This is a false distinction. Musical notation is a written transcription of sounds and silences (notes and rests); alphabetic and syllabic writing systems are also written transcriptions of sounds and silences (letters and punctuation). While the two generally concern themselves with different elements of sounds (alphabets with phonemes and musical notation with tone and duration), this is not always the case; some languages have a tonal component, and the constructed language Solresol is made entirely of music tones.
I'm not talking about musical notation. Such notation isn't necessary for music to exist, and doesn't have a monopoly on determining what music is. The simple fact that Western music notation has only existed in its current form for maybe 400 years underscores that fact, not to mention the existence of many parallel systems of notation.
Writing isn't necessary for language to exist, and doesn't have a monopoly on what language is. I really do not understand the great divide you are positing between language and music.
Language has words and meaning and grammar, and music doesn't? It seems fairly straight forward to me.
and music has chords and rhythms and timbres
you don't have to write them down for them to exist, just like words
what is this getting at
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MrMisterJesus dying on the cross in pain? Morally better than us. One has to go "all in".Registered Userregular
My intuitions are that yes, artwork qua artwork is a natural kind - but I'm not terribly committed to that since I quite honestly haven't thought about it. I would say that artwork qua artwork is beauty, or an instance of beauty and to understand artwork qua artwork is to come to know what beauty is.
I would imagine that you would be committed in some form to the idea that art is a natural kind, and that it is united by being some human production of beauty, or some such. This strikes me as highly implausible. About the only thing uniting all works or art is that they have all been called works of art, and hence, considering art as if it were a category in nature seems like a fundamental mistake. My point here is related to your other objection: that I have defined art in such a way that it's no longer a distinct category at all. Well, that is precisely what I intend, at least if you are talking about a distinct natural category, as that of copper or zinc. The bounds of art are inevitably mind-dependent, not mind-independent: something is art if we take it to be art.
At best, art is united by its ability to provoke a specific kind of pleasure in us, a pleasure we label as distinctly aesthetic. In that case then artfulness is like sweetness (another property that can be realized at physical level by any number of different physical microstructures). I suspect that is probably true to some limited extent, but what strikes me as more characteristic of art is that it occupies a certain social location, closely related to class. Going to the symphony is really a rich hobby, and sponsoring a symphony is a way that the Neuvo Riche can buy respectability, for instance. So I think that really the delineation of art is part of a class dynamic, and that is why we can have Starry Night and Duchamp's Urinal both be art at the same time, despite really having nothing in common besides the label.
But I don't think that my mildly Marxist musings are really important to the general idea, which is that art is not the collection of objects united by instantiating the platonic form of the beautiful.
So, beauty is reducible to popularity, and since popularity is entirely subjective, and thus inert as a measure of anything, beauty itself is also inert? I don't want to be uncharitable, but it seems that you are denying the existence of beauty as something other than preference altogether.
No object holds beauty, there are only preferences for objects; a thing may have more or less people who prefer it, but we cannot ever distinguish between them. The only way we can distinguish between things is through their ability to reflect true and proper values and attitudes.
That account is wholly unsatisfactory to me, but that is exactly what I am taking away from your position.
That is, more or less, exactly my position.
Beauty, like deliciousness, is recognized by all as an intrinsic good. But beauty, like deliciousness, still does not exist over and above a set of preferences that people happen to have.
and music has chords and rhythms and timbres
you don't have to write them down for them to exist, just like words
what is this getting at
I hold that (a) music isn't language, and, (b) music isn't a text. That is, music isn't reducible to, say, a score or a record of an instance of music. Apparently this was controversial.
And you will possibly even find some who, likely through spite or some negative experience, don't even like beauty.
Though usually this is only found in fiction. I hope.
Quite possibly, but I don't know what beauty is, at this point. Like I said, I've had intuitions, but I'm not prepared to make a substantive argument one way or another.
I would imagine that you would be committed in some form to the idea that art is a natural kind, and that it is united by being some human production of beauty, or some such.
Perhaps, yes.
This strikes me as highly implausible. About the only thing uniting all works or art is that they have all been called works of art, and hence, considering art as if it were a category in nature seems like a fundamental mistake.
I don't necessarily agree with this. I'm not committed to agreeing that poetry or literature is art, nor necessarily something like dance; I think we are having two problems, here. First, the common label of "an art" which is applied generally and without good reason to all sorts of things which are rather unrelated. Second, no one here is in a position to provide a satisfactory account of beauty, such as it is, and without that one cannot rule out the possibility that there are arts which are, in fact, instances of beauty.
The bounds of art are inevitably mind-dependent, not mind-independent: something is art if we take it to be art.
This is inextricably linked to what we take beauty to be.
But I don't think that my mildly Marxist musings are really important to the general idea, which is that art is not the collection of objects united by instantiating the platonic form of the beautiful.
Let's not call names. We don't need a platonic form of the beautiful if beauty is a "proper combination of elements," or something along those lines. The decision isn't simply between a platonic form of the beautiful or no beauty whatsoever.
I don't know what you're asking, nor how it relates to some art being value-laden.
Storytelling seems to be a language game that indulges in either history, a counterfactual, or a creation of a possible world. Are any of these things artworks?
Beauty, like deliciousness, is recognized by all as an intrinsic good. But beauty, like deliciousness, still does not exist over and above a set of preferences that people happen to have.
Yeah, I disagree with this.
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Podlyyou unzipped me! it's all coming back! i don't like it!Registered Userregular
edited December 2009
Saggio, I never said that music was necessarily reducible to a score. That does not make it a text. What makes music a text is that it is a structure of repeatable iterability and splay of absence and presence. I will address you other points once I'm not on m iPhone.
Quite possibly, but I don't know what beauty is, at this point. Like I said, I've had intuitions, but I'm not prepared to make a substantive argument one way or another.
I imagine my stance on what beauty is is obvious.
It should be noted that beauty is not the only thing people find attractive in art, at least not the more common definition of beauty.
Saggio, I never said that music was necessarily reducible to a score. That does not make it a text. What makes music a text is that it is a structure of repeatable iterability and splay of absence and presence. I will address you other points once I'm not on m iPhone.
Yeah, I figured you'd go this route. Please expand on your argument when you have the time.
Sorry, I'm a bit slow. What is your stance on beauty?
It should be noted that beauty is not the only thing people find attractive in art, at least not the more common definition of beauty.
Quite so. This is why I find my account more satisfactory than MrMister's, even with the glaring omission of not having a satisfactory definition of the good. Artworks can be appreciated not as artworks necessarily, but for the 'surface' elements of them, or for the things which they reference, etc.
Sorry, I'm a bit slow. What is your stance on beauty?
A value judgment resulting from the usual determination.
I'm sorry, I don't understand. What is the usual determination? Are you saying that beauty is found in the judgement itself - that is, when one makes a value judgement, beauty is being created or imbibed into whatever the judgement is happening upon or about?
I posit that the "determinism" is the apparent reality, in contrast with with "free will"
I posit that values are determined, as with everything else.
I posit that "beauty" is a value.
As such, one judges beauty in relation to one's determined value of what is beautiful.
I may however be straining the word "value" a bit. There may be a more suitable term that encompasses preferences and such, including what are more often understood as values.
The main point is that nothing is beautiful in and of itself, but it is beautiful or ugly or whatever to specific individuals based on determined factors like genetics and personal history.
It's just a very long-winded way to say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder OR That's just, like, your opinion, man.
I posit that the "determinism" is the apparent reality, in contrast with with "free will"
I posit that values are determined, as with everything else.
I posit that "beauty" is a value.
As such, one judges beauty in relation to one's determined value of what is beautiful.
I may however be straining the word "value" a bit. There may be a more suitable term that encompasses preferences and such, including what are more often understood as values.
The main point is that nothing is beautiful in and of itself, but it is beautiful or ugly or whatever to specific individuals based on determined factors like genetics and personal history.
It's just a very long-winded way to say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder OR That's just, like, your opinion, man.
This is so curious. Values are determined, along with wills? And yet they differ? Most curious. How exactly does that work?
and music has chords and rhythms and timbres
you don't have to write them down for them to exist, just like words
what is this getting at
I hold that (a) music isn't language, and, (b) music isn't a text. That is, music isn't reducible to, say, a score or a record of an instance of music. Apparently this was controversial.
by 'music isn't language' do you mean that in the sense that 'canadian bacon is not ham' or 'robots are not puppies'
because no, of course it isn't the same as language and made up of perfectly analogous parts and everything
but language is just as much of a 'not-text' as music is. you certainly don't need a written language to have a spoken one
so no music is not reducible to text, but neither is language and therefore why is it necessary to make the music=! language distinction
and music has chords and rhythms and timbres
you don't have to write them down for them to exist, just like words
what is this getting at
I hold that (a) music isn't language, and, (b) music isn't a text. That is, music isn't reducible to, say, a score or a record of an instance of music. Apparently this was controversial.
by 'music isn't language' do you mean that in the sense that 'canadian bacon is not ham' or 'robots are not puppies'
because no, of course it isn't the same as language and made up of perfectly analogous parts and everything
but language is just as much of a 'not-text' as music is. you certainly don't need a written language to have a spoken one
so no music is not reducible to text, but neither is language and therefore why is it necessary to make the music=! language distinction
Poldy is asserting that music is text. I'm sure he'll be in the thread at some point to elaborate on what this means, but I'm quite sure I know where he's going to go with that (absence and presence and repetition, etc). I responded that I don't think music is reducible to notation, at which point Hachface joined in the conversation and pointed out that language has tonal elements to it.
My point, and I stand by it, is that music isn't language, as it lacks meaning and grammar. Music has notation, sure, and so does language, but the similarity stops there. Mathematics also has notation, but it is obviously distinct from natural language and derives its meaning differently than natural language does.
I don't understand why this is so controversial or why people keep responding to this.
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MorninglordI'm tired of being Batman,so today I'll be Owl.Registered Userregular
edited December 2009
I don't have any major points to say.
I just wished to express my appreciation at seeing an op that clearly outlines it's aims and objectives, gives definitions and guidelines and makes an effort to indicate the limitations of the idea/position being put forth.
I further appreciate the thoroughness with which further posts expanded upon the idea, to the point of revision where it was deemed necessary. It is a quality op (and further revision) that was a pleasure to read.
