Last June I went to the Heterodox Academy’s annual meeting, this time in Brooklyn, New York. I had been asked to be on a panel, “The Duties & Responsibilities of Scholars”, which included, besides me, Jennifer Frey, Louis Menand, and John McWhorter. The introductions were by Alice Dreger and Coleeen Eren.
I knew of two of the panelists—Menand (a Harvard professor of English, distinguished author, and writer for the New Yorker), and McWhorter, (a Columbia University linguist, writer, and columnist for the NYT who’s been featured regularly on this site). That was enough to intimidate me, so I spent several months reading about the topic beforehand, concentrating on academic freedom and freedom of expression. Some of my thinking on these topics was worked out in posts on this site that you might have read. Along the way, I realized that the “clash of ideas” that is touted as essential (indeed, perhaps sufficient) to guarantee the appearance of truth, does not produce any kind of “truth”. (This clash, discussed by John Stuart Mill and Oliver Wendell Holmes, is often said to be the reason why we need freedom of speech.) But the clash doesn’t home in on truth unless you put into the mix some empirical evidence, essential for finding the “propositional truths” defined in my article below.
That led to my realization that the purpose of universities stated by many people is incomplete. As I say in my new Quillette piece (click on the screenshot below, or find it archived here):
Likewise, the common claim that the most important purpose of colleges and universities is to expand, preserve, and promulgate new knowledge—to find consensus truths—is also wrong. Finding truth is not the purpose of the literary arts like literature and poetry, the visual and graphic arts like film, painting, animation, photography, and the performing arts like theatre, dance, and music. These fields cannot find truth because that is not why they exist nor why they are taught. (Other areas like economics and sociology, often considered part of “the humanities,” can find truth insofar as they engage in empirical study of reality.)
It’s not just art that can’t find truth without evidence, but also philosophy. (I won’t deal with math here, as I’m still thinking that one over). I don’t deal with philosophy in the article, but I haven’t yet found an example of philosophy coming up with a testable propositional truth without dragging in empirical evidence. But this doesn’t mean I think that philosophy (or the humanities in general) shouldn’t be taught in college. As I say in my piece:
First I should address the anti-art bigot charge. Just because I see art as a source of something other than the kind of truth uncovered by science does not for a moment mean I’m dismissive of art. My undergraduate education included courses in Greek tragedy, Old English (I can still read Beowulf in the original), modern literature, ethical philosophy, and fine arts, creating in me a desire to keep learning, to keep being inspired, to keep discovering art. I have derived and continue to derive extraordinary pleasure and betterment from art and other branches of the humanities. Science gave me a career, but the arts have given me at least as much in life as science has. But what I’ve gained from art has not been truth.
The rest of the piece, which I won’t expend on as you can read it at the link below (you might have to give Quillette your email address, but you can accces it for free) explains, at least implicitly, why I still think that the humanities (which includes all forms of art) should be taught in schools, for the purpose of such instruction, while not finding truth, is to give us a hunger to expand our experience. One more sentence:
Finding truth is not the purpose of the literary arts like literature and poetry, the visual and graphic arts like film, painting, animation, photography, and the performing arts like theatre, dance, and music. These fields cannot find truth because that is not why they exist nor why they are taught. (Other areas like economics and sociology, often considered part of “the humanities,” can find truth insofar as they engage in empirical study of reality.)
. . . The real value of art, then, is not that it conveys knowledge that can’t be acquired in other ways, but that it produces emotional and cognitive effects on the receiver, usually conferring an experience of beauty. Art can enrich how we think about ourselves and other people, and, crucially, allow us to view the world through eyes other than our own. Through reflection, this expansion of experience can enhance our knowledge of ourselves. But that is subjective rather than propositional knowledge.
I showed this piece to a friend this morning, who asked me this: “Your argument is basically ‘the humanities have other uses so we need to keep them in universities.’ So it begs the question — why should they be housed in universities? You seem to suggest the answer is because it makes people feel and think in other ways. Is that kind of personal development something university resources should be dedicated to? A lot of administrators and politicians these days answer no.”
