Episode 231: Ideal Critics (Hume's "Of the Standard of Taste")

[00:00:00] Very Bad Wizards is a podcast with a philosopher, my dad, and psychologist, David Pizarro, having an informal discussion about issues in science and ethics. Please note that the discussion contains bad words that I'm not allowed to say, and knowing my dad, some very inappropriate jokes.

[00:01:02] Welcome to Very Bad Wizards. I'm Tamler Sommers from the University of Houston. Dave, today I'm going to decisively demonstrate to you that Straw Dogs is a great movie. Are you ready to face that? You know what it is?

[00:01:30] It's, you know, 40-year-olds like Pulp Fiction, 50-somethings like Straw Dogs. Oh yeah, 40-year-olds. Listen, I feel 40. That's a good point, right? And I actually, my emotional age is 14 maybe. So we have told you, listener, both of our segments, just in that bit of just sparkling back and forth.

[00:01:54] Believe it or not, it wasn't even planned. So for the second segment, we're going to do a classic paper, part of our classic paper series that's been about five years since the last one. Like now, now papers we discussed five years ago are already classics.

[00:02:15] But this one has stood the test of time. It's by David Hume and it's an essay called On The Standard of Taste or Of The Standard of Taste. That's where you'll find that I was right all along about Straw Dogs because true judges, like myself, John...

[00:02:35] You've already pointed to a fatal flaw in human habits. And in the first segment, we're going to keep talking about whoopie goldberg and Joe Rogan. Oh yeah, you know, we upset some people. Not the people we usually upset, also. Did you craft your apology?

[00:02:56] I would like to say that I apologize if anyone was offended by my remarks about whoopie goldberg and Joe Rogan. Now, what I will say though is that I did have a nice exchange with someone who really

[00:03:10] did feel like whoopie goldberg while people were reacting hysterically about it, that there was something to get upset about which. And while I don't necessarily agree with this person's arguments, I don't know if he wants me to say his name, so I won't. But I appreciate them.

[00:03:32] Like I see the force in them and maybe we were a little more dismissive than we could have been. I don't know. Well, this is the thing. I feel like I had the feeling when we were recording that it was a bad idea to do

[00:03:45] like a lightning round of culture war topics because our glibness is, it can seem like we haven't really thought about what we're saying or that we are not bothered by this, like the right kinds of things.

[00:04:01] When in reality, we just don't want to spend more than five minutes on it. So in other words, the reality is the same as the period. Well, I guess what I'm trying to say is that our affect does not appropriately convey.

[00:04:15] We usually have a lot more time for new ones. Right? Yeah, I don't know. Like I know you're trying to throw me under the bus because the lightning round was my idea. But I didn't even remember that. But sure.

[00:04:25] I don't know if that was the culprit, but maybe it was because we didn't really look into it, like especially with Rogan. Like I really had no first clue what I was talking about.

[00:04:35] I read one New York Times article about why people were mad at him and I didn't get from that that there was that much to be mad about. There is. And there's an interesting heuristic because I feel like people misunderstood what

[00:04:49] we were saying about Rogan and sure, maybe you weren't prepared. But I really was trying to make the argument that he shouldn't be de-platformed and people took it as being an argument that he wasn't damaging. And that it's. Yeah, I think that was clear.

[00:05:05] No. Well, but but yet all of the angry emails and Reddit comments were about like how serious his damage was. And and I think it's one of those cases where the heuristic of me not not displaying outrage in the way that I spoke about it was like somehow

[00:05:24] taken as not believing that he's doing bad shit, I guess. But I don't want to dig myself into a deeper hole. I don't know why. And also like, yeah, like that also because I still think it's that fucking bad.

[00:05:37] It's by the gurus are going to have some words for you. I know. Dear listeners, I'm not the glib one. Yes. The unbelievable how you're just trying to push me in front of like various different buses. All right, enough of that anyway, let's get to.

[00:05:56] Oh boy, this is this is quite something. This is a paper that is forthcoming, I guess. Or no, it was already published in 2019. We just have the draft version of it. But in Journal of Medical Ethics, like legit journal, like, yeah, yeah, I'm assuming.

[00:06:19] Yeah. A moral case for legal age change. So should a person who feels his legal age does not correspond with his experienced age be allowed to change his legal age? And this paper argued that in some cases people should be allowed to change their legal age.

[00:06:35] Such cases should be where one, the person genuinely feels his age differs significantly from his chronological age to the person's biological age is recognized to be significantly different from his chronological age. Three age change would be likely to prevent, stop or reduce ageism

[00:06:53] discrimination due to age he would otherwise face. And then he considers some rejections of this. I mean, objections to the view. And that's honestly some of the funniest things so apparently there was a Dutchman who at the legal age of 69

[00:07:11] claims that he is often discriminated against because of his old age. He states that due to having an official age that does not reflect his emotional state, he is struggling to find both work and love. Therefore, he asked the Dutch court to change his date of birth

[00:07:25] to 20 years, I guess before his actual birth. This is one of the most ridiculous papers I've ever read. There's a footnote there during the revision of this paper. The Dutch court has rejected. Now, both of us had I mean, I think I had it first and then maybe

[00:07:45] like me saying it to you, but like we both had a little bit of deja vu. So I still think there's like a one percent chance we've already talked about this, but I don't think so. I feel 65.

[00:07:57] I maybe we just talked about the Dutch like the case or something came up. I don't know if any listener has, you know, remembers us mentioning anything like this. Please let us know because it's. But I don't think we read the paper.

[00:08:10] At least we did not remember reading the paper when we delved into the arguments. So OK, so you might think as I thought, well, he's trying to make an analogy from sex change, right? The moral, the fact that it is morally

[00:08:25] some on some views required to allow people to change their sex. He says, no, no, that's not. I'm not. No, OK, I think I think we should read this exactly. Some people might claim that because sex change is permissible, age change should also be permissible.

[00:08:43] You know, like all those people who are saying that while I feel a certain sympathy for this strategy, I do not argue from analogy that because sex change is permissible, so is age change. The aim of this paper is to make an independent argument

[00:08:58] that will work whether or not one accepts the claim that sex change is both permissible and permissible. I mean, that's really important because like it would be too easy to just go because sex change is permissible, so is age change.

[00:09:13] Yeah, well, he's also setting up like a if if he granted that that thought that sex change was permissible, that so would age change be. He would be, I think, unable to make a later argument that it does not follow that anything else should be permissively

[00:09:30] changed because of age change. He thinks that's a slippery slope argument. He also like like he doesn't want the claim that sex change is possible and permissible to like have any effect on whether we accept his claim, because you know, what if it's not right? Yeah. Right.

[00:09:45] So I look, you know, I don't know this person. I always try to separate the article from the author. This is one of the sloppiest pieces of philosophy I've ever read. So like if ever it's just a whole series of arguments

[00:10:01] that aren't really persuasive, nor are they even really defended that much, they're just put out there to be accepted as are all of the claims that he is defeating the potential objections, which I want to go through. Like I want to go through. Let's go.

[00:10:18] But let me just say that there is another clarification that we didn't mention, which is that he doesn't deny that there is a certain chronological age, the length of time that each particular person has existed with most people. Chronological age corresponds well with emotional and biological age.

[00:10:35] And thus it is often unproblematic that legal age equals chronological age. But this is not always the case. And it's and then so he says it's ethically permissible for people to change their legal age. So it matches their biological and emotional age.

[00:10:49] So one thing I want to get clear before we go through the argument and objections is like biological age. We're going to get a definition about what that is. Emotional age has kind of dropped. And I guess that's just like it's never really defined at any point.

[00:11:03] And so it's a footnote for I think we'll read it because this is as much work as he does to find these things by emotional age. Oh, OK. Experience age. Yeah. I refer to the age someone feels and identifies himself.

[00:11:17] By biological age or physiological age, I refer to the age one's body and mind appear to others by objective measures. OK. Yeah, that's an important footnote. Arguably maybe put it in the actual paper. The whole argument hinges on that there is this biological age

[00:11:35] that might be separate because he's not arguing just because I feel like I'm still 28 year old David that I should be allowed to change my age. He's saying if I feel like 28 year old David, even though I'm 46, that maybe if a doctor looked me over and said,

[00:11:52] you have the legs of a 28 year old, that would be what's required. Right? Like you need both of those things. Yeah. So you both have to feel it genuinely, which I don't. It's like it's hard to even say what that means. Like how old do you feel?

[00:12:07] Like I don't know. Like I definitely don't feel like I'm 51 or whatever. Yeah. But my doctor told me that I have the erections of a 14 year old. My doctor said that I fuck like 18 year old in his prime.

[00:12:23] No, but like honestly, like that's a that's just a bizarre thing to just talk about your emotional age. Like it's you don't have like a specific age in mind. If you feel younger than you are, you don't have a specific age in mind.

[00:12:36] You know, like I don't have like an emotional age. All right. You know what? It's actually like 37. Right. And like and then and then you could track you be like, but my emotions only age one year every six years. Also, when I was 37, like I felt much younger.

[00:12:54] So like, you know, it's it's it's very like the whole thing is pretty complicated. You then have to feel like I felt when I was 37. OK, so this seems motivated by what he says that that sex discrimination. I mean, sorry, age discrimination is bad.

[00:13:12] So he lays out these premises. One, legal age is a cause of severe discrimination for some people who's biological and emotional age, emotional age do not match their chronological age. We can just leave it at that first clause.

[00:13:23] Legal age is a cause of severe discrimination for some people. Yeah, right. Sure. P2, but there is a P2 and a P2. People should be allowed to secure relief from severe discrimination against them. General principle. Yeah, unless this has excessive consequences. So you what are you saying that?

