What makes some art good?

Consider this state of affairs: Higher price 'makes wine more enjoyable'

January 15, 2008 - 3:31PM
Source: ABC

The wine study is the first to show that marketing has a direct effect on the brain (File photo). Photo: AFP

The more wine costs, the more people enjoy it - regardless of how it tastes, a study by researchers in the United States has found.

Researchers at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and the California Institute of Technology found that because people expect wines that cost more to be of higher quality, they trick themselves into believing the wines provide a more pleasurable experience than less expensive ones.

Their study, published on Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, says expectations of quality trigger activity in the medial orbitofrontal cortex, the part of the brain that registers pleasure.

This happens even though the part of our brain that interprets taste is not affected.

The researchers say that “when 20 adult test subjects sampled the same wine at different prices, they reported experiencing pleasure at significantly greater levels when told the wine cost more.”

Is that strange or what?  Here you thought you had discriminating taste buds when, if the truth be known, your brain is modulated by the price of your purchase.  Your expectations dismiss or fog up your critical evaluation.

Now here is the stinger. Chances are ‘expectations of quality’ is not limited to wine tasting.  It will emerge whenever you rely on others to determine the quality of what you purchase or admire.  In other words the price tag reflects quality.  We all knew this didn’t we?

No doubt the appreciation of art is also susceptible to the marketing gurus who inflate both the quality and price of art works.  If the price is appreciable the quality of the painting is enhanced.  Consequently this work is the finest of the fine.

                                                    

This is  No, 5  (1948) by Jackson Pollock  which sold in 2006 for US140 million dollars. This work must reek of quality.  Forget about Velazquez’s Las Meninas or Vermeer’s view of the Delft this is the supremo work.  This brings up another problem for art lovers.  Chances are Las Meninas or the Delft which are now owned by museums, will never be sold so the price they would fetch will never be known.   To describe them as priceless undermines the quality seekers whose brains need a price to fully activate their pleasure neurons.

                                                           

Second in priceful quality is this work by Gustav Klimt; it's Adele Bloch-Bauer and sold for 135 million in 2006.  Doesn’t this just tickle your fancy?  

But anything governed by neurons and synapses of the brain must have a down side.  After all not every day is a great day for art lovers.  A Japanese collector purchased Vincent van Gogh’s Portrait of Dr. Gachet in 1990 for 82.5 million. 

                                                           

It has since been sold for a little over 10 million.  Whoops, it has lost something of its quality. Obviously the collector suffered an expensive bout of the black dog and his investment waned. 

So there you have it, your brain makes decisions of quality for you.  All you have to do is insert the price and your neurons do the rest.  It is not unusual for persons to describe a work as good because it gives them pleasure but when you have a bad day don’t expect your art work to give you a little pick-me-up. It has no color in the dark and no quality when your brain is shroud in a cloud.

Launt Thompson
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?field-keywords=Launt+Thompson&url=search-alias%3Daps&x=16&y=9

Looking at the Mona Lisa in the Dark

If you’re not busy take a minute to consider these thoughts. I found a book the other day that was full of questions. It’s got more questions in it than a ten year old’s homework.  You know the kind I mean; questions like that hoary chestnut; ‘if a tree falls in the woods and there is no one about to hear it, does it make a sound?’  That’s an easy one.  The falling tree creates sound waves that vibrate in the air. If the tree was on the moon where there is no air that would be a different story. 

Here’s another one; ‘is a painting (lets say it’s da Vinci’s Mona Lisa that just happened to fall off the back of a truck) that you keep hidden in the darkest recesses of your cellar where no one can see it, a work of art?’  Now that’s a tricky question.  Do works of visual art exist in the dark?  I once saw a painting by a Russian by the name of Kasimir Malevich that was just large Black Square.  Wasn’t much to see. 

                                                                                

It wouldn’t matter much if that was in the dark but what about the Mona Lisa?  Who dares say it is not a work of art in the dark?  

