Religious music does weird things to me

[BaalChatzaf]

They also have a sale on French Army wristwatches with their hands set permanently to 11:05

Ba'al Chatzaf

I never understood that line. What does it mean?

(Also, the tagline previous was supposed to be: "Never been fired and only dropped once.")

As for making fun of the French army, that seems to have originated with The Simpsons: "...cheese-eating surrender monkeys." Earlier references are harder to find. On the other hand: 'Ils ne passeront pas." Read about the Battle of Verdun before you joke about the French. As for the Foreign Legion, you would be similarly hard-pressed to find them dropping their weapons without firing.

The best tank in the world is just a way to kill or die.

On the other hand, a washing machine brings happiness.

http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_and_the_magic_washing_machine

... but again, no thrilling songs for that...

Hold your arms up in the surrender gesture. It is 11:05 5 minutes to 1:00 = 12:55

[Ellen Stuttle]

I haven't misunderstood or misrepresented Rand.

I think you do misunderstand or misrepresent her, since you've frequently cited her as saying that musical tastes are subjective, without indicating that she considered the subjective status only a temporary reflection of lack of knowledge and not due to the nature of music.

[bold emphasis added]

"Art and Cognition"

Signet Second Revised Edition

pg. 46

At present, our understanding of music is confined to the gathering of material, i.e., to the level of descriptive observations. Until it is brought to the stage of conceptualization, we have to treat musical tastes or preferences as a subjective matter - not in the metaphysical, but in the epistemological sense; i.e., not in the sense that these preferences are, in fact, causeless and arbitrary, but in the sense that we do not know their cause.

No conceptual vocabulary. Therefore, not literally a language.

Do you mean to imply that any phenomenon for which we have a conceptual vocabulary is a language?

No, I do not mean to imply that. Nothing that I said suggests that I was implying that. Likewise, if I were to say that MSK isn't a stalk of corn because he doesn't have a tassel, the meaning of my statement would be that all stalks of corn have tassels, not that anything which has a tassel is a stalk of corn.

Are you aware, then, that there are phenomena which have a "conceptual vocabulary" but aren't languages?

Your next comment (see below) again provides no indication of such awareness if you have it.

(Btw, I think "schema" or "notation" or "symbolism" would have been a better word choice than "vocabulary," which is borrowed from language and can mislead as to the meaning.)

And Rand thought that we one day will have a conceptual vocabulary of music - a mathematical one - which will provide an objective criterion of aesthetic judgment of music. (That was her opinion. It isn't mine.)

Her subjective wishes and hopes and predictions are not relevant to my point on this thread. Music does not have what Rand called a "conceptual vocabulary," and her wishing and hoping and predicting that one day it would have one does not make it true. And it especially doesn't make it true today. The Objectivish method of treating music as objectively valid today, or as calling it a language today, based on assertions of future discoveries of music's nature and means, are not rationally valid.

But Rand did not call music a "language" and wasn't indicating that music is a language in speaking of a "conceptual vocabulary."

And are you taking Michael Marotta as a representative of "Objectivish method"? Does he even consider himself an Objectivist? Have you seen examples of people who do claim to be Objectivists describing music as a language?

If, at some point in the future, a "conceptual vocabulary" of music is discovered and identified (it won't be, but for the sake of argument, let's pretend that that it will), then, and only then, will music become a phenomenon which can be categorized as a legitimate language, and as objectively measurable. Up until that point, music cannot properly be called a language, and it cannot be judged objectively. No instances of past production and consumption of music would become retroactive examples of language usage or of objective judgment.

Your lumping together "objectively measurable" and being a language again leaves me wondering if you think that to have a "conceptual vocabulary" makes a phenomenon a language. "If, at some point in the future, a 'conceptual vocabulary' of music [were] discovered and identified," that would not therefore mean that music is a language.

Ellen

[dldelancey]

Taking Care of Business is about an unemployed musician who loves to work at nothing all day. Hardly a capitalist anthem.

