I don't understand why Cheerskep changes my arguments, or maybe it's just that his comments are too long and seem to stray from any clear outlook.
First, I would not say that the artwork exists independently of an observer/experiencer who claims it as art. Also, I would not claim that the artwork is fully subject to the observer/experiencer for its identity. This is not the contradiction it may appear to be because we can postulate another observer/experiencer, a fictional one who represents an amalgam of historical/cultural outlook. This is analogous to Hume's idea of agent, receiver, spectator in moral judgment. We can say that agent is the art object, the receiver is the one who observes the art object and experiences it, and the spectator is the historical/cultural identity (the "gaze"). We can look at an artwork, experience it and judge it (in actuality judging our experience by matching it to the historical/cultural gaze with submission or some exception). When we disobey Cheerskep and say, for the sake of convenience, that such and such is an artwork we are simply surfacing the object with the cultural/historical Humean "spectator." I don't think of myself as being so naive as to hold to the notion that an object IS art in itself minus its symbolic function. I do think we can safely say that an object IS an artwork in the sense that it stands for the cultural/historical "spectator" which I may adopt knowingly or not as symbolic of my subjective judgment and experience. I also think, albeit vaguely, that Cheerskep is too linguistically mechanical in his a-priori insistence that no one may really accurately convey one wordy thought to another. Here too one may introduce a third element -- the language itself which includes unconscious recognitions that are shared though utterances but are not the utterances. Paradoxically, Cheerskep insists that expressed words must nearly exactly call up the same word and intended meaning in a receiver (hearer) and that requires a stable ISness. If we don't know when an object is art, then we certainly don't know if an utterance is a word. Just as there is the third element -- I use Hume's spectator -- standing for a historical/cultural outlook, so too there is a spectator standing for a word and its meanings ( which is personified by the dictionary of common usages). For years here I have argued that material things, any physical objects at all, have no meaning except what is applied to them, like verbal wallpaper. In and of themselves, as material objects, they are meaningless. Why does Cheerskep keep putting me in the dunces' corner with his dead horse named IS? Again, for the sake of clarity I use Hume's idea: A. there is an agent, the object. B. there is a receiver the one who experiences the object and names it (both descriptively and emotionally). C. There is a spectator, the historical/cultural judgment -- the gaze-- that affects what A is and how B perceives it and judges it. D. All material things are meaningless in essence. WC --- Saul Ostrow <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I don't consider this to be an example of an > ontological(origins) argument > but a epistemological one (systems of knowing) > > > > > > > > From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > Reply-To: <[email protected]> > > Date: Tue, 22 Jul 2008 12:09:16 EDT > > To: <[email protected]> > > Subject: "An 'aesthetic experience' MAKES the work > 'art'" > > > > I realize many listers hate to hear such cold and > "artless" terms as > > 'ontological'. But when they see and use a > distinction between merely CALLING > > something an XXX and its "BEING" XXX, they are > into ontology.
