LEAVES wrote: ↑Sun Jun 23, 2019 10:09 pm
I don't think the role of dialectics is to relate to others' divergent experiences. That is the role of empathy and opinion. I don't think "what can be considered facts" is of much importance relating to opinions. I don't think the concept of an "objective conception" is coherent. A subject conceives, an objective measurement reports facts. There is no conception or opinion in objectivity. I mean, I think that this is the role of opinion, and in the art of expressing opinions, and it has absolutely nothing to do with dialectics. I don't think the idea of "doubt" is coherent with respect to opinions. It's impossible to even conceive of a way to speak about "doubting" an opinion except with respect to a person lying, which has nothing to do with the subject's experience and solely to do with the subject's choice to relate an opinion or not.
Fwiw, the heliocentric system was an imagined concept before it was an objective fact; therefore objective concepts are definitely a thing.
I never thought of opinions as something that brings people together, per se. On the contrary (esp. internet culture), many people use their opinion as a way to ignore other people's opinions, a 'you go your way, I go mine', or something similarly, um, arbitrary. Opinions are useful to measure people's perspective differences, but much less so in bridging them, without the follow-up of some kind of establishment of mutual understanding between them. I also don't see how doubting anyone's, or one's own, opinion has to do with honesty, as if so many people have not been honestly mistaken on many occasions. The doubt is just the recognition of the possibility of error, god forbid. Opinions are also, thankfully, not immutable. Clarifying certain objective properties ("facts") of the thing being experienced does not have to be a threat to the quality of that experience, and ideally it should enhance it in hindsight. Another wonderful attribute of great art is that we are not done with it by sight, but we can take it with us. Solidifying our immediate impressions into fixed opinion is then pretty stultifying to how the art should evolve within us. Opinions are qualitative, and, believe me, I wish more people's opinions were less cheap.
LEAVES wrote: ↑Sun Jun 23, 2019 10:09 pm
Dialectics is not the same as dialogue. None of what you said above has anything to do with dialectics, and is entirely part of subjectivity, and none of it has any relationship to solipsism. To call it arbitrary is merely to accurately categorize it with respect to the denotation of the word arbitrary. I am not using "arbitrary" as a qualitative valuation, merely a denotative statement. Thus, to say that I am "shrugging off the effort" or "dismissing the value" is not accurate. I don't think that something being arbitrary is a negative. It has a negative connotation in other contexts, certainly - contexts where it deemed important that determined choices be made - but not in all contexts.
Dialectics are part of the dialogue, but, yes, let's stick to context. In this particular context: I'm curious why you have such a diametrically opposite opinion of the two Malick films which, to me and Justin Chang, appears to have been cut from the same thematic and stylistic cloth. You mentioned the lovely montage in the second half of
Song, but I'm less interested in your preference for
Song than in your contempt for
Cups. When you respond that this is your opinion and opinions are arbitrary, then that has the negative connotation that suggests "shrugging off the effort".
LEAVES wrote: ↑Sun Jun 23, 2019 10:09 pm
all art that is worthwhile must have, for example, a strong central narrative.
Most art isn't narrative in nature, but I will agree that art is rarely a reliable narrator. The point being that a lot of art forces us to reevaluate our presumptions in a way that undermines our "arbitrary" impressions. A lot of art is deceptive. A lot of it deceives to reveal truth, and visa versa. Art does, in fact, a lot of things, and so do we as we experience it and ruminate over it. The facts of the matter will not ruin you and tend to improve opinion if anything.
LEAVES wrote: ↑Sun Jun 23, 2019 10:09 pm
Arbitrariness is openness.
It can certainly be arid at times.