                                                                            

Here’s a curious thing, visual works of art need light.  Painters often choose to work where they can use the sunlight for their painting because sunlight contains the full spectrum of colors. A few years back a fella by the name of Isaac Newton did an experiment.  He used a prism to reflect sunlight into a spectrum of colors and showed that all our colors exist in white sunlight.  Smart boy, I reckon.    

                                                                        

It’s strange when you think about it.  All our colors exist in white sunlight.  You’d think that some of the colors would dirty up the others but they don’t.   This is because individual colors are expressed as wave lengths which are a particular kind of electromagnetic energy.  The human eye can only perceive light wave lengths between 400 and 700 millimicrons.

Not only did Newton use a prism to show a continuous band of color from red through orange, yellow, green, blue to violet, he collected these waves by using a converging lens and projected a white light again.  Now you can’t do that with paint.  You can’t mix red, orange, yellow, green, blue and violet pigments and get white. Why do you suppose that is?  Here’s the surprising thing.  There’s no color in pigments.  Wait a minute, that can’t be right.  If there’s no color in pigments, there’s no color in paintings.  What’s going on here?

I’ll see if I can explain.  You see that nice new red car sitting in your drive.  The one you just washed.  Why do you suppose we see it as red?  We see it as red because the molecular constitution of its surface absorbs all light rays but those of red.  The red wave length in the sunlight is reflected back at us.  The car does not have color in itself; light generates the color.  Color arises in the human eye and brain.

Painters are often concerned about how their works are hung in galleries and Museums because they want their work to be seen in the proper light.  While light globes cannot project the full spectrum of sunlight they come close.  Halogen lights and incandescent lights are the most common.  Fluorescent lights, while energy saving, are unsatisfactory because they project a limited spectrum.

So what about the Mona Lisa sitting in the dark; is it a work of art?  Well, if being a work of art has something to do with the colors the pigments reflect then the Mona Lisa is not a work of art in the dark.

Launt Thompson

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?field-keywords=Launt+Thompson&url=search-alias%3Daps&x=16&y=9

A Rhino On The Nose

                                

“Faced with sensory evidence of a charging rhino, it’s virtually impossible not to believe that a rhino is charging“.”

So states a contributor to a recently published book designed to answer those everyday questions Homo sapiens rarely ask. Sensory evidence is what you and I would call seeing the rhino, hearing it and smelling its droppings which we have inadvertently stepped in.

It may come as a surprise to discover that the statement is incorrect.  No doubt the contributor feels comfortable with his statement because the so-called impossibility is described as virtual rather than actual; an impossibility that is not actually impossible.  Is it any wonder philosophers have a reputation for saying things they don’t mean and meaning things they don’t say?  Do you suppose the contributor wants us to understand that faced with such evidence we must believe that a rhino is charging?   If so the statement is false.

Believing is not a difficult concept to unpack as long as we remember that believing something is the case is not the same as knowing it is the case.  If you take a moment to describe what is before you, say on the table or desk you will be obliged to admit that if you described what you saw then you believed what you described else why describe it that way?  This is what is meant when we say seeing is believing but notice you have not been asked to verify the truth of your beliefs.  You may have looked at a letter opener and mistakenly described it as a dagger.  Macbeth had a similar problem.  Is this a dagger before me or am I expecting mail?  In your case you believe it is a dagger.

How do you suppose we learned to believe anything?   (see Myths that Misinform the Philosophy of Art in this blog.)  Philosophers often remind us that we cannot believe something we cannot think but the inverse is also the case.  We can believe anything we can think.  The contributor I spoke of earlier believes in virtual impossibilities but he is mistaken.  What, if like our contributor, I am mistaken.  I have never seen a rhino and know nothing of its existence.  I saw a drawing of an elephant once and here is what I believe to be an elephant with a hardened nose bearing down on me.  My belief is mistaken because my language use is not applicable.  Nevertheless I’m convinced so it must be possible not to believe that a rhino is charging even though I am faced with sensory evidence of the rhino.  Think on’t  and I’ll catchya later.

