Hacker News Reader

Comment by keiferski | Hacker News Reader

> but everyone has equal legitimacy in their opinion on this.

Why is everyone's opinion equal? When building a bridge, is the opinion of a civil engineer equal to that of a cook? No, clearly not - but we only recognize this because the effects of building faulty bridges are obvious and immediately noticeable, whereas the effects of cultural ignorance are far more subtle and wide-reaching.

The fields of art and aesthetics have a long, complex history and have been studied and written upon by thousands of intelligent scholars, designers, artists, philosophers, and religious figures. Unfortunately, the default opinion among society today (which you yourself are echoing) is just a sort of ignorant relativism - everyone's opinion on art (and anything else that isn't 'practical') has the same value and the topic is fundamentally just a popularity contest.

Worse yet, this opinion wasn't arrived at by carefully considering all the approaches to art and choosing subjectivity as the best option, which it may actually be (but that isn't my point.) Instead, it was arrived at by simple ignorance.

View on HN

It's not about practicality. A Formula 1 car or high-performance sailboat has no practical value, but I trust engineers far more than kindergartners about Formula 1 or yacht design. On the other hand, I've seen gifted kindergartners draw things which I thought were pretty good -- on par with some respected artists.

It's about having real-world validation. Anyone can have an opinion about art and literature. If your opinion happens to mirror the opinions of English department academics -- just clever enough to be a new twist, but not so brilliant as to go outside of the culture -- you can get a position as a scholar, and keep writing papers within a mutual appreciation society of academics all thinking roughly the same thoughts. Eventually, the whole crew goes down one rabbithole or other.

A group of thousands of self-supporting, mutually reaffirming "intelligent scholars, designers, artists, philosophers, and religious figures" doesn't make that opinion any more right or valid than my own.

On the other hand, if an engineer can make the fastest sailboat, that's external real-world validation that they got something right.

As a subtle point, I'll trust the opinion of filmmakers who receive public acclaim (external validation). I'll trust the opinion of filmmakers of niche artistic films a lot less. That is to say, I'll trust them about the technical aspects (what aperture means, or how to edit a video), but not about the artistic aspects: how you use film as a medium for communication, expression, and so on. A big part of communication and art is understanding the audience, and they haven't demonstrated they can do that, at least outside of their own clique.

You do realize that the activity of art-making and the field of aesthetics (defined broadly as philosophical thought about art-making) are thousands of years old? And that just as there are arguments for certain political systems over others, there are arguments for certain ways of interpreting and valuing art over others?

The idea that artistic value is only based on modern academics is really quite myopic.

I'm curious as to what the argument actually is against the idea that it is perfectly reasonable to value Bach and JK Rowling's Harry Potter with the latter having more "value" than the former. What argument do aestheticians put forth to say that my judgement is incorrect, or worse, than that of the Bach scholar?

It seems to me that the challenge for the "objective" theory of aesthetics is pretty much the same as the one for moral realism. Yes, the fact that people disagree about artistic value doesn't mean that artistic value is subjective - but I'm yet to be convinced that it's objective in any meaningful sense. In the end, though, you're right about disagreement over political systems (despite some attempts to do away with political relativism, e.g. Badiou) - but only because different people have different, mutually exclusive, visions of what society is and should be, and the methods to get there. The arguments you're talking about in politics only have any meaning once at least one set goal is agreed upon - e.g. human freedom. But I struggle to think of any such goal that the Bach scholar and the Harry Potter fan are going to agree on.

I think there's a reason why even die-hard Adorno "fans" have given up trying to argue why jazz music is so bad.

When someone can think up an argument to convince a Harry Potter fan that they should really judge Bach's music as more beautiful, pleasing, of higher artistic value etc. than Harry Potter, then I'm curious.

Aestheticians don’t frame the question as “objective vs. subjective” so I wouldn’t use that as a goal or a starting point. There are various approaches and none is more “objective”, just as the X political philosophy is not more objective than Y political philosophy. They are constructed of arguments, evidence, worldviews, and other things that have nothing to do with arriving at some standard of “objectively better.”

My criticism of the “ignorant relativist” is that he is uninformed on the reasoning of his position and of other positions, not that he thinks art is subjective.

