...or how Diaz and Scratch learned to stop worrying and love drunken philoso-bingo.
This is just to keep me and Jose from tying up Nathan's thread about shared snippets of wisdom with our long diatribes of confusion. Though not to be exclusionary, if anyone else wants to jump in, you're more than welcome.
Oh, diatribe. (drink)
No, I think there is a definite separation between authorial intent and what is inferred by the audience.
Well, actually that's the "having to choose between the two" I was referring to... and perhaps it was my turn to be too loose with my words when referring only to the danger in prioritizing authorial intent. I don't think we can so easily separate the two. What I like about your schema is that it takes on the inference from the culture, and the intentions of the artist as both inherent parts of the structure. It feels weird to come out at the end and look at the product of the system and then split them apart again. To say that the artist's intentions in regard to his interaction with cultural inferences is a separate question than the cultural inferences from an artist's intentions... that doesn't seem a sensible distinction. Or at least a somewhat self-defeating one, to create a system that combines artistic intentions with artistic inferences in a unified dialectic (drink) progression, and then talk about them as two separate entites when you've just established them as being one in the same. Especially on the level of individual works as opposed to artistic movements or modes.
But just because he did not enjoy what he produced does not mean that the public has any obligation to concur. It is two separate arguments that are asking two very different things.
Yes. Whether or not an artist enjoyed a piece of work and whether or not an audience enjoyed a piece of work are separate questions,but are also both separate from the piece as a product of this schema you are developing. Now I'm struck by Melville's letter to Hawthorne, "People think that if a man has undergone any hardship, he should have a reward; but for my part, if I have done the hardest possible day's work, and then come to sit down in a corner and eat my supper comfortably -- why, then I don't think I deserve any reward for my hard day's work -- for am I not now at peace?" or perhaps Mencius speaking to King Hûi of Liang,
The king said, 'Venerable sir, since you have not counted it far to come here, a distance of a thousand lî, may I presume that you are provided with counsels to profit my kingdom?'
Mencius replied, 'Why must your Majesty use that word "profit?" What I am provided with, are counsels to benevolence and righteousness, and these are my only topics.
Now I understand why we want to talk about art in terms of enjoyment. Our modern utilitarian point of view has shifted these discussions towards framing this in terms of pleasure: "I may not know art, but I know what I like," we have our guilty pleasures in "bad" television shows, and if beauty is in the eye of the beholder, then we don't have to justify any claims beyond, "It's my eye." It's unassailable, but also indefensible. I understand that our culture gives us this notion that the purpose of the artist is to produce art, not explore art. That we regard the artist as a worker like any other, with a job; to make things that are beautiful for us.
And I acknowledge that if we're going to hold the socially constructed aspect of art as still a necessary part, then it is something that we will have to contend with. Though I am probably mostly only reacting to the characterization you seem to be aiming at. If we are to talk about throwing our whole souls and beings into destroying our pasts and reconstructing our futures, why is enjoyment the measure of the end product? Unless we again couch this in terms of love. I would be willing to go along with a notion of love that qualifies enjoyment for painful/destructive processes as means to an end, or for the sake of a medium that is incapable of returning that love, or in the face of a culture that turns a blind eye to artistic acheivement in favor of pleasure and utility. But then we have to untangle what it means to love words as a medium from what it means for words as a medium to be merely the means to an end that we love. (Does that qualify as Kant? Drink!)
Did Tchaikovsky produce what he intended?
I thought we weren't going to talk about teleology (drink) :) But that was my point about not using teleology in this scheme. Not that I'm confused about why teleology would be "not a good thing" but because the word itself is slippery. Yes, it comes to us from the Greeks, but it comes to us only meaning "intentional" or "designed". It takes thinkers like Aquinas to use this concept (admittedly, probably through Cleanthes) to engage in cosmological questions, to get the heavily burdened "teleology as god's plan for the world" that we still mostly have today.
From the S.E.P. (a fantastic resource I cannot recommend enough):
Design-type arguments are largely unproblematic when based upon things nature clearly could not or would not produce (e.g., most human artifacts), or when the intelligent agency is itself ‘natural’ (human, alien, etc.)
So to say that Guernica seems designed, or intentional, or purposeful and so had a designer/intention/purpose is a teleological argument and is not controversial. We just point at Picasso, "yeah, here he is." The extra baggage that comes with the word (again probably through Aquinas and Cleanthes) is when it is used abductively to explain the natural world. And I think you are right to push against it (which seems odd that you'd want to bring it into the discussion in the first place) but to go the extra step and deny teleology in art because "...teleology is an unknown. That we never know the ends. Can a person know the mind of god? Can an artist know what he will produce?" seems to be confusing the baggage of the term with its definition.
And to unpack this further; the robust teleological arguments for the natural world also do not purport to know god's ends, to know the ultimate design. Our inability to know the divine will (or I suppose in Nietzschean terms, the divine mind?) is an integral part of the teleological argument. So if that ignorance doesn't hurt intelligent-design theory for nature, why would it hurt intelligent-design theory for art? Just because we can't know (with the hard-line, determinative certainty you seem to be aiming for) what end Picasso would acheive when he started Guernica, and I would include Picasso in that 'we', doesn't mean we can claim he didn't intend or design the painting. Or I suppose most relevant, that the end he was aiming for wasn't an eleven by twenty-five foot piece of canvas with oil paint on it.
Because the opposite of teleology is not acting through will in spite of the limitations of the mind. The opposite of teleology is randomness, unintentional or coincidental, at best, a product of natural processes.
But the main reason not to bring up teleology is because it is a big old ball of problems that has sidetracked us away. Silppery words for slippery slopes... or something.
