Objectivist Esthetics, R.I.P.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

7 minutes ago, Jonathan said:

Rand saw a part of a galaxy, and tried to project its features and qualities onto the entire universe of art.

Jonathan,

I, also, contend she did that a lot throughout her entire philosophy. Not all of it, but in certain parts.

I've been talking about this for years. I generally call it a problem of scope. This does not take away from some breathtaking insights she came up with, but I believe her imposition of the universality of some ideas where they do not fit is one of the reasons intellectuals who are experts in other fields often reject her ideas. In order to accept her ideas on her terms, they have to disavow the fundaments of everything they have learned, known and discovered and, essentially, declare they have been living an intellectual lie their entire lives.

I don't know many people who have worked honestly and worked hard all their lives who are willing to do that. Since Rand could get ugly, throwing out terms like swamp and so on, it was easy for them to respond in kind.

Of course, there are real Rand-haters, too, for the reasons she gave. But once again, this hostility is not due to a universal cause of epistemological or moral corruption as she constantly claimed and implied.

I see nothing wrong with acknowledging this and still admiring Rand for all the right reasons.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

22 minutes ago, Jonathan said:

In the second image, I see suns and stars.

Jonathan,

Maybe. It makes sense with the sun and star worship of primitive peoples.

I also see possible icons for identifying the group. Maybe even images to indicate status. Or signs as a memory jog for stories.

And, believe it or not, some abstract forms probably for no other reason than the painter thought they were cool.

 

Notice that this abstract "cool" element is part of the depictions of sun and stars, if that is what they are. Rand would not use the word, "cool," though. She would say "stylized."

 

Michael

 

[Jonathan]

43 minutes ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Jonathan,

I, also, contend she did that a lot throughout her entire philosophy. Not all of it, but in certain parts.

I've been talking about this for years. I generally call it a problem of scope. This does not take away from some breathtaking insights she came up with, but I believe her imposition of the universality of some ideas where they do not fit is one of the reasons intellectuals who are experts in other fields often reject her ideas. In order to accept her ideas on her terms, they have to disavow the fundaments of everything they have learned, known and discovered and, essentially, declare they have been living an intellectual lie their entire lives.

I don't know many people who have worked honestly and worked hard all their lives who are willing to do that. Since Rand could get ugly, throwing out terms like swamp and so on, it was easy for them to respond in kind.

Of course, there are real Rand-haters, too, for the reasons she gave. But once again, this hostility is not due to a universal cause of epistemological or moral corruption as she constantly claimed and implied.

I see nothing wrong with acknowledging this and still admiring Rand for all the right reasons.

Michael

I agree. The old gal was brilliant. She was creative and original. But she also bluffed now and then, was a bit too full of herself, and overconfident in areas where she actually knew little. She didn't always adhere to the tenets of her own philosophy, especially in the realm of aesthetics, and seems to have really wanted, or needed, to believe that she had solved all of the philosophical problems, that her philosophy was fully integrated and complete, with no holes, contradictions or errors.

I like the idea of cleaning up the areas where she made a mess. People like Tony have the opposite view. They want to hide and deny the mess and allow it to contaminate everything else.

[Jon Letendre]

On 12/23/2017 at 1:11 PM, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

 

 

Michael, about spiritual fuel, I think in context I can see how a primitive person would find fuel in it. If I had recently escaped the city where the rulers bleed people out atop the great stone temple, if I hadn’t had water in two days or food in ten, if I was coughing blood and had an oozing lump the size of my fist on my face, then, when I got to the cave with all those hands on the wall I am certain I would get the message.

Now, for the second image, as someone who has picked up round rocks while walking river bottoms and etched them with other rocks, I can say I recognize the large round object in the second picture. You a draw straight line, maximal length. (That’s an equator.) Then you draw straight lines perpendicular to the first one. They meet at two places on the rock. (The poles.) The depicted object is radiating, so it’s the sun. The lines indicate the notion that it could be a sphere rather than a disk.