However I have been barred from participating due to one of aforesaid guidelines and since I wish to respect this guideline I will not be participating. In addition, I don't really know what I think about aesthetics: I tend to just dislike it when people start using aesthetics to judge others. Which is more of an objection to stereotyping than anything else.
Also my minor criticisms were already covered within the first couple of pages.
But it has been interesting to read the discussion.
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(PSN: Morninglord) (Steam: Morninglord) (WiiU: Morninglord22) I like to record and toss up a lot of random gaming videos here.
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ElldrenIs a woman dammitceterum censeoRegistered Userregular
edited December 2009
What do you mean music lacks meaning? You can make happy music, sad music, music that invites dance, music that elicits quiet contemplation etc. And music certainly has grammar, that's what notes and rhythms and loops and bridges are.
Yes. Music, by itself, lacks meaning. Compare to language, which has meaning.
You can make happy music, sad music
No. You can make music that you take to be associated with happiness but that doesn't mean that music itself experiences emotions or even references the emotions that you experience. This is one of the points I made earlier in responding to MrMister - music seems to be alone in the arts in that it cannot reference anything but itself.
And music certainly has grammar, that's what notes and rhythms and loops and bridges are.
No again. Music has elements and features and qualities, perhaps even necessary or fundamental qualities, such as tone, sequence, metre, etc. None of these things are grammar - only language has grammar, that's part of what makes language comprehensible for us.
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ElldrenIs a woman dammitceterum censeoRegistered Userregular
Yes. Music, by itself, lacks meaning. Compare to language, which has meaning.
You can make happy music, sad music
No. You can make music that you take to be associated with happiness but that doesn't mean that music itself experiences emotions or even references the emotions that you experience. This is one of the points I made earlier in responding to MrMister - music seems to be alone in the arts in that it cannot reference anything but itself.
Something must be broken with you.
You were explicitly comparing it to language.
And music doesn't experience emotions any more than language does. It can, however, reference those emotions and elicit those emotions in a manner that both its creators and its listeners mutually understand.
The fact that you are apparently musically illiterate does not mean it is not linguistic.
Yes. Music, by itself, lacks meaning. Compare to language, which has meaning.
You can make happy music, sad music
No. You can make music that you take to be associated with happiness but that doesn't mean that music itself experiences emotions or even references the emotions that you experience. This is one of the points I made earlier in responding to MrMister - music seems to be alone in the arts in that it cannot reference anything but itself.
Something must be broken with you.
You were explicitly comparing it to language.
And music doesn't experience emotions any more than language does. It can, however, reference those emotions and elicit those emotions in a manner that both its creators and its listeners mutually understand.
The fact that you are apparently musically illiterate does not mean it is not linguistic.
Please, show me how music can reference emotions "in a manner that both its creators and its listeners mutually understand." I challenge you to do this and to show us that this meaning that is being conveyed doesn't rely upon (a) culture and (b) the place in history where the performance took place.
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ElldrenIs a woman dammitceterum censeoRegistered Userregular
Yes. Music, by itself, lacks meaning. Compare to language, which has meaning.
You can make happy music, sad music
No. You can make music that you take to be associated with happiness but that doesn't mean that music itself experiences emotions or even references the emotions that you experience. This is one of the points I made earlier in responding to MrMister - music seems to be alone in the arts in that it cannot reference anything but itself.
Something must be broken with you.
You were explicitly comparing it to language.
And music doesn't experience emotions any more than language does. It can, however, reference those emotions and elicit those emotions in a manner that both its creators and its listeners mutually understand.
The fact that you are apparently musically illiterate does not mean it is not linguistic.
Please, show me how music can reference emotions "in a manner that both its creators and its listeners mutually understand." I challenge you to do this and to show us that this meaning that is being conveyed doesn't rely upon (a) culture and (b) the place in history where the performance took place.
Not even language stands up to that standard.
Are you implying that language also has no meaning now or that music must be held to a stricter standard?
Yes. Music, by itself, lacks meaning. Compare to language, which has meaning.
You can make happy music, sad music
No. You can make music that you take to be associated with happiness but that doesn't mean that music itself experiences emotions or even references the emotions that you experience. This is one of the points I made earlier in responding to MrMister - music seems to be alone in the arts in that it cannot reference anything but itself.
Something must be broken with you.
You were explicitly comparing it to language.
And music doesn't experience emotions any more than language does. It can, however, reference those emotions and elicit those emotions in a manner that both its creators and its listeners mutually understand.
The fact that you are apparently musically illiterate does not mean it is not linguistic.
Please, show me how music can reference emotions "in a manner that both its creators and its listeners mutually understand." I challenge you to do this and to show us that this meaning that is being conveyed doesn't rely upon (a) culture and (b) the place in history where the performance took place.
Not even language stands up to that standard.
What are you talking about? Language expresses meaning without depending upon culture or history. We can read Thucydides today just as well as we can read Hemingway, and derive meaning from both.
Are you implying that language also has no meaning now or that music must be held to a stricter standard?
Um, no. I'm implying that music has no meaning in the manner that language does, and that it cannot reference anything other than itself, unlike language.
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ElldrenIs a woman dammitceterum censeoRegistered Userregular
edited December 2009
No, you can read a translation of Thucydides, unless you happen to know Attic Greek, which is the translator's reinterpretation of Thucydides into English or whatever language.
And really, nobody today knows Attic Greek as it's been dead for over 1500 years. What people know is, at best, neo-attic greek, an interpretation of Attic Greek.
The meaning you derive from language is entirely dependent on culture.
Please, show me how music can reference emotions "in a manner that both its creators and its listeners mutually understand." I challenge you to do this and to show us that this meaning that is being conveyed doesn't rely upon (a) culture and (b) the place in history where the performance took place.
Something about certain sounds are hard coded into us. It's not just that you equate the Jaws themesong with 'scared' because you heard it in Jaws. African tribesmen without contact to the outside world do as well. Happyness and sadness as well, and it's been backed up by cross-cultural as well as infant studies.
It's similar to how nonverbal communication works. Nodding or shaking your head for 'yes' and 'no' may mean different things in different places. However, all humans use smiles in roughly the same way regardless of culture. Every human also has similar anger response signals, similar arousal signals, similar fear signals. Every person tends to naturally wrinkle up their nose at something that disgusts them; and every other person on the planet understands what that means instinctually. It's just how we're built.
Same with music; we just respond inherently to some things. Some music is universal.
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MrMisterJesus dying on the cross in pain? Morally better than us. One has to go "all in".Registered Userregular
I don't necessarily agree with this. I'm not committed to agreeing that poetry or literature is art, nor necessarily something like dance; I think we are having two problems, here. First, the common label of "an art" which is applied generally and without good reason to all sorts of things which are rather unrelated. Second, no one here is in a position to provide a satisfactory account of beauty, such as it is, and without that one cannot rule out the possibility that there are arts which are, in fact, instances of beauty.
I thought that you might go down this route--namely, denying that many things called art by 'the mob,' as you so colorfully called them, can count as actual art. This might be so, as far as it goes, but you're getting into territory where you really need a positive account. You are correct that we cannot logically exclude, at this point in the argument, the possibility that some arts are instances of beauty. But prima facie we have strong evidence that beauty is mind-dependent: there is significant cognitive diversity regarding beauty--tastes vary widely--the disputes do not seem amenable to rational resolution, and we don't have at hand any account of beauty which reduces it to anything mind-independent.
Furthermore, I think you need to say a little more about what the criteria are for a satisfactory account of beauty. I have already offered an account, sketchy as it may be: namely, that beauty is an analogue to deliciousness. This is, to you, not satisfactory, and so is ruled out at the get-go. But what are your criteria of satisfaction, and how do they not wind up being simply the presumption of your conclusion--that beauty must be a mind-independent property?
Storytelling seems to be a language game that indulges in either history, a counterfactual, or a creation of a possible world. Are any of these things artworks?
Sure; for instance, the counterfactual description of events is art when it is done in literature. I don't know why you think that those things---histories, conterfactual descriptions, or possible world specifications--couldn't be art.
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MrMisterJesus dying on the cross in pain? Morally better than us. One has to go "all in".Registered Userregular
No. You can make music that you take to be associated with happiness but that doesn't mean that music itself experiences emotions or even references the emotions that you experience. This is one of the points I made earlier in responding to MrMister - music seems to be alone in the arts in that it cannot reference anything but itself.
This seems to be false. Here is why:
As you've said, music can invoke associations of happiness, triumph, sadness, etc. in the listener. It seems also possible for it to evoke more complicated sentiment, as would occur upon listening to a national anthem, or a funereal song (as such, it could even refer to places and events). But, you say, this is just a projection of the listeners associations--the music itself does not reference anything.
But, the same can be said of any form of representation. Consider a painting of a tree: that painting, in and of itself, is merely paint on a canvas. If the artist were a man who had never seen a tree, but was just painting something he found abstractly beautiful, or which had appeared to him in a dream, then that painting would not actually refer to trees, despite looking awfully like them. Similarly, if an ant happens to trace out the words "Winston Churchill" in the sand, those letter-shapes do not actually refer to Winston Churchill; If a waterfall happened to burble out "the sun is shining," it would not have referred to the sun. No particular lines in the sand, or paint on a canvas, or humming of sound refer in and of themselves.
So the notion that certain arts refer in and of themselves, but that music, by contrast, does not, is confused. No art refers in and of itself, and once you allow causal histories and artistic intention into the picture, then music can most definitely refer.
Perhaps the most accessible example of Music as Language would be Peter and the Wolf.
It would, perhaps, be fair to posit that music is a language that must be taught BUT that it also contains a host of sound cues which are responded to instinctively and consist of "natural language."
However, it should be kept in mind that not everyone will respond precisely the same way to the "natural language" sounds, and not everyone will get the largess of music language, in the same manner that Asperger's cases can't comprehend the language of body language and social behavior.
This is so curious. Values are determined, along with wills? And yet they differ? Most curious. How exactly does that work?
Yes and no.
They don't "differ." They're just different components of the same overall structure.
Your actions are determined, in part, by your values, which are determined by other things. Your actions, and their consequences, will, in part, determine your future values, ad infinitum until you die.
Okay, everyone just basically said what I was going to say in response.
Music is a language and can/does have meaning outside of itself; just because it's less straightforward and clear in its meaning doesn't mean it doesn't have one.
