Reality and Incompleteness
A sense of reality requires incompleteness. Think of a painting of a garden path. If you experience a suspension of disbelief and follow the path, a sense of reality is conveyed by the idea that something is beyond our sight. The more I focus on the fact that the scene is actually complete, that there is nothing beyond that bend in the path, the more that feeling of reality is dispelled.
Other obvious examples are dreams, novels, and plays. Breaking the fourth wall creates a reality-breakdown. To what extent is this same aesthetic in force in regard to what we think of as the real world?
Other obvious examples are dreams, novels, and plays. Breaking the fourth wall creates a reality-breakdown. To what extent is this same aesthetic in force in regard to what we think of as the real world?
Comments (23)
Made me think of this:
Another thought. Not sure if relevant. I carry a model of the world around in my mind. If I unfocus my eyes, I can see it. A cloud that contains everythng - noodles, quarks, nebulae, love. When something new comes along, I hold it up against the model and see how it fits. This is a metaphorical process and model I'm describing. But real. For me, it's that model that fills in the world beyond what the painting shows.
I agree with T Clark. In the context of artistic expression, I find the most believable, and therefore engaging, forms of art are the ones that suggest there is something beyond what the artist directly shows. A good story is one that takes place in a consistent universe. That consistency is best portrayed by a fully realised, or complete, world. For example, I like A Game Of Thrones because the world it takes place in feels complete and consistent with its own set of physical, social, political and even magical laws. Because the story is told from the perspective of its characters the audience does not see all of this but can "paint" a complete picture thanks to the consistency of its laws.
Abeit, A Game Of Thrones isn't 100% consistent with laws in the latest episodes. But that, I feel, aids my point. When the world isn't consistent, the shows drama and my enjoyment of it suffers.
I was writing about how what is going on in a representation - painting, story - has to match the model I carry around with me in order for it to work. You took that further - it is the creator's responsibility to provide her own world/model that I can buy into if she wants me to be involved. And the two worlds - hers and mine - have to be connected, compatible, although not necessarily consistent e.g. if gravity works differently, there'd better be a reason. You don't have to tell me the reason, but I have to trust you enough to believe there is one.
And yes, as I get older I am less and less willing to put up with inconsistencies in my stories. I want people to behave like people behave, even if they aren't people. Unless there's a reason, whether or not I understand it. The great thing about NetFlix is you can watch for 10 minutes and say "screw this." Problem is, being persnickety means I end up with nothing to watch. Why, when I was a boy.......!
Indeed. Consistent probably isn't the most suited term, but our points are the same. In order for an artistic expression to be believable, or real, we need to have an understanding of the wider world it is a part of. We need to believe there is something beyond the path, even if we never experience it.
Of course, subverting this notion can be just as rewarding. As the OP points out, breaking the forth walk and other abstract concepts like it can be just as engaging. However, these exceptions prove the rule. Sometimes an expression is engaging because it is not believable, as it is with stories like Deadpool and abstract art.
So an expectation of completion is part of the background of Game of Thrones. We assume that a full map and history could be constructed if the information was available. But in the foreground, the view is incomplete.
Right, the model is complete or completable. It's just the subjective view that has to be limited.
I don't know of any examples of incompleteness in reality (by which I assume you mean the physical world). In mathematics sure, but the reason for Incompleteness there has to do with how expressive the theory is. Don't know what the physical analogue for that is.
Could you explain what expressiveness is to a lay-person?
No, it's not the expectation of completeness. More the illusion of it. The artist convinces us their world is complete because the characters conform to the laws of that world.
Speaking of garden paths, when I studied abroad in Austria, I had an experience of the kind you describe when viewing the following painting by Monet at the Belvedere:
For a moment, I felt I was on the path and inside its world. It seemed to me that, ironically, the non-realism of the piece made it all the more realistic, in the sense of inducing a suspension of disbelief and conveying something real beyond the painting itself. Life, I find, is a lot like the haze and fuzziness of an impressionistic painting most of the time.
