Nietzsche's hypothesis about what he calls the origin or "birth" of tragedy (in Greece): that the tragic brings together two apparently 'opposed' artistic impulses: one sober, the other 'intoxicated'...
--Trying to domesticate play is somewhat self-defeating.
--The "becomings" children engage in (becoming-animal and so on) -- these have the same status as memories or dreams. They're veritable transformations; not metaphors, though of course a child doesn't literally "become" a horse. But it's not an imitation either; or at least that isn't the key...
Hmmm, so I was going to try to bring it back to language, even dialogue -- the way we can't really chart out the course of a conversation in advance, it has to emerge and we have to be open/attuned to the emergence and so on.
I'm not sure if that helps clarify. But the thought is basically that an experiment affords us an opportunity to be surprised; it 'opens' the possibility of a future we couldn't have predicted beforehand. Any experiment worth the name has the possibility at least of an interesting failure (of the null hypothesis or whatever.)
But the purpose of this potentially surprising result is truth, and the purpose of this truth is...to use it later, in situations where it can help us.
We have to be open to an event that could surprise us. --I just wonder if we can demand an artistic experiment have some clearly-articulable 'purpose'.
At any rate, I'm compelled to remind us of Picasso here, who says the thing about art obviously not being true, but a lie to help us realize truth... :)
It strikes me it's not particularly "pragmatic" to essentialize truth. --"Truth" is after all necessarily incomplete and fragmented; so an illusion which has forgotten it is illusory.
Pragmatically (immanently) truth is a metaphor which has lost all vitality and worth; never transcendental, or "given".
Hard won through experimentation. But I wonder to what "purpose" we could assign the truth itself?
--Certainly, a scientist might have some question he is trying to answer; the experiment serves to answer his curiosity on some point or another.
But this question doesn't need to be immediately itself "practical" for the experiment to be interesting; it's still constructive even if no immediate 'use'. --I guess that would be one of my thoughts here again: that play, learning, experimentation are themselves their own valid 'purposes'.
But I think the natural inclination of animals to experiment is mainly caused by the advantage truth gives us in acquiring material and social benefits.
@JosephWeissman Sure, in most situations?
@JosephWeissman Absolutely: requiring an immediate "use" is terribly destructive and bad.
Subjectively, we sometimes desire it as an end in itself, at other times as a means to power, and you could say "the power to experience an aesthetic sensation" can be part of that.
@Cerberus Actually, I remember reading an article recently (or perhaps someone told me?) that there is no evolutionary advantage to be gained from believing truth things...that evolution selects for some factor other than truth...trying to dig up a reference now
That is, it is a simplification: transcendental truth does not exist, but it is convenient to more or less act as if it it did. Just as it is convenient to assume genes "strive" to procreate, even though in fact they do not strive at all.
Question: Have I had a false impression all this time in thinking that an answer with link and a little summary is always preferred to an answer that's basically only a link? And furthermore, is it not the norm, when the bulk of the value of an answer is in a link, to summarize some of the content found at that link?
That's not a false impression. One of the post notice texts says something like this. "Answers that don't explain anything are subject to deletion" or whatever.
I have often wondered at the practice on SO, SF, and the other sites where someone will ask a question and an answer will come in that says Look here: http://link elsewhere. Rarely will the link have exactly the answer necessary -- often it's an entire article -- yet these answers get voted up.
...
Yeah, I've been thinking about that. --Careful review would probably uncover opportunities to cleanup and close a decent number I would think...
@commando Heh. Well, I think we estimated he's authored 13-odd percent of the questions on the site! --It's probably worth a review of his in particular, given his outsize 'representation' in the sample.
I don't know if autogenesis is as simple as time reversing self-destruction. --Maybe more like time-reversing a snake eating itself (successfully)...? :)
The Symposium
The Symposium