Are all Picasso paintings perfect?
Picasso was the first to note that everything he painted was not a masterpiece. In a particular anecdote; a dealer purchaces a painting, seemingly signed by Picasso. He brings it to Picasso's studio and asks him to verify it. Picasso looks up from the piece he's working on (he never stopped working, hence the plates) and says, "no, that's a fake." A few months later the dealer comes back with another painting, seemingly signed by Picasso, and asks him to verify it. Picasso looks up and says, "no, that's a fake." The dealer is flabbergasted (this anecdote is really just an excuse to use the word 'flabbergasted') and says, "But how can that be? I saw you working on this painting the last time I was here." Picasso replies, "yes, I often paint fakes."
All this really to say that these relationships are complicated. If your ultimate goal is to draw a line of separation between "writers must love words" and "writers must love what they do with words" then that is what you have to go after. You can have all the idealistic, Nietzsche-backed reasons for wanting people to follow you into that divide, and find the future of their art in the ruins caused by breaking their assumptions apart... but until you create that divide, I don't think this argument can get very much farther. But to get you started on that path, you do have to tackle Eichenbaum, and Jakobson, (and perhaps Bakhtin) as well as Knapp and Michaels. All of these have claimed, fairly conclusively, that that divide does not exist. What words are (especially in fiction), is what we do with them. I think the post-structuralists would go even further and say there is nothing deeper, because it is already an infinite chain of signification. (Bakhtin, post-structuralists, signification... drink drink drink, I win. liver loses...)
Okay, I think we have 98 ideas running through all of this. Let's try to focus our effort instead of drinking ourselves to death.
And good call moving the thread.
What are we talking about? I will concede that my initial idea went into "what the fuck are you talking about" territory. I think, now, this can be our focus.... Until you chime in. We can go all Hegelian (drink) with a thesis, antithesis, synthesis model. But I would like to have this question in mind.....
Question: What will lead to producing great writing?
I would like to remove the aspect of the audience from the argument, or the reception it receives. For now...
While, we can use art for examples, let us try to use writing examples. If our question is for writers, let us use writers as models, as much as possible. Or at least make sure the analogy definitely ties back into writing.
My initial argument had this question in mind. So, a writer having a love for words is great, but it is not the end of the discussion. We can ask,
Why is a love for words not enough?
What else must we have?
Do we have any firm examples? Or must we only work at a meta-level for now?
What is great writing?
All of this is going to force me to do a shit-ton of research and I haven't taken a literary theory course, so this is going to be painful. My background is Ancient Greeks (Platonic), Modern epistemology (Descartes, Locke, Berkeley, Hume), perspectivism (Nietzsche), existentialism (Sartre, Kafka), feminism (de Beauvoir & Yasbir Puar), theory of mind (Paul Churchland, T.S. Kuhn), evolutionary theory (ethics, Darwin, Dawkins, Dennet) contemporary epistemology (Clifford, James, Wittgenstein, Russell, Dewey and some really recent like Michael Williams and Nicholas Tebben) (mostly pragmatists, but a couple naturalists, like Kornblith). I have some other stuff sprinkled in. I see my biggest flaw will be taking bits and pieces of different philosophy to try and create something cogent (drink). I have an understanding of the typical modernist, post-modernist, Brit Lit stuff for literature. Most of my English degree was writing, mostly focused on rhetoric and different tools for writers, like understanding plosives and asyndetons and polysyndetons. But I have a solid foundation in research and I still have access to my schools JSTOR account, so there's that.
I write all of that so you know where I will be coming from. Just so we can try and stay on the same page. Feel free to tell me to read something, I go and read it, then I come back with interpretation, and we move forward.
And all of this is contingent on you actually wanting to delve into the depths of this entire holy-fuck (drink).
Let me know.....but if you're game, the question has been asked. OR, we can just ramble on and see what sticks?
Brilliant.
I'm going to start with something I picked up from Arthur C. Danto's What Is Art?. And, unfortunately, I will instantly go back on my request that we try to limit the use of other mediums besides writing, but I assure you it will come back. I beg you to read this article, which is only two pages. I hope it will set the stage for us.
http://mysite.pratt.edu/~morourke/common/Readings/DantoTransfiguration.pdf, or simply find Danto's piece, "Works of Art and Mere Real Things.
I'll wait...... (Jeopardy theme playing)
While this article deals with paintings, I think we can come up with a parallel in writing. In order to do so, we continue with a thought experiment.
We have developed a computer that generates word combinations. It uses all languages and all punctuation. Given enough time (infinite amount of time), each and every great story will be created by this computer. We somehow have the ability to sort through this seemingly infinite amalgamation and retrieve what we want from it. So, when Cormac McCarthy presents to us Sunset Limited, we can retrieve the computer's version and place it next to his. Your next story, my next story, every story that we painstakingly create, is then placed next to the computer's version. So, no matter what anyone produces, we have an exact duplicate created in a completely different way.
Then, we get a third version by means of copy. Another person, grabs the copy from the writer, takes it into the next room, types it out, and then that copy too is placed next to the writer's version and computer version. So, we have three copies.
Obviously, we will not be able to determine which is which. Yet, we know one is art, one is forgery, and the last is pure chance.
What makes the one art?
I think by delving into this thought experiment, we can begin to see that authorial intent does matter. (This is not to say that I think you said intention doesn't matter. I just want to solidify the assumption.) If the writer produces something that they like, but it wasn't their true intention, then we must, I think, respect that decision. Then it is not art. It is a work in progress, it is unfinished.
So, I think by going through this, I think we can certainly state that an author's intent is not only relevant, but of paramount importance when determining if writing can make it to the table to be considered great writing.