And as far as grammar goes, you could even dispute the fact that music doesn't have an equivalent to that either. Look at something like Joyce's Ulysses or any kind of avant-garde writing or poetry- it's possible to have language that conveys meaning without adhering to our traditional grammatical rules. The grammar itself doesn't impart meaning, it's organization and categorization for clarity and understanding.
Equate that with say, sonata form. Something being a sonata doesn't give in any inherent meaning or reveal any particular intent of meaning, but it's a pretty concrete set of rules (capable of being innovated within, however) on how to organize chords and melodies and sounds. And likewise, it is very possible to make music outside of preconceived forms that still has emotional weight and meaning.
Just because music and language aren't perfectly analogous doesn't mean they're not equatable. They don't call it the universal language for nothing.
No, you can read a translation of Thucydides, unless you happen to know Attic Greek, which is the translator's reinterpretation of Thucydides into English or whatever language.
Firstly, I can read Attic Greek (poorly). And there are many people who exist who can read it just as well as they can read English. Secondly, translation doesn't affect the meaning of any given sentence or passage, only its comprehensibility for the reader or 'end user.' Translation can occur as a matter of course between any language to any other language, with the only consideration being the quality of the translator in respect to presenting an accurate account of what has been said or written.
You cannot translate a musical score into English or from English into a musical score without creating meaning where there was none before. When going from Greek to English or English to Greek, all that is changing is the way in which we access the meaning. The same cannot be said for music to English.
And really, nobody today knows Attic Greek as it's been dead for over 1500 years. What people know is, at best, neo-attic greek, an interpretation of Attic Greek.
Congratulations on being incorrect. There has been a continuous literary history of the Greek language since before the death of Socrates, and we have, more or less, written examples from every notable era of the Greek language, so much so that a person can learn to read Homer (which is written in Ionic), Thucydides (which is written in Attic), the Gospel of John (which is written in Koine, a simplified Attic), the Alexiad by Anna Comnena (artificial Attic written during the Komnenian Restoration), the poetry of St Theodore of Stoudios (written in Byzantine, or Middle Greek), and the works of Adamantios Korais (who wrote in Modern Greek) without an undue amount of effort. Indeed, give the copious amount of written examples that we have from many of the eras, it's quite easy for philologists to track the grammatical changes through time, identifying where, when, and in some cases even why such changes were made. The biggest changes happen between the Hellenistic era and the Modern era, where Byzantine scholars, writing in Middle Greek or reconstructed Attic introduced many reforms that simplified the reading and learning of classical Greek texts, and also set the stage for the eventual development of modern Greek, which occured only a century after the fall of Constantinople.
Hell, we even have written examples of Linear B. That's Greek before the invention of the Greek alphabet.
The meaning you derive from language is entirely dependent on culture.
This claim is extremely strong and I doubt that you can defend it.
Something about certain sounds are hard coded into us. It's not just that you equate the Jaws themesong with 'scared' because you heard it in Jaws. African tribesmen without contact to the outside world do as well. Happyness and sadness as well, and it's been backed up by cross-cultural as well as infant studies.
The link you provided only goes to the abstract, not the paper. So I can't exactly read and respond.
I do not doubt that there are physiological effects of music, or even psychological ones. But I do doubt that we can point to either elements of music (tones, metres, etc) or passages therein and track them to particular emotions. Which key is the saddest? D minor? Is the tritone really the devil in music? Is a C dorian scale the scale that creates or correlates to melancholy?
At best, what this abstract points out is that people may share first reactions to experiences or that in some cases some musical elements may correlate to some emotions. But I would be very careful not to make a causation-correlation error, which I think that one does if they claim that there is any strong connection between certain musical passages and emotion.
It's similar to how nonverbal communication works. Nodding or shaking your head for 'yes' and 'no' may mean different things in different places. However, all humans use smiles in roughly the same way regardless of culture. Every human also has similar anger response signals, similar arousal signals, similar fear signals. Every person tends to naturally wrinkle up their nose at something that disgusts them; and every other person on the planet understands what that means instinctually. It's just how we're built.
I'm not prepared to commit to music being biologically determined.
Same with music; we just respond inherently to some things. Some music is universal.
Yes, exactly. Some music is absolutely universal, but I wouldn't at all ascribe that to a biological origin.
Sure; for instance, the counterfactual description of events is art when it is done in literature. I don't know why you think that those things---histories, conterfactual descriptions, or possible world specifications--couldn't be art.
I made this point earlier in the thread, but I think it stands. Your treatment of certain activities and the artefacts that they create - such as manuals for sheep husbandry, or histories, etc - is such that the category of "art" becomes essentially meaningless. Any object or any activity which anyone undertakes at any time whatsoever is art, and furthermore, you reject the notion that there can ever be an object or artefact that appeals to no one whatsoever, categorically. This requires us to consider all objects and activities and their artefacts as being completely equal with one another, as it seems we are prevented from even being able to, based on communal agreement or popular consent decide upon which objects and activities are preferable.
In summary, you've (a) made the definition of art overly broad so as to make it meaningless, and, (b) made it impossible for us to distinguish even nominally between which activities and objects are preferable and which are not preferable.
I thought that you might go down this route--namely, denying that many things called art by 'the mob,' as you so colorfully called them, can count as actual art. This might be so, as far as it goes, but you're getting into territory where you really need a positive account. You are correct that we cannot logically exclude, at this point in the argument, the possibility that some arts are instances of beauty. But prima facie we have strong evidence that beauty is mind-dependent: there is significant cognitive diversity regarding beauty--tastes vary widely--the disputes do not seem amenable to rational resolution, and we don't have at hand any account of beauty which reduces it to anything mind-independent.
1. I think the very existence of a category called "art" points in the direction of there being something mind independent that people recognize and account for. Even though I disparage what I see as imprecise usage of the label, and I think with good reason, we have this category that commonly all people recognize and all people separate out from other, more mundane activities. We consider painting and sculpture and music to be arts, whereas we don't consider autorepair or biology experiments to be arts. There is a difference between these activities, and even if it remains shrouded or occulted from us, we can recognize the division and take it to be meaningful. So much so that it does not matter, in practical terms, whether or not our notion of beauty is truly objective of simply objective in practice (intersubjective).
2. The varying diversity of tastes does not necessarily lead us to the conclusion that beauty is mind-dependent. Rather, we can posit that beauty itself is multi-faceted: that it is complex, and cannot be reduced simply to one activity. Just as with ethics, we recognize that the good (such as it is) may be present or manifest in all sorts of actions and scenarios, so too can beauty be manifest or made apparent to us in various activities and approaches. What you've presented to me and to the thread is just that; beauty is complex and people may approach it or understand it differently or access it differently or in more or less accurate or better or worse ways. What we haven't yet done is establish why this diversity of tastes in activities must lead us to conclude that beauty does not exist.
3. Furthermore, if we accept a weaker version of my position and conclude that beauty is ultimately intersubjective, we are still in a position to say that the divergent tastes of activities or practices are simply those which are recognized by the aesthetic community (I'm using this term in a similar way one might use the language use community) as being activities which lead to or best reflect beauty.
1) It isn't possible to entirely place yourself in the perspective of an Ancient Greek person. People have enough difficulty identifying with their own siblings. You will never be able to experience something from their perspective or understand it through their mindset because no human being can fully describe themselves. There is a reason that, even among Academic scholars, interpretations of ancient texts are under constant revision and discussion. Consider how much we disagree on words just in this thread.
2) The meaning we derive from language is determined in the usual manner. It is mostly cultural, however, an individual may have specific experiences with specific aspects of language, and the biology of that person may react to the words in certain ways; like how people find the word "spleen" funny.
3) "Art" is only really a useful shorthand for "artifice." Things created by the actions of a creature. In contrast to things which are created by incident or which are alive and thus generate their own form. The most general use of the word "art" is "created things that I enjoy looking at." Trying to make it some magical high concept is extravagent and groundless. We have more distinct terms like "fine arts" or "performance art" or that.
4) If the universality of certain forms of music isn't biological than what the hell is it?
5) What is this "Manifesting" you're talking about? Are you proposing a mystical, Platonic universe? On what grounds?
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Podlyyou unzipped me! it's all coming back! i don't like it!Registered Userregular
I do not doubt that there are physiological effects of music, or even psychological ones. But I do doubt that we can point to either elements of music (tones, metres, etc) or passages therein and track them to particular emotions. Which key is the saddest? D minor? Is the tritone really the devil in music? Is a C dorian scale the scale that creates or correlates to melancholy?
Historically, yes, which is a result of non-well-tempered tuning. Before the widespread use of tempered-tuning, the keys progressing away in the circle of fifths from C became more and more "untuned," which made them more dissonant. The tritone is suspension of notes that hang in resolution above a fifth,k which creates a unresolved, haunting sound to them.
Please, show me how music can reference emotions "in a manner that both its creators and its listeners mutually understand." I challenge you to do this and to show us that this meaning that is being conveyed doesn't rely upon (a) culture and (b) the place in history where the performance took place.
Not even language stands up to that standard.
What are you talking about? Language expresses meaning without depending upon culture or history. We can read Thucydides today just as well as we can read Hemingway, and derive meaning from both.
We can derive meaning, but do we derive "the" meaning "in a manner that both its creators and its listeners mutually understand."?
You seem to be claiming that language has a special power to express meaning without depending upon culture of history. This is a very silly claim to make absent some notion of an ideal, Platonic notion wherein all participants have direct access to meaning. I think your account would rely upon a language which was not semiotic, did not rely on signs, and rather was a language of direct participation in MEANING itself. Why?
Well, to understand Thucydides one need understand the history and culture in which the text was written. There are particular cultural referrents for particular words (signs) one must utilize to discern the correct meaning.
Think of it this way: When you and I read "duck" do we both think of the same duck? What gender is your duck, what color is it? Is it flying or floating, swimming or bobbing? Is it eating or sleeping?
We can function with language because of these ambiguities and their assumed similarity. If my "duck" is floating and your "duck" is flying there seems to be functional equivalence in meaning insofar as we are both thinking of a kind of waterfowl.
However, while this practically functions, I do not think that it meets your "in a manner that both its creators and its listeners mutually understand" criteria. Is there this sort of mutual understanding between you and I with regard to "duck" given the obvious differences in our understanding?
If so, why the shit would music not operate in that same way with its own brand of ambiguity?
Edit: Said another way, read late Wittgenstein. You seem to have stopped at the Tractatus.