[00:13:42] Are you saying that we shouldn't fight discrimination, Tamler? That's the general principle, right? Just in general, like if you don't agree with that, you're a racist and an anti-Semite and you like Joe Rogan. P3, P3, there's changing a person's legal age would not

[00:13:57] in the case of people who is biological and emotional age, do not match their chronological age, have excessive consequences. Excessive consequences is not going to be well defined. But it doesn't mean like absurd ludicrous consequences. Right. The only things that are defined here are legal age,

[00:14:17] because biological age is not, emotional age is not. Excessive consequences is not. Yeah. People who's biological and emotional age do not match their chronological age should be allowed to choose. This just follows. Should be allowed to choose. This is the syllogism. This is the syllogism. They're legal age.

[00:14:33] So in parentheses, from P2 to P3. Yeah. So then sometime defending the first premise that ageism exists. And when I was reading that, I was like, don't spend your time on this. There's so much that you should be talking about. It's true. It's true.

[00:14:51] Like, just like we, yes, we get it. People, you know, arguably, like the more kind of efficient, intuitive way of dealing with ageism would be to like make ageism, you know, illegal rather than that rather than this.

[00:15:09] I mean, this seems like a weirdly kind of Rube Goldberg machine end around. Like involving judges in this. So like individual, make it and doctors and panel of doctors. Still like. All right. What do you think?

[00:15:25] His biceps are like 32, but I feel like his hips are more like 29. It's this is a bizarre paper that I can't shake the feeling that it's a joke. Maybe on us. I don't know. I have a more nefarious theory about where this is going. But all right, save.

[00:15:45] I'll save that for the end. You would want an argument such as this to somehow have have mounted like a case from the medical literature saying that biological age is a construct that doctors think could even be derived, like that it's not just your

[00:16:02] hometown doctor telling you you have the lungs of a 30. Like trying to be nice. Trying to be nice and tactful. Right. You're it reminds me of long ball, Larry, like it may be your balls are long, long, too long. As you as you say, he seems to never

[00:16:22] even ponder the possibility that just outlying age discrimination is what you should do. Or in a later argument, he says, look, for instance, suppose that you the job requires some sort of like quick reflex and you think that people over 65 should not be allowed to have the job.

[00:16:44] But there are people who are 65 and older who do have those quick reflexes enough to do the job. Therefore, age change should be allowed. And it's like, why not just let people why not just like fix the law?

[00:16:58] Why not measure their reflexes and hire them on the basis of that? And like, that's all that's good. Oh, my God. All right, let's go through these objections. We can go through them quickly. Like objection one ages a biologic potential. They're only potential objections potential. Right.

[00:17:12] All right, objection one ages a biological fact that cannot be changed. Biological age equals chronological age. Age change should not therefore be allowed because it is impossible. You could just have that last sentence, right? You don't need to do another fucking P1, P2, like conclusion there.

[00:17:29] You know, like just how about age change is impossible. Well, all all this objection is doing is is like in his definitions. He's like he's just definitionally erased the subjection. Right. Like all like all he's saying is no, you cannot maintain that age,

[00:17:45] that biological age and chronological age are the same thing. Well, he says the objection is misplaced. Like it would be like it's like if we had placed this in a different in a different part of the argument, maybe just in another paper.

[00:17:59] You put it on it would be well placed, but it's misplaced. You put it up on the important shelf and really this should be on like Journal of Medical Ethics article from 2016. He says, I do not deny the existence of chronological age,

[00:18:14] which I mean, I thought he said that earlier. So like what a misplaced objection. Besides this chronological age, there are other ages such as emotional and biological age. I just like what are the premises? Yeah.

[00:18:29] And but then and this is where he gives the Alan and Bob, right? Alan, his chronological age is 50. I like that we're already just accepted that there are these categories of things. Drinks and smokes heavily does not exercise.

[00:18:42] The doctor examines Alan and tells him that his body is 60 year old man. Right? You're in my way or wherever. 50 year old guy smokes and drinks has the body of a 60 year old man. That's only got a different doctor. Then it's OK to discriminate.

[00:18:57] Yeah, it's OK to discriminate against him. Yeah, he's too old. Bob does not smoke or drink. Also chronological age of 50. Yeah, also chronological age. He eats healthily and has a less stressful job. The doctor examines Bob and tells him that his body is that of a 40.

[00:19:16] This is really just like I just can't believe this. It's just your doctor hitting on you. You have the body of a 40. Like that is not a medical thing. Like it's not at all. The biological age does not always correspond with the chronological age

[00:19:30] because I just gave you this Alan and Bob exam. Of course. And then he knows he does go to the empirical research. I thought you would appreciate this. As Richard serves of this recent study stated, as compared with control subjects, patients with major depression exhibited higher epigenetic

[00:19:50] aging in blood and brain tissue, suggesting that they are biologically older than their corresponding chronological age. So he's basically saying, no, damage to yourselves is possible. Damage to yourselves also occurs when you age. There. It's terrible.

[00:20:09] And like he just quotes, he just cut and pastes like from the from this one study. They get all hinging on the one study, the one quote. The ethics of sirenics. Yeah. Wow. OK, objection to an old person should now be allowed to change his age to younger

[00:20:24] because he might endanger himself and others in the workplace. Age change would thus have excessive consequences. Like of all the objections to bring up like, no, obviously, that's not the reason why you don't allow people to change their legal age is

[00:20:38] because they might endanger others in the workplace. He said he was 40 and he dropped. He dropped this thing on my head. This objection fails. So it's not misplaced at least. So that's good. We're getting better with our objective categories. It just but it's well placed, but it fails.

[00:20:59] And even if it was successful, this objection, it would really merely show that in some cases, age change should be prohibited. Not that it should be prohibited in all cases because not all old people pose

[00:21:12] safety risks and not all jobs are of the sort where people's lives might be in danger. I mean, that's totally true. Like I would say even the vast majority of jobs like old people don't like pose a special danger.

[00:21:27] It's it's like also he's shifted shifted the burden on like, all right, like let's just accept that age change should be allowed. And you're telling me that sometimes it would hurt people. But like then that means it's not true in all cases.

[00:21:42] Like like the default should just be that age change is not allowed. And then your objection fails, sir. Yeah. Oh, you're out of order. You want the truth about biological, chronological and emotional age. All right.

[00:22:01] Objection three, age change is expensive for society, at least if it's this one. This one. This one like anybody, anybody's saying like no, the price. Think of the price. Yeah. That's the problem. I mean, have you seen inflation and like we can't even get built back better,

[00:22:21] you know, past and now we got to like have panels, medical doctors and psychologists. Throw your gold around Scrooge McDuck and like meanwhile here I'm paying three bucks for a coke and you want to change the age.

[00:22:34] And as like as he does with these objections, he has to have the conclusion. The third premise is therefore false due to these excessive reasons. Age change should not be allowed. This objection somewhat misses the goal.

[00:22:49] It's like it's like wide to the left, but it's not like, you know, it's not into the stands. Seven and a half. Yeah. Because it is an objection against the view that age change should be publicly funded and is not obvious that it should.

[00:23:01] Oh yeah, the person that with that. This is great. I don't think I saw this the first time. It's like, but you know, in this case is there might be cases where it would be beneficial because the person would stop collecting government retirement

[00:23:15] and go back to work instead. So that's a really good point, actually. It's like no social security for you. These objections, like objection. It's like objection three. Think of the children wrong. There is no danger to children in my proposal.

[00:23:36] Objection four, someone changing his legal age could have psychological problems because the person cannot know how it would feel to be acknowledged as older because he has not been that old before. Thus, changing one's age could be psychologically dangerous and therefore it

[00:23:51] should be put again, another sentence that is just completely superfluous. Like that doesn't add a single thing to what was just said. I mean, you don't know if you're 30 and you claim you're 46. You don't know the crazy shit I get into.

[00:24:07] You don't know the risks that I have of being a four to six year old. And in fact, it is arguably a transformative experience, which he eludes, which he actually says. Right. But yeah, but if successful, if successful,

[00:24:23] this objection shows that age change should be prohibited when a person wants to change his legal age to older, not when a person wants to change his age to younger because they know what that feels like. You know what it feels like. I can't believe this is real.

[00:24:37] Changing legal age to younger is not a jump into the unknown, Tamler. It is to match a person's legal age with his emotional and biological age and to acknowledge the lived experience of the person. Because if you don't allow this, Tamler, you're failing to acknowledge the lived experience.

[00:24:51] Yeah, I mean, OK. Nevertheless, while I admit the changing age might in some cases be a transformative experience so that age change would have an effect on the sort of person we will be, this is not a reason to oppose age change.

[00:25:05] After all, there are many choices and decisions that are transformative in this way, such as whether one will have children, but it seems that they shouldn't still not be prohibited because in human life, it is inevitable to face choices that transform us. Right.

[00:25:17] We don't ask people to not become vampires. You know? This part really actually confused me because I take it that, you know, he has a footnote saying that anonymous reviewers pressed him on this. Oh, wait. No, that was for the other one.

[00:25:36] But but yeah, I didn't read footnote 10. Well, what like I took it that the objection was not that it was just that you don't know what it's like to be a 40 year old. Therefore, you shouldn't claim to be a 40 year old or whatever.

[00:25:50] These objections, like none of them, like our objections that I would know, because like we're not like we we haven't gotten passed like the very fundamental objective. P3 P3. I've never gotten past it. Objection number five, if people should be allowed to change their legal age,

[00:26:09] then people should be allowed to change, for example, their legal height. But this cannot be right. Therefore, people should not have the right to change their legal age. We just don't we need like every reductio ad absurdum spelled out for us

[00:26:23] like in full. In fact, the existence of this article supports the claim that legitimizing sex change has led to demanding the legalization of age change. And similarly, age change might lead to height change. So this is slippery slope. Two kinds of slippery slope. Yes.

