Hallo conlangers!

On Thursday 19 July 2012 20:48:40 And Rosta wrote:

> Jörg Rhiemeier, On 19/07/2012 17:29:
> > On Wednesday 18 July 2012 21:13:57 And Rosta wrote:
> >> I myself would go further, and argue that patterns of intersubjective
> >> aesthetic agreement can be translated into an approximation of absolute
> >> value.
> > 
> > I doubt that.  Seriously.  Beauty is a subjective notion; it
> > lies in the eyes of the beholder, as it is said so often.
> > Sure, there are things that people *tend to* consider
> > beautiful more often than others, such as symmetric shapes;
> > but the variation is sufficient to doubt that anything like
> > "absolute beauty" exists.  Some people consider luxurious
> > gold embroiderings on clothes beautiful; others (including
> > me) consider them pompous and ugly.
> 
> But my argument is that this datum is of only small evidential value,
> insufficient to falsify a claim that gold embroiderings are beautiful. (By
> "absolute" in my original "absolute value", I meant value to mankind in
> general rather than relative value to different individuals.) To ascertain
> whether gold embroiderings are beautiful, canvas the views of mankind in
> general, and make due allowance for the distortions of fads and fashions.

How do you canvas the "views of mankind in general"?
 
> >>        For example, _Sight and Sound_ has periodically published
> >> 
> >> collections of film critics' ten favourite films. There's a very large
> >> amount of agreement between them. There are individual oddities -- for
> >> example, Citizen Kane is in almost all top tens, but not mine, whereas
> >> Scaramouche is in my top ten but in nobody else's I've ever seen, but
> >> overall there is huge overlap -- e.g. Bicycle Thieves and Seven Samurai
> >> are in my top ten and most others.
> > 
> > There are certain conventions in the western world concerning
> > what makes a good film and what not, and it is these conventions
> > that show in such lists to a large degree.  Especially among film
> > critics, who are accustomed to these conventions as they have
> > studied them professionally.  This explains why the film critics
> > agree most of the time.
> 
> Whereas I think that the proof of the sagacity of the critics is that I
> tend to agree with them...

*You* tend to agree with them.  Fine.  But are you "mankind in
general"?  Are you better disposed to speak for "mankind in
general" than other people?  What kind of crystal ball enables
you to see the views of "mankind in general"?  You sound quite
hubristic here.
 
> Note that I was talking about lists of best films of all time; the more
> contemporaneous the artwork is, the more that ostensibly aesthetic
> judgements are distorted by extraneous factors such as fashion, the allure
> of the new, the pleasure of mere novelty, and so forth.

Yes.
 
> > There are similar conventions in many other bodies of artistic
> > criticism, and sometimes the conventions change radically.  One
> > example of such a sudden reversal was in 1977 when progressive
> > rock music was suddenly declared gauche and pompous with the
> > advent of punk rock.  So who was right, the pre-1977 critics
> > who hailed progressive rock as the "classical music of the
> > future", or the post-1977 critics who condemned it as "not
> > true to the proletarian spirit of rock'n'roll"?
> 
> A certain amount of time has to pass before one can answer this. From the
> vantage point of 2012, it looks as tho neither was right, both because
> neither movement yielded much of value and because works of greatest value
> rise above any movement they belong to, and, on the whole, there is little
> aesthetic value to movements per se. (I haven't bothered checking this,
> but I reckon that if you consulted lists of top hundred albums or top
> hundred songs, neither prog rock nor high punk would figure prominently.)

Depends on who compiles the list on which criteria.
 
> >>         From a utilitarian perspective, the
> >> 
> >> world would be far more impoverished by the loss of Bicycle Thieves than
> >> by the loss of Police Academy 27, and ergo is far more enriched by
> >> Bicycle Thieves than by Police Academy 27. And while you may not agree
> >> with that philosophical position, its logic is robust enough to
> >> legitimate disputation about taste.
> > 
> > Balderdash.  I agree with you that the _Police Academy_ films
> > are rubbish, so it is not much of an achievement to be "better"
> > than that (I haven't even *heard* of _Bicycle Thieves_ yet,
> > unless it is known by some completely different name in
> > Germany, as is often the case with Hollywood films).
> 
> It's called _Fahrraddiebe_ in Germany
> (<http://www.amazon.de/Fahrraddiebe-2-DVDs-Vittorio-Sica/dp/B0016420QG/ref
> =sr_1_1?s=dvd&ie=UTF8&qid=1342722120&sr=1-1>). _Ladri di Biciclette_ is the
> original title.

OK.  Rings no bell in me.
 
> > But that
> > is just my personal opinion; *some* people are attracted by
> > _Police Academy_ films, otherwise they hadn't made so many of
> > them.  Isn't it a dangerous move to say that your taste was
> > "better" than theirs?
> 
> The point I'd been trying to make is that a rational theory of aesthetic
> value is possible without it being based merely on an assertion that my
> taste is better than theirs. Rather, it's a Utilitarian theory.

How do you measure the utilitarian value of a work of fine art
(if there is one)?  How is it different from the amount of money
made with it (a very poor gauge for artistic quality, if you ask
me)?
 
> >It is a slippery slope from aesthetic  prescriptivism to art censorship.
> 
> In my previous message I wasn't advocating aesthetic prescriptivism;
> aesthetic prescriptivism had nothing to do with what I was talking about.

OK.  Aesthetic prescriptivism is just a practical consequence
of your kind of reasoning.  If there is absolute beauty that
can somehow be measured, why not weed out all ugliness as
defined by that measure, for the good of mankind?

> All the same, I am happy to advocate aesthetic prescriptivism in
> situations where it is better than the absence of it (e.g. educational
> curriculums, public architecture, public art galleries). It is a slippery
> slope from government to totalitarianism, but lover of liberty tho I am,
> that does not make me embrace anarchism.

Government is a necessary framework without which no freedom is
possible (without government, there would not be total freedom,
but rule of brute force).  I don't see how aesthetic
prescriptivism is necessary for the functioning of a free
society.
 
> >The various totalitarian
> >
> > régimes which banned modern art as "degenerate", "bourgeois",
> > "formalist" or whatever all laid claims on "absolute beauty"
> > which they considered being manifested in the centuries of
> > pre-modern art tradition.  You seem to wish to revert to times
> > when art was not free.
> 
> I share and commend your hatred of totalitarianism, but don't let your fear
> of totalitarianism lead you to abandon rational thought on matters of
> philosophy or -- 

I know that you are a Platonic idealist, which has the
consequence that, for you, absolute beauty must exist.
In my opinion, this philosophy is unable to cope with
evolution and creativity (other than by providing a
Form for everything that could theoretically have
evolved or been invented but never is, which seems
quite ridiculous to me) and thus fallacious.

>       if you can manage not to (and if you can't I accept that
> limitation as innocent and as part of who you are) -- to impute to me
> wishes that are neither mine nor expressed or implied in my email.

I apologize.  No, I didn't intend that; I just pointed out a
problem with your reasoning I perceived.

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