Launt Thompson

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?field-keywords=Launt+Thompson&url=search-alias%3Daps&x=16&y=9

The Humpty Dumpty Effect.

“But ‘glory’ doesn’t mean ‘a nice knock-

 down argument,’” Alice objected.

“When I use a word”, Humpty Dumpty

 said, in rather a scornful tone,

“it means just what I choose it to

 mean – neither more nor less”.

“The question is”, said Alice,

“whether you can make words mean

 so many different things”.

“The question is”, said Humpty Dumpty,

“which is to be master –that’s all”.

          Lewis Caroll Through the Looking-Glass 

Humpty Dumpty is making an error that is common among those who misunderstand the role of language in our lives.  He is forgetting that language functions to allow communication between two or more people. Each must have a means of determining the other’s meaning else the notion of communication would be shallow.  Each must also have a means of determining the other’s mistakes or misuse of language.  The capacity of the latter is a necessary condition of the former.  These two factors contribute to what the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein calls the public criteria condition of language use.

What Wittgenstein means by ‘public’ is that the criteria for correct language use are open to discovery by anyone who chooses to look.  While we may hold ‘personal’ opinions as regards the meanings of our expressions, what we mean can never be private (only knowable by us).  ‘Meaning’ is part of the communicative act and must be discoverable.

Implicit in Humpty Dumpty’s argument is the view that our ideas or meanings are nonlinguistic and are more or less formulated in our mind; we think of something and then we shop around in our vocabulary to find suitable words to express our thoughts.  This is what has come to be known as ‘the private language argument’.  Humpty Dumpty holds that ‘what he means’ is different and distinct from the symbols that are the expression of his meaning.

Have you ever encountered someone who has insisted they were trying to express an idea before their mind but they hadn’t quite got a hold of it?  What they are suggesting is that what they are trying to express is already expressed, only in a different language; they have the idea in their head but they need to translate from the mental into the verbal language.  Such people believe that ‘thinking’ is one thing and language use is a different thing entirely.  Unknowingly, they are suffering from the Humpty Dumpty effect.

There’s an old joke about the gentleman who walks into a doctor’s office and exclaims: “I want to be castrated.”  The doctor, somewhat shocked, counseled the man suggesting that his request was somewhat extreme but the man was adamant.  “If you won’t do it, I’ll find someone else, I have to be castrated.” he insisted.  Finally the doctor relented.  The operation was performed and the man slowly regained consciousness in the recovery room.  Looking around, he saw another, much younger, patient in the bed next to him who had also regained consciousness. Feeling somewhat self- satisfied and curious about his younger roommate’s affliction he casually asked: “And what are you in here for?”  “Oh, I’ve been circumcised.” came the reply. Alarmed, the elder patient exclaimed: “That’s the WORD!”

Have you ever been in a situation where you are groping for a word?  Several words are suggested and you reject them.  Finally one is proposed and you say: “That’s what I meant!”  If Humpty Dumpty’s argument was correct we would never be in a position where we need to ‘grope’ for a word – as ‘any old word’ would serve.  More to the point our elder patient cannot argue that he didn’t mean what he said, rather he didn’t say what he should have.  If he said he wanted to be castrated he meant he wanted to be castrated.  How else could the doctor understand his statement?  It may well be that he expected a different outcome from his operation but his expectation is not the meaning of his statement.  It is not a case of our patient not saying what he meant. Rather, it is a case of our patient realizing he did not wish to mean what he meant.

What this example brings home to us is that we think in language but there are not such things as meanings going through our minds in addition to our language.  The language is itself the vehicle of thought.  Our ability to use language is correlate with our ability to think and what we lack in language ability we lack in thinking ability.

Launt Thompson
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?field-keywords=Launt+Thompson&url=search-alias%3Daps&x=16&y=9

Arresting the Art Attack.

