Bob Dylan, Nobel Laureate. Really?
The Nobel Academy can pick whoever they damn well please, of course. And there's nothing about that their choices the make them the last word. I was surprised they picked Dylan.
I like early Dylan. His early songs are the only lyrics I know. "Are song lyrics the equivalent of poetry?" the New York Times asked. Aren't song lyrics always poetry, even if the lyrics are very bad, or very obscure, or very vulgar, or very pedestrian, or very, very whatever?
This line, "And don't speak too soon for the wheel's still in spin", has the density of meaning one would expect from significant poetry. Don't read your fortune yet because 'The wheel' [of fortune] 'is still in spin' is a very sophisticated construction -- it sounds like "stilling spin", a rearrangement of "still spinning". That isn't the in the text, of course, just the way it sounds.
The line it is drawn
The curse it is cast
The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
The order is rapidly fadin’
And the first one now will later be last
For the times they are a-changin’
Sure, that's poetry -- and perfectly fine poetry at that.
But the Nobel... I wouldn't have voted for him getting it, much as I like his early stuff. The problem is not in the quality of the lyrics. The problem is in the genre: Dylan wouldn't have become rich and famous standing up in coffee houses reciting his poetry. Nobody else has in America, why would he?
Dylan, like all great song writers/singers, writes material and sets it to music. It's real art -- it just doesn't happen to be in one of the 5 categories the Nobel traditionally makes awards in. There have been and are many great lyricists; maybe the Nobel Foundation should add that to its award categories.
I like early Dylan. His early songs are the only lyrics I know. "Are song lyrics the equivalent of poetry?" the New York Times asked. Aren't song lyrics always poetry, even if the lyrics are very bad, or very obscure, or very vulgar, or very pedestrian, or very, very whatever?
This line, "And don't speak too soon for the wheel's still in spin", has the density of meaning one would expect from significant poetry. Don't read your fortune yet because 'The wheel' [of fortune] 'is still in spin' is a very sophisticated construction -- it sounds like "stilling spin", a rearrangement of "still spinning". That isn't the in the text, of course, just the way it sounds.
The line it is drawn
The curse it is cast
The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
The order is rapidly fadin’
And the first one now will later be last
For the times they are a-changin’
Sure, that's poetry -- and perfectly fine poetry at that.
But the Nobel... I wouldn't have voted for him getting it, much as I like his early stuff. The problem is not in the quality of the lyrics. The problem is in the genre: Dylan wouldn't have become rich and famous standing up in coffee houses reciting his poetry. Nobody else has in America, why would he?
Dylan, like all great song writers/singers, writes material and sets it to music. It's real art -- it just doesn't happen to be in one of the 5 categories the Nobel traditionally makes awards in. There have been and are many great lyricists; maybe the Nobel Foundation should add that to its award categories.
Comments (102)
I guess you have to ask what makes poetry Nobel worthy versus just perfectly fine poetry. I am partial to his lyrics here:
My eyes collide head-on with stuffed
Graveyards, false gods, I scuff
At pettiness which plays so rough
Walk upside-down inside handcuffs
Kick my legs to crash it off
Say okay, I have had enough, what else can you show me?
And of course the first three "stanzas" of that song (poem?) are iconic:
Darkness at the break of noon
Shadows even the silver spoon
The handmade blade, the child’s balloon
Eclipses both the sun and moon
To understand you know too soon
There is no sense in trying
Pointed threats, they bluff with scorn
Suicide remarks are torn
From the fool’s gold mouthpiece the hollow horn
Plays wasted words, proves to warn
That he not busy being born is busy dying
Temptation’s page flies out the door
You follow, find yourself at war
Watch waterfalls of pity roar
You feel to moan but unlike before
You discover that you’d just be one more
Person crying
'There must be some kind of way out of here'
Said the joker to the thief
'There's too much confusion
I can't get no relief
Businessmen, they drink my wine
Plowmen dig my earth
None of them along the line
Know what any of it is worth'
'No reason to get excited'
The thief he kindly spoke
'For there are many here among us
Who think that life is but a joke
But you and I, we've been through that
And this is not our fate
So let us stop talking falsely now
The hour is getting late....'
Overall, I think it's a pretty strange choice for the committee, even though I can see Dylan's importance in the cultural history of the 20th C.
It isn't the words themselves which are remarkable, although it is good poetry, it is the performance, performance art. Some of the most highly regarded poets are enjoyed reading out their own poetry as performance art, Dylan Thomas comes to mind, or T S Elliot. It is the atmosphere, the mood that is created, a living interactive performance.
