Is existence absurd and superflous?

[GrowingSmaller]

Again: "The Picasso has aestetic value in my eyes" is true if I find it aesthetically pleasing. This just means that it is pleasing and interesting to me when I look at it. It need not be a property of the picture when no one is looking, or to everyone, in order for this to be true.

And "The spanner has value as a tool if I want to tighten the bolt" is true if I want to tighten the bolt and the spanner is the right size.

These things are facts.

Calling them "values" as opposed to facts sounds absurd. "'The spanner has value' is not a fact but a value." Wa?

Saying they are opinions is a bit weak, or can be misleading. Its not my "opinion" that the spanner has value, it actually does. It is useful, and therefore valueable (to me when I want to tighten those nuts and bolts). The value of the spanner in this context is not a matter of "mere opinion", it is a fact. Likewise, if I want to be pleased and interested when I look, then the Picasso is the 'tool' for me. It gets the job done, but in that artistic rather than the practical sense. It has aesthetic value to me at least, even if everyone else is turned off. If I say "It is my opinion that it is a great work of art, even if you disagree", which is a valid use of English, this in no way implies that the value it actually has for me is somehow not a fact. In fact, it is a fact, and it's that fact (having aesthetic value to me, turning me on, having power to "tighten my nuts and bolts" as it were) that causes me to express the opinion.

 

[quatona]

Again: "The Picasso has aestetic value in my eyes" is true if I find it aesthetically pleasing. This just means that it is pleasing and interesting to me when I look at it. It need not be a property of the picture when no one is looking, or to everyone, in order for this to be true.

Of course, the more straightforward and accurate way (i.e. without making the actual object appear as the subject) of wording this would be "I value the Picasso aesthetically."
No matter how you word it: It tells me something about you and your state of mind, not about the Picasso. (But as long as you add "in my eyes" your wording may be a bit clumsy but at least not misleading.)

 

[GrowingSmaller]

Of course, the more straightforward and accurate way (i.e. without making the actual object appear as the subject) of wording this would be "I value the Picasso aesthetically."
No matter how you word it: It tells me something about you and your state of mind, not about the Picasso. (But as long as you add "in my eyes" your wording may be a bit clumsy but at least not misleading.)

Would you also want to say that gold does not have monetary value, but instead people value it monetarily? What is the relevant difference, the statements are usually thought to imply or be logically equivalent to one another in any case at least amongst rational well informed people. You seem to want to say that the only property an object can have is an objective (mind independent) property, such that functional properties and culturally utilised properties etc are all reduced entirely to mind games.

What would you say to the statement "in nearly all imaginable chess scenarios, the queen is a more valuable piece than a pawn". Is that a statement about my state of mind, or what? I know that I must have a mind in order to make that evaluation of the queen, but it also reflects hard facts about the game. She is valuable, which value IMO is an emergent property of the mind-rules-board-pieces-opponent system. The fact that the queen is valuable says something not only about my mind, but also the game I am playing. And anyone who says, in the context of a game of course, that the general rule queen-better-than-pawn is merely "opinion" does not understand the game.

But even if the aestetic value, and the value of the queen in the game is "in my mind" or "in our minds" it still is. The value still has place as part of reality. If it is, it has being, and is therefore part of reality, and therefore it is a fact: as the dictionary puts it "a thing that is indisputably the case."

Just like pain, or qualia of colour, sound, loudness, brightness etc are also real phenomena but are in some way "in our heads", they are facts we have to live with, and aesthetic value -I argue- is no different to loudness or brighness in that respect. And just like we have to obey the highway code or get hurt, the queen has value in a game of chess. And indisputable knowing and using the highway code has value in the game of life, for ordinary Westerners anyway.

Perhaps, a little like a young Wittgenstein, you think that all this talk of >> "value" << is unwarranted philosophically speaking and should, like God, be eliminated from all sensible reality based communication?

 

[GrowingSmaller]

Compare "This car has value as a mode of transportation" with "This picture has value as something to look at".

 

[sandwiches]

IIRC Sartre the existentialist said that existence was absurd and superflous.