[Brant Gaede]

Taking Care of Business is about an unemployed musician who loves to work at nothing all day. Hardly a capitalist anthem.

There's an old story about the industrialist who hires X for his abilities who then objects to him sitting around his office all day. X points out he's already accomplished A, B and C all to the company's great benefit. Nothing to do with pushing paper across his desk and answering the phone all day--busy, busy, busy.

(I don't know enough about the song to comment on it, though.)

--Brant

[dldelancey]

Brant,

The "narrator" of the song is basically making fun of people who have jobs. The lyrics of the song literally say "I love to work at nothing all day." It's a slacker's anthem.

[Brant Gaede]

Brant,

The "narrator" of the song is basically making fun of people who have jobs. The lyrics of the song literally say "I love to work at nothing all day." It's a slacker's anthem.

And you can work like hell then sing that song on your "slacker" vacation.

--Brant

you better or you aren't taking one

[Jonathan]

I haven't misunderstood or misrepresented Rand.

I think you do misunderstand or misrepresent her, since you've frequently cited her as saying that musical tastes are subjective, without indicating that she considered the subjective status only a temporary reflection of lack of knowledge and not due to the nature of music.

[bold emphasis added]

"Art and Cognition"

Signet Second Revised Edition

pg. 46

At present, our understanding of music is confined to the gathering of material, i.e., to the level of descriptive observations. Until it is brought to the stage of conceptualization, we have to treat musical tastes or preferences as a subjective matter - not in the metaphysical, but in the epistemological sense; i.e., not in the sense that these preferences are, in fact, causeless and arbitrary, but in the sense that we do not know their cause.

My point has been that Rand's wishing musical tastes to be only temporarily subjective is irrelevant. The same would be true if she had just as arbitrarily declared that all other subjective tastes would one day be found to be objective due to some future person's discovering "conceptual vocabularies" for preferences in, say, flavors, colors, lucky numbers, fragrances, etc. If she had said that people's preferences in ice cream flavors must be treated as a subjective matter until the time that a conceptual vocabulary of ice cream flavors has been identified, I would be reporting that, today, even by Rand's criteria, preferences in ice cream flavors are, and have always been, subjective. I would be identifying that aspect of her opinion on preferences in ice cream flavors as being the only part that was rational. I would reject her unsupported belief that her every taste must someday be shown to have been objective.

Are you aware, then, that there are phenomena which have a "conceptual vocabulary" but aren't languages?

Yes, I'm aware of the notion that a "conceptual vocabulary" wouldn't necessarily have to be a language.

(Btw, I think "schema" or "notation" or "symbolism" would have been a better word choice than "vocabulary," which is borrowed from language and can mislead as to the meaning.)

The problem with those terms is that they would not be quite "objective" enough for Rand's purposes. Her goal was to turn music into a language. She wanted it to be literature. She wanted it to communicate specific meanings, just as words do. "Conceptual vocabulary" is a bigger step than "schema," "notation," or "symbolism" in the direction of establishing a precise and objective language.

But Rand did not call music a "language" and wasn't indicating that music is a language in speaking of a "conceptual vocabulary."

I agree that she didn't call music a language, but that was indeed what she was after. Her dream was that music would be decoded/deciphered into a very precise and objective language, and then Rand would be shown to have been correct to have classified music as a legitimate art form even though it did not meet her criteria at the time.

Her requirement was that, in order for something to qualify as art, it must communicate objectively intelligible subjects and meanings, just as literature can. Her dream of the future "conceptual vocabulary" was that it would allow music to become as precisely communicative as literature.

That, and she wanted her tastes in music to be shown to be "objectively superior." When stating that musical tastes must be treated as a subjective matter until the time that the long-awaited and hoped-for Esthetic Savior arrived to make them objective, she also said, "No one, therefore, can claim the objective superiority of his choices over the choices of others." Making such claims was apparently a big concern of hers.

