I regard the truth dependent and truth independent distinctions as erroneous. An object is subject to both distinctions and requires a judge-perceiver who always lacks some information and therefore must guess, or go with unreliable information, pretending it is complete. The judge-perceiver is essentially forced to make determinations according to beliefs. I even believe that our beliefs precede our determinations to the extent that aesthetic judgments are a-priori and even scientific judgments are a-priori, mainly. And besides, since cognition is always metaphorical, any knowledge or judgment is make-believe, a fiction, a story, a script. I claim that Michael has already decided what is truth dependent and truth independent before he engages in the make believe process of judgment. He presents various conditions for each category a-priori and then finds what he is looking for.
wc ________________________________ From: Michael Brady <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Tuesday, July 7, 2009 10:08:50 PM Subject: Re: Worringer: Abstraction and Empathy 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. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Michael Brady [email protected] http://considerthepreposition.blogspot.com/
