In a message dated 3/4/09 12:55:52 PM, [email protected] writes:
> There is no procedure for testing the existence of good art. > Look hard and you'll see most of my effort is aimed against the indefensibly foggy notion behind "Good art exists". You can, as Bruce Attah was unwittingly doing, putting together (an actually fairly smart!) stipulative definition of "good art" -- that is, he was listing the characteristics that, if found in a object, would move him to call it "art". (His definition was such that if it isn't "good", it isn't "art". His biggest problem was he didn't realize that all he could possibly achieve would be to say, "This is what I call art." Instead, he took the unwinnable position that he was describing what art IS. (Attah: "This definition is unbreakable, and it is only eighteen words long! I just sewed up and finished off and, worse, showed to be mainly misguided, roughly a century's worth of theorising about the "meaning of art" in about a hundred lines of text. You people probably thought you had another century of fun to go on that one. Sorry people, but it had to be done. My deepest sympathies go to the Weitzians. The bottom has just dropped out of their world.") Chrsis adds: "Can't we all cease appealing to the "the normal uses of language?)" To which Michael responds: "Why? Do you have a disagreement with "the normal uses of language"? But, Michael, we've now had about a hundred fifteen years of philosophy of language prompted by the inherent fogginess of "normal uses of language". (Alas, most of that technical, ABnormal discussion is even more foggy.) ************** Worried about job security? Check out the 5 safest jobs in a recession. (http://jobs.aol.com/gallery/growing-job-industries?ncid=emlcntuscare00000002 )
