How do I defeat the taste is subjective and good or bad taste doesn't exist meme

How do I defeat the taste is subjective and good or bad taste doesn't exist meme

my friend reads nothing but harry potter and twilight books and tells me it isn't that different taste wise from Don Quixote or The Trial.

Literary taste is neither "objective" nor frivolous like a favourite colour. It's an extension of one's values.

Trying to convince a shit tasted person that their opinions are not in fact good but shitty and dumb is usually an exercise in futility

Personal enjoyment and emotional resonance is subjective and arguing about that can get you nowhere.

Whether something has important historical value or has a masterful use of literary techniques can definitely be argued based on evidence and reasoning.

I despise relativism in all its forms. Some art is objectively better than others and if anyone disagrees, take a shit on the floor and proclaim that it has more value than the Mona Lisa. They can't disagree with you then.

>my friend reads nothing but harry potter and twilight books and tells me it isn't that different taste wise from Don Quixote or The Trial.
I'd ask them something like

Why do you think they are the same
Can you name a book that reflects bad taste
How is twilight different from that book, what makes it better
What does it mean to have good taste in literature

And interweave my opinions on what makes literature worth reading, what we can hope for in good literature and what's lacking in bad literature

If I had friends

It is entirely subjective, retard.

>Some art is objectively better than others

Justify that statement.

it's very simple

"I like these books and I'm better than you. Therefore, the books I like are better than the books you like."

I don't believe that's true. That's why I believe my mornings shits are equally or more valuable than the Mona Lisa and nobody can tell me I'm wrong.

maybe, but your beliefs don't matter because you're insignificant

Someone gets it.

>maybe

Good. Just as long as you concede the mere possibility that my morning shit is just as valuable as the Mona Lisa I'm happy.

i don't, the "maybe" was purely rhetorical

It isnt a meme, it's epistemologically correct.

Read john Dewey's "art as experience" though if you want to convince your friend that there is art that they can enjoy more than twilight etc

Nice slajov though

So are you saying that there's an objective standard that you can point to that says my morning shit is not less valuable than the Mona Lisa?

Kek.

i'm saying i don't care in the slightest about you or the contents of your intestines, regardless of what rhetorical flourish you choose to dress them in

Do values not have an aesthetic aspect to thm though?

Look at the relativist squirm. If he admits that my morning shit is not as valuable as the Mona Lisa then he is tacitly admitting that there's an objective standard, but if he continues to lie to himself and say that my morning shit could be as valuable as the Mona Lisa he makes himself feel like an ass because that's obviously a stupid thing to believe.

tell him that harry potter & twilight are objectively superior to quixote and kafka.

i'm not a relativist, friendo, i just think you're autistic and don't want to waste my time arguing with you

Can objectivity exist without God?

I don't think so.

When it comes down to it, no. This is why atheists despise the idea of objectivity. There is not truth or lie, good or bad, ugly or beautiful. Everything is ultimately meaningless.

fpbp

Poor atheists btfo

Many professional philosophers think so.

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this debate arises because most people are unable to identify the backbone of all art, which is at its heart is the arrangement of certain 'artistic building blocks' in clever, novel ways. the exact identity of these blocks differs based on the specific art form. in instrumental music, the clearest illustration, it's pattern-making using the lateral and transverse arrangement of frequencies with tonal variations. in fine literature, the primary building blocks are plot (change; the protagonist's desires and the complexity of the path by which they fulfil them), characterisation (the interestingness of characters; their interactions; the expression of their 'character' across the changes in the plot), and wordplay (puns, metaphors, exactitude, emotionally-evocative words, grammatical complexity); in addition, there are several smaller blocks such as psychological insights (e.g. Proust's famous tangents), topicality (e.g. post-9/11 stories about it), moral edification (e.g. Orwell's illustrating the dangers of totalitarianism), the pleasures of experiencing and learning something new (Melville's Moby Dick; a different walk of life; the 'redundant' chapters on whale anatomy), the double-meanings of allegorical stories (e.g. Kafka; Aesop), variations of the character/environment induced by seasonal changes in the weather (a la Japanese Kigo), etc etc.

