Plot is Gameplay's Bitch

Great reviews. They dovetail with my own hangups o...

2012-05-29T22:14:55.057+01:00

Great reviews. They dovetail with my own hangups on games as of late, which can be summed up with "why do I need to kill that many folks, that many time, again?"

The more games take the appearances of movies (Mass Effect, GTAIV, ACII) the more the outlandish sociopathy they're asking the player character to perform sticks out.

I'm thinking more specifically of games forcing you through masses of soon-to-be victims while never letting the surreal proceedings influence the least bit their narrative.

tl;dr the verb kill has been flogged dead.

There are some interesting issues with this line o...

2012-05-26T21:01:24.723+01:00

There are some interesting issues with this line of thought, in so far as it seems to imply something like chess is also about story, since it's framed as a medieval battle. All I could say in response is that sure, to that degree chess does tell a story; but plainly video games go far beyond chess in even their dramatically barest incarnations - enough, I'm sure, for this not to be such a problem.

What are your thoughts?

PS My Masters exams are over, summer is here, I've got two new indie games I can't wait to talk about in the next few weeks, and some time to actually update the blog. Stay tuned :-)

Yeah, the name was 'Euphemios'; not a good...

2012-05-07T12:40:31.436+01:00

Yeah, the name was 'Euphemios'; not a good pick on my part!

The laughter - agreed. We had some ideas for how to make that work, I'm hoping it might be better framed in the final version.

Rather impressive, though, what can be achieved these days with just a camera and some software...

The laughter seemed a bit off and took me out the ...

2012-05-03T14:33:46.224+01:00

The laughter seemed a bit off and took me out the moment as it were but otherwise it pulled me in fairly well with the writing being one of the main reasons for that. The animation on the lips did feel to me to be slightly exaggerated and didn't look quite natural.

Looks great. Sounds good. I like the idea, but it ...

2012-04-29T17:29:32.870+01:00

Looks great. Sounds good. I like the idea, but it could be shorter I guess. Things almost always sound better when they're shorter. The biggest sticking point for me was that I couldn't figure out if he was saying 'feminists' (which would have been a step too far I think) or 'family' (which would turn him into an oddly pathetic figure) until I figured out that it was a name or something although I still can't really make it out.

I do worry that perhaps as a portfolio piece it...

2012-04-29T15:02:07.198+01:00

I do worry that perhaps as a portfolio piece it's a bit one note, AAA space marines ;-)

What do you reckon?

"[...]What I really wanted to do was trek acr...

2012-04-17T20:02:10.030+01:00

"[...]What I really wanted to do was trek across to the Bard's College in Solitude and earn my stripes as a wordsmith. I recovered a lost manuscript, helped my tutor to fill in the blanks, and then presented it to the Jarl as a way to defend the freedom of speech festival that was under threat of a ban. These are my priorities, this is the person I'm playing, and this is my story.[...]"

Yeah, I just remembered why I read this blog :). Also, damn it, I thought that Skyrim actually had that sort of game mechanics! Small minigames that would give a massive amount of immersion.

I haven't played either to be frank. I stopped playing RPGs after I finished Alternate Reality: The dungeon back in 1988 or something. Well, with a couple of exceptions here and there. But that game completely fulfilled my needs for RPGs mostly. (sorry for babbling, I'll get me coat!)

Always a risk working in this industry and then cr...

2012-04-17T13:33:29.653+01:00

Always a risk working in this industry and then criticising the A list competition; but as regards ME3 in particular I'm genuinely surprised it's been received as well as it has been. Let me note though - before someone suggests that I do better (which I haven't, yet)- that these are pesonal opinions that aren't intended to speak for the two million people who bought ME3.

However, I'm also slightly heartened by all this. It's rather nice to be moving away from the times when a 90% score was a guarantee you'd enjoy a game. It's nice that a large array of guns, good writing and polish, while still enough to secure a top score, are not enough to buy engagement in people of all tastes. It's important that we have broader interests, and that these may not be served by simply throwing an awful lot of money at a development cycle and a marketing campaign. Kickstarter, as is hard not to know, is breathing new life into classic RPGs, and I'm certain we have more ground to break very soon.

