A frank extemporaneous discussion on the nature of knowledge as it pertains to professionalism in Art

My brothers and I occasionally get the itch to match wits on a topic which we are aware we disagree on. In most cases, said discussions are as much about one-upping each other as they are about convincing the other of our position, but iron sharpens iron whether it's in battle or in the blacksmith's tent.

Recently, as an employee of an institution of higher learning, I discovered that the highest attainable degree in the field of Art general is a Masters Degree of Fine Arts. No Doctorate currently exists in this field. So, I made a proposition as you will read below and a no holds barred, claws out debate began...

*minor editing and grammatically correction but no editorializing

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Lance: 

Also, fairly random tidbit, but I found it philosophically curious. The highest possible credential some[one] in the Art field can attain is a Master of Fine Arts with an Art focus (and apparently this is a devastatingly difficult degree). I believe this is due to the fact that Art is purely subjective, that is there is no objective standard by which to measure someone's expertise in making Art. The other Fine Arts (music, drama, literature) have object measurements and systems by which to determine someone's level of attainment, and therefore Doctorates can be earned.

Clint:

Huh interesting

Shane:

False, art is not subjective

Clint:
[Micheal eating popcorn gif] 

Lance:

What then would be the objective standard by which it would be measured?

Clint:
Shane, if you could end this smug retort with something hardcore that'd be nice.

Shane:

Answer: God. Get your head out of your butt, it's not a hat.

Lance:

Nice, I’m sure Academia can measure someone’s artistic skill by the Supreme Being of the Universe who chose to not provide any template or evidence of what “good” Art is (and don’t say Nature, you Platonist) and is in fact self-admittedly invisible and has been seen by no man. Therefore, how does someone who has never been seen and has never directly provided examples serve as an objective standard for Art?

Shane:

There are 3 general possibilities for how a person might come to know anything. 1) intuition - we just know it 2) empiricism - we've experienced it to be true 3) rationalism - we can deduce it's truthfulness. 

So the question at hand has to be filtered through the framework of knowledge itself. Do we know beauty because we somehow intuitively recognize it? Because we've experienced phenomena which we have come to describe as beautiful? Or do we have a pre-existing understanding of the category of beauty intrinsically and deduce phenomena as beauty as we experience it? 

1) if A, then beauty is subjective or it's objective depending what one decides to know to be true. In which case no conclusion is reached because one has no grounds to dismiss or accept any phenomena as beautiful. 

2) if B, then Beauty is subjective but so is all data entirely. In fact, if we come to know things only by experiencing them in the world then we can never really know anything at all because the potential for falsifying information always exists. 

3) if C, then beauty as an absolute must exist, and be revealed to individuals. Then it would be objective and dependent on the source of beauty for expression in the world. 

Historically Calvinists have believed that category 3 best describes reality. Beauty (and all things of any worth or value) are sourced in God. Therefore because the source of beauty, truth or goodness is God, then It exists eternally and objectively. But whether it is objective or not is pointless if one can not experience it or does not have the faculties to recognize it. However the imago Dei, historically, has been recognized as man's divinely ordained means of experiencing what is True, Good and Beautiful in the world. On these grounds, beauty is objective. It exists regardless of human experience and it's source is God's nature, the prime reality. 

Take that for data!

Clint:

So using that framework can you honestly tell me which is the better song? “Let it Be” by the Beatles or “Twerk it like Miley” by Brandon Beal?

Shane:

Plato has a passage on this very question but I don't think you'd have the stomach for the answer.

Lance:

Counterpoint: Both B and C can exist simultaneously, due to the fact the imago Dei has been shrouded by the fall. True Beauty (capital ”B”) exists in the person and mind of God. Those who he chooses to reveal it to have the experiential knowledge of it and therefore “know” Beauty. However, in the fallen and non-illumined state, there is only experience and no inspiration. So as you say, nothing can be known for sure apart from a source of authority, I would think that honest Calvinists would realize to allow for fallen man to appreciate Beauty in the proper sense would be akin to a Dead Man tasting a meal. 

Game, Set, Match

Shane:

Both B and C cannot exist simultaneously as they are two mutually exclusive ways of describing reality. Obviously, we all experience things every day and we all make deductions, that's why these ideas have resonated with people for a millennia but the question is "how do we know" so 1) does our experience of what we come to describe as beautiful lead us to conceive of a category which we call beautiful? Or 2) do we have a pre-existing category for beautiful in our minds that allows us to recognize beauty when we experience it in the world? 

