“What causes humans to interpret an object or a performance as art” and “What is art?” may be seen as two entirely different questions to certain philosophers. I’m skeptical that people who frequent this site would make such a distinction, but we aren’t talking about LWers here.
People whoe frequent this site already do make parallel distinctions about more LW-friendly topics. For instance, the point of the Art of Rationality is that there is a right way to do thinking and persuading, which is not to say that Reason “just is” whatever happens to persuade or convince people, since people can be persuaded by bad arguments. If that can be made to work, then “it’s hanging in a gallery, but it isn’t art” can be made to work.
ETA:
That said, I believe that questions (1) and (3) are, in fact, questions about humans.
Rationality is about humans, in a sense, too. The moral is that being “about humans” doens’t imply that the
search for norms or real meanings, or genuine/pseudo distinctions is fruitless.
Agreed, but my point was that questions about humans are questions about the Universe (since humans are part of it), and therefore they can be answerable and meaningful. Thus, you could indeed come up with an answer that sounds something like, “it’s hanging in a gallery, but our model predicts that it’s only 12.5% art”.
But I agree with BerryPick6 when he says that not all philosophers make that distinction.
“What causes humans to interpret an object or a performance as art” and “What is art?” may be seen as two entirely different questions to certain philosophers. I’m skeptical that people who frequent this site would make such a distinction, but we aren’t talking about LWers here.
People whoe frequent this site already do make parallel distinctions about more LW-friendly topics. For instance, the point of the Art of Rationality is that there is a right way to do thinking and persuading, which is not to say that Reason “just is” whatever happens to persuade or convince people, since people can be persuaded by bad arguments. If that can be made to work, then “it’s hanging in a gallery, but it isn’t art” can be made to work.
ETA:
Rationality is about humans, in a sense, too. The moral is that being “about humans” doens’t imply that the search for norms or real meanings, or genuine/pseudo distinctions is fruitless.
Agreed, but my point was that questions about humans are questions about the Universe (since humans are part of it), and therefore they can be answerable and meaningful. Thus, you could indeed come up with an answer that sounds something like, “it’s hanging in a gallery, but our model predicts that it’s only 12.5% art”.
But I agree with BerryPick6 when he says that not all philosophers make that distinction.