If a piece sounds good to me, does that mean it's good?

Originally Posted by Ferkungamabooboo

That's part of my point. Coming to a consensus as to the criteria would be a discussion. that there are differences in opinion mean that there are differences in reason, unless those opinion are unfounded in ANYTHING. For someone to say that only style x is good, it would be ridiculous to take their opinion seriously without a reason backing it. Those reasons behind the opinions are the objective criteria.

Sorry, no. It comes down again to evidence of objectivity being objective. There's no possible "proof" that a subjective opinion is objective since it can be handwaved by the VERY NATURE of what subjective MEANS.

I don't give a flying shit about the "reasons" people have for having X or Y opinions, they're not objective enough to be evidence of anything other than their reasons for having the opinions. You may agree, or you may disagree with the reasons and opinions, but they're not more or less valid than your own.

There can be no discussion of the subjective, expecting an objective conclusion. Quite literally by virtue of what we're talking about, it's impossible. It SOUNDS very much "in the interest of discussion" the way you put it, but it's a redundant circular-logic inducing nonsense fest to which the only answer is that there is no absolute answer and there CAN'T BE any absolute answer.

Originally Posted by Ferkungamabooboo

So then critique is solely personal and largely worthless? If we eliminate the possibility for objective criteria of evaluation, then there is absolutely nothing but PR that separates the greats from the not-so-greats. Therefore, music pedagogy is a waste of funds.

Why is it, then, that certain people are nigh-universally hated - try punching bag Kenny G, even though he has some serious talent (or at least I haven't circular breathed for 20 minutes straight). Or some are universally acclaimed: pre-fusion Miles Davis, mid-experimental Coltrane.

There is a discrete difference between "I like" and "I think this is good."

Welcome to the world of art. Critique, unless based on evident objective terms such as:

"This stop sign doesn't get the message across well enough, and it should because it's got a functional purpose."

or

"This soup tastes terrible, because you put sugar and poop in it."

It boils down to a conflict of aesthetics to which there is NO ABSOLUTE DISCOURSE OR OPINION.

Bach, Beethoven and Co. are only "great" because, uh, that's the tradition built around them. That's the power of something similar to the modern concept of PR and indeed that's the pull tradition has on culture and society. No, there is really nothing scientific that tells anyone that Bach's music is better than Britney Spears or indeed someone farting. The psychological and sociopolitical factors can ALL be manipulated to grant any of those the upper hand in terms of preference.

I've linked to an article before concerning just how POOR people are at even knowing what their own opinions are, and much worse at trying to figure out WHY they have those opinions at all! That's real science, done by real psychologists on human behavior.

This whole deal is exactly what people who study sociology touch on, and of course what it all means is that given the right influences, people will cheer on people being devoured by lions.

Remember that?

If that can be done, let's put into perspective that considering what people have been known to do under the influence of their culture, tradition, military or religious values, is MUCH WORSE and MUCH more irrational than asking someone to consider a fart a valid piece of music, or a photocopy of Bach a piece of art*. Remember WWII, remember the crusades? Do I need to go on?

I think I can't really make my point any more clear than this.

Now, does it mean musical studies are nonsense? Of course not. Musicology IS after all the field which deals with advancing the knowledge of music altogether. It's serious important business, as it deals with the human condition, psychology, sociology, politics and any other number of fields which are of basic importance to humanistic studies anywhere.

But even if we're not talking about musicology, it doesn't take very much to see how useful a proper musical education can be when composing, learning how to write for different instruments, and so on.

So, with that out of the way, the people who still hold the insane argument that there's something objective about musical taste, preference or indeed "goodness" should consider the following implications of their claim:

Do you seriously, honestly, think that if there WAS such objective nature to aesthetics, we would be having this argument right now?

Because,

Don't you think that someone in say, oh, the hundreds of years of recorded musical history (if not going ALL the way back to the Greeks and so on with their discourse on aesthetics!) would've had it figured it out by now and since this is something OBJECTIVE and TRUE that we're talking about, scientists would've been all over it?

But that doesn't seem to be the case, does it?

Just something to think about, if you still rather hold this opinion. Evidence isn't on your side and neither is logic.



---
* Not that the artistic things mentioned here are irrational or bad at all, it stands as a comparison of how some people make these things sound.

Originally Posted by SSC

Sorry, no. It comes down again to evidence of objectivity being objective. There's no possible "proof" that a subjective opinion is objective since it can be handwaved by the VERY NATURE of what subjective MEANS.

