>I don't do that 'argument from authority' thing i get what you're suggesting here, and i would be inclined to say that i don't really appeal to someone I woul

>I don't do that 'argument from authority' thing i get what you're suggesting here, and i would be inclined to say that i don't really appeal to someone I would personally consider authoritative as a means of validating my argument, but that being said, citing someone who was fairly prominent in a specific field of study in order to make a point based on their work in that field of study isn't really appealing to authority. it's like if i were to cite Stephen Hawking to make the claim that black holes slowly radiate out their content over time, that wouldn't necessarily be appealing to authority, it would just be citing someone who happened to be an expert in a specific field for their work in it. granted, there are better, more objective things to refer to than the hypothesis of hawking radiation to demonstrate the accuracy of it, but I think the analogy stands. >So according to pierce, my interpretation of this as not as art is as valid as you thinking its art, since that's how im interpreting it? precisely. that's the nature of the relationship between interpreter, signs, and the signified. >It doesn't seem like a very self consistent idea. that's because the idea isn't necessarily one specifically used to justify the validity of what constitutes art, it's more about categorizing the relationship between an interpretive entity and that which is being interpreted as a triple, namely as a sign (the conveyed meaning or intent), the signifier (the thing which the sign is referring to), and the intepretant (the personal interpretation formed by the interpreter in response to the sign+signifier.) (note: apologies to anyone reading this if I haven't represented it fully accurately, im still in the process of integrating it completely, but I am confident my summation of it is generally correct) the connection I made to the subjective interpretation of what constitutes valid art is just my own invocation of this idea in the specific context of art and the criticism thereof. it definitely is a very generalized approach to things, but it's important to note that this process of semiosis isn't about the specific outcome, but rather about the process that leads to it, and therfore despite our personal experiences with it being contradictory, the process itself that leads to it is self consistent, it's just that you bring something different to the process of interpretation than I do because of your own experience, your own Bayesian Net as it were.