Of Art In The Noumenal World

                  Art has been a central part of almost all cultures across the world. It expresses Ideas which we could never express to others in any other way. It inspires and empowers us to be bold and stand for what we believe in, in a way nothing else can do. However, what makes something art is defined by both the creator and the viewer of that art, meaning that as long as a piece of art still inspires an idea in the eye of someone it is still, at the bare minimum, art to someone. As long as there is someone who sees it as more than paint on a canvas it is still art. When the artist dies his work does not cease to be art because the ideas he left in his art still linger in the minds of those who experience his work.

This is all fine and dandy until we consider the Noumenal world and art become’s less of a tangible thing and more of an idea. The Noumenal world, as defined by Kant, is the world outside of any experience of it. The Noumenal world is, by nature, unknowable. We can never know what the Noumenal world is like or, like Berkely thinks, if it even exists, however, I’m going to assume it exists since my house doesn’t stop existing every time I stop experiencing it. I earlier said that as long as someone is experiencing something as art it’s art, but what if there’s no one to experience it? Does it lose some quality of art that it had while it was in the Phenomenal world, the world as we experience it? Art is strictly a personal thing, as in it pertains to persons, art is not physical in what makes it art. The nature of art is that so that it affects our minds and not simply our eyes. If no mind is there to be affected by the art then it has failed its job and, thus, returns to simply being paint on a canvas, however, God experiences all things so does that mean that he sees it as art and it is, thus, still art? Well…. This is sort of a paradox in it of its self because if God is experiencing it then it ceases to be the Noumenal world and becomes the Phenomenal world because it’s being experienced, but God can’t stop experiencing it because of his nature. This is not a limit of his power because he can’t experience the Noumenal world, but merely common sense. If it was experienced, even by God, it would cease to be the Noumenal world and become the Phenomenal world. So, in the Noumenal world, we see that art cannot exist in the sense of the personal expression of an idea from one person to another.

If art is simply an idea and not something tangible then what does that mean for works that have never been experienced, perhaps because the artist held it too personal to share, and now the artist is dead? Is that not art or does it hold some artistic value as the record of the artist’s ideas and feelings, though they haven’t been experienced? For close personal works like these, I’d say it’s label as art is solely defined by the artist as it was not intended to inspire an idea in the eyes of anyone, but the artist. The art remains art because it was not meant to be experienced, but rather to be a private expression of the artist’s feelings and not anything else so it remains art after the artist’s death even though it is no longer being experienced.

It is important to make a distinction between inwardly centered art and outwardly centered art because the result in the Noumenal world is radically different between the two. Outwardly centered art crumbles when there is no one to experience it whereas inwardly centered art stands strong as an artistic record of the artist’s thoughts and feelings even when there is no one to experience it.

This question is, at its roots, the question of ‘If a tree falls in the forest and there’s no one around to hear it does it still make a sound?’ The answer to this question is, quite simply, no. The tree causes the air molecules to vibrate, but without an ear and a mind to perceive it as sound it remains simply air molecule vibrating. This is unless, like inwardly centered art, the tree never wanted to be heard.

 

 

Stoicism

We often think of people as stoic if they’re stiff and without emotion, however, Stoicism with a capital S is actually a technical term.

The word stoic comes from the Greek word stoa, which actually was a word used to name an enclosed walkway, the reason it is now to used to describe an entire school of thought is because one of the founders of Stoicism, Zeno of Citium, used to teach in one of these enclosed walkways. The word for this walkway was, as you now know, stoa.

As you most likely know life is very difficult. The reason stoicism flourished for 480 years is because, unlike so much philosophy at the time, stoicism was helpful; helpful when we want to give up, when tragedy happens, and when we’re sinking in despair. The reason it was so helpful was because is said what no one else dared to at the time. When you’re sad people always feel the need to cheer you up, but the stoics hated this. What the stoics said that was so daring was simply this: It will be horrible, I will get humiliated, I probably will go to prison……. BUT. A huge, giant, stoic, BUT you must remember that no matter difficult it may be you will get through it. No going to prison won’t be fun, nor will getting humiliated, but you must remember that you will, nevertheless, be okay. As Marcus Aurelius said, “We are each of us stronger than we think.” Stoicism emboldens us for the worsed life can throw at us.

The Stoics thought we should regularly rehearse worst case scenarios. They said that twice a year you should get out of your smart clothes, get into some old rags, sleep on an old rug, eat nothing, but stale bread and rainwater from an animal bowl then you shall make a discovery as Marcus Aurelius said, “Almost nothing material is needed for a happy life for he who has understood existence.”

