The 5 magnificent delusions regarding musical elitism
- Thread starter Sadguru
- Start date
all_sins_undone said:
lol ''listen dumbass'' you are a fucking crybaby retard cause you can't make a coherent argument about anything, and then starts acting like a typical angry teen dicksucker instead of actually discussing something...i've already proved my points, but you, as the big idiot that you are surely can't see that.
all_sins_undone
New Metal Member
- Oct 5, 2005
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dishcloth
Boozehound & metalhead...
Yes. Have you heard of creativity? Stop being so cynical. There is such a thing as possibility.
Tubbs
Bi-weekly top album:
Wth, don't bring me into this uberoflcore argument plz.all_sins_undone said:it's true that sadguru and tubbs for example will bring the same "subjective" argument into every thread where there is an inconsistency among which of their favorite bands are "good" or "bad"....
all_sins_undone said:
And you say you were not talking about ''context''?, hahaha, what a fucking idiot.
metal_wrath
I dip my forefinger...
Music should judged like any art should, by it's artistic/technical qualities. Therefore, there is better music, regardless of anyones opinions.
Prognostic
Jiggachu
Prognostic
Jiggachu
BloodSword
Member
Sadguru posts a thread that just requires a dignified response. And what does he get? Bitching, complaining and fuckin' moaning. Nowhere else but, the Opeth forum. Got to be the worst fuckin' board ever.
Kenneth R.
Cináed
Which is why I more or less skipped a few pages of this thread.BloodSword said:
His initial proposal had some good points, but the fundamental on which he based it is flawed in my opinion. No such thing as music superiority? Clearly this is false or every band would get the same number of fans, income, and publicity in an ideal situation. Obviously the world is not ideal, but it would be much more apparent as some have tried to argue: that some "music" is more thoughtfully constructed than other "music" and that this leads to its superiority.
What I find idiotic, and where I agreed with him, was that people do not need to be told what is good and what is not. "Good" is subjective to taste, but qualitative comparisons can be made for extreme examples. Putting the White Stripes on the scales versus Debussy may seem subjective to some, but I find reasonable qualitative argument to claim one is more thoughtfully constructed and therefore superior in my worldview.
Elitism however, is pathetic on all fronts.
I am tired and so this may not be clearly stated, apologies.
NFU
I like pie.
i think theres a distinction that needs to be made here.
the rare case in which some sick individual finds the sound of a dog being raped pleasant...doesnt fall under those given parameters of "good music". everyone has querks and preferences...and some people find certain smells, sounds or tastes pleasant, when some others are not. the taste of paste when some preschooler decides to eat it, is not just as "good" as say the greatest chocolate ever made. even though 2 different people may enjoy the tastes.
the rare case in which some sick individual finds the sound of a dog being raped pleasant...doesnt fall under those given parameters of "good music". everyone has querks and preferences...and some people find certain smells, sounds or tastes pleasant, when some others are not. the taste of paste when some preschooler decides to eat it, is not just as "good" as say the greatest chocolate ever made. even though 2 different people may enjoy the tastes.
Kenneth R.
Cináed
erm... yeah. -^ I attempted to say something like this.
Continuing my example to clarify further (if need be
) I respect that somebody would find Jack White more interesting than Debussy. But I would not agree if they claimed the two are equally talented.
Continuing my example to clarify further (if need be
) I respect that somebody would find Jack White more interesting than Debussy. But I would not agree if they claimed the two are equally talented.
the status of judgments of taste (in general, not just concerning music) is a significant philosophical question that has been a subject of debate since the time of plato. today much attention is being paid to spelling out different possible positions and evaluating arguments for these positions. it has been almost everybody's experience teaching in college to see freshmen claim to hold some sort of position of relativism, subjectivism or social constructivism with respect to moral or aesthetic values (hence the label, "freshmen relativism"). what these labels really mean is difficult to articulate, as the ideas behind them seem rather half-baked. actually developing a coherent position from such claims is a difficult matter. some first passes might go as follows.
