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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   31010 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 15, 2023

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Art only has to inspire emotions in people.

Is that true?

If we could inspire the same emotions by taking the relevant pills, would art be redundant?

Really the premise is a bit self-defeating. If art is meant to inspire emotion, it's meant to make you think. Something that sticks around in your head and makes you think will generate much more complex and long-lasting emotion than a simple aesthetic achievement.

Not only that, but there are important things much more important than emotion which art aspires to capture. Who cares about a moment of appreciation when you could induce a character change in someone and alter the course of their life? That is, I think, the true purpose of art--to change us--and other claimed purposes such as "to make us feel something" or "to make us think" are just gesturing towards smaller, less ambitious versions of its true purpose.

When I listen to a classical symphony, it doesn’t inspire change or really any ideation in me at all. It’s a pure aesthetic experience, designed to manipulate my emotions and make me feel enjoyment and awe. There’s no intellectual content there, no lasting alteration in my patterns of conscious thought, no epistemic or philosophical updates on offer. Do you believe that this makes classical music “not art”? Or is it art that is failing at its one true purpose? Did Beethoven just not understand that he was supposed to be changing people’s minds, rather than simply making something beautiful for them?

I don't accept the premise that any experience is incapable of producing change. Any awe you feel while listening to music will inescapably color your behavior throughout the day to some extent, and possibly make you see things in a slightly different light.

This is of course not limited to art, but I think the value of things in general is based on how they affect and change us. If art were purely aesthetic experience, with no lasting changes to attitude, perspective, philosophy, mood, etc. then I would find it valueless, yes. Luckily such an experience is impossible. Everything we do and experience changes us to some extent, or else it's no better than wireheading and should be discounted entirely.

Every year on my birthday, I eat a delicious piece of salted caramel cheesecake, as a treat. It’s pure sugar and fat, an indulgence of atavistic hungers programmed in me by evolution. It’s orgasmically delicious in the moment, but also terrible for me, which is why I do it once a year. Is there intellectual content in my consumption of the cheesecake? Does it “produce a change in me”? Is the cheesecake art? It is a physical artifact produced by hand by a human being, with the intention of generating an emotional/aesthetic experience in the consumer. Like a classical symphony, it produces a transitory, evanescent sense of elation in me. (Thank God Beethoven’s 9th Symphony doesn’t put 1,300 calories of pure junk food into my body every time I listen to it.)

I used to draw a distinction between “art” and “entertainment”, using an exclusive definition of art the way you are now. Over time, though, I accepted that the distinction is illusory, and that there is nothing wrong with consuming content that is designed purely to excite me aesthetically and to cater to my current preferences, rather than to alter them.

I suppose I'm trying to remove the distinction from art and entertainment from the other direction--by saying that all entertainment is art, rather than that all art is entertainment. Would you eat the cheesecake if you knew that afterwards you'd forget eating it? I think even for the very most carnal pleasures (besides drugs) most of the enjoyment we get from them is still from the meaning we derive from them.

That said, at this point "art" doesn't really seem to be what I'm talking about, so I agree with your point to an extent. I don't know if I could truly define what art is, but I can say that it's not just to make us feel something and then that's the end of it.

Would art be redundant if we could inspire the same changes by popping pills?

It's a strange hypothetical. Good art causes you to reflect and compare/contrast your own thoughts and experiences to the art. The pill would have to have some sort of intellectual effect in addition to its weak calming effect (or whatever emotional effect it is that art has on you). I'd go so far as to say the only way for it to inspire the same change would be for it to be the same thing. So yes, if we could hallucinate art by popping pills, maybe there would be less need for physical art.

Ah, I see. So the changes induced by art (when carrying out its true purpose) have an intrinsic intellectual element, tied to the item of art itself? Seems quite plausible to me, though I'm no expert on the topic.

Yes.

The Experience Machine is a dumb philosophical quandry IMO. If reality and illusion are identical from the observer's perspective, what's the difference? What is valuable about a painting? The structure of its molecules? The pattern of light it produces? That's nothing without an observer to see it. Surely it must be the product of the thoughts and emotions that it inspires in those who view it. If you can remove the light and the molecules but keep the thoughts and emotions, then nothing of value is lost.

If reality and illusion are identical from the observer's perspective, what's the difference?

People's preferences are usually asymmetric over the two.

But if they can't tell the difference, then what is the meaning of the preference? If illusion can't be disproven then it differs from reality in name only.

what is the meaning of the preference?

I don't know what you mean by that phrase.

If illusion can't be disproven then it differs from reality in name only.

Why not also in fact? There's nothing mysterious about the notion of someone being trapped in an illusory state.

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