Furthermore, I think you need to say a little more about what the criteria are for a satisfactory account of beauty. I have already offered an account, sketchy as it may be: namely, that beauty is an analogue to deliciousness. This is, to you, not satisfactory, and so is ruled out at the get-go. But what are your criteria of satisfaction, and how do they not wind up being simply the presumption of your conclusion--that beauty must be a mind-independent property?
I find your account of deliciousness to be problematic. As many in the thread will be quick to point out, there are natural, biological limitations on what we can perceive as delicious that one, no matter how hard they try, can get around. Taste and how the tongue is constructed and how many buds it has and whether or not they are sensitive enough, etc, are all things which pose limits on deliciousness at the very beginning, and which allow us, at least in broad terms, to judge meaningfully differences between things which "have taste" and things which "do not have taste."
I'm sure you would agree that having taste is a necessary precondition for something to be judged to be delicious. If that's the case, then we are in a situation where deliciousness is going to be naturally guided into areas which are, essentially pre-selected for us. So even if we admit to your claim that deliciousness cannot be subject to judging which isn't arbitrary or subjective, we must admit that we can judge between things which "have taste" and which "don't have taste," and thus have no potential whatsoever to be delicious.
I would put forward that beyond this, having taste is not a question that adheres to the excluded middle: there are degrees to which something has the capacity to be delicious that different, even amongst those which we could judge to actually have taste, or not. An illustration: let us look at three objects. A hot pepper that was grown in poor soil, in a poor environment and just generally farmed badly; a hot pepper that was grown in the very best soil in the very best environment and was generally farmed in the best possible manner; finally, mud. If we take mud has having no properties of taste whatsoever, we can easily divide the three objects into two categories: mud does not have taste (in other words, it has no capacity for deliciousness) while the two hot peppers do have taste (in other words, they have capacity for deliciousness). This is straight forward and follows from our above discussion. However, is it possible to consider the two hot peppers and judge between them? Yes, as we can empirically identify the elements which give the hot peppers their taste, the things which act upon our tongues and our taste buds to give that wonderful (or horrible) burning sensation.
During this sort of empirical investigation we would find that the poorly farmed hot pepper had less of the substance that interacted with the taste buds than the pepper that was farmed with the best possible methods and in the best possible circumstances; that, through this increased quantity and potency, the capacity for deliciousness is increased. That is, the property of "having taste" is superior in the best hot pepper because the thing which acts upon the taste buds is more potent and there is more of it.
We can say that the poor hot pepper can only ever hope to amount to, say, having half as much "taste" or capacity for deliciousness as the best hot pepper can.
Now, obviously, having the capacity for deliciousness and having deliciousness are two very different things. If we accept, for argument's sake, that deliciousness is truly subjective, we have an interesting case. Say there is a person who doesn't like hot peppers and what they do to your tongue at all, and they have to choose between eating one or the other. It is not hard to imagine that they might choose the poor hot pepper, and we can say that, 'aha!' the capacity for deliciousness doesn't matter at all when it comes to choosing which things are actually delicious for a person, the only consideration is whether or not they themselves feel something is delicious. My response to this is thus: given, for argument's sake, that the judgement to be delicious is entirely subjective, or at least primarily so, it stands to reason that the person making the judgement would want to make the best possible judgement. As there are no rules or community standards for judging what is or is not delicious, a person must rely upon their own faculties in determining for them, what constitutes deliciousness or not-deliciousness.
Now, I assume that people, when given the choice will choose to err on the side of rationality, and also, when given the choice, attempt to make the best, most definitive decision possible. If we are being rational and opened minded in our choices, something which is philosophically good practice, I would put forward that the person choosing between the hot peppers will want to make the best possible determination between the hot peppers, so as to make the best possible decision on the deliciousness of hot peppers generally. In that situation, it follows that the person would choose the best hot pepper - the one with the more capacity for deliciousness, so as to experience the most definitive answer to whether or not the hot pepper is delicious.
Other foods or drinks could be substituted just as well. Wine is a perfect example. Would any rational person choose the dregs of some bathtub over the finest wines from Bordeaux, so as to see whether or not they like wine? I think not.
Beauty is like having taste. It is a question of capacity. We want to see things which have the best possible capacity for deliciousness, if we are using MrMister's parlance - which means that there are obviously things which are better than anothers, and also things which have no capacity for beauty whatsoever, just as mud has no capacity for deliciousness while hot peppers, however poor, do. The deliciousness, and an individual's judgement of the deliciousness of any given object, is ultimately second order to the choice between (a) something which has the capacity to be delicious in the first place versus something that doesn't, and, (b) the choice between something that can be most delicious and something that can be only poorly delicious.
This seems to be false. Here is why:
But, the same can be said of any form of representation. Consider a painting of a tree: that painting, in and of itself, is merely paint on a canvas. If the artist were a man who had never seen a tree, but was just painting something he found abstractly beautiful, or which had appeared to him in a dream, then that painting would not actually refer to trees, despite looking awfully like them. Similarly, if an ant happens to trace out the words "Winston Churchill" in the sand, those letter-shapes do not actually refer to Winston Churchill; If a waterfall happened to burble out "the sun is shining," it would not have referred to the sun. No particular lines in the sand, or paint on a canvas, or humming of sound refer in and of themselves.
So the notion that certain arts refer in and of themselves, but that music, by contrast, does not, is confused. No art refers in and of itself, and once you allow causal histories and artistic intention into the picture, then music can most definitely refer.
First, I draw a distinction between linguistic arts and non-linguistic arts. Second, the status of paintings or sculptures as images implies to me that at least for some of them, these things refer to things other than themselves, in whatever way. Abstract painting is a good example, as it is apparently without a particular subject in the same way that non-abstract painting is not - rather, the considerations of abstract paintings have are entirely internal to themselves. The lines on the paper and the colour and the canvas, etc, etc.
Perhaps we can draw further distinctions between arts that I didn't see before. Those which cannot ever refer to things other than themselves, those which can sometimes refer to things other than themselves but do not necessarily have to, and those which must refer to things other than themselves to be comprehensible.
I don't think this separation is confused or that I am contradicting myself, here. It simply looks as if I simply have to be more careful where I am categorizing which art.
Music is a language and can/does have meaning outside of itself
Okay, that's your central claim.
just because it's less straightforward and clear in its meaning doesn't mean it doesn't have one.
Okay, you are saying that (1) music is a language, and, therefore music has meaning. Are you also saying that (2) only language has meaning?
And as far as grammar goes, you could even dispute the fact that music doesn't have an equivalent to that either.
How?
Look at something like Joyce's Ulysses or any kind of avant-garde writing or poetry- it's possible to have language that conveys meaning without adhering to our traditional grammatical rules.
For the purposes of this argument, I will put forward that grammar is necessary for a language to be a language, and that meaning doesn't exist outside of languages. Please illustrate how it is possible for something to be meaningful in language without a grammar.
The grammar itself doesn't impart meaning, it's organization and categorization for clarity and understanding.
What is a language without a grammar? What would that look like?
Equate that with say, sonata form. Something being a sonata doesn't give in any inherent meaning or reveal any particular intent of meaning, but it's a pretty concrete set of rules (capable of being innovated within, however) on how to organize chords and melodies and sounds.
The sonata form is just like any other compositional form: a way of organizing tones in particular sequence with one another. We have many ways of organizing things such as arrays, tables, lists, etc, and yet we don't consider any of these things to be grammars. Why should we consider the sonata form or the symphony or the concerto to be grammars when we don't consider tables and lists and arrays grammars?
Just because music and language aren't perfectly analogous doesn't mean they're not equatable. They don't call it the universal language for nothing.
...I don't want to be uncharitable, but I think you just contradicted yourself there. You are saying that music and language are equal (if and only if), but also saying that they aren't analogous. What does that mean? They are equal and yet they aren't?
1) It isn't possible to entirely place yourself in the perspective of an Ancient Greek person. People have enough difficulty identifying with their own siblings. You will never be able to experience something from their perspective or understand it through their mindset because no human being can fully describe themselves. There is a reason that, even among Academic scholars, interpretations of ancient texts are under constant revision and discussion. Consider how much we disagree on words just in this thread.
A person need not inhabit the mind of an author to read a text. Indeed, all of the objections you raised against ancient literature apply equally well to any contemporary literature. There is a reason that, even among academic scholars, interpretations of contemporary texts are under constant revision and discussion.
2) The meaning we derive from language is determined in the usual manner.
This means nothing to me. I don't know what the usual manner is.
It is mostly cultural, however, an individual may have specific experiences with specific aspects of language, and the biology of that person may react to the words in certain ways; like how people find the word "spleen" funny.
Are you arguing that language is biologically determined?
3) "Art" is only really a useful shorthand for "artifice." Things created by the actions of a creature. In contrast to things which are created by incident or which are alive and thus generate their own form. The most general use of the word "art" is "created things that I enjoy looking at." Trying to make it some magical high concept is extravagent and groundless. We have more distinct terms like "fine arts" or "performance art" or that.
I don't know about you, but I'm not using art or artworks in a manner that covers every possible thing imaginable. I'm specifically arguing against that.
4) If the universality of certain forms of music isn't biological than what the hell is it?
Mathematical.
5) What is this "Manifesting" you're talking about? Are you proposing a mystical, Platonic universe? On what grounds?
Everyone loves to accuse everyone else of being a Platonist. No, I'm not proposing the doctrine of the forms, and although this is very off-topic, I want to put forward that I believe that taking the Republic as putting forward the doctrine of the forms is based on a misreading of Plato and a misunderstanding of the Socratic method.
Historically, yes, which is a result of non-well-tempered tuning. Before the widespread use of tempered-tuning, the keys progressing away in the circle of fifths from C became more and more "untuned," which made them more dissonant.
This is untrue. Keys became more dissonant with the introduction of well-tempered tuning for keyboard instruments (the pianoforte and its predecessors). Woodwinds, brass, and most of all string instruments were and remain able to be more in tune than a piano because they are able to adjust completely to any new key one moves to. Previously, one had to completely retune the piano or harpsichord when moving from one key to another, because there was no acceptable way to account for the harmonic distance between the leading tone and the octave, as well as other degrees of the scale (tonic and the mediant, etc.) Equal temperament basically made every key a little bit out of tune, so as to allow a very good approximation across all twelve keys.
The tritone is suspension of notes that hang in resolution above a fifth,k which creates a unresolved, haunting sound to them.
