Forrest Cameranesi – Geek of all Trades

On Emergent Instrumental Attributive Value

The simple form of evaluating wealth outlined above, which we might call its use value, is only the fundamental level of wealth, in the same way that in the physical sciences mass-energy is the fundamental kind of substance. But just as in the physical sciences there are other kinds of stuff that emerge from configurations of that mass-energy, while remaining reducible to it, as detailed in my previous essay on existence, so too there are other kinds of value that can emerge from this fundamental use value, while still remaining reducible to it, and so remaining of instrumentally attributive value for its ability to achieve predicatively valuable, hedonic, moral goods.

One level further up, and so analogous to chemical substance in the physical sciences, is exchange value. With exchange value, something may be of little if any use value for either of the immediate trade partners, but it was before, or is expected to be later, of use value to someone else. So it will cost something to get it from its ultimate source, and be worth something in sale to its ultimate destination, making it indirectly valuable to anyone in possession of it along the way, even those who have no use value for it themselves. But trade cannot create or destroy use value, only distribute things to where they are most useful, and do ethical work as they move; just like chemical reactions may be endothermic or exothermic, absorbing or emitting heat, but still cannot actually create or destroy any energy.

Another level up, and so analogous to living organisms, is the investment value of some organization of wealth. Just as living organisms, driven by the chemical reactions that compose them, can grow over time, so too some arrangements of capital and labor, such as into a business corporation, can over time increase in value through their trading interactions. Thus, owning such an organization, or a part thereof, is a means to obtain continual new value. But again, just as living organisms do not actually produce or consume energy, but merely collect it from their environments, refine it, and retain it for later use, so too nothing of investment value is actually creating (or destroying) value, but rather only collecting, refining, and storing it.

And one more level up, and so analogous to the brains (and thereby minds and wills) of living things, is control value. Control value is where something is the exclusive source of something of value, some good or service, and so owning that thing allows one to control the entire market for that – or to prevent someone else from doing so, and consequently to retain free access to it oneself. But that, of course, depends entirely on the thing in question, the thing that has control value, having some kind of investment value, being something that collects, refines, and stores something of exchange value, that is of use value to someone. Control of the sole source of something completely useless, or worthless, or of nothing at all, is itself utterly worthless.

Like with the stack of emergent and reducible layers of abstractions in my ontology, I suspect that we commonly desire these kinds of value from the top down. As social beings, it is control value, power, or keeping others from having such over ourselves, that is at the forefront of our volition. It's only when we think a little more deeply that we understand the value of control as access to investment value, to an ongoing source of further value. And it takes further thought to realize that the output of such investment, such means of production, is something of value to us for its ability to persuade others to give us the goods and services we really need; needs that, ultimately, are satisfied by the use of something to relieve some kind of pain or suffering, or to bring some kind of pleasure or enjoyment.

On Pure Artistic Attributive Value

When we consider attributive value that is not instrumental to predicative value like any of the emergent kinds of value above, something that's not good because it's good for achieving something that's good in itself in a moral way, but good simply inasmuch as it's good at something, we enter the realm of purely artistic value. Becoming good at something just for the sake of being good at it – for the sake of showing off, even if only to oneself, and not for any more practical end – is to adopt that something as an art form.

In my previous essay on rhetoric and the arts, I gave a definition of rhetoric, as the foundational form of art, as being all about the packaging and presentation of speech-acts, and a definition of the arts more broadly as similarly being anything presented to an audience to as to evoke some reaction in them. But just being a work of art is not all it takes to be good art. Just as good rhetoric, rhetoric that excels at being rhetoric, is rhetoric that is successful in doing what it was meant to do, in making its audience feel some intended way about the things being said, so too any kind of art in general is good only inasmuch as it succeeds in doing whatever it was meant to do, provoking whatever reaction in its audience it was meant to provoke.

This intended reaction can again vary with who is judging the art: the artist may mean to provoke one reaction, different audiences may mean to have different reactions provoked in them, different societies may mean for art to serve some particular purpose or another, and there maybe be some universal standard by which to judge what any art should do. But whatever the art is meant to do by whichever standard it is being judged, it is only good art, by that standard, if it succeeds at doing that. (Though it is nevertheless still art, even if it fails at that; it is merely bad art instead, in that case).