How is the question framed, then? Either everyone's aesthetic judgement is equally valid, or there are some judgments that are better than others. I'm interested in the defense of the latter position. By what reasoning can an aesthetician convince me that Bach is better (in some, in any way) than Harry Potter? Or if that's not the right question either: by what reasoning can an aesthetician argue that a particular interpretation or assignment of value is better than another?

Yes, I arrived at my position out of ignorance, but I've had this kind of argument online before, and nobody has been able to offer me an argument for the side which says we can arrive at value judgments about art that are independent of the person, or whatever the opposite opinion to "art is subjective" is supposed to be.

Let's say there's two books in front of us. A and B. I have read both you have only read A. I argue that B is better because the plot was more intricate. You argue that A is better because you think the cover of book B is bad.

Do you think these two judgements have equal value?

>When someone can think up an argument to convince a Harry Potter fan that they should really judge Bach's music as more beautiful, pleasing, of higher artistic value etc. than Harry Potter, then I'm curious.

Such matters are not decided by arguments, the same way flat earth society members are not won by arguments (they heard them all anyway).

It's up to each person to make the effort to grow their understanding, which requires study and self-development.

>I think there's a reason why even die-hard Adorno "fans" have given up trying to argue why jazz music is so bad.

Yes, because mediocre commercial art prevailed in the end, and the kind of cultural development of bourgeois society declined.

Ironically for a good while jazz took a different route from the earlier kind of jazz Adorno criticised, much closer to those ideals of art. So it's more like Jazz post-50s went closer to Adorno than the other way around...

>It's up to each person to make the effort to grow their understanding, which requires study and self-development.

That's true, but it's falling into the same problem I was trying to tease out of GP, which is whether an argument can be produced that study and self-development will lead to one appreciating Bach over Harry Potter. We say that spherical earth theories are superior to flat earth ones not because individuals applied study and self-development to their opinions, but because the spherical earth theory is objectively true, it conforms to the generally agreed upon epistemology. The same can't be said about art (as far as I can tell).

Is Bach "better" than Harry Potter because an individual who studies and self-develops will judge it to be so, or do those who study and self-develop judge it to be so because it's objectively better?

Even then, let's take the individuals out of the equation. To a person unacquainted with both Harry Potter and Bach, on what grounds does an aesthetician say that we should assign higher value to Bach?

>That's true, but it's falling into the same problem I was trying to tease out of GP, which is whether an argument can be produced that study and self-development will lead to one appreciating Bach over Harry Potter.

An historical/statistical argument can surely be made.

You seldom see people who have studied aesthetics, music, literature, etc, preferring Harry Potter over Bach.

You'll see many more who seldom read or only read genre books or only listened to anything than the charts their whole life enjoy Harry Potter over Bach.

>To a person unacquainted with both Harry Potter and Bach, on what grounds does an aesthetician say that we should assign higher value to Bach?

On points related to one being immersed in culture to recognise. E.g. having read enough literature to understand the derivative and trite nature of Harry Potter, and having heard enough music and knowing its history to know about the innovation and coherence of Bach. Asking professional musicans/composers etc to describe the merits of Bach's music wouldn't be bad either.

There's also an element of "if you have to ask, you will never know".

But all this rounds to the same initial question "what is the objective measurement that makes Bach better".

But there is no objective measurement or axiomatic argument.

The scale in aesthetics is one of development and cross-correlation of techniques, ideas and experiences, and one can only understand these is they have the knowledge and have made the connections. Not just for Bach, but for anything in arts.

The same way a 13-year old pop music fan doesn't have the same refinement as a 20-year old music fan, who has studied the genres, their history, interplay, who did what, techniques, cultural impact, etc, and even less than a 30 year old music critic.

Harry Potter fans are more of the 13-year old kind.

Of course this is sacrilege to say in the modern world.

I tend to rely on michael Scriven's take from _Primary Philosophy_. He suggests (I believe) that aesthetics is one of the few remaining pure philosophical ideas. That is that it has yet to branch into an accepted science.

So all arguments devolve into making a case before a non-existent court of higher appeals. Which I enjoy and only point out here because I love any chance to offer the book up as suggestion. 320 pages of dense mind hackery. Enjoy!

P.S. - You may critique me, but the effort may be largely wasted. I really have no idea what I'm talking about.