[00:26:41] This reply is this slippery slope argument comes in two forms, causal and logical. According to the causal version of the argument, legalizing age change would be a path to legalizing height change as well, because we should not allow people to change the legal height.

[00:26:52] We should not allow people to change their age either. And of course not like no. Who believes that? Like, OK, yeah, that's a dumb slippery slope. Right. So he says evidence shows the opposite. Legalizing sex change has not led to legalizing race change or age change

[00:27:06] despite the existence of this article or the article defending race change. So therefore, you're wrong about the causal. I mean, I thought this one, I had him. I really did. I thought like, oh, you're so you're going to defend height change now.

[00:27:20] Like how is that going to affect the NBA draft? Well, you know, they already over they already over report. They're already doing. Has led to height change. They felt they felt like they were seven feet tall. The other form of the slippery slope argument is the logical one,

[00:27:38] which I really actually have a question for you about this, because I didn't take this as a slippery slope objection. He says, according to this objection, the principles behind age change and height change are the same. And therefore we would we should prohibit both.

[00:27:49] The argument is this objection claims proves too much because we do not want to permit height change. And because of the same principle, support age change and height change, we should jettison those principles. It is true that people might also be discriminated

[00:28:00] against due to their height and the avoidance of discrimination would thus form a prima facie argument for height change. However, while there is a categorical difference between biological age and chronological age, there are no such categories with height. Legal height corresponds with biological height QED.

[00:28:15] And obviously there's no chronological height. So the argument presented here does not imply allowing height change. This is the most hand wavy of replies to an objection that I could possibly imagine. There is a well, because it's just assumed that there is a categorical difference between biological

[00:28:31] and chronological age because of that one article like where something was quoted out of context. That's right. This isn't a slippery slope objection, right? It's it's not. It's just saying like, no, you're in order to defend your age change. You seem to be relying on some principles

[00:28:48] that would also apply to a similar case that is height change. And all he's saying is that that is not a similar case because there is no analog to. But but he then but it's in his statement, legal height corresponds with biological height.

[00:29:01] And obviously there is no chronological height. Who is that really the argument that he thought we were going with? Well, I thought that there is a chronological right. The analogy would have to be stretched a little further. You know, then like I feel six foot ten,

[00:29:19] I can do all the jobs that a six foot ten person does that I can wear high heels such that people perceive me to be six foot ten. Well, that's emotional, though, I think more than right. That last one.

[00:29:30] Suppose that I always wear shoes that increase my height by three inches. So therefore to every external observer and my ability to physically reach the top shelf where the good injections are, then therefore I should be allowed to change my height. I agree.

[00:29:44] I think he should bite the bullet here and say. I just like the bullet. Say height change should also be illegal. Last one, I guess is kind of boring that people might misuse this option. Right. So we could retire the duty of work.

[00:30:00] You could like just go right to retirements. And then of course at the end, because of the possibility of misusing age change, it should not be an option in the first place. That's like anybody would. This guy is like it's like he wrote an article on straw manning

[00:30:14] that there's that and then there's that just completely superperfluous addition of the last sentence, which just is exactly what the two sentences before. Right. It feels like they're padding, like when you had to reach some word limit on an essay that you submitted in high school.

[00:30:29] There's like a page and a half of the actual substance here. And then there's just like connecting dots. This eight page paper has the identity of the three page pages. Exactly. I mean, I file for a legal page and word count change.

[00:30:44] But you know, very rightfully says if someone wants to change his age merely to misuse this option, he would not satisfy this criterion. Age change should not be done lightly. Psychologists and medical doctors should be consulted. Mind you, at your own expense, at your own expense

[00:31:04] to find out how serious an age change candidate is and what motivations he has for age change. It's not something like this is. I've probably made it a. Yeah, he's he can't take this anymore.

[00:31:18] Like you really this is the thing we want to because we should ramp up. But I want our listeners to not because we were a glib last time, like do not change, like take this option lightly of changing your legal age.

[00:31:33] You have no idea where it will take. And it will be expensive. Oh wait, no, he covered that. I just saw this. I admit I did not had not seen this because it was the very end. This he replied to my objection about height.

[00:31:47] Footnote 10, an anonymous referee suggested that there could be something like functional height, i.e. one could identify herself. He's finally used the her herself taller than she is and could also be capable of doing many of the things taller people are able

[00:32:01] to do because they jump well or manage to compensate their height in another way. So while it would be a slightly different argument and something a supporter of age change could reasonably contest, height change might be worth considering as well. Fight the bullet. That's like I told them.

[00:32:14] Fight the bullet. That's OK. Can I get to my deep concern? My deep concern is that somebody might use this just to try to fuck 15 year old chicks. I feel like it's motivated in some way. And again, so you would have to be the to make that work.

[00:32:31] You would have to be like like a 20 year old would identify as like 17 or something like that. Maybe. Or yeah, I suppose because because you're right. I was thinking that a 15 year old because doesn't it strike you

[00:32:44] as the kind of language that you use when people say like, oh, you're so much more mature than you are. Then, you know, it's like, oh, you're thinking of bumping the girl. Bump big up. Yeah, that's probably better.

[00:32:53] He did say, but he did say maybe we shouldn't bump up. And I think maybe he realized that that would be an argument. Yeah. I don't think that's what this is. Again, I think there's it would be a very rubbed Goldberg way of trying to like underage girls.

[00:33:10] I would say Mr. You know, Russ and then like, I have no explanation for this. I can't get in the head of the anonymous referees that like are pressing him on these tiny details. Can you imagine accepting this? Like, this is my real complaint.

[00:33:25] Like this is just sloppy. Right. It's like, I don't even mind mounting an argument if you have an argument, but he's just like restating things, repeating things, bringing up objections that nobody would bring up and dismissing them with poor like arguments.

[00:33:38] And not considering the one objection that makes this whole thing just completely absurd and just risible. I've never used that word. It's like you studied for your SAT life. Which is if age discrimination is a problem, then deal with that directly.

[00:33:59] You know, like we deal with race discrimination without like trying to say people can change their race. Right. And like if you think that somehow changing your legal age would be the more efficient way to deal with age discrimination, then I don't know what world you're living in.

[00:34:15] Can you imagine how complicated it would be? He's just following the argument where it leads. You know, if you can't take that, then maybe, you know, you should turn away from philosophy. All right. All right. We're going to talk about a good piece of philosophy

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[00:41:32] All right, well, let's talk about Hume's paper of the standard of taste. This is a topic that we've definitely discussed, you know, how objective artistic judgment can be. We've certainly talked about it as an analogy for moral judgment,

[00:41:51] which I think for Hume, the two things are analogous because in both the moral cases and artistic cases, he doesn't think the beauty or the rightness is a property of the object, but rather it is

[00:42:09] in our sentiments that gives rise to the feeling of, you know, that's good or that's beautiful. Right. And so the thing that's in the object is some sort of power to excite our feeling of pleasure or approval in both the moral cases and the aesthetic cases.

[00:42:29] And and so that leads to a kind of puzzle. And now we'll just talk about the aesthetic cases, the case of beauty, where on the one hand, because of that, because we feel that the identification of beauty is something that happens within us rather than we've identified

[00:42:50] beauty in the object, because of that, we have this tendency to think that art is subjective and we also notice a ton of variation. You know, like people like you love Ant-Man and the Wasp, people like me like Andre Tarkovsky and like Ingmar Bergman.

[00:43:08] So we see all this variation in terms of a judgment. And we tend to think that there's a lot of subjectivity. At the same time, we also just can't help thinking that some works of art are

[00:43:22] clearly better than others like to use his example, whoever would assert an equality of genius and elegance between Ogilby and Milton or Bunyan and Addison would be thought to defend no less an extravagant that if he had maintained

[00:43:38] the molehill to be as high as Teneriff or a pond as extensive as the ocean. So if anyone like imagine, Dave, someone saying that like Ogilby and John Milton are just crazy, just as good as John Bunyan and someone Addison. That's crazy talk.

[00:43:57] Yeah, I mean, you would think they're just denying the nose on your face, essentially. So but the point here, even if the the examples may not resonate, but the point is, is I think right that like

[00:44:11] you're not going to tell me that good fellas isn't better than whatever latest like corporate Marvel like Quip Fest is out, you know, like the Eternals or something like you can't tell me that like one thing isn't better than another.

[00:44:26] Like even if I think there's inherent subjectivity about art, like I also think that there are clear cases where we can say that one thing is a better example of that art than another thing. So how do we reconcile this as I think the problem of this essay?

[00:44:42] How do we reconcile these two attitudes we have about artistic judgment that on the one hand that it's subjective and on the other hand that it's not fully subjective, you know, like so what's the, you know, how do we understand what's going on when we make artistic judgments?

[00:45:01] It's almost been like the central topic of many of our episodes in some way or another, like a discussion of what makes something good or bad. Often we we are in the practice of evaluating things for their aesthetic appeal.

[00:45:17] And what we're doing is trying to come to some agreement about what characterizes a piece of art that that is good versus bad. And when we disagree, it's it's kind of hard. Right? Like you joke about straw dogs, but it's like, well, what am I,

[00:45:32] you know, surely like what am I seeing that you're not or what are you seeing that I'm not right? There is some some force to that drives us to try to understand why there would be disagreement among people. Yeah, right.