For me most of Dylan's poetry is lacking in depth and subtlety, it's mostly facile and forced. If you want compare him with other singer/ songwriters, I would say both Leonard Cohen and Jim Morrison are far better as poets than Dylan. But none of them compare, as poets, to the best of the poets of the mid to late 20th Century. There was a rumor a couple or three years ago that he was being considered for the Nobel Prize. I thought it was a joke then, and was convinced it had been when nothing came of it. If it is true that he will be awarded the prize then I think it's a joke now, too; only in a different sense.
:-}
Opinion of Bob Dylan is divided for cultural reasons which occurred at the time of his rise in the folk movement. But for whatever reasons he became, or was perceived as, the most influential artist in music in the late 20th century, this cannot be denied.
Compare and contrast Dylan's The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll and Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath.
Regarding Dylan, I'm not sure he's a poet per se, but he's credited with generally elevating popular music to another level. Dylan's music did everything from protesting wars to advocating for civil rights to meaningfully describing the human experience, which was a far advancement of the doo wop era of 50s music. Surely Dylan wasn't the first to do this, but he was one of, if not the most, important person to do that. Why he's being giving the award now is odd, considering his best days are behind him and this appears more to be a lifetime achievement award than in something he's done currently. It might be that those on the Nobel committee are old hippies who now have the authority to promote their favorite son.
Jim Morrison, while on my avatar, is no Dylan. While Dylan represented a headiness and a change in the mindset of American culture, Morrison represented excess and carpe diem ("I woke up this morning and got myself a beer. The future's uncertain and the end is always near."). I'm a huge (and I mean huge) Doors fan, but Dylan runs circles around Morrison any day.
Why be surprised that Dylan received it when they did not?
Right, but neither was the prize in economics, which is sponsored by a bank, not Alfred Nobel's will.
He may not have the greatest singing voice but his musicianship has never been in doubt.
One line, out of one song, out of context? Really? There is plenty of his poetry online for you to read if you are interested.
It's always going to be a matter of taste anyway; although as Kant points out regarding aesthetic judgement, we don't really believe it is merely a matter of taste.
Jim Morrison published at least one book of his poetry (as did Leonard Cohen), did Dylan? His poetry is far better than his song lyrics. Song lyrics generally do not hold up as poetry, anyway. Arguably Dylan was the better songwriter. He also has had a much longer career. But did he publish poetry as poetry? If not, then what was Dylan awarded the prize for?
Sure, but I thought this category of the Nobel Prize was for Literature, not for prophecy or songwriting. I'm not saying that Morrison should have been awarded the prize. It should have gone to a real poet/ writer.
Well, and then we'll try to guess what he thinks as he continually revises it.
So you've read CofJ then?
Aesthetics was one of my areas of specialization, so yeah.
Great, then you should be able to concisely summarize Kant's explanation of how and why we think aesthetic judgements are universal and say why and how you disagree with his argument.
It seems that they have created a category tailor made for Dylan then. I mean under that criterion Dylan isn't merely the best, or doesn't merely stand out amongst a small number of competitors, he would be literally the only candidate.
You appear to be equating skill with an instrument with musicianship. This is a mistake.
There's not much point saying, on a philosphy forum, that you disagree with some philosopher on some issue, if you're not prepared to argue in support of your disagreement.
Even if I were to agree with that, presenting it with attitude as if you're looking for a response to an exam probably isn't coextensive with presenting an argument against something.
But at any rate, why would you feel that it requires an argument to say that it's not true for onself that one doesn't really believe it is merely a matter of taste? You don't believe that would be a simple matter of reporting one's beliefs/dispositions?
Also, I hate meta stuff where people lecture others about how they should communicate. I'm probably not going to respond well to that, just fyi.
If you are claiming is that just for you it's not true that you think aesthetics "is (not?) merely a matter of taste" then sure that requires no argument. But it's also not relevant to Kant's claim which was about people in general, or the general nature of aesthetic judgements. One exception, or even a few exceptions, does not refute Kant's claim and is hence not of any interest.
Kant says we don't really believe that aesthetic judgements are matters of taste. I don't agree with him because I do really believe that aesthetic judgements are matters of taste. The statement is therefore false if it is claiming to be a universal truth or trivial if it's merely claiming that there are some people for whom it is true. This does not require argument, it is self-evident.