At the time Stoicism flourished the Romans were very angry people and stoics wanted to calm them down. The stoics said that no one was inherently “hot blooded” anger was simply a result of being stupid and having the wrong ideas about life. Life is not about being happy as soon as you realize this the happier you’ll be. Anger is simply our lovely ideas about life clashing with the harsh reality of the real world, which is why the faces of the elderly are always rife with anger and disappointment.

We don’t scream every time something bad happens. We only scream when it’s bad and unexpected. For example, we don’t scream every time it rains, though rain can be terrible, because we’ve learned to expect rain. The stoics said that we shouldn’t just expect rain. Expect pain, strife, infamy, humiliation, lust, greed, spite! To be wise is to reach a state where nothing can disturb your peace of mind because every tragedy has already been accounted for.

Seneca uttered his last words as he was being pushed into a room where he was ordered by Nero to stab himself Infront of his entire family. His wife was kicking, screaming, and grabbing onto his cloak, to this Seneca turned to his wife and simply said, “What need is there to weep over parts of life? The whole of it calls for tears.”

The Irenaean Theodicy

About a month ago I made a post about the Augustinian theodicy and now I think it’s only fair to talk about its counterpart the Irenaean theodicy developed by the 2nd-century Christian philosopher and theologian St Irenaeus of Lyons.

The Irenaean Theodicy is a so-called “greater good” theodicy, opposed to the Augustinian “free will” theodicy. Irenaeus, like Augustine, draws on from the book of Genesis where, in Genesis 1:26, God says “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness” Irenaeus looks at this and draws the conclusion that there must, in fact, be two stages in creating human beings. First of all, humans are made in the image of God. This doesn’t mean a physical image, since God is not physical, rather it means that we share certain characteristics with God like that, we are intelligent, conscious beings with a sense of morality. Secondly, we begin at birth to grow into the likeness of God which means that we develop our moral natures to be more like Gods this means that, unlike Augustine, Irenaeus believes that human were not born perfect, rather they were born with the potential to become perfect by growing into the likeness of God. The obvious question that now arises is why God didn’t just make us perfect? Well Irenaeus said that morality which is gained through hard work and perseverance is intrinsically better that ready-made perfect morality built into us. If perfect morality was built into us we would be robots worshiping God because we could do nothing else.

Irenaeus also doesn’t believe that the world was made perfect either because in order to seek out a life set apart from evil so that you can achieve the likeness of God there has to be evil and hardship in the first place. In no evil or hardship, our actions would have no moral consequences, in other words, punching someone in the gut would be no different than giving them a fist bump because neither could cause any pain or hardship in a perfect world.

Christian philosopher Richard Swinburn has developed this idea by saying that many of the moral virtues that we admire most like compassion, generosity, and selflessness are only possible with things like pain, poverty, and corruption. In other words, good is only possible if there is bad to compare it to.

 

The Uselessness Of Solipsism

Solipsism is the epistemological view that the only thing you can know is yourself. Everyone/everything else is unknowable. Solipsism as a metaphysical view takes this a step further and says that everything except for you does not exist.

Now let’s talk about a critique of solipsism. First of all, it is very difficult to reconcile a true solipsistic worldview with our experience of the world, specifically, pain and pleasure, because pain, and sometimes pleasure, is the outside world affecting us in a way that we could not affect ourselves, but if we’re the only thing that exists then how could the outside world, which doesn’t exist, affect us?

Solipsism’s biggest enemy is realism. Realism is the view that some aspects of reality are ontologically independent of our experience. Believing realism also means you believe in the noumenal world which is the world outside of any experience of it. But here’s a thought can God experience the noumenal world. If God could experience the noumenal world it would cease to be the noumenal world and become the phenomenal world, the world as it is experienced. Maybe we’re thinking about this all wrong, maybe the noumenal world only exists, as a concept, for contingent beings? Because to experience the phenomenal world, and by extension not experience the noumenal world, you have to have a phaneron which God does not. God experiences all he is not limited to the tiny window of experience we call the phaneron.

Solipsism may be true, even if it is it doesn’t matter because we will never know if it is true and so many people waste their lives with a solipsistic worldview. Realism is easier healthier and most of all it works.

Martin Gardner said this as to why he is not a solipsist: “If you ask me to tell you anything about the nature of what lies beyond the phaneron, my answer is how should I know? I’m not dismayed by ultimate mysteries, I can no more grasp what is behind such questions as my cat can understand what is behind the clatter I make while I type this paragraph.” I think the part about his cat perfectly mirrors our situation. Cats do not understand what keyboards are. They know they like to lay on them and play with them. It is the same with us. We know nothing about the noumenal world or if the world exists, but we know we like to puzzle over them, however, that will get us nowhere because solipsism is a spiraling road which leads to nothing.