[00:45:45] That that would like that we can actually talk about it. It's not just like us arguing over whether eggplant is good or something like that. It's we're actually having an argument. And even though I don't know, like not sure that I can convince you,

[00:45:59] I can at least give kind of reasons to think that one piece of art is better than another. And I just and whether I can convince you or not, like, I'll just think that you're wrong if you defend an extravagance

[00:46:12] like Oglebay and Milton in the same category as Bunyan and Abbasin. Well, you know, I'm I'm you're definitely the kind of person who likes tacitists. Definitely. Wait, we'll get to that. Yeah. You like Ovid because you're 20. You changed your your legal age.

[00:46:34] It starts with a very this very human problem. And I think that there is, you know, astranda philosophers. When I say a very human problem, I mean, I feel like it's hard to go

[00:46:44] to live a life on this earth and not have those two things kind of be jarring this like notion that no, there's surely there is something. Everybody has some domain in which they believe that they have some opinion

[00:46:56] that is truly valid, that it is like it's maybe not a statement of fact, but it is close to that thing. Yeah. Some philosophers go to resolve this, they just go to like a pure realism where they say, no,

[00:47:11] human, this is how this is how we make sense of this. Beauty is in the object itself. So they're correctly identifying it. Exactly. Like our faculties are just built to correctly identify beauty when it

[00:47:22] exists and as much as I'm tempted by the objectivity and I've often been tempted by the objectivity of moral realism, I think that seems like a not crazy way to go, but it's definitely take it definitely takes a mind a bit debauched by philosophy to make that argument.

[00:47:39] It's in some ways the analogous kind of legal age change. Right. There are there are easier, less metaphysically expensive ways of resolving this than saying that there's like that an object of art has a property of beauty and like trying to unpack what that means.

[00:47:58] But some people do. You know, I think your boy Shoemaker believes this of of like humor, that there are properties that are just funny properties in things. Yeah. Yeah. He might. Again, I would say with humor as with as with these beauty judgments or artistic quality judgments,

[00:48:17] there is a less metaphysically expensive way to handle it. And I think Hume kind of lays out a way of resolving this kind of paradox that allows for our our judgments to be a product of our of the sentiments

[00:48:35] that we have that are excited by the object rather than identifying some property within the object that is beauty that is beauty related. But at the same time kind of shows that there is there can be right and wrong judgments.

[00:48:53] There is a way to say, oh wait, that this person's judgment when it comes to you know, this movie or this work of art or this piece of music is actually better and more accurate than this other person.

[00:49:06] And I'm not sure that he gets there and I'm curious what you think of like the success of this argument, but I will say this usually, you know, we sometimes start with a what did you think of the paper? I'd never read this paper and I loved it.

[00:49:19] I don't know what it was. Maybe it was in a crabby mood the first time I looked at it. But yeah, we're not in the proper frame of mind to appreciate it. That's right. That's right.

[00:49:31] But this hits on so many just, I don't know, just in the psychology of evaluating works of art, just so interesting that it almost makes me mad that somebody could be this insightful. Yeah. And his essays are like this.

[00:49:47] There's another essay I would love to do that's kind of on this issue of projectivism, like that we project properties onto objects. And in this essay called The Skeptic, he argues that we do that with beauty and then also with moral judgments. But again, that this doesn't

[00:50:06] entail a kind of radical relativism that you might think based on having that view. Because you might just think, look, if you don't feel it, if beauty is a feeling and you don't feel it, then it's just not beautiful. It's beautiful for the people who feel it.

[00:50:22] It's not beautiful for the people who don't. But there is something about Homer, say the Iliad and the Odyssey, as Hume points out, that the fact that they have stood the test of time to such a degree that the

[00:50:36] same people they were that loved them in Greece and then Rome and in the 15th century, 16th century, 17th century Europe. And then today in America and also in the East, like that says something. That says that there's something that it has in it.

[00:50:54] A kind of quality that can excite almost universal acclaim in spite of fast, cultural and just historical differences. Yeah, that test of time is super interesting because, you know, it does take care of this possible, that possible objection that relativism

[00:51:13] can creep in at least through cultural historical forces, at least the way that he sees it, the reason that you like Homer is because Homer is good. Because there's something in Homer that just appeals. I think he's assuming a kind of universal human nature. Yes, exactly.

[00:51:32] And so the way that this works is that a really great work of art will cause this artistic appreciation or just excite pleasure in a person as long as they meet certain external conditions that he's going to go through.

[00:51:50] But the idea is that the property that it has is this power to excite in humans just by virtue of being human, not by virtue of just any kind of idiosyncratic fact about them. There's something about great works of art that will give anybody pleasure as long

[00:52:07] as they're approaching it in the right way, the way a good judge would approach it. Yeah. And and that's why he talks a lot about sort of sensory organs and this is all, yeah, like you say, I think rests on some notion of

[00:52:26] universality in our sensory experiences, in our maybe in our faculties of reason as well in the kinds of judgments humans are likely to make. That's what's going on. What you're what you're finding with these great pieces of art that withstand

[00:52:39] the test of time is that they reliably press the buttons of a human being. Yeah. If there's an alien who has radically different perceptions, you know, they see in the ultraviolet spectrum and they, you know, they only smell half of the things we smell.

[00:52:52] Of course, you wouldn't say, well, too bad that they can't perceive the beautiful thing, you would simply say, well, what is beautiful to them? So must be so different. Right. But it is it is meant to apply to human beings of all races

[00:53:08] and cultures and historical time periods. The test of time, I think is a great one because, you know, like I one of the worst Oscar, like just mistakes was dances with wolves beating good fellas for a best picture.

[00:53:26] And I think with the benefit of just like you, this is in Homer, you just need like 30 years. Yeah. Nobody talks about dances with wolves. It's like completely forgotten. And even if you might turn it on and think, oh, that's fine. Like there's something about the fact,

[00:53:43] like the difference in terms of just how influential good fellas was, how rewatched it is and how completely forgotten dances with wolves is tells you something right about the judgments of people who thought good fellas was better.

[00:53:59] Yeah. And I think it's it's not to say that there can't be bias that creeps in at that level. You might have, you know, artists who are promoted at the expense of other artists for reasons that have nothing to do with the beauty of their art.

[00:54:15] And maybe that's why we talk about some more than others. But it really is the case that if there was like you get the sense that we were all smoking crack when we thought dances with wolves was better or

[00:54:27] that I'll say a forest, forest gump was you didn't vote. They didn't send you this. They didn't. The forest gump is better than Pulp Fiction. It's it's just just look at the amount of ink that has been spilled in

[00:54:41] discussing good fellas and Pulp Fiction and and you could reverse the other two. And and there are reasons and those reasons will be given to you. And should you have the right capacities, you should be able to see this.

[00:54:56] Yeah, it does remind me of like, you know, how people were considered hot when you're like in sixth or seventh grade. Yeah. And you look back and it's not wasn't because they were actually hot. They just sort of were more popular and everybody was convinced that they were

[00:55:10] hot. Yeah, right. So like the hot girl in eighth grade has to stand the test of time. You have to be going back to your eighth grade yearbook like 25 years later and being like, oh yeah, she's pretty hot. That's not what I'm doing. She's really record.

[00:55:30] No, that's a really good point. Dave, Dave, it was our open at that point. That's why my yearbooks are all stuck together. So yeah, so like I think he he gives these qualities for like an ideal judge

[00:55:50] or a true judge that I like some are positive and some are negative. Like they have to be free from certain obstacles. They have to be free from bias and prejudice in the same way that, you know, like somebody being colorblind or in his

[00:56:07] example has jaundice will not be able to identify colors properly because they there's something just messed up in terms of how they perceive things, even though he thinks color is just like beauty is a secondary quality and is in the mind, not in the actual object, which doesn't

[00:56:29] have a color in the object. So like that can be the same with judges who are have these obstacles and prejudice is one being in the wrong frame of mind. I mean, how many times have you

[00:56:42] watched something that you just weren't in the mood to watch or read something and you just didn't have the attention span to read it at that time? And we both did this with this article even. You know, right?

[00:56:54] So there are these things that can get in the way of you appreciating a work of art. You know what? It's interesting because it also means that I have to predict whether I'm going to be in the right frame of mind before I watch something.

[00:57:09] And I often can mispredict in the other direction. So I'll say like, I don't at all want to watch this. I don't feel like watching this, but somebody else will force me to watch it or whatever, you know, because I want to be agreeable. I'll watch it.

[00:57:21] And then I'm like, oh, yeah, that shit was really good. Like I just had failed to predict what my own mental state would be. Exactly. So like, and that's like to me, that's always true with documentaries.

[00:57:32] Like I don't feel like watching this, but then if somehow I'm compelled to watch it, like, oh, this is great. This is exactly what I wanted to see. Yeah. Right. I like this Sancho Penzo from Don Quixote example. Yeah.

[00:57:47] So, you know, he's making use of these analogies like taste. And he tells the story from Don Quixote. Sancho Penzo is talking about he has countrymen, I guess, who were who claimed to be they had just a really discerning palette when it comes to wine.

[00:58:09] And so the other towns people decided to test them and gave them wine and ask them independently what they think. And one of them thought, that's good, but it's a little leathery. And then the other one said, it's good, but there's a little bit of iron to it.

[00:58:24] And everybody laughed at them. It was like, oh, you guys can't even agree. Like you guys think you have such good palettes, but you both came up with a completely different thing that was wrong with the wine than when it's all drained and they drink all the wine,

[00:58:36] they find a key with a leather strap attached to it. And so they were both right after all. And so like I think the idea here is there can be discerning people. But then like in that case, there is a way of objectively identifying that there was right,

[00:58:54] because there was evidence of that being in the actual substance they were drinking. It's not as easy to find that kind of objective correlate to show this when it comes to works of art. Yeah, that's right. And it was unclear at first to me whether he was.