And then I would lose my concentration and wonder if there could be women in this cave. See? The first painting is working already!

[Jonathan]

45 minutes ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Jonathan,

Maybe. It makes sense with the sun and star worship of primitive peoples.

I also see possible icons for identifying the group. Maybe even images to indicate status. Or signs as a memory jog for stories.

And, believe it or not, some abstract forms probably for no other reason than the painter thought they were cool.

 

Notice that this abstract "cool" element is part of the depictions of sun and stars, if that is what they are. Rand would not use the word, "cool," though. She would say "stylized."

 

Michael

 

Sure, and it's not just abstract forms that artists include because they're "cool." The same is true of representational shapes. And musical phrases. Artists in reality generally don't follow the rules that Rand made up.

Of course, she and her followers have a ready response to that, which is that the artist followed her rules whether he knew it or not.

And that type of response is an act of throwing falsifiability out the window, which puts the theory in the realm of pseudo-science/pseudo-philosophy.

[Jonathan]

18 minutes ago, Jon Letendre said:

If I had recently escaped the city where the rulers bleed people out atop the great stone temple, if I hadn’t had water in two days or food in ten, if I was coughing blood and had an oozing lump the size of my fist on my face, then, when I got to the cave with all those hands on the wall I am certain I would get the message.

"I am Jaguar Paw, son of Flint Sky. My Father hunted this forest before me. My name is Jaguar Paw. I am a hunter. This is my forest. And my sons will hunt it with their sons after I am gone."

[anthony]

22 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Tony,

I'm still curious about something here. This was your response:

In other words, you didn't address my question. You sidestepped it by "turning it back to me."

I'm not trying to be part of the back-and-forth raging right now , but I have a serious aesthetic question. 

Unfortunately, it takes a bit of projecting into the minds of others to grok and people interested in Objectivism are generally horribly incompetent at that (even unwilling), but reality is what it is and this is a requirement to get it right when looking at what ancient people have done.

Rand said the human need for art was psychological. It was a concretization of "metaphysical value judgments" and its purpose was to give the human spirit (i.e., conscious mind in her view) fuel to carry on carrying on. Essentially, for Rand, art is food.

Somehow the hands images--which in your view belong to art because it's easy to correspond the images to actual hands--are supposed to provide that fuel. When I try to project my mind into the mind of a group of primitive human beings at the time that image was made, I can't for the life of me come to anything resembling spiritual fuel. I can imagine religious kinds of connections (say, the afterlife in the underworld and dead people consigned there putting their hands on the barrier between the underworld and normal reality trying to get out or something like that), but I can't imagine a bunch of hands inspiring the primitive people to greatness or justifying their evasions or Randian things like that.

And then we come to the primitive abstract images.

Why would primitives do that?

Spiritual fuel? It doesn't make any sense. And, from a Randian perspective, considering the difficulty and effort involved in producing those images, the primitives would have to engage in such artistic efforts on purpose for a reason. So what is that reason? Why abstract images? What psychological need did it serve in primitive human beings?

After all the study I have done, I have my own ideas about this, but they are nowhere near Rand's concepts of art and decoration.

Once again, I hold that Rand wasn't wrong, but her concept of art is a smaller abstraction in a wider category, meaning it is a member (among many) of the wider abstraction called art. It pertains to a type of art practiced in parts of the relatively modern civilized world and only that.

The trouble starts when one tries to apply her concepts of art and decoration to situations where they don't work. Then come the rationalizations and blank-outs and sidesteps--which I call trying to deduce reality from a principle rather than observing what reality is (i.e., in this case, observing what people have done with art starting way back in prehistoric antiquity and trying to understand the context of the respective times) and arriving at principles from that through induction.