What did you make of these two? Are you any less cynical than me?

Am I being harsh? Am I ever going to work for Zyng...

2012-04-02T13:51:59.115+01:00

Am I being harsh? Am I ever going to work for Zynga? Should we even care as long as we're putting out new product at the same time?

Header image: Great Giana Sisters; one of the most unashamed Mario clones of all time.

The funny thing is that consequences alone cannot ...

2012-03-26T14:20:11.549+01:00

The funny thing is that consequences alone cannot morally judge your choice; the fact that in that situation you die and in the other you don't? Nothing you can do about that.

It's like they missed the point of fables entirely; it's not that you go "a man stole a wallet, he was impaled by a tree", but that for some reason you want to create a chain of narrative logic from one to another.

Only then do the consequences matter, when you say they are in some way necessary consequences!

If the game designer doesn't put in the work, then you can happily ignore their "moral statements" as unrelated consequences, that could go any other way except in the artificially repeating world of the game.

One thing I wish game designers would do is start building mechanics to play out those fable chains of logic, so that it's not just a->b, but a->b->c and the game will procedurally, over time, generate roughly the moral you want, unless people subvert it. This will almost inevitably become more contingent as the length of the logic chains increase, but I think part of the reason that game's moral messages have been so trite in the past is that as children we already pick up very basic causal fables, and it's only over time that the more subtle effects become clear.

Passage is an artistically great game because it deals with simple causal links that we do not discover except with age or relationships, things that we experience, in a childlike way, for the first time when reaching certain ages. But I suspect that to tell many other kinds of moral stories, we will have to move into longer chains.

Mass effect (the series as a whole, which was on my mind the moment I saw a discussion of endings!) looks like it's wound all these people up because it places it's story structure on simple causal links that operate on multiple levels/time scales, rather than the explosive complexification that directly following plot from chained choices would require.

I think I like you stance. Though I need to be ca...

2012-03-23T11:55:05.696Z

I think I like you stance. Though I need to be careful saying that because I know from experience that sometimes I can become too easily convinced by an argument and fail to discern a flaw to an otherwise good argument unless that flaw is presented to me from someone else.

But it makes sense to me. Everything just being subjective doesn't ring true to me in judging art. It is very rare for any medium though, that I come across a judge whose reasoning, knowledge and ability to communicate their analysis comes across in a way that is totally convincing and feels worthy of respect. Sometimes I've doubted the possibility to judge on that level but then I've come across a piece of writing/analysis of something artistic and it's blown me away and I become sold on this idea of the possibility of objective assessment of what you term "power to produce".

I agree with Stephen that games seem to hold their greatest artistic promise in the fact that they are systems and rules and so can dynamically produce a message. It's not a static picture that is being observed, but something you can poke from different angles and it will respond to you in kind.

The core behind Ebert's argument is intriguing. I do wonder whether the interactive experiences that will end up producing the more highly thought of artistic pieces will ascribe to the proper definition of 'game' which means things that have a specific goal or if there is a wide road to be explored that doesn't have goals but is nevertheless interactive. I guess very few films or books have no strong narrative spine that trys to pull the viewer along with a motivation of witnessing how something turns out though. So maybe the key artistic interactive experiences will maintain the same goal structure.

Been looking forward to you rounding this out TJ. ...

2012-03-21T20:28:54.026Z

Been looking forward to you rounding this out TJ. (Aviation Anon).

TJ said: I would want to argue that there exists no sound justification for an assumption of universal pre-programming in human subject's aesthetic taste...

Unfortunately, I did not see an argument, just a position of an argument that you may take.

Not that is of much consequence, but it is generally considered that human beings "do" appeal to symmetry as apposed to "asymmetry". Certainly this is true in facial recognition. Considering this is not "taught" then it necessarily appropriate to assume (though not particularly sufficient to assert) that the being, "came from the sender that way". If this axiom holds, then it is further safe to posit that symmetry, as an a priory, is a foundational element towards constructing a manifold for more complex aesthetics in a posteriori rational reflection.

