A Couple of Astract Paintings--Thoughts?

[Jonathan]

Oh, a few things could be said, despite them being too small to include telling details...

To begin with, there is a difference between a work done with contemplation in mind and one done as a recorder - for despite the advent of photography to remove the recorder mode which inflicted artists from millenia ago, many artists never grasped the freedom gained and only intuited the contemplation in their preferences of what was wished to be painted...

Which artists are you talking about? Could you be specific about which ones avoided contemplation and acted as mere recorders?

Given that, tho, one can note the top left and bottom left are formal floral arrangements, which in itself reflect a consensus of humanity being important, and that structure or orderliness is an attribute consequence....

What about the orderliness of very structured abstract paintings? Are you not capable of seeing their carefully selected proportions, color compositions, contrasts and dramas, etc.?

the same can be said of the second down and the fourth, as these, too, reflect humanity's presence - the one being a garden and the other cultivated roses, and indeed the garden one evokes the emotion

It evokes the emotion to whom? To you? And therefore the emotion should be treated as if it is objective or universal?

of gaiety and festive delight, tho not too much as the cropped universe only alludes to humanity by what it is and not by an overtness... the impressionist forest scene, however, involves nothing human - its universe is 'manless', yet even here it shows a point of upliftedness with the solo tree in the clearing, like a ballerina pirouetting on the floor, despite the subdued quietedness possibly pointing to the lessening of optimism as fall is preferred to, say, spring... the fall leaves, full of blemishes and deliberately so close cropped, have the same sense of decay...

The above is a series of emotional responses, subjective interpretations, and stream-of-consciousness associations. It sounds like an Objectivist-theory-inspired version of tea-leaf reading.

The ones on the right leave little emotion other than the so-called psychological ones of color responses

They leave little emotion to whom? To you? It sounds as if you're proposing that your personal level of emotional sensitivity should be the standard by which things are determined to be art or not, and which things should be judged to be good or bad art. How would we determine that your artistic tastes and emotional sensitivities are worthy of being the standard, versus determining that you're lacking in sensitivity and are emotionally and aesthetically inept?

best viewed in the one across from the leaves - the brightness of a drunken festivity - and the Pollock, bleary dismalness of low chroma best suited as a rug decorative but nothing more [unless perhaps in a psychiatrist office as a case study], or the second down as perhaps a tile design... indeed, the tree on the left side is so abstracted and so emphasizing chaos it might as well be a pattern for use too...

Again, purely subjective opinions.

And, once again, you didn't address the problems that music and architecture present to your views on art. Are they valid art forms because you have feelings about them despite their not containing the direct, objectively identifiable likenesses of things from reality that you require in other art forms?

J

Edited November 23, 2008 by Jonathan

[kiaer.ts]

In other places I discussed the values I have gotten from abstract artists, but I wonder what others value about it, if at all. Here is a Kline and a Kandinsky, but if you would like to discuss some other abstract piece, by all means post it and do so. And, if you want to compare it to representational work, for clarity, that would also be welcomed.

I promise to be friendly and considerate--I am just curious about how others see abstract art.

Well, to answer Michael's original question...

If my ten year old child had painted the black and white painting, I would be concerned, and check to see whether he was torturing animals or cutting himself. Had he painted the color painting, I would have said "you look like you had fun playing with the paint, dear."

But if I were decorating my living room, there are no circumstances under which I would use the color painting. I might, if there were several other similar pieces, and I were decorating with wrought iron and polar bear fur, and the pieces were free, use the black and white paintings as decorations, somewhat in the way that gangstarappahs use Chinese characters for tattoos. I would never hang just that one painting, aside from personal dislike, since people might think it actually had some significance, like a tattooed teardrop, which indicates one has killed a man. Rather, I might (again, depending on the decor) hang several of them to add an accent to otherwise bare white walls.

How do they make me feel? The colored painting simply evokes pity at incompetance. The black and white painting needs a context. As a Rohrschach it is disturbing. It looks like the right corner of a leering mouth, crossed by scars that look like railroad tracks. Hung in a group of similar objects in an appropriate minimalist setting it could evoke Oriental calligraphy, but I wouldn't pay to provide that setting.