This does bring up another issue. A digression if you will. That is of the happy accident. I hold that the happy accident is one in which the author writes something, does not believe it to be complete, shows it to others, and they bestow upon it great praise. The author, happy that it is accepted and praised, no longer considers it "in progress", but it is now a finished product.
This is a difficult issue. This shows the transitory nature of artistic intent. Was the work complete, unknown to the author? Another question, was the intent merely to receive praise? Therefore, anything produced that managed the right reception would be considered what the author intended. But in this case, going back to the thought experiment, any of the three versions would have received the same admiration. Does this negate anything? Must the author be bold, nay--courageous enough to say, "Et voila!" (there it is), to bring closure to the process. Or is authorial intent as multifaceted as everything else in our world? Is the finished product and the reception all part of the same package? Or is it merely parallel desires that may influence each other, but are not of the same stuff?
I'm going to stick to my gun and say that reception does not complete work. It is merely abandoned. If the artist wishes to call it a complete work only after it has been accepted, then it should not be considered art, it is merely pandering. (Yes, I fully expect you to destroy this).
I guess that means we should bring up the opposite. Yet, what is the opposite of the happy accident? Van Gogh? Mr and Ms Anonymous?
So, for now....
Great writing is...
A) A product of authorial intent.*
B) Not produced by accident.*
C) Not dependent on reception.
D, etc.) TBD....
Therefore, E) it is Great Writing.
*Should I combine these? A product of authorial intent and not produced by accident.
{[(A * ~B) * ~C] * (D * ~D)} ^ E
* = and, ~ = not, ^ = then, v = or, = = if and only if, (I'm horrible at logic. But I'll never get better if I don't try.)
And I think we can table the discussion on the value judgement of "Great Writing." It will be the place where all of this crumbles. Let us for the moment proceed with our idealistic idea of great writing that we each have in our own heads, as of yet, undefined. Let us presume it is intuitive, and that when we read it, we just know, "hey, this is great writing."
No, as I write this, it all falls apart. Dammit!!!!!
fuck, okay, great writing, what is great writing is a bullshit statement.
What will lead to great writing? Maybe...
What are things that writing, that is to be considered art, should have in common? No, this a question geared to fit nicely with my argument. Fuck me.
I like my argument, I think it does well with removing reception as a measuring stick for writing. It places the onus back on the author, and what was their intent. Only the author can know what they truly intended. So, there must be personal honesty with ones self.
Dammit. I'm all over the place. I'm much better at deconstructing arguments.
"What is Great Writing." It is something that is produced with intent, not produced by accident, not dependent on reception, (I will say nothing of enjoyment because I think there must be some enjoyment for it to finally achieve that Great mark).....
These all seems like qualifiers on the writer and very little to do with the actual writing. *flips desk, sets it on fire, sets self on fire, enjoys the scenery*
Fine, you're right. Where do we start? Fuck, what are we trying to accomplish?
Perhaps, the best we can achieve is to force the writing community to ask better questions concerning what great writing is. But who's asking and what are they saying? Saying that it's based on reception is akin to saying based on profit. Profit as the bench mark of writing. Awards? Nobel, Pulitzer?
Fuck it. I'm officially a nihlist and it's all pointless. Just let me die.
i am so appreciative of this thread
@ Thuggish, Please step in at any time. I can only handle getting ridiculed by XyZy for so long before I end up in an asylum for the philosophically inadequate.
@ XyZ - y, because you love us.
You have ruined my plans. I wholly expected you to see that I had destroyed my entire argument, then, because you couldn't help not being the destroyer, you would have destroyed my destruction thus proving my initial argument. But no, I said I erred and you just nodded.
I will admit, I have read Borges sparingly, and one of those was his A Course on English Literature, which was great. I did stay up very late to catch up on these readings, luckily they were all very short, but quite profound. Thank you for bringing them to light. I can now go on being a writer. ;-)
Danto does, I believe, in his actual book, What is Art?, go into the meaningless, or automatic, form that in itself is an act of intention. Specifically I think he brings in Pollock. I think the movie Ex Machina did a great job bringing this up. In one scene they mention Pollock and his style. It is said he used the automatic thought process to create his work, but also noted that the opposite is never possible. That is, if one were to think about every aspect before they begin, the artist would never begin, thus at some point the artist must just go and figure it out along the way. There is no possible way to plan out every aspect. This means that authorial intent is still, at best, a vague term.
I concur that I did struggle to come up with an analogy that would cross the boundary between art and writing. I'm not sure there is any parallel, though Borges' "The Library of Babel" produced a better snapshot of our landscape than I ever could. I did say that one was art and I dismissed the other two. That was error 1 on my part. (At least I think it was one.) Perhaps a better way to phrase it would be: since we cannot distinguish either piece from the others, all three must be considered despite knowing that their origins are wholly different.
Also, let us change out the forgery for something like what Borges brought up in "Pierre Menard, Author of Quixote." This way, we remove the forgery aspect, if not entirely, but it is still produced to be a work of art per se.
So, if you will allow that we have three works that cannot be distinguished, and that we must therefore accept all three on this basis, then (what I think Danto was actually after) is that we have discovered a situation in which we must accept all or accept none. This situation for the art world is not good. Not everything is art, but we do know that there is art. I think what he has done is forced the point that if you have no good reason to consider something art other than its origin, then you open the door to everything. I think the field of thought that grasps this point in literature is the New Criticism School of the 1920s. They felt that the best way to determine if a work had literary merit was to break down its components, or something like that. (i'm not going to delve into New Criticism, but it is one in which I think there is lots of stuff that we can play around with, that and Historical criticism, and their bretheren.)