Yes, the tritone sounds unresolved, and it is notable musically speaking because when you hear it, you have no ability to tell which direction the tone comes from: whether the tonic (ascending) or the octave (descending). I'll leave aside the haunting value judgement...
A person need not inhabit the mind of an author to read a text. Indeed, all of the objections you raised against ancient literature apply equally well to any contemporary literature. There is a reason that, even among academic scholars, interpretations of contemporary texts are under constant revision and discussion.
The further away from the reader you are in perspective, the further your interpretation of the text will be from what it meant to them. Certainly it applies to modern texts as well, the difference is simply smaller.
This means nothing to me. I don't know what the usual manner is.
Determined in the sense of "determinism." I've explained it several times in this thread.
Are you arguing that language is biologically determined?
I'm arguing that it is determined, and that biology is one of the factors in that determination.
I don't know about you, but I'm not using art or artworks in a manner that covers every possible thing imaginable. I'm specifically arguing against that.
And I think that, in light of history and language, it is folly. "Art" needs an adjective to not produce endless stream of conflicting definitions. Fine art, culinary art, martial art, street art, etc etc etc.
4) If the universality of certain forms of music isn't biological than what the hell is it?
Mathematical.
The whole damned universe is mathematical. That does not have a clear result in a man from Alaska enjoying the same drum beats as a lady in New Zealand.
Everyone loves to accuse everyone else of being a Platonist. No, I'm not proposing the doctrine of the forms, and although this is very off-topic, I want to put forward that I believe that taking the Republic as putting forward the doctrine of the forms is based on a misreading of Plato and a misunderstanding of the Socratic method.
When you say things that sound Platonic you will in fact be accused of Platonism. Explain your stance and terminology.
You seem to be claiming that language has a special power to express meaning without depending upon culture of history.
The only claim that I'm truly committed to in this discussion is that music is not a language.
Well, to understand Thucydides one need understand the history and culture in which the text was written. There are particular cultural referrents for particular words (signs) one must utilize to discern the correct meaning.
Who says which meaning is "correct" and which is "incorrect?" The author? You? The language use community? The language use community when a work was written, or the language use community now? Philologists? Who?
Think of it this way: When you and I read "duck" do we both think of the same duck? What gender is your duck, what color is it? Is it flying or floating, swimming or bobbing? Is it eating or sleeping?
That doesn't matter; what matters is what we are both thinking of a duck, in whatever form we conceive of it. The point is that language allows us to communicate, not to gain privileged access to one's private thoughts. If you and I both understand the sentence, "the duck is over there," as referring to a duck that is over there then our language act has been successful, and we can congratulate ourselves.
The consideration of texts changes things, because, as Socrates points out repeatedly in various Platonic dialogues, you cannot converse with a text. You cannot ask it questions for clarity or engage in discourse with it; it is ultimately limited, and generally inferior to being able to speak to someone directly. So there are considerations to be made for authors, in how they write words down so as to ensure communicabillity, and also for readers, and how they should approach the reading of a text. So reading a text is similar but different than speaking to someone. I think we can all accept this claim as non-controversial.
However, while this practically functions, I do not think that it meets your "in a manner that both its creators and its listeners mutually understand" criteria. Is there this sort of mutual understanding between you and I with regard to "duck" given the obvious differences in our understanding?
I don't understand you. (Ha!)
If so, why the shit would music not operate in that same way with its own brand of ambiguity?
I find it difficult to ascribe ambiguity to something other than language.
The further away from the reader you are in perspective, the further your interpretation of the text will be from what it meant to them. Certainly it applies to modern texts as well, the difference is simply smaller.
Why should we give authors privileged status when it comes to the meaning of a text? Are you saying that we need to resort to going outside of the text to find the meaning in the text in the first place? What is the point of a text then, if it cannot even give us clear meaning?
I'm arguing that it is determined, and that biology is one of the factors in that determination.
This is a crazy position.
And I think that, in light of history and language, it is folly. "Art" needs an adjective to not produce endless stream of conflicting definitions. Fine art, culinary art, martial art, street art, etc etc etc.
You may consider that, but I'm talking about aesthetics. Art and artwork are things which have aesthetic value, as opposed to things which aren't art, and accordingly don't have aesthetic value, or at least not in the same way as art. That's the way I've been using the terms since the discussion started, and I believe that is true also of MrMister.
The whole damned universe is mathematical. That does not have a clear result in a man from Alaska enjoying the same drum beats as a lady in New Zealand.
Once again, I'm slow. I don't know what you are saying here.
Why should we give authors privileged status when it comes to the meaning of a text? Are you saying that we need to resort to going outside of the text to find the meaning in the text in the first place? What is the point of a text then, if it cannot even give us clear meaning?
You can look at the text from many different angles, but the intention of the work is in fact an important thing to at least try to grasp unless you're only interested in how pretty the words are.
You must have outside information for every text you will ever read in your life. The thing is that you have already internalized the vast majority of such outside information.
"Marty is a stool pigeon" requires outside information to have any clue as to what it means.
You need to know that stool pigeon does not mean "bird made of feces." You need to know what society at the time thought of stool pigeons, and you need to know if the author agreed with that stance. You also need to know the context of the text, whether the narrator or character is trustworthy or favored or supposed to be sarcastic, etc.
I'm arguing that it is determined, and that biology is one of the factors in that determination.
This is a crazy position.
I'm not aware of any other possibilities that don't require me to believe in dragons and shit.
You may consider that, but I'm talking about aesthetics. Art and artwork are things which have aesthetic value, as opposed to things which aren't art, and accordingly don't have aesthetic value, or at least not in the same way as art. That's the way I've been using the terms since the discussion started, and I believe that is true also of MrMister.
Aesthetic value can be applied to anything you can perceive, even if only in your imagination, including things which are purely incidental. Art and aesthetics are not attached at the hip.
Once again, I'm slow. I don't know what you are saying here.
I'm saying that "LoL music is math" doesn't convey ANY useful information.
"Marty is a stool pigeon" requires outside information to have any clue as to what it means.
So someone needs to know language to read language?
You can look at the text from many different angles, but the intention of the work is in fact an important thing to at least try to grasp unless you're only interested in how pretty the words are.
Why don't you provide an argument for that instead of assuming it to be the case?
Aesthetic value can be applied to anything you can perceive, even if only in your imagination, including things which are purely incidental. Art and aesthetics are not attached at the hip.
Perhaps you can do as MrMister and I have already done and expand on your views?
I'm saying that "LoL music is math" doesn't convey ANY useful information.
When you ask for reductionism, you get reductionism.
So someone needs to know language to read language?
There's a reason that texts on Shakespeare are full of footnotes despite being written in largely-readable English. You can get surface ideas from raw reading, but you're going to miss a hell of a lot of nuance if you don't have any depth to your understanding.
You can look at the text from many different angles, but the intention of the work is in fact an important thing to at least try to grasp unless you're only interested in how pretty the words are.
Why don't you provide an argument for that instead of assuming it to be the case?
I thought this was understood by anyone who had ever had an English or equivalent class... ever... like even once. It quite honestly blows my mind that someone who can spell their own name hasn't learned this.
Do you not think it important to comprehend that Aesop's fables are not to be taken as literal events and that they are intended as lessons? It is not the ONLY way to read the text, but it is pretty fucking valuable information to have when reading it unless you're happy thinking that Aesop was a crazy fucker who believed in talking animals.
Aesthetic value can be applied to anything you can perceive, even if only in your imagination, including things which are purely incidental. Art and aesthetics are not attached at the hip.
Perhaps you can do as MrMister and I have already done and expand on your views?
"What a beautiful sunset"
When you ask for reductionism, you get reductionism.
So you have no actual answer just "LOL MATH"
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If you want a good example of the importance of context and outside information, consider how I have to explain shit to you which to me should not have to be explained any more than the term "stool pigeon."
If you want a good example of the importance of context and outside information, consider how I have to explain shit to you which to me should not have to be explained any more than the term "stool pigeon."
You are, in fact, a living example of my point.
I just want an argument, man. There's no need for you to get uppity. Just make some claims and then explain what you mean and give me some evidence.
There's a reason that texts on Shakespeare are full of footnotes despite being written in largely-readable English. You can get surface ideas from raw reading, but you're going to miss a hell of a lot of nuance if you don't have any depth to your understanding.
Meaning and understanding are two separate things. You are saying that there are different levels of understanding. I don't think that's particularly controversial, but you aren't addressing what I was talking about.
I thought this was understood by anyone who had ever had an English or equivalent class... ever... like even once. It quite honestly blows my mind that someone who can spell their own name hasn't learned this.
This sort of tone is really unnecessary and is no substitute for actually stating your views. If you wish to critique, that's cool but you aren't providing supporting evidence of why I should accept your claims as opposed to mine or MrMister's or Poldy's or anyone elses.
So you have no actual answer just "LOL MATH"
You are asking about the universality of music. You are asserting, somehow, that music is universal because of...biology? That music is biological, or that music has some element to it which is biological? I'm not really sure. If we are talking about foundational, reductionist elements of music which we can take to be universal, the most natural things to point to are its mathematical elements. Frequency and ratio and time, which are the things which allow us to have tones and metre and sequence. These things are necessary for music and they also apply categorically, and so they can be true in all possible cases.
Usage of a word to express intention by a language user.
All of this discussion is secondary though to the question that apparently provoked such a large response: Is music a language?
I still hold that English, or any other natural language for that matter, has elements which music does not have and thus cannot be understood to be a language. Further, if we understand meaning in terms of words and the usage of those words, then we can say that music does not have meaning - as language does. That is not to say that music lacks value. On the contrary, what I am arguing for is that music has aesthetic value, in and of itself, in contrast to MrMister who is arguing that all artworks only have value in terms of things external to them (values and attitudes they may represent or bring about).
The points that Incenjucar and _J_ are raising are so very far afield from what the discussion is about I fear that we are getting too off track. Perhaps if you wish to talk about language and meaning it would be best to return to the other philosophy thread?
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and music has chords and rhythms and timbres
you don't have to write them down for them to exist, just like words
what is this getting at
I would imagine that you would be committed in some form to the idea that art is a natural kind, and that it is united by being some human production of beauty, or some such. This strikes me as highly implausible. About the only thing uniting all works or art is that they have all been called works of art, and hence, considering art as if it were a category in nature seems like a fundamental mistake. My point here is related to your other objection: that I have defined art in such a way that it's no longer a distinct category at all. Well, that is precisely what I intend, at least if you are talking about a distinct natural category, as that of copper or zinc. The bounds of art are inevitably mind-dependent, not mind-independent: something is art if we take it to be art.