anyway, so what the vast majority of people are referring to by "the quality of a work" is a work's sum-total value of the skill with which each of these blocks is arranged. where the subjectivity comes in is, firstly, that within an art-form, individuals will value certain artistic building blocks over others (e.g. within the wider field of literature, poetry deemphasizes plot and characterisation for wordplay; genre fiction deemphasizes everything for plot), and, secondly, that even for those who value the same blocks, some of them within a work will resonate more or less depending on the individual (e.g. the hundreds of parallels between The Odyssey and Ulysses are barred from those who haven't read the former).

and then there is a third cause of subjectivity, applying to those who say "all art is the same", which is lacking this insight and therefore experiencing all art as something mystical, beyond human comprehension (the smart but unversed will attribute this to vague existential meaninglessness). note, however, that a lack of insight is not an incrimination against the view-holder's intelligence or education. in practice, most artists aren't even conscious of the exact blocks they're manipulating, as they largely learn them unconsciously by absorbing the works and habits of their predecessors. i mean Joyce, who by the above standard I would argue has created the greatest works of literature ever (Ulysses if you value novels; Finnegans Wake if you value artistic expression for artistic expression's sake), sounds when discussing his process like a deranged schizophrenic, which he probably was.

autism

>and tells me it isn't that different taste wise from Don Quixote or The Trial.
Lol. I mean, saying that taste is subjective is fine, but you can't go on like that jesus christ.

The external universe doesn't care to distinguish between shit on the floor and the Mona Lisa, humans do.

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Reply that due to basic genetics humans share the same point of view and aesthetic taste to an extent. To a big enough extent that no sane human would actually call Twilight better than the Divine Comedy, but not to a big enough extent that two people can't differ on whether Shakespeare or Dante is better.
So basically say to them that if they actually read your books they'd agree with your taste (to an extent) or they'd lie through their teeth.

Step 1. Become intelligent enough to criticise literature for yourself and not just mimic what strangers online tell you.
Step 2. Stop caring about "objectivity" and start caring about being able to justify your own subjective positions effectively and articulately.
Step 3. Mock your friend for caring about objectivity and explain your reasoning for why you think Don Quixote and The Trial are better than Harry Potter and Twilight.
Step 4. If he retreats back to the relativism argument, explain that no book has "objective" literary value, but since you are able to justify why Don Quixote and The Trial have subjective value to you, and he is unable to justify why Harry Potter and Twilight have subjective value to him, the former clearly has literary value while the latter does not—at least not on anything above a superficial level.
Step 5. Call him a pleb.

If it's all subjective then how you justify a belief that one thing is better than another?

Why does he look so stupid in every photo?
Maybe he is...?

The external universe doesnt have an opinion, only humans do. You're a human, you're not the external universe. The external universe is a figment of your imagination, why are you so concerned with its opinion?

READ MY BOOK

Agreed. How else is it possible that you can just look at a person and tell what kind of media they consume?

Which one? Where to start with bloom desu?

The Western Canon. It's the one where he most directly rapes relativism as regards aesthetic taste.

ideology was a mistake

Meaninglessness has no meaning either so it's a moot point.

If it's all subjective then you don't need to justify it.

quick information that outside US nobody gives a fuck about bloom. Nobody even knows him.

Dividing literature into good and bad is a consequence of a process of specialization in which certain people spent more and more time dissecting literature and thinking about it.
These proffesionals obviously tried to find something deeper in their favorite area of inerest and thus pushed for further complexification of literary structures.
Those who are very invested in literature and require from it some grand structural beauty reading hgih literature is more appropriate but for those just looking to pass the time, reading endless garbage form hack writers, is what is appropriate.
Saying someone has bad taste in literature simply means he gets satisfaction from other sources.
By desiring a "better" literature, a more complex structure, a person essnetially creates this understanding within himself.
You can approach it from a pragmatic point of view i.e. why are you as a person reading literature? Under certian conditions the need for reading hgih literature would be an easy conclusion to make, like if you were an aspiring writer for example, for others the reason for expending the effort of aquiring the taste for such literature would seem less clear.
Once you make the space within yourself to get interested in a deep way in something you are then at the whims of the literary traditions which are the ones to define under their own set rules which literature of the PAST is indeed worthy.

Butthat depends on what you mena by objective. In contemporary post structuralist society objectivity means what is agreed upon by the biggest number of people.