Michael

Michael, there's more to think about there and answer, but to point out one thing: Not all - in fact, not much, realist art - is "spiritual fuel" by Rand's reckoning (I'm not so uncompromising, but essentially agree). If we can ever rise past the "identity" of art (what it is, of it containing at least one perceivable entity - and is not: anything else which doesn't) - we may eventually debate the genus art, and the "value" certain species of realism have or have not - in their many degrees. Rand primarily sections 'Art' into Naturalist contra Romantic Realist, as you know. And Romanticism, also, into combinations and sub-categories. So one might see pictures which are affirmative of man's life/mind/volition in one way, but lacking or opposing some of those in another. In fiction, the main individual might volitionally build and demonstrate strong character qualities, but not realise his (volitional) goals - since reality can't be overcome, finally. We see many cases of this mixed premise in fiction, and while less evidently, in painting. The purest version to her clearly, is both together - the quite rare example of a depiction of man as " a being of volitional consciousness", without contradiction, i.e.,of character and achievement (being and action) highly possible to mankind. What we are left with, is there's not a preponderance of spiritual fuel from art, but it can certainly be partially found in subtle elements from many works here and there, to my mind.

I'd estimate the "Hands" as (Realist-)Naturalist, but with an attractive "sense of life". ( I sometimes like "combinations". I could probably get too much of and may "overdose" on the perfection/idealism of the human figure of Greco-Roman statues -  while finding pleasure and thought-provocation in e.g. Rodin's The Thinker--which is picked out for an undeserved critical reception in Oi'st circles, I read some place. There is also some great Naturalist art and literature available, Rand wrote too, and I believe it's idiotic to deny oneself the whole expanse of artistry out there. It is all grist for the conceptual and emotional mill).

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

1 hour ago, anthony said:

Not all - in fact, not much, realist art - is "spiritual fuel" by Rand's reckoning (I'm not so uncompromising, but essentially agree).

Tony,

This caused a doubt in me about the "fuel" metaphor, so I checked.

(Apropos, in the quote below, notice that most art with mixed premises contain some spiritual fuel for Rand. At least, given what she just wrote before the two mixed premises paragraphs, it is reasonable to infer this. Mostly imitative, not creative art is devoid of such fuel for her. And the rest I presume is total aesthetic trash by people without a smidgen of talent.)

From "Art and Sense of Life" in The Romantic Manifesto (my bold of words relevant to this discussion):

Quote

Since a rational man's ambition is unlimited, since his pursuit and achievement of values is a lifelong process—and the higher the values, the harder the struggle—he needs a moment, an hour or some period of time in which he can experience the sense of his completed task, the sense of living in a universe where his values have been successfully achieved. It is like a moment of rest, a moment to gain fuel to move farther. Art gives him that fuel; the pleasure of contemplating the objectified reality of one's own sense of life is the pleasure of feeling what it would be like to live in one's ideal world.

"The importance of that experience is not in what man learns from it, but in that he experiences it. The fuel is not a theoretical principle, not a didactic 'message,' but the life-giving fact of experiencing a moment of metaphysical joy—a moment of love for existence." (See Chapter 11.)

The same principle applies to an irrational man, though in different terms, according to his different views and responses. For an irrational man, the concretized projection of his malevolent sense of life serves, not as fuel, and inspiration to move forward, but as permission to stand still: it declares that values are unattainable, that the struggle is futile, that fear, guilt, pain and failure are mankind's predestined end—and that he couldn't help it. Or, on a lower level of irrationality, the concretized projection of a malignant sense of life provides a man with an image of triumphant malice, of hatred for existence, of vengeance against life's best exponents, of the defeat and destruction of all human values; his kind of art gives him a moment's illusion that he is right—that evil is metaphysically potent.

Art is man's metaphysical mirror; what a rational man seeks to see in that mirror is a salute; what an irrational man seeks to see is a justification—even if only a justification of his depravity, as a last convulsion of his betrayed self-esteem.

Between these two extremes, there lies the immense continuum of men of mixed premises—whose sense of life holds unresolved, precariously balanced or openly contradictory elements of reason and unreason—and works of art that reflect these mixtures. Since art is the product of philosophy (and mankind's philosophy is tragically mixed), most of the world's art, including some of its greatest examples, falls into this category.