[anonrobt]

Oh, a few things could be said, despite them being too small to include telling details...

To begin with, there is a difference between a work done with contemplation in mind and one done as a recorder - for despite the advent of photography to remove the recorder mode which inflicted artists from millenia ago, many artists never grasped the freedom gained and only intuited the contemplation in their preferences of what was wished to be painted...

Which artists are you talking about? Could you be specific about which ones avoided contemplation and acted as mere recorders?

Given that, tho, one can note the top left and bottom left are formal floral arrangements, which in itself reflect a consensus of humanity being important, and that structure or orderliness is an attribute consequence....

What about the orderliness of very structured abstract paintings? Are you not capable of seeing their carefully selected proportions, color compositions, contrasts and dramas, etc.?

the same can be said of the second down and the fourth, as these, too, reflect humanity's presence - the one being a garden and the other cultivated roses, and indeed the garden one evokes the emotion

It evokes the emotion to whom? To you? And therefore the emotion should be treated as if it is objective or universal?

of gaiety and festive delight, tho not too much as the cropped universe only alludes to humanity by what it is and not by an overtness... the impressionist forest scene, however, involves nothing human - its universe is 'manless', yet even here it shows a point of upliftedness with the solo tree in the clearing, like a ballerina pirouetting on the floor, despite the subdued quietedness possibly pointing to the lessening of optimism as fall is preferred to, say, spring... the fall leaves, full of blemishes and deliberately so close cropped, have the same sense of decay...

The above is a series of emotional responses, subjective interpretations, and stream-of-consciousness associations. It sounds like an Objectivist-theory-inspired version or tea-leaf reading.

The ones on the right leave little emotion other than the so-called psychological ones of color responses

They leave little emotion to whom? To you? It sounds as if you're proposing that your personal level of emotional sensitivity should be the standard by which things are determined to be art or not, and which things should be judged to be good or bad art. How would we determine that your artistic tastes and emotional sensitivities are worthy of being the standard, versus determining that you're lacking in sensitivity and are emotionally and aesthetically inept?

best viewed in the one across from the leaves - the brightness of a drunken festivity - and the Pollock, bleary dismalness of low chroma best suited as a rug decorative but nothing more [unless perhaps in a psychiatrist office as a case study], or the second down as perhaps a tile design... indeed, the tree on the left side is so abstracted and so emphasizing chaos it might as well be a pattern for use too...

Again, purely subjective opinions.

And, once again, you didn't address the problems that music and architecture present to your views on art. Are they valid art forms because you have feelings about them despite their not containing the direct, objectively identifiable likenesses of things from reality that you require in other art forms?

J

The issue here specifically was painting, but to respond to these others - the use of the word 'art' has two distinct concepts, related but distinctly different, the field of 'fine art' and the much broader umbrella field of 'aesthetics' under which reside both 'fine art' and 'craft', the distinguishing difference being that fine art is for contemplative purposes and craft is utilitarian... as such, architecture, while filled at times with an immensity of aesthetics, is utilitarian, a craft...

As for music, see this from my manuscript ---

What, for instance, tho, is intelligible about music?

As Rand pointed out, we gain our knowledge thru the use of concepts – that is, by means of abstractions. But out cognition, however, begins with the ability to perceive. “Art brings man's concepts to the perceptual level of his consciousness and allows him top grasp them directly, as if they were percepts,” she added. As I said earlier, this means that a work of Art takes the abstractions of metaphysics and makes them into specifics – the concretes. Now, concretes are usually thought of in terms of entities – yet Rand, writing in her Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, has said that concretes subsume not only entities, but attributes, actions, and relationships. To me, this includes situations as well – what, I would say, in terms of music, as emotional situations. This brings me to conclude that Rand did indeed make a error in assuming that Helmholtz's use of sensations meant that music is auditorily experienced as sensations, not precepts. But, as David Kelley pointed out in his Evidence of the Senses, all sounds are properly to be regarded as percepts, as he goes on to explain their feature as being an attribute of specifics in an auditory context. The harmonic sounds, as tones, then get integrated into what is called a melody, the fundamental aspect of music.