So, I think that those were her driving motives in making unsupported assertions about the future of music: Allowing music to qualify as art despite its not meeting her own criteria, and believing in the objective superiority of her subjective tastes.

And are you taking Michael Marotta as a representative of "Objectivish method"? Does he even consider himself an Objectivist?

Marotta regurgitated a bunch of Objectivish cliches in his bluffing and blustering episode. That's what I was responding to. What he considers himself to be is irrelevant. And if he repeats a bunch of Marxist slogans in the future, then I'll probably call him Karl Junior or something, despite your protestations that he doesn't consider himself to be a Marxist.

Your lumping together "objectively measurable" and being a language again leaves me wondering if you think that to have a "conceptual vocabulary" makes a phenomenon a language. "If, at some point in the future, a 'conceptual vocabulary' of music [were] discovered and identified," that would not therefore mean that music is a language.

No. My point is that to reach the level of a language, one must first have a "conceptual vocabulary." You can have a conceptual vocabulary without having a language, but you can't have a language without a conceptual vocabulary. Rand wanted a "conceptual vocabulary" because it would represent the removal of the obstacle that was preventing Objectivism from claiming that music is a precise and objective language -- one that meets her requirement of communicating objectively intelligible subjects and meanings.

J

[Jonathan]

Brant,

The "narrator" of the song is basically making fun of people who have jobs. The lyrics of the song literally say "I love to work at nothing all day." It's a slacker's anthem.

I always thought that it was a musician's anthem -- that the "narrator" is making fun of people who have "day" jobs rather than playing for a living.

J

[Jules Troy]

You get up every morning

From your 'larm clock's warning

Take the 8:15 into the city

There's a whistle up above

And people pushin', people shovin'

And the girls who try to look pretty

And if your train's on time

You can get to work by nine

And start your slaving job to get your pay

If you ever get annoyed

Look at me I'm self-employed

I love to work at nothing all day

Looks to me that he is looking at the average joe 9-5 guy and saying "damn that sucks"

If it were easy as fishin'

You could be a musician

If you could make sounds loud or mellow

Get a second-hand guitar

Chances are you'll go far

If you get in with the right bunch of fellows

People see you having fun

Just a-lying in the sun

Tell them that you like it this way

It's the work that we avoid

And we're all self-employed

We love to work at nothing all day

And we be

Taking care of business (every day)

Taking care of business (every way)

As opposed to being self employed as a musician, having fun and getting payed stupid money for doing what he loves with some like minded fellows that are also self employed in their band.

[Brant Gaede]

You get up every morning

From your 'larm clock's warning

Take the 8:15 into the city

There's a whistle up above

And people pushin', people shovin'

And the girls who try to look pretty

And if your train's on time

You can get to work by nine

And start your slaving job to get your pay

If you ever get annoyed

Look at me I'm self-employed

I love to work at nothing all day

Looks to me that he is looking at the average joe 9-5 guy and saying "damn that sucks"

If it were easy as fishin'

You could be a musician

If you could make sounds loud or mellow

Get a second-hand guitar

Chances are you'll go far

If you get in with the right bunch of fellows

People see you having fun

Just a-lying in the sun

Tell them that you like it this way

It's the work that we avoid

And we're all self-employed

We love to work at nothing all day

And we be

Taking care of business (every day)

Taking care of business (every way)

As opposed to being self employed as a musician, having fun and getting payed stupid money for doing what he loves with some like minded fellows that are also self employed in their band.

Sigh. I haven't done that since I was a paratrooper at Ft. Bragg. The last time was jumping out of a helicopter at 1000 ft above ground level (AGL). Unlike jumping out of a regular airplane it was like jumping off a building or cliff. I kept wondering when that damn chute would open while my stomach went up into my throat! If I ever did skydiving the feeling would be the same and I'd get use to it, but those were static line jumps. I was completely unprepared for the delayed opening. There was no slipstream to snap the chute open.

