On Sat, Jan 12, 2013 at 2:17 PM, joseph berg <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Sat, Jan 12, 2013 at 1:54 PM, William Conger > <[email protected]>wrote: > >> Whenever something is named art it is assigned a value that is presumed to >> exemplify something essentially human in imagination or reflective >> thought. >> Although objects can have many purposes in addition to being so-called >> artworks, the one constant function for artworks is to evoke feelings >> that >> can't be measured or fully shared by other means. So we say. >> >> When the doctor asks you to rate your pain from 1 to 10 with 10 signifying >> acute, excruciating pain, you are being asked to do the impossible. How >> does >> one rank pain? Is a number two pain eight parts pleasure? If pain is >> truly >> excruciating, a ten, no sensible response can be made, except perhaps a >> screech >> or grunt or some foaming of the mouth or even unconsciousness. But some >> pain >> can be terrible but not yet incapacitating. Then there is the mental >> pain, so >> bad that it can drive one to suicide, insanity, or rage or murder. Is >> that a >> 10? How can one rate an aesthetic response? Is there a number 10 >> response? Is >> that ecstasy? What about, say, a number 3 aesthetic response? Or what >> about >> the zero response when it's all intellectual as in some conceptual art >> (for >> those erring buffs who claim to separate feeling from reasoning)? How >> does one >> price a feeling ...pain or pleasure, fear or affection? How does one >> express a >> number nine pleasure without accounting for the one part pain? >> Quantification >> of art, like any feeling, is impossible. But because it's impossible we >> need, >> must, find some way to quantify it anyway because that's the only means >> we have >> to convey its importance. Name anything that inherently defies being >> priced and >> it will be priced anyway. That's how we know the ineffable exists, >> somehow. If >> we don't price the ineffable then we can't say it exists and we become >> nihilists. What's the pain/pleasure number of nihilism? If I shrug when >> the >> doctor asks me to rank my pain, is a 5 recorded or O? is a 0 pain the >> same as 10 >> pleasure? This nonsense helps to show that the aesthetic response or >> experience >> or feeling is oceanic or unconfined or inseparable from any other >> responses but >> claiming some irrational status for it is all we can do to insist it is >> experienced, and thusly, that we exist. >> > > > But isn't that like saying that if something cannot be quanitified, then > it has no value and therefore doesn't exist.? > > What about the subjective? > And is there no such thing as the qualitative?