Perhaps you may assist me, but I find that Hume struggles for a foundation to posit that their is a "higher standard" (I presume based on experience of the medium), which is sufficient to judge a thing from. Though he does seem to play with an idea that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, that, that is not necessarily "enough" to qualify as a competent judge of an unfamiliar medium.

I like that idea, but I find that there is a waffle in the epistemology of the position, which would further offer a habitability of an ongoing ontological discussion of "what is art", by what should it be judged, under what criteria... Maybe it is the lack of an epidemiological approach, as a self proclaimed empiricist, that I find my own troubles with Hume... and his somewhat "Platonic" dialectic of "as above...".

Getting right down to it:

video games = art, I suppose is an "ok" statement.

Though I struggle when I say, art = video games... does it?

Chemistry (and again propositional calculus) uses terms that suggest connotative "yields".

Such as, art -> video games, and video games -> art.

Like H2+O -> Water, as an exothermic reaction... and as such Water -> H2 + O as an endothermic reaction. The yields is a great way to show a process, without establishing an equivocation to the molecule to it's elements. Simply we reassert that there is in fact a "process" that takes place for these things to find equivocation. Thus, what is being judged is not the art, it is the skill in which that equivocation took place.

On the subject of games, Feng Zhu to my knowledge was the designer of much of the Bioshock game. He himself stated that he does not consider himself an "artist", rather a designer, that if it is "artistic" it is an emergent property of good design elements and replication of simple concepts.

From what I gather of your post, and I like it, don't get me wrong, is that a judge, must first and fore most be "capable" of grasping the thing that is being judged. Let me say "like" a master "martial artist" is one who "judges", practitioners of martial arts, and "gauges" if individual is ready to "move on" to the next stage of progression. At no time may a neophyte of the discipline have the license to judge those whom are significantly more advanced in the practice. Certainly "they do", but it is irrelevant in the context of "that" discipline.

What is being judged here? The practitioners ability "to do" something. That what is produced, is an (art-form) is not in question, "how well it was done" is.

2c don't spend em all in one place.

As far as I'm concerned, rules and systems are...

2012-03-20T21:00:32.286Z

As far as I'm concerned, rules and systems are the substance games are made of, as books are composed of word phrases. In a game, you can tell a story by the way things react to other events, you can create a system where things are a certain way, and a player has the ability to discover the effects of different conditions. This is vastly different than other mediums, where there is only one state that the narrative exists in -- games may not even [i]have[/i] a narrative, but they have a dynamic state.

As a relatively simple example: A game designer can create a world in which the only way to succeed is to lie. If presented right, the player's discovery of this can be a process that communicates emotion very effectively. No other medium can do this -- a book can tell a story in which the liars succeed and all others fail, but this still remains an example, a singular story told.

I don't know if I'm saying this well. I'm always looking for a better way to talk about these ideas.

"Schindler's List is a better film than M...

2012-03-19T08:30:52.961Z

"Schindler's List is a better film than Men in Black"

... no, you could say that SL is a more artistic/some other adjective film than MiB. Not "better". Better at evoking emotion, maybe (do you count amusement as an emotion? I was not very amused by SL. Do you need to qualify the evocation of which particular emotions are valid to be considered art under your definition?).

TJ, (I am the anon that wrote about the aircraft),...

2012-03-18T18:04:16.847Z

TJ, (I am the anon that wrote about the aircraft), I find the discussion interesting, though I am curious as to why you would discount a certain "borrow" from the physical sciences, such as a Galilean Inference, or In-variance; which is very useful for describing how subjective reference frames are quite capable of establishing reliable objective "truth" values.

Only to reassert that such a subjective truth "is" capable of an objective or at-the-least universal appreciation of a value judgement (subject) as being an objectively meaningful judgement call.