The truth or falsehood of a given artist's philosophy as such, is not an esthetic matter; it may affect a given viewer's enjoyment of his work, but it does not negate its esthetic merit. Some sort of philosophical meaning, however, some implicit view of life, is a necessary element of a work of art. The absence of any metaphysical values whatever, i.e., a gray, uncommitted, passively indeterminate sense of life, results in a soul without fuel, motor or voice, and renders a man impotent in the field of art. Bad art is, predominantly, the product of imitation, of secondhand copying, not of creative expression.

I misremembered this. I was using "spiritual fuel" for both romantic inspiration and bad sense of life inspiration.

But Rand set up "[spiritual] fuel" versus "permission" and "justification" as extreme opposites for these poles.

Granted, all metaphors have limitations of use, but I'm not so sure I like this way of counterpointing a metaphor against an anthropomorphic authoritative order from an inanimate object.

It doesn't matter. My point still remains.

What "permission" or "justification" to stand still is imparted by the primitive abstract figures to primitive human beings?

And if this (or some of it) is fruit of "mixed premises," what is the fuel component?

Michael

[anthony]

On 1/5/2018 at 9:15 PM, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Jonathan,

Maybe. It makes sense with the sun and star worship of primitive peoples.

I also see possible icons for identifying the group. Maybe even images to indicate status. Or signs as a memory jog for stories.

And, believe it or not, some abstract forms probably for no other reason than the painter thought they were cool.

 

Notice that this abstract "cool" element is part of the depictions of sun and stars, if that is what they are. Rand would not use the word, "cool," though. She would say "stylized."

 

Michael

 

Fundamentally, this "cave art" isn't art. First, it's a photographic reproduction(which we should bear in mind, when seeing anything photographed of art (or not art) which is 3-dimensional: sculpture, buildings, etc. especially) and therefore has been rendered 'best' through a photographer's mind and his choice of light, angle of view, etc. He has a lot of control over the end result. Minor point, but viewers often are taken in). Then, most significantly, the "signs" are definitely depictions of symbolic referents to reality, symbols, but not depictions of the real entities themselves. "Second stage" derivation, so to speak. (Where the "hands" picture differs, in its direct realism). Third, and minor, the picture lacks any compositional component, arrangement, between its entities. I think one has to be careful not to project/imagine intent where there wasn't, of what may only be some ancient man's writings or language or records, or something. Valuable material, but for scientific purposes. 

[anthony]

23 hours ago, regi said:

Really?

Then, what is it? A fiction?

"A concept is a mental integration of two or more units which are isolated by a process of abstraction and united by a specific definition". (The Psycho-Epistemology of Art, TRM). Similarly,

"A concept is a mental integration of two or more units possessing the same distinguishing characteristics, with their particular measurement omitted". (Concept Formation, ItOE)

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

42 minutes ago, anthony said:

Fundamentally, this "cave art" isn't art.

Tony,

In other words, are you postulating that cave people were incapable of creating art?

Or they were, just in this particular case, that they were creating "modern art" instead?

 

How do you square that with art serving the following human need according to Rand? (Rand, "Art and Cognition" from The Romantic Manifesto):

Quote

Man’s profound need of art lies in the fact that his cognitive faculty is conceptual...

So when do you propose that primitive peoples developed enough conceptual cognitive faculty in order for this profound need to emerge (or drop from the skies like lightening) in humans? Obviously, in this Randian view of art, primitive peoples did not have such a profound need...

Or did they?

Michael

[anthony]

31 minutes ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Tony,

In other words, are you postulating that cave people were incapable of creating art?

Or they were, just in this particular case, that they were creating "modern art" instead?

 

How do you square that with art serving the following human need according to Rand? (Rand, "Art and Cognition" from The Romantic Manifesto):

So when do you propose that primitive peoples developed enough conceptual cognitive faculty in order for this profound need to emerge (or drop from the skies like lightening) in humans? Obviously, in this Randian view of art, primitive peoples did not have such a profound need...

