Chris,
If you read the thread out of which this emerged you would realized that I was writing about relative levels of certainty. I was stating the differences between myself and Michael C. I have no certain knowledge that we live in a world without (intrinsic) narrative meaning. It just seems reasonable and rational to me given what I know about astrophysics, cosmology and biological evolution, that there is no purpose or narrative that is intrinsic to the universe. I may be wrong, but I was stating what I think is a rational belief against imposing a teleological narrative on the "world." That is all. In fact I was arguing against certainty.
>JM: Art helps us to invent meaning to
> > deceive ourselves
> > that we don't have this suspicion about life.
>
>Chris: How do you know?
JM: Same as above. I don't think that there is only one function to art or narrative but rather a multiplicity of functions, desires, need fulfillments that are associated with art, narrative etc. It is a simple observation that one way that many people use art/narrative is to organize meaning, tell stories in their lives and that most people have the existential suspicion at some point in their lives that it is all pretty damn meaningless. Sometimes art/narraive helps us to overcome that existential suspicion and sometimes art/narrative reminds us of it. Sometimes both at once. I think that the observation is trivial.
What is not trivial is that good art can, and often does, provide us with not only powerful illusions, disillusions, but also powerful delusions. This may not be the only function of great narrative but it is a bit counter to Michael's belief in the truth-value of art.
> >
> > JM: Again, I just don't think that beauty and
> > pleasure has a "truth
> > value" and much of art is about beauty. This is the
> > old Platonic
> > fallacy about beauty. A mushroom cloud is not art.
> > If you wish to
> > talk about the terrifying beauty of some landscapes,
> > say the Grand
> > Canyon, I am willing to entertain speculations on
> > the relation of such
> > "natural" beauty to art. A mushroom cloud has
> > terrifying beauty.
> > There is some terrifying beauty in the Marquis de
> > Sade and Dostoevsky
> > also. Homer's _Iliad_ is a terrifying, bloody,
> > selfish, even
> > alienating beauty to me. It is still great are as
> > far as I am
> > concerned. I think there is as much lies as truth
> > here.
>
> I can't figure out what any of this has to do with
> anything. Why shouldn't the beauty of an atomic bomb
> have a truth value?
Again if you had read the thread this emerged out of you would have realized several things. That Michael brought up mushroom clouds in relation to art, and I couldn't quite understand why he was talking about mushroom clouds in this context. Is a mushroom cloud a work of art? Is it an artifact at all?
Also Michael was using "truth-value" along with some societal standard of class struggle that I simply don't agree with.
I don't think beauty has a truth value, unless it is a biological truth value having to do with why beauty strikes us as beautiful in the first place. Beauty is neither true nor false. A mushroom cloud is neither true nor false. Similarly, I don't think that the Grand Canyon has a truth-value in and of itself, unless it is a truth-value relative to what we discover about the Grand Canyon through geology.
Truth-values are relative to our systems of calculus or of judgment. But splitting the atom is neither true nor false, it just is. One can ask whether it is moral to drop an atom bomb and murder thousands, and whether it is true or false that that bombing civilians is wrong given our moral system. But it is a a category mistake to ask "Is the Mushroom Cloud true or false?" and a non-sequitur to conclude that their is a "truth value" to events in and of themselves. Maybe one can ask "Is the mushroom cloud my hallucination or is it real?" But this is a true false question relative to my judgment about the information given to me by my senses and not at all the kind of truth value that Michael C. was referring to in relation to art, etc. As far as Homer's presentation of Achilles is concerned, it may be feel true or false depending on the presentation of the poet, but it certain doesn't have the truth-value that Michael is arguing for. And as a matter of fact I think that the kind of strong and wonderful arguments that emerge from within the Iliad on the value of heroism are inherently delusional. I can't prove this, but I basically think that heroism (and genius and the "conversion" or the turning point) and like phenomena are delusional notions presented over and over again with-in narrative and art. and such delusional notions help us to organize patterns in our world.
Which gets to an argument that Michael never presented to me. I don't think that "truth value" is a useful way to judge art as he articled. But within any "system" propositions can be true or untrue relative to that system. And then will be many propositions that will not be provable either way. Artistic "systems", (and this is only an analogy) I think, exhibit similar structures and even a larger amount of ambiguities. In __Anna Karenina__ her little red hand bag keeps on appearing and reappearing in many of the crucial scenes of Anna's life. And in fact you can recognize a turning point for Anna by the presence of her little red hand bag. It appears at the railway station when she witnesses the death beneath the wheels of train that prefigures her own death and appears with her when she herself throws herself beneath the wheels. I find no "truth value" in this, and as a matter of fact when you consider that the little red hand bag follows her around like a puppy dog it feels absurd when you point to it. But with-in the system of narrative illusion that Tolstoy creates it all feels so "real" and so "true."
Jerry