'Art' and 'Truth': How Important Are the Creative Arts for Philosophical Understanding?

[Veritas Aequitas]

Kant had something to say about "Aesthetics" but I have not fully grasp his 3rd Critique yet.

For Immanuel Kant (Critique of Judgment, 1790), "enjoyment" is the result when pleasure arises from sensation, but judging something to be "beautiful" has a third requirement: sensation must give rise to pleasure by engaging reflective contemplation.
Ibid

Here's the thing with Kant: in his first critique, your mastery of which I gather you take some pride in, you will note that Kant divided propositions into:
analytic a priori
synthetic a priori
analytic a posteriori
synthetic a posteriori
The silly Kant ruled out analytic a posteriori because, in his view it is self contradictory. As I have mentioned frequently it is only analytic a posteriori propositions that we can be absolutely certain about; examples being Parmenides "Being is" and a modification of Descartes' cogito to the effect that 'thinking is'. Other than those, the propositions we base our philosophy on are chosen for fundamentally aesthetic reasons.

I am pro-Kantian but not in absolute terms; I don't agree with everything of Kant's view.

analytic a posteriori
For Kant, such statements do not exist. If a statement is true by definition (analytic), then we know it without experience (a priori). There is no need for any a posteriori considerations at all.

"Being is" is meaningless because "is" is not a predicate.
To be meaningful a statement must be in the form of 'subject + predicate'.
Kant argued "is" [existence] is not a predicate, it is merely a copula to join the subject with the predicate.
To have meaning it has to be "Being is x" where x is the necessary predicate.

To be meaningful and realistic 'being is x' need to be verified and justified within a human-based [collective of subjects] framework and system [FS] of which the scientific FS is the gold standard of credibility and objectivity.
This would make is synthetic a posteriori.

It the same with a modified cogito "Thinking is".
It is meaningless because "is" is not a predicate.
So, Descartes would argue "Thinking is [infer] the 'I-AM'" the soul independent of the body.
But there is no way to verify and justify the absolutely independent "I AM" credibly and objectively.

The most one can conclude is "Thinking is [infer] the 'I-Think" the thinker which can be verified and justified as the empirical self via the science-psychology-FS.

Whatever is claimed to be aesthetics has to conform to its definition:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aesthetics

[Will Bouwman]

As with scientists, philosophers have been wrong about many things...

Can you give me an example?

Marx seems to have been wrong in his predictions concerning the evolution of industrial societies. Few seem to believe in Plato's forms anymore. Leibniz thought this was the best of all possible world's. That seems kind of suspect to me. I can think of better world's. Aristotle thought slavery was justified. Hegel believed in the supremacy of European culture. Fichte was an anti-Semite. Ptolemy had the wrong hypothesis concerning the orbits of the planets.

I'm sure there are other things I've missed that philosophers once thought we're true at one time but have since been discredited. Can you add to the list?

Ah, we are talking at crossed purposes. You are absolutely right that philosophers have said many things which are demonstrably untrue, but I was referring to

...initial premises propositions that are unfalsifiable.

So in the case of Marx for instance, the premise he started with is that there is a tension between employer and employee. That has eased somewhat in most of the western world since Victorian times, but there are still plenty of employees who would like to be paid more than their employers are willing to give them.
The most celebrated example of an unfalsifiable initial premise is Descartes' 'I think, therefore I am'. The thing is, to make an argument, you have to include further premises which are less well founded. They might be based on historical circumstances, as in Marx, or personal opinion, such as Descartes' belief in God. Things can go wrong very quickly.

[Will Bouwman]

"Being is" is meaningless because "is" is not a predicate.

That's Kant's opinion. I disagree.

Whatever is claimed to be aesthetics has to conform to its definition:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aesthetics

I disagree with that too. Even so, if you look at the answer I gave to Gary Childress above, the way people choose auxiliary premises is fundamentally the same way we choose what art we look at, or what music we listen to. We choose them because we like them.

[Jack Daydream]

Our moral principles are forged analogically and the steel is hardened with logic.

That is: we (at least I) emulate admirable characters in stories and try to avoid behaviors we find deplorable. "What would Jesus do?" ask the Christians.

