I love this web comic, called Sorry Comics...It's an autobiographical comic about a regular but very introspective dude's life. It can be kinda sad though. Kinda existential.
What else
This is a thing I wrote about informed subjectivity:
Eh. We are born with certain preferences and tendencies in our like (like liking sweet food, preferring the shape of the opposite sex (for most people) and Universal Grammar (which is seeking out patterns in language when you are a baby)) and then we are taught values and preferences when we grow up. Our parents listened to rock music, so we do. We are taught (maybe not directly) that the best books are strong characters, and the best movies are at a certain pace. We are taught to appreciate the circumstances of how a piece of art was made over just the looks of it. We are also taught to value innovation and creativity. . .people and styles that challenge our values, and change them; but for most people it can't be too much innovation; it has to be the right time, the right context, etc.
How it is with the arts is the same with morality. The two are very similar, you know. There is the is/ought gap; you can't prove that something is good without first putting forth something else that is already good. We have a foundation of morals that we just accept in order to get anything done. It is wrong to cause people pain for no reason is a very basic one, that 99% of people accept. What if the person killed someone? Some people have the extra value that justice is good. An eye for an eye. Other people (me included) don't value our gut emotions like that. We try to show flaws in their logic. If the carpenter built a house that collapsed and killed your son, are you justified in killing the carpenter's son? With more complicated issues, we use more complciated arguments, of course, to make them realize that they are somehow a hypocrite. Because there are two very important core values that informs all decisions we make, even if they lose out. The first is the Golden Rule. The second is avoiding cognitive dissonance. We hate lying so much that if we are forced to write down "Communism is good" over and over again, even if we are capitalist, our brains will make us like communism. If someone that we don't like asks us for help with something, and we decide to help him, we start to like him more, because our brains have a lot of trouble dealing with doing something that contradicts itself.
And so, when we paint a painting, there are a ton of factors at work. All you learned about composition. How tacky is this color? Is this too bright? What is the right amount of weight on the right side? Is this too cliche? Is this too ahead of its time? Those that are in good touch with his own artistic values will create a painting that is great in his own eyes. And the more his artistic values sync with society's, the more well regarded society will view that painting.
That's just how I view the problem of informed subjectivity. We learn subjective values. If you improve, you improve in the eyes of those that have those subjective values.
Also, test test, let's try chat.
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