On the aesthetic sense of life
In his work On the tragic sense of life, Miguel de Unamuno speaks of the tragic history of human thought, consisting of the struggle between reason and life. Any position of agreement and lasting harmony “between reason and life, between philosophy and religion becomes impossible” (1). The reason wants life to come to terms with […]
Ethics of the whole
In this paper, I will observe if we can apply classical ethical concepts to the whole and if humanity is able to judge its actions on a holistic realm. More precisely, I will see if Mill’s utilitarianism and Kant’s deontology can be applicable in justifying actions based on unity and integral wholeness. For this, it […]
Biases
Bias is an erroneous reasoning at the level of perception, judgement and memory. Some biases stem from the way our senses work (perceptual biases), others are the effects of how we judge, believe and expect (cognitive biases). Repetition effect People tend to judge claims they hear more often as likelier to be true. In other […]
Logical Fallacies
Logical fallacies are some forms of unreliable reasoning or misleading arguments. Any structurally invalid argument is logically fallacious, but there are some recognized patterns of how a logical fallacy is committed. The following list will review some illustrative examples of them. Affirming the consequent: If P then Q QTherefore, P Denying the Antecedent: If […]
Valid argument forms
Argument is the basic unit of our reasoning and communication. The most idealized form of argumentation is a deductive reasoning according to which a good argument: is a valid argument (there is no way for a conclusion to be false if all the premises are true) and has all true premises. An argument that is […]
Doubting Descartes’ Doubt
Meditations of Descartes presents a series of arguments about a thinking thing and a God’s existence. In this essay, I will doubt his reasoning by pointing out at some fallacies. In search of a foundation of knowledge, Descartes starts from the scratch by undermining everything that he knows. He asks himself what could ground his […]
1. Facing the art of “anything”
The disappearance of any normative idea of art since the era of conceptual art has opened up unlimited possibilities and total freedom of contemporary art. The whole problem is to know by virtue of what to judge a work under the denunciation of any notion of quality. How to appreciate the art of “anything”? Critics […]
2. Ruptures of contemporary art
Appearing after the Second World War, with Marcel Duchamp as a precursor, contemporary art is often unrecognized or misunderstood. It leaves no one indifferent, arousing passion, perplexity or contempt, sometimes going so far as to question its legitimacy. By presenting itself as an experimental art, contemporary art transgresses rules in perpetual innovation. It seeks a […]
3. How to judge contemporary art
The controversies around the value of contemporary art always revolve around aesthetic criteria. Each artistic practice obeys more or less explicit rules from which it is possible to evaluate the excellence of the artworks. The problem that arises from the considerable variation in artistic practices in contemporary art is that there are too many criteria […]
4. Appreciation scales of contemporary art
One day in February, after visiting the Jeff Koons exhibition at the Pompidou Center in Paris, I was sitting in a small creperie nearby and looked out the window. “Art is everywhere! », I suddenly exclaimed while observing the Stravinsky fountain and its eccentric sculptures, the Saint-Merri Church known for its contemporary art exhibitions, and […]