The Divine Right Of Kings, Lex Rex, and Tabula Rasa

Since ancient times if anyone ever asked why a particular person was in power they gave short and simple answer: “God set me apart from everyone else to be king.” And for a long time, this answer was widely accepted by the common people living under monarchal rule. However in the 16-1700’s people like Samuel Rutherford and John Locke began to question the legitimacy of this “right” that the monarchs claimed to possess.

The title of Rutherford’s book, Lex Rex, already opposes the divine right of kings, but I’m going to assume that you don’t speak latin and tell you what it means. Lex Rex is latin for “The law is king” opposed to Rex Lex which is “The king in law.” It seems like these are odd things to say, I mean what did Rutherford mean when he said “The law is king” and what did the monarchs mean when they said “The king is law?” Well when Rutherford said “The law is king” he basically meant “whatever the law  says is what rules” and when the monarchs said “The king is law” they basically meant “Whatever the king says is the law.” Rutherford goes on to talk about, among other things, how Lex Rex is ultimately less corrupt than Rex Lex because Rex Lex can always change depending on what the king says, but the law, in Rutherford’s eyes, is a fixed point, therefore, more fit to rule.

Locke comes from a different point, that I personally do not agree with, Locke attacks the claim that they were “set apart” rather than whether or not they’re fit to rule. Before we get into Locke’s critique we need to know a little bit about his worldview. John Locke was a hardcore empiricist, rather than a rationalist, which means that he believed that all knowledge was gained through experiencing the world. Back to Locke’s critique, Locke believed in what he called “Tabula Rasa” which, again, is latin for “Blank slate.” Again this seems like an odd thing to say, I mean what did Locke mean when he said “Blank slate?” When Locke said “Blank slate” he meant that all people are born with nothing in their head, their mind is a”Blank slate”, and it is only when we empirically experience the world do we gain knowledge. If everyone is born the same, with nothing in their head, then how could kings be “set apart?” I personally don’t agree with Tabula Rasa because if babies have no knowledge in their head at all it makes them less like people and more like robots.

Ethics vs Morality

In philosophy people generally use the terms “Ethics” and “Morality” interchangeably, but is there a difference? There is no agreed-upon distinction between the two terms and there aren’t really any ethicists who think about this, however, there are people, outside of the philosophical community, who ask this question. These people say that there is a distinction between these two terms. According to them, ethics is what is right and wrong by the definition of an outside force, such as a community or a government, whereas morality is what is right and wrong according to you and your own thoughts and beliefs.

After contemplating this definition of ethics and morality I began to wonder whether these could be in conflict with each other? And what I found out was that, by this definition, ethics and morality could, but not always, be in conflict with each other. Let’s take this scenario to see what I mean. Let’s say that you personally believe in freedom of speech, however, your community believes that defaming religious icons is wrong…. your ethics and your morals are in conflict. It is also important to say that just because, by this definition, ethics and morality can be in conflict it doesn’t mean that ethics and morality are in conflict period.

Another view says that you should flip this definition. This view makes its point by saying God gives us morals, an outside force, but ethics was made by man, our own personal beliefs. However, this doesn’t make much of  difference they can still be in conflict, but not always.

The Augustinian Theodicy

The problem of evil is a problem that keeps many people from turning to Christ. Many Christian philosophers and theologians have tried to reconcile this problem, but we’re just going to talk about one man’s attempt to reconcile it. We’re going to talk about the Augustinian Theodicy the word “Theodicy” is a combination of two greek words, but it simply means to justify God or in other words to reconcile a perfect God with a sinful world.

Augustine starts off by stating the fact that God is perfect and it was God who created the world, right, so therefore God must have created a perfect world. He also gets this from the book of Genesis where, through The Garden of Eden, it seems to claim that God created the world without evil.

“God saw all that he had made and it was very good.” is Genisis 1:31, Augustine see’s this verse and concludes that God could not have created evil. Since God could not have made evil, evil isn’t really a thing in itself instead, it’s just the absence of good. This is what Augustine called this a “Privatio Boni” or privation of good. God made us, and other beings such as angels, with free will and when a being with free will turns away from God he creates an absence of God within himself. Augustine explains this clearly in this quote: “For when the will abandons what is above itself, and turns to what is lower, it becomes evil not because that is evil in which is turns to, but because the turning itself is wicked.”  It is this turning from God that we call evil. Because evil is simply the absence of what is good Augustine says that evil is compatible with a perfect God.