If I didn’t know better I could be persuaded that aestheticians were mutating into philistines. For example Roger Kimball exclaims:

“The idea that art should serve as a source—perhaps the primary source—of spiritual sustenance in a secular age is a Romantic notion that continues to resonate powerfully. It helps to explain, for example, the special aura that attaches to art and artists, permitting such poseurs as Andres Serrano, Bruce Nauman, and Gilbert & George to be accounted artists by otherwise sane persons”[i]

It’s official. There is a special aura that attaches to art and artists and Serrano, Nauman and Gilbert and George have usurped this aura. I never realized that artists were so powerful. Next we’ll discover that artists can cure warts. Most of the artists who made the world’s great art are now deceased. I wonder if is documented anywhere that persons were able to see their aura. Are Rembrandt, Goya or Monet able to capture their own aura?


Such myths are the stock in trade of philistines; those who are indifferent to the artistic achievements of artists. Kimball, of course, seems to consider himself an aesthetician for he is adamant that beauty holds a supreme place in art. 

“This much, I think, is clear: Without an allegiance to beauty, art degenerates into a caricature of itself; it is beauty that animates aesthetic experience, making it so seductive; but aesthetic experience itself degenerates into a kind of fetish or idol if it is held up as an end in itself, untested by the rest of life.” [i]

 

I’m inclined to want to test the argument that artists are beauty makers. Has Rembrandt created a caricature with his Slaughtered Ox or is Caravaggio’s Judith beheading Holferines a caricature. I find I can call these works

artistically pleasing though not particularly attractive which seems to me to be the sine qua non of beauty. But contrary to Kimball I find Serrano’s Piss Christ and his White

Christ attractive as well as artistically pleasing. It is clear that Kimball uses the term ‘art’ honorifically. 

  

“ Calling something a work of art endows it with a nimbus of value; the same is true of religious.”

 

We can take it from Kimball that beauty is the nimbus of value that allows us to call a work art.  Consequently any work he deems not beautiful is simply not art.  There is no such a thing as bad art in Kimball’s world.  There is art and there are works that are affectations passing themselves off as art; poseurs. Kimball exposes the Achilles heel of aesthetics.  The discipline of aesthetics offers no means of depreciating art works.  A work is either art or not art. A work has either attained perfection or it is a different species incompatible with art.  In Kimball’s world there is no such a thing as an ugly work of art.   Jean Dubuffet’s Art Brut cannot be art.

 

 

But of course cave art is acclaimed by all to be art and nary a complaint about cave artists being poseurs is heard. The problem with Kimball’s argument is that he doesn’t depreciate the works he loathes as artistic events; he doesn’t discuss how they fail as artistic works. Rather he bemoans the fact that he cannot exercise his aesthetic impulse with them. But his actual chosen enemy is those critics who indulge “in a process of spurious aggrandizement” of what he believes to be “mediocre works”.[i] But Kimball doesn’t understand that his approach to art is inartistic. He criticizes his opponents as interlopers.

“More precisely, they poach upon the authority of art in order to pursue an entirely non-artistic agenda.  Their interest in art is ulterior, not aesthetic.”[ii]

As Kimball only has an aesthetic interest he, too, poaches upon the authority of art to promote a non-artistic agenda. Artistic concerns are only relevant as he happens to recognize their effect on his aesthetic concerns. The integrity of a work based on the materials the artist uses, the techniques and methods applied, the style of the work and how it suits its subject matter is not a concern for this aesthetician. He doesn’t want to think about art, he wants to feel it. But, of course, the only thing he can feel is the echo of his maudlin response to an art work.

Launt Thompson

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?field-keywords=Launt+Thompson&url=search-alias%3Daps&x=16&y=9

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[i] Kimball,   Roger, The End of Art , in First Things The Journal of Religion, Culture and Public life, June/July 2008  http://www.firstthings.com/article.php3?id_article=6228

[i] Ibid.

[i] Kimball, Roger, The Rape of the Masters, Encounter Books, San Francisco,2004 pp9.