Danto on the aspect of the found-art and the produced-as-art differentiation used Warhol's Campbell's Soup Can etc. art pieces as an example of how we can have mass-manufactured work and work that is produced once and how one is art, the others are not forgery, but serve a wholly different purpose. Campbell's Soup, the company, does not produce art because their purpose is to sell what is inside the can, whereas Warhol's work (mind you he was not the sole creator of that lot) was created specifically to bring attention to the distinction between mass-manufactured items, and actual art. So from this, I think we have reason to believe that while the works may be similar, how they are created, what the intent is, actually matters in differentiating art from non-art.
I think because of this, we must know origin, and we must know intent, before we can provide a verdict on which is actually art. So if we receive all the different versions and we can't tell the difference, we do not simply say all are included. We must say all are excluded until more information can be gathered.
As for the second problem, Sunset Limited as a play, yes, it is a play, but it was written down and I take it as literature the same as we consider Shakespeare's plays literature. I did not intend to jump into the argument between play and novel to determine if one qualifies or one doesn't. I simply accept that if it is written down, then it counts. (I'll pay for this later.) But this is a separate argument and only leads us off course.
Though, I do like the idea of parsing out is if only the original copy is art or if each print is considered art. I do not consider these to be a forgery. They never claim to be anything other than copies that signify that there is an original and the one in question is not it. I think the copies are not the actual art, hence they have much less value. Much like a copy of a Monet vs the actual Monet. But they do have the ability to introduce people to the work. Yes, it is very different to actually see it than only see it on a screen.
I do agree that natural things are not art. I think that since we have included intention, they must be excluded. Unless we want to chalk one up to the dude in the sky,but i have a feeling you don't want to jump into that hole. Neither do I.
I do believe accidents are a part of the process. Much like a scientist that says, that's funny, follows the new path and discovers something much better than they had originally intended. Perhaps not better, but something that the scientist considers more valuable.
This did make me think about our issue of "great" writing. I would like to take a page out of the scientists handbook. We cannot hold a work up by itself and say it is great. There is no measuring stick. But, we do know that it is a product from a culture. A culture is made up of people that have commonalities. Based on this shared commonness, we call it a culture. Let us start with the individual. If one person, not the artist, says that liked book X, then we will give it a single point. If two people, then it gets two points. And so on. There is no teleological thing for each person to say that this is great. Much like the automatic art, I think we also get an automatic like toward things. If we bothered to parse out every detail of why we liked it, we wouldn't have any time to enjoy what we liked. A person would only respond with an automatic like if the work somehow reminded them of something in their own life, or showed them a new way to look at something in their own life. But either way, the work connected with the culture in a meaningful way. And if there are 100 people that like a work, it may be considered more great than the one that gets 50 likes. (god, I feel like I'm influenced by facebook.)
But what of a work in China and one in the U.S. the likes would be skewed. Perhaps, if the number of people that represent a culture, if more than 50% who read it, like it, then we can say that it is great.
This is really rough, but I'm now tired and my brain isn't firing on all cylinders.
So, authorial intent, known origin (this is problematic for the anonymous work, or maybe not, maybe anonymous is the mystery origin that acts like origin) and cultural reception, may be some key elements of determining what is a great writing. How do we justify things like Twilight? I think there will always be outliers in every model. It doesn't negate everything, it just means there are things we don't know yet.
step in? i have yet to read any of the long-ass posts, and have no idea what the fuck you're talking about.
Perfect, because neither do I.
...does xyzy?
I'd say he has a better grasp of the material than I do.
... right...
You guys are talking about, like, writing, right?
Exactly. One of the big questions we're working on is what makes something great writing.
The only caveat is that your argument can't be defeated. Think of it like two attorneys' working a case, but their both on the same team, but have different ideas on how to win the case. And we could always use fresh eyes on what we've come up with.
My opionion... That's way too much talking to decide what good writing is.
Good writing is something that captivates you.
Then the question becomes, How do you know that?
What if what captivates you and what captivates me isn't the same thing, is yours or mine suddenly not great writing? I recognize The Heart of Darkness as great writing, but I can't sit down and read it for the life of me. I've tried like 8 times. Is it bad writing and we are all mistaken as to its greatness? How can we tell when we're wrong?
Aloha XyZy,
Because I have it used quite a few times, and you have brought it up, I must provide an explanation of what I mean by teleology. "Telos, meaning end or purpose. It is a judgment concerning an object the possibility of which can only be grasped from the point of view of its purpose." (IEP, Kant, Teleology) Now, I will say that there is a great fat chance that I have not used in this sense in the past, and for that I do apologize if it has forced us to talk past each other. So, from this point forward, I will ensure I keep it to this definition.
You are correct between the distinguished and discernible nature of the writing. We have said there is a knowable difference, and that we must account for this difference.
Now, Paul Churchland talked about our programming of a computer to discover if something in the water is a mine or a rock. We send out a ping and everything comes back as a rock (0), we tweak, send out another ping and everything comes back as mine (1). The more we calibrate, the better the machine gets at picking out rock from mine. In our case we want art/great writing (1) and not art/great writing (0). Now what data do we insert that would get us to 1 or 0. Our threshold would be that we want all the stuff above .51, and nothing below .49. And .5 will be indeterminate.
So, we have material form/content, authorial intent. But lets add some more information in that is actually relevant and we know it is. I would like to hold that writing is a product of a culture. It cannot exist outside of the culture. So cultural factors will make up an aspect. Let's make it a cube, and hold three sides for cultural factors. Audience reception, Publishing reception, ?? (something else here, maybe criticism that has nothing to do with audience or publishing, how about scholastic reception?) The other three sides are based on the individual creating the work. This is authorial intent, monetary gain, material form/content. Each is based on a 1-0 scale.