That was nothing. My brother once skydived in Europe out of a communist country military airplane using their equipment and survived a double malfunction, main and reserve, finally getting the reserve to deploy just before he would have hit the ground "splat!" My sister did static line jumps but they were afraid to let her skydive. She always screamed on the way down and was known as "the screamer." 50 years ago her finance said no more of that! Three out of four siblings jumped out of airplanes.

--Brant

[Jules Troy]

Ahhhh I loved skydiving when I was younger! My next door neighbour was a jump master and got me into it, really good times!

[dldelancey]

Hmm. I hadn't considered that angle.

[Ellen Stuttle]

Edit: See the POSTSCRIPT in post #67

Jonathan,

I want to start with this section of your reply:

(Btw, I think "schema" or "notation" or "symbolism" would have been a better word choice than "vocabulary," which is borrowed from language and can mislead as to the meaning.)

The problem with those terms is that they would not be quite "objective" enough for Rand's purposes. Her goal was to turn music into a language. She wanted it to be literature. She wanted it to communicate specific meanings, just as words do. "Conceptual vocabulary" is a bigger step than "schema," "notation," or "symbolism" in the direction of establishing a precise and objective language.

Where do you get your statements that Rand wanted "to turn music into a language," "wanted it to be literature," "wanted it to communicate specific meanings, just as words do"?

Are you claiming that she was attempting to deceive when she wrote this?:

"Art and Cognition"

Signet Second Revised Edition

pg. 42

Music cannot tell a story, it cannot deal with concretes, it cannot convey a specific existential phenomenon, such as a peaceful countryside or a stormy sea. The theme of a composition entitled "Spring Song" is not spring, but the emotions which Spring evoked in the composer. Even concepts which, intellectually, belong to a complex level of abstraction, such as "peace," "revolution," "religion," are too specific, too concrete to be expressed in music. All that music can do with such themes is convey the emotions of serenity, or defiance, or exaltation. Lizst's "St. Francis Walking on the Waters" was inspired by a specific legend, but what it conveys is a passionately dedicated struggle - by whom and in the name of what, is for each individual listener to supply.

But Rand did not call music a "language" and wasn't indicating that music is a language in speaking of a "conceptual vocabulary."

I agree that she didn't call music a language, but that was indeed what she was after. Her dream was that music would be decoded/deciphered into a very precise and objective language, and then Rand would be shown to have been correct to have classified music as a legitimate art form even though it did not meet her criteria at the time.

I think you aren't getting what sort of "objective vocabulary" Rand thought would be developed for music: a kind of schema-of-flow graphing the emotions (supposedly) directly produced in all listeners by physiological processes triggered by particular combinations of tones - the baseline emotion to which she said listeners' "sense of life" emotions then respond.

Her desire was to be able to make such a statement as: "The physiologically-triggered emotional sequence of X composition is: sorrow -> tranquility -> hopefulness stirring -> resolve -> striving -> joy of victory."

If she had such a flow-diagram, then (she thought) she could objectively evaluate what a listener's "sense of life" reaction to that flow said about the listener.

Her requirement was that, in order for something to qualify as art, it must communicate objectively intelligible subjects and meanings, just as literature can.

Where are you getting that statement about Rand's requirement? From something she said in a context pertaining to painting?

Ellen

[Ellen Stuttle]

Continuing from the post above.

I haven't misunderstood or misrepresented Rand.

I think you do misunderstand or misrepresent her, since you've frequently cited her as saying that musical tastes are subjective, without indicating that she considered the subjective status only a temporary reflection of lack of knowledge and not due to the nature of music.

[bold emphasis added]

"Art and Cognition"

Signet Second Revised Edition

pg. 46

At present, our understanding of music is confined to the gathering of material, i.e., to the level of descriptive observations. Until it is brought to the stage of conceptualization, we have to treat musical tastes or preferences as a subjective matter - not in the metaphysical, but in the epistemological sense; i.e., not in the sense that these preferences are, in fact, causeless and arbitrary, but in the sense that we do not know their cause.