As far as Kant, and I think bob_d echoes some of my own sentiment, is that it is not a "leap of faith", rather a "little hop" that certain quanta or understanding of "form and function", (to go a step further) implies a self narrative, inside of "itself" as being a self referential truth.

Many a mathematical "truth" relies on self reference to proof itself, yet, mathematical systems are often inconsistent in so doing. That someone who studies art, and someone who studies mathematical systems for industrial applications are able to appreciate this phenomena, as an experience, is an interesting "emergent" truth in and of itself.

To call it a gene is a a bit of a social crap concept... though to say that a certain subconscious hierarchy does exist, as a framework from which to objectify a subject, and give it meaning in the context of the self, is a viable position.

Art illustration is an interesting rapid anecdote to this, as someone once asked, "what is off with this figure drawing"... looked at it... and stated, the wrist position is wrong, it is locked, subconsciously an observer is thinking that a "locked wrist" is not appropriate in a combat stance... then I presented a picture of someone being handcuffed... and said "see" you already knew it was off, one just didn't know why... a priory in one way, but in fact a posteriori once having of analyzed the consequence of the flow of the piece with what one already knew.

The SL and MiB discussion, begs a certain false dichotomy... these seem like different products with different markets in mind.

...off the top of my head, there is also something to "saying more with less"... as an example, happen to like old Jaguars, interestingly I feel an old Jag may be expressed in profile, as a single line or stroke... while a modern car needs many strokes to say the same thing... when the mind brings a quality to the work, such as, motion to a static line; perhaps it is "high art", when it is abrupt or shows many inconsistencies, such as an American sports car, with a plastic interior, the flow is broken... just to ramble.

@Dogface I do appreciate that this is, for many, a...

2012-03-18T17:18:25.524Z

@Dogface
I do appreciate that this is, for many, a very tired topic. Glad my treatment of it isn't exacerbating the issue for everyone ;-)

What I'm trying to do here is not to go into details of what actual features make something valuable as art; but to establish a sound philosophical framework that's able to support relativism *without* just consigning the whole of art criticism to "I like this just because".

David Marchand : Kenco coffee is art insofa...

2012-03-18T17:06:05.161Z

David Marchand : Kenco coffee is art insofar as anyone is able to appreciate how the effort that went into making it and the decisions that led to its being the way it is, led to a specific aesthetic response (its taste, smell, how it's presented in the can, the process it requires to make it, etc).

Most people don't particularly appreciate Kenco Coffee as art to any great extent. Arguably, that means it isn't particularly useful to consider it as art most of the time -- at least, until you get into a debate like this where its status as art is actually useful to talk about. However, to draw a distinction between Kenco Coffee and, say, a painting, and say that the former is absolutely "not art" where the latter is, is arbitrary.

You can't really say all tastes are different, you can't assume just everyone has a random, impossible to predict taste

But that's not what Anonymous was saying. The fact that many people have overlap in their tastes does not mean that there's an objective measure for it - unless you want to say "the more people like it, the better art it is," which is as arbitrary as any other aesthetic statement and no more objectively true.

Now if you think we all have different tastes, but not random, and that there's no significant, material proof to justify why one work of art is better than others

Which is broadly correct...

then at least you should be interested in what gives a person her taste, and how comes so many people agree on the superiority of some works of art.

We are interested in that, but this article (by my understanding) is saying that "what gives a person her taste" is some vague combination of objective artistic qualities and a "shared genetic heritage" which I don't think could possibly mean anything useful.

Having said that, much as this debate recurs perennially, I appreciate Tom's attempt to bring a fresh angle to it.

Thanks for your comments guys, and for keeping it ...

2012-03-18T17:06:01.655Z

Thanks for your comments guys, and for keeping it mostly friendly. Some thoughts...

"meaningful discussions over whose taste is better is an oxymoron"

"Why is it so important to you to establish that some people are 'better at taste' than others?"