Aside from her misdirected mis-understanding of the sensation/perception issue of musical experience, there are two criticisms of her view of music I also find a need to address. The first is that she premised the \essence of music as being mathematical. The easiest way to respond to such a criticism is to remember that she defined mathematics as the science of measurement – and also to remember that a sheet of music, any music, is a sheet full of measurement. Yes, there are other aspects of music that give texture to the music, put the measurements into contexts – but the bottom line is that music is an expression of auditory stimulus according to mathematical means. It is on that basis, the fundamental level, that she expressed the way music is involved in one's sense of life and was concerned with.

The other criticism leveled at her music theory is the one she really didn't give a satisfactory answer to – what is the re-presentational aspect of music that co-responds to reality? I suspect part of the problem in giving a good answer to this was her sensation/perception mis-understanding aspect of how the mind hears music. But, if one were to re-translate her sensation mistaken observations and put them into perceptual concretes, it seems a much more integrated and noncontradictory view emerges.

While I am primarily an artist, tho I also sculpt, I also am an avid listener of serious music. One thing I've observed is that for the most part of human history, music was in accompaniment with song and dance. It wasn't until about 300 years or so ago that secular music really made its mark, and music started being played for its own sake. But, for the time music was connected with voice especially, and dance, there was never a question about its expressive meanings. This is to say there was no problem as to what aspect of reality music's meaning referred to, music's emotional respondings. The question would only arise when music per se was involved. Yet, as far as I am concerned, it seems a false problem, as the same set of pitch, beat, tone, etc. That music makes use of when accompanying vocals should elicit the same response emotionally when not accompanying vocals, when the music stands on its own. This is clearly noted in such instances as laments, or songs of joy, or the emotions of solemnity, or the gaiety of dance. Music, as such, is a very abstract Art, and in expressing what it is and does in a form similar to the definition of Art, I would have to say that music selects and styles certain important or meaningful aural experiences, making use of certain configurations which best express those qualities, drawing out the relative emotional responses – abstracting, as it were, to better the perception.

Even when one deals with music beyond a single instrument or small group of instruments, as, say, the expressiveness of an orchestra, where far greater variety of tones and emotional derivations can be achieved, note that there is still a co-respondent to singing – the violins, which are analogous to the vocal, whether singly as in a violin concerto, or grouping as if a choral, as they are arranged in the orchestra itself. In any case, it is clear there is intelligibility, a definite "re-presentation of..." in music, and a definite reference to "some aspect of reality."

Edited November 23, 2008 by anonrobt

[BaalChatzaf]

But if I were decorating my living room, there are no circumstances under which I would use the color painting. I might, if there were several other similar pieces, and I were decorating with wrought iron and polar bear fur, and the pieces were free, use the black and white paintings as decorations, somewhat in the way that gangstarappahs use Chinese characters for tattoos. I would never hang just that one painting, aside from personal dislike, since people might think it actually had some significance, like a tattooed teardrop, which indicates one has killed a man. Rather, I might (again, depending on the decor) hang several of them to add an accent to otherwise bare white walls.

That last one has designs with some of the 17 planar symmetry groups. They are symmetric about their horizontal and vertical axes, they have 90 degree rotational symmetry and have diagonal symmetry. I see nothing objectionable about them.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[kiaer.ts]

But if I were decorating my living room, there are no circumstances under which I would use the color painting. I might, if there were several other similar pieces, and I were decorating with wrought iron and polar bear fur, and the pieces were free, use the black and white paintings as decorations, somewhat in the way that gangstarappahs use Chinese characters for tattoos. I would never hang just that one painting, aside from personal dislike, since people might think it actually had some significance, like a tattooed teardrop, which indicates one has killed a man. Rather, I might (again, depending on the decor) hang several of them to add an accent to otherwise bare white walls.

That last one has designs with some of the 17 planar symmetry groups. They are symmetric about their horizontal and vertical axes, they have 90 degree rotational symmetry and have diagonal symmetry. I see nothing objectionable about them.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Bob, that image was meant to show how I might use B/W images to decorate a minimalist decor. The image to which I was responding was that in Michael's first post.

Here is my post, disambiguated, in full:

In other places I discussed the values I have gotten from abstract artists, but I wonder what others value about it, if at all. Here is a Kline and a Kandinsky, but if you would like to discuss some other abstract piece, by all means post it and do so. And, if you want to compare it to representational work, for clarity, that would also be welcomed.