[00:59:11] Whether this was by analogy or whether he was actually making this like a real example of aesthetic discrimination. These guys thought the wine was good except for this, whereas the other people thought the wine was good with no exceptions. There is a difference between being able to discern,

[00:59:34] make differences and notice things versus judging those things to be beautiful or not. What do you mean? So I mean that the fact that they could detect iron and leather in the taste means that they're really good at detecting differences in wine.

[00:59:53] But are they better judges of the goodness of that wine merely because they can detect those things? I think the idea, because I think this comes right in the section where if you're going to be a good judge of a work of art,

[01:00:05] one of the things you need to be able to do is compare it to all sorts of different other kinds of art. Find things in it, be really delicate. Like I think this is like the delicacy of taste. Find things in it that like other people wouldn't find.

[01:00:20] You know, you can really notice things that other people wouldn't notice. And in doing that, you are able to appreciate it. Like I think he assumes and I think he's right that in being able to do

[01:00:32] that makes you have a richer appreciation for the work of art than someone who can't do that. Yeah, yeah. And I totally agree. And I don't know if you want to talk about this yet, but one of the criteria is practice and experience.

[01:00:48] And that is something that I just didn't. I don't think I either just didn't pay enough attention to this as a criteria when I was younger or I didn't realize it until I gained more experience that that.

[01:01:03] I don't think I really knew how to listen to music that well when I was very young. I don't think I really learned how to read a book. I don't think I don't think until recently I learned how to watch a movie.

[01:01:14] And it sounds weird, but it requires so it does require experience and, you know, he calls it practice, I think. But but some degree of expertise. Yeah. In order to make these refined distinctions between things.

[01:01:33] And music, I'll keep coming back to his analogy, but I was listening to a podcast that was Questlove. You know Questlove? Yeah. Yeah. He was interviewing an early producer of hip hop named Marley Marl and they were

[01:01:45] talking and it was really a roundtable of people who are experts in this domain. And they were talking about the different sounds of a snare and a kick and and about how obvious it was to them. You know, there was a hilarious story where somebody stole the samples

[01:02:01] from this producer and used them for other songs. And he's like, I heard that those are mine. Like I could hear the static in them. And I really did not know before I started, say, making beats how to listen

[01:02:12] for differences between a particular kick and a particular snare. And I don't think it's just that I've become more picky. It's that I actually feel like I am making a reasonable judgment about the goodness or badness of something that I didn't have the ability to do before. Right.

[01:02:26] Because you appreciate the qualities of it that you didn't appreciate before. They all just seem the same before. And now you know to look for something or not to look for something. Exactly. And I was trying to wrap my head around

[01:02:41] why this is like, what is what is Hume really saying? And what am I experiencing? Because if I listen, you're right to like to say, I couldn't tell the difference before and so I would make an aesthetic judgment that this song is as good as

[01:02:55] this song or this production is as good as this production. And now I can. So I say this one is better than this one. It is it is weird, though, because this is something that I've wanted to talk about for a long time and that we've mentioned before.

[01:03:11] Am I just why am I just not better off having never learned that difference in enjoying all of the music right here? Right. But I think that's not like I don't think Hume is necessarily saying you might not be better off if you just dumbly.

[01:03:28] Dumbly like liked all those. He's trying to resolve this paradox of like we have this sense that some things are better than others and it could be that, well, you know, would be happier in their, you know, like in brave new world just seeing like the feelies and,

[01:03:44] you know, rather than reading Shakespeare or Homer or whatever. But it doesn't. So they might be just happier at a baseline level, but that's not the point. The point is trying to like figure out why we have this sense that some works of art

[01:03:59] are better than other works of art. Well, at the same time thinking that it's ultimately subjective, like it's inherent in us rather than the object. I think obviously Hume would think that you are better off like learning and like

[01:04:13] you do and I bet and I think you feel that I feel that like, you know, we always talk about with movies and how just talking about a movie on the podcast just makes us watch it in a different way, appreciate it in a new

[01:04:23] way, like it more than we liked it before. And like it's because we're just keep learning and keep practicing like how to analyze it and teaching is the best example of this, right? Like you teach something over and over again,

[01:04:36] you're just going to just going to learn so much more to appreciate about it. And it becomes a richer experience, like like a richer just feeling of aesthetic appreciation. Yeah, yeah, definitely. He does point out, I think, somewhere in this essay,

[01:04:54] he says, you know, sometimes like the first time you see something, it's amazing. Yeah, right? Like you're sort of overwhelmed by it and everybody thinks it's great. And then upon repeated viewings or listening or whatever, you start to realize it wasn't as good.

[01:05:14] And this is an experience I had before I knew what, you know, before I had the words to describe it is it always felt like that. You know, when we would still buy albums as kids,

[01:05:24] yeah, like the albums that I liked right away were never the ones that I liked in the long term or were rarely the ones that I liked in the long term. There's something there's a depth

[01:05:36] to music that sometimes it takes some getting like some getting used to or familiarity or this complexity that there's a complexity that you don't catch the first time around. Yeah, and it's not that there aren't some songs like maybe there is

[01:05:53] some Beatles songs that you like right away. And then you also just like you listen to it a thousand times and you still think it's amazing. But the fact but one of the criteria is for being a good judge is that you read or view the thing repeatedly.

[01:06:10] Like you're just not going to be able to give, make an informed judgment about the quality of a work. If you've only seen it once, right? One of the hardest things that we have to admit to ourselves is is to each other.

[01:06:23] I mean, is if we've come to discuss a movie or a TV show and we've only watched it once, that's like a heart. It's a terrible way to have to admit. Yeah, which only applies to you because I always watch the thing twice.

[01:06:37] Really, you watch those Star Trek more than once? No, we were talking about the good art. Fair enough to say. So yeah, so I mean, that's another one of his criteria that you have. And I think again, very plausible that you do have to

[01:06:55] watch the thing more than once or review it more than once or read it more than once. Right. It's not that that it's bad if you like it at first. It's that it's that upon repeated viewing or listening, you should come to appreciate it more if it's good.

[01:07:11] Yeah, it's good if it's really good. And and maybe you'll agree, you'll come to the same judgment. But in a lot of cases, you're going to learn something on repeated feelings. And so again, like if if we disagree,

[01:07:25] like maybe the reason you don't like straw dogs is because you only saw it once. And I've seen it like five times, you know, that would be an argument that I could make. I would still have to convince you to watch it again.

[01:07:35] But it's like an argument that would make sense as a way of resolving our disagreement about straw dogs. You know, he makes a lot of the sensory organs like it's like he's saying

[01:07:51] what you refer to as his his view that we there's a common human nature is really like he's like, well, you need to have sufficient eyesight and hearing and smell in order to really make sense of the experience. Yeah.

[01:08:04] So when the organs are so fine as to allow nothing to escape them. And at the same time, so exact as to perceive every ingredient in the composition, this we call delicacy of taste. And I really like that.

[01:08:16] And it's not it might sound at first as if, well, either you have the ear or the eye or you don't, but there really is something that comes from the practice of viewing and listening. Yeah, it's not about your innate ability

[01:08:32] or like how many, you know, how high a pitch of sound you can hear or whatever. And maybe you don't have the innate ability. I don't think he's committed to say that everybody can be an ideal judge or even

[01:08:43] approximate an ideal judge, but I think he is saying that we all have the capacity to become much, much, much more accurate and informed than we are, which is true. Like this is so obvious, right? Yeah.

[01:08:57] Like the delicacy, you know, this could also tie this into the understanding in the historical context of so he says, you have to, if a certain thing is is written or painted or whatever for an audience in a different time,

[01:09:16] then you have to put yourself in the mindset of the intended audience of that thing. Talks a lot about I was wondering what you felt about this sort of he wants the judge of the art to be objective and free of bias.

[01:09:32] And he makes a great deal of this. And that sort of bias where you're like, well, I just like, I don't know, movies about people who look like me or from my time. But I think this is a different like this is a different point than being free

[01:09:48] of prejudice or bias, I think. Well, I think the objectivity point is right. He's where you need to step outside of the constraints of your historical time and view it from the audience like that it was intended to be viewed from. Like, right?

[01:10:02] I think it is a broad point. Right. It's it's yeah, it's part of the broader objectivity, but it's actually making yourself less objective. You're actually trying to put yourself in the perspective of somebody who is viewing or hearing or whatever it was of that time.

[01:10:20] And so it requires this kind of projection of empathy and, you know, like a perspective taking, I guess. Yeah. And dismissal of your own like bias, I guess. It's in your bias at least to like the things that you're familiar with.

[01:10:34] And I also have to see it in the form. Like if I'm if we're talking about oratory and I'm just reading it, that's not how it was intended to be presented. And I have to imagine myself as a like Roman citizen listening

[01:10:49] to this Cato speech and only then will I be able to judge its quality. If I just read it in my own mindset, I could be dismissive of it. And if I am that I'm missing like I'm not judging the work of art as it is. Yeah.

[01:11:06] You know, this is why reading a play is you can't judge it as well as seeing the play because these like Shakespeare is meant to be acted. It's not it was not meant to be read.

[01:11:16] Yeah, but I've always thought it must be a weird thing for your job to be to read scripts. To me, they must have a crazy imagination to be able to see all of the stage instructions and are like to see

[01:11:30] this play out as a movie and be able to at that level distinguish what would be good and what would be bad. Right. To Hume's point, like that's a great example. It would be insane to judge a movie by the script.

[01:11:42] Right. Like that would not be a fair way to assess whether a movie was good or not. You have to see it in the form that it was presented. And and then, yeah, you know, this other part where you have to put yourself in

[01:11:56] the mindset like, you know, what does that mean? Like how far can you take that? Like are you supposed to put yourself in the mindset of the people that triumph of the will was intended for and, you know, and judge it from that perspective?