So, we add these parameters in, and then we put in data that we know (a priori) that is great and not great. We insert stuff like Shakespeare's Hamlet and plot his points. .9 for audience, .5 for publishing, .99 for scholastic, The individual stuff is just a guess, but let's say, .8 intent, .7 monetary gain, .8 for material form/content. We get our score of .78 (I think.) Next, we insert one of my great works. The scores in order are .1, .01, .05, .8, .01, .6. We get our score of .26. (How would we actually calculate this I have no clue, but I'm on a roll. I did math, let me play this out.) I think we re-tweak the machine here because I have a feeling the difference between me and Shakespeare may be greater than .52. So, we adjust, Shakespeare comes out at .99, mine at .01, and then we move forward.
We insert enough data, and we can now start keeping better track. We plot all the work and see what we get. (We can add sides or take them away as needed. We may need an eight sided, ten, 20 sided dice. We could use as little as three (six sided divided).
This was fun to write, but it does little for our current predicament. We could plot each work based on the information and get some good data. We just can't look at the work and say, this is the one that scored .75 and this one was .52. And the one from the Library ... I have no clue what to do with it.
We could make it even more complicated. In the scope of scholastic reception, we can use another algorithm where the different sides are New Criticism, Russian Formalists, Historical, Psychoanalytic, Structuralists, etc. It would be an important determining factor, but it wouldn't be the only factor.
In the above model, there would be information we could not gather. Work that never gets published, never gains an audience, never gains scholastic criticism, it just stays out of the culture. It was still a product of the culture, it just has no significant impact on culture. It could have maxed out in intent, and form, someone could have bought it for millions of dollars, and then it sat on a shelf for the rest of its days. The best it can muster is .5.
So a possible point of contention is works that we "know" are great. I think we must accept certain things as great to start. And certain things as rubbish. It is the only way to move forward. We must make the assumption and accept that there will be information that we do not know. We say Shakespeare is great, we enter in the data, if someone wants to challenge if Shakespeare is great, that's another question we are not focused on. This is a page out of Michael Williams' Groundless Beliefs. It's a book that does a great job combating reductio ad absurdum. The ol' how do you know that, how do you know that....
I think because we do have some models, we have a foundation of sorts. We still have a problem with materially identical works, but we can enter the data and know with more certainty where they would fall if it could be determined which is which. I think Danto did what he wanted to do, he forced us to ask better questions of why we consider certain works art, or great, and why others weren't. I think we still end up at the same destination, but via a different channel. I think the best we could do is to add more checks and balances, hence the computer, in the hopes of helping us identify works that are great.
It doesn't tell authors do this and you will be great, but it does state that these things matter in a way regardless if we want them to or not. So, yes, publishing houses are gatekeepers, but they are not the only gatekeepers. They play a huge role, but it guarantees nothing.
Back to teleology. I wholeheartedly believe that there is no purpose or end other than that which we create for ourselves, as individuals and as a society. This argument is not teleological. It is something we are creating for a purpose that we have also created. It still has value to me, value that I have placed on it. Why do I place value on this and pursue something that I say has no purpose besides that which we are, in essence making up as we go? I guess because it makes me happy. How do I know it has value? Because I'm using the only currency that I know is finite, I spend time out of my life working on this. I know I will die, I know not when, but I will not regret spending the time I have on this project. Thus, that means you also have value to me. I respect your time. I am not attempting to waste it. I am actually trying here. But it must be known that we do this because it is what we want to do with our lives.
Back to our regularly scheduled program. As for Oscar Wilde, he had great form and wit, his writing is okay, he made money, he was famous, he was published, he is well received scholastically. Was that his intent? I don't know. How can we know the intent of authors we no longer have access to?
Perhaps in authorial intent, we can subset it by peer review, revisions and editing, and some other stuff.
Good writing? Bad writing? Are we in agreement or disagreement that values are created by Man? That objectivity is impossible because everything comes through the filter of subjectivity?
I do not agree. You can't know that objectivity is impossible, the best you can say is that you don't know. And even if it is subjective, it doesn't mean we can't talk about it objectively. However, values are a creation.
And even if it is subjective ...
But isn't that the problem? Everything is subjective, not if. There is nothing that we can tap that is outside of our subjectivity to verify objectivity.
However, values are a creation.
Then how does one determine what is good and bad?
You have no evidence that it is only subjective, nor are you able to say that it's only objective. You get to a point where the only true answer you can give is that you don't know. But, considering that you don't know, you prefer to act as if it is subjective until you have further evidence for or against.
How we determine what is good or bad, good or evil, is dependent on many factors such as culture, religion, economic status, race, gender, etc. There is no right answer per se, but, we can try to do things that will give us the best possible chance of doing good, or recognizing the good.
World 1: All anyone does is rape women, will that lead to a good world?
World 2: All anyone does is try and help each other, will that lead to a good world?
If you can say that you would rather live in one world more than the other, then you have an objective goal for which type or world you would like to live in. Then, you can act in such a way that you try to make that world a reality.
Sam Harris gives a much better account of this in his book, The Moral Landscape. Good read, check it out.
You have no evidence that it is only subjective
Insofar as the observable world is made whole through the prism of the subject I, then yes, it is subjective. How does a person observe outside of the self? That's not to say objective reality doesn't exist, but our reality is indeed subjective.
How we determine what is good or bad, good or evil, is dependent on many factors such as culture, religion, economic status, race, gender, etc.