At best, art is united by its ability to provoke a specific kind of pleasure in us, a pleasure we label as distinctly aesthetic. In that case then artfulness is like sweetness (another property that can be realized at physical level by any number of different physical microstructures). I suspect that is probably true to some limited extent, but what strikes me as more characteristic of art is that it occupies a certain social location, closely related to class. Going to the symphony is really a rich hobby, and sponsoring a symphony is a way that the Neuvo Riche can buy respectability, for instance. So I think that really the delineation of art is part of a class dynamic, and that is why we can have Starry Night and Duchamp's Urinal both be art at the same time, despite really having nothing in common besides the label.
But I don't think that my mildly Marxist musings are really important to the general idea, which is that art is not the collection of objects united by instantiating the platonic form of the beautiful.
I don't know what you're asking, nor how it relates to some art being value-laden.
That is, more or less, exactly my position.
Beauty, like deliciousness, is recognized by all as an intrinsic good. But beauty, like deliciousness, still does not exist over and above a set of preferences that people happen to have.
Though usually this is only found in fiction. I hope.
I hold that (a) music isn't language, and, (b) music isn't a text. That is, music isn't reducible to, say, a score or a record of an instance of music. Apparently this was controversial.
Quite possibly, but I don't know what beauty is, at this point. Like I said, I've had intuitions, but I'm not prepared to make a substantive argument one way or another.
Perhaps, yes.
I don't necessarily agree with this. I'm not committed to agreeing that poetry or literature is art, nor necessarily something like dance; I think we are having two problems, here. First, the common label of "an art" which is applied generally and without good reason to all sorts of things which are rather unrelated. Second, no one here is in a position to provide a satisfactory account of beauty, such as it is, and without that one cannot rule out the possibility that there are arts which are, in fact, instances of beauty.
This is inextricably linked to what we take beauty to be.
Let's not call names. We don't need a platonic form of the beautiful if beauty is a "proper combination of elements," or something along those lines. The decision isn't simply between a platonic form of the beautiful or no beauty whatsoever.
Storytelling seems to be a language game that indulges in either history, a counterfactual, or a creation of a possible world. Are any of these things artworks?
Yeah, I disagree with this.
I imagine my stance on what beauty is is obvious.
It should be noted that beauty is not the only thing people find attractive in art, at least not the more common definition of beauty.
Yeah, I figured you'd go this route. Please expand on your argument when you have the time.
Sorry, I'm a bit slow. What is your stance on beauty?
Quite so. This is why I find my account more satisfactory than MrMister's, even with the glaring omission of not having a satisfactory definition of the good. Artworks can be appreciated not as artworks necessarily, but for the 'surface' elements of them, or for the things which they reference, etc.
A value judgment resulting from the usual determination.
I'm sorry, I don't understand. What is the usual determination? Are you saying that beauty is found in the judgement itself - that is, when one makes a value judgement, beauty is being created or imbibed into whatever the judgement is happening upon or about?
I posit that values are determined, as with everything else.
I posit that "beauty" is a value.
As such, one judges beauty in relation to one's determined value of what is beautiful.
I may however be straining the word "value" a bit. There may be a more suitable term that encompasses preferences and such, including what are more often understood as values.
The main point is that nothing is beautiful in and of itself, but it is beautiful or ugly or whatever to specific individuals based on determined factors like genetics and personal history.
It's just a very long-winded way to say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder OR That's just, like, your opinion, man.
This is so curious. Values are determined, along with wills? And yet they differ? Most curious. How exactly does that work?
because no, of course it isn't the same as language and made up of perfectly analogous parts and everything
but language is just as much of a 'not-text' as music is. you certainly don't need a written language to have a spoken one
so no music is not reducible to text, but neither is language and therefore why is it necessary to make the music=! language distinction
Poldy is asserting that music is text. I'm sure he'll be in the thread at some point to elaborate on what this means, but I'm quite sure I know where he's going to go with that (absence and presence and repetition, etc). I responded that I don't think music is reducible to notation, at which point Hachface joined in the conversation and pointed out that language has tonal elements to it.
My point, and I stand by it, is that music isn't language, as it lacks meaning and grammar. Music has notation, sure, and so does language, but the similarity stops there. Mathematics also has notation, but it is obviously distinct from natural language and derives its meaning differently than natural language does.
I don't understand why this is so controversial or why people keep responding to this.
I just wished to express my appreciation at seeing an op that clearly outlines it's aims and objectives, gives definitions and guidelines and makes an effort to indicate the limitations of the idea/position being put forth.
I further appreciate the thoroughness with which further posts expanded upon the idea, to the point of revision where it was deemed necessary. It is a quality op (and further revision) that was a pleasure to read.
However I have been barred from participating due to one of aforesaid guidelines and since I wish to respect this guideline I will not be participating. In addition, I don't really know what I think about aesthetics: I tend to just dislike it when people start using aesthetics to judge others. Which is more of an objection to stereotyping than anything else.
Also my minor criticisms were already covered within the first couple of pages.
But it has been interesting to read the discussion.
Yes. Music, by itself, lacks meaning. Compare to language, which has meaning.
No. You can make music that you take to be associated with happiness but that doesn't mean that music itself experiences emotions or even references the emotions that you experience. This is one of the points I made earlier in responding to MrMister - music seems to be alone in the arts in that it cannot reference anything but itself.
No again. Music has elements and features and qualities, perhaps even necessary or fundamental qualities, such as tone, sequence, metre, etc. None of these things are grammar - only language has grammar, that's part of what makes language comprehensible for us.
Something must be broken with you.
You were explicitly comparing it to language.
And music doesn't experience emotions any more than language does. It can, however, reference those emotions and elicit those emotions in a manner that both its creators and its listeners mutually understand.
The fact that you are apparently musically illiterate does not mean it is not linguistic.
Please, show me how music can reference emotions "in a manner that both its creators and its listeners mutually understand." I challenge you to do this and to show us that this meaning that is being conveyed doesn't rely upon (a) culture and (b) the place in history where the performance took place.
Not even language stands up to that standard.
Are you implying that language also has no meaning now or that music must be held to a stricter standard?
What are you talking about? Language expresses meaning without depending upon culture or history. We can read Thucydides today just as well as we can read Hemingway, and derive meaning from both.
Um, no. I'm implying that music has no meaning in the manner that language does, and that it cannot reference anything other than itself, unlike language.
And really, nobody today knows Attic Greek as it's been dead for over 1500 years. What people know is, at best, neo-attic greek, an interpretation of Attic Greek.
The meaning you derive from language is entirely dependent on culture.
Music elicits universal emotions.
Something about certain sounds are hard coded into us. It's not just that you equate the Jaws themesong with 'scared' because you heard it in Jaws. African tribesmen without contact to the outside world do as well. Happyness and sadness as well, and it's been backed up by cross-cultural as well as infant studies.
It's similar to how nonverbal communication works. Nodding or shaking your head for 'yes' and 'no' may mean different things in different places. However, all humans use smiles in roughly the same way regardless of culture. Every human also has similar anger response signals, similar arousal signals, similar fear signals. Every person tends to naturally wrinkle up their nose at something that disgusts them; and every other person on the planet understands what that means instinctually. It's just how we're built.
Same with music; we just respond inherently to some things. Some music is universal.
I thought that you might go down this route--namely, denying that many things called art by 'the mob,' as you so colorfully called them, can count as actual art. This might be so, as far as it goes, but you're getting into territory where you really need a positive account. You are correct that we cannot logically exclude, at this point in the argument, the possibility that some arts are instances of beauty. But prima facie we have strong evidence that beauty is mind-dependent: there is significant cognitive diversity regarding beauty--tastes vary widely--the disputes do not seem amenable to rational resolution, and we don't have at hand any account of beauty which reduces it to anything mind-independent.
Furthermore, I think you need to say a little more about what the criteria are for a satisfactory account of beauty. I have already offered an account, sketchy as it may be: namely, that beauty is an analogue to deliciousness. This is, to you, not satisfactory, and so is ruled out at the get-go. But what are your criteria of satisfaction, and how do they not wind up being simply the presumption of your conclusion--that beauty must be a mind-independent property?
Sure; for instance, the counterfactual description of events is art when it is done in literature. I don't know why you think that those things---histories, conterfactual descriptions, or possible world specifications--couldn't be art.
This seems to be false. Here is why:
As you've said, music can invoke associations of happiness, triumph, sadness, etc. in the listener. It seems also possible for it to evoke more complicated sentiment, as would occur upon listening to a national anthem, or a funereal song (as such, it could even refer to places and events). But, you say, this is just a projection of the listeners associations--the music itself does not reference anything.
But, the same can be said of any form of representation. Consider a painting of a tree: that painting, in and of itself, is merely paint on a canvas. If the artist were a man who had never seen a tree, but was just painting something he found abstractly beautiful, or which had appeared to him in a dream, then that painting would not actually refer to trees, despite looking awfully like them. Similarly, if an ant happens to trace out the words "Winston Churchill" in the sand, those letter-shapes do not actually refer to Winston Churchill; If a waterfall happened to burble out "the sun is shining," it would not have referred to the sun. No particular lines in the sand, or paint on a canvas, or humming of sound refer in and of themselves.
So the notion that certain arts refer in and of themselves, but that music, by contrast, does not, is confused. No art refers in and of itself, and once you allow causal histories and artistic intention into the picture, then music can most definitely refer.
It would, perhaps, be fair to posit that music is a language that must be taught BUT that it also contains a host of sound cues which are responded to instinctively and consist of "natural language."
However, it should be kept in mind that not everyone will respond precisely the same way to the "natural language" sounds, and not everyone will get the largess of music language, in the same manner that Asperger's cases can't comprehend the language of body language and social behavior.
Yes and no.
They don't "differ." They're just different components of the same overall structure.
Your actions are determined, in part, by your values, which are determined by other things. Your actions, and their consequences, will, in part, determine your future values, ad infinitum until you die.
Music is a language and can/does have meaning outside of itself; just because it's less straightforward and clear in its meaning doesn't mean it doesn't have one.