Obviously I think there can be such a thing as a meaningful discussion of taste. Obviously for some I haven't succeeded in explaining why. Ultimately, the purpose of this piece is not to be some kind of art nazi who tells everyone what they ought to like. More accurately, I'm seeking to develop a picture that explains the actual ways in which we interact with art; to explain, most crucially, why we have this dualism which seems to say on the one hand that taste is subjective (each to their own), and on the other that there's something about our taste that often feels *justified*. Straight relativism of the type usually adopted denies, as David points out, that good art is really any different to bad art, and that just doesn't seem to conform to how we tend to think about art. Perhaps our intuitions on the latter are wrong; but perhaps (as I've tried to argue) plain relativism just simplifies the issue too much.

I've tried to make clear in part 2 that I actually rally against staunch realists like Kant, and that I value differences in taste when well informed. If you and I are both good judges and we have different preferences: viva la difference. However, if my objective ability as a judge is rather limited then my insistence that MiB is better than Schindler's List and that you ought to see that is rather midguided.

"Beauty and art are not analogous."

True. I've rather avoided questions of what actually constitutes 'aesthetic approbation' becuase that's another essay in itself.

"shared genetic programming to agree about all aesthetic judgements" - genes do not work like that."

I have to disagree on this point. I'm not arguing, here, that there's some kind of Good Dialogue Gene ;-) What I'm suggesting is some kind of Kantian notion of the essential framework of the human mind, and his eternally elegant ideas around 'the freeplay between reason and imagination'. Our brains absolutely are wired in certain similar ways, and one of the outcomes of this common wiring is at least the tendency to find value or approbation in things that are otherwise of little or no use to us (Kant's disinterested pleasures). It's not a massive leap to propose that we might often find that value in the same places; though I don't claim that need always be the case.

I have rather simplified the argument for the sake of keeping this post as accessible as possible. If you're interested in the more rigorous version you can grab it over here:

http://www.2shared.com/document/D85Ph4Gb/Aesthetics_Essay_v3.html

I'd be interested to know if it addresses things any better.

As someone who spent many years in graduate school...

2012-03-18T16:56:16.917Z

As someone who spent many years in graduate school studying art, I'd say that no one is willing to pin down "art" in this situation because they lack the several years necessary to have the discussion. 15 minutes or a couple pages definition doesn't cover it. To fall back on the "art is whatever you think is art" is unfortunate, however, because it's not only useless but arguable untrue. There are some pitfalls to avoid when discussing art that are relevant here, however:

1) "Art" is not a value judgement. It's a category definition. That is, that something can be labeled "art" doesn't make it better than something that can't be so labeled. (I don't think we'd say that pose is "better" than poetry, or the reverse, for example. They serve different functions.) A particular piece of non-art can be marvelous and beautiful while a piece of art may not be so. There's good and bad art, and being bad doesn't disqualify it as being art.
2) "Art" exists and is defined within a cultural (and historical) framework, so it's not universal or consistent. Semiotics are culturally dependent, so art is, too.
3) Whether art is "good" or not is also culturally defined, so a work can become more or less relevant over time (and fall in or out of favor) depending on how it speaks to us at any given time. This is also individually defined based on personal taste or ability to extract anything of value from it. We may lack the background knowledge that the art depends on us knowing to make its points, because of cultural or educational differences.
4) "Art" is not necessarily beautiful. "Good art" isn't necessarily beautiful, either.
5) The artist's intention is irrelevant. It's about how the thing functions, which means art can indeed be accidental. Context matters, however, which is why Duchamp's "Fountain" works as art. (This doesn't help games, however.)

So what is art? I'd argue it's a particular way of exploring an idea (and that idea may be "beauty" or even just "formal exploration of the medium"). The problem is that the "particular way" it functions that makes it art requires a self-referential definition, which is why it takes several years to fully define, in order to study the history and theory of art. Art-works themselves tend to be self-referential for this reason, making reference to the history of art or formal issues. (I think this is relevant to the game discussion.) In the fine arts world, art institutions play an active role in defining what art is. (Which doesn't help us in the game discussion.) Some definitions of art require this self-referentiality. Ultimately what it comes down to is: art is that which functions as art.

