What do you think was the motivation for writing this piece?

(Click the post title to read the submission.)

Hi B!

One of the great unfortunate lessons that school drills into us when we are children is Plato’s error.  He suggested that by virtue of the existence of a word (such as “poetry”) there exists an ideal form of what that word means and all examples we have in reality are imperfect copies of it.  I think this is called Platonism.  Hence, great poets everywhere are made to question themselves and measure their value against the artificial institutions of academia and publishing which both try to control artists.

The basic idea of poetry is to use words in an aesthetic way (convey feeling) in addition to (or instead of) a meaningful way (convey meaning). In my mind, the distinction is something we made up.  While there is a very general distinction between the meaning of words and the aesthetics of the words, it’s possible to bend from one to the other.  Perhaps a better question than “what is poetry?” is “How can some piece of writing become more poetic?”  The simple (but still very useful) answers are rhyme and meter, and slightly more complicated are allusion, alliteration, and other… neat stuff.

I agree with your grandpa that it’s better when a thing doesn’t require explanation.  Whether prose, poetry, software, a house, a chicken, or a gift, if you have to add explanation to uncover the value you’ve already lost some of it.  This fits with my sense that epiphany is one of the highest forms of human experience.

I don’t know what to say right now… I’m going to have to come back to this. Words are merely labels, and there is often a startling lack of direct translations for them from language to language. This is because labels are often generalizations, and when inappropriately applied, by definition (ha ha) they are fallacious. There is a fine line between red and pink, but a very exact wavelength. So I suppose only qualitative labels tend towards “lumping” while quantitative tend more towards clarification. But how often do measurable values play in to the value of art (other than in a monetary sense?) But if we’re talking about measurable values we’re not even discussing words anymore, are we? I’ll come back. I’m giving myself a migraine. Thank you for the intellectual response and philosophical idea to obsess about until I physically collapse or resolve it. And I’m sorry for the borderline incoherence of this reply, if we choose to label it that way.

-B.

“But if we’re talking about measurable values we’re not even discussing words anymore, are we?”

I disagree with that assertion.  I very much enjoy explaining to people how I would measure something they feel is immune to measurement.  For example, “comfy” and “clever” seem like qualitative rather than quantitative words, but they are (like all words, in my opinion) both.  Take 1000 people and expose them to something and ask each one “Would you call that comfy?”  Some will say yes, some will say no, and some will say other things that we can discard.  Thus, we have a number for comfy.  But again, I’d argue that an easy chair company should not be aiming to make a product that is the perfect example of “comfy” but rather make changes to increase the comfiness of their product - because it is more qualitative than quantitative.

Ahhh… Interesting, but what you are establishing would not be a quantitative value of comfiness, but rather a quantitative value of the sample’s opinion on what constitutes comfy. This value would still be an amalgamation of subjective viewpoints on a qualitative state and as such, would be subject to change over time (as connotations evolve) as well as the difficulties of translation I mentioned. The answer may vary wildly depending on the culture of the person being asked, their personal opinion on what comfy is, and what word you used to substitute “comfy” based on their regional word associations. So you would not measuring a physical state, you would (as you already pointed out) be measuring the feedback of a population concerning a subjective state. Words exist merely because of the value we attach to them. Numbers exist only in relation to other numbers (labeled and/or approximations or not). Therefore only numbers would exist (arguably) in the absence of evolving sentient opinion.

Softness, however, could easily be measured to a degree. Maybe we should tell Lay-Z-Boy.

-B.

For all practical purposes, you’re right.  But poetry isn’t practical, so I have to point out that the exactness we get from numbers is illusory.  One plus one is two, right?  But what if they reproduce?  I don’t believe in objectivity.  I can imagine the “constant” of gravity changing, though we’ve never measured it accurately enough to detect any change.  Length can be constrained (1 inch, plus or minus 3 1/1000ths of an inch), but it can’t be exact (the edge of a physical object, at a high enough magnification, is comfy, or soft, if you will, so you can’t place it, exactly).

I have yet to disabuse you of Plato’s error.  There is no comfy, except for… what did you call it?  “an amalgamation of subjective viewpoints on a qualitative state and as such, would be subject to change over time (as connotations evolve) as well as the difficulties of translation I mentioned. The answer may vary wildly depending on the culture of the person being asked, their personal opinion on what comfy is, and what word you used to substitute “comfy” based on their regional word associations.”

La-Z-Boy won’t care what academics and language philosophers think of their chairs’ comfiness.  And I bet that few publishers would really care how poetic your poetry was if it delighted your readers.  We are ALL about the amalgamation of subjective viewpoints.  Everything else (by definition, as far as I’m concerned) is meaningless.  Literally.  Amalgamating subjective viewpoints is the defining characteristic, to me, of meaning.

Dave, I must be confused, because it sounds to me like we are in agreement. I was merely pointing out that what would be quantified in your earlier post is an average of opinions which says everything about perception but nothing about unchanging physical properties.

Which are probably based on perception anyways, so from metaphysical and quantum mechanical perpectives you are 100% correct.

I think we are in agreement too.  I just wanted you to say something like “[w]hich are probably based on perception anyways” to demonstrate that you’ve freed yourself from Plato.  Sounds like you’re on your way.  Like all great conversations, we find bits to argue about and bits to agree upon, and all the while our appreciation of each other and life in general is expanded (I hope!)