And as far as grammar goes, you could even dispute the fact that music doesn't have an equivalent to that either. Look at something like Joyce's Ulysses or any kind of avant-garde writing or poetry- it's possible to have language that conveys meaning without adhering to our traditional grammatical rules. The grammar itself doesn't impart meaning, it's organization and categorization for clarity and understanding.
Equate that with say, sonata form. Something being a sonata doesn't give in any inherent meaning or reveal any particular intent of meaning, but it's a pretty concrete set of rules (capable of being innovated within, however) on how to organize chords and melodies and sounds. And likewise, it is very possible to make music outside of preconceived forms that still has emotional weight and meaning.
Just because music and language aren't perfectly analogous doesn't mean they're not equatable. They don't call it the universal language for nothing.
Firstly, I can read Attic Greek (poorly). And there are many people who exist who can read it just as well as they can read English. Secondly, translation doesn't affect the meaning of any given sentence or passage, only its comprehensibility for the reader or 'end user.' Translation can occur as a matter of course between any language to any other language, with the only consideration being the quality of the translator in respect to presenting an accurate account of what has been said or written.
You cannot translate a musical score into English or from English into a musical score without creating meaning where there was none before. When going from Greek to English or English to Greek, all that is changing is the way in which we access the meaning. The same cannot be said for music to English.
Congratulations on being incorrect. There has been a continuous literary history of the Greek language since before the death of Socrates, and we have, more or less, written examples from every notable era of the Greek language, so much so that a person can learn to read Homer (which is written in Ionic), Thucydides (which is written in Attic), the Gospel of John (which is written in Koine, a simplified Attic), the Alexiad by Anna Comnena (artificial Attic written during the Komnenian Restoration), the poetry of St Theodore of Stoudios (written in Byzantine, or Middle Greek), and the works of Adamantios Korais (who wrote in Modern Greek) without an undue amount of effort. Indeed, give the copious amount of written examples that we have from many of the eras, it's quite easy for philologists to track the grammatical changes through time, identifying where, when, and in some cases even why such changes were made. The biggest changes happen between the Hellenistic era and the Modern era, where Byzantine scholars, writing in Middle Greek or reconstructed Attic introduced many reforms that simplified the reading and learning of classical Greek texts, and also set the stage for the eventual development of modern Greek, which occured only a century after the fall of Constantinople.
Hell, we even have written examples of Linear B. That's Greek before the invention of the Greek alphabet.
This claim is extremely strong and I doubt that you can defend it.
The link you provided only goes to the abstract, not the paper. So I can't exactly read and respond.
I do not doubt that there are physiological effects of music, or even psychological ones. But I do doubt that we can point to either elements of music (tones, metres, etc) or passages therein and track them to particular emotions. Which key is the saddest? D minor? Is the tritone really the devil in music? Is a C dorian scale the scale that creates or correlates to melancholy?
At best, what this abstract points out is that people may share first reactions to experiences or that in some cases some musical elements may correlate to some emotions. But I would be very careful not to make a causation-correlation error, which I think that one does if they claim that there is any strong connection between certain musical passages and emotion.
I'm not prepared to commit to music being biologically determined.
Yes, exactly. Some music is absolutely universal, but I wouldn't at all ascribe that to a biological origin.
I made this point earlier in the thread, but I think it stands. Your treatment of certain activities and the artefacts that they create - such as manuals for sheep husbandry, or histories, etc - is such that the category of "art" becomes essentially meaningless. Any object or any activity which anyone undertakes at any time whatsoever is art, and furthermore, you reject the notion that there can ever be an object or artefact that appeals to no one whatsoever, categorically. This requires us to consider all objects and activities and their artefacts as being completely equal with one another, as it seems we are prevented from even being able to, based on communal agreement or popular consent decide upon which objects and activities are preferable.
In summary, you've (a) made the definition of art overly broad so as to make it meaningless, and, (b) made it impossible for us to distinguish even nominally between which activities and objects are preferable and which are not preferable.
1. I think the very existence of a category called "art" points in the direction of there being something mind independent that people recognize and account for. Even though I disparage what I see as imprecise usage of the label, and I think with good reason, we have this category that commonly all people recognize and all people separate out from other, more mundane activities. We consider painting and sculpture and music to be arts, whereas we don't consider autorepair or biology experiments to be arts. There is a difference between these activities, and even if it remains shrouded or occulted from us, we can recognize the division and take it to be meaningful. So much so that it does not matter, in practical terms, whether or not our notion of beauty is truly objective of simply objective in practice (intersubjective).
2. The varying diversity of tastes does not necessarily lead us to the conclusion that beauty is mind-dependent. Rather, we can posit that beauty itself is multi-faceted: that it is complex, and cannot be reduced simply to one activity. Just as with ethics, we recognize that the good (such as it is) may be present or manifest in all sorts of actions and scenarios, so too can beauty be manifest or made apparent to us in various activities and approaches. What you've presented to me and to the thread is just that; beauty is complex and people may approach it or understand it differently or access it differently or in more or less accurate or better or worse ways. What we haven't yet done is establish why this diversity of tastes in activities must lead us to conclude that beauty does not exist.
3. Furthermore, if we accept a weaker version of my position and conclude that beauty is ultimately intersubjective, we are still in a position to say that the divergent tastes of activities or practices are simply those which are recognized by the aesthetic community (I'm using this term in a similar way one might use the language use community) as being activities which lead to or best reflect beauty.
2) The meaning we derive from language is determined in the usual manner. It is mostly cultural, however, an individual may have specific experiences with specific aspects of language, and the biology of that person may react to the words in certain ways; like how people find the word "spleen" funny.
3) "Art" is only really a useful shorthand for "artifice." Things created by the actions of a creature. In contrast to things which are created by incident or which are alive and thus generate their own form. The most general use of the word "art" is "created things that I enjoy looking at." Trying to make it some magical high concept is extravagent and groundless. We have more distinct terms like "fine arts" or "performance art" or that.
4) If the universality of certain forms of music isn't biological than what the hell is it?
5) What is this "Manifesting" you're talking about? Are you proposing a mystical, Platonic universe? On what grounds?
Historically, yes, which is a result of non-well-tempered tuning. Before the widespread use of tempered-tuning, the keys progressing away in the circle of fifths from C became more and more "untuned," which made them more dissonant. The tritone is suspension of notes that hang in resolution above a fifth,k which creates a unresolved, haunting sound to them.
We can derive meaning, but do we derive "the" meaning "in a manner that both its creators and its listeners mutually understand."?
You seem to be claiming that language has a special power to express meaning without depending upon culture of history. This is a very silly claim to make absent some notion of an ideal, Platonic notion wherein all participants have direct access to meaning. I think your account would rely upon a language which was not semiotic, did not rely on signs, and rather was a language of direct participation in MEANING itself. Why?
Well, to understand Thucydides one need understand the history and culture in which the text was written. There are particular cultural referrents for particular words (signs) one must utilize to discern the correct meaning.
Think of it this way: When you and I read "duck" do we both think of the same duck? What gender is your duck, what color is it? Is it flying or floating, swimming or bobbing? Is it eating or sleeping?
We can function with language because of these ambiguities and their assumed similarity. If my "duck" is floating and your "duck" is flying there seems to be functional equivalence in meaning insofar as we are both thinking of a kind of waterfowl.
However, while this practically functions, I do not think that it meets your "in a manner that both its creators and its listeners mutually understand" criteria. Is there this sort of mutual understanding between you and I with regard to "duck" given the obvious differences in our understanding?
If so, why the shit would music not operate in that same way with its own brand of ambiguity?
Edit: Said another way, read late Wittgenstein. You seem to have stopped at the Tractatus.
I find your account of deliciousness to be problematic. As many in the thread will be quick to point out, there are natural, biological limitations on what we can perceive as delicious that one, no matter how hard they try, can get around. Taste and how the tongue is constructed and how many buds it has and whether or not they are sensitive enough, etc, are all things which pose limits on deliciousness at the very beginning, and which allow us, at least in broad terms, to judge meaningfully differences between things which "have taste" and things which "do not have taste."
I'm sure you would agree that having taste is a necessary precondition for something to be judged to be delicious. If that's the case, then we are in a situation where deliciousness is going to be naturally guided into areas which are, essentially pre-selected for us. So even if we admit to your claim that deliciousness cannot be subject to judging which isn't arbitrary or subjective, we must admit that we can judge between things which "have taste" and which "don't have taste," and thus have no potential whatsoever to be delicious.
I would put forward that beyond this, having taste is not a question that adheres to the excluded middle: there are degrees to which something has the capacity to be delicious that different, even amongst those which we could judge to actually have taste, or not. An illustration: let us look at three objects. A hot pepper that was grown in poor soil, in a poor environment and just generally farmed badly; a hot pepper that was grown in the very best soil in the very best environment and was generally farmed in the best possible manner; finally, mud. If we take mud has having no properties of taste whatsoever, we can easily divide the three objects into two categories: mud does not have taste (in other words, it has no capacity for deliciousness) while the two hot peppers do have taste (in other words, they have capacity for deliciousness). This is straight forward and follows from our above discussion. However, is it possible to consider the two hot peppers and judge between them? Yes, as we can empirically identify the elements which give the hot peppers their taste, the things which act upon our tongues and our taste buds to give that wonderful (or horrible) burning sensation.
During this sort of empirical investigation we would find that the poorly farmed hot pepper had less of the substance that interacted with the taste buds than the pepper that was farmed with the best possible methods and in the best possible circumstances; that, through this increased quantity and potency, the capacity for deliciousness is increased. That is, the property of "having taste" is superior in the best hot pepper because the thing which acts upon the taste buds is more potent and there is more of it.
We can say that the poor hot pepper can only ever hope to amount to, say, having half as much "taste" or capacity for deliciousness as the best hot pepper can.
Now, obviously, having the capacity for deliciousness and having deliciousness are two very different things. If we accept, for argument's sake, that deliciousness is truly subjective, we have an interesting case. Say there is a person who doesn't like hot peppers and what they do to your tongue at all, and they have to choose between eating one or the other. It is not hard to imagine that they might choose the poor hot pepper, and we can say that, 'aha!' the capacity for deliciousness doesn't matter at all when it comes to choosing which things are actually delicious for a person, the only consideration is whether or not they themselves feel something is delicious. My response to this is thus: given, for argument's sake, that the judgement to be delicious is entirely subjective, or at least primarily so, it stands to reason that the person making the judgement would want to make the best possible judgement. As there are no rules or community standards for judging what is or is not delicious, a person must rely upon their own faculties in determining for them, what constitutes deliciousness or not-deliciousness.