That's not exactly what I'm arguing. My point is that the basis for those opinions is objective - demography, tradition, all that lot is at some level objective. There are functional reasons why Indian music uses tala instead of measures, even when describing the same thing, such as in tintal, which might as well be 4/4. The feeling of tal is a goal in that music, as is the feeling of meter in western music; my point is that underlying both is a respect of rhythm. In European free improv, the goal is to avoid discernable meters, a willful disrespect of rhythm. I feel that these purposes are throughout every aspect of music.

I don't give a flying shit about the "reasons" people have for having X or Y opinions, they're not objective enough to be evidence of anything other than their reasons for having the opinions. You may agree, or you may disagree with the reasons and opinions, but they're not more or less valid than your own.

My terminology was a bit loose; "reasons" are the underlying aspects which provide thrust to opinions. Taking it to a subject I'm better versed in, you have people looking for a free market and people looking for increased interventionism. While they both attack the impetus for their opinions differently, at their core is an understanding that people should be on equal standing and free. Their opinions are radically different, but the ideological aspect driving them to that opinion is the same. Think of them like axes on a graph.

Welcome to the world of art. Critique, unless based on evident objective terms such as:

"This stop sign doesn't get the message across well enough, and it should because it's got a functional purpose."

or

"This soup tastes terrible, because you put sugar and poop in it."

It boils down to a conflict of aesthetics to which there is NO ABSOLUTE DISCOURSE OR OPINION.

It is interesting that you bring up cooking - that's something violently subjective for the end product. However, certain basic concepts still apply: that food should provide nourishment (but how much [above a certain threshold] is needed for a "good" meal?), should be flavourful (again, how much and what kind are the questions), and should have a decent appearance (but how much does that matter?). The questions are the subjective part, but the objective underpinnings are what I'm talking about.

Bach, Beethoven and Co. are only "great" because, uh, that's the tradition built around them. That's the power of something similar to the modern concept of PR and indeed that's the pull tradition has on culture and society. No, there is really nothing scientific that tells anyone that Bach's music is better than Britney Spears or indeed someone farting. The psychological and sociopolitical factors can ALL be manipulated to grant any of those the upper hand in terms of preference.

Well you could say that Bach's music is fundamentally equal Ms. (Or is she married again?) Spears's writers', but I'd disagree.

However, I could say, with some agreement I hope, that "...Baby One More Time" and a deep track from the same album have varying quality levels. Or that Brötzmann's Machine Gun and his work with Last Exit have varying quality levels. The difference is in purpose. Ms. Spears is a pop singer, and there are objective qualities to judge her on. The choice of which qualities is subjective - some might just stick with image, while others would argue from a collection of qualities - but the field is the same.

While genre's, demographic's, and tradition's influence may change which qualities one chooses, my point is that the qualities are fundamentally the same across all boundaries, even if one quality is a negative in one style and a positive in another.

I've linked to an article before concerning just how POOR people are at even knowing what their own opinions are, and much worse at trying to figure out WHY they have those opinions at all! That's real science, done by real psychologists on human behavior.

Crap, what are those called? Non-attitudes? I always heard them explained as a product of lack of information combined with societal pressures to give an answer, but that might just have been my professor's take on it. It a big problem in sociology, because surveys are, to some degree, nonconsensual. But we're talking about willfully talking about something for the purpose of critique from a place of knowledge about the subject.

Remember WWII, remember the crusades? Do I need to go on?

I'm gonna ignore Godwin's Law

Do you seriously, honestly, think that if there WAS such objective nature to aesthetics, we would be having this argument right now?

Because,

Don't you think that someone in say, oh, the hundreds of years of recorded musical history (if not going ALL the way back to the Greeks and so on with their discourse on aesthetics!) would've had it figured it out by now and since this is something OBJECTIVE and TRUE that we're talking about, scientists would've been all over it?

But that doesn't seem to be the case, does it?

Well, there are schools of critique, and a large percentage of critics tend to cluster, even when money is not an issue. I haven't done it, but it'd be interesting to see what drives Amazon, IMDB, or Digg users to vote the way they do. And I feel again, for each of those disparate realms of opinion-giving, one could find axes from which all the opinions flow.

And while I haven't studied specifically music aesthetics (I got frustrated with the French... Marxists like Attali infuriated me, not because they're Marxists per se, but because their fact-checking was atrocious), I got through about 300/500 pages of a survey book on the philosophy of aesthetics. There are great similarities across the theories. Sure, there are differences, the many of the main points carried across, even cross-culturally.

But yeah, this is fun

Originally Posted by SSC

Don't you think that someone in say, oh, the hundreds of years of recorded musical history (if not going ALL the way back to the Greeks and so on with their discourse on aesthetics!) would've had it figured it out by now and since this is something OBJECTIVE and TRUE that we're talking about, scientists would've been all over it?

But that doesn't seem to be the case, does it?