> The same way a 13-year old pop music fan doesn't have the same refinement as a 20-year old music fan, who has studied the genres, their history, interplay, who did what, techniques, cultural impact, etc, and even less than a 30 year old music critic.

There are two pressures at play here, that get commingled in actuality.

(1) No one (in Western culture) likes to admit to ignorance. Ergo, they will always project rejection of an idea of which they are ignorant onto any alternate, available rationale. (E.g. "I don't like Bach because..." rather than "I don't understand music theory enough to appreciate what Bach's doing.")

(2) Academic or isolated artists fundamentally under-recognize the fact that their audience approaches the piece with varying levels of knowledge. Consequently, there is often a communication problem. (E.g. I compose an excellent poem in Navajo, then bemoan the fact that Europeans don't understand my work)

Of these, I think (1) is a frequent but less interesting distraction. (2) is the more fascinating to me.

Because it doesn't argue for subjectivity... but rather self-reflective objectivity. In that "To the person I am, with my training and knowledge, this is what the piece is."

Which is why I find popular arts so fascinating (e.g. auto styling, music, film). They seem to encourage artist-engineers, in that their practitioners are simultaneously trained in the medium, but also willfully optimizing for the environment as-is, not for themselves. And that's a skill I can respect.

I imagine Taylor Swift frequently has an idea and rejects / simplifies it, in light of what would resonate with her fans.

>(E.g. "I don't like Bach because..." rather than "I don't understand music theory enough to appreciate what Bach's doing.")

It's very possible for me to understand and appreciate what Bach is doing and still not think that this is sufficient qualification for ascribing more artistic value than Harry Potter. As an amateur programmer, I can appreciate all the work that goes into an operating system, but I don't assign more artistic value or appreciation to it than Bach, even if, by whatever measure, the techniques required to make an OS are more intricate. Similarly, I could never get into Iannis xenakis' works - but I do appreciate the work put into it, and I understand how and why he's done it.

I would argue that preference is more rarely the driver of high art evaluation than ignorance.

Which doesn't seem that bold of a claim.

It's somewhat like saying "Environmentalists don't like nuclear power because most are not trained nuclear engineers." It is a fact that there are few nuclear engineers (or even adjacent physicists). Yet how often do you hear "Nuclear power scares me because I don't understand it"?

This comes back to having shared goals; presumably the environmentalist and the nuclear engineer have the shared goal of human/environmental safety, so evaluation within that context is possible, but because the Harry Potter fan and the Bach scholar don't have shared ideas about what makes good art, each standard of what makes good art is just as good as another. The Bach scholar doesn't seem to have any reasoning behind the assertion that Bach's use of high techniques and synthesis of ideas means that his art is more valuable. On the other hand, because the nuclear engineer and the environmentalist agree on some desired state of the world, the environmentalist, lest he remain ignorant as to what is best for human/environmental safety, should listen.

In short: the Harry Potter fan and the Bach scholar don't have a shared idea about the best way to judge art. The environmentalist and the nuclear engineer do have a shared idea of maximizing human/environmental safety. The environmentalist has no reason to listen to the nuclear engineer if the engineer's reason for nuclear power is something like "I like to see the number of reactions go up on the computer screen", because looking at numbers on a screen isn't a shared goal between the two parties.

What a load of snobbery. Anyone who has listened to enough earlier Italian and French composers would understand the derivative nature of Bach.

>But there is no objective measurement or axiomatic argument.

This is what I was getting at; the statistical argument isn't convincing at all, because it's very common for people (including academics) to value fashions and trends. I'm not saying that Bach is valued because of the orthodoxy of music theorists, I am saying that it being a possibility discounts the inherent authority we give to a music theorist's opinion.

>The scale in aesthetics is one of development and cross-correlation of techniques, ideas and experiences, and one can only understand these is they have the knowledge and have made the connections.

There's still no "objective" reason to value a piece of art with particular technique, ideas expressed, or experiences relayed (or within the artist) over another. The 13 year old doesn't have the refinement, but it's unclear why refinement has anything to do with assigning artistic value - and even then, we can point to a great many techniques and ideas expressed in Harry Potter. That Bach's technique has more development and history behind it has no clear bearing on how I ought to judge the artwork.