Are academics completely useless in a postmodern world, or is it in that such a perspective, the percieved subjective value of academics is considered valid either way.
Also, why is the subjective reality in a post-modernist view just being USED to perpetuate ignorant evils compared to liberating us from trivial constructs. But then again postmodernism also deconstructs the idea of any objective morality so my previous statement is otherwise moot. Wait but then how is postmodernism different from nihilism!

Just some thoughts from my sociology theory class today...

Great post.

Taste is also, in a sense, refinement and those that begin on the path to 'good taste' often have to work towards it - which then ratifies the integrity of the literature canon, as more tread down the same path trying to reach the same end.

:(

Can subjectivity exist without God?

>hurr what's the point of philosophy if nothing can be proven

Who said I was?

Are you fat, unhygenic and generally digusting?
I always wonder why other people dont have friends. For me for example its because I dont let anyone get close nor do i try to ge close to others, rationalizing it by deciding i and my circumctances make me unsuitable for friendship or closeness of any kind(I live with my mom and dont really have any promising future prospects).

also you guys said to read Durkheim and Weber but my professor said reading classical sociology is a waste of time because its been disproved. Would it be possible for anyone to confirm this for fact?

it's depends on how to contextally and thematically frame your artwork.

it's why the works of Pollock or Warhol are far better (imo) than any Renaissance works, or why others prefer post-modern artists like Marina Abramovic to others.

Art isn't just about how it looks. In fact, i would say aesthetic appearance is the least important quality of art.

The most important quality is the connection art creates with you, and for many people this comes through its context, themes, messaging, experience of artist etc.

So no, you are dead wrong when you assert that some art is objectively better than others.

Objectivity is some sort of standard which is used for value judgments...
You can redefine it as what is believed by most people.
I think that objectivity for post modernists is exactly that. If we agree there is no underlying bedrock of knowledge then pragmatically what "works" for most is objective.
This also comes down to definitions of different groups. Most can refer to all of humanity or say the upper class...Music for example can be divided into lower or higher music and then judged accordingly.
If you stratify and segment different mediums you can apply different standards to them.
the question if something is REALLY true or REALLY exists doesnt matter if most people believe it to be a certain way. Better to say that when most people believe something to be a certain way they make it so because thye act as if it is so.
If all act as if god exists and the new testament is truth then the question about some hypothetical "actual way the world works" is meaningless since when most believe in the bible and god they lead their lives accordingly and thus prove it to be so..
Believing in something eans to partially make it so and the more people believe something the more true it is by virtue of them acting and making descisions according to their belief.

Your professor is oddly uninformed about their own field, or deluded about the epistemological nature of the field. I read a peer reviewed article marshalling a bunch of statistical evidence for the Protestant Work Ethic hypothesis. I didn't really buy it mind you, but I don't think it's been refuted so finally as, say, geocentrism.

Ok well now I think I'm wasting my time in his class because that advice confused me and seems shittier than what I read on Veeky Forums lol, I have no idea why he would say that but so far the sociology dept has been mediocre at best

Don Quixote and the Trial are not that great.
They ascend Enlightenment ideas to godhood. They're deists.

>geocentrism
>refuted
fuck off last man

Reading bad literature makes you dumber though. If you constantly consume media that shows a shallow, simple-minded view of reality, you will start viewing reality in shallow and simple terms. The difficult questions that good literature brings up is good for people.

Le dernier homme est perdu parmi la fou foule.

why is every thread on this board pure intellectual masturbation?

Do you actually still believe in Heocentrism?
>my tools telling me its true.
Why are your eyes and intuitions any worse than mechanical tools? Are they somehow less truthful? Do they not experience the world?
Heocentrism was only important because they simply lacked the math to make geocentrism mathmatically valid.
Now all the fools have convinced themselves that heliocentrism is correct in the name of effeciency.. How by being more complex means something is less correct?

>consuming or doing anything unless you are an expert in it makes you worse
eh..Being autistic and obsessive abut one field is according to you nessecarily positive?
Thats the effeciency driven capitalism society talking through you.