In his famous essay In Defense of Poetry, Shelley compares Homer to Plato. The essay is available on line, and here's a snippet:

Homer embodied the ideal perfection of his age in human character; nor can we doubt that those who read his verses were awakened to an ambition of becoming like to Achilles, Hector, and Ulysses the truth and beauty of friendship, patriotism, and persevering devotion to an object, were unveiled to the depths in these immortal creations: the sentiments of the auditors must have been refined and enlarged by a sympathy with such great and lovely impersonations, until from admiring they imitated, and from imitation they identified themselves with the objects of their admiration.

We learn friendship from Don Quixote and Sancho, the dangers of a quest for perfection from Lancelot, and the power of love from Jean Valjean. Of course from Achilles we also learn the dangers of vanity, stubbornness and cruelty. Philosophy merely expounds on, justifies and clarifies these virtues and these faults.

I've started reading Harold Bloom"s Where Shall Wisdom be Found, and he will doubtless have more to say on this subject.

The roots of morality are based on rationality and so much more. There is also a connection between morality and aesthetics. That is because some ideas of moral goodness are connected to what one likes or dislikes in terms of personal taste. That is not to say that this is without problems of subjective feelings. For example, views about sexuality may be based on feelings and aesthetics. Hopefully, rationality is a means of analysing moral feeling subjectively.

Characters in novels may provide ideals and values for moral life. There are heroes and so many anti-heroes. Characters may perform great acts of kindness or malice. To imitate them alone as ideals could be very limiting. Would one wish to emulate King Lear or Lady Macbeth? The characters one reads about give raw material for reflection on moral values. It is this reflective aspect of reading novels which may make it so important in the discovery of a personal sense of 'truth' . This may also be related to honesty and authenticity.

[Alexiev]

The roots of morality are based on rationality and so much more. There is also a connection between morality and aesthetics. That is because some ideas of moral goodness are connected to what one likes or dislikes in terms of personal taste. That is not to say that this is without problems of subjective feelings. For example, views about sexuality may be based on feelings and aesthetics. Hopefully, rationality is a means of analysing moral feeling subjectively.

Characters in novels may provide ideals and values for moral life. There are heroes and so many anti-heroes. Characters may perform great acts of kindness or malice. To imitate them alone as ideals could be very limiting. Would one wish to emulate King Lear or Lady Macbeth? The characters one reads about give raw material for reflection on moral values. It is this reflective aspect of reading novels which may make it so important in the discovery of a personal sense of 'truth' . This may also be related to honesty and authenticity.

Novels are a modern literary form. In Europe, Don Quixote, 1605 is one of the earliest.

Older literary forms include poetry, epic, drama, and myth. Of course myth is the most important form in terms of influencing morality. Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed, ef. al. clearly influence morality, not only as teachers, but as exemplars.

In that regard, the Norse have attractive exemplars. The monotheistic religions worship God because He is all powerful and all victorious. The old Testament God is not all powerful; He is a jealous God, more powerful than His rivals. The Norse God's, on the other hand, are doomed to lose to the Giants. Yet we humans are expected to be on their side, not out of self interest, but out of a sense of moral righteousness.

[Jack Daydream]

The roots of morality are based on rationality and so much more. There is also a connection between morality and aesthetics. That is because some ideas of moral goodness are connected to what one likes or dislikes in terms of personal taste. That is not to say that this is without problems of subjective feelings. For example, views about sexuality may be based on feelings and aesthetics. Hopefully, rationality is a means of analysing moral feeling subjectively.

Characters in novels may provide ideals and values for moral life. There are heroes and so many anti-heroes. Characters may perform great acts of kindness or malice. To imitate them alone as ideals could be very limiting. Would one wish to emulate King Lear or Lady Macbeth? The characters one reads about give raw material for reflection on moral values. It is this reflective aspect of reading novels which may make it so important in the discovery of a personal sense of 'truth' . This may also be related to honesty and authenticity.

Novels are a modern literary form. In Europe, Don Quixote, 1605 is one of the earliest.

Older literary forms include poetry, epic, drama, and myth. Of course myth is the most important form in terms of influencing morality. Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed, ef. al. clearly influence morality, not only as teachers, but as exemplars.

In that regard, the Norse have attractive exemplars. The monotheistic religions worship God because He is all powerful and all victorious. The old Testament God is not all powerful; He is a jealous God, more powerful than His rivals. The Norse God's, on the other hand, are doomed to lose to the Giants. Yet we humans are expected to be on their side, not out of self interest, but out of a sense of moral righteousness.

