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Re: What do you think is necessary in order to have an excellentcomposition?



----- Original Message ----- 
From: "andy butler" <akbutler@tiscali.co.uk>

>>> "Already it transpires that rigid adherence to serial systems is not
>>> exclusively considered to be a pre-requisite for good composition. "
>>>
>>> hmmm.............true or false?
>>
>> That's easy...neither, if you follow and use the gist of my original
>> response as a starting point (that's the premise for my response).  The
>> gist is that some statements are neither true nor false, because they
>> aren't statements in the factual sense, only appear to be by syntax.
>
> There's no logic here.
> what are you saying?
> That because some sentences are neither true or false you can blandly
> apply that to any sentence?

There is no blandly applying anything here, but there is a methodology and
entire
system behind the application. To reiterate the view, which is not my own
unique view,
but was set forth by a group of linguistic, analytic, and philosophers of
science in the 50s,
some statements, not all, are regarded as pseudo statements, meaning that
they are
neither true nor false. In other words, they are not the type of sentences
that can be
analyzed as true or false.  Just because we use our language syntax to
construct a
sentence, doesn't imply that is meaningful, nor that it has the ability to
be true or
false. According to the view, statements of this sort, which are literally
meaningless,
typically come out of the disciplines of ethics, metaphysics, and
aesthetics. It is
impossible to do the view justice here on the list, and it takes a fair
amount of reading
to understand the full thrust of the argument. I would start by reading 
A.J.
Ayer's
"Language, Truth and Logic", or Hans Reichenbach's "The Rise of Scientific
Philosophy",
all easy reads. But the main point is the application is not "blandly"
applied, nor
does it assume that simply constructing a sentence entitles it to have the
property of
truth or falsehood.

> As the opposite of that sentence is disproved by counter example, then it
> has to be true.   :-)

Just because we can "construct" or contrive a sentence that appears as if 
it
were a legitimate statement
about the world, and then contradict it with a negative, doesn't imply that
the statement is
literally meaningful, meaning that it actually expresses a fact about the
world. And it doesn't
imply truth or falsehood either.  If you are talking pure symbolic logic,
like:

1. If p, then q
2. p
3. Therefore: q (derived by modus ponens)

....then we abstractly assign truth values to "p" so that we can conclude
q...but these statements
are ENTIRELY different than statements about the word around us, such as 
the
nature and
value of art - coming back to our original topic.  The truth of a statement
in logic is assigned,
where as the true or falsehood of a statement about the world about us is
derived by analyzing
the statement, and determine whether the terms of the statement are
meaningful and express
a factual state of affairs. If we discover that the terms (subject,
attribute) are pseudo-terms and
don't denote anything in the real world, then the whole statement becomes a
pseudo-statement,
that is, unable to be either true or false.

Your original statement: 1) "Already it transpires that rigid adherence to
serial systems is not exclusively considered to be a pre-requisite for good
composition. "

This is a complex statement. Let's say we simply it to: 2) "Rigid adherence
to serial systems is not exclusively considered to be a pre-requisite for
good composition."

And then simply that to: 3) "Rigid adherence to serial systems is not a
pre-requisite for good composition". This is the core statement.

If what you mean by "considered' in version 2 is that people believe or
state that rigid adherence to serial system is not a pre-requisite for good
composition, then I suppose you could verify this by just asking people,
provided you didn't ask them to describe when they mean by "good". Though
I'm not sure how you can show this is universally true or false...it seems
that the opinion would vary. But, it does, "at first glance" suggest that
the statement can be either true or false (theoretically).

However, if you further analyze the statement to the third version above,
and scrutinize the term "good", using the system of philosophy I referred 
to
above as the starting point (this is important, because it is my whole 
axiom
for discussion here), then that system suggests that "good composition" is 
a
literally meaningless phrase, which means that when a person uses that
phrase to express their belief that rigid adherence to serial systems is 
not
exclusively considered to be a pre-requisite for good composition, that
expression is also literally meaningless. It take one bad apple to ruin the
whole barrel in other words.  This is why according to this philosophy I am
alluding to, not only are statements of value meaningless without
translation into emotive expressions, but the whole question that give rise
to them are meaningless. So, "Is there such a thing as good art" or "What 
is
beauty?", or "What are the criteria for a good composition?" become empty,
unless those "good" terms are defined in a non-evaluative manner...which
can, and has been done. The pragmatists did it (good means useful). The
ethical emotivists did it (good is generate positive emotions). Many of us
on this list do it and actually prefer it that way because it is more
direct, emotive, and does leave this nebulous thing called Good floating
around in the air.

So, to summarize the main point. One bad apple ruins the whole barrel. :)
If you find a term in a sentence that is meaningless, meaning that you 
can't
connect it to anything "real" (empirical, introspective, etc), then the
whole sentence is rendered meaningless (i.e., is neither true nor false),
unless we rid ourselves of the bad apple and replace it with a more
description term or set of terms.

Kris




Not only that, you provided a suitable counter
> example yourself.
> That's logic.
>
>> But you are free to use a different set of premises to support a
>> different concusion....but then you wouldn't disputing my logic at that
>> point, just my initial assumptions.
>
> I'm disputing your conclusions.
> So far you neither justified "aesthetic non-cognitivity", nor 
>demonstrated
> that it applied to composition.
>
>>
>> We are probably talking about diffrerent definitions of "objectivity"
>> here. I am using the more formal and philosophical concept.
>
> http://www.iep.utm.edu/o/objectiv.htm
>
> Don't think so, that looks ok to me.
>
>> Kris
>>
>>
> andy
>
>