Kant is saying that if you understand yourself to be merely expressing your opinion about or response to a work of art or nature in the form of "I like it" and nothing more than that, then you should not take yourself to be expressing an aesthetic judgement at all.
I don't feel that aesthetic judgments are not merely matters of taste.
Certainly there are people who do feel that aesthetic judgments are not merely matters of taste.
Who knows what the number of people would be on each side of that? The only way to know that would be to do a survey.
Man in the Long Black Coat
Bob Dylan
Crickets are chirpin' the water is high
There's a soft cotton dress on the line hangin' dry
Window wide open African trees
Bent over backwards from a hurricane breeze
Not a word of goodbye not even a note
She gone with the man in the long black coat.
Somebody seen him hangin' around
As the old dance hall on the outskirts of town
He looked into her eyes when she stopped him to ask
If he wanted to dance he had a face like a mask
Somebody said from the bible he'd quote
There was dust on the man in the long black coat.
Preacher was talking there's a sermon he gave
He said every man's conscience is vile and depraved
You cannot depend on it to be your guide
When it's you who must keep it satisfied
It ain't easy to swallow it sticks in the throat
She gave her heart to the man in the long black coat.
There are no mistakes in life some people say
It is true sometimes you can see it that way
But people don't live or die people just float
She went with the man in the long black coat.
There's smoke on the water it's been there since June
Tree trunks uprooted beneath the high crescent moon
Feel the pulse and vibration and the rumbling force
Somebody is out there beating on a dead horse
She never said nothing there was nothing she wrote
She gone with the man in the long black coat.
The fable of the 60s was personified by Morrison and his music, but he is dwarfed by Dylan in talent, rigor, intelligence, and significance.
That's one way of looking at it I suppose. I agree that Morrison wasn't much of a poet. But Dylan wasn't a poet at all, he was just a song-writer.So insofar as he at least wrote some poetry Morrison is a better poet than Dylan. Cohen is a far better poet again; he is actually a good poet in his own right in my book.
I agree with you that Dylan dwarfs Morrison in talent, if you mean talent as a songwriter. And i agree that he dwarfs Morrison in terms of sgnificance, if by that you mean influence. As for the "rigor and intelligence"; that's empty rhetoric. Sure you can say Dylan wasn't stupid enough to totally fuck himself and his life with drugs and alcohol, but Dylan was also lucky to be at the right places at the right times with the right formulas for success, and perhaps not to have had the extreme psychological issues Morrison did.
Have you ever read Dylan's Memoir Chronicles?
"We recorded "Man in the Long Black Coat" and a peculiar change crept over the appearance of things. I had a feeling about it and so did he. The chord progression, the dominant chords and key changes give it the hypnotic effect right away--signal what the lyrics are about to do. The dread intro give you the impression of a chronic rush. The production sounds deserted, like the intervals of the city have disappeared. It is cut out from the abyss of blackness--visions of a maddened brain, a feeling of unreality--the heavy price of gold upon someone's head. Nothing standing, even corruption is corrupt. Something menacing and terrible. The some came nearer and nearer--crowding itself into the smallest possible place...the lyrics try to tell you about someone whose body doesn't belong to him. Someone who loved his life but cannot live...In some weird way, I thought of it as my "I Walk the Line".
Actually it's Dylan's response to an old Scottish Ballad https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Daemon_Lover. In the old ballad the wife takes off with the devil and leave her husband dangling.
I like this cover by Steve Hackett, it seems to follow Dylan's description, with a great, hypnotic guitar lead.
https://youtu.be/6aCXgFdUhbk
I'm just reading Suze Rotolo's memoir of the Freewheelin' Dylan, very acute on the shift in personality visited upon him by fame and Albert Grossman.
Dylan talks about first meeting Suze Rotolo:
"She was the most erotic thing I'd ever seen. She was fair skinned and golden haired, full-blooded Italian. The air was suddenly filled with banana leaves. We started talking and my head started to spin. Cupid's arrow had whistled by my ears before, but this time it hit me in the heart and the weight of it dragged me overboard. Suze was seventeen years old, from the East Coast. Had grown up in Queens, raised in a left-wing family. Her father worked in a factory and had recently died. She was involved in the New York art scene, painted and made drawings for various publications, worked in graphic design and in Off Broadway theatrical productions, also worked on civil rights committees--she could do a lot of things. Meeting her was like stepping in the tales of 1,001 Arabian nights. She had a smile that could light up a street full of people and was extremely lively, had a particular type of voluptuousness--a Rodin sculpture come to life. She reminded me of a libertine heroine. She was just my type."