[01:12:12] I mean, I think the answer might be yes. Like you might say yes. He has this other thing about the immorality of a work that is, you know, we can talk about at the end.

[01:12:21] But I think in general, the idea is look, if this is meant for, you know, like a kind of propaganda for a racist ideology and it's a work of art that is intending to do that, then you have to kind of put yourself in the mindset

[01:12:37] of somebody who is the intended audience of that to judge his quality. Yeah. So let's read a little bit of what he says. Where where he's talking about there's a paragraph where he says, but to enable a critic,

[01:12:52] the more fully to execute this undertaking, he must preserve his mind free from all prejudice and allow nothing to enter into his consideration. But the very object which is submitted to his examination and so he goes, he makes the point that's where

[01:13:06] it says in order to address himself to a particular audience and must have a regard to their particular genius interests, opinions, passions and prejudices. Otherwise, he hopes in vain to govern their resolutions and inflame their affections. And so he's asking he's asking something.

[01:13:20] He's asking a lot of this judge. And I think some criticism from the little that I read has been that he is he's requiring some version of an ideal judge to exist that can can't really exist. Why do you say that?

[01:13:36] I mean, like or I get why you're saying that. But why is this a problem in the sense that we can be better or worse when it comes to those things, right? And so all that the ideal does is set a kind of standard.

[01:13:53] And even if we can't approach it, like we certainly get whether we are closer to the ideal or further away from. Yeah, I think the criticism and again, I don't know, but it would be in the same vein as any other criticism of a sort

[01:14:06] of ideal theory where where he is asking us to forget, if possible, my individual being and my peculiar circumstances, right? If the work be addressed to persons of a different age or nation, he makes he the critic makes no allowance for their peculiar views and

[01:14:21] prejudices, but full of matters of his own age and country, which is actually condemns what seems admirable by this means his sentiments are perverted and so he's asking people to get out behind the veil of ignorance. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, OK, that's fair, fair enough.

[01:14:38] And the funny thing is, is that he also at the same time admits that it won't be possible to fully do that, right? Because like you're going to appreciate different things at 20 and at 50. And you're just not going to be able to get into the mindset,

[01:14:52] depending on whether you're emotional and biological age, like setting that aside. But like you're just not and also just people are going to have different temperaments and different things. Like I take that as a kind of admission that what we're talking about here

[01:15:10] is not 100 percent true or false here. There's going to have to be some inherent relativity. And so it's definitely more of a pluralistic view than. But I guess that wouldn't even really reply to the objection that you're raising. Right.

[01:15:28] And he does say, you know, there's some shit that gets in the way of being a good judge, these biases you have to remove. And there's some stuff that it's OK that there is differences in judgments and things that have to do, for instance, with temperament.

[01:15:43] Like if you're a sensitive person, you will like a different. He thinks that that's that's an OK kind of difference that doesn't make one work of art better or worse. It really depends on who's seeing it. Right. But I think like the OK, how do you read this?

[01:15:58] Like the OK biases are just the ones I think he thinks we can free ourselves from, whereas the other ones is just we can't. And so by definition, one of them is going to is going to affect in a way

[01:16:12] that like we could say it's our judgments are inaccurate. Whereas in the other case, it's just inevitable. And so human nature is such that we're not going to be able to make accurate distinctions between works of art that are only different because

[01:16:30] like people only have different judgments because of these differences in temperament or age or whatever. Right. So so I don't know. And I think part of what I'm struggling with is what kind of, you know,

[01:16:43] it seems like he is making a normative claim about what can be considered beautiful and what can't or what shouldn't. And so he says, but not withstanding all our endeavors to fix a standard of taste and reconcile the discordant apprehensions of men, there still remain two sources

[01:17:01] of variation which are not sufficient indeed to confound all the boundaries of beauty and deformity, but will often serve to produce a difference in the degrees of our approbation or blame. The one is the different humors of particular men that's personality differences.

[01:17:16] So it sounds like he is making a normative claim about like, well, if your judge, if you and I disagree because of our personality, then that's an an OK kind of disagreement. I don't think he's saying normative.

[01:17:31] He says two sources of variation which are not sufficient indeed to confound the boundaries of beauty, so you're not confounding, but will often serve to produce a different difference in the degrees of our approbation or blame.

[01:17:47] And so like he's saying, like this is just going to happen and there's nothing we can do about it. That's how I read that. Yeah, but he's contrasting this with what might cause variability in our judgments that might have to do with bias.

[01:18:00] So if you like a work of art because your friend made it, yeah, that would that difference is is I think he's making a normative claim. That's the kind of difference that we aim to get rid of differences in personality, though.

[01:18:13] Hey, I mean, it's hard to discern what's normative and what's descriptive here. But I would say that he thinks that, you know, the you're my friend thing is something we're capable of removing ourselves from, but we're not capable of contra the first article, like making ourselves

[01:18:32] younger or making ourselves be born in different times. Like we can try to a certain extent to remove ourselves from those things and with some success. But when you've like down to the handful of like really great art that you're

[01:18:50] trying to like rank or something like that, it's just inevitable that your age and your temperament and the time that you live in will have an effect that only affects the degree of appreciation that you will have for something. Yeah, yeah.

[01:19:08] And I think I think this is an agreement with what you just said. In that case, a certain degree of diversity and judgment is unavoidable. And we seek in vain for a standard by which we can reconcile the contrary

[01:19:18] sentiments, he does say though that those those are then just blameless. So he's saying something really normative. He's saying like those are kinds of blameless sources of diversity. The other ones are are avoidable, so you should remove yourself from the biases

[01:19:34] that like it was your friend who made it or not because they're avoidable. That's I guess the so that's where the descriptive and the normative kind of bleed together. It's an odd implies can kind of thing. Right. Exactly. You know, like I think this actually makes sense.

[01:19:48] Like I've often said that Wes Anderson just doesn't do it for me. But I also can recognize the artistic quality of his movies. It just isn't going to like I'm of a temperament for whatever reason,

[01:20:03] where it doesn't excite pleasure in me to see his movies while at the same time, fully recognizing that other people who have just as discerning tastes as I do when it comes to movies will appreciate his movies. And, you know, like that's just that is an inherent

[01:20:22] subjectivity that actually is is both normatively and descriptively fine. You know? Yeah. That's a really good example, I think for this essay because as we've said, I think we've both said this before that we can't get into the Wes Anderson thing, but at least I remember I said,

[01:20:41] I like watching video essays about Wes Anderson's filmmaking. So I am appreciating the meticulousness of his framing, for instance, you know, his use of color palettes and fonts, all that stuff. I do appreciate it. I just as a work of art, like it's just not my thing.

[01:20:57] As this comment said, if I don't like it, I don't like it. It doesn't mean that I'm hating. Right? Like it's not right. It's right. Echoing Hume. Exactly. I believe he was quoting paraphrasing Hume. So we get to this point that I love where he says,

[01:21:13] a young man whose passions are warm will be more sensibly touched with amorous and tender images than a man more advanced in years who take pleasure in wise philosophical reflections concerning the conduct of life and moderation of the passions. I haven't gotten there yet.

[01:21:31] I literally wrote me versus Tamler. No, I'm the warm one. Are you? I have warm passions. You're the Kantian. I mean, it is you and me, but not in the reverse way. This is when he says at 20, Ovid may be the favorite author, Horace at 40.

[01:21:51] And perhaps is it Tacitus or Tacitus? Tacitus. I think C.I., like Softsy. I don't know. Yeah. It's interesting like and he said it's because Ovid wrote these love ballads, but like Ovid is like when it comes to immorality,

[01:22:10] his works like, you know, there's nothing that we do that even approaches it. It's more fucked up than anything Tarantino has come up with. Like it's crazy and it's a funny example given what he says at the end.

[01:22:26] Another thing that he says we can't get over, but this is actually something that means the art because I guess this is universal, that the art isn't beautiful in the same way as if the artwork is immoral. Yeah. And so he gives the example of Homer,

[01:22:46] which he's previously used as the example of like how incredible is this, you know, that it stood the test of time and rightly so. But then he says there are some aspects of it and other immoral pieces of art that we just rebel at.

[01:23:03] We can't accept and that makes it less good, you know? And maybe the people in Homer's time didn't appreciate that because their sense of morality was different. But for us, like I think this is actually something that counts in disfavor of work for him is if it's immoral.

[01:23:25] Yeah. I was really surprised at that part. And it seemed like Hume of all people doesn't seem like a moralistic person. I think I was trying to understand because on the one hand, taking it face value, it seems kind of like our

[01:23:41] modern aesthetics are not like that, like we like anti heroes and we don't mind violence and we don't mind fucked up stuff. But I don't think that's the right reading of this. I don't think what he's rebelling against is what,

[01:23:59] like what in common parlance we would say immoral, like I don't think he would disapprove of a Tarantino. I think he's saying maybe something deeper about how hard it is to put ourselves in the mindset of somebody who doesn't seem to have any of the sympathies or

[01:24:19] values that we have. And that's the immorality he's talking about. Whereas somebody like Tarantino who's pushing against whatever our standards of clean, clean movies are is not it's not somebody who I can't even get into the mindset of.

[01:24:36] But you read some of those early, early things and you're like, what the fuck? Like it just almost doesn't make sense morally that like. Yeah, I would act. Yeah. I'd like to think you're right. But let me read that.

[01:24:50] He says, but where the ideas of morality and decency alter from one age to another? So he sets this up by saying like there's this whole debate of like, are we better educated than the Greeks and Romans were?

[01:25:02] And he says, you know, in some senses, yes, obviously, when it comes to like science and he thinks philosophy too. I'm not sure about that. We are, but like in some areas we're not. And he says, but where the ideas of morality and decency

[01:25:18] alter from one age to another and where vicious manners are described without being marked with the proper characters of blame and approbation. This must be allowed to disfigure the poem and to be a real deformity. I cannot nor is it proper. I should.

