For instance I read The Fountainhead as a youth and was moved by it for purely personal (non-political) reasons, and with regards to that experience it doesn’t matter to me what Ayn Rand was on about.

I hope you and the parent comment are correct, but this argument seems a little facile.

There is some art that I like because there is a story that connects the art to the artist.

But there are also novels that I have enjoyed simply because they tell a great story and I know nothing about the author. There are paintings and photos that I like simply because they seem beautiful to me and I know nothing about any suffering that went into their creation.

Does that make these works "not art"? If so, then I'm not sure what the difference is, and I'm not sure most people will care about the distinction.

Now imagine you found out that novel was actually generated by a computer program. It's the same text, but you now know that there is no human behind it, just an algorithm.

Would that make a difference for how you view the story? It certainly would to me. If it makes even a tiny difference to you as well, it demonstrates that you do care about the artist, even in cases where you don't notice it under normal circumstances.

I thought of two novels that I enjoyed:

First, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime. I have no recollection of who the author is, but if I learned that the story had been computer generated, it would bother me a little. So... "point to you."

Second, Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption. I know it was written by Stephen King, but the plot is so elegant that if you told me it had been computer generated, I don't think I would care. It's simply a great enjoyable story.

In the next 10 years, if the world is flooded with computer-generated novels that are hugely popular and the vast majority of people enjoy them without knowing their provenance, do you think those people will care that they are enjoying something that doesn't meet your definition of art?

edit: to be clear, this is not a position that I enjoy taking. There's something "Brave New Worldish" about it. Or it's a depressing version of the Turing Test.

The art is on the perception, not the intention. Though, if they overlap, it's more satisfying.

As for all art being human, there are a lot of birds who make art to attract a mate in nature, and at least one captive elephant that can paint.

Honest question. If the artist means nothing to you, do you still judge their work as art, or do you consider music more as entertainment?

I realized, it's the same about music. I like songs, but then I don't really know very well the bands/authors (nor care about them).

Some of my younger colleagues can't even tell me the name of what they're listening to, because they only encountered it in passing and can't say "Oh yes, that song by Bill Withers is amazing..." because they just listened to it as background.

Some people approach movies/music/books etc. as entertainment and some people approach them as Art. Neither is right or wrong, but it does fundamentally affect how you consume and judge them. A lot of the reasons people talk past each other in these discussions is that they have rather different 'use cases' for movies/music/books. If you consider music and books as entertainment then it makes no difference how it's produced as long as it entertains. If you consider them art then it makes a much bigger difference.

I think, from Borges' perspective, it's supposed to be an interesting satire. Obviously there would not be an original word in the new Don Quixote, so how could it be a greater achievement than the "real" one?

The line of thinking is that there is a difference between semantics (actual aboutness) and syntax (mere structure). The classic example is watching a colony of ants crawl in the sand, and noticing that their trails have created an image that resembles Winston Churchill. Have the ants actually drawn Winston Churchill? The intuition for externalists is no. A more illustrative example is a concussed non-Japanese person muttering syllables that are identical to an actual, grammatically correct and appropriate Japanese sentence. Has the person actually spoken Japanese? The intuition for externalists is that they have not.

Not everyone is in agreement about this, although surveys have shown that most people agree with the externalist point of view, that meaningfulness does not just come from the head of the observer — the speaker creates meaning since meaning comes from aboutness (semantics).

The most famous argument for semantic externalism was put forward by Hillary Putnam, I think, in the 60s. Roughly, on a hypothetical Twin Earth which was qualitatively identical to Earth, except which water was not composed of H2O but some other substance XYZ, an earthlings visit to Twin Earth and looking at a pool of what appears to be qualitatively identical to water on earth and stating “That’s water” is false, since the meaning of water (in our language) is H2O, not XYZ. To externalists, the meaning of water = H2O is a truth even before we’ve discovered that water = H2O.

I think the argument for AI art being pseudoart follows a similar line of thinking. Even though the AI produces, say, qualitatively indistinguishable text from what would be composed by a great novelist, the artwork itself is still meaningless since meaning is “about” things. The AI, lacking embodiment, and actual contact with the objects in its writing, or involvement in the linguistic or cultural community that has named certain iconography, could never make (externally) truly meaningful statements, and thus “meaningful” art, even if (internally) one is moved by it.

If one is to maintain the internalist position, that any entity that creates aesthetic mental states qualifies as art, then it seems trivial, since literally anyone can find anything aesthetic. Externalist intuition effectively raises the stakes for what we consider art, not necessarily as a privileged status available only to human creations, but by arguing that meaning, and perhaps beauty, does not only exist when we experience it.

Could a human being, raised in a featureless box but taught English and communicated with using a text-based screen, produce text with semantic value? It seems pretty obvious that the answer is "yes". Will a synthetic mind developed and operated in similar conditions ever be able to produce text with semantic value referencing its own experiences? Probably not now, but at some point?