You say about myth as being a major form of moral teaching, especially in the form of spiritual teachers. However, so much of such traditions have been enshrined as fact as opposed to story. It is hard to disentangle the fact from the narratives built around them. In particular, Christianity has themes resembling mythic traditions. For example, the resurrection story can be compared to the Greek story of Osiris. Within Christendom, Biblical accounts were developed in such a literal way, which may have led to the debate being between religion and science.

[Alexiev]

You say about myth as being a major form of moral teaching, especially in the form of spiritual teachers. However, so much of such traditions have been enshrined as fact as opposed to story. It is hard to disentangle the fact from the narratives built around them. In particular, Christianity has themes resembling mythic traditions. For example, the resurrection story can be compared to the Greek story of Osiris. Within Christendom, Biblical accounts were developed in such a literal way, which may have led to the debate being between religion and science.

Stories are stories. Perhaps it matters little to their value as moral instruction whether they are histories, myths, or fictions. If we emulate heroes, does it really matter whether their heroism is historically accurate?

[Veritas Aequitas]

"Being is" is meaningless because "is" is not a predicate.

That's Kant's opinion. I disagree.

It is a very rational sense that "is" is merely a copula and not a predicate.

Are you a theist?
Theists [most, could be all] will just claim 'God is' based on faith without justifications.

If not, you need to provide justifications for your claims to be recognized as philosophically rational.

Whatever is claimed to be aesthetics has to conform to its definition:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aesthetics

I disagree with that too. Even so, if you look at the answer I gave to Gary Childress above, the way people choose auxiliary premises is fundamentally the same way we choose what art we look at, or what music we listen to. We choose them because we like them.

It is because you are ignorant to the 13.7 billions of physical and 3.5 billion years of organic history up to the present [you are not taking into consideration] that influenced why one person [or you] prefer 'this art' and 'not that art'; it the same for the wide varieties of choices different people made.
This is what Kant termed as a priori and transcendental without knowing the details of evolutionary psychology, neuroscience, neuro-psychology and the like.

We choose them because we like them.

Your choice is "we are deliberately and consciously 'like' them"??
Are you so sure?
Have you heard of subliminal advertising?

https://www.webfx.com/blog/marketing/su ... vertising/
The idea behind subliminal messaging is that most human decision-making happens in the subconscious rather than the conscious. So, subliminal messages are so subtle that people won’t consciously notice them, but overt enough that their subconscious will pick up on it.

Most of your views above are below par because you have failed to 'know thyself'; not your fault because it is not easy to know thyself reasonably due to a strong evolutionary default that drive the majority to focus on reality externally where every thing is "just-is".

Because of the many philosophical dilemmas and problems, Kant proposed we look inward with his Copernican Revolution and that resolves all the philosophical dilemmas and problems.

Here's Kant bold claim:

In this enquiry I have made Completeness my chief aim, and
I venture to assert that there is not a single metaphysical problem which has not been solved,
or for the solution of which the key at least has not been supplied.
CPR Axiii

What are missing are merely the details of 'know thyself' that Kant had no access to during his time.

[Jack Daydream]

You say about myth as being a major form of moral teaching, especially in the form of spiritual teachers. However, so much of such traditions have been enshrined as fact as opposed to story. It is hard to disentangle the fact from the narratives built around them. In particular, Christianity has themes resembling mythic traditions. For example, the resurrection story can be compared to the Greek story of Osiris. Within Christendom, Biblical accounts were developed in such a literal way, which may have led to the debate being between religion and science.

Stories are stories. Perhaps it matters little to their value as moral instruction whether they are histories, myths, or fictions. If we emulate heroes, does it really matter whether their heroism is historically accurate?

The issue which I see is how people relate to the idea of stories. Personally, I see life as being experienced as stories. I see the spiritual teachers as being examples to follow. However, this is so different from how religions are used in an authoritarian way as 'fact', with ideas of 'truth' being enforced. It often involves moral guidance but so much more in terms of prescriptive guidelines about how life should be lived and viewed. This is bound up with absolutes ideas about what is 'truth'.

[Will Bouwman]

We choose them because we like them.

Your choice is "we are deliberately and consciously 'like' them"??
Are you so sure?

If you look where you imagine I said that, you will find a gaping hole. The fact that we like something does not imply that we are conscious of why we like it. For all that billions of years of evolution have shaped our neurons, and thereby influenced our taste in art, we do not need to be conscious of either to like things.
The number of things we end up liking because we persuade ourselves they are likeable, is dwarfed by the number of things we like and justify our taste post hoc.