If you were to redo your cabinets, wouldn't you call a professional to do the job?
You would want someone who has been proven qualified at doing the job.
Though not exactly in line with OP's question, let's simply say there's a certain skill needed in order for the cabinet maker to be considered good. It's not the license you're looking for, necessarily, rather the skill needed to obtain it.
Consider now the cabineter going back home to his workshop, where he spends the evening chipping away at a model of The Milan Cathedral.
Wouldn't you say this person also has a certain skill in order to achieve this particular feat of woodworkery? And wouldn't you say his skill is reflected upon his work?
There still remains the sentiment you feel at the sight of, say, a child's first drawing. Something deeper perhaps than if you were to see the finished work of the sculptor.
We see a spectrum arise. Some works tickle the spirit, whilst others boggle the mind.
Pushing the analysis further, we'd say there's a sort of structural aspect to the carpenter's work which is forthcoming in the child.
&c.

I don't know.

What specifically do you mean?

Not autism or being an expert, just not consuming complete shit.

Because everyone here is too much of a pussy to be elitist around real people, so they come here to pretend they are better than others until it's their bedtime, and then they go to bed never having actually read a single page of any book.

>yeah dude, you're just brainwashed by capitalism because you want people to read good books
>unlike you, I stick it to the capitalists by encouraging people to read John Greek, JK Rowling, and Steven King

Thats not what i meant autismo.
My point was that we constantly do and consume "pleb" things(we can only be experts on a few fields at best). They dont make us nessecarily worse.

Who the hell cares about people outside the US? lol

Its called having a better justification

Form your own opinions. If you need to ask us then you don't deserve to feel superior to your friend.

>Hey guys can you feed me my own opinions and also teach me how to defend them?

This is how trump becomes president. And entire nation separated into their own echochambers refusing to think critically or subject an adult level of scrutiny to their ideas.

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I don't care who you are or what your cicumstances are user, I love you.

Value is not derived from the object but from the experience of it, which is clearly subjective. If there were no humans to see, what would be the difference in value between the Mona Lisa and shit.

You should learn to think for yourself OP, but I'll give my hypothetical response.

1. Let's define art as some work that, as perceived by the senses, causes the participant to experience emotion and reflection beyond the work itself
'beyond the work itself' is vital here, else you could argue that face punching is art as it causes emotion. Art should cause introspection.

2. Admit that yes, while Harry Potter and Twilight may be interesting and fun bits of fiction, there's very little takeaway from them. The reader (or let's face it, viewer) finishes them, puts them down, and while they may have some self-insert fantasies or fan theories, does not dwell on them, nor comes away from them a better or deeper person.

3.At this point in time, they may point out plots and devices such as the Mirror of Erised and the worth of immortality. A good response to that might be to admit that those by themselves would have made interesting short stories or even novellas, but in the greater picture of the narrative, they weren't the focus. Harry Potter, in particular, hammers in values of friendship, loyalty and love, without ever really questioning them other than 'they are good'. By that line, Veggietales or small equines are equally art, as they seek to embody the same principles in the same way as Harry Potter did.

4. Present your case for Don Quixote or The Trial. Both are absurd works, and lead the reader wondering about their own life. A reader of Don Quixote can wonder about insanity and happiness, and after The Trial, can wonder what a man may do when the world is against him.

5. If all else fails, you might make a point for aging. This is a significantly weaker argument. Don Quixote is over four hundred years old. The Trial fast approaches 100. Point out that fiction series such as Harry Potter and Twilight tend to fade and be replaced. Point out the death of Buck Rogers or Dragnet. Even better, point out the Baum's The Wizard of Oz, despite how wonderful it is, is more well known for the movie, and subsequent works are based off of that than any of his writings.

>he says while using words
nice try

How much do you think this applies to other artistic mediums?

I love threads about art in Veeky Forums because they're shit from the beginning to the end.

The mere fact you value the Monalisa over Bocaccio, Giotto or even other works by DaVinci like the Last Supper only go to show how your knowledge about art as a whole is below youtube courses.

hey art snob got any good art books you'd recommend?
i didnt think so

I agree, but some values are clearly better than others. So it is "objective" insofar as the values the work has (and the beauty which reinforces the values with conviction) can be measured on their worth.

read this and enjoyed reading it

My sociology professor said no such things about Durkheim and Weber, and I really enjoyed reading them both.

like um you can say that taste is subjective or whatever but that doesn't mean it's not weird to prefer the taste of poop

It can exist with Gnon