Or did they?

Michael

Michael, no, I am referring to one instance of "cave art" -the collection of symbols. I excuse you not knowing what I have said earlier on here or somewhere else on OL about early paintings. You couldn't have read it all!

Much of what I have seen of cave art, their contents of animals, people and hunters, *identifiably*, is of course, art.  Reality remade to the artist's personal life-view, as simply done as their art materials/abilities allowed them . I have said some pictures can easily be taken as a celebration of their hard existence, pride in their (identifiable)tools and weapons and reverence for the animals' lives which supported them. Each painting may be a visual story of a hunt and someone's skill and bravery, for all we know.

Not everything painted on canvas or a rock wall is to be assumed as "art", however.

[anthony]

On 1/5/2018 at 5:55 PM, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

 

And then we come to the primitive abstract images.

Why would primitives do that?

Spiritual fuel? It doesn't make any sense. And, from a Randian perspective, considering the difficulty and effort involved in producing those images, the primitives would have to engage in such artistic efforts on purpose for a reason. So what is that reason? Why abstract images? What psychological need did it serve in primitive human beings?

 

Michael

 

Michael, why "...abstract images"? The abstracting took place in the artist's mind - perception, selection, value-importance - but the image is a concrete.

I am and was quite happy to accept those cave paintings were viewed as "spiritual food" - for the people of the time.

[Brant Gaede]

5 minutes ago, anthony said:

Michael, why "...abstract images"? The abstracting took place in the artist's mind - perception, selection, value-importance - but the image is a concrete.

I am quite happy to accept those cave paintings were viewed as "spiritual food" - for the people of the time.

And not for you?

--Brant

[Brant Gaede]

37 minutes ago, anthony said:

Michael, no, I am referring to one instance of "cave art" -the collection of symbols. I excuse you not knowing what I have said earlier on here or somewhere else on OL about early paintings. You couldn't have read it all!

Much of what I have seen of cave art, their contents of animals, people and hunters, *identifiably*, is of course, art.  Reality remade to the artist's personal life-view, as simply done as their art materials/abilities allowed them . I have said some pictures can easily be taken as a celebration of their hard existence, pride in their (identifiable)tools and weapons and reverence for the animals' lives which supported them. Each painting may be a visual story of a hunt and someone's skill and bravery, for all we know.

Not everything painted on canvas or a rock wall is to be assumed as "art", however.

Art? Not art? You need to get on first base first.

--Brant

[anthony]

5 minutes ago, Brant Gaede said:

And not for you?

--Brant

Let's just say, I need a bit more than they did! Existence is not as simple now.

[anthony]

6 minutes ago, Brant Gaede said:

Art? Not art? You need to get on first base first.

--Brant

As a few here assert. And is why no one gets to third.

[Brant Gaede]

5 minutes ago, anthony said:

Let's just say, I need a bit more than they did! Existence is not as simple now.

You don't know what they needed that way and how much or anything about the simplicity of their existence relative to ours, only that it's different I'm many ways.

--Brant

ideological thinking generates its own form of knowledge which may coincidentally be sometimes factual

[anthony]

39 minutes ago, Brant Gaede said:

You don't know what they needed that way and how much or anything about the simplicity of their existence relative to ours, only that it's different I'm many ways.

--Brant

ideological thinking generates its own form of knowledge which may coincidentally be sometimes factual

Wouldn't you say it was harder then than now? Ideological thinking follows the realities, and one doesn't have to guess, only to reverse extrapolate, that existence was precarious, brutal and short for them. I do know this.

[Jonathan]

2 hours ago, anthony said:

"A concept is a mental integration of two or more units which are isolated by a process of abstraction and united by a specific definition". (The Psycho-Epistemology of Art, TRM). Similarly,

"A concept is a mental integration of two or more units possessing the same distinguishing characteristics, with their particular measurement omitted". (Concept Formation, ItOE)

Tony has apparently already lost track of what the conversation that he's having is about.

