Update 33

An Excerpt for you

"What, then, does art have to do with this third notion of human nature, specifically the art that makes things that are meant to be themselves and to be experienced by us; things like sculptures, novels, and Taylor Swift songs?

Well, what this kind of art does, given the definition of human nature we’ve settled on, is make the immaterial world of ideals, laws, judgement, and experiences material in some sense. Even a photograph, which is arguably a simple recording of what something looked like at the time the photo was taken, accomplishes this because the photographer has chosen to record something they’ve seen. They might additionally have other aesthetic ideals and impressions they intend to convey, but even a snapshot taken on a vacation is a tangible artifact which embodies, in a sense, the intangible experience the vacationer had.

The camera simply receives impressions from photons, but what is communicated by the photo to any mind that looks at it is what the photographer saw when he was there, which is more than simple photons.

They may do this to share it with other people, or to remember what it was like to be there, or both. The point here is that while the medium is physical (a photograph) and even the subject is physical (some place the photographer visited on vacation) it’s the immaterial that drives the taking of the picture and the looking at it."

© 2015 John Hiner III