Perhaps. But the GPT family of algorithms isn't a synthetic mind: it's a predictive text algorithm. It can interpolate, but it can't have original thought; it almost certainly doesn't experience anything; and if, somehow, it does? Its output wouldn't reflect that experience; it's trained as a predictive text algorithm, not a self-experience outputter.

More precisely, I think it would be akin to the person on the featureless box knowing all the thesaurus concepts to say, pain, but never actually experiencing pain itself. They might be trained to know that pain is associated with certain descriptions such as sharp, unpleasant, dull, heartbreak, and so on, and perhaps extremely complicated and seemingly original descriptions of pain. However, until the human actually qualitatively experiences pain, they only know the corpus of words associated with it. This would be syntactic but not quite semantic. It’s similar to the infamous Mary and the black and white room thought experiment, where even with a complete knowledge of physics, she still learns something new the first time she experiences the blueness of a sky, despite knowing all the propositions related to blue such as that it’s 425nm on the EM spectrum, or that it’s some pattern X of neutrons firing.

That said, it’s not clear if this applies to statements other than subjective states. Qualitative descriptions of subjective states like pain, emotions, the general gestalt of the human condition might be empty of content, but perhaps certain scientific and mathematical ones pass the test, as they don’t need to be grounded in direct experience to be meaningful.

"We associate Van Gogh's art with his madness, Da Vinci's art with his universal genius, Michelangelo's art with his faith, Rembrandt's art with his empathy, Picasso's art with his willingness to break with norms, and Giger's art with his terrifying nightmares."

Disagreeing with this is not about internal or external semantics. It also does not imply that "aesthetics" alone create a mental state. Great art is typically rich in symbolism as well. Symbolism that directly references humanity's aspirations, hopes, fears, dreams: the Human condition.

A ~contemporary example:

The Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelors

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/86/0a/6d/860a6d3c87b349734277...

In my opinion, you don't need to know anything about Duchamp to decipher (or project as you wish) meaning here.

So no photo of the Mona Lisa is art, just the original painting is? I'm not sure if I understand your reasoning here correctly.

So accurate were these fakes - not copies, but new paintings in Vermeer's style - that several experts verified them as real, and then tried to sue to save their reputations.

These fakes were certainly made by a human, but are somewhat mechanical in the sense that they were copying someone else, much like an AI copy of existing artists.

For that matter, a limited run print has a different impact and value than an unlimited run print. Compare an original warhol print of a can of soup, to a modern repr print, to an actual can of soup, to an I <3 NY t-shirt.

Calvin: "A painting. Moving. Spiritually enriching. Sublime. High art!"

Calvin: "The comic strip. Vapid. Juvenile. Commercial hack work. Low art."

Calvin: "A painting of a comic strip panel. Sophisticated irony. Philosophically challenging. High art."

Hobbes: "Suppose I draw a cartoon of a painting of a comic strip?"

Calvin: "Sophomoric. Intellectually sterile. Low art."

This confuses a lot of people who think art is defined by finished, potentially consumable art objects.

Art is made by artistic actions - especially those that have a lasting impact on human culture because they effectively distill the essence of some feature of human self-awareness.

The result of the actions can sometimes be reproduced, collected, and consumed, but the art itself can't be.

This is where AI fails. It produces imitations of existing art objects from statistical data compression of their properties. The results are entertaining and sometimes strange, but they're also philosophically mediocre, with none of transformative power of good human-created art.

I also don't think your (very strong) assertion that AI art products have no transformative power would stand up to any sort of unbiased, blinded comparison. Art's transformative power on the viewer comes from the effect of the art object (the end product) on a human mind, and it's possible to get that effect while knowing absolutely nothing about the source of the art object.

There is no end product. There are only consequences.

> “Art is inseparable from the artist”

That is pure sentiment and really a modern take on the function of art in the personal and social sense. As an artist, I derive joy from the creative act. As an appreciator of works of art I generally do -not- care about the artist. Of course, the lives of influential humans (artist or not) can be interesting and certainly enrich one’s experience of the artist’s work, but it is not a fundamental requirement.

Two days ago, the National Gallery of Art closed its Sargent in Spain exhibition. (I almost feel sad for those who didn’t get to see it.) Sargent was never really on my radar beyond the famous portraits. I still really don’t know much about the man besides the fact that he visited Spain frequently, with friend and family in tow.

But I am now, completely a Sargent admirer. Those works, on their own sans curation copy, are magnificent. And I am certain, that even if I had walked into an anonymous exhibit, I would walk out completely transported (which I was dear reader, I pity those who missed this exhibit).

> But that connection is entirely one-sided and based on our perceptions and knowledge and our _model_ of the artist and his or her intent. Humans have no problem reifying an artist where none exists and being just as moved as if the art were "authentically human-sourced".

