4 ms·
What about an art test: What other species makes art for the sake of art?
by lowglow 16y ago
What about an art test: What other species makes art for the sake of art?
- alanh 16y agoIs your goal to create a test that only humans pass because we already know humans are the only worthwhile species? Sort of begging the question, isn’t it? (Edit: I don’t mean any offense — just suspicious of human heuristics.)
- jpwagner 16y agoNo offense, but this comment is awfully condescending considering the interesting question it's in response to. I think Alan's claim of the motive of the original question is unfounded. *edit: reworded for clarity
- chc 16y agoI don't see how it's condescending. Either you're seeing something I'm not or you're mistaking a rhetorical device for condescension. The idea of art being some kind of moral threshold does seem very arbitrary. Edit: Incidentally, I'm not one of the people who downvoted you.
- jpwagner 16y agoI would be totally with you if lowglow's question was: "what about a long division test?" or something similarly snarky. but art is an interesting cultural phenomenon that very likely occurs in some form in many animals. Alan's supposition that there was some bad intent in posing the question is absurd here, in my opinion.
- chc 16y agoArt is an interesting cultural phenomenon, but not something that even all humans are very interested in (unless you define it very loosely). I wouldn't be surprised to see animals produce some form of art, but neither would I surprised to see a species as intelligent as humans — or even more intelligent — that didn't give a hoot about art. Let's reframe the validity of this test in terms that we don't have thousands of years of cultural baggage around: If an alien species arrives here and teaches us all sorts of miraculous things, would we feel compelled to conclude that they are not intelligent beings if they aren't very interested in the works of Rothko? It seems particularly likely to me that an aquatic species would not have art at least until it was very advanced, since they don't have the tools or media for creating it that, say, a caveman did.
- jpwagner 16y agoart is not what you learn in "art class"
- jpwagner 16y agoNot sure what "for the sake of art" means, but these guys pass or come close: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowerbird http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowerbird http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPbWJPsBPdA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPbWJPsBPdA
- msbarnett 16y agoThis pre-supposes we would recognize another species' art when we saw it.
- pyre 16y agoIt pre-supposes that 'art' (something that we argue about the definition of as humans) is a measure of intelligence.
- kragen 16y agoDo bubble rings count?
- docgnome 16y agoWhat about Elephants? I guess it depends on how you define art for art's sake. http://www.elephantart.com/catalog/splash.php http://www.elephantart.com/catalog/splash.php