He had written that a concept is not a fact. Regi responded by asking, "Really? Then, what is it? A fiction?" Right there is where Tony got lost, apparently decided that Regi was seeking instruction from him, and therefore Tony realized that it was a perfect opportunity to expose Regi to some information that would be new to him via quoting Rand on the topic of "concepts."

You've probably heard the term "mansplaining":

"Mansplaining is a blend of the word man and the informal form splaining...Lily Rothman of The Atlantic defines it as "explaining without regard to the fact that the explainee knows more than the explainer, often done by a man to a woman",^[5] and feminist author and essayist Rebecca Solnit ascribes the phenomenon to a combination of "overconfidence and cluelessness".^[6]"

It's time for a new concept (just so you know, a concept is a "mental integration of two or more units which are isolated by a process of abstraction and united by a specific definition."):

Randsplaining. It's when a Tony, or any of the kids at OO or SOLOP, displays the combination of overconfidence and cluelessness in parroting Rand's theories to people who know much more than the idiot explainer.

J

[anthony]

I don't know where or from whom J picked up this knowledge (it is not his own) but I suggest he does not interrupt a discussion, nor speak for anyone else. "A mental integration" is epistemological. "A fact" is metaphysical. "A unit" connects them, and there must be a minimum of two units to comprise a concept. Therefore, a concept is not "a fact". What exists are things, not units, but one "regards" things as units for conceptual purposes..

The ability to regard entities as units is man’s distinctive method of cognition, which other living species are unable to follow.

A unit is an existent regarded as a separate member of a group of two or more similar members. (Two stones are two units; so are two square feet of ground, if regarded as distinct parts of a continuous stretch of ground.) Note that the concept “unit” involves an act of consciousness (a selective focus, a certain way of regarding things), but that it is not an arbitrary creation of consciousness: it is a method of identification or classification according to the attributes which a consciousness observes in reality. This method permits any number of classifications and cross-classifications: one may classify things according to their shape or color or weight or size or atomic structure; but the criterion of classification is not invented, it is perceived in reality. Thus the concept “unit” is a bridge between metaphysics and epistemology: units do not exist qua units, what exists are things, but units are things viewed by a consciousness in certain existing relationships.

“Cognition and Measurement,”
Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology,

[Jonathan]

^ Randsplaining.

[regi]

On 1/6/2018 at 11:00 AM, anthony said:

A concept is a mental integration of two or more units which are isolated by a process of abstraction and united by a specific definition". (The Psycho-Epistemology of Art, TRM). Similarly,

Hi Anthony,

I am totally familiar with Rand's definition of concepts, which happens to be wrong but close. If you are interested in a correct epistemology, please see the articles, "Knowledge," and, "Concepts--Simple."

A fact is whatever acutally is. If someone has a concept, that concept is a fact which actually exists. It is not a metaphysical fact, it is a psychological fact. Rand did get that right.

"Things of human origin (whether physical or psychological) may be designated as 'man-made facts'--as distinguished from the metaphysically given facts." [Philosophy: Who Needs It, “The Metaphysical Versus the Man-Made”]

Randy

[regi]

21 hours ago, Jonathan said:

Randsplaining. It's when a Tony, or any of the kids at OO or SOLOP, displays the combination of overconfidence and cluelessness in parroting Rand's theories to people who know much more than the idiot explainer.

Oh that's perfect. You have definitely identified a good and useful concept.

Thanks, Johathan,

Randy

[regi]

20 hours ago, anthony said:

"A fact" is metaphysical.

Well, we already know Rand disagrees with that.

20 hours ago, anthony said:

Thus the concept “unit” is a bridge between metaphysics and epistemology: units do not exist qua units, what exists are things, but units are things viewed by a consciousness in certain existing relationships.

If you were right, of course, the concept, "unit," would not be a fact because it is not metaphysical. Actually, "units do not exist qua units, what exists are things, but units are things viewed by a consciousness in certain existing relationships," is one of most meaningless statements Rand ever wrote. It's nonsense.

Randy