[01:25:35] So that's like it's both descriptive and normative here. Enter into such sentiments. And however I may excuse the poet on account of the manners of his age, I can never relish the composition, the want of humanity and of decency so

[01:25:49] conspicuous in the characters drawn by several of the ancient poets. And sometimes even by Homer and Greek tragedians diminishes considerably the merit of their noble performances and gives modern authors an advantage over them. We are not interested in the fortunes and sentiments of such rough heroes.

[01:26:08] This is just wrong. We are displeased to find the limits of vice and virtue so much confounded. So like I almost think like and like this is just descriptively wrong. Like you said, we love heroes always have

[01:26:20] and whatever indulgence we may give to the writer on account of his prejudice is we cannot prevail on our self. I almost think this is like written to like please somebody or something. It's so weird for him to say this. Right. It's not true.

[01:26:34] He knows it's not true. It doesn't even fit with the rest of his philosophy. Yeah, it seemed weird. It seems so. I was trying to understand he's describing some sort of resistance that he's feeling when he's reading about something that he disagrees with.

[01:26:53] So I was trying to get into the head of like, OK, what would I? What would take me out of a work of art? Morally. And I do think that it can happen. I just don't think it happens nearly as easily or that it even should happen as

[01:27:12] easily as Hume says, but I do think that sometimes you get a character that is just like this is not the kind of human being that I'm interested in. Like this is I felt that way a little bit about mad men. I could never get into it.

[01:27:24] I did too, actually. Yeah. And it was a moralistic take, which is weird coming from from me because I like a lot of really bad act like bad shit. And I also don't think like I hate works of art that are presenting bad people

[01:27:37] but are also like heavy handedly condemning it. Yeah, like like crash or something like that. You know, like, oh my God, Oscar winner. Yeah, speaking of which, because he says like with that it's OK if they're marked with the proper characters of blame and disapprobation.

[01:27:55] But I think a black hat that this is what people get mad at Tarantino about is that he glamorizes the violence without condemning it enough. And you know, or like the, you know, in Pulp Fiction where Jimmy uses the N word, it's like, no, we're not supposed to

[01:28:12] think like or it doesn't seem like the intention is to think, oh, Jimmy's racist. It's just supposed to be funny. And like, I guess, you know, I think a lot of people have trouble enjoying that. Yeah, yeah, I think so. I think that's that's right.

[01:28:25] It hits different to like now to me too. So maybe be Hume's right to an extent, like you said, just not to the. Yeah, like I want to think, you know, when you read some of that

[01:28:38] Greek and Norse mythology and the gods act with this very weird, almost like arbitrary morality, like it's you're just like, this is so foreign to me that I can't can't really think of people who would, you know, and then he cut off

[01:28:51] his head and came in his neck and then like three horses emerged. What Icelandic sagas are you reading? That was my fan fiction. There was your horse, horse flows fan fiction. But you know, that kind of really weird and like that, you know,

[01:29:10] then he just killed his daughter and then yeah, shit like that. No, I mean, but at the same time, there's something pretty fascinating about some of those some of those texts too. And just imagining a society.

[01:29:25] This is where I think that imaginative kind of enterprise that Hume was talking about really helps. It's like this is like you they live in a world where it seems like the gods are capricious and often cruel and often unjust.

[01:29:37] And I mean, I don't think we necessarily live in a world where we don't think that if we believe in gods, it's like, I mean, you're right that sometimes just rank immorality, you know, it will just take you out of it,

[01:29:53] you know, and there's also certain things like I've said, I've never I can't like I have trouble watching like rape scenes in a movie, like in a movie, even if it's like properly condemning it or something like that.

[01:30:06] But I think, you know, that is so maybe he's right to an extent. And it's just the way he's phrasing it makes him sound more moralizing. Remember when we we noted that like the book of Job seemed to have this

[01:30:19] extra added like and then Job was happy because God rewarded him. And it's like, wait, somebody else must have written that. Exactly. We had we hosted Anthony Appiah, you know, he's the New York Times ethicist. And we ran a session where he would answer questions that students have.

[01:30:39] And one of the students asked this very question, which is like, is it OK for me to enjoy works of art that are immoral, either that the artist is immoral or that the work itself isn't moral and mention Triumph of the Will and mentioned,

[01:30:53] you know, some of like 90s rap music and and Appiah just straight down the line. Triumph of the Will great movie. Like you can't moralize your art. Art is art. And if you're only going to confine yourself to art, which is morally

[01:31:10] virtuous in and of itself or has been made by moral people, like you're basically down to vert nothing, you know, like. And so you have to be able to both at this like aesthetically appreciate something because he doesn't think you'll be corrupted by it.

[01:31:28] Like Plato or Socrates says in the Republic, he doesn't think it's going to corrupt your soul. He thinks like this is how you learn. And he also used the example of Mark Twain and Huckleberry Finn.

[01:31:39] And it's like if you're just not going to read that stuff because there, you know, there's racist elements to it. How are you going to learn about like what happened in these times and how people thought and what was going on?

[01:31:50] Like if you're not going to, if you're going to just shut yourself off from that stuff, then you're not going to have a refined moral understanding. Never mind a refined aesthetic understanding. So I mean, he was really to bite the bullet on Triumph of the Will.

[01:32:03] Like I think that, you know, there's something to be said for that. Yeah. Yeah, that's a line I would like to draw firmly in the sand too, which is art, art is art and you don't have to like it. Right. But I would put money on that that

[01:32:20] is not people don't get corrupted morally from reading Huckleberry Finn. Like that's not the sort of thing that brings you to be a racist. Right. Like it takes other things and those other things don't tend to be art. Yeah.

[01:32:35] And he was saying like you can watch Triumph of the Will. It's not going to make you racist unless you're already racist. You know, like it's just not so. So that's one it also he also says religious principles are OK.

[01:32:48] Like you have to cut them some slack if they believe some crazy religion. Unless it's superstitious. This is another weird one. Yeah, where is that? That's right at the end. Yeah. It's like he's like don't judge don't judge cultures.

[01:33:06] Of all speculative errors, I'm quoting now, those which regard religion are the most excusable in compositions of genius, nor is it ever permitted. There's a weird there's a weird like a, you know, like a advice column sound to this, nor is it ever permitted to judge of the

[01:33:21] civility or wisdom of any people or even a single person by the grossness or refinement of their theological principles. The same good sense that directs men in the ordinary occurrences of life is not harkens to religious matters which are supposed to be placed

[01:33:34] altogether above the cognizance of human reason. I really liked that sentiment for some reason, where he's like, look. Just give him a break if they believe in like this, you know, big, big guy in the sky walking around like that's not that's not the domain

[01:33:50] of what we're considering anyway. It can actually like inform their art in a way of like or inspire their art and inspire some of the beauty in there. Yeah. But yeah, but then there's the part where he says.

[01:34:05] But religious principles are a blemish in any polite composition when they rise up to superstition and intrude themselves into every sentiment, however remote from any connection with religion. It is no excuse for the poet that the customs of his country had

[01:34:21] birthed in life with so many religious ceremonies and observances that no part of it was exempt from that yoke. It must be forever ridiculous in Petrarch to compare his mistress Laura to Jesus Christ. Nor is it any less ridiculous in that agreeable,

[01:34:39] libertine Boccaccio very seriously to give thanks to God Almighty and the ladies for their assistance in defending him against his enemies. It's like I don't know if he's being serious here. And it's weird because that's how he ends it. Yeah, that's like the last line, right?

[01:34:55] You know, it seems to me that what he might be trying to say, which I think is he's biased himself. Like, I think he lives in a time where Christianity was stifling to the art. So he goes he goes at it in the paragraph before he goes.

[01:35:11] He goes at the Roman Catholics for being themselves hateful of all other religions. Yeah. And so he thinks that there there is a certain rigidity that it sounds like he's against. I think the part that isn't serious,

[01:35:26] I think is that he gives these caveats both about the moral and like it almost feels like he's pleasing a certain audience just to get them not to like shit post them on Twitter, because it doesn't feel like that. You know, like, OK, I'll give you moral.

[01:35:40] And yes, if it's really superstitious, you know, it's like the people who can't get over the fact that I'm open to ghosts like that's I can't like I'm going to have to listen to just draw the line Sam Harris exclusively, like old Richard Dawkins speeches.

[01:35:58] So I read this criticism that that Hume is being a bit circular in his normative theory of beauty, where he says, what it means to be beautiful is what these a judge that meets all the criteria that he's laid out, that is unbiased, that is practiced, that whatever.

[01:36:22] That's what makes that's what we can say is the criteria for something being beautiful. I don't think it's like you make it sound definitional. I think it's just beauty is like the people who are capable of identifying

[01:36:39] beauty because they meet all these criteria, they are going to be the ones that can identify what's beautiful and what's not. But he's not saying that's the definition of beauty. It's more the definition of beauty is that it will,

[01:36:53] that it excites certain passions and people, certain sentiments when they're in right for you know that something is beautiful. It's like an epistemic claim that you know that something is beautiful if these people with these properties. It's epistemic exactly. Yeah. But yes, maybe I maybe can actually.

[01:37:13] So is the circularity that well, how do we know if they're like if these people are correctly identifying beautiful things? We would have to already know what was beautiful so that we could identify the good judges. Yeah. Yeah. So here is quoting from the Stanford encyclopedia entry.

[01:37:31] I don't know who wrote it. The proposal has been criticized on the grounds that it posits a viciously circular analysis of aesthetic value. Aesthetically superior artworks are those endorsed by true critics, but true critics are identified by their endorsement of the best art.

