Frances to Derek and others...
My main point about the need of a relevant governing group to make reasonable tentative determinations about works of art or works of nonart in tech and science was that the sole individual alone is not reliable enough to control determinations, and must therefore succumb to the communal collective for assurance of their conformity to the norm. Relevance need not necessarily require "learnedness" in say ordinary common situations, but it does require normality. The main thrust here is normative reasonableness. If "learnedness" however is usable in a broad manner, rather than only in specific academic situations, then it might be aligned with some "collateral experience" needed about knowing the object of determination on the part of all members in the group. The process of determination is not about imposing arbitrary conventional standards or dogmatic regulatory rules by some overall judicial authority, but rather is about collaboratively agreeing by a consensus of tentative opinion. There may be dissent among members of the group, but the agreed determination will evolve, which is why the determination is contingent and conditional and provisional. The philosophic support for the probability of determinations is fallibility. The determination further is not a cause or origin, but rather is a limit and ground. To determine a forecasted outcome therefore is to agree on setting the boundaries as might be related to the situation at issue. A communal act to determine the status of an object in a limited ground is not necessarily an act of critical judgment or analytic review or empirical inquiry or scientific research, although it very well can be and ought to be in situations warranting it. At its simplest it need only be a means for the individual person to avoid uncontrolled abnormality and assure controlled conformity. The most that an individual might however be for example is a whole single institute or nation of persons and peoples. The issue then turns to the object and criteria of a group determination. In the case of art and under pragmatism the form of a work must be agreed as empowered to reflect worthy values and to evoke warranted responses. The values and responses in turn will determine the kind of art the work might be. This realist approach seems to be the best available at the present.