In hundreds of years of scientific discourse it's only quite recently that we figured out, say, how neurons interact, or even that they exist. Hell, until scarcely 150 years ago we didn't have a clue how species arise and change over time in nature. Science is an ongoing process. At the moment we've hardly even begun to learn how the brain works--is it really surprising to you that not everything is within our reach yet? Give it some time. Our understanding is increasing by the day. I know this is pretty far off the real topic of the discussion, but I really don't see why the idea of a neurological basis for aesthetics is such a pointless dead end as you imply it to be.

Originally Posted by EldKatt

In hundreds of years of scientific discourse it's only quite recently that we figured out, say, how neurons interact, or even that they exist. Hell, until scarcely 150 years ago we didn't have a clue how species arise and change over time in nature. Science is an ongoing process. At the moment we've hardly even begun to learn how the brain works--is it really surprising to you that not everything is within our reach yet? Give it some time. Our understanding is increasing by the day. I know this is pretty far off the real topic of the discussion, but I really don't see why the idea of a neurological basis for aesthetics is such a pointless dead end as you imply it to be.

Well this is more of a "wait and see" argument.

We can as well, though I highly doubt it, find something like:

Uncanny valley - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

But applying to sound/music.

Originally Posted by robinjessome

But there can be no consensus. you can map out generalizations or commonalities...but there is no possible way for Everyone to agree on "what makes a work of art 'good'".

Crap, gotta bite that bullet. But again, I'm more focused on the impetus to that agreement.

I'll agree that SUCCESS can be measured - but is success your only rubric for evaluating the artistic merit of something? And again - it's still a subjective evaluation, success; a complete bomb to some, a resounding success to others.

Maybe not in the traditional sense of "success" for myself, but in a general sense, I can't see what else there is to go to, once you eliminate genre and that sort of thing.

Nah...highly personal, yes...but there are certainly Many aspects of a work that can be evaluated - especially when compared to benchmark masterpieces. BUT, the critiques may still be rooted in personal taste and bias. One professor may hate the coda...another will love it.

True, but their reasons for their opinions come from the same place, and I think it is just weighting of those points that brings the professors to different conclusions. That weighting is the subjectivity, not the aspects of the composition itself.

There's also a Very solid similarity... the fact that it has to read "I like" and "I think this is good" illustrates the fact the you can not say "Everyone likes" or "Everyone thinks this is good".

::chomps on lead::

[See! This is getting Fun now!!]

Yay! I like fun!

Originally Posted by SSC

We can as well, though I highly doubt it, find something like:

Uncanny valley - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

But applying to sound/music.

How? i'm curious, since I love the concept of the uncanny valley. Do you mean, something that is almost perfect, so its worse than something that is just plain bad?

I guess that's where the damage of "It a bit generic..." comes from...

No, I don't mean a direct musical parallel to the uncanny valley. I mean an aesthetic statistic theory which can be tested and observed.

People can voluntarily oppose the uncanny valley effect if they really want to, but just like eating a poop sandwich, they have to fight the evolution of their senses to try to keep them alive by developing specific biases.

It's also philological very hard to talk about something like the sense of taste being similar to the sense of hearing as they deal with VERY different things. Taste works with chemistry and chemistry is sure as fuck not subjective; the tongue and such organs' functions and so are NOT subjective.

You can get used, or indeed, overcome/ignore your senses screaming at you for trying to eat a poop sandwich and likewise someone working at the morgue or dealing with people with physical deformities will get past the uncanny valley's suggested bias.

But is there such bias in music?

I think the biggest piece of evidence against such bias is that we hear ALL the time and we generally hear a lot of things which don't qualify to many as "music" yet they're in no way disgusted at it. The sound of rain for example isn't exactly A 440 tonal music, yet nobody jumps in horror at the gentle cacophony produced by it.

See what I'm getting at?

The sound of a siren during war can mean something terrible, frightening and so on. But the same siren in a concert condition can invoke entirely different ideas or feelings.

Let's look at smell as another example. There's a good reason for a bias in smell, as the smell of rotten food for example is generally something that causes a reaction of rejection. This goes back to the evolution of the sense, which was based on the need to survive and, well, identify food which was not fit for consumption.

You can get USED to smelling rotten food, but it'll take working against that bias built into the sense and the instinct it calls to.

But sound? Surely, a loud persistent buzzing noise is more annoying than directly repulsive as rotten meat is to your nose. It becomes very, VERY difficult to talk about bias in the ear that isn't directly related to actual ear damage safeguards ("that's too loud!")

Partially, the main difficulty is that sound is much more open to interpretation and influence of context, and such other factors, than something that causes X or Y reaction built into the sense other than the one mentioned above.

Which is why the food example clearly does not apply to music. It's comparing very different senses, built entirely in different ways for different purposes.