyaev said about art, paraphrasing: "art wants to create actual being, but fails." Art has the divine creative urge, to create being itself. Laughable or controversial, maybe, but real.

I can understand how art if understood as semblance fails to create actual being, that's why Plato kicked the imitative arts out of his Republic, but if an artist composes a song with lyrics and melody, a work of art, doesn't that song have actual being?

Even for myself, my motives for making art depend. I will say, in leu of the Witty quote I just posted to the TPF Quote Cabinet, that the music I've made that I found to be the most personally satisfying and cathartic was the work that was the most personal and honest, as cliche as that is. The personal goal, for me, of making music is to go deeper and deeper, both into myself as I evolve (or devolve), and also into the medium that I have available to me. To explore my own being concurrently with exploring the medium, and to explore how the two interact, and how they interact with the world. All of this is a product of the world around me; the world and the life I find myself in dictate how I respond to the medium, and to what extent I can go into myself to pull a piece of myself out and transform it into something.

“If anyone is unwilling to descend into himself, because this is too painful, he will remain superficial in his writing...If I perform to myself, then it’s this that the style expresses. And then the style cannot be my own. If you are unwilling to know what you are, your writing is a form of deceit.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein

Here is what Kandinsky said:

It is very important for the artist to gauge his
position aright, to realize that he has a duty to his art and to
himself, that he is not king of the castle but rather a servant
of a nobler purpose. He must search deeply into his own soul,
develop and tend it, so that his art has something to clothe,
and does not remain a glove without a hand.

Yes "If you are unwilling to know what you are, your writing is a form of deceit." and yes, "All of this is a product of the world around me; the world and the life I find myself in dictate how I respond to the medium, and to what extent I can go into myself to pull a piece of myself out and transform it into something"

Kandinsky and Wittgenstein seem to bring ethics into the goal of art, the duty that one owes to one's art as one of its devout practitioners. So then perhaps a goal of art is to produce ethically authentic works, that further our understanding of truth because they can enable observers to experience a facet of the artist's self which is consciously or unconsciously transformed and presented in the work of art.

By "contingent" are you trying to say that there is no such things as how things are? I don't think that word serves this purpose.

No, but then again I don't think "how things are" can be known, only how things are for us can be known, which is where propositional attitude comes into play. What can or can't be subsumed as attitudinal in a proposition.

So then:
a) is that (the referenced) which can't be doubted attitudinal or
b) is that which can't be doubted outside of anyone's attitude towards it?

I tend to think it is b) and, if the only thing that can't be doubted is that every thing is absolutely contingent, then contingency itself is non-attitudinal...I guess my thought is that if anything is absolute, it is absolute de re.

You suggest that certainty is an undoubted fact, but what does that entail, what is an example of undoubted fact. I doubt any undoubted facts, I think all facts are contingent, that all facts could have been otherwise. If so, does this reduce all certainty to certitude and does this mean that un-certitude is also an attitude.

Suppose that the absolute contingency of everything is the only certainty possible, then what could be meant by saying that this is a fact except that absolute certainty can't be known.

If this is your understanding, Cavacava, can you explain why art is not paraphrasable?

I don't think artworks provide discursive explanations of what they are. The aesthetic effect we experience from certain works of art describe a spectrum of experience which is not amenable to discursive explanation because it expands beyond our typical conceptualization of the subject by opening new ground and expanding our conception of what the subject entails . The experience of art , the aesthetic effect is lost in any attempt at interpretation of what is experienced. If there is no remainder, nothing left out of the explanation then what is explained is not a work of art.

To communicate feeling/value/meaning.

Art as expression creates narratives which intersect with existing narratives either negatively or positively, the movement is dialectical. It is only by negation of existing meanings in art that new meanings can be experienced, and our notions can be expanded. Kandinsky's abstractions are not based on representations of the exterior world, they are interpretations of an interior world of feelings/values/meanings, which sets him apart from other abstract artists such as Picasso or Mondrian.

As much a something as anything else.

I don't think that great works of art are simply things, rather I think they pull things out of simple material existence into processes, or ways of experiencing which if you can catch their vibe separates them from other experiences.