It’s time to look at some critiques of The Augustinian Theodicy. Friedrich Schleiermacher asks how a perfect world could go wrong? He says that this is a logical contradiction for a perfect world to go wrong either the world wasn’t perfect in the first place or it was God who enabled it to go wrong. Another critique asks why would perfect beings choose to do wrong? Again it seems like a logical contradiction for perfectly made being to have imperfect actions. If we were hard-wired to be good then why would we choose to do wrong?

The Frege-Geach Problem

The 20th century was the prime time for a branch of ethics called metaethics. Ethics is trying to find out what the “good” is where as metaethics is trying to figure out what on earth “good” even means. One set of views that arose in metaethics was noncognitivism. There were many different versions of noncognitivism, but the unifying thread was that moral talk isn’t about anything. The sentence “the sky is blue” is about the sky and ascribing some type of blueness to it. The sentence “charity is good” seems to be talking about charity and ascribing some type of goodness to it. But the noncognitivists said that that was not the case they said that moral talk is not about anything so therefore, it has no truth conditions. They said that “charity is good” is neither true nor false it seems like it’s talking about charity, but it’s not that sort of sentence. A. J. Ayer, a noncognitivist, said that the sentence “charity is good” was just saying “charity! yay!”. The noncognitivists said that the key aspect of moral language wasn’t what it means, but instead, it was about what action the speaker was performing.

Now that we know what noncognitivism is we can start to talk about it’s biggest flaw The Frege-Geach Problem. According to noncognitivism if I say “charity is good” I’m saying “charity! yay!”. Let’s say that I was to say “if charity is good then giving to charity is good, charity is good, therefore, giving to charity is good” this is an If-Then sentence now the problem is that when I say “if charity is right” I’m not actually expressing approval of anything I’m simply saying that if this thing is right then this thing is right. Now we have a problem according to noncognitivism  moral talk is simply cheering on a certain idea, but it seems that in conditionals, If-Then, that this is not the case. So noncognitivism still has to explain how moral talk functions in conditionals and that is the Frege-Geach Problem.

The Allegory Of The Cave

In book seven of Plato’s masterpiece, The Republic, Plato introduces us to some people living in a cave. They’ve always lived in the cave and have never been out of the cave there is no natural light in the cave and the only light comes from a dimly light fire which casts shadows of the outside world on the cave wall. Because these shadows are all that the people have seen they assume that they are real and talk about shadow and take pride in their “sophistication”. Then one day one of the men stumble out of the cave. The light blinds him at first, but gradually his eyes adjust to all the light. Now he can see the true form of things, he sees the colours of the flowers and the beauty of the trees and now he realises that all the shadows, his reality, was just a phantom of what really exists. Out of compassion, he decides to go back into the cave and tell the others about what he has discovered. Because his eyes were adjusted to the light he stumbles around the dark cave, which makes the others think he’s gone completely bonkers. He tries to tell the others about the sun, but they don’t believe him they just pass him off as crazy.

Plato says that every single person on earth is one of the people in the “cave” and the “sun” is the light of reason and the man who escapes the cave is a man who has been enlightened by reason. Plato says that we all live in a “cave” and we gloat about how sophisticated we are and we simply pass off the people who try to warn us of our ignorance as crazy. We’re all in a “cave” of ignorance and the only way out is to listen to those who have been out. If only we would listen to those who try to warn us.

Is a Good Life a Pleasurable One Or a True One?

20th century, American philosopher Robert Nozick purposed a famous thought experiment trying to debunk Hedonism, the view that pleasure is the ultimate goal in life. He purposed a world set in the future where scientists have created a virtual reality indistinguishable from reality. In this virtual reality, there is no pain and all the ups and downs of life are replaced with only ups. The only catch is that to be allowed to use the virtual reality you would have to leave reality behind forever. Would you want that? Would you give up what is real in order to gain something that is fake?

Let’s say that you use the machine to be a famous actor and win lots of awards, is it the same thing to use the machine and experience being a famous actor than it is to actually be a famous actor? If Hedonism is true then it’s just as good, if not better, to merely experience being a famous actor rather than work to become a famous actor, however, it seems to us that it would be better to in fact be a famous actor rather than just experience being one. In a more formal way the argument against hedonism goes like this: According to Hedonism, it’s no better for us to actually be a famous actor than to merely experience the illusion of being a famous actor, however, it’s clearly better for us to live a reality rather than an illusion, therefore Hedonism is false.

This thought experiment makes us question whether a good life is a pleasurable one or a true one?