My point has been that Rand's wishing musical tastes to be only temporarily subjective is irrelevant. The same would be true if she had just as arbitrarily declared that all other subjective tastes would one day be found to be objective due to some future person's discovering "conceptual vocabularies" for preferences in, say, flavors, colors, lucky numbers, fragrances, etc. If she had said that people's preferences in ice cream flavors must be treated as a subjective matter until the time that a conceptual vocabulary of ice cream flavors has been identified, I would be reporting that, today, even by Rand's criteria, preferences in ice cream flavors are, and have always been, subjective. I would be identifying that aspect of her opinion on preferences in ice cream flavors as being the only part that was rational. I would reject her unsupported belief that her every taste must someday be shown to have been objective.

1) Notice what Rand was taking "subjective" to mean - "causeless and arbitrary."

Is it your contention that tastes in fact are "causeless and arbitrary"?

I don't think that that's what you mean by "subjective," but instead something like "personal, and differing from person to person, unlike, say, measurements of the wave length of red light."

I mentioned to you someplace before that I think you're often misunderstood by people who have an Objectivist connotation of "subjective," since they interpret you as saying, in effect, "capricious," which isn't what I think you mean. I question if you actually are as much at logger-heads with Rand on the issue as you believe you are.

2) I think that you miss several boats with this statement:

My point has been that Rand's wishing musical tastes to be only temporarily subjective is irrelevant.

She wasn't saying that musical tastes are "temporarily subjective," not in fact ("metaphysically"). She was saying that they're "subjective" only in the sense that we don't currently know the causes. (She thought that she did know the causes of tastes in other art forms.)

What she thought is not irrelevant to what she thought. It is what she thought. And of course your casting the statement the way you did changes the character of her actual belief.

The way she viewed the situation can be analogized to the nature of atomic structure before and after the development of the Periodic Table of the Elements. Nothing in the nature of atomic structure has been changed by our developing a conceptual framework for categorizing and comparing elements.

Similarly, the way Rand thought of musical processing, the physiological registering of the emotional character of tone combinations already exists. We just don't know what it is.

Ellen

[Ellen Stuttle]

Part three (last).

And are you taking Michael Marotta as a representative of "Objectivish method"? Does he even consider himself an Objectivist?

Marotta regurgitated a bunch of Objectivish cliches in his bluffing and blustering episode. That's what I was responding to. What he considers himself to be is irrelevant. And if he repeats a bunch of Marxist slogans in the future, then I'll probably call him Karl Junior or something, despite your protestations that he doesn't consider himself to be a Marxist.

The only Objectivish cliches I see in Michael Marotta's post #20 are "the analytic-synthetic dichotomy" and "the mind-body dichotomy."

As is his wont, he threw together a bunch of breezy comment, but the idea of music as a kind of language is a trite-ish - and very long-historied - cliche, not, insofar as I've seen, an Objectivish one.

You didn't answer:

Have you seen examples of people who do claim to be Objectivists describing music as a language?

You've done quite a bit of posting on OO, a list I rarely look at. And you'd been posting on SoloHQ before I started to follow that list in 2005.

Do you know of examples from those lists of self-styled Objectivists who claim that music is a kind of language?

Ellen

[Brant Gaede]

Petr Beckmann wrote a book called The Structure of Language which had to do with language commonalities and universals, if I recall correctly. Unfortunately, it's in a box somewhere and I don't have time to dig it out and see if he made any allusions to music, a subject he also had some interest in.

--Brant

[Ellen Stuttle]

POSTSCRIPT to post #63

Jonathan,

It occurs to me to wonder if possibly you're mixing up Rand's views on music with Roger Bissell's.

Roger presents an analogy in Western tonal-drama type music between musical themes and protagonists in a story.

Rand didn't so much as understand the idea of tonal drama, despite Allan Blumenthal's trying numerous times over the years to explain it to her.

She thought of melody as the basis of music, and of music as producing - by direct physiological means as yet unknown - a series of "depersonalized" emotional states in the listener, with the listener's "sense of life" emotions then reacting positively or negatively to the series.