Is her book good?
I'm not sure how you think saying the same thing a different way gives it more justification. If Kant is making an imperative out of an opinion as yuour use of 'should' suggests he is doubly mistaken.
That is such a silly distinction. Is Robert Burns not a poet then? Much of his work that we now read as poetry was originally song writing (far more in fact than most modern readers are even aware). What about the poetry that was later used in lieder, in oratorio, and cantata. Has that somehow become not poetry now we've discovered how well it suits performance to music? Are Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience somehow diminished by association with the song form?
There's no difference between an enterainer who plays an instrument and other sorts of performers who play instruments whose work is made public.
Anyway, aesthetic assessments are subjective. There aren't right answers re whether Dylan or Morrison is better, or any good at all, etc.
The Nobel Peace Prize was always politicized in my opinion. Al Gore won the prize for Chrissakes - granted, I commend his work exposing anthropogenic climate change, but I was never clear on what that had to do with peace. On the other end of the political spectrum, I'm also not clear on why, for instance, Mother Theresa won the prize: nothing she did helped to promote peace, as far as I can tell.
But I agree about Obama: he didn't deserve the prize (which is no criticism of him: the vast majority of people, politicians or not, don't deserve the prize), and I don't think it was something which he sought for himself or believed himself worthy of. Regardless, as you say, he was a war president. How could he not be? He had Bush's messes to clean up.
(Suze Rotolo) Yes I think it is good. She seems to look back without any rancour or awe, with indeed, memories of love, and it's a differently-angled insight into how things were 1960 to 66.
Mother Theresa was an extremely insightful choice. The old bag tended to the dying on the streets of Calcutta and founded an order of nuns. Had she instead become a general, given her sandblasting personality, we would have had nothing but war, war, war, war, war.
Bob Dylan sings, plays guitar and plays harmonica. He can also play bass and keyboards. That makes him a musician.
Nice one.
Seems irrelevant. I haven't said that something that works as a song thereby necessarily cannot work as poetry. I have said that I don't think Dylan's lyrics, which work great in conjunction with his music, in his songs, work very well as stand-alone poetry.
I don't think that saying it again gives it more justification: I think it was already amply justified. I just thought that saying it again might allow you to understand what I was saying better.
I'll say it again, without significantly changing its meaning, to dispel your worries about the use of "should".
Kant is saying that if you understand yourself to be merely expressing your opinion about or response to a work of art or nature in the form of "I like it" and nothing more than that, then would be mistaken to take yourself to be expressing an aesthetic judgement at all.
Which I read as saying that something of Everest's stature hardly needs a medal to bolster it. The medal pales in comparison--it's more of an honor for the medal than the recipient.
This is incorrect, it just a matter of clearing up category errors. If you say "I Iike Bob Dylan's music" that is not the same as to say "Bob Dylan' music is great" because a mere declaration of liking something simply does not constitute an aesthetic judgement.
The problem seems to be that people think that if an aesthetic judgement is to be something more than merely subjective in the sense of "I like" or "I do not like" then it must somehow be objectively true. I think this is a mistake due to dualistic, objectivist thinking. The truths of aesthetic judgement are the truths of the spirit, the truths of life; and thus they go beyond the merely subjective ambit of opinion; but that does not mean they can be objectified, or determined as objective truths.
Dylan's greatness in his genre of one is more than merely a subjective opinion, just as the stature of Everest is; I agree with that. What I don't agree with is that he should receive an award for poetry or literature or that a special category should be constructed simply to justify giving him the award. The thing is that Dylan has literally no competition within the definition that Wayfarer dug up earlier, because he is the only one who seems to consciously see himself as continuing and building upon the legacy of Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger and Hank Williams ("the great American song tradition") :
Quoting Wayfarer
At least there are many other mountains that are near the stature of Everest.
And I still don't agree that he created significant poetic expressions, but rather just great songs, within that specific genre.
If there were a Nobel category for music, then I think it would be fine to award the prize to Bob Dylan. Or now, if a special category has been created, then they should continue it, and award the Nobel Prize to other musicians, for their contributions to culture, as well.
But he has been awarded for Literature. and that just aint right!
If only it weren't incorrect that what I said was incorrect.
Some of us disagree that "Bob Dylan's music is great" doesn't amount to--"functionally" or noumenally amount to that is--either "I like/endorse/prefer Bob Dylan's music" ("Yay Bob Dylan") or "I like/endorse/prefer such and such which I believe is related to Bob Dylan's music in a particular way" ("Yay x where x has something to do with, or is an upshot of, or is related to, etc. Bob Dylan's music").