The "scale in aesthetics" seems to be just as arbitrary as the claim that we ought to judge artwork by how many wizards are depicted in it. Why should techniques and ideas matter more than the number of wizards, if the wizards bring pleasure but knowledge of the techniques does not?

Harry Potter fans are more the 13-year old kind because 13 year olds don't have the idea that the enjoyment of artwork should depend on techniques, ideas and experiences, or rather, the partcular techniques, ideas and experiences one finds in Bach, despite different ones in Harry Potter. The fact that 13 year olds aren't part of that orthodoxy yet is good - they are expressing their freedom to value things apart from what high society tells them to.

Popularity can be said to be independent of the quality of the work - popularity is linked to fashions. Quintessential concept of large followings not being so concerned about what they follow.

So the Bach v Potter argument is really arguing about whether a typical Harry Potter fan is more motivated by fashion or intrinsic interest. We know Bach isn't fashionable because the music has survived something like 300 years of musical fashions ebbing and flowing.

On a purely technical ground, the great works are usually interesting examples of a particular ... something ... and often capture the culture in a unique way. Eg, Don Quixote still gets read because it introduced a tonne of literary techniques with style and really hits a note at the peak of the Spanish empire. Shakespeare defined a big portion of the English lexicon. Jane Austin is an exemplary example of concise, relevant and interesting storytelling (she packs a lot into a sentence). Tolkien tied together cultures through their languages while setting the standard for what high fantasy worlds should look like with an unreasonable amount of worldbuilding. The Harry Potter series is certainly well written and a really good example of a certain genre, but it isn't obvious if that is enough to compete with all the other well written books out there. It certainly isn't the first of its kind and it isn't clear it showcases any literary tricks. It is a hard argument to say it captures anything about the culture of the day. It looks like one of a very large number of good books that will struggle to be remembered with the passing of time.

For political systems, I can look at how happy people are, how healthy people are, how affluent they are, how much economic progress there is, how much scientific progress there is, equality, stability, as well as apply whatever theories of morality I like (e.g. utilitarianism).

There is a value judgement as to how I weigh those, or which ones I care about, but I can evaluate it in some way. People might argue about the merits of a meritocracy versus a democracy, but broadly speaking, everyone will agree that a progress democracy is better than an exploitative, violent, oppressive dictatorship.

The quality of art, in contrast, is fully in the eye of the beholder.

If you'd like to see how this manifests in practice, it's worth looking at Soviet Russia, the French Revolution, or many democracies which failed in practice, despite what were, on the surface, plausible ideas.

This contrasts with literature, where there is no objective metric, and much of the time, someone says "that's great, now let's go even further" to an idea as good as North Korean style communism.

...and there are ways to evaluate art or literature and make value judgments. You simply seem to be unaware of them.

Sure, but there is no intrinsic canonical way to do so, because there is no objective goal that is common to instances of a certain form of art.

As a result, those evaluation metrics become as arbitrary as the art itself.

Yes but that idea validates the habitation of an ivory tower.

The notion that visual design for a consumer product isn't fundamentally validated by a sufficient demand by a sufficiently large set of consumers, to me, is stupid.

So much of humanities seems to be somewhat arbitrary and fashionable categorization in a (somewhat vain) attempt to be able to academically analyze (or at least publish the equivalent).

So this article seems hilarious to me.

You take position of authority, criticize, but you are not educating.

> The fields of art and aesthetics have a long, complex history and have been studied and written upon by thousands of intelligent scholars, designers, artists, philosophers, and religious figures.

So, let me ask you, why should I care?

I care about design e.g. "The Design of Everyday Things": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yY96hTb8WgI

But what is it about aesthetics that is not subjective?

You should care because (presumably) you don't want to be an ignorant person (as in, lacking knowledge). If you don't see why being ignorant is undesirable, then I can't really help you.

If you're genuinely interested in learning about aesthetics, then you'll have to do a lot of reading. As with pretty much any complex topic, there are no easy one-line answers. I recommend starting with the Wikipedia page, browsing some articles in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, and then finding some books in areas that you find interesting. If you're a software engineer, for example, then I'd recommend Aesthetic Computing.

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aesthetics

- https://plato.stanford.edu/search/searcher.py?query=aestheti...

- https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/aesthetic-computing

I'm sorry, but your argument can be applied to everything.

> You should care because (presumably) you don't want to be an ignorant person (as in, lacking knowledge).

