Hi Jonathan and Squad
Istarted this one on Thursday night but I was too knackered to do it well, so I'm having
another go tonight (friday).
On 25 Feb 99, at 4:48, Jonathan B. Marder wrote:
> > Over in the unmoderated discussion, Horse wrote:-
> > I've got one 9 year old boy and two one year old twin girls - eek!
>
> They aren't by any chance IDENTICAL twins are they?
I'm not sure if they are genetically identical (monozygotic) as the placenta was never
analyzed. They certainly look alike enough to confuse most people but that's not good
enough really to support a reasonable argument or to draw any worthwhile conclusions.
This is one of the reasons that I haven't brought it up as any comparisons I make would be
uncertain. I would also probably get very gooey and waffle on for ages about their
wonderful attributes, which would please me no end but bore the pants off everyone else.
If they are identical then it is only in a very superficial physiological way as their
personalities are very different.
> On 25 Feb 99, Horse wrote:-
> >Unless I am mistaken the value which you refer to is the
> >value relationship
> >which exists between the copied Mona Lisa and myself (or whoever is
> >looking at it) - at
> >least that's the angle I'll take on it.
>
>
> I'm glad that you liked the question. Your answer makes it clear that the
> value goes way beyond the physical structure of the picture itself. Some
> people value UNIQUENESS, which by definition cannot be copied:-)
> For some, the connection with the original artist and his creative
> activity confers great value.
But by the above criteria that you give, wouldn't the copy be unique in its own way. What
if we called the copy a tribute or a celebration or some such and the copy had been
produced by another equally creative and well-known artist. It certainly alters the
emphasis of the appreciation and hence changes the nature of the copied paintings value.
> Let me suggest an example which may be rather different -
> your great-grandfather's pocket watch. Here, the main value
> may really be in the connection with HIM - the fact that that
> very same watch sat for years in his pocket. No copy can ever
> replicate that value.
Yes, I agree. The watch is a means of evoking memories. When I take the watch and look at
it, the watch is a trigger for some means of memory recollection. The watch posseses no
means in itself to produce these memories but the interaction between myself and the
watch can do so. I think that exactly the same response would occur if I looked at an
identical copy where I am unaware that it is a copy.
In the same way that if I was confronted with an identical copy of a person, if I am
unaware that it is not the 'original' and the copy/clone behaved in pretty much the same
way then my relationship with the copy would probably be identical to that with the
original. As has been discussed, the physical body is constantly regenerating and
changing and so is never the 'original' from one moment to the next. Even the personality
can change but we still know that it is the same person Surely this is at the root of how we
identify and evaluate another person. Not just by their physical attributes but by more
subtle additional attributes which are as much part of ourselves as they are with others.
> OTOH, maybe you could be tricked into unknowingly accepting
> a copy as the original. When years later, you learn of
> the error, would the "copy" suddenly become worthless, or
> would it now have some special value of its own?
I'm not sure. I was given my father's watch shortly after he died and it evoked all sorts of
memories. Not because of his wearing of the watch but because it was, as far as I know,
the watch that belonged to him. I suppose it would depend on the initial relationship
between myself and my (great-grand)father. After a while the watch is no more than a
symbol - if it was ever anything else - and the memories alter, whereas initially there is a
stronger relationship due to the person to person relationship, the 'freshness' of the
memories etc. and not due purely to the watch. As in Pirsigs music analogy, the watch
hasn't changed - I and many other related associations have changed over time. The watch
is static value, myself and the relationships are part of a dynamic process.
> [snip]
> >The value relationship exists between myself and the painting not
> >in the painting or in me. (Actually there may be a difference in that I
> >would be considering
> >something other than just the painting, but the basic idea doesn't
> >change)
>
>
> That last parenthetical statement is intriguing. Is "just the painting"
> the objective part and "something other" a subjective part?
I was thinking more that if there were two identical Mona Lisa's in front of me I would be
doing something other than appreciating the the artistic value of the paintings. Looking for
obvious differences, wondering who the other artist might be, thinking of tests to find out
which was the original and which the copy etc., much as I might do if I walked into a room
to be confronted by two identical persons when I had been previously unaware of a
second 'twin'. But the next part of your post provides for a different slant.
> How do we
> classify the history of the painting, its uniqueness, the celebrity value
> of the artist? I can absolutely and "objectively" state that the Mona Lisa
> was painted in the seventeenth century (or whatever), that the artist was
> almost certainly Leonardo da Vinci, famous for many other art works and
> designs, that there are no known additional productions of the Mona Lisa
> by the original artist, and that it has an insured value of XXXX. There is
> absolutely no lab test which can be performed on the painting itself that
> can verify any of these "facts".
> Thus there is no self-defining object to be objective about, but a
> series of values which
> involve all sorts of external interactions. The "object" would seem to
> be an emergent
> property of these values.
I think I would see it the other way around. If there were no physical painting then what is
the focus of the interaction. The response to the painting is due to the relationship
between myself (and/or others) and the painting and possibly due to a whole host of other
factors. But it is the physical object from which the other factors arise or emerge. If there is
no object then there will be a history but nothing to be unique. If you destroy the painting
what happens to the other values.
I completely agree that additional to the painting there are a number of non-physical
values that become associated with the painting. It may be these non-physical attributes
and associations that create the 'art value' (as with the 'person value'), but I can't see that
they create the object. It is more likely to be the art that is created.
Hopefully I haven't misinterprted what you say but if I have then please expand further.
Horse
"Making history, it turned out, was quite easy.
It was what got written down.
It was as simple as that!"
Sir Sam Vimes.
MOQ Online - http://www.moq.org
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