--- On Tue, 9/23/08, [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Subject: Re: Examining the theory
> To: [email protected]
> Date: Tuesday, September 23, 2008, 1:27 PM
> In a message dated 9/23/08 12:35:39 PM,
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
>
>
> > I understand that the artist is concerned only
> > with his/her perception - whether an observer shared
> in some specific
> > meaning is apparently not important;
> >
> Geoff -- You have to keep in mind that this forum is
> dominated by visual
> artists, among whom you're likely to find many --
> though not all -- who honestly
> feel, "The hell with being preoccupied with the effect
> of my work on others. I
> paint what I want."
>
You fellows can be annoying in your smug assumptions that artists don't care
about communicating thoughts clearly, or can't. When I'm writing here I try to
be as clear as I can, as a thinking person, as one who is reasonably well
informed and capable of logical verbal expression. As an artist I've said over
and over again on this forum what my aims are and what I do, rather clearly I
believe. If the topic is mainly philosophical I can function with that, too,
being educated in the field and keeping up through constant reading. And I
usually list my sources, and their publishers. Cheerskep claims to be the
father philosopher here and that's ok with me but he has yet to demonstrate
that the rest of us are incompetent buffoons as thinkers. In other words,
because I am an artist does not exclude my other abilities. I know Cheerskep
likes to say I'm muddled, fuzzy, confused, etc., because I am unwilling to
accept his very narrow, literalist and
mechanical view of cognition as though it were purely a linguistic issue. I've
offered my rebuttals several times but have received no reply. I have offered
the theses of other philosophers on the topic and these too are ignored.
Crealock does raise interesting concerns; namely centered on the point where
sense data is transformed into metaphor. He says or implies that such a point
can be ascertained. I am claiming, through people like Lakoff and Johnson
Philosophy in the Flesh and Sartre and Husserl and lately Antonio Damasio, that
all cognition is belief and imagination and all belief is metaphorical. That
does not preclude accurate representations of the material world, as in
measurements. But measurements are not the real world, they are stand-ins, and
very useful ones, too. Anyway, artists can wear different hats. I can draw
and paint, write and read, and even drive a car. I am a philosopher because I
think in philosophical terms; that is,
in seeking the endpoint of meanings.
WC