"Art and Cognition"

Signet Second Revised Edition

pg. 42

Music communicates emotions, which one grasps, but does not actually feel; what one feels is a suggestion, a kind of distant, dissociated, depersonalized emotion - until and unless it unites with one's own sense of life. But since the music's emotional content is not communicated conceptually or evoked existentially, one does feel it in some peculiar, subterranean way.

That paragraph comes right after the one I quoted in post #63 which begins "Music cannot tell a story [...]."

Ellen

[Jjeorge]

I originally said this might belong more in psychology than music because it was less about the music itself doing the weirdness, and more the message. The pieces without words (or rather, words I can understand) do not have the same effect on me as the others.

I was thinking it could be something about whatever good there is in religious philosophy, and the abject lack of those things in "orthodox" Objectivism, at least how I've understood it.

Forgiveness, for example, so long as it's not taken too far. (I have never liked the idea of Hitler getting into heaven, even when I was a church-goer.)

Also, what is "Objectivish"? Is this a pun of some sort, or a real (or even made up) "term"?

[Brant Gaede]

Also, what is "Objectivish"? Is this a pun of some sort, or a real (or even made up) "term"?

I think William means talking in a special language common to some purported Objectivists and so acting creating a special culture not quite rational and not quite silly. Other than that you'd have to ask him. He's the only one I know of here (or anywhere[?]) who uses the word although he thinks I must know all about it. My understanding is vague and I'm disinterested anyway, so I've never asked him WTF he means.

--Brant

[Brant Gaede]

Forgiveness, for example, so long as it's not taken too far. (I have never liked the idea of Hitler getting into heaven, even when I was a church-goer.)

WHO on God's green Earth ever had the idea Hitler would go to heaven? (You know--the Hitler we all know and love.)

--Brant

Hell!--Hell is for Hitler! If it isn't there is no hell except hell on Earth

[william.scherk]

Also, what is "Objectivish"? Is this a pun of some sort, or a real (or even made up) "term"?

I think William means talking in a special language common to some purported Objectivists and so acting creating a special culture not quite rational and not quite silly. Other than that you'd have to ask him. He's the only one I know of here (or anywhere[?]) who uses the word although he thinks I must know all about it. My understanding is vague and I'm disinterested anyway, so I've never asked him WTF he means.

I took the 'Objectivish' term from Joe Maurone some years back. It has been used by a number of folks here and there, including Jonathan in this thread. What the F does it mean? Well, an Objectivish person would be someone who is sort-of Objectivist, almost Objective-ist, or Objective-ish to some degree. It's a sloppy neologism that for me covers those who do not call themselves Objectivist but who profess some Objectivist values and who adhere to an Objectivist-ish philosophy.

So, the term is useful for marking out an uneasy aggregate of folks who are influenced by or deeply affected by Objective-ist thought -- without being formally attached to Ayn Rand's philosophy.

Here's a small excerpt from Robert Tracinski on the term:

Everyone agrees that we need a way to designate Objectivism as Ayn Rand presented it, unabridged and unaltered—sola scriptura, so to speak. We also agree that there has to be room to present theories that cover things Ayn Rand didn’t write about, in a way that are consistent with her philosophy. (There was less agreement about offering corrections to Ayn Rand’s views on minor philosophical issues that don’t invalidate the fundamental ideas.) Finally, we all acknowledge that there are theories that are going to pop up that retain major elements distinctive to Ayn Rand’s philosophy, so they can be said to be vaguely of an Objectivist persuasion, but which clearly depart in some significant way from the fundamentals. The most popular proposal was to call these “Objectivish.” I happen to prefer Objectivististic, but I’ll grant that it’s harder to pronounce.

There was also a small intense scuffle between Binswangerites and Speicherists back in 2007. The term 'Objectivish' was laid on the Ayn Rand Fans forum by Robert Mayhew, in a snippy posting to the Binswanger list. Much sad hilarity ensued.