[01:37:46] And then it goes on to say that more recent interpretations see a problem of regress where circularity is avoided by identifying good critics who satisfy the five criteria that he lays out. But this generates new evaluative questions for we must determine if their

[01:38:01] responses are sufficient sufficiently delicate, grounded in the right comparisons and so on. Yeah. So as for the first version of the circularity, I don't think that's right because those criteria that he lays out, you know, for being free from

[01:38:15] prejudice, putting yourself in the mindset of the intended audience, being informed, being being able to discern various distinctions, reading it more than once, seeing it more than once, practicing like being like seeing a lot of things in that genre so you know how to compare.

[01:38:33] Like all of those things are intuitively plausible. Like when I am more like that for a particular kind of art, like I appreciate it more. So like I don't see any circularity there. That just seems right to me that those people are going to be more trustworthy.

[01:38:49] That's why, you know, you will read good film critics and like trust them more when they say a movie is good than you would just a random person on the street. Yeah, I think the reading that it's circular has to come from wanting

[01:39:06] Hume to be making some sort of metaphysical claim about beauty. And I don't think he really is. I agree with you that what he's saying is I think what he's saying is some version of this.

[01:39:18] I don't know, you might disagree, but it is those things that you just laid out like watching something more than once, having enough practice in that domain where you know training your senses to identify things like, I don't know, light and color

[01:39:37] sounds, all of these things end up informing judgment in a way that like if everybody did these things, there would be some agreement. It's like washing away the spurious parts, like the part that is just about like where you were raised or the part that's

[01:39:56] just about like whether they are of your religion or not or whether you know them or not. And how much you understand the genre? You know, like classical music, like I just don't understand it well enough

[01:40:06] to be able to tell the difference between like Haydn and some lesser version of Haydn. Exactly. And and he really believes that if somebody, which I this is I feel like matches my experience, if somebody were to pull me aside

[01:40:21] and say, no, listen to Haydn and how he does this and teaches me how to do this, that like there is a far greater chance that I will agree with the expert. Right. That's that's the whole joy in it. And I think we don't.

[01:40:39] The question of the metaphysics of beauty here, I think, can be entirely avoided. What he's what he's really talking about is the human experience of enjoying enjoying beauty. And he's trying to say, look, it seems as if there's all this disagreement, so it must be subjective.

[01:40:53] But I think that if you wash away, like if you just take the common whatever, the common denominator, like of brushing out all of the stuff that's unimportant and focusing on the stuff that we would agree is important. You would get more agreement than you thought. Yeah. Yeah.

[01:41:11] And I think so it's like an empirical bet and it corresponds like it corresponds with like my own experience now. That's why the test of time, I think, is what he's saying. Like the test of time is that like, look, over and over again,

[01:41:23] people who know shit, right, they can tell they can tell from good rap like after 20 years. Yeah. And like it's not like otherwise, it would be kind of a miraculous coincidence that we all just like, God, everyone still loves Homer. Now he gets that there could be just

[01:41:37] fashions or whatever, but fashions don't typically last 2,500 years or 3,000 years and like across all different kinds of cultures. Right. And even then, right? So he said something that really resonated with me in there. I don't have the quote, but he said something about being able to

[01:41:55] appreciate the beauty of something, even though it's out of your time. So like if I listen to the earliest run DMC record, it is like rap has progressed so much that it's certainly not the kind of rap

[01:42:09] that if it came out today, I would judge it as good. But it is so groundbreaking for its time that I enjoy it for what it is. Like truly enjoy it. Like I can I can say it is aesthetically pleasing,

[01:42:20] even though in the context of like if they came out right now, it wouldn't be. Yeah. And like you can because you're doing that thing of putting yourself in the mindset of somebody who's just having their mind blown by this stuff because

[01:42:32] they have no like it's just like so new and so different and so cool. And like that's what you're doing. It's like seeing Citizen Kane, which actually is still pretty, you know, like cool or third man or something like that.

[01:42:46] Imagine seeing this in 1941 where you were just used to like, like unless you were into German expressionism, like you never saw cameras being used like that and people talking that fast. And, you know, and understanding the historical context helps you understand the influence as well.

[01:43:01] So you can you can better appreciate today's movies by appreciating what that movie did that may seem like corny now, but it really influenced everybody that came. You know, it's sort of like watching Casablanca for the first time and

[01:43:19] realizing there are all these quotes that like are common in popular culture. But you never knew where they came from. Yeah, like, yeah, sure, you wouldn't say those things now. But like, god damn it, they really did make some some cultural impact.

[01:43:31] The Simpsons like ruined a lot of art by just like making it that your first exposure to it is through the Simpsons. And then when you see that, you're like, oh, that's like haunted house of horror or whatever. All right, we should wrap up.

[01:43:48] But I like the one like I think we're both very positive about this. Both like that it's good and also that it's plausible. I do think there's way more variation than he admits in this and that like

[01:44:01] there is like true judges will only get you up to a point and and that's fine. Like, there's no reason that we need to go beyond that point. But I think he makes it still sound like there would be a little more

[01:44:15] agreement than I think there actually will be. Yeah, maybe. And I think it depends like what what your default belief is. If you think that it's all whatever capricious, then I think you'd be pleasantly or like very it would be very interesting to note that there actually

[01:44:34] is there's a reason Godfather makes the top lists of movies all the time. Like these these people, there is some agreement. So going from zero to like some is I think. You really would have a different experience of this argument if you thought there was zero. Quiet.

[01:44:55] But if you think like some people do that there is beauty in the thing itself and that we must merely recognize it, then you would be dismayed a bit by the amount of disagreement there is and you might say, well,

[01:45:09] the ratio of acceptable variation to unacceptable variation might, you know, who knows? Right. It might be that personality and temperament and humorous, as he calls them, might actually cause a lot more variability than he is willing to accept or that he believed. Yeah. It's hard to know.

[01:45:27] It's hard to know. But I think also there are certain kinds of art that is more subject to this kind of variability. So like everybody loves the Godfather and probably if you don't like the Godfather, there's something about movies that you don't understand.

[01:45:40] But like something like Blue Velvet, which like Roger Ebert panned when it came out and then, you know, like eased up a little bit, but still panned pretty much until he died. And maybe this is part of the morality aspect of it that's going to hit some

[01:45:57] people in one way and some people in another way. There is a kind of art that will be divisive even for informed critics. And that's like, again, I think that's fine. But I also think like that's just inevitable too. Yeah. Yeah, I think you're right.

[01:46:14] I mean, this is the the Lynch question. What what is it that makes some people like that kind of movie? Versus not. And it would be weird to make some sort of normative claim that like, well, Roger Ebert just didn't know how to watch a movie.

[01:46:31] It's like, no. But that's why those kinds of disagreements are so distressing sometimes where you're just like, wait, what is it then? Like, why can't you see what I see? It's like a very weird feeling to like respect someone's opinion and have them.

[01:46:45] Like if somebody who really, really knew rap really well came and told me like MF Doom sucked as an MC, I'd be like, but wait, that we I thought we all understood that we understood. But that's a big thing.

[01:46:57] But like if he told you that there's some particular song that you love that he didn't like it wouldn't be that. That's how I feel about like Roger Ebert and Blue Valley. Like if there's a whole like, you know, if he didn't like any of Lynch's work,

[01:47:10] then I would think, OK, what the fuck is wrong with Roger Ebert? But to have like that reaction to a specific movie, I think, you know, while it's legitimate and why I respect him tremendously as a critic, like I agree to disagree on that one.

[01:47:24] Yeah. And you never know what buttons it pressed in him. Yeah. Like and I think that that respecting the opinion of a critic is fine. Like this is the thing. You know, if somebody told me that like this country music artist was the bomb,

[01:47:39] I like it's not like I would be mad at them and tell them country music sucks. Like I would just be like, well, I never really listened to country music because it didn't even start to get me interested in it.

[01:47:47] So I believe you like I don't think you're wrong. You know, the best one of the best examples that I was thinking of is like when you go to an art museum and you just look at the paintings

[01:47:56] versus when you have those things that they sometimes give you like the headphones that just like alerts you to all these aspects of the painting, gives you historical context, like all these things. And then you just appreciate it more.

[01:48:09] You just like understand it more and appreciate it more. It's telling you like I'm not like I don't know much about painting and art. And so like I need that stuff. And to have that being explained to me allows me to have a much richer

[01:48:23] aesthetic experience than if I didn't. Yeah, absolutely. And I maintain actually the best class I ever took in college was art history. It the way that it taught me just the smallest little smidgen of how to like see art, like composition and whatever else.

[01:48:44] It completely opened my mind. I went from zero to something and that leap from zero to something is huge. Right. Yeah. So is Monet or Renoir better? Mr. Art History, like major. I yeah, I never got into that. I never quite understood what people saw in like Monet.

[01:49:09] It's really have you seen like the fucking lily pads or whatever? I saw the water exhibit when it came to San Francisco when I was in college. Yeah. And I was underwhelmed. But on the other hand, those Dutch masters, man.

[01:49:24] You see it in you're just wearing in the right context. You got to see it in that little museum in Paris. Yeah. That is a case where like those impressionists were doing something that mattered historically, like getting that context totally would make me

[01:49:40] appreciate it more. I just sometimes I like Ant-Man and Wast. You know, sometimes. All right. That was fun. And you know, like learn how to value art. Otherwise, you're just going to think that the only way it has value is if it's an NFT.

[01:49:59] If David Lynch made NFTs, would you buy? Didn't he? No, I like I don't I don't know. I don't want to know. Don't tell me if he did. Join us next time on Very Bad Wizards.

[01:50:56] Very Bad Wizards.