But my answer is “yes“. As I wrote her:
Yes, you ask a good question and I should have answered it. It’s sort of implicit in the piece when I relate how much I’ve benefited from learning about the arts personally, and that is from the arts (literature, etc.) having awakened my desire to learn more. The arts are one of the great areas of human endeavor, and for that alone should be taught in universities. As I said, it sparks the desire to think about oneself, or learn other perspectives, and while that’s not truth in the scientific sense, it should be taught for that alone. Ditto philosophy. Ethical philosophy was an important course I took in college, and without that I wouldn’t know about the history of people’s ideas on morality, even though morality turns out to be subjective.In the end, I think that colleges should stay the way they are, save for the elimination of teaching religious dicta, as in some divinity schools, and that the purpose of a college education is more than just the expansion, production, preservation, and promulgation of (propositional) knowledge. Why AREN’T universities the place for absorbing the artistic endeavors of humanities? Where else would you learn about it?And I added that philosophy, which I still don’t think can find truth on its own, is one of the most valuable tools we have for sorting out dreck in arguments, and helping us home in on the truths by thinking logically. Ethical philosophy, in particular, was important to me as it made me think about exactly why I thought things were moral or immoral, and why—a quest I’m still on. So of course philosophy should stay in the college curriculum. The only thing that should be eliminated is the teaching of religious dogma (as opposed to the history and content of religion), dogma that is often promulgated in divinity schools.
The video discussion above is long: 75 minutes, but if you want to listen to the bit on truth in humanities, and see McWhorter and Menand try to tar and feather me, start about 22 minutes in and listen for about six minutes. It’s in that section that I think McWhorter made an admission that undercut both his and Menand’s argument—an admission I note in the last paragraph of my Quillette piece:
Curiously, I think that perhaps my art-isn’t-truth stance is not as extreme and unreasonable as my eye-rolling, shoulder-shrugging friends in the humanities imply. As I mentioned, at the Heterodox Academy panel Menand and McWhorter were the eye-rollers and shoulder-shruggers, but I see that they too have run up against the objective/subjective issue in their own thinking. For example, in an exchange about whether Leonard Bernstein’s symphonies are greater than his musicals, McWhorter wound up admitting, “There is no truth: it’s a matter of informed opinion and opinion on what you have decided you value in art.” Agreed!
McWhorter makes his claim starting at 27:55. You don’t have to watch the video, but do read the piece, which at about 2000 words is short.
Ahh, this looks great.
Yeah, I think the emotional processing layer works on the same time frame that art is contemplated – e.g. less than minutes for music…. and it kinda matters most when you know lots of others like it – like when that favorite tune came on the radio in the Old Days, there was a damn near spiritual feeling, that wow – EVERYONE is listening to this!…
… but that time frame noted above is shorter than that for logic, analytical thought… or of an incompatible nature… like a different engine…
Hmmmm…
“why should [humanities] be housed in universities?”
Universities are places of learning, and I believe that having a broad base of learning produces a more well rounded human being. Having both types of learning together allows you to appreciate the interactions between them at the same time, rather than trying to learn them separately and consecutively.
Thanks for these comments, especially for the value of what we used to call a “liberal arts” education. I used to say that I got the best 19th-century gentleman’s education my parents’ money could buy—languages, classics, literature, arts, science and mathematics, social sciences. All these fields add to human knowledge, and, unfortunately, the current “reforms” in educational policy seem to be going in the opposite direction: narrowing the scope and emphasizing skills over inquiry. My HS English teacher used to say that the process of higher education was learning more and more about less and less. And now that process seems to be starting earlier and earlier. We can discuss the disciplines that are not grounded in empiricism some other time; though my experience is they can provide insights and observations that challenge us to do the empirical work, so I think it is more a question of where and how they help us. The visual thinking of model-building is one aspect that comes to mind. In the end, I am inspired by John of Salisbury (ca 1178) who wrote this about the Liberal Arts: “We call them liberal…because their object is to effect Man’s liberation. More often than not, they liberate us from cares incompatible with wisdom” (Metalogicon. D McGarry, tr. UC Press. 1956:37). And what does that better than empirical evidence?