The claim that it's a category error, that "a mere declaration does not constitute . . ." IS the "no true Scotsman," " false metal" part. One is simply saying--again, functionally, not necessarily literally--that one is going to refuse to consider "Yay Bob Dylan" and "Yay x," per se, to be aesthetic judgments.
Quoting John
Which of course is dubious to those of us who believe that "spirit" is nonsense, basically, and re "truths of life," we'd need to clarify just what it is we're talking about in ontological terms.
The greatness of anything is never "more than" merely a subjective opinion. ("More than" is in quotation marks because there's always a connotation from "your side" of this debate that there's something inadequate or inferior etc. with subjectivity. As if it's not good enough for something to be subjective.)
The stature of Everest isn't "more than" merely a subjective opinion, either, if by "stature" we're referring to any sort of value judgment.
Your comments about the subjectivity of aesthetic evaluation go only so far. Obviously Dylan is better than me and I'm better than a 5 year old. While it certainly has a subjective component, there are clearly some objective agreed upon criteria, else the category itself would make no sense. If we can declare certain BBQ and certain beers superior and even the best, surely I can meaningfully say Dylan is superior to Morrison.
I made it clear that your use of should made Kant doubly mistaken. Now you've removed it it simply returns it to being singly mistaken.
A blue plaque on your London home!
Well, they go as far as making value judgments goes.
Quoting Hanover
Aka mistaking strong emotions, strongly held judgments and/or popular sentiments for objectivity. A common mistake, unfortunately, but a mistake nonetheless.
Quoting Hanover
There are no objective criteria. "Objective" doesn't refer to agreement. That confusion occurs because people take agreement to be an upshot of something being objective. And saying that agreement gives weight to something being true or correct is an argumentum ad populum.
Quoting Hanover
Of course you can declare anything to be superior or the best, but there's nothing objective about those judgements.
To say that you like something is not an aesthetic judgement, it is a statement about your feelings. To say that something is beautiful or great or a work of genius is to (implicitly at least) claim that it is so, and that it is not merely your arbitrary opinion that it is so simply because you happen to like it.
This is as plain as day to me, but if you can't see it then I don't believe any further argument will help.
The greatness of anything is never objectively determinable and that is what leads you to think mistakenly that it is merely a matter of subjective opinion. Can it be merely a matter of subjective opinion that Shakespeare's works are much greater literary works than Mills and Boon?
Such things are truths of the human spirit, as I said before, and truths of the human spirit are not determinable, but are self-evident to those with the education, the subtlety and the will to see them.
The size of Everest (it's stature or status as the tallest mountain) is not merely a matter of subjective opinion.
Yes. Of course that would be a subjective assessment. It would even be a subjective assessment that Shakespeare's works are greater than your five-year-old's stories.
Is "the human spirit" something independent of individual humans in your view? If so, where does it exist?
Sure, we agree on that. It's just that that isn't any sort of value judgment.
Quoting John
Which is what aesthetic judgments are--statements about one's feelings/preferences.
After all, surely you are [I]not[/i] saying that "Shakespeare's works are better than Mills & Boon" is not a statement of your feelings/preferences (that is, you do feel that Shakespeare is better/you do prefer Shakespeare), and surely you're not saying that it's not the feelings/preferences of many other people, especially people that you consider to be well-educated with respect to literature. It's just that you're saying that it's something additional to that, something that all those people's feelings/preferences can match or can fail to match as the case may be. But the claim that it's something additional to the feelings/preferences of the people who have that opinion requires some evidence beyond the fact that people strongly feel that way, beyond the fact that a lot of people, even a vast majority, feel that way, and beyond the fact that people believe that it's not just the feelings/preferences of people.
Quoting John
In the opinion of cognitivists. That is, in the opinion of people who believe that aesthetic judgments (can) have truth values. Of course they're going to interpret aesthetic judgments that way. But cognitivists are mistaken.
Quoting John
No one is saying either of those things:
We're not saying that anyone's opinions are arbitrary with a connotation of randomness or whim.
And we're not saying that one's opinions make anything so (make anything true) aside from making it true that the opinion is the person in question's opinion.
Well, actually ... its status as the tallest mountain is disputable as there is at least one challenger in the form of Mauna Kea so there is a subjective judgement involved. There is no doubt that the peak of Everest is the highest piece of land in the world but that's a different criterion.
