That can’t be right. X are Y and X can be Y have clearly distinct meanings. I am a human being; I am male; therefore human beings can be male; but that hardly means that human beings are male, that to be human is to be male.
Think of it in terms of Venn diagrams. The circle for “photographs” overlaps with the circle for “art,” certainly; that is expressed by saying “some photographs are art”. But it is not wholly contained within the circle for “art,” which would be expressed by saying “all photographs are art.” Not all photographs are art, or, which is synonymous, some photographs are not art.
By omitting the quantifiers, you are reducing the alternatives to two: all X is Y and no X is Y. But there are four: all X is Y, some X is not Y (its denial), some X is Y, and no X is Y (its denial).
What do you mean by “paintings”? It seems to me that the word normally refers to things that are done with an aesthetic purpose; there don’t seem to be many that are done for purely utilitarian reasons as photography often is, and I don’t think they’re usually referring to as “paintings” or as examples of “painting.”
If you are using “photography” to mean images captured with an aesthetic purpose, then yes, photography in that sense is an art. If you are using it to refer to a technology, then no, photography in that sense is not an art, but a technology. Treating the two denotations as interchangeable is the logical fallacy of equivocation.
I’m a professional copy editor, AND I read philosophy for pleasure; both have given me a very strong attachment to high precision in the use of language, and a very strong sense of the errors in thinking that can result from its careless use. That’s where I’m coming from in this.
Trying to forensically pick apart the language used to make a point and redefine what the writer intended without actually reading and understanding the point being made doesn’t help either
All these slabs of text that you’ve dropped pedantically nitpicking the language and seemingly wilfully ignoring or misunderstanding the intent have done nothing to aid this discussion, only derail it entirely from the intended subject.
When the majority of them can also be summarised within a sentence or 2, it’s a highly inefficient use of language that is almost painfully difficult to plough through.
In terms of the discussions of what qualifies as art; I would suggest that art may be a conceptual work that provokes an emotional response. Whether this is an aesthetically pleasing visual work, a written piece, or piece of music - usually involving talent or craft to create; although the emotional response by no means has to be a positive one
Considering that board games can not only be aesthetically pleasing, but can invoke emotional reactions through the experience of gameplay, I’d wholeheartedly suggest that qualifies them
I think that’s an inadequate definition. People can have emotional responses to all kinds of things.
It seems to me that if you want to define art, the starting point is things that are clearly and uncontroversially examples of it: paintings, drawings, sculptures, works of vocal and instrumental music, poems, novels, stage plays, ballets and other dances performed for an audience, films, videos. There are a lot of other things that aren’t normally considered “art”: mathematical theorems, codes of law, engineering designs, tools, weapons, vehicles, among others. Many of those things can be appreciated aesthetically for qualities such as good design, so “being appreciated aesthetically” doesn’t make something art. And all the things I named are conceptual works, and aesthetic appreciation is an emotional response, so being a conceptual work that evokes an emotional response doesn’t strike me as making something art either, because if you apply the term so broadly that it includes all those things, I think you’ve made it meaningless.
I often find that if I don’t immediately have something of substance to contribute to a conversation, patiently listening to allow the conversation to progress naturally can be really worthwhile.
It often leads to either learning new information I hadn’t considered, finding an interesting point of view that I can consider further, or that the subject may move into an area where I can positively contribute to the conversation.
Trying to steamroller the conversation to something contrary that I want to talk about instead doesn’t usually help me learn much
As far as the subject of games being used to make a statement or argument/conflict (however you choose to sub-categorise it), I haven’t come across many examples myself but the example above by brattyjedi of the designer specifically using mechanisms in the game rules to make a point of simulating inherent racial difficulties sounds very interesting.
I’d note another wee example. Wasn’t Monopoly originally designed as a statement against economic privilege and the consequences of the profiteering in how property was developed?
I don’t want to define art really. The only reason anybody started is because of all the boxes you tried to force it into in order to troll the thread to oblivion
That’s a nice prescription, but it doesn’t seem to apply to the response that my own comments have gotten. Instead of patiently reading what I have to say to see what is to be learned from it, I’ve seen people rushing to assert that it can’t possibly be right, or, as in your latest post as I type this, dismissing my concerns as trolling. I don’t think I’m very inclined to take seriously advice that you yourself don’t follow.
It’s also trying to prescribe an objective definition for something which is entirely a subjective experience. Two people can see the same thing and completely disagree on whether it’s art. Neither is wrong. I’ve been told that when I used to breakdance that it wasn’t art because it wasn’t something taught in conservatories, which is bollocks gatekeeping because it wasn’t codified by some governing elitism. You can prescribe another’s concept of art as much as you can prescribe another’s catharsis, which is to say you can’t.
I think this is being interpreted as trolling because the concerns don’t serve or further the conversation other than to detract from Benkyo’s purpose of the thread. The prescriptive definition of art wasn’t the topic. If others interpret games as art, it’s art for them. You can’t say they are wrong about their subjective experience with something, you can only disagree on opinion.
That’s a philosophical claim about art, and it’s one that I reject.
A hundred years ago, there was an art exhibition that invited the submission of works of visual art without defining what it meant by that. Marcel Duchamp submitted a urinal to which he had given an arty-sounding title, Fountain. That was a brilliant reductio ad absurdum of the idea that art cannot be defined; unhappily, most of art world since then has said that Fountain was sculpture (and that John Cage’s 4’33" was music), at once failing to get the point of the joke and destroying the entire concept of art.
“I think that’s an inadequate definition.” Then proceeds to give no meaningful definition, except “These specific things are art, because I think that they are.” Congrats on your “precise use of language”, lol.
I find no fault with the definition, personally; The fact that you don’t consider car design, for instance, to be art, seems based solely on a preconception on your part that leads to a very arbitrary conclusion. I dare say, you go to a car show and say “This is not art.” and see if you can get away in one piece.
While certainly not all of car design is artistic, one could hardly say none of it is. The same could be said for many things often considered art. Architecture, journalism, cooking, and such, all have functional elements to them, but one can hardly argue that these can’t be artistic. They’re certainly not always art, as anyone who’s experienced my cooking can attest, but to say that a great chef is not an artist would be highly disrespectful.
Not quite. I think that those are the prototypical examples of the category.
What I’m saying is more that if you don’t have an objective definition of a category, if anyone is free to put anything whatever into the category and no one can say they’re wrong, then there is no boundary between what the category contains and what it doesn’t, and as a result you don’t have a category at all.
In ordinary English, none of the things I named is “art.” You will not find a university where the department of engineering, or of mathematics, or of law, is in the faculty of art, if there is a distinct faculty; or where students can meet an art requirement by taking calculus or DC circuits.
I accept the claim, so who is right in this case? Can either of us be right? There is no absolute truth here except that which we individually determine. No one else’s idea of art has to be approved by intellectual elitism deeming it worthy.