[ii] Kimball, Roger 2004. pp 12.

Talking to the Animals

Strangely, language has always fascinated me.  It began when I was sixteen when I discovered I was speaking in sentences and realized I didn’t know what a sentence was.  Perhaps that was why I was never a successful student. I was convinced High School English classes were a foreign language and pretty useless as I was sure I would never go to England. 

Language is still a mystery; it is the beginning and the end of our world.  What we know of the world we only know as language.  Did that thought ever cross your mind?  It’s really scary when you think about it; only humans have language.  A well known philosopher said that if a Lion could talk we would not be able to understand it.  I realize that some cat lovers and dog lovers might take issue with the statement but the point he was making was that animals and humans are so physiologically different that our experiences of the world would share little that was common.   Our language has evolved as a result of our experiences of the world as we physically and psychologically evolved.  We might describe a dog as angry (anthropomorphism) but never remorseful.

Someone is bound to interject with: ‘Hey, wait a minute, what about those monkeys that talk with sign language?’  Well, what about them?  The evidence is not convincing.  Well-meaning enthusiasts insist Koko the gorilla knows 2000 words but her adopted mother and teacher Dr. Penny Patterson credits her with 500 words. Of course Dr. Patterson seems to be the only one to interpret Koko’s finger wagging.  On April 27^th, 1998 AOL conducted a Live Internet Chat with Koko the gorilla.  If you would like a giggle, Google it.  Critics suggest that Koko’s so-called language acquisition is a mixture of operant conditioning and a form of digital ventriloquism.  Perhaps that’s a little unkind but there is little hard evidence to support Koko’s glowing reviews. 

On the other hand the journal of Science has reported on the work of Marc D. Hauser, professor of psychology at Harvard and W. Tecumseh Fitch of the University of St. Andrews in Scotland.  It seems their research demonstrates that nonhuman primates are unable to grasp a fundamental grammatical component used in all human languages.  Score one point for Noam Chomsky.

Koko has been reared as one would rear a child but now she is more than 30 years old and weighs 300 pounds.  Imagine if she had a vocabulary of say 12000 to 15000 words comparable to that of a high school student.  Would she have rights?   I think we would have to conclude she was an autonomous speaker. If so, would it be morally wrong for her to be locked in a cage?  If she wished her freedom could we deny it on the grounds that she was in some way non-human?  If she brushed up on Australian Values could she gain citizenship?  Would we be obliged to give her the right to vote if she demonstrated a preference for one party over another?  Are some animals more equal than others? 

Launt Thompson
 http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?field-keywords=Launt+Thompson&url=search-alias%3Daps&x=16&y=9

Sorry Ernest, the Sun Doesn't Rise.

In Tom Stoppard’s Jumpers the leading character tells a story about a famous philosopher who asked the question:

“Why do people always say it was natural for men to assume the sun went round the earth?” 

The answer is obvious, right?  It just looks as if the sun is going around the earth. But then I began to think about it.  What would it look like if the earth was rotating?  It would look just the same so why did men suppose it was the sun that was moving?

We still do it don’t we?  We still say the sun rises in the east, crosses overhead and sets in the West but it doesn’t.  Are we lying to ourselves? Hemingway got his idea from the first chapter of Ecclesiastes.  Does the Old Testament need a rewrite?  Why don’t we say the east horizon turns toward the sun in the morning and the west horizon turns away from the sun in the evening?  Instead of saying that ‘dawn breaks’ we could say that ‘the sun’s rays leak past the horizon’, which may well be a truer description of the world.

Is it curious that people should deliberately harbor an illusion to satisfy an aesthetic impulse?  We deliberately hold a false belief about the reality of the situation which psychologists would describe as holding an illusion.   I guess it is not as hard to believe things we know are not true as some would have us think. 

