Topics Philosophy

Question Is there a handy rule for determining which questions can be resolved with a correct answer, and which questions cannot? I get caught up in trying to answer questions like, "What is love?" and "Is justice a beneficial value?" No matter how satisfied I am with the answers I come up with, I find other people who offer equally satisfying answers from other perspectives. For instance, I generally argue that artistic merit exists in the relationship between an audience and a man-made production. A statue of Adonis is just a statue of Adonis, but it becomes art when I see it and I am inspired by it in some way. One of my buddies hates this view of art. To him, artistic merit exists in the independent spirit of the artist, striving against conventions. So we both dig The Velvet Underground, The Beatles, and Miles Davis, but we cannot agree on James Taylor. He thinks Taylor's music is banal and devoid of artistic merit because it panders to a mainstream sensibility, whereas I find some of his albums to be artistic because they inspire my emotions. Maybe "What is art?" can't be answered correctly, and the best you can do is make interesting arguments for how to use the word. Could there possibly be an answer?

Accepted:
November 3, 2010

Comments

What a great question! Post world war two, the movement of positivism tried to shut down all questions that could not be resolved with empirical verification. This movement would have shelved questions about justice (positivists took a non-cognitive approach to ethics and assumed moral judgments were mere expressions of emotions that are neither true nor false) and questions about beauty and such. But the movement ran into serious problems in the late 1960s, early 1970s, self-destructing in some cases (as when positivists claimed that only empirically verifiable statements are meaningufl, even though their claim about meaning could not itself be empirically verified). Plus the questions about love, justice, art, and so on seem irrepressable. Two things you might consider: First, I suggest that some substantial terrain is of profound importance even if we lack the common tools to reach a consensus. Questions about the nature of justice and love seem to fit that category and I believe that even arguing about James Taylor involves a disagreement about facts (is his music truly devoid of any excellence artisitically?) But, second, some debates do seem to come down to defining terms. This is not necessarily trivial, however. For example, if everyone came to the conclusion that the term "art" could refer to anything whatever, then it seems like the philosophy of art would have to conclude that the term is virtually without any content --especially compared to how the term has been used historically. But one of the reasons why some philosophers seem to fight for some definitions (of art, love, justice, beauty and so on) is that they are trying to preserve or advance what they take to be of real value. So, there are multiple theories of art today that try to preserve or capture why some object being a work of art is a good or honor or something that one may rightly say deserves attention.

As for your specific examples, I must say I do side with you both on the Velvet Underground ("Heroin" is still a favorite), the Beatles, and Miles Davis. Your point about what constitutes art has been championed by John Dewey and I think you would greatly value his book Art as Experience. As for your disagreement about Taylor, I wonder how deep your division. I would say, for example, that James Taylor's songs (especially the early ones, "Just yesterday morning, they let me know you were gone...") definitely "inspire my emotions" and while I would not think Taylor's music banal, empty of merit or use the word "pander," we would have to concede that he does address "a mainstream sensibility," yes?