Exactly. If these things, like culture and religion, determine what's good or bad, then clearly there is no Truth in an absolute sense of what is good or bad. This is why what constitutes "good" art has changed over time. Likewise, the deux ex machina endings often used in ancient Roman and Greek tragedies were once acceptable. Today this plot device is derided by writers.
World 1: All anyone does is rape women, will that lead to a good world?
If you can say that you would rather live in one world more than the other, then you have an objective goal for which type or world you would like to live in.
But again, the type of world you would like to live in. Pronouns are important here.
There is a group whose name rhymes with SMISIS that uses sex slaves. For them, this is the world they would rather live in. A world with rape. As for the sex slaves, not so much--ie., subjective.
World 2: All anyone does is try and help each other, will that lead to a good world?
Best intentions do not necessarily lead to "good," so no. Altruism easily devolves into nannyism. The movie Idiocracy tackles some of these dystopic possibilities.
Can I get some bullet points?
Ha ha.
So, the problem is that experience is variegated even though objects may appear static. Obviously, we need for all art to be rendered by a device designed to include chaotic alterations into every iteration. That way, everybody really will be experiencing different things from each other, and they can then focus on attempting to relay their experience of the various objects instead of freaking out about subjective responses to the same object(s).
I think we're getting a little ridiculous.
I promise that with 7 billion people + on the world, if they all learned to read fluently, there is nothing that they all would like, 100%. Sometimes you don't need a double-blind-placebo-hyper-mega-data experiment to know that.
So let's just call it subjective already.
If you all want to make assertions, qualify them.
If it is all subjective, prove that it is all subjective. You do nothing to advance our knowledge of that matter than simply regurgitating a lame argument.
You call it subjective, fine. The burden of proof is now in your court.
Is it fair to claim the questions over "greatness" come down to the relatively rudimentary problem of qualitative vs quantitative evaluation? That's how a lot of this read to me. Of course, one can say qualities may be displayed in various quantities. For example, one thing might exhibit more "greatness" than another thing, or it might display equal "greatness" in more ways. Or one could say "greatness" is displayed when one or more quantifiable attributes pass the "greatness" threshold, beneath which is mere "goodness". One can define "greatness", or one can say what conditions or other qualities are necessary for something to be considered "great". What sort of scaling system one might employ depends on what is being scaled, no? I could say more, but I'll wait to see what people say about this (admittedly) basic question.
@XyZy --- The brain is the bugbear.
I knew it. Everyone's ganging up on me. lol.
I'll respond tomorrow if I have time.
However, I thought I did say that the examle I provided was a sliding scale and that nothing was fixed. As culture/society/intentions shift, so does how/where place different writing.
As for the subjective argument ... *sigh* okay, I will find my notes from my courses and pull up the arguments that show how it fails. I think the thread runs from Hume to James to Quine, and from there it branches out again two different lines, that of the naturalists and that of the neo-pragmatists.
I just not sure I'll be able to remember the argument for how the tree will still be there regardless if someone is there to witness it but it only matters if someone is there to witness it which is a nice pragmatic view, or some such thing.
How do you know you're arguing with a human? I could very well be a computer running the beginnings of an AI system. Then again, you would expect a computer to learn quicker. lol
K fine. I saw "data points" as I scrolled to the bottom of the latest posts.
There are no data points in art. At best you can track people and how they react and self-report. Other than that, there is nothing quantifiable about it. Eliminating that, namely things that would be OBjective, it can only be SUBjective.
Are we switching to the subjective argument? I think the IEP has a great workup of the argument in question. http://www.iep.utm.edu/objectiv/
But, as it stands, I wholly believe that we/I have bitten off way more than we/I can chew. How can we possibly create a synthesis between the subjective/objective argument, aestheticism, epistemology, theory of mind, literary theory, add in linguistics, cultural/societal aspects ...? Let alone throwing in the ethical seasoning.
I would really like to think that I can accurately keep track of all these threads in something that may resemble something cohesive, but I think I have already shown that these arguments are getting away from me.
So, how do we pull this back in toward something manageable?
Side note:
Teleology: I keep saying it, so I will try to be much clearer. I do not hold teleology merely as purpose, or use. But it is the only purpose to achieve a desired end, final cause. Very Aristotelean. The only time I hear anyone speak of something with a teleology, it always has to do with some design, or specific purpose. While the thing can be used for other endeavors, there was one purpose for which it was designed.
I think you have a more recent interpretation that has pulled very far from Aristotle.
For me, I keep thinking religion. Religious people have morality which the use to bring them in line with god's plan so they can get to heaven and be reunited with the old man. If one doesn't have god, then they have no need for morality, thus mayhem.
It isn't just any use or purpose, but the intended use for which it exists. If teleology just meant purpose or use, we would just say purpose or use. Teleology is the combo bag of specific purpose for a specific end.
That's why I keep saying art doesn't have a teleology. Yes, there is authorial intent, but I feel that intent to be fluid and not a fixed thing. If you're saying that it can still be fluid and teleology, then that is where we have a disagreement.
And I completely expect you to give a better run down.
XyZy,
As for our new model, I didn't mean to imply that we would compare the works against each other and only one would get the top spot and everything else would be shifted accordingly. I used Shakespeare to bring up what is art and great writing. I used my work to show what is not art and bad writing. It wasn't a comparison between the two, it was just the opening salvo to create the framework where we can input data to see where the work falls. If more than one work falls at .99, then so be it. I think we just call these works the greatest of the great. So, the three sonnets that you brought in would not need to compete for space, they would just be.
However, the more I think about this, the more I think of the beginning of Dead Poets Society, where Robin Williams is talking about plotting poetry. Excrement.