Certainly, the fall has marred our deductive abilities and our ability to recognize God in the world. But the question is not, can man fully experience beauty, the question is, is beauty objective? Does beauty exist eternally, timelessly and regardless of one's personal opinion? The answer, of course, is yes, it is objective because we only recognize beauty in as much as the imago Dei in us redeems our experience of beauty in the world. We only recognize beauty in the world because beauty and all good things, are sourced directly in God's nature, and God's nature is by definition objective.

Furthermore, you basically admit this in your response, you said in a fallen world "it's only experience, no inspiration" you're essentially saying that since man is sinful and marred by wickedness that we cannot know anything unless it is revealed by God. This is certainly true, but just because all of our knowledge is dependent on God does not mean our knowledge is not real. As a corollary, all human life is dependent on God. As a core level, we believe that God is holding all things together. Does that mean human existence is not "real" because it is not independent? No, it's reality is actually supported by its dependence on God. Furthermore, direct special revelation is not the only way God has chosen to reveal knowledge to humanity. The Imago Dei and plays a key role in our knowing. There is a reason that there are only 6 sentence types in all the languages of the world, that even a cannibal wouldn't eat its mother, and that Asians love sunrises too. All men have a knowledge of God that they suppress.

Lance:

Ah, but does similarity necessitate objective standard or merely proximity? The world is not so big and not so old as to suggest that 6 language types speak to a "form" of language. It merely is a result of a single source and our current framework by which we understand communication and particularly in the field of linguistics, patterned aural communication. There are sciences of "language" which don't fit your 6 categories, Cymantics for one, animal communications for another. In these and other cases, our relative framework by which we describe "language" and more topically to this debate "communication" is a collection of observations continually adapting to the next stimulus. There are wave particles being received by our long-range satellites that don't match any before observed phenomenon, due to their patterns they fit into some of the accepted definitions of language, so some hypothesize it is a communication from a distant source. As such our understanding of language will need to change in order to accept this new phenomenon. Does this mean our current understanding of language is incorrect or correct? Art is a language, or poignantly described as, the language without words, and therefore is dependent on the same relatively established rubric of its proximal authority. Platonism only worked when everyone anybody knew existed was a white, Greek-speaking, toga-wearing, Hellenist living in the Peloponnesian peninsula. I'm gonna need a source on the cannibals because I'm pretty sure they eat their mothers, in fact, Mark Ritchie records such events in his sociology of the Yammamoa people "Spirit of the Rainforest." (how ya like them apples?) 

So, to circle back to the original proposition. To bestow a doctorate in a field in the current academic system, it must be established that the individual has a mastery of a particular objective standard. Art History is a possibly attained doctorate, as is Art Restoration, Art Education, even particular defined forms of Art such as Cubism or Expressionism. However, Art general has no defined objective standard, tomorrow something never seen before will be Art for no reason beyond us as a society agree it is.

Shane:

I would merely point out that if what you attempt to assert in your first paragraph is true, then metaphysical knowledge is by definition impossible and therefore all "knowledge" is merely speculation. But I don't need to prove that because Derrida already did. 

The beauty of your position, of course, is that all one has to do who is not defending a framework but rather trying to poke holes in everyone else's is to find one seeming contradiction because the burden of proof lies with me. However even if I can't defend every assertion I make, it doesn't mean your framework is more plausible and in fact, if your framework leads to existential impossibilities logically then it is self-defeating. For instance, the claim that knowledge is merely observation over time, which defeats itself because in the very definition it denies the possibility of knowledge. 

That being said, communication and language theory are not 1 for 1 corollaries. Furthermore, the fact that we can recognize something as "language" and not "desk" or "cause and effect" and not "cup" means that metaphysical categories exist which we can recognize universally. The only way to explain this I a supreme being, and I happen to have a candidate who would fit that role rather well.

So for a doctorate in Art, we are recognizing that a person had mastered the tradition, history, philosophy, technical ability, etc which has historically captured what resonates most deeply in humanity in terms of art.

Lance:

And there is no Doctorate of Art so your last paragraph is a hypothetical.

Shane:
Ya, but there's no doctorate in dumbuttery but you manage to get it, so my point stands.
[ba dum tssh gif] 


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Additional reading on the topic of the Master of Fine Arts vs a Doctor of Philosophy can be found here.

So, what do you think?