On 10/2/06, Michael Catolico <<a href="mailto:mcatolico@mindspring.com">mcatolico@mindspring.com</a>> wrote: > > >Michael Catolico:  My point of the astrology/astronomy comment was simply to show that claiming art has no objective criteria for discerning value is like someone saying science has no objective criteria.  I used the trite dichotomy to show that common thinking about art as "all just a matter of my opinion or taste against yours" is the equivalent of pre-enlightment rationality. > _Criteria and Choice_ JM: Well if I don't agree with your criteria and think that your criteria does harm to what is valuable in artistic creation -- then what can we do?  You seem to think that there is an agreed upon criteria on how to decide good art is great art.  As I said to Chris, the very aspects of the novelistic narrative art that he loves in Dostoevsky, I believe are anterior to the art of the novel, and actually mar it's construction.  My criteria I think is good and strong and rational.  It partially derives from my basic visceral experience of the art of narration.  Again you seem to want to establish a science-like criteria of knowledge about the judgment of art where there is simply is none that I can see.  This is not particular to art itself -- on some levels it even applies to attempts at intrinsic interpretations of quantum mechanics.  It certainly applies currently to all aspects of human experience philosophers label "qualia."  You simply don't know what it is "like" for me to read Dostoevsky and even though I think we can set up a criteria for rational discussion about Dostoevsky I also think that you can rationally believe that Dostoevsky is a great artist and I can rationally believe that he is a lousy artist without either of us being wrong.  The situation is not the same with regards to astrology.  Again given our state of (lack of) knowledge about psychology and our state of knowledge about astrophysics it is highly improbable that there is some-kind of astronomical-psychological confluence that is modeled by astrology.  That is all that my scientific knowledge allows me to say with some certainty.  The statement is largely a negative statement which excludes astrological models from serving their current purpose.  There is a set of criteria by which I can make a choice between astrology and not-astrology.  It is limited and negative.  There is not a set of criteria by which I can set positive standards of choice that will apply to convince me that a certain work of art is good or bad or great or small.  That does not mean that we can't decide between good or bad or great or small.  It is just means that this decision is not set out by any criteria that can subsume or dictated experience.  And quite simply my experiences in these matters are different than yours.  > Michael Catolico: I'm not sure why you've taken such pains to discuss the nature of scientific reasoning.  I'm all too well aware of how positivism reduces and dismisses all other forms of thought to the realm of relativism.  _Skepticism and Knowledge_: JM: I take pains to explain the scientific method because even in places we are most certain of our conclusions -- mathematics and some aspects of physics -- there are still axioms of choice and problems of proof, that do not allow us to state with absolute certainty anything about the intrinsic nature of the subjects that, for example, set-theory or quantum mechanics discuss.  These are the areas of human knowledge where we are most certain.  And yet you are somehow absolutely certain from your original "scientistic" starting point, that you can set down criteria by which it would be irrational for me to either accept or reject Faulkner or "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" or Chopin or Mies van der Rohe as good or bad. My point is not relativistic as far as I can see.  To admit that our knowledge of why people experience works of art in one way or another is limited and defective and cannot be reduced to a set of criteria is only to admit to the material reality of our state of knowledge.  There are simply no theories of art or artistic creation that are worth the name of "theory".  All that we have in these matters is what we can derive from universal common sense, which are compounded with our intuitions, reactions, taste, cultural sense, social arguments, etc., etc.  Maybe someday we will have adequate theories of human experience and human choice (including are experiences and choices of art) but if so I suspect that they will imitate our current physical theories which allow me to exclude astrology as a rational model, but with many qualifications and allowances for future knowledge, but does not bring me to any certain conclusions.  This is what has been called in other contexts "modified skepticism" modified from Hume that is.  >Michael Catolico: I haven't, in any of my comments, claimed scientific validity or relied on scientific method to prove the merits of art works or to distinguish among them.  I have however referred to the truth value of works which is the criterion for assigning rank that I'm advocating. I have however referred to the truth value of works which is the criterion for assigning rank that I'm advocating. _Truth-Value or Experiential Value_? JM: I don't see that works of art have any truth-value at all.  In fact if anything, in some works of art, it is the attempt that to have truth value that mars them.  There is simply no truth value that I can see in the beautiful open symmetry of the Parthenon or the grandeur of imperial subjugation of the Pantheon, unless our reactions to these works is somehow determined by the biological design of our brains which demand this symmetry in both openness and subjugation.  I am willing to believe this since I am an advocate of the correctness of the hypothesis of evolutionary psychology and sociobiology.  But then it is a truth value that is derived from our biological history, with all of its contingencies and tinkering half-rigged optimizations and nothing more.  I don't see the truth value in Chopin's etudes.  I do see the moral value in both Dostoevsky and Tolstoy.  But I think that the moral value is not a truth value in the sense that you use it and I think that even though Dostoevsky has great moral value he is a lousy artist.  > >Michael Catolico:  There are numerous ways that one can demonstrate good or bad art without ever relying on scientific method.  Referencing the evolution of forms or techniques and then showing how a particular work evolves or lags that history is one such means.  Another is to identify the contradictions in a work (whether in the area of content or in form or between the two) and detail how the work grapples with those contradictions.  