I'm thinking of falling back to my initial intention for writing ... to woo women.
So, it is great writing if and only if you are able to achieve your ultimate goal of wooing women, or men or whatever you're into, toaster ovens, baked potatoes, apple pie, whatever.
So, how do we pull this back in toward something manageable?
I find using fewer words, that are less esoteric, helps a lot.
^
If I knew fewer words, I would use them.
On Subjectivity: Heard.
On Teleology: With the tree, watch, and art, yes, that is what I mean.
As for .99 spot. I don't think it is a matter of it being put into a spot and a lot of the work being in the same room. I think of it as something like brown hair. It's just a descriptor and doesn't change the status of the work, it is just another way of describing the work. A description that, if it someday worked, would just be a more precise way to talk about the work. So there is brown hair, and in what we call brown hair are a multitude of hues and variations, but it doesn't diminish the other works. Of course my analogy is hugely flawed because I'm not making the claim that brown hair is great and all other hair is less great, I'm just saying we use it as a descriptor, nothing more.
It may lead to a conversation such as, "If we are going to create a new canon, let's use works that have a descriptive score of .8 or higher." And someone else says, "I want to use this work, but the descriptive score is .6." Then the other can say, "If it will help you teach the material to students so they come to understand how to discover this for themselves, then so be it."
It just doesn't have to be a this and only this kind of thing. It would be something to help us make better informed decisions.
Though, I foresee the possibility of people using this tool/model like an axe and chopping down trees just to count the rings, thus rendering the tree worthless in the future. It really could do just as much harm, if not more, if used without understanding. I guess like everything.
"It isn't enough to foresee the invention of the car, one must also foresee the traffic as well."
^ I forget the exact quote or who said it.
"Subjectivity" is a dead horse which might not be dead & which might not be a horse.
@Jose --- What's the agenda? Is it to obtain a means by which to define a new canon? Is it merely to obtain new means for evaluating literature? If so, what's wrong with the old means, as you see it? Or, what are the old means, as you see them?
(I suppose, regardless of a goal, without a means of objectively describing literature, there could potentially never be agreement on what anyone was talking about, and therefore no possible agreement on what's to be done with or about whatever it is.)
@ jyh: I would go back and read through the old thread and this to see where we are.
As for our computer model, and computer generated works, perhaps we need to rethink some things based on the LR article....
https://litreactor.com/news/japanese-ai-written-novel-makes-award-bid
@Jose -- Yeah, I read that a month ago, when it happened; though, I admit, I haven't intimately familiarized myself with its every nuance. You started with "love of words" and ended up here. From what I've read, I've no clear sense of a singular objective. I think you're content to bounce various ideas back and forth for however long it interests you. Nothing wrong with that, I suppose.
To clarify I'm not against sentient AI with romantic capabilities from writing.
I'm against the Orwellian use non sentient computers to ensure obediance without individuality.
Or as some may put it. Using such to supplement and eradicate human authors.
In other words. Against computer as slaves to human masters who inherently have an interest in mass marketing, and the desire to make money.
Give a robot a heart. Well that chabges things. That would be awesome.
Sign me up for Uploading my brain to be with 'her' always.
@ XyZy: I believe that you are right and the only place where we seem to be able to carve out a niche is in the audience reception, and that "Art finalizes in reception."
This is something I think Alexander Nehamas was trying to do in his work, The Art of Living: Socrates Reflections from Plato to Foucault. In much the same way that a painter creates a painting, humans create their lives, and it is only upon reception that we determine if it was a good or bad life lived. It's a really interesting read.
If I threw JYH under the bus it was not intentional. So, if I have offended, I sincerely apologize. I think I just didn't want to recap where we started and where we were going. I don't think I have a solid understanding of it, if I ever did. So, yes, all I seem to be doing is bouncing ideas around.
And yes, I am content to do just that until I gain a better understanding of the landscape in which I find myself. I did say that literary criticism is one of my weakest areas, so if we are doing New Criticism, then let us do it, or anything else for that matter.
If my randomness makes it feel like I am wasting people's time, it is purely out of ignorance and not out of any animosity or that I simply do not care. I am more than willing to take a backseat as the both of you resume your old dialogue.
I'll be standing by.
@Jose --- Your reply was terse enough to seem perhaps curt or impatient, but I wasn't positive that you meant it that way. I wouldn't want to have to recap all this, nor did I expect you to. I was just wondering whether or not you had a course along which you hoped to align all this back-and-forth, or if you wished to perhaps to focus on something in particular. I certainly wasn't trying to put anybody in the backseat.
XyZy makes a good point, though, regarding the breadth of what's already out there. I think you've both probably read more theory than I. I have an observer's interest in modern developments in criticism, but I don't feel I've explored the field in much depth.
I believe that is right, and that one cannot create great writing, but one can pull their weight and make it easier for the audience to say, this is great ... because....
Intentionally and purposefully....: I think a writer can create great work inside the box, per se. They go above and beyond with the big three, Character, Setting, and Plot. There is a music to their prose, the know how to use plosives, fricatives, etc. effectively. Rhetoric is used with great effect, asyndetons, understatement, litotes, etc. They have an ability to make fiction the truth, if that makes sense. They do all of this blended in such a way that the reader doesn't recognize the actual craft, until after the fact when they go back and really try and see how it all works, like that of a clock.
(Separate argument that can be destroyed: Can I appreciate the beauty of a watch, sure, do I become more impressed when I find out how that watch actually works and came into being, I think then it becomes more than just about the watch, it becomes a point of pride for the society to have set up a culture in which this person and that this person created this watch. I can just hear the chants now of 'Merica! How this work switches from creation and slips into the cultures consciousness that becomes a point of pride, is beyond me, but I do think we witness such things.)