I promise to be friendly and considerate--I am just curious about how others see abstract art.

Well, to answer Michael's original question...

If my ten year old child had painted the black and white painting, I would be concerned, and check to see whether he was torturing animals or cutting himself. Had he painted the color painting, I would have said "you look like you had fun playing with the paint, dear."

But if I were decorating my living room, there are no circumstances under which I would use the color painting. I might, if there were several other similar pieces, and I were decorating with wrought iron and polar bear fur, and the pieces were free, use the black and white paintings as decorations, somewhat in the way that gangstarappahs use Chinese characters for tattoos. I would never hang just that one painting, aside from personal dislike, since people might think it actually had some significance, like a tattooed teardrop, which indicates one has killed a man. Rather, I might (again, depending on the decor) hang several of them to add an accent to otherwise bare white walls.

How do they make me feel? The colored painting simply evokes pity at incompetance. The black and white painting needs a context. As a Rohrschach it is disturbing. It looks like the right corner of a leering mouth, crossed by scars that look like railroad tracks. Hung in a group of similar objects in an appropriate minimalist setting it could evoke Oriental calligraphy, but I wouldn't pay to provide that setting.

[Jonathan]

The issue here specifically was painting, but to respond to these others - the use of the word 'art' has two distinct concepts, related but distinctly different, the field of 'fine art' and the much broader umbrella field of 'aesthetics' under which reside both 'fine art' and 'craft', the distinguishing difference being that fine art is for contemplative purposes and craft is utilitarian... as such, architecture, while filled at times with an immensity of aesthetics, is utilitarian, a craft...

Okay, so architecture is not a valid art form to you because it serves utilitarian purposes.

How about a desktop 3-year novel/calendar in which each page contains a date and a page from Atlas Shrugged? Would Atlas Shrugged cease being art if, in addition to being a novel, it also served such a utilitarian purpose? Would it suddenly be a "craft."

And how is it possible that you believe that architecture is at times filled with an "immensity of aesthetics"? After all, it's merely meaningless, abstract arrangements of shapes, colors and textures which are not direct likenesses of things from reality. There's no difference between architecture's aesthetic means of expression and that of abstract painting and sculpture.

Btw, what do you think about the fact that Rand very heavily promoted the idea that architecture -- a non-mimetic and utilitarian practice -- was art? Surely she must be judged as a charlatan equal in evil to Kandinsky and his ilk for trying to destroy the meaning of art by classifying non-art as art, no?

As for music, see this from my manuscript ---

What, for instance, tho, is intelligible about music?

As Rand pointed out, we gain our knowledge thru the use of concepts – that is, by means of abstractions. But out cognition, however, begins with the ability to perceive. “Art brings man's concepts to the perceptual level of his consciousness and allows him top grasp them directly, as if they were percepts,” she added. As I said earlier, this means that a work of Art takes the abstractions of metaphysics and makes them into specifics – the concretes. Now, concretes are usually thought of in terms of entities – yet Rand, writing in her Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, has said that concretes subsume not only entities, but attributes, actions, and relationships.

Ah, so art doesn't have to deal with specific concretes, but can use mere attributes, actions and relationships divorced from specific entities, except in the cases where Robert Malcom arbitrarily requires that an art form that he doesn't like cannot use mere attributes, actions and relationships divorced from specific entities. Got it.

To me, this includes situations as well – what, I would say, in terms of music, as emotional situations. This brings me to conclude that Rand did indeed make a error in assuming that Helmholtz's use of sensations meant that music is auditorily experienced as sensations, not

precepts. But, as David Kelley pointed out in his Evidence of the Senses, all sounds are properly to be regarded as percepts, as he goes on to explain their feature as being an attribute of specifics in an auditory context. The harmonic sounds, as tones, then get integrated into what is called a melody, the fundamental aspect of music.

Aside from her misdirected mis-understanding of the sensation/perception issue of musical experience, there are two criticisms of her view of music I also find a need to address. The first is that she premised the \essence of music as being mathematical. The easiest way to respond to such a criticism is to remember that she defined mathematics as the science of measurement – and also to remember that a sheet of music, any music, is a sheet full of measurement. Yes, there are other aspects of music that give texture to the music, put the measurements into contexts – but the bottom line is that music is an expression of auditory stimulus according to mathematical means. It is on that basis, the fundamental level, that she expressed the way music is involved in one's sense of life and was concerned with.