When we say the sun is setting we are employing a convention which is an agreement among members of a society to describe the world in a particular way.  Indeed, all our descriptions of the world are conventions.  It is our descriptions of the world, our conventions, that create our reality.  Our reality doesn’t have to consist of true descriptions.  Many will be true but a number will be false but the latter should not be a cause for concern.  A child playing with mud pies and putting them into a wooden crate calling it an oven is creating a convention for herself and her playmates.

While false beliefs are not components of knowledge they can become stepping stones toward knowledge.  False beliefs often provide us with entertainment and stimulate our capacity for imaginative experiences.  Most of us have had the experience of fighting back tears while sitting in a crowded cinema.  We accept the film as an example of our world.  We know that Stuart Little is a cartoon but convention allows us to fear for his safety and silently rejoice when all ends well. After all we’re human aren’t we?

Launt Thompson

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?field-keywords=Launt+Thompson&url=search-alias%3Daps&x=16&y=9

Myths that misinform the Philosophy of Art.

The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein believed the task of philosophy was to show the fly the way out of the bottle.  

Flies buzzing around in a bottle is an apt image of the entrapment philosophers of aesthetics experience when attempting to unpack what goes on in art.  More often than not their problems relate to beliefs or practices long held reliable but never questioned.  Consequently long complicated theories are produced attempting to explain how  people respond to art works. 

For example, Kendall L. Walton[1], in an attempt to circumvent the principle that we are obliged to believe what we know, rejuvenates the notion of make-believe to explain emotional reactions to fiction. 

For Walton make-believe is not actually a case of believing.  Rather it is something that children do regularly and adults do when confronted with fiction.  Walton asserts:

“Participants in a game of mud pies may decide to recognize a principle to the effect that whenever there is a gob of mud in a certain orange crate, it is “true in the game of make-believe,” i.e., it is fictional, that there is a pie in the oven.  This fictional truth is a make-believe one.”[2]

Walton intends this description to be an explanation of what make-believing is describing it as a game.  He goes on to assert that “Principles of make-believe that are in force in a game need not have been formulated explicitly or deliberately adopted.”

Walton has just flown into the bottle and the notion of ‘make-believe’ is the illusion that will keep him there. Walton is correct to describe the children’s creation of mud pies a game but it is not a make-believe one.

The notion of ‘make-believe’ has a long history.   In part, it became popular as a result of trying to explain how it is that children can seemingly believe that a gob of mud is a pie when they know it isn’t.  For Walton it is how an audience can, during the experience of a play, feel flashes of pity, joy, admiration, fear or what have you.

But believing that a gob of mud is a pie is no different than believing that the sun rises and sets everyday. (See: Sorry, Ernest, The Sun Doesn’t Rise in this blog) It is a convention of our language use.  All conventions are language conventions. But of course Walton, would hold that it is incorrect to say ‘believing that a gob of mud’ etc. and there are many who would support him in this. He would insist we must say “make-believing that a gob of mud’…and so on.

There are several myths implicit in Walton’s argument and we mention them only to point out that they create a web of bewitchment.  Myths such as ‘reality is a fixed state of affairs’ and ‘illusion is a false thing’.  Also ‘acting is pretense’ and ‘a convention is a type of behavior’ rather than a description in language, to name a few.   Belief in one myth entraps the believer into swallowing down a host of others.

There are two ways to demonstrate the fallacy of Walton’s argument.  The first is to accept the children are playing a game.  Games are rule governed (Walton describes them as principles) and rule determined.  There is a rule that tells us when the game is over. In this children’s game it is an ad hoc rule that comes into play when they tire or become bored with it or when an adult calls them to dinner or some such.  Walton holds that the game is a fiction and as such is not something the children actually believe.  But all games that develop a story-line are fictional.  If there are rules to the game then we are obliged to believe (not make-believe) the rules apply.  There’s nothing fictional about following rules.

Is it the case that Walton believes that children who play a game of mud pies are in some way insincere?  If the children were insincere then they would be disbelieving the rules apply.  Disbelieving the rules is not playing the game.  Walton must have something else in mind.  Make-believe must be some type of pseudo believing and not actually believing.  But what type of believing is this?  Walton cannot be thinking of pretense for all pretenses are insincere.