So an artist may mean some art piece to shock or offend the audience, and if it succeeds at that, then it is good art to the artist; but if the audience does not mean themselves to be shocked or offended, but were simply minding their own business when something caught their attention and then turned out to be something horrible they wished they hadn't experienced, then it can simultaneously be bad art to the audience. Whether there is any such thing as universally good art depends on whether there is anything that art universally ought to be doing, any reaction that art universally ought to be provoking.

There are many different things that art can be meant to do. It can be meant simply to engage, to be something interesting that catches people's attention and makes them stop to consider it, with no particular further reaction or another meant beyond that simple engagement, though further reactions may nevertheless occur. It can further be meant to amuse, to provoke a pleased reaction in the audience.

Some philosophies of art consider works of whatever media that are simply meant to engage and amuse with no further purpose to be not art at all, but merely entertainment. But while I am fine to apply the label "entertainment" to works meant to engage and amuse, which not all art might be meant to do, I hold that entertainment thus categorized is still a subset of art as I characterize it.

Even art works that are meant to do more than merely engage and amuse often do still intend to amuse or at least to engage, and so are still themselves entertainment even though they might also belong to some other, nominally loftier category of art as well. I dispute that there is some hard line between art and entertainment, with entertainment somehow more base than art; entertaining, engaging and amusing, is just one of many things art can do, and it is a fine thing for art to do.

But art can also be meant to do other things, that are in some sense more noble than mere entertainment. Art can also be meant to inspire, as in to convey attitudes towards ideas (which is to say, opinions, as defined in my earlier essay on language), and in that respect art, of any medium, is most like rhetoric as traditionally defined, as being about persuasion.

(Conversely, rhetoric as I define it might not always be strictly about persuasion per se; the same concerns for arrangement, style, and delivery, appealing to emotion and character, might instead be used to tell a joke, or cheer someone up, or tell someone off, or otherwise do something, to provoke some reaction, other than to persuade someone of some opinion).

Those opinions that art might mean to convey may be descriptive or prescriptive in nature, intending to make people feel either that something is true (or false), or that something is good (or bad). This can be construed as art being used to educate, either in the descriptive sense that word commonly connotes today, as conveying facts about reality, or in a prescriptive sense now found slightly archaic, as conveying moral norms.

Art can also be meant to educate in a less paternalistic fashion by conveying not statements, either about facts or norms, but rather questions about either, intriguing its audience by prompting them to wonder what is actually real, or actually moral; or more still, about what is possible, or what is permissible, exploring other worlds and ways of life, exotic other options of what could be real or could be moral. That, I think, is perhaps the most noble of purposes for which art can be meant.

Contrary to those positive purposes, some art can be meant specifically to provoke a displeased reaction in an audience. Sometimes provoking a displeased reaction could be part and parcel of a nobler purpose, as in teaching people an uncomfortable truth. But sometimes it is just for the purpose of displeasing the audience, often for the entertainment of the artist, turning the audience themselves into the art and the artist into the audience. Since the advent of the Internet, speech-acts with this purpose are often called "trolling", named after a fishing technique where a lure is dragged through waters from a passing boat to stir up activity among the fish. Many Internet trolling communities actively think of their trolling activities as an art form, and even develop a variety of their own unique trolling aesthetic styles.

One of the most important questions in the philosophy of art is whether the quality of art can be judged by any universal standards or only relatively. I reject both of the more extreme types of view on that topic, that hold respectively either that there is no such thing as universal quality to art, or else that some specific kind of art held in high status by some culture is the one universally good kind of art and everything else is bad art for its failure to comply with that standard. I hold instead that art can only be judged universally inasmuch as the art itself can be considered a kind of action, a communicative action, a speech-act really, but in a broader variety of media than merely literal speech.

What that art is meant to do is thus fundamentally important in how it can be judged. I hold that art meant merely to entertain can only be judged by its success at being a pleasurable experience for many people, for I hold that people being pleased is a universally good thing, of predicative value, as detailed earlier in this essay. Conversely, I hold that art meant specifically to be displeasing, like something meant just to shock and offend, not merely as a side-effect or a means to some other good end but just as an end in itself, is intrinsically bad art, even if it is good at doing what it sets out to do, because I hold it is universally bad for people to be displeased.

But what any person finds pleasurable is still a relative matter, and so art as entertainment retains always a degree of relativity in its judgement. However, art meant to educate can be judged by the same universal standards that the opinions it means to convey can be judged, and so in that sense some art can be more strictly judged as being universally good or bad art.