Now, I assume that people, when given the choice will choose to err on the side of rationality, and also, when given the choice, attempt to make the best, most definitive decision possible. If we are being rational and opened minded in our choices, something which is philosophically good practice, I would put forward that the person choosing between the hot peppers will want to make the best possible determination between the hot peppers, so as to make the best possible decision on the deliciousness of hot peppers generally. In that situation, it follows that the person would choose the best hot pepper - the one with the more capacity for deliciousness, so as to experience the most definitive answer to whether or not the hot pepper is delicious.
Other foods or drinks could be substituted just as well. Wine is a perfect example. Would any rational person choose the dregs of some bathtub over the finest wines from Bordeaux, so as to see whether or not they like wine? I think not.
Beauty is like having taste. It is a question of capacity. We want to see things which have the best possible capacity for deliciousness, if we are using MrMister's parlance - which means that there are obviously things which are better than anothers, and also things which have no capacity for beauty whatsoever, just as mud has no capacity for deliciousness while hot peppers, however poor, do. The deliciousness, and an individual's judgement of the deliciousness of any given object, is ultimately second order to the choice between (a) something which has the capacity to be delicious in the first place versus something that doesn't, and, (b) the choice between something that can be most delicious and something that can be only poorly delicious.
First, I draw a distinction between linguistic arts and non-linguistic arts. Second, the status of paintings or sculptures as images implies to me that at least for some of them, these things refer to things other than themselves, in whatever way. Abstract painting is a good example, as it is apparently without a particular subject in the same way that non-abstract painting is not - rather, the considerations of abstract paintings have are entirely internal to themselves. The lines on the paper and the colour and the canvas, etc, etc.
Perhaps we can draw further distinctions between arts that I didn't see before. Those which cannot ever refer to things other than themselves, those which can sometimes refer to things other than themselves but do not necessarily have to, and those which must refer to things other than themselves to be comprehensible.
I don't think this separation is confused or that I am contradicting myself, here. It simply looks as if I simply have to be more careful where I am categorizing which art.
Okay, that's your central claim.
Okay, you are saying that (1) music is a language, and, therefore music has meaning. Are you also saying that (2) only language has meaning?
How?
For the purposes of this argument, I will put forward that grammar is necessary for a language to be a language, and that meaning doesn't exist outside of languages. Please illustrate how it is possible for something to be meaningful in language without a grammar.
What is a language without a grammar? What would that look like?
The sonata form is just like any other compositional form: a way of organizing tones in particular sequence with one another. We have many ways of organizing things such as arrays, tables, lists, etc, and yet we don't consider any of these things to be grammars. Why should we consider the sonata form or the symphony or the concerto to be grammars when we don't consider tables and lists and arrays grammars?
...I don't want to be uncharitable, but I think you just contradicted yourself there. You are saying that music and language are equal (if and only if), but also saying that they aren't analogous. What does that mean? They are equal and yet they aren't?
A person need not inhabit the mind of an author to read a text. Indeed, all of the objections you raised against ancient literature apply equally well to any contemporary literature. There is a reason that, even among academic scholars, interpretations of contemporary texts are under constant revision and discussion.
This means nothing to me. I don't know what the usual manner is.
Are you arguing that language is biologically determined?
I don't know about you, but I'm not using art or artworks in a manner that covers every possible thing imaginable. I'm specifically arguing against that.
Mathematical.
Everyone loves to accuse everyone else of being a Platonist. No, I'm not proposing the doctrine of the forms, and although this is very off-topic, I want to put forward that I believe that taking the Republic as putting forward the doctrine of the forms is based on a misreading of Plato and a misunderstanding of the Socratic method.
This is untrue. Keys became more dissonant with the introduction of well-tempered tuning for keyboard instruments (the pianoforte and its predecessors). Woodwinds, brass, and most of all string instruments were and remain able to be more in tune than a piano because they are able to adjust completely to any new key one moves to. Previously, one had to completely retune the piano or harpsichord when moving from one key to another, because there was no acceptable way to account for the harmonic distance between the leading tone and the octave, as well as other degrees of the scale (tonic and the mediant, etc.) Equal temperament basically made every key a little bit out of tune, so as to allow a very good approximation across all twelve keys.
Yes, the tritone sounds unresolved, and it is notable musically speaking because when you hear it, you have no ability to tell which direction the tone comes from: whether the tonic (ascending) or the octave (descending). I'll leave aside the haunting value judgement...
The further away from the reader you are in perspective, the further your interpretation of the text will be from what it meant to them. Certainly it applies to modern texts as well, the difference is simply smaller.
Determined in the sense of "determinism." I've explained it several times in this thread.
I'm arguing that it is determined, and that biology is one of the factors in that determination.
And I think that, in light of history and language, it is folly. "Art" needs an adjective to not produce endless stream of conflicting definitions. Fine art, culinary art, martial art, street art, etc etc etc.
The whole damned universe is mathematical. That does not have a clear result in a man from Alaska enjoying the same drum beats as a lady in New Zealand.
When you say things that sound Platonic you will in fact be accused of Platonism. Explain your stance and terminology.
The only claim that I'm truly committed to in this discussion is that music is not a language.
Who says which meaning is "correct" and which is "incorrect?" The author? You? The language use community? The language use community when a work was written, or the language use community now? Philologists? Who?
That doesn't matter; what matters is what we are both thinking of a duck, in whatever form we conceive of it. The point is that language allows us to communicate, not to gain privileged access to one's private thoughts. If you and I both understand the sentence, "the duck is over there," as referring to a duck that is over there then our language act has been successful, and we can congratulate ourselves.
The consideration of texts changes things, because, as Socrates points out repeatedly in various Platonic dialogues, you cannot converse with a text. You cannot ask it questions for clarity or engage in discourse with it; it is ultimately limited, and generally inferior to being able to speak to someone directly. So there are considerations to be made for authors, in how they write words down so as to ensure communicabillity, and also for readers, and how they should approach the reading of a text. So reading a text is similar but different than speaking to someone. I think we can all accept this claim as non-controversial.
I don't understand you. (Ha!)
I find it difficult to ascribe ambiguity to something other than language.
Why should we give authors privileged status when it comes to the meaning of a text? Are you saying that we need to resort to going outside of the text to find the meaning in the text in the first place? What is the point of a text then, if it cannot even give us clear meaning?
This is a crazy position.
You may consider that, but I'm talking about aesthetics. Art and artwork are things which have aesthetic value, as opposed to things which aren't art, and accordingly don't have aesthetic value, or at least not in the same way as art. That's the way I've been using the terms since the discussion started, and I believe that is true also of MrMister.
Once again, I'm slow. I don't know what you are saying here.
You can look at the text from many different angles, but the intention of the work is in fact an important thing to at least try to grasp unless you're only interested in how pretty the words are.
You must have outside information for every text you will ever read in your life. The thing is that you have already internalized the vast majority of such outside information.
"Marty is a stool pigeon" requires outside information to have any clue as to what it means.
You need to know that stool pigeon does not mean "bird made of feces." You need to know what society at the time thought of stool pigeons, and you need to know if the author agreed with that stance. You also need to know the context of the text, whether the narrator or character is trustworthy or favored or supposed to be sarcastic, etc.
I'm not aware of any other possibilities that don't require me to believe in dragons and shit.
Aesthetic value can be applied to anything you can perceive, even if only in your imagination, including things which are purely incidental. Art and aesthetics are not attached at the hip.
I'm saying that "LoL music is math" doesn't convey ANY useful information.
So someone needs to know language to read language?
Why don't you provide an argument for that instead of assuming it to be the case?
Perhaps you can do as MrMister and I have already done and expand on your views?
When you ask for reductionism, you get reductionism.
There's a reason that texts on Shakespeare are full of footnotes despite being written in largely-readable English. You can get surface ideas from raw reading, but you're going to miss a hell of a lot of nuance if you don't have any depth to your understanding.
I thought this was understood by anyone who had ever had an English or equivalent class... ever... like even once. It quite honestly blows my mind that someone who can spell their own name hasn't learned this.
Do you not think it important to comprehend that Aesop's fables are not to be taken as literal events and that they are intended as lessons? It is not the ONLY way to read the text, but it is pretty fucking valuable information to have when reading it unless you're happy thinking that Aesop was a crazy fucker who believed in talking animals.
"What a beautiful sunset"
So you have no actual answer just "LOL MATH"
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If you want a good example of the importance of context and outside information, consider how I have to explain shit to you which to me should not have to be explained any more than the term "stool pigeon."
You are, in fact, a living example of my point.
I just want an argument, man. There's no need for you to get uppity. Just make some claims and then explain what you mean and give me some evidence.
Meaning and understanding are two separate things. You are saying that there are different levels of understanding. I don't think that's particularly controversial, but you aren't addressing what I was talking about.
This sort of tone is really unnecessary and is no substitute for actually stating your views. If you wish to critique, that's cool but you aren't providing supporting evidence of why I should accept your claims as opposed to mine or MrMister's or Poldy's or anyone elses.
You are asking about the universality of music. You are asserting, somehow, that music is universal because of...biology? That music is biological, or that music has some element to it which is biological? I'm not really sure. If we are talking about foundational, reductionist elements of music which we can take to be universal, the most natural things to point to are its mathematical elements. Frequency and ratio and time, which are the things which allow us to have tones and metre and sequence. These things are necessary for music and they also apply categorically, and so they can be true in all possible cases.
I'm not sure how much more universal you can get.
What do you mean by "meaning"?
Usage of a word to express intention by a language user.
All of this discussion is secondary though to the question that apparently provoked such a large response: Is music a language?
I still hold that English, or any other natural language for that matter, has elements which music does not have and thus cannot be understood to be a language. Further, if we understand meaning in terms of words and the usage of those words, then we can say that music does not have meaning - as language does. That is not to say that music lacks value. On the contrary, what I am arguing for is that music has aesthetic value, in and of itself, in contrast to MrMister who is arguing that all artworks only have value in terms of things external to them (values and attitudes they may represent or bring about).
The points that Incenjucar and _J_ are raising are so very far afield from what the discussion is about I fear that we are getting too off track. Perhaps if you wish to talk about language and meaning it would be best to return to the other philosophy thread?