To claim that it is so, yes. But claiming something to be true doesn't make it so!
Quoting John
But that is exactly what it is. Of course that opinion may be informed by cultural and social factors. It may be entirely learned or even coerced (by peer pressure for example) but none of that makes it any less arbitrary. Any examination of the history of art or music makes that obvious. It explains why pure landscape painting is virtually unknown until the 19th Century in Europe but had been the foremost artistic expression in China for centuries. It explains why Van Gogh 'sold' only one painting in his lifetime and compositions by Bartok and Beethoven were described as the most painful experiences of their critic's lives. Shakespeare was widely considered a hack for at least a century after his death. And Philistines are now considered one of the most culturally advanced civilisations of their time!
There simply is no 'ugly' thing that nobody claims beautiful nor 'beautiful' that someone does not claim repellent. The aesthetic status of any object or experience is a relative not an absolute truth. When I say "Isn't that beautiful?" it is wholly an expression of opinion that is neither right nor wrong except for me and me alone. While it may be considered to be a correct or incorrect judgement by a cultural elite or society at large there is no absolute standard by which it is measured (something which the commissioners of art in all its forms would do well to remember). It cannot be tested in the way that mathematics is.
But yeah, what terms like "tallest" refer to is of course subjective.
Of course, the thing about claims is we believe they must be true or false. The understanding of the nature of aesthetic judgements falls into seeing them as subjective on account of the fact that aesthetic claims cannot be objectively demonstrated. But as I have said the truth or falsity of aesthetic judgements is not subjective or objective truth or falsity; it is spiritual truth or falsity; and spiritual truth or falsity cannot be demonstrated, but can only be seen.
The reason I say that mere subjective like or dislike of something cannot be an aesthetic judgement is because a judgement must be capable of being right or wrong; and purely subjective 'judgements' cannot be right or wrong; they just are what they are; propositional statements about what I like or dislike. and hence they cannot be rightly be thought to be judgements at all.
No, you've just offered an impossible definition of objective, which implies a view from nowhere, where there is no viewpoint of the observer. Unless you're willing to dispense with the entire enterprise of offering awards for literature because at some point the award will represent only the viewpoints of somebody (whoever that may be), then you've got to accept at some level that one artist is better than the other.
If you believe that a 3 year old's babble is as artistic as Dylan's, I do think there is adequate basis for saying that you are wrong. If not, then why not award the 3 year old?
If you know then there's no need to tell you, and if you don' t then there's no point.
Wos is right; it is that which gives life. That"s what we award great artists for (or should) their gifts of life.
Descartes knew that form was distinct from content, and that the overwhelming vast majority fallacies were informal, as logic is easy, but people don't know what words mean. He might mean something different, and perfectly coherent, but if his intention is to link the word to its literal meaning, then that's what it is.
I actually didn't offer a definition of objective (in the post you're quoting or in this thread.)
The way that I define "objective," if I were to define it, doesn't suggest "a view from nowhere." (Since there is no such thing, but I do believe there are objective things.)
What on Earth would give you the impression that I think that we shouldn't bother with something just in case it's someone's viewpoint?
It wouldn't be a matter of belief. It would be a matter of someone feeling that way. Belief would be about whether one thinks some fact obtains. There are no facts with what we're talking about however.
And ironically, there you would be wrong.
Isn't it obvious that people award the stuff they prefer?
Well, "that which gives life" is biological processes. For one, how would it be the case that biological processes do not denote subjectivity?
I don't know what that means. We reward them for somehow gifting biological processes? (Procreating do you mean?)
Descartes would be wrong there. So he wouldn't know that, because it wouldn't be a true belief.
How do I draw a tiger than without utilizing it's flesh and bones? What part of a tiger necessarily goes into the representation of it?
Though your rebuttal of "nope, nope" is quite sophisticated.
Anyway, the "how do I draw a tiger" question is a bit mysterious. I'd say, "However you want to draw a tiger." Nothing is necessary there if we're talking about something like drawing a tiger (at least sans qualifications/more context).
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2016/oct/22/bob-dylan-criticised-as-impolite-and-arrogant-by-nobel-academy-member
The announcement was posted up on his web site several days after the award was announced, but then taken down shortly thereafter. He is just not communicating with them, and they are peeved by it.
Sartre refused the award, but Dylan is the first one to not respond (at least thus far).
As far as I know, he did not ask to be placed in contention for the prize, and I see no reason why he has to respect their award.
(although he could ask them to give it to charity)