Mayhew's disdainful mention: "Unfortunately, I'm reluctant to discuss these issues further. My essay is being "discussed" on a dubious Objectivish internet forum"

Edited November 7, 2014 by william.scherk

[moralist]

Also, what is "Objectivish"? Is this a pun of some sort, or a real (or even made up) "term"?

It's a Jewish Objectivist.

Greg

[Jonathan]

I think you aren't getting what sort of "objective vocabulary" Rand thought would be developed for music: a kind of schema-of-flow graphing the emotions (supposedly) directly produced in all listeners by physiological processes triggered by particular combinations of tones - the baseline emotion to which she said listeners' "sense of life" emotions then respond.

Her desire was to be able to make such a statement as: "The physiologically-triggered emotional sequence of X composition is: sorrow -> tranquility -> hopefulness stirring -> resolve -> striving -> joy of victory."

The above is what I mean by saying that Rand expected a "language" of music to be discovered. She was expecting that music would translate into a language of emotions, and series of something akin to emotional "words" or "sentences" which would be combined to form a story, much like you did above. She believed that her personal, emotional interpretations of various sections of music would be shown to be the objectively correct interpretations, and that any other differing interpretations would be wrong. Totally, viciously, reality-denyingly wrong, and therefore evil.

Let me give some random chords as an example: Dm + A7 + E, might objectively equal, say, "sorrow." If so, it would be the objective-emotion-language equivalent of saying the word "sorrow." If you or I then took Dm + A7 + E to mean "serene" or "contemplative," we would be as wrong -- and as evil -- as if we had said that "sorrow" means "serene" or "contemplative."

Jonathan, on 04 Nov 2014 - 8:31 PM, said:

Her requirement was that, in order for something to qualify as art, it must communicate objectively intelligible subjects and meanings, just as literature can.

Where are you getting that statement about Rand's requirement? From something she said in a context pertaining to painting?

It wasn't just in the context of painting.

Rand said, "As a re-creation of reality, a work of art has to be representational; its freedom of stylization is limited by the requirement of intelligibility; if it does not present an intelligible subject, it ceases to be art."

She was talking about the entire category of art, not just visual art. She said "art," not "visual art."

Also remember that Rand prided herself on thinking in principles. It would be anti-principle for her to have taken the position that only visual art must present intelligible subjects and meanings. It would be highly irrational to arbitrarily impose that requirement on one or two art forms but not on others.

So, no, her statement isn't just about abstract visual art, but about all works of art. Her position was that anything which does not present objectively intelligible subjects and meanings "ceases to be art" (a better way of saying it would have been that it "does not quality as art," not that it "ceases to be art," since it never would have been art by her criteria in the first place and therefore couldn't "cease" to be it).

1) Notice what Rand was taking "subjective" to mean - "causeless and arbitrary."

Is it your contention that tastes in fact are "causeless and arbitrary"?

I don't think that that's what you mean by "subjective," but instead something like "personal, and differing from person to person, unlike, say, measurements of the wave length of red light."

I mentioned to you someplace before that I think you're often misunderstood by people who have an Objectivist connotation of "subjective," since they interpret you as saying, in effect, "capricious," which isn't what I think you mean. I question if you actually are as much at logger-heads with Rand on the issue as you believe you are.

"Causeless and arbitrary" is not Rand's rational definition or usage of "subjective," but rather her highly emotional, irrational misidentification of the term. I think she may have actually had several definitions or meanings of "subjective," and most of them are just nonsensical outbursts. In other words, she had a lot of what MSK calls "normative before cognitive" ("evaluating before you have correctly identified") comments about the term "subjective," and she very rarely offered a reasonable identification of the term's meaning.

Her calm, rational identification of "subjective" was that it meant any content that is contributed to a judgment by a man's individual consciousness, and which cannot be proven to be inherent in the object.

Subjectivity is the state in which "a man cannot tell clearly, neither to himself nor to others — and therefore, cannot prove — which aspects of his experience are inherent in the object and which are contributed by his own consciousness."

