If I may, I read this thread for over 65 posts without commenting. And I truly mean this in terms of trying some constructive criticism to reduce the frustration, I hope it is taken in that spirit. (I apologise again for my knee jerk reaction earlier)
Where you feel that your comments have been jumped on by others, I have read that as them being met with frustration because it seems as though you often haven’t engaged with the conversation unless you’ve picked apart other posts and put them back together to say what you want them to say - then attacked the strawman you’ve built from it.
Nothing can be discussed unless it has been defined beyond any meaning. And when you’re trying to be that analytical of the words used, you’ve stopped listened to what the words mean.
It doesn’t feel as if you are honestly engaging in the conversation if you refuse to take part unless you and everyone else fits your rules of what is discussed
For example, I gave a simplified generalisation of some criteria that could be applied to things which are considered art - your response was to rewrite what I said, imply that I was attempting to define ALL art, and when my suggestion obviously fell short of such a high bar you felt it should nullify it entirely.
Do you see where that could provoke my reaction?
Your ability to understand precise language doesn’t impress me. I didn’t offer that list as a definition; rather, I said that a definition of art ought to start out from recognizing those things as art, and that it ought to include them and exclude things that, in the ordinary use of the English language, are not normally called “art,” of which I also gave examples. That was a suggestion for other people who want to define “art.”
Could you provide a specific, precise definition of art?
Edit: For what it’s worth, the Oxford English Dictionary has over a dozen definitions for art
The most analogous to the current conversation is perhaps:
“The application of skill to the arts of imitation and design, painting , engraving , sculpture , architecture ; the cultivation of these in its principles, practice, and results; the skilful production of the beautiful in visible forms.
This is the most usual modern sense of art , when used without any qualification. It does not occur in any English Dictionary before 1880, and seems to have been chiefly used by painters and writers on painting, until the present century.”
Being a copy editor AND reading philosophy gives no authority to prescribe what someone else’s concepts OUGHT to be. I could rattle off a whole list of my qualifications and it still wouldn’t give me any authority over anyone else’s subjective experience. It would do nothing but serve to flex some authoritative muscle.
If you’re saying that what is art is purely subjective, and that anyone can call anything art, then I think you have made “art” impossible to define.
Aside from any philosophical issues about it, I think that in that case, “not art” is also impossible to define. Saying that someone who says “such and such thing is not art” is wrong, is just as much a denial of that person’s subjectivity. If I say that games are not arts, and you say that I’m wrong—and if there is no objective standard for what is art and what isn’t—then what you are doing is purely asserting the dominance of your consciousness over mine. And I don’t see why I should submit to your will to dominate.
Or…
Other people have opinions too, and you don’t have to be objectively right about subjective ideas. You could just accept that people find artistic merit in something
It doesn’t have to be. But if a question is purely subjective, and if you insist that my position is wrong, then what else can it be?
But I was never arguing about “artistic merit,” if by that you mean aesthetic quality. I find aesthetic merit in all sorts of things; to start with, there are mathematical theorems that I find beautiful. Good design in general, including good design of a game, can have aesthetic merit and can produce a sense of aesthetic appreciation.
But what I mean by art is things that are made by human beings with the primary purpose not merely of having aesthetic merit, but of producing awareness of aesthetic merit and of stimulating the emotional response of appreciation of aesthetic merit.
What I’m typing now, for example, is not art, because I’m not trying to make you feel a shiver of aesthetic sensibility with the elegance of my wording or of my reasoning; I’m simply trying to communicate an abstract concept to you. I do care about writing well, but that’s not my primary focus.
Your position is flawed, and you refuse to see the flaws and adjust your position. If you only dig your heels in further, you just dig a deeper hole.
Give a bit of slack and examine your own argument. Give some ground in what you choose to accept as valid and see that if you dismiss and negate everybody else’s comments, you can hardly cry foul at your own perception that people are saying you’re just wrong (which I don’t think people are really saying. Just that you’re trying to fit a square peg in a round hole)
That is the biggest reach. You’re in here telling everyone their definitions SHOULD be according to your dictated terms. I’m saying you have no authority in their definitions.
Asserting that a differing opinion to yours is somehow “dominating” you implies that you believe you are objectively right. I never said your definition was wrong, because your definition guides your experience of art. But to suggest others must abide by your definition then claiming they’re dominating when the choose not to apply your definition to their experience is ridiculous. You have your definition. I have mine. Everyone in this thread has their own, and it’s no one’s place to assert that any of them are wrong, which is what you’ve been doing this entire thread.
You’re arguing black and white positions seeing no grey inbetween where everybody else is. And if something doesn’t fit absolutely every one of the criteria you’re trying to apply (which are also fluctuating on a post by post basis) then you completely invalidate it and consider it completely without merit.
Do you think you could compose a single definition for “Art” which clears the bar you’ve set others?
It’s not possible. And while you’ve picked apart every suggestion everybody else has made, you haven’t made any attempt yourself
Any individual opinion about what constitutes art to them is entirely up to them.
Defining your position of “Only this specific stuff can be art” as an objective fact as opposed to a belief is incorrect. Not because your definition of art is incorrect, but because your attempts to ascribe that belief to an objective fact.
I’m 90% sure I didn’t use all of those words correctly.
I think you are flatly wrong. A subjective “definition” is not a definition at all. It does not enable different people to use a word in the same way, as referring to the same things.
I would note that the comment you are responding to was written before you made that attempt of a definition via an edit of a previous comment.
You would agree that it was not disingenuous for me to say that you had not made an attempt at a definition when at the time you hadn’t?
That’s not unfair to ask for that clarification so that I don’t look like I have been unfair to you by ignoring your previous entry?
Yes, of course. It may have been hasty for you to assert that I couldn’t do it, but it wasn’t disingenuous for you to say that I hadn’t done it. I’m just referring you there now.
You’re argument boils down to “I am uniquely qualified to prescribe the framework for this conversation. I will only provide a framework by asserting what is NOT within this framework. If you disagree with this framework you’re attempting to dominate my subjectivity.”
There does not have to be a certified definition for concepts to be discussed. Or do I need you to define my definitions of love, joy, happiness, identity, fatherhood, enjoyment, or pleasure before I can discuss those? Because I would get similar but also vastly different definitions of each of those depending on who I ask, and none of them will be wrong.