From: Richard Wentk ()
Date: May 18, 2008
Subject:
Re: Objectivity (Was maybe we can discuss the definition of)
On 17 May 2008, at 15:14, Kevin Austin wrote:
> Allow me to simplify.
>
> There is an absolute external reality. It is far too complex for
> human beings to grasp. A claim to grasp it is hubris. IME those who
> have grasped a corner of this mantle remain silent; they know there
> is nothing to say.
This computer and this Internet - and this map of the Universe say
otherwise.
You're making a god-of-the-gaps argument - 'Just because you know X,
Y, and Z doesn't mean that dragons and unicorns don't exist
elsewhere, and you can't get there from here.'
It's certainly an opinion. But it's not any more than an opinion - at
least, not any more than Michael's belief in a transcendent Platonic
music is also an opinion.
> This is my position. Yours is below. You cannot refute my
> existence. You will continue to seek the truth of "good". I have
> moved on, or may be I was never there.
So when you teach listening, you teach without any distinction
between 'good' and 'bad' listening?
When you grade work, you do it without any notion of 'good' and 'bad'?
We can, for the purposes of the exercise, assume a normative and
functional definition of 'good' here - as elsewhere.
Incidentally, there was a farcical and self-serving attempt by an
orchestra recently to bring culture to savages by packing themselves
into a plane a and giving a performance of Beethoven to pygmies.
The conductor was convinced that the pygmies had heard something
special.
Unfortunately no one asked the pygmies what they thought. Or if they
did, no one was much interested in their answers.
This seems - in a lateral way - to be a tidy summary of where
arguments about the objectivity of music seem to go.
(At least it was until recently. In 2008 it's just as likely to lead
to a remix posted on YouTube.)
Richard