Great post, not the biggest fan of Hume, but do li...

2012-03-18T15:38:42.480Z

Great post, not the biggest fan of Hume, but do like Kant. On the other hand, one comment wrote about Duchamp... hardly see relevance considering the short lived surrealist movement. Although the urinal makes for an interesting lead in.

There is one supposes, art, and then there is design. In many respects one could say that one begets the other, but no matter. Working in a design field, that of aviation, clearly one see's that form and function are closely related... while not genetic, one may agree that through phenomenological experiences, or accumulating a strong visual library, that even the common man may look, let us say, at a high tech fighter plane, and "get" what it does, "how" it more or less goes about doing it, and perhaps is "moved" by the lines of the object... which looks like it is "screaming, even when sitting in the hangar." Moving without moving.

(By the by, the word "manga" means "wispy lines", see Renascence art technique or Japanese zen art, and while a comic may not be high art, one may rest assured that the ink paintings of Musashi are cultural treasures.)

When a "piece" or a completed work demonstrates a form, function, and a complete "thought" or design I find that it is much more considered positively, and ergo, is art... as in "state of the art".

Outside of this, and really reaching for a subjective philosophical qualifier such as that of Hume, in some respects weakens the case, not strengthen it. Hume is well known for using circular reasoning and catch-22 logical fallacies, and as you stated, there are "correct" and "incorrect" logical statements... however, I must insist, that a=b, b=a is a perfectly valid logical statement... it is "just" that it is not particularly reasonable outside of the "proposition" that is being posited. Although in propositional calculus it is (again) perfectly valid.

That is to remark, "Ode to a Grecian Urn", which is clearly what this article is "getting at", does state, "Beauty is Truth, Truth is Beauty", A=B, B=A. The logic is perfectly A-OK, but it is a logical fallacy. (Reasserting the original position as an a priory to the truth value of the position).

While I do not wish to go any further, I would leave this, that an argument is simply one side armed with some truth, but also burdened with nonsense, pushing their agenda onto another group with some truth and also burdened with nonsense.

A debate, is civil, typically in agreement, and is merely concerned with the limit, or "to what extent" as to the case of such and thus.

Some video games are clearly more than the sum of their parts, not all of them, certainly not. In many respects the tooling has become so "easy" that any talent-less unskilled schlep may make "something" and call it art. Even in that their are "sometimes" happy accidents, should we praise a broken clock that is right twice a day though?

Well, Marcus, he didn't say Kenco coffee on a ...

2012-03-18T15:27:10.038Z

Well, Marcus, he didn't say Kenco coffee on a pedestal in an art museum can't be art. It would be, but it would be a sculpture work (a ready-made if you will), not a Kenco coffee work. The phrase 'is art' is not used here as 'is a work of art' but as 'is an art discipline'.

And, Anonymous, you kinda make your point there, but that's exactly the point Tom here is trying to prove wrong, or insufficient. You can't really say all tastes are different, you can't assume just everyone has a random, impossible to predict taste, because then all writers, for example, instead of writing meaningful novels, they would just hit random keys on their keyboards, and the resulting work of literature would have the same probability to be loved by readers than an old school story.

Now if you think we all have different tastes, but not random, and that there's no significant, material proof to justify why one work of art is better than others, then at least you should be interested in what gives a person her taste, and how comes so many people agree on the superiority of some works of art. And, I think, this article is pretty much an interesting take on those questions.

"The punch that's pulled - the willingnes...

2012-03-18T14:33:26.180Z

"The punch that's pulled - the willingness to actually pin down what art is beyond what we think it is - renders the art world a much less interesting place to be. It means there is no right and no wrong in taste; that the statement 'video games are art' is meaningless, because we can say with equal validity 'Kenco coffee is art', provided someone somewhere considers it so."

It might be worth brushing up on your Duchamp. The art world has already confronted this very problem, although substitute urinals for Kenco coffee.