The other criticism leveled at her music theory is the one she really didn't give a satisfactory answer to – what is the re-presentational aspect of music that co-responds to reality? I suspect part of the problem in giving a good answer to this was her sensation/perception mis-understanding aspect of how the mind hears music. But, if one were to re-translate her sensation mistaken observations and put them into perceptual concretes, it seems a much more integrated and noncontradictory view emerges.

While I am primarily an artist, tho I also sculpt, I also am an avid listener of serious music. One thing I've observed is that for the most part of human history, music was in accompaniment with song and dance. It wasn't until about 300 years or so ago that secular music really made its mark, and music started being played for its own sake. But, for the time music was connected with voice especially, and dance, there was never a question about its expressive meanings. This is to say there was no problem as to what aspect of reality music's meaning referred to, music's emotional respondings. The question would only arise when music per se was involved. Yet, as far as I am concerned, it seems a false problem, as the same set of pitch, beat, tone, etc. That music makes use of when accompanying vocals should elicit the same response emotionally when not accompanying vocals, when the music stands on its own. This is clearly noted in such instances as

laments, or songs of joy, or the emotions of solemnity, or the gaiety of dance. Music, as such, is a very abstract Art, and in expressing what it is and does in a form similar to the definition of Art, I would have to say that music selects and styles certain important or meaningful aural experiences, making use of certain configurations which best express those qualities, drawing out the relative emotional responses – abstracting, as it were, to better the perception.

Even when one deals with music beyond a single instrument or small group of instruments, as, say, the expressiveness of an orchestra, where far greater variety of tones and emotional derivations can be achieved, note that there is still a co-respondent to singing – the violins, which are analogous to the vocal, whether singly as in a violin concerto, or grouping as if a choral, as they are arranged in the orchestra itself. In any case, it is clear there is intelligibility, a definite "re-presentation of..." in music, and a definite reference to "some aspect of reality."

So, apparently the answer to my question is that, yes, you believe that music is a valid art form because you have feelings about it despite its not containing the direct, objectively identifiable likenesses of things from reality that you require in other art forms.

It's amusing that you need to create drastically different meanings of the word "intelligibility" so that you can selectively apply them to art forms depending on which you want to accept as legitimate and which you don't.

J

Edited November 23, 2008 by Jonathan

[anonrobt]

The issue here specifically was painting, but to respond to these others - the use of the word 'art' has two distinct concepts, related but distinctly different, the field of 'fine art' and the much broader umbrella field of 'aesthetics' under which reside both 'fine art' and 'craft', the distinguishing difference being that fine art is for contemplative purposes and craft is utilitarian... as such, architecture, while filled at times with an immensity of aesthetics, is utilitarian, a craft...

Okay, so architecture is not a valid art form to you because it serves utilitarian purposes.

How about a desktop 3-year novel/calendar in which each page contains a date and a page from Atlas Shrugged? Would Atlas Shrugged cease being art if, in addition to being a novel, it also served such a utilitarian purpose? Would it suddenly be a "craft."

And how is it possible that you believe that architecture is at times filled with an "immensity of aesthetics"? After all, it's merely meaningless, abstract arrangements of shapes, colors and textures which are not direct likenesses of things from reality. There's no difference between architecture's aesthetic means of expression and that of abstract painting and sculpture.

Btw, what do you think about the fact that Rand very heavily promoted the idea that architecture -- a non-mimetic and utilitarian practice -- was art? Surely she must be judged as a charlatan equal in evil to Kandinsky and his ilk for trying to destroy the meaning of art by classifying non-art as art, no?

As for music, see this from my manuscript ---

What, for instance, tho, is intelligible about music?

As Rand pointed out, we gain our knowledge thru the use of concepts – that is, by means of abstractions. But out cognition, however, begins with the ability to perceive. “Art brings man's concepts to the perceptual level of his consciousness and allows him top grasp them directly, as if they were percepts,” she added. As I said earlier, this means that a work of Art takes the abstractions of metaphysics and makes them into specifics – the concretes. Now, concretes are usually thought of in terms of entities – yet Rand, writing in her Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, has said that concretes subsume not only entities, but attributes, actions, and relationships.