Walton holds that when children follow the rules and say there is a pie in the oven it is a fictional truth and this fictional truth is a make-believe truth.  What ever is fictional is make-believe for Walton.  If we have fictional truths then it must be the case that we could also, at times, have fictional falsehoods but what would a fictional falsehood look like?  In actual fact what Walton describes as a fictional truth is a rule that governs the game and this rule cannot be make-believe.  There is an inherent contradiction here.

Walton’s problem is that he doesn’t question what it is we are doing when we believe.  How do you suppose we learned to believe anything? When did we start believing?

I think it would be difficult to argue that believing took place before we learnt language.  By the same token once we had become accomplished with using language believing was well and truly established.  There seems little doubt that believing is an attitude that is a necessary condition for acquiring language.

A child who points to a stove and produces a sound that we take to be ‘burn’ verifies her language use, her beliefs by her behavior which elicits a response which sustains or corrects that behavior. The believing behavior of the child demonstrates her conviction.

It seems pretty safe to say that for the child believing is a conviction that the language she is using is correct.  Not true or false but correct. The stove may be disconnected or not in use but as the child is learning language her behavior is supported because the truth or falsity of the statement does not come into play. We learn to believe before we learn statements to be true or false. We learn to believe when learning language.

All believing entails conviction.  No conviction no believing.  Walton might suggest that Make-believe means that the children are playing without conviction but this will not do for their behavior would demonstrate this.  We have seen children play these games with honest sincerity and conviction.

Make-believing has to be an attitude much as believing is an attitude but unlike believing, make-believing has no antonym.  We cannot take on an attitude of make-disbelieving.  There is good reason to believe that ‘make-believe’ is a grammatical red herring.

There is a long held philosophical axiom that states that in order demonstrate that you know something to be the case (have knowledge of) you must believe it.  Knowledge entails belief.  It is a contradiction to say: “I know the earth is round but I don’t believe it.”  If you don’t believe it then you cannot claim to have that knowledge.  In Walton’s example the child would say: “I know this to be an orange crate but I believe it to be an oven.”  Walton and many others would see this as irrational and not wishing to create an example where the children could be described as irrational he has conjured up the notion of ‘make believe’.  He insists the children don’t actually believe the orange crate is an oven rather they make-believe it is an oven.  Walton’s solution is a common one but it is mistaken.

It is no more of a contradiction to believe an orange crate is an oven than it is to believe an orange crate is a toy box (a box for storing toys) or a bookcase.  We might wish to argue that it is a poor oven whereas it is a good toy box and an adequate bookcase but this is a different argument.  The children are not disbelieving and saying ‘I know this is an orange crate but I don’t believe it.’  Quite the contrary, they believe that as an orange crate it will make quite an adequate oven just as we believe it will make a toy box or bookcase.

No doubt some people will bring forth that hoary old chestnut insisting the children do not believe the orange crate is an oven but they suspend their disbelief but this also will not work.

The ‘willing suspension of disbelief’ is a term coined in the nineteenth century by S. T. Coleridge as a refutation of the positivists’ attack on poetic truth.  It was soon adopted by theatre enthusiasts to relieve them of the criticism that it was ‘irrational’ to believe the falsehoods of the stage to be true.

But what the ‘willing suspension of disbelief’ means is ‘I believe’.  It functions much like the remark: “I promise not to read the previous sentence.” Belief entails conviction and disbelief means a belief in a contrary proposition.  There is no in-between attitude here. If we suspend disbelief we obliged to believe. We have no choice.  

Launt Thompson

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[1] Kendall L. Walton, “Fearing Fictions” Journal of Philosophy, 75:1 (January 1978), pp. 5-27. also published in  Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art, ed. Peter Lamarque and Stein Haugom Olson,  Blackwell Publishing, 4^th Edition, 2006, pp. 307.

[2] Ibid.,pp 310.