For instance, a story with a universally bad moral can for that reason be judged a universally bad story, even if it excels in technical aspects at conveying that moral successfully; just like art that means solely to shock and offend might be judged bad art by the standard that being shocked and offended is bad, even if that shocking offensive art is technically proficient at being shocking and offensive.

It is important to note, however, that this does not mean that every work of art that in any way depicts something universally bad or universally false is therefore universally bad art. It may actually be universally good art if it depicts such things so as to raise the question of whether they are (or could be) good or bad, true or false, and prompt the audience to try to figure out what is real or what is moral, what is possible and what is permissible.

The art may also be presenting bad or false things merely for their engagement or amusement value, as entertainment, without meaning to make any claims or raise any questions at all, only to present some interesting or pleasing possibility, which can only be relatively good or bad art to the extent that each member of the audience finds it interesting or pleasing. It is only if the art means to depict bad things as good, or false things as true, that it thereby becomes universally bad art, regardless of its technical proficiency at delivering that wrong message.

Circling back again to rhetoric, as the archetypical medium, for illustration: an argument that successfully persuades someone to believe something false or to intend something bad is thereby universally bad rhetoric, even if the speaker meant his words to do so and so would relatively consider his rhetoric good for its success. Because by universal standards false things are not to be believed and bad things are not to be intended and so rhetoric is not meant, by those standards, to persuade people to do so, and in succeeding at doing what it is not meant to do, that rhetoric thereby fails at doing what it is meant to do, and is thereby bad rhetoric.

This clearly illustrates the difference between predicative and merely attributive value. The ability for something to be "good art" in an attributive sense (as in technically proficient art that achieves what it sets out to do), yet also "bad art" in a predicative sense (as in art that sets out to do a morally bad thing), is analogous to how a logical argument, despite being logically valid and so "good" inasmuch as technical proficiency at logic goes, can still be an unsound and so overall bad argument if its valid inferences are from false premises or to a false conclusion.

On Beauty

This notion of the beliefs or intentions that art can inspire being an important factor in the judgement of the art segues into another central topic of the philosophy of art: beauty. Philosophers of art, and aesthetics as that is sometimes distinguished from it, question what the nature of beauty is, and whether it is inseparable from art, as in whether un-beautiful things can be art, and whether beautiful things are thereby automatically art.

I have already answered above that I hold art fully capable of being un-beautiful, and I likewise hold that beauty does not only apply to works of art, but to any experience at all, even ones not put forth by some artist for the purpose of provoking a reaction, but just happened upon in the world. The same beautiful vista that might be captured by a photographer and turned into photographic art was already beautiful before it was made into art. Just as art does not need to be beautiful in order to be art, beautiful things do not need to be art in order to be beautiful.

As to the nature of beauty, I hold that beauty is, broadly speaking, the experience of apprehending something that seems good. Beauty may be found in some lofty moral triumph of good over evil; it can be beautiful in a sense to see justice prevail. But it may also be something as simple and relative as apprehending something to be in some way desirable. Flowers and fruits and other healthy, vibrant flora may be beautiful because they, on at least a subconscious level, signal bountiful food, which is desirable. Huge open vistas may be beautiful because they signal a lack of predators or competitors, and hence freedom and relative abundance of resources.

Other people may be beautiful because their features signal that they are in good health, and so safe company, reliable companions, or possibly potential sexual partners. All manner of things can be beautiful to us just because they seem, on an emotional level, to signal some kind of simple, primitive good to us as animals. The common factor in all of these diverse kinds of beauty is that they are all experiences of something seeming good.

Specifically artistic beauty is thus somewhat analogous to logical soundness, in the same way that attributive value was earlier analogized to logical validity: where soundness is validity plus correct premises, artistic beauty is attributive value, i.e. artistic proficiency, plus predicatively good, pleasing content. Soundness and beauty can thus both only be judged by some pre-formed standards of truth or goodness: we might think something is sound or beautiful, if we think its premises or content to be true and good, only to later learn more about something wrong with it in some way, and then be unable to see it as beautiful or sound anymore.

