The Arts (Art)

by George Jelliss , Crewe, Wednesday, October 01, 2008, 11:12 (5896 days ago) @ BBella

Mark wrote: I don't see how it is possible to give any account of the arts without speaking of transcendence: the human spirit reaching for something beyond, searching for meaning. I'm not saying that art is or should be necessarily religious, but that the artistic impulse and the sense of the divine are linked. - Turner Prize 2008: Is this "transcendent" or "searching for meaning" or kitsch rubbish? - http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/visual_arts/article48... - Mark cites Chesterton: "The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head that splits." - Ha-ha. A neat inversion but a cheap point. As both a logician and a poet - though both admittedly in a very minor way - I disprove this thesis. - Mark claims: Consciousness presents an even bigger problem to science. 
Carl echoes: Consciousness is the great mystery that may never be solved by science. Mark is right that science has no real prospects for explanation at this time. - I find all this mysticism or fetishism about "consciousness", even from philosophers like Daniel Dennett, completely overblown. There is no great mystery about it. It is just a function of our complex nervous systems in combination with our senses through which we gain awareness of our environment, and ultimately awareness of our selves as selves. - Even Carl it seems can't get his mind free of the god-fog, he concludes: Much of what we think of as created, such as galaxies, solar systems, planets and life is really emergent rather than created. Perhaps God is emergent. 
BBella takes up the theme: It seems to me that God could be considered the most basic commonality in all that is; change. - For God's sake! God is only a metaphor. Because we know of craftsmen creating watches or furniture or engines we think the Universe has to have an artificer. It's only a convenient way of thinking. Just because you've got this "god" idea in your brains doesn't mean there must be something out there that is that god. Frankly you all seem me to be getting more and more desperate to imbue your fantasy with some meaning, no matter what meaning.