On Mar 12, 2012, at 6:49 PM, William Conlin wrote: >> How do we gauge the quality of art when we base it on our own >> ephemeral experiences?
(William: I'm sorry for the lofty tone here; it's often one of the regrettable side effects of philosophizing, the exchanges you say you've been enjoying.) I'm constantly struck by the python-power of language. Behind this query by William Conlin lies a number of non-skeptical near-unconscious reifications -- assumptions that the existence of a word or phrase implies a "referent" for the word or phrase: 'art'; 'quality' (not in the confused Platonic "essence" sense, but in the equally confused "worthiness" sense); 'gauge'. Despite Frege's 'On Sense and Reference', Russell's 'On Denoting', etc, the existence of a word does not entail a non-notional "thing" that the word "refers to". When someone says, "No matter what you say, 'art' is meaningful to me!" all he has in mind is that when he hears the utterance "art", the sound connects with all sorts of (indeterminate, indefinite, multiplex, and transitory) notion in his mind. There is no non-notional entity that "is" art or artness. But when people talk of gauging the quality of an alleged work of art, there's little doubt they think they are weighing an objective worth, not a subjective worth that varies from one contemplator to another. One suppressed assumption of their effort is that, since they are addressing an objective worth, it should have a uniform effect on those of competent sensibility. The fact that given works have left highly sophisticated observers with hugely varying judgments does not faze the examiners. In sum, all that's at issue is notional stuff largely based on what people -- preferably alleged "experts" -- are saying about their own subjective responses. Which implies that even the 'we' in the first sentence above needs skeptical questioning.