Two comments: One, mathematics is as close to truth as one can get. To.deny that one would have to renounce logic as a means of finding truth, because what mathematics – formal mathematics based upon axiom systems, that is — consists of is the logical derivation of true statements from given assumptions. Regardless of whether those assumptions correspond to any facts about the material world, the derived statements must be true if the assumptions are true. So mathematics tells us what statements must be true if certain other statements are true.
Two, universities should not basically stay as they are. In addition to getting rid of religious programs, they need to get rid of all of the academic programs that are basically homes for political activists, like women’s studies, gender studies, postcolonial studies, fat studies, and the rest. Politically motivated “scholarship” produces propaganda, not knowledge.
Just read your Quillette piece. Like it! A few thoughts:
The arts and humanities, while they cannot in themselves discover (= empirical?) truth, can—and do—serve to reinforce truth and comment on truth.(1) So, the arts and humanities are far from irrelevant to truth. To the extent that they offer commentary or reinforcement, they comport with the conventional academic purpose to “expand, preserve, and promulgate new knowledge—to find consensus truths.” The arts and humanities can also stimulate the search for propositional knowledge, as Jules Verne’s fanciful stories can spur interest in the deep sea.
The purely creative arts—those that neither comment on or reinforce empirical or consensus truths—might be viewed as a bonus in the academy (or as superfluous, depending on your point of view). But the purely creative arts may be commentaries on “truth,” even if those commentaries be subtle.
Overall, the arts and humanities do or should have a secure home in our colleges and universities, even if we restrict universities to the somewhat narrow purpose of expanding, preserving, and promulgating knowledge.
When the arts and humanities untether from truth and become propaganda mills, they lose my interest.
(1) I wonder if the arts and humanities might play a role in testing truth. I’ll need to think about this further.
Excellent piece. To be honest, it seems such a simple and straightforward construction that I’m surprised there’s pushback on the idea.
I get the science bigot accusation sometimes when I express similar ideas to friends and loved ones who are artists and/or spiritual. It’s mystifying but I think it is rooted in a sense of inferiority stemming, in turn, from confusion about what science is. I don’t seem to be able to make headway against that. In future, I suppose I could refer them to this article, but I know it’d never be read.
The following immediately came to mind – I’m just taking initiative to add this, I bet readers like you here know :
The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution
Rede Lecture
C. P. Snow
1959
Also see Snow’s books on this theme which include a follow-up The Two Cultures – A Look Back
I found facsimiles easily by searching.
And why would there be push-back about whether art conveys truth? It can’t discover Truth (in the empirical capitol T sense), but at best it only conveys truth in the ‘my truth / your truth’ sense. It really isn’t a big deal.
Given the way propositional truth is defined as conforming with ‘fact or reality’, did they give an example of one produced by the arts?
If the answer to the question as to what a university should or should not be is not a propositional truth, perhaps we can go on as usual with different kinds of universities. The debate can go on too, as is usual when propositional truth is not involved 🙂
Here’s my two cents on the question that you can find the truth through art. Joseph Campbell, in his lecture he called “The Way Of Art”, says that art can either be dynamic, or static. If it is dynamic, it moves you to either desire, or be repelled, by what you see. If it is static, it annihilates you, and, therefore, opens you up to the truth that is waiting to show itself once your preconceived notions of the truth have been destroyed. So, art can’t reveal the truth, but can set up the conditions for the truth to be revealed IMHO.
The questions raised in this article were also dealt with memorably by ‘alpha plus intellectual gadfly’ Prof John Carey, whose obituary appeared yesterday in the NYT, Guardian etc. He was fond of, and accomplished in deflating high bourgeois pretensions in the arts. His main books are ‘Intellectuals and the Masses : pride and prejudice among the literary intelligentsia 1880-1939’, and ‘What Good are the arts?’ I still have a copy of the latter, and must thumb through it once again.