it is taken to be common ground that there are certain sentences which are not context-sensitive and are plainly true or false, eg. "John Lennon was killed in 1980" or "Water consists of two hydrogen atoms and an oxygen atom." sentences which are context-sensitive, such as "I am in Istanbul" or "It is hot here", are not simply true or false but true or false with respect to the context in which they are uttered (the first sentence is true if uttered by me, false as uttered by many of you, the second is true with respect to any context in which the environment of the speaker is hot). the context-sensitivity of these sentences is due to certain words present in them ("I", "here"). now, one might hold that sentences expressing judgments of taste, eg. "Mozart's music is excellent", "Rhubarb is disgusting", are context-sensitive as well. one position in the neighbourhood of what the freshmen are getting at might be what might call contextualism (about judgments of taste). the contextualist claims that "Mozart's music is excellent" is true as uttered by me but false as uttered by someone who doesn't like Mozart, because the adjective "excellent" is context-sensitive. perhaps one could try to state this generally as follows: for any speaker S, the sentence "x is excellent" is true with respect to context C just in case S is the speaker in the context C and S likes x to a significant degree. so when i utter "Mozart is excellent" and you utter "Mozart is not excellent", we could both be speaking the truth, since the speaker of my context (me!) likes Mozart but the speaker of you context (you!) doesn't. notice, however, that if these sentences really are context-sensitive, we are not saying the same thing (making the same claim) by uttering the same sentence. when we say "I", we mean different people, hence we are not disagreeing when I utter "I am in Istanbul" and you utter "I am not in Istanbul". the speakers of the contexts are different, so what is said by the sentence in those contexts are different as well. the same applies to any sentence with the word "excellent", if contextualism is correct. one might think that for contextualism doesn't really articulate the original half-baked idea well, since that idea seemed to require that there is some one thing that different speakers claim by uttering the same sentence "Mozart is excellent" and they can disagree about its truth and both be right. let us call truth-value relativism the thesis that a sentence such as the above is not context-sensitive and also is not true or false absolutely but true or false only with respect to people. this captures the spirit of the original idea better, but there are many problems with undertanding the notion of truth with respect to a person. let us not pursue those problems here, but finally note another position on the board: expressivism. according to the expressivist, sentences including words like "excellent" are not true or false at all but are expressions of certain emotions just like the exclamations "Ouch" or "Wow". as such, they do not have conditions for truth or falsity at all.
i do not wish to say that we should have a philosophical discussion on this board, but i do wish to say that there isn't much point to what has been said on this thread so far. what has been said so far has been completely unclear and impossible to evaluate (for truth - we can evaluate them for clarity). maybe we should not continue this thread much further.
it is taken to be common ground that there are certain sentences which are not context-sensitive and are plainly true or false, eg. "John Lennon was killed in 1980" or "Water consists of two hydrogen atoms and an oxygen atom." sentences which are context-sensitive, such as "I am in Istanbul" or "It is hot here", are not simply true or false but true or false with respect to the context in which they are uttered (the first sentence is true if uttered by me, false as uttered by many of you, the second is true with respect to any context in which the environment of the speaker is hot). the context-sensitivity of these sentences is due to certain words present in them ("I", "here"). now, one might hold that sentences expressing judgments of taste, eg. "Mozart's music is excellent", "Rhubarb is disgusting", are context-sensitive as well. one position in the neighbourhood of what the freshmen are getting at might be what might call contextualism (about judgments of taste). the contextualist claims that "Mozart's music is excellent" is true as uttered by me but false as uttered by someone who doesn't like Mozart, because the adjective "excellent" is context-sensitive. perhaps one could try to state this generally as follows: for any speaker S, the sentence "x is excellent" is true with respect to context C just in case S is the speaker in the context C and S likes x to a significant degree. so when i utter "Mozart is excellent" and you utter "Mozart is not excellent", we could both be speaking the truth, since the speaker of my context (me!) likes Mozart but the speaker of you context (you!) doesn't. notice, however, that if these sentences really are context-sensitive, we are not saying the same thing (making the same claim) by uttering the same sentence. when we say "I", we mean different people, hence we are not disagreeing when I utter "I am in Istanbul" and you utter "I am not in Istanbul". the speakers of the contexts are different, so what is said by the sentence in those contexts are different as well. the same applies to any sentence with the word "excellent", if contextualism is correct. one might think that for contextualism doesn't really articulate the original half-baked idea well, since that idea seemed to require that there is some one thing that different speakers claim by uttering the same sentence "Mozart is excellent" and they can disagree about its truth and both be right. let us call truth-value relativism the thesis that a sentence such as the above is not context-sensitive and also is not true or false absolutely but true or false only with respect to people. this captures the spirit of the original idea better, but there are many problems with undertanding the notion of truth with respect to a person. let us not pursue those problems here, but finally note another position on the board: expressivism. according to the expressivist, sentences including words like "excellent" are not true or false at all but are expressions of certain emotions just like the exclamations "Ouch" or "Wow". as such, they do not have conditions for truth or falsity at all.
i do not wish to say that we should have a philosophical discussion on this board, but i do wish to say that there isn't much point to what has been said on this thread so far. what has been said so far has been completely unclear and impossible to evaluate (for truth - we can evaluate them for clarity). maybe we should not continue this thread much further.
Opethian666
Booze influenced
- Sep 17, 2005
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metal_wrath said:
The problem is, that the value of artistic and technical qualities is different from person to person. The only thing you can rate music by is by commonly accepted norms for the largest part of the population, but then you're leaving out a lot of people too. There is no way to objectively rate music. You can only rate music by commonly accepted human guidelines, that are bound to have a decent number of people that don't agree with them.
I think that post that Powers made is the most logical thing said in this entire thread.
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