Philosophically speaking, I agree with Schopenhauer that the genuine aesthetic experience transports one to reality at a higher pitch - that is, to the realm of the Platonic Ideas - which has a clarifying effect that cannot be put into words.
Our phenomenal reality is never complete we are always adding what we know to what we see, but we rarely suspend our belief in what is manifest to us in the world.
The suspension of disbelief is a different. We know what we are looking at a mimesis but we want to experience it as if it were real, we want the work to be real and our imagination allows us to do this, to enter and experience the work.
There are different theories about how this is done, Diderot thought that a painting ought to present its characterizations as a separate world quite aside from us, and this view monopolized the art world for over a century, until Manet's painting Olympia, where the subject of the paining overtly confronts the viewer.
This is what my last paragraph was about.
How a painting can grab you:
Here is The Death of Socrates, which was done by Jacques Louis David (French, Paris 1748–1825). The painting is its own little world and the observer puts together a piece of history. So according to Diderot the aesthetic effect, the grab here is the story the painting is tells.
Manet's Painting of Olympia is vastly different. Olympia boldly confronts the viewer, an commands attention but the painting is not just about her brash pose. The black maid presenting the bouquet adds to the story, and the black cat structurally balances the painting plus adds an air of mystery . It grabbed its viewers back in 1863.
Both paintings grab the observer, each in its own manner. Phenomenal realty also grabs but quite unintentionally and most of the time without any cogent need to be read into, just simply experienced.
To the extent that Wittgenstein is not a philosopher.
We think in pictures, as in complete picture, one shot at a time. This is a problem of certainty and determinism.
Well, depending on what you mean by "everything", many do not accept that a theory for everything is possible. If the theory is supposed to explain everything in every field of learning, then I'd suggest that's just a pipe dream. If it's just supposed to explain fundamental physics, that's probably possible.
I'll give it a try! So what mathematicians discovered back in the 30s was this. If your formal (logical or mathematical) theory or language contain certain features, then that theory will let you validly construct a paradoxical sentence, one that ends in a contradiction. The classic Liar Paradox, essentially. So if you're using a language or a logic, even natural languages, which can create self-referenial sentences and which contain the concept of truth, you can make:
This sentence is false.
Which when explores ends up being both true and false at the same time; a contradiction that falls right out of basic logical principles. So what Kurt Godel (and also technically Tarski) proved was that if your language/logic contained these 2 features (self-reference and truth), it will be contradictory. The only way to avoid this is to limit the expressive power of the language, meaning you restrict how you can apply truth to sentences or you discharge or otherwise modify self-reference. This inherently limits what can be proved in mathematics if you want to stay consistent. If you're consistent, many things in math will be unprovable, but if you want complete provability then you'll end up proving the truth of some contradictions.
As it turned out, the entire thing is a mine field, and it's arguably defensible to embrace the contradiction to see the interesting theories that can result from accepting certain contradictions as true (Paraconsistent mathematics/paraconsistent logic)! Or not. It's fun anyway. Somewhat similar to your 4th wall break, actually.
This was more of a random thought. Probably just me being silly, I grant.
"if we construe the grammar of the expression of sensation on the model of 'object and designation' the object drops out of consideration as irrelevant." L.W
This nominalistic equivocation of names with particular experiences produces an aesthetic of superficiality similar to your picture of the garden-path leading nowhere and is in contrast with our actual use of names, in which names are representative of [I]roles[/I] played by particulars within a language game.
As you hinted, the aesthetic depth of a name corresponds to an appreciation of the role referred to by the name , i.e. to the name's [I]potential[/I] use.
Hopefully no one here will claim that all of Reality is knowable, discussable, describable. If he does, then ask him if he really believes that words can completely describe everything.
If he persists in that belief, remind him that no finite dictionary can non-circularly define any of its words.
Michael Ossipoff