As for the exchange on ‘Whether Bernstein’s musicals are greater than his symphonies’, this actually melds two propositions. 1. Are X’s symphonies as symphonies, greater/ ‘the artistic truth they convey is more valuable’ than the other symphonies in the canon, compared to the relative placement of X’s musicals in the canon of all musicals/operettas. 2. Are X’s works of Y greater/’the artistic truth they convey is more valuable’ than X’s works in Z?
John Carey might have opined that since I listen to lots more symphonies than I do of musicals/operettas, my judgement that Bernstein’s symphonies are a waste of time, is just a personal bias because I have 3000+ classical CDs but only have recordings of 4 musicals ( though I’ll be seeing West Side Story sung in English and German in Vienna next June ).
Great article; well-researched, well-written, well-chosen illustrations. Much appreciated. I didn’t time myself reading it, so I can’t say whether or not it took me 8 minutes. 😉
I’m not sure whether I disagree with our host. I agree that “the most important purpose of colleges and universities is to expand, preserve, and promulgate new knowledge” but I think I disagree that new knowledge is synonymous with finding “consensus truths”. I agree finding consensus truths is the way scientists and engineers expand knowledge (and maybe philosophers and mathematicians, but that’s above my pay grade). But I think the way artists expand and promulgate new knowledge is just a different kind of knowledge that doesn’t involve consensus truths. A scientist asks, “Is this statement/claim true?” and asking the question leads to knowledge about objective reality. An artist might ask instead, “Is this expression/text beautiful?” or “part of the human experience?” and this leads to knowledge about subjective experience. So I think I agree with our host? I’m content for universities to include both areas of knowledge production & promulgation, only one of which (STEM) involves the pursuit of truth.
A missing element of the conversation is the pursuit of both kinds of knowledge at a university. Scientists can expand knowledge and find truths outside of a university and without participating in preservation or (especially) promulgation (cf. Bell Labs, National Institutes of Health, etc.). But universities especially value combining all three, and they prize the hiring of superstar researchers who will also teach and write about STEM.
I don’t think this holds for artists, but I could be wrong. In the arts and humanities departments at my cozy university, most faculty members have an artistic or literary practice where they expand artistic knowledge in some modest way, but this praxis (hey Bryan!) is a minor part of their scholarship and they afaik mainly write about art or literature (preservation) produced by others outside the academy, or they teach students about the art and literature of others (promulgation). And hey that seems fine to me.
Is that difference the actual source of the anti-art bigotry accusation? It’s not a complaint from artists in general because a successful novelist doesn’t care if someone says she’s not discovering truth. Instead it’s a bit of defensiveness from university arts and humanities professors with self-awareness of this gap.
True or false :
[ ] Minor chords sound sad. E.g. the opening chord of My Funny Valentine
[ ] Major chords sound happy. E.g. the final chord of Day In The Life
Seems to be an easy question to prove that there are facts which are either true or false in works of art such as music.
That is an empirical assertion which can be tested empirically. Did you read what I wrote, because what you said is not the kind of truth that is said to inhere in music. It is a testable propositional truth.
I thought I’ve followed so far across the posts (up to any paywalls anyhow) on this so here’s where I’m confused :
What about the scale at the doctor’s office with the smiley faces – that’s useful, important, and ostensibly empirical – we all agree what happy or sad means – based on that setup – and go with that, right?
Isn’t that empirical, reproducible, and true even though it’s a feeling and subjective?
I never looked for a poll on this, but the major/minor chord sound ought to be practically the same question.
Is the whole happy–sad result not reporting on propositional truth as explained in your piece purely because its origin is subjective – feeling/emotion is involved in forming a sense of “happy” or “sad”?
Or if a question has an empirical answer that means the answer IS propositional truth, and stands apart from art as explained in the piece …
Thanks