You're over-emphasizing how one-sided looking at something like the Lascaux paintings are. Their value is not the same as beautiful natural phenomenon, like a fascinating stalagmite like seems to be a sculpture, it is precisely the human agency we understand in them (even if we cannot explicitly understand the use of them, that is, their meaning) and connect with that makes them so important and profound as a means of connecting --- tenuous it might seem --- to prehistory. We've been making "stick people" and finger painting for 10s of thousands of years.

You're right that we don't know who the artists were in any explicit sense, but we do understand that they were human, and in quite fundamental ways, us as well.

Generative AI art is really more like a beautiful natural landscape. Lacking agency, it nonetheless appeals to our aesthetic sensibilities without being misconceived as art from an artist. It is output, not imaginative creation.

Your position allows a dead person to have their experiences retroactively cheapened because of carbon dating and microstructural analysis. "How sad, it wasn't _really_ art though." You can define art that way, but you end up with an immaterial, axiomatic essentialism that seems practically useful only to in drawing a circle and placing certain desirable artifacts inside and other indistinguishable artifacts outside.

No, you shift the attribution. The art is not from the fictional sculptor, but from the archaeologist: the artefact is not the stone, but the articles.

> Your position allows a dead person to have their experiences retroactively cheapened because of carbon dating and microstructural analysis.

This isn't unique to this situation. If you risk your life paragliding over the ocean to drop a "bomb" far away from anyone it could hurt, and nearly drown making your way back, only to realise there was no bomb and it was just some briefcase? That's "retroactively cheapened" not just your experiences, but your actions.

And yet, you were willing to risk your life in that way.

> the "authentic human art" they were inspired by turns out to be a mechanical forgery,

If they were inspired, how does the source of inspiration affect the validity or the meaning of what they were inspired to do? Sure, it might lessen it in some ways, but it doesn't obliterate it entirely. In fact, it can reveal new meaning.

> If artistic value is not one-sided and tied to the transformations in the observer's mind

Art is public and need no relation to transformations in the observer's mind. Art is a public concept in language related to human behavior, manifesting and reflecting certain human behaviors and abilities, like imagination.

> you get into situations where you invalidate the experiences of thousands of people because the "authentic human art" they were inspired by turns out to be a mechanical forgery

This is pretty unclear, we have the concept of forgery and it is not a new concept, just because something was beautiful and inspiring doesn't mean it's art (think a beautiful and inspiring coastline). If thousands of people fell prey to a forgery...so? A forgery is in relation to the real, so why not show them the actual existent work art, or simply explain about where it came from and see what they say? History is rife with people realizing they were lied to.

> or the aboriginal sculpture some archaeologist discovered, admired and wrote articles interpreting is discovered to be unworked stone.

Sculpture has a long tradition and is often understood as art by communicating that tradition. That's aboriginal sculpture, which is understood and put into context by present day members of that aboriginal culture or by people who have studied it. The flip side is things like "talismanic" objects, which have often been later put into context as unworked stone or completely different objects. That's simply archeology. Some artistic traditions are "lost", we only know of them through existing records. That's just history. Some may be lost in a more explicit sense in which they are unknown unknowns, but then that is just hypothesizing.

> Your position allows a dead person to have their experiences retroactively cheapened because of carbon dating and microstructural analysis. "How sad, it wasn't _really_ art though."

I don't know why you come to that conclusion. My point is pretty clear. Art is understood through the context of human agency. If we have the context and ability to place and recognize that in a work, then amongst other elements (for the purpose of aesthetics for instance), we generally refer to it as a work of art. There is a more casual way of saying such and such is "a work of art" --- but that way of saying it just means "aesthetically pleasing". There is a difference between the work of art that is a painting or a sculpture or a dance, and the "work of art" that is a beautiful landscape, and that is largely human agency and the use of imagination. So when you say:

> You can define art that way, but you end up with an immaterial, axiomatic essentialism that seems practically useful only to in drawing a circle and placing certain desirable artifacts inside and other indistinguishable artifacts outside.

You're ignoring my point: it's not about desirability, it's about insisting on the distinguishable characteristic of human agency which is not there in generative AI art. The study of art is largely about putting things into their context and, if anything, is extremely welcoming of non-traditional practices (think much conceptual art), but the through-line throughout is still human agency. That difference still persists whether we find generative AI art beautiful or not, it is still generative AI "art" and not human art with all that entails.

Then tomorrow there is a nuclear war and humanity is devastated and takes thousands of years to rebuild itself for one reason or another.

Now, those future humans find your vault and dig up the art are they somehow going to intrinsically know that AI did some of them? Especially in the case that they don't have computing technologies like we do? No, not at all. They are going to assign their own feeling and views depending on the culture they developed and assign rather random feelings to whatever they were thinking we were doing at the time. We make up context.