It is absurd because ultimately there is no reason for it to be here.

It is superflouus because being contingent, it is more than is necessary.

I think that whilst existence may seem absurd we can give it, or at least ourselves and our experience of life, a reason for being e.g. to enjoy ourselves. This seems at least to be a "final cause" for continued existence. We have radical freedom in this respect, and can choose so many objectives, although we have to live and learn.

As for being "superflous" I can't think of a counter to that except that life becomes necessary if we want to enjoy it etc.

I think the questions are inapplicable to life. Because it simply is. For something to be absurd or superflous, it must be compared to something that's expected or desired.

 

[quatona]

Compare "This car has value as a mode of transportation" with "This picture has value as something to look at".

I see a lot of significant differences - don´t you?

 

[quatona]

Please answer me the following question:

You and I stand in front of a Picasso. You find it beautiful and precious, I find it ugly, uninspiring and worthless.
What value does the Picasso have? And what does this tell us in regards to the question where this value (these values?) is located?

 

[GrowingSmaller]

Please answer me the following question:

You and I stand in front of a Picasso. You find it beautiful and precious, I find it ugly, uninspiring and worthless.
What value does the Picasso have?

It has value relative to the subject, rather than an absolute and unconditional value for all. But it still has the value, if we are going to use ordinary English.

And what does this tell us in regards to the question where this value (these values?) is located?

IIRC that quote from the philosophy encyclopedia said that value is the property of an object that makes it interesting, useful or desirable. It would seem going by that definition that the object has such properties.


But back to your question, I am not sure what it tells us about the "location of the value". What if I show one person many pictures, and we have a range of evaluations. Would that prove the value is "in" the pictures not the person? But as I said in post 23 paragraph 3:

"But even if the aestetic value, and the value of the queen in the game is "in my mind" or "in our minds" it still is. The value still has place as part of reality. If it is, it has being, and is therefore part of reality, and therefore it is a fact: as the dictionary puts it "a thing that is indisputably the case.""

If value indisputably exists it is a fact, even if the value s "in my mind". Impying that subjectivism entails non-factualism seems to me to fail.

 

[GrowingSmaller]

Quatona you seem to want a war of attrition on aesthetic value.

I would like you to address the "value of the queen in chess" paragraph I wrote earlier (paragraph 2 post 23). Also would you answer the question about whether the the fact value distinction is an ontological distinction (facts on the one hand, values on the other) and if this is the case, what is it to be a "non-factual entity"?

 

[GrowingSmaller]

I see a lot of significant differences - don´t you?

Would you say that the value of the car is "in the mind", and that it is a "matter of opinion" that a car is more valuable as a mode of transportation than is a stationary boulder.

 

[brinny]

IIRC Sartre the existentialist said that existence was absurd and superflous.

It is absurd because ultimately there is no reason for it to be here.

It is superflouus because being contingent, it is more than is necessary.

I think that whilst existence may seem absurd we can give it, or at least ourselves and our experience of life, a reason for being e.g. to enjoy ourselves. This seems at least to be a "final cause" for continued existence. We have radical freedom in this respect, and can choose so many objectives, although we have to live and learn.

As for being "superflous" I can't think of a counter to that except that life becomes necessary if we want to enjoy it etc.

Hmmmm.....thinkin' about what you posted, and it kinda' makes ya wonder:

Is there a difference between "existence" and "living"?

 

[GrowingSmaller]

Hmmmm.....thinkin' about what you posted, and it kinda' makes ya wonder:

Is there a difference between "existence" and "living"?

Yes, depending on your philosophy I suppose. Take scientific realism. If "existence" is what is real, then existence (planets, stars etc) preceded life on earth, and human life, by billions of years at least.

 

[GrowingSmaller]

I think the questions are inapplicable to life. Because it simply is. For something to be absurd or superflous, it must be compared to something that's expected or desired.

I disagree. If it is absurd then there is no reason for it, it is not rational. O maybe it needs to be irrartional, rather than merely non-rational. But anyway the truth of whether existence is rational or not is logically independent of our desires. So whatever our desires are, the truth remains the same.