1. "meaningful discussions over whose taste i...

2012-03-18T11:48:12.431Z

1. "meaningful discussions over whose taste is better" is an oxymoron. Your taste is better for you. Mine is for me. That's all there is to it.

2. Similarly, "We could meaningfully argue that Schindler's List is a better film than Men in Black". No, we couldn't. We could argue, but that would not be in any way meaningful.

3. Why is it so important to you to establish that some people are 'better at taste' than others? Why not just let one person enjoy what they like and another enjoy something else that they prefer?

4. Beauty and art are not analogous. You can have art that's not beautiful (Bacon, much of Goya, Un Chien Andalou etc.) and beauty that's not art (natural subjects, coincidences of circumstance). Ability to recognise beauty, wherever it comes from, has nothing to do with artistic merit.

5. "shared genetic programming to agree about all aesthetic judgements" - genes do not work like that. Do you have any idea how amazingly complex such a set of genes would have to be, and thus how many millions of years we'd have had to spend evolving this sort of thing? I mean, mankind has only been capable of aesthetic judgement, or any sort of judgement since language formed; in those, what, 20,000 years, we got a bit taller. We as a species find it hard enough to express this through language, let alone our bodies doing so through infinitesmally small non-directed changes.

6. Perception of beauty is not shared. Perception is shared. Beauty is like language, you need to learn to recognise and understand it. That's why appreciation of some art is culturally based. Look at any relatively new medium, like anime or computer games; some people love it, others hate it. Some grew up surrounded by its tropes, others learned to appreciate it, still others to detest it. So is it beautiful? How much of it? All of it? And is it art? Is it all art? How much of it? None of these questions can be answered 'correctly'.

For the most part, exactly. The idea behind the ...

2012-03-16T18:14:31.454Z

For the most part, exactly.

The idea behind the theory is that it ought to be applicable to anyone regardless of their take on existential purpose. Whether you think it was put there by god or by evolution, anyone can refer to powers-to-produce and to the sense that we all have had at certain times in our life of a thing that we find beautiful. Even if we take life to be meaningless, such is only true from some kind of view from nowhere - some omniscient, non-subjective perspective that realises there is no god and no higher order. A life still holds value for the subject leading it, as will certain works of art.

The ideal judge is a central element of many absolutist neo-Humean theories. Basically:

1. Judges are able to judge their own ability as judges and consider that ability worthy of improvement

2. There must be, at least in theory, a point at which a judge can find no further improvement in their own ability

3. This judge is therefore perfect

4. If there is only one perfect judge, then their taste represents the taste of our objectively better selves; we would share their taste if only we were better judges ourselves

5. There is only one perfect judge

6. Therefore there is an abolute right and wrong in aesthetic judgement, and we ought do our best to comprehend it.

Of course, I take premise 5 to be false. I believe that two perfect judges might still have different subjective responses to the same art work due to innocent variancies of taste in each. Importantly, this is only to say that their personal and internal responses would both be equally justified, not that any possible value statement they make about the work will be correct.

Still, I expect that in a great many cases they would agree. We might say that what we tend to take as masterpieces have stood the test of time precisely for the reason that they appeal to something deeper and more universal than lesser works.

Isn't the definition of art linked to what you...

2012-03-16T17:50:42.832Z

Isn't the definition of art linked to what you consider the point or goal of existence to be? If you take our existence to be ultimately meaningless is it possible to ascribe any meaning to art? On the other hand if your existence is framed by a god/purpose, presumably art must be a reflection of the character of that God/pantheon/force.

Is it possible to meaningfully ask: "what is art?" without answering "what is life?"

I guess, as you note in part 1, here too the relativist pulls the punch with the answer "life is what you make of it". However, that seems to be a good motto for the times.

I guess your definition does seem to suggest either the possibility of a perfect ideal judge, who knows more than other judges - effectively a "god of art". Or otherwise, the possibility for good judges of art to disagree, in which case where equally good judges disagree, wouldn't you just wind up in a relativist position?