On Jul 7, 2009, at 5:34 PM, Saul Ostrow wrote:
If this is so is the word art a useful one in that it would appear
that art does not differ fromany other form of let us say cultural
production
I've proposed my Truth Conditions threshold on this list before.
Briefly, I believe it's like this:
A person perceives an object in the world. Then, in very rapid
succession, the person (1) determines various characteristics or
properties of the object, such as extent, shape, etc.; (2)
provisionally categorizes it from among known categories (does it
resemble anything else already known?); (3) provisionally identifies
it, if possible; (4) assigns a "trustworthiness rating" (i.e.,
assesses it for actual safety or threat) and for
"scrutability" (whether the person can readily grasp or understand or
know something about the nature of the object and use that as the
basis of continuing to approach or expose oneself to it).
I suspect this might be a decision loop, that after one determines its
"trustworthiness-scrutability," one then loops back to (2) and refines
the provisional categories, etc.
I believe that when a person encounter artifacts--human made things--
he rapidly gets to (4), the decision point about trustworthiness and
scrutability, posed in a form of the question, "What do I [or can I]
do with this object?" If the answer is that one relies on it for some
useful end (it contains information to use, for example, like the Da
Vinci code <g>), then it's judged first by some utilitarian test of
suitability. This includes denotative truthfulness, that is, if it's a
representation does what it portrays faithfully and reliably its
subject. Over the last couple of days, there was a manhunt for a
serial killer. The news websites showed a police sketch of what eye-
witnesses said the suspect looked like. I thought it was a pretty good
drawing, actually. Much better in quality than you usually see. I was
reacting to its aesthetic properties with absolutely no concern for
how accurate it depicted the suspect. As far as the police and others
were concerned, its value depended on its degree of accuracy. They
judged it based on its "truthfulness" to the killer. I judged it on
artistic (i.e., non-truthful) qualities of drawing, proportion, etc.
So it goes like this:
What is it?
If it appears to be a representation, is it "truth-dependent" or
"truth-independent"?
If it's truth-dependent, then I will judge it *first* by its utility
(looks like the suspect, looks like the car part, etc.). After I have
"used" its utilitarian purpose, then I might judge its visual
properties, its aesthetic aspect.
If it's truth-independent, then I will judge it by its aesthetic
properties first, by how well it exhibits the various qualities that
the maker had available. This includes both things like color, line,
mass, balance, etc., AND any represented subject or scene. The maker
chooses how to dispose of figures, buildings and spaces, animals,
atmospheric appearances, etc., with as much freedom as using lines,
colors, and the other ways of making the representation.
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Michael Brady
[email protected]
http://considerthepreposition.blogspot.com/