Great works always embody the most complex contradictions as their raw material and the resolution – even if it is the inability of the work to reconcile the contradictions – is another criterion for measuring value.  These and many other critical techniques are objective and can be universally recognized.   > _Objectivity, Reality, and Certainty_: JM:  I find all of the above criteria both mechanistic and trivial.  It is not how I judge a work of art.  Again I have no idea what you mean by "objective".  I suppose you mean to distinguish it from the "subjective."  But for me the "subjective" is simply another kind of objectivity.  There is  experiential matter and non-experiential matter.  It is all matter.  There is the kind of object that we call subject and there is the non-subjective object.  This is not merely semantics for me because I think that you use the word objective in two senses and then go back and forth between those sense.  Your use the word "objective" to mean something like "reality" or material reality and you also use it to mean "certainty."  And you continually go back and forth between those uses.  I am willing to admit that a quark or a work of art is an objective reality but I am not willing to admit that we can be certain about the position of any particular quark at randomly specified times or certain of the success or failure of any work art at any specified time.  Your use of objective is a synonym for 'certainty.'  In brief you want to set up a criteria for judging art and through this criteria you wish to show that you can be certain what is bad art an what is good art.  > JM: "[…] An argument over art is continuous and inconclusive by nature.  That is why tolerance of differences in taste in these areas is a necessary condition for rational argument.  In short there can be argument but no certainty." > >   > Michael Catolico: If you replace the word "art" with "science" in your statement you'll see my frustration with this line of thinking.  _More naturalistic fallacy - the arrogance of the lack of knowledge; pleasure, pain, laughter, tears_  _ JM: Zeus, Michael! The fact that you can ask me to replace the word "art" with the word "science" in the above statement is what I am trying to get you to see is wrong thing to do.  There are criteria (conditional and contingent) of certainty in science.  There is no certainty of judgment in human experience in the same way.  We can come to workable and honest conclusions in human experience but it is not at all a matter of the kind of certainty that you hope for.  But how could you have read what I wrote and make such a statement without argument.  Talk about frustrating.  At least make the argument that I can ever replace the word "art" with the word "science" in the above statement. Again I think you are falling into the naturalistic fallacy, and confusing the is/ought distinction.  Science can describe what is and so can some of our rational arguments about how we judge art.  But judging art is always about what I think should feel great, what ought to be, good, beautiful, strong, compelling, etc.  Yes it is a matter of taste because art is partially about pleasure and pain, about tears and laughter, illusion and disillusion, catharsis and ecstasy; and pleasure, pain, tears, laughter, illusion, disillusion, catharsis and ecstasy are parts of human experience that we feel in different ways to some extent and is biologically channeled to another extent.  The thing is we don't know how this happens.  We don't know! We lack knowledge!  What knowledge is it that you have that has suddenly dropped down from Athena about the alchemy of pleasure, pain, laughter, tears, with the work of art, that I don't have?  It is possible at a future date we will know enough about the human brain and human experience to understand how we come to such judgments, but  as of now we know next to nothing.  It is I believe a dangerous and depressing pretense to knowledge to think that you know something that nobody else knows.  It is what gives rational argument and the world view of science the name of arrogance.  Even when we come to learn something about how we experience and judge a creative work of art, I doubt that we will ever know why Chris loves Dostoevsky and I hate him and why Chris might be right and why I could be wrong.  >Michael Catolico: Once again, my point is that 1) art works have objective features which can be identified as better or worse than other works, _Criteria of Judgment, Objectivity, Certainty:  the criteria for establishing a criteria of judgment_ JM: All art has objective features. Everything about art is objective.  Who cares?  All criteria of judgment is objective.  Who cares?  Once again you confuse objectivity with certainty; the status of an object and judgments about an object The point is to establish your criteria of judgment in such away that we can come to a rational agreement about it _and_ be certain we are correct.  For this to happen, your criteria of judgment has to be 1) testable, 2) the testability has to be repeatable, 3) you have to set some criteria by which we can establish when your criteria of judgment about art is wrong, and 4) it has to be a long-lasting stable model for judging, and 5) it has to be non-trivial and non-tautological and, finally, 6) it has to be something that we all should agree with if we are to maintain any rational argument about the subject you wish to address.  You come nowhere close to suggesting such criteria and if you did I would bet that many of us would think it the equivalent of astrology or deconstruction. >Michael Catolico: 2) recognition and acknowledgment of this concept is unpalatable to the ruling class, and thus 3) it is in the interests of that class to perpetuate the dismissal of any effort to treat art objectively.  JM: Oh great art can prop up the ruling class --- for example the Pantheon --- as well as undermine it.  If this is part of your criteria then I not only think it is wrong but detrimental to artistic creation.  > Michael Catolico If science posed the threat to the powerful that art does, it too would be relegated to disagreements about matters of taste and subjective preference. JM:  Science does pose such a threat and always has.  That is why scientific knowledge has always been walled off form the masses and has been relegated to specialization.  But this is another argument altogether.  I believe that spreading knowledge of physics and mathematics and biology to the masses, and showing how such thinking is creative and can be used to see life anew is a radical act and part of a revolutionary message.  In this respect the great civil rights leader Bob Moses has convinced me that simply teaching mathematics to young children, teaching democratically and openly, can be part of a revolutionary consciousness.  So we see that we disagree on almost everything. Jerry Monaco