Since beauty on this account is all about something seeming good, and on my account of predicative value above actual predicative goodness is nothing above or beyond things seeming good – appetitively, phenomenally – beauty can in a way be considered the fundamental kind of value, even as associated with attributive value as it is. A beautiful world is a pleasant world, and a pleasant world is a morally good, predicatively valuable world. This is much the same as how in my ontology, I simultaneously hold concrete reality to consist entirely of empirical phenomena, and yet also to be itself an entirely abstract structure, the one that we are those empirical phenomena are a part of. As that ontological view is called "mathematicism", this analogous axiological view may likewise be called "aestheticism".

Beyond these concrete forms of beauty, there are also more abstract aspects to beauty, to be found in the form or structure of a phenomenon (be it natural or a work of art) rather than in its relation to reality or morality, though this abstract sense of beauty also factors into the concrete kinds discussed above. This is beauty as in elegance, which is to say, the intersection of a phenomenon being interestingly complex, but also comprehensibly simple. Complexity draws one's attention into the phenomenon, seeking to understand it; and if that complexity is found to emerge from an underlying simplicity, beauty can be experienced in the successful comprehension of that complexity by way of the underlying simplicity.

That is to say, symmetries and other patterns, that allow us to reduce a complex phenomenon to many instances and variations of simpler phenomena, are inherently beautiful in an abstract way detached entirely from whether the phenomena are concretely real or moral. This is the kind of beauty to be found in abstract, non-representational art, and also in places besides art such as in mathematical structures.

The tension here between interesting complexity and comprehensible simplicity is, I think, what underlies the distinction many artists, audiences, and philosophers have made between what they call "high art" and "low art".

• Those who prefer so-called "high art" are those with enough experience with the kinds of patterns used in their preferred media that they are able to comprehend more complex phenomena than those less experienced, but simultaneously find simpler phenomena correspondingly uninteresting.
• Those who prefer so-called "low art" (so called by the "high art" aficionados, not by themselves) instead find more complex phenomena incomprehensible, but are simultaneously more capable of taking interest in simpler phenomena.

Unlike the attitudes evinced in the traditional naming of these categories, I do not think that "high art", a taste for complex phenomena, is in any way inherently better than "low art", a taste for simple phenomena. In each case, the aficionados of one are capable of appreciating something that the other group cannot, while incapable of appreciating something that the other group can.

In my opinion, if any manner of taste was truly to be called universally superior, it would be a broader taste, capable of comprehending complex phenomena and so appreciating "high art", while still remaining capable of finding simple phenomena interesting and so appreciating "low art". In that way, audiences with such taste would be best capable of deriving the most enjoyment from the widest assortment of phenomena, both natural and artistic.

On Comedy and Tragedy

A sort of mirror image of beauty, I hold, is drama, by which I mean an umbrella category encompassing both comedy and tragedy. The common factor to comedy and tragedy, and what I hold makes drama like a mirror image of beauty, is that while beauty is about experiences of something seeming in some way right, comedy and tragedy are both experiences of something seeming in some way wrong.

The distinguishing difference between comedy and tragedy is how they approach that wrongness: comedy approaches it frivolously, with levity, making light of whatever is wrong; while tragedy approaches it seriously, with gravity, taking the wrong thing to be a weighty matter. This wrongness can be of either a descriptive or prescriptive kind, just like the rightness of beauty can be.

I think this is best illustrated in the wide varieties of comedy, ranging from slapstick (where people experiencing physical violence is treated lightly instead of as a matter of grievous injury) and roasts or other jokes explicitly at someone's expense (that are treated as an acceptable transgressions of social norms), which are both making light of prescriptively bad things; to jokes that hinge on setting up and then subverting expectations (where something that was thought to true turns out to be false), including postmodern comedy that violates medium conventions such as breaking the fourth wall, and even things like puns where the wrongness is just the use of the wrong word in place of the expected one.

All comedy hinges on something being, in some way or another, wrong, and yet treated as not a big deal. Tragedy, on the other hand, depicts something being in some way wrong, and makes a big deal out of it being wrong. Both of them are, for that wrongness that they depend on, in some way un-beautiful. Yet both can nevertheless be, in the end, beautiful in their own way. Comedy, in making light of bad things, shows them as not so bad, and so correspondingly good, at least relatively speaking, and thereby beautiful in a way. And tragedy, in treating bad things as weighty matters, can speak hard truths about bad experiences that people can really have, and so, for that truth, also be beautiful in a way.