That is what "subjective" means. That's the standard usage, and it represents Rand's usage at her most rational. Her comments about the "causeless and arbitrary" are nothing but her being philosophically frantic.

The way she viewed the situation can be analogized to the nature of atomic structure before and after the development of the Periodic Table of the Elements. Nothing in the nature of atomic structure has been changed by our developing a conceptual framework for categorizing and comparing elements.

Similarly, the way Rand thought of musical processing, the physiological registering of the emotional character of tone combinations already exists. We just don't know what it is.

The problem is that Rand's thoughts on musical processing don't take into account the fact that people have wildly differing experiences of which emotions any piece of music might evoke. The nature of music is that it does not evoke the same emotional responses in everyone. Her ignoring that fact would be like trying to come up with a table of elements which was based on the fact that she arbitrarily didn't like or want to acknowledge gases or rare earth elements. Her desired "conceptual vocabulary" would necessarily clash with the emotional responses of millions of people. It would necessarily have to arbitrarily deny the validity of their emotions. If effect, it would declare that only the content contributed by Rand's consciousness when listening to music (and those whose experiences coincided identically with hers) would count as not being contributed by any individual consciousnesses. Arbitrary, solipsistic, and laughably arrogant.

A big problem with Rand is that she didn't really research anything, but put way too much confidence into the act of introspection. She had no way of knowing what was true of others and the emotions that music evoked in them. And she didn't care to investigate it. She began with the assumption of her own superiority and was only interested in pursuing and supporting that presumption. She made zero effort to test her theory against reality. I think that what was true of her judgments of abstract art were probably true of her approach to music: If, after a "conceptual vocabulary" had been put forth to her satisfaction, someone had claimed to experience in music what she did not, she would have instantly rejected that person's claims, and then vilified him as a destroyer of man's consciousness, or whatever.

You've done quite a bit of posting on OO, a list I rarely look at. And you'd been posting on SoloHQ before I started to follow that list in 2005.

Do you know of examples from those lists of self-styled Objectivists who claim that music is a kind of language?

I don't have examples that I could link to quickly. But, yes, I've seen Objectivishistic people assert that music is a type of language of emotions. Like Rand, they believe that each individual piece of music will be shown to objectively mean what they currently take it to mean -- the emotions that they experience while listening to music must someday be shown to be the objectively right emotions.

They think that it is highly unlikely that they could be wrong in their tastes, and that they would therefore have to be the ones who would have to reevaluate their interpretations of music and their senses of life. But, there actually have been a few people over on OO who have said that they would be willing -- if not eager -- to alter their musical tastes in order to comply with the future "objective vocabulary." Pathetic.

J

[Jonathan]

I originally said this might belong more in psychology than music because it was less about the music itself doing the weirdness, and more the message. The pieces without words (or rather, words I can understand) do not have the same effect on me as the others.

I was thinking it could be something about whatever good there is in religious philosophy, and the abject lack of those things in "orthodox" Objectivism, at least how I've understood it.

Forgiveness, for example, so long as it's not taken too far. (I have never liked the idea of Hitler getting into heaven, even when I was a church-goer.)

Also, what is "Objectivish"? Is this a pun of some sort, or a real (or even made up) "term"?

Objectivish is just a way of referring to someone who has an interest in Objectivism, and appears to agree with some of it, but doesn't call himself an "Objectivist."

But now I'm going to switch to a new term, because even though I called Marotta "Objectivish," Ellen is taking issue with it and reminding me that Marotta is not an Objectivist, even though I specifically avoided calling him one. So, since "Objectivish" now equals "Objectivist," I'm going to use "Objectivishistic" from now on.

J

[Brant Gaede]

"Objectivishistic"? You must have a key programmed to put up the entire word by hitting it once.

I prefer "Objectivishistically" because it's longer, therefore more impressive to hoi intellectual polloi.

It helps if no one else knows WTF we are talking about.

--Brant