Ah, so art doesn't have to deal with specific concretes, but can use mere attributes, actions and relationships divorced from specific entities, except in the cases where Robert Malcom arbitrarily requires that an art form that he doesn't like cannot use mere attributes, actions and relationships divorced from specific entities. Got it.

To me, this includes situations as well – what, I would say, in terms of music, as emotional situations. This brings me to conclude that Rand did indeed make a error in assuming that Helmholtz's use of sensations meant that music is auditorily experienced as sensations, not

precepts. But, as David Kelley pointed out in his Evidence of the Senses, all sounds are properly to be regarded as percepts, as he goes on to explain their feature as being an attribute of specifics in an auditory context. The harmonic sounds, as tones, then get integrated into what is called a melody, the fundamental aspect of music.

Aside from her misdirected mis-understanding of the sensation/perception issue of musical experience, there are two criticisms of her view of music I also find a need to address. The first is that she premised the \essence of music as being mathematical. The easiest way to respond to such a criticism is to remember that she defined mathematics as the science of measurement – and also to remember that a sheet of music, any music, is a sheet full of measurement. Yes, there are other aspects of music that give texture to the music, put the measurements into contexts – but the bottom line is that music is an expression of auditory stimulus according to mathematical means. It is on that basis, the fundamental level, that she expressed the way music is involved in one's sense of life and was concerned with.

The other criticism leveled at her music theory is the one she really didn't give a satisfactory answer to – what is the re-presentational aspect of music that co-responds to reality? I suspect part of the problem in giving a good answer to this was her sensation/perception mis-understanding aspect of how the mind hears music. But, if one were to re-translate her sensation mistaken observations and put them into perceptual concretes, it seems a much more integrated and noncontradictory view emerges.

While I am primarily an artist, tho I also sculpt, I also am an avid listener of serious music. One thing I've observed is that for the most part of human history, music was in accompaniment with song and dance. It wasn't until about 300 years or so ago that secular music really made its mark, and music started being played for its own sake. But, for the time music was connected with voice especially, and dance, there was never a question about its expressive meanings. This is to say there was no problem as to what aspect of reality music's meaning referred to, music's emotional respondings. The question would only arise when music per se was involved. Yet, as far as I am concerned, it seems a false problem, as the same set of pitch, beat, tone, etc. That music makes use of when accompanying vocals should elicit the same response emotionally when not accompanying vocals, when the music stands on its own. This is clearly noted in such instances as

laments, or songs of joy, or the emotions of solemnity, or the gaiety of dance. Music, as such, is a very abstract Art, and in expressing what it is and does in a form similar to the definition of Art, I would have to say that music selects and styles certain important or meaningful aural experiences, making use of certain configurations which best express those qualities, drawing out the relative emotional responses – abstracting, as it were, to better the perception.

Even when one deals with music beyond a single instrument or small group of instruments, as, say, the expressiveness of an orchestra, where far greater variety of tones and emotional derivations can be achieved, note that there is still a co-respondent to singing – the violins, which are analogous to the vocal, whether singly as in a violin concerto, or grouping as if a choral, as they are arranged in the orchestra itself. In any case, it is clear there is intelligibility, a definite "re-presentation of..." in music, and a definite reference to "some aspect of reality."

So, apparently the answer to my question is that, yes, you believe that music is a valid art form because you have feelings about it despite its not containing the direct, objectively identifiable likenesses of things from reality that you require in other art forms.

It's amusing that you need to create drastically different meanings of the word "intelligibility" so that you can selectively apply them to art forms depending on which you want to accept as legitimate and which you don't.

J

Ah - I was warned this place had a resident Kantian relativist... you must be him...

[Jonathan]

Ah - I was warned this place had a resident Kantian relativist... you must be him...

Wow, what a devastating tactic! Being called a "Kantian" by an Objectivist who can't substantively answer questions and criticisms. I've never experienced that maneuver before. How will I ever recover?