Everybody is ignorant about approximately everything. People may find me ignorant because I don't follow some celebrities, sports etc. We need to choose what we educate ourselves on.

To me, it seems like you are making a social proof argument. Other people care about it, so I should care about it too, because otherwise I may be labeled as ignorant. But at the same time, I doubt that this is the kind of argument you want to make. I assume you have some stronger reasons.

I like the monologue of Feynman about Beauty: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRmbwczTC6E

To me, aesthetics is more or less a curiosity. An aspect of our cognition, that is relevant only because it is a result of evolution, some kind of heuristics for dealing with the world. Would you agree with that kind of characterization?

Well I can only speak personally, but if I have a strong opinion on something, I prefer to be quite knowledgeable about the topic. Having public opinions on aesthetic matters while knowingly admitting ignorance seems pretty foolish and close-minded to me.

And no I wouldn’t agree that aesthetics is a curiosity; I think it’s perhaps one of the most important topics there is. Wittgenstein, Nietzsche and countless others would agree.

Well, I'm pretty happy to discount theology for example. My knowledge of the subject is rather small, but big enough that I'm aware that it is a very rich discipline of knowledge. As atheist/agnostic I just don't see any use for it.

I'm reading "Wittgenstein’s Aesthetics" from Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy [0] and ... At least this summary doesn't peak my interest. Granted, I seem to have different opinions to Wittgenstein, but that's not the issue. The issue is that the arguments presented are, dare I say it, not aesthetically pleasing :) .

> Wittgenstein, Nietzsche and countless others would agree.

Again, proof from authority + social proof. I don't care how big their names are, or how many people believe it. So, I will end here.

[0] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wittgenstein-aesthetics/

>So, let me ask you, why should I care?

Because there are more things people should care about than things that can be proven axiomatically or measurement-wise that they should.

I agree, and I'm ok with other types of arguments from the ones you mentioned.

But why people, me included, should care about aesthetics in particular?

We have limited time, we need to choose how to allocate it.

"Why is everyone's opinion equal? When building a bridge, is the opinion of a civil engineer equal to that of a cook?"

Engineering is objective. It is provable. It yields foundational precepts that, if you annihilated society and it grew again, would recur in the same form. Aesthetics/art has gone through countless cycles -- often completely contradictory states -- and at any one time you can find any number of adherents of virtually any belief.

Looking at the disastrous CyberTruck, though, which subjectively almost everyone hates, and saying "I'm kind of into this stuff, so my opinion means more" is absurd. It is 100% subjective, and it is something that everyone has an equal opinion on.

A design that was the result of the limitations of forming stainless steel and pretending like it is some heightened presentation is farce.

the disastrous CyberTruck, though, which subjectively almost everyone hates

Your hate for it is subjective.

Whether almost everyone shares your opinion is objective.

The question here, though, is whether the hideous abomination is Brutalist or not. I'll buy the argument that it doesn't satisfy the definition.

Absolutely! Modern industrial designers spend years in school learning to solve linear differential equations describing visual weight and balance, materials and emotional response.

> the default opinion among society today (which you yourself are echoing) is just a sort of ignorant relativism - everyone's opinion on art (and anything else that isn't 'practical') has the same value and the topic is fundamentally just a popularity contest.

Have you been to Art Basel or any of the other “important” art events where the “experts” go to opine? The $150k banana taped to the wall? There is an “artwork” in MOMA New York that is literally a giant white wall in which the “artist” shot a BB gun. [1] Much of modern art is a giant MLM scam in which some dealer convinces people that some junkie that dips his penis in paint and touches the tip to a canvas is somehow the next Basquiat. A banana sold at Basel this year for $150k. Then some “performance artist” ate the banana, but then the artist said that it’s ok to replace the banana. What the heck just happened? These are the people who’s opinions on art should be respected? I am a very minor league art collector and sloshing through the liquified excrement of an art show is both hilarious and disheartening: hilarious because people will actually spend $50k on used toilet tissue stapled to a wall if the dealer spins a good enough story, and it’s disheartening because there is some real talent out there that doesn’t have the benefit of professional carnaval barkers or flim-flam men to make them famous.

Art absolutely is a popularity contest and always has been.

[1] https://www.moma.org/collection/works/137436

Reply on news.ycombinator.com