But there are writers that do things much like what artists sometimes do, (and by that I mean painters sculptures and the such), and that is they change the landscape, they push the boundaries of what writing is, or can be. The black dot on a white canvas became minimalist. We get magical realism, and science fiction, and the graphic novel, if you will. They have to hit the same marks as the former lot, but they also have to do this new thing really well, so well that people go, that's a new thing. And then others do it.
If we hold that it is in audience reception, then we do open the door for a huge, massive fucking problem, (pardon my fucks), and that is something along the lines of what we have now in certain aspects. Those that have the ability to control availability can guide reception to their own means. They can't control all of it, but they do a really good job of it. It's the record company that advertises and gets radio stations to play only their artists work. It's watching TV and seeing a commercial for yet another James Patterson novel, (no offense to Patterson, but really dude).
If we are to make this work, I think we need watch dogs, and multiple tiers to make sure we haven't just blindly grabbed the first cracker we see and say it's the best ever. We had 50 Shades of Gray, entertaining for what it was, but I personally thought it was awful once I actually looked at it. If audience reception is the marker, there is more to it than just the number of people that agree with it. Perhaps, then we bring up something that becomes the elitist audience. That of the scholars. Who do act as a kind of watch dog, but one that must also be watched over.
And then the watchers of the watchers of the watchers. (But let's not run into the ad infinitum).
So now we have people able to manipulate supply to the audience, those capable of keeping the audience's taste in check to a point but typically have little oversight, other than they teach themselves, and now (as I'm about to become a part of,) teach the writers about great writing, per se.
Perhaps the ultimate goal of writing is to become dulce et utile, (entertaining and instructive), using the mot juste (right/exact word in the right place). I love American Gods, not just because it is entertaining, but I also learn something along the way, same for Invisible Monster, and so many others. Yet, there are so many other works that I read and can only say, "it was good, I was entertained, but there isn't much else to it," and that is because it does nothing to further my education as a human.
^ Yes, I think there is something in that, that we must absolutely explore. Eventually. That is right after the rest of my rant is thoroughly put to bed. But really, that dulce et utile hits on a thread in my mind, and I can't quite shake the feeling it is of vital importance.
---And Off Topic---
Since we aren't out to insult each other, waste each other's time, and we all have a vested interest in this conversation, I think we can move on from the cumbersome worry of insult or embarrassment. I think we all bring something to the table, and we all have limitations, but I still think we can at least force ourselves out of our boxes a little to maybe make us better members of the writing community. Why? Because it's our passion and what we want to do with our lives.
I'm going to spend some of this weekend working on spinning myself up on new criticism.
There are a lot of big issues touched in that last post. I'll offer my own sticking point which I believe is fundamental to the concerns regarding art & criticism.
------
Without means to discern between types of writing, all writing will be or must be treated as a single type, or as an irreducible lump of all writing. (I'll use the term "texts.") If there are no causes or means to read various texts in various ways, then fiction, non-fiction, poetry & criticism may all be read in the same way.
Some argue for readers accepting cues from the text itself on how it is to be read. But, without a tacit acknowledgement of the author, there is no reason to care about cues, no reason to treat the text with any respect (apart from some belief in texts' inherent respectability).
On the other hand, unless one is to read an instructional manual on how to read an author's work, one has nothing but prior experience and the text itself to go on. And what would a text be without its own characteristics and statements (i.e., that which might be considered cues)?
All this in mind, I can't help but believe that some level of objective certainty is necessary for any criticism to be taken seriously (even if only so seriously as to dismiss it for what it actually is). In fact, for a reader to believe a piece of criticism is in fact in any way relevant to the piece of which it is a criticism, the reader must either recognize a relationship between the two pieces, or the reader must trust the author of the criticism to be acting in good faith.
And there we see that art's and criticism's meanings or values are equally questionable; we see that one cannot evaluate opinion or interpretation with any more certainty than one may evaluate fiction or poetry (or whatever supposedly more subjective pursuits).
^ More good points. I haven't actually read the book, but Negative Dialectics sounds like it might be compatible with my thinking.
Define & establish an artistic ideal, and someone will do the opposite. Without actual censors or watchdogs, it will slip through at some point. Obviously, scholastic and commercial watchdogs can operate differently; obviously, it's also conceivable they'd both be tapped by some higher influence to use their varied means to single ends.
"Attention" as a metric for greatness is problematic. An untranslated Maori epic poem (hypothetical, I know of none) is inacessible to the overwhelming majority: it can't receive their attention. Is it any less great? Naturally, this again confronts the meaning of "greatness" among other things.
I'm not sure I actually believe in real artistic "greatness" apart from the evaluation of experts. I value expertise, but I'm not in thrall to it. I don't much care for critics whose agenda would appear to be the elevation or protection of criticism itself. If a criticism has something to offer me, I'll feel it when I read it — same as with a work of art. (Or is it? Possibly there's potential for similar experience; yet another question . . .)
First, as you respond point by point, I wonder what you think I'm attempting to do. I'm not trying to enlighten you or impress you. Are you replying to my post without any regard for what I intended? Are you rationally estimating my aims? Or are you replying in whatever way feels good / apt / enjoyable / educational?
I didn't say texts become characteristcless. Texts will always have characteristics. That isn't what I said, so I wonder about your conclusions therefrom. (Though it doesn't seem as though all of your statements thereafter depend on this.)
Then you say we do this or that "without any objective certainty." How can one assert the non-existence of certainty?
I don't believe systems of signification can exist within but not without.