Have you heard of subliminal advertising?

https://www.webfx.com/blog/marketing/su ... vertising/
The idea behind subliminal messaging is that most human decision-making happens in the subconscious rather than the conscious.

My point precisely.

[Veritas Aequitas]

We choose them because we like them.

Your choice is "we are deliberately and consciously 'like' them"??
Are you so sure?

If you look where you imagine I said that, you will find a gaping hole. The fact that we like something does not imply that we are conscious of why we like it. For all that billions of years of evolution have shaped our neurons, and thereby influenced our taste in art, we do not need to be conscious of either to like things.
The number of things we end up liking because we persuade ourselves they are likeable, is dwarfed by the number of things we like and justify our taste post hoc.

Have you heard of subliminal advertising?

https://www.webfx.com/blog/marketing/su ... vertising/
The idea behind subliminal messaging is that most human decision-making happens in the subconscious rather than the conscious.

My point precisely.

Your point:

The silly Kant ruled out analytic a posteriori because, in his view it is self contradictory. As I have mentioned frequently it is only analytic a posteriori propositions that we can be absolutely certain about; examples being Parmenides "Being is" and a modification of Descartes' cogito to the effect that 'thinking is'.
Other than those, the propositions we base our philosophy on are chosen for fundamentally aesthetic reasons.

The fact that we like something does not imply that we are conscious of why we like it.

The reason why you like "Being is" without justifications is via fundamentally aesthetic reasons. You are not conscious and rational why you like or are align with "Being is".

To be rationally conscious you'll need to justify 'Being is x' within a human-based framework and system [FS].
You just cannot claim "being-is is" or just-is or because your mother [whoever] said so.

The statement 'water is h20' cannot be just-is but because the science-chemistry framework and system said so as justified in according to its constitution and conditions.

Science as qualified within the science-chemistry FS also claim 'water is not H20' when ions are taken into account.
"Water is Not H20"
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=39844

So, Kant is not silly.
The term "analytic a posteriori" is unrealistic.
"Whatever-is" is always conditioned upon a human-based [collective of subjects] framework and system that has a 13.7 billion years physical history and 3.5 billion years organic history that condition its present state, i.e. the a priori which validates synthetic a priori propositions or judgments.

[Will Bouwman]

Have you heard of subliminal advertising?

https://www.webfx.com/blog/marketing/su ... vertising/
The idea behind subliminal messaging is that most human decision-making happens in the subconscious rather than the conscious. So, subliminal messages are so subtle that people won’t consciously notice them, but overt enough that their subconscious will pick up on it.

My point precisely.

Your point:

Let's sort out the point in hand, before we go back over old ground. The point in hand is that this was a misapprehension on your part.

Your choice is "we are deliberately and consciously 'like' them"??
Are you so sure?

If we can establish that is not my position, and that actually, my point is that most of the choices we make about what premises we choose are made unconsciously, then we can return to the things you want to go over again.

[FlashDangerpants]

The reason why you like "Being is" without justifications is via fundamentally aesthetic reasons.

You like the "efficiency" of impossible to compile "exhaustive lists" for similarly fundamentally aesthetic reasons. You just lack the self awareness to realise it.

[Will Bouwman]

The reason why you like "Being is" without justifications is via fundamentally aesthetic reasons.

You like the "efficiency" of impossible to compile "exhaustive lists" for similarly fundamentally aesthetic reasons. You just lack the self awareness to realise it.

The genius is that VA acknowledges the rather mundane point I am trying to get through to some of the hard of thinking, only to choose one of the two examples I have made clear to anyone with the intellect of a mushroom, are the exceptions.

[FlashDangerpants]

The reason why you like "Being is" without justifications is via fundamentally aesthetic reasons.

You like the "efficiency" of impossible to compile "exhaustive lists" for similarly fundamentally aesthetic reasons. You just lack the self awareness to realise it.

The genius is that VA acknowledges the rather mundane point I am trying to get through to some of the hard of thinking, only to choose one of the two examples I have made clear to anyone with the intellect of a mushroom, are the exceptions.

Doesn't his whole KFC-buckets thing rest on analytic a posteriori propositions anyway? Why is he arguing over this, is it just because you bad mouthed Kant and that sets him off?