Probably the most popular misconception about science is that “science” is just a body of knowledge, a list of facts or an accumulation of data. On the contrary, scientists of all disciplines insist (although no one listens), science is rather a methodology, a worldview — a reliable means of getting at the truth, not the truth itself. There are several criteria which distinguish actual science from other truth-seeking disciplines, or from theories which purport to be scientific but in fact are nothing of the sort. One of the most important is predictive power: real scientific theories make specific, verifiable predictions, whereas “fake” or “junk” science does not. For example, Newton’s theory of gravity predicted that the force of gravity exerted by an object was proportional to its mass, a prediction confirmed over a century later after the invention of the spaceship.
I've seen this argument happening lately in, of all places, youtube movie reviews and video essayists.
There's a clique around a Welshman named MauLer that tries to hold a standard of "Objective Criticism" of narrative art. They make it clear that they mean colloquially objective; really it means valuing consistency and citing justifications for why you like or dislike something. So, Objective compared to "I liked it so it's good."
This is a refreshing read, as I find such claims that “all art is subjective” quite boring and wrong headed. The sources of such misunderstandings are multifaceted, but I find that they stem primarily from confusion surrounding 1) the relationship between art’s practical functionality and the substance-essence divide in mechanical-emotional aesthetic cultivation, 2) the relationship between art’s intended purposes and aesthetic functionality itself, and 3) the disparity between cultural capital and value production.
1) It is possible, especially in academic institutions, for the practical functionality of art making (substance) to be left behind in pursuit of the philosophical and theoretical abstraction of artistic possibility and storytelling alone (essence). When art is no longer about the product itself acting as the conduit for expression, but about the artist themselves or the story the art is telling abstracted from the product, art can become unmoored from the prerequisite mechanical and emotional pedagogy required to establish cultivated art forms.
2) the “all art is subjective” argument is as much bunk as “the death of the artist” argument is, because there is no reason to assume that the experience of artistic creation is not inherently an entwined balancing act between both artistic intention and audience reception. Additionally, conceptions of artistic objectivity are often wrongly understood to be “scientific” (the not-actually-scientific type of) facts instead of as parameters born out of cultivated pedagogical skills in the pursuits of aesthetic creation (which can then be interpreted as observable events that produce subjective experiences). This point is synergistic with your claim that in order to perceive artistic value at all, there must necessarily be methods with which we can use and apply to determine artistic quality.
3) the culture industry is an added complication to how we experience art that gets forked between the folk-popular-academic distinction and how it gets consumed as capital and valued by consumers. I rarely, if ever, see analyses of artistic creation that place the value product of an artistic experience in the creation process and performance of the work in question as opposed to its valuation on a purely abstracted-subjective level on behalf of the consumer buying / purchasing / experiencing a commodity. In other words, the labor capital of artistic production gets displaced from the artist as a result of commodity capitalization. The artist is not only left to toil for purposes that are inherently invaluable, but to do so under the condition that they must determine the value of their productive labor in an economy that may ostensibly value them on behalf of the consumer, but does not truly care to value them in any meaningfully material way.
As a fun side note: minor tempo alterations and key selection are often understood to be performance considerations for a tune as opposed to being interpreted as being an incorrect performance of a tune. Major rhythmic or tempo alterations and time signature alterations would be more distinct arrangements of a tune, alongside reharmonization. Falsifiability often comes from how well a performance is mapped to the core melodic/harmonic idea and originally indicated or observed performance intent of a tune, alongside ornamentation and accepted performance considerations. Some composers are sticklers with their scores, others don’t really care as long as the main idea is there.
I like this theory a lot. I suspect the analogy works in more fields than science and art.
One could sort of apply it to political ideology. Is there anything that your candidate could say that would make you say he doesn’t belong in your party? If not, your party is not about ideology. (Of course, it doesn’t have to be.)
I've seen this argument happening lately in, of all places, youtube movie reviews and video essayists.
There's a clique around a Welshman named MauLer that tries to hold a standard of "Objective Criticism" of narrative art. They make it clear that they mean colloquially objective; really it means valuing consistency and citing justifications for why you like or dislike something. So, Objective compared to "I liked it so it's good."
Misunderstandings of valid art criticism, whether objective or subjective, make my head roll
This is a refreshing read, as I find such claims that “all art is subjective” quite boring and wrong headed. The sources of such misunderstandings are multifaceted, but I find that they stem primarily from confusion surrounding 1) the relationship between art’s practical functionality and the substance-essence divide in mechanical-emotional aesthetic cultivation, 2) the relationship between art’s intended purposes and aesthetic functionality itself, and 3) the disparity between cultural capital and value production.
1) It is possible, especially in academic institutions, for the practical functionality of art making (substance) to be left behind in pursuit of the philosophical and theoretical abstraction of artistic possibility and storytelling alone (essence). When art is no longer about the product itself acting as the conduit for expression, but about the artist themselves or the story the art is telling abstracted from the product, art can become unmoored from the prerequisite mechanical and emotional pedagogy required to establish cultivated art forms.
2) the “all art is subjective” argument is as much bunk as “the death of the artist” argument is, because there is no reason to assume that the experience of artistic creation is not inherently an entwined balancing act between both artistic intention and audience reception. Additionally, conceptions of artistic objectivity are often wrongly understood to be “scientific” (the not-actually-scientific type of) facts instead of as parameters born out of cultivated pedagogical skills in the pursuits of aesthetic creation (which can then be interpreted as observable events that produce subjective experiences). This point is synergistic with your claim that in order to perceive artistic value at all, there must necessarily be methods with which we can use and apply to determine artistic quality.
3) the culture industry is an added complication to how we experience art that gets forked between the folk-popular-academic distinction and how it gets consumed as capital and valued by consumers. I rarely, if ever, see analyses of artistic creation that place the value product of an artistic experience in the creation process and performance of the work in question as opposed to its valuation on a purely abstracted-subjective level on behalf of the consumer buying / purchasing / experiencing a commodity. In other words, the labor capital of artistic production gets displaced from the artist as a result of commodity capitalization. The artist is not only left to toil for purposes that are inherently invaluable, but to do so under the condition that they must determine the value of their productive labor in an economy that may ostensibly value them on behalf of the consumer, but does not truly care to value them in any meaningfully material way.
As a fun side note: minor tempo alterations and key selection are often understood to be performance considerations for a tune as opposed to being interpreted as being an incorrect performance of a tune. Major rhythmic or tempo alterations and time signature alterations would be more distinct arrangements of a tune, alongside reharmonization. Falsifiability often comes from how well a performance is mapped to the core melodic/harmonic idea and originally indicated or observed performance intent of a tune, alongside ornamentation and accepted performance considerations. Some composers are sticklers with their scores, others don’t really care as long as the main idea is there.
I like this theory a lot. I suspect the analogy works in more fields than science and art.
One could sort of apply it to political ideology. Is there anything that your candidate could say that would make you say he doesn’t belong in your party? If not, your party is not about ideology. (Of course, it doesn’t have to be.)