J

[kiaer.ts]

So, apparently the answer to my question is that, yes, you believe that music is a valid art form because you have feelings about it despite its not containing the direct, objectively identifiable likenesses of things from reality that you require in other art forms.

What do you mean by "likeness"? Do you expect sound to convey a visual image? We percieve motion and voice (a special type of motion) through hearing. Hearing is time integrative in a way that vision is not. One does not "glance" with the ears.

The "image" conveyed by music is ultimately that of the human voice (melodic song) and the motion of the human body (dance) as accompanied by a rhythm. Birds and mammals produce wanring cries and mating calls and it is war chants and love songs (as well as shamanistic trance inductions, etc.,) that are the original subject of music.

Human consciousness is essentially harmonic. Our neurons fire in rhythms that both depend on the input of the environment and which also firre in internal unison. The "binding problem" is solved by the common rhythm of the neurons. Music entrains the consciousness, producing emotional states directly. It is the states of consciousness produced by war chants and love songs and sobs and heartbeats which are "reproduced" selectively, and even more broadly, by music.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Wow, what a devastating tactic! Being called a "Kantian" by an Objectivist who can't substantively answer questions and criticisms. I've never experienced that maneuver before. How will I ever recover?

Jonathan,

It's obvious.

You are doomed to losing your mind like James Taggart. Or becoming an object of pity to the Roarks of the world like Peter Keating while wallowing in the misery of knowing it is too late, that you squandered your talent.

Woe is you...

Michael

[Jonathan]

What do you mean by "likeness"?

This section of a painting is an objectively identifiable likeness of the area of a human face that includes the eyes.

This section of a song...

C-------|G-------|E-------|------DE|C-------|G-------|E-------|-------E|D-------|B-------|F--------|------BD|D-Db-D-E-|F-------|

... when played on a musical instrument, is not an objectively identifiable likeness of anything in reality, including the differing emotions that different people might feel when listening to it.

Do you expect sound to convey a visual image? We percieve motion and voice (a special type of motion) through hearing. Hearing is time integrative in a way that vision is not. One does not "glance" with the ears.

I think that music could be said to evoke or imply a "visual image," but not to "convey" it.

J

Edited November 25, 2008 by Jonathan

[Brant Gaede]

Jonathan,

You must embrace your Kantianism--become one with it. Don't let Objectivist snears and jeers drive you away.

--Brant

[Jonathan]

Wow, what a devastating tactic! Being called a "Kantian" by an Objectivist who can't substantively answer questions and criticisms. I've never experienced that maneuver before. How will I ever recover?

Jonathan,

It's obvious.

You are doomed to losing your mind like James Taggart. Or becoming an object of pity to the Roarks of the world like Peter Keating while wallowing in the misery of knowing it is too late, that you squandered your talent.

Woe is you...

Michael

Yeah, I was hoping that I would be doomed to running to Robert Malcom for help on a mural or sculpting project, because he's a real-life Howard Roark of the visual and plastic arts, and I could make a secret deal with him that he'd let me pass his work off as my own. And then, after I let someone else screw up the project because I'm a weak an evil Kantian, he could blow it up and give an awesome speech that gets him exonerated.

J

[Jonathan]

Jonathan,

You must embrace your Kantianism--become one with it. Don't let Objectivist snears and jeers drive you away.

--Brant

Yes! And you must join me, Darth Brant. Nurture your evil. Let it fester and spread within you. Feel its power. Take your rightful place beside me, and we will impose our Kantian evil on the universe!

J

[BaalChatzaf]

Jonathan,

You must embrace your Kantianism--become one with it. Don't let Objectivist snears and jeers drive you away.

--Brant

Yes! And you must join me, Darth Brant. Nurture your evil. Let it fester and spread within you. Feel its power. Take your rightful place beside me, and we will impose our Kantian evil on the universe!

J

It is your destiny!

[Brant Gaede]

Jonathan,

You must embrace your Kantianism--become one with it. Don't let Objectivist snears and jeers drive you away.

--Brant

Yes! And you must join me, Darth Brant. Nurture your evil. Let it fester and spread within you. Feel its power. Take your rightful place beside me, and we will impose our Kantian evil on the universe!

J

It is your destiny!

Ho, boy! I haven't felt a rush like this since I joined that panty raid in college!

--Brant