But is it art?
[quote=“Quentin”]
But is it art?[/quote]
Well, it LOOKs like art. But I wonder if it has been trained to paint that picture.
You could say the same about some of the posters here. It looks like they’re participating in the discussion and understand it, but maybe they’ve just be trained.
E.g.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Ro … experiment
[quote]Searle asks his audience to imagine that many years from now, people have constructed a computer that behaves as if it understands Chinese. The computer takes Chinese characters as input and, following a program, produces other Chinese characters, which it presents as output. Suppose that this computer performs this task so convincingly that it easily passes the Turing test. In other words, it convinces a human Chinese speaker that the program is itself a human Chinese speaker. All the questions the human asks are responded to appropriately, such that the Chinese speaker is convinced that he or she is talking to another Chinese-speaking human. The conclusion that proponents of artificial intelligence would like to draw is that the computer understands Chinese, just as the person does.
Now, Searle asks the audience to suppose that he is in a room in which he receives Chinese characters, consults a book containing an English version of the computer program, and processes the Chinese characters according to the instructions in the book. Searle notes that he does not understand a word of Chinese. He simply manipulates what to him are meaningless squiggles, using the book and whatever other equipment is provided in the room, such as paper, pencils, erasers, and filing cabinets. After manipulating the symbols, Searle will produce the answer in Chinese. Since the computer passed the Turing test, so does Searle running its program by hand: “Nobody just looking at my answers can tell that I don’t speak a word of Chinese,” Searle writes.[/quote]
are you saying that it cannot be art because it’s not done by a human?
elephants doodle, and paint new scenes, or things other than those which they have ben prompted to, apparently. and some are much better than others at it. seems like art to me. the ability to waste brain power on art probably comes from being bored and well fed, just as it does with humans.
But can he paint a car for 39.95?
[quote=“urodacus”]are you saying that it cannot be art because it’s not done by a human?
elephants doodle, and paint new scenes, or things other than those which they have ben prompted to, apparently. and some are much better than others at it. seems like art to me. the ability to waste brain power on art probably comes from being bored and well fed, just as it does with humans.[/quote]
Actually I think if something can pass the mirror test it can do art, because the mirror test is a test of self awareness.
In before “The Chinese Room is racist analogy, and only fat, decadent westerners have time to waste on art and democracy” 
I didn’t say that I think animals cannot produce art. I just wondered if some human hadn’t taught that trick to the elephant to make a buck or two. The elephant may create original works of art, for all I know–and I don’t know. I’ve never seen an elephant paint an original work and, as far as I know, no one has ever asked an elephant to explain his inspiration. Do elephants, or other animals, also sculpt, compose original dances or songs, play music in some other way, or creat any other forms of expression? Would the elephant be painting if it’s owner hadn’t shown him how to grip a brush and what to do with it?
I don’t believe that artistic expression amoung humans is only for fat, borred types. They may be the only types with the time or money to buy it, but they’re not the only ones to create it.
i think that the elephant could create art, but on that case, i see a guy next to him… maybe pointing or something…
i’m certainly not saying that art is the preserve of bored, fat types. i was referring to the idea that art probably arrived ater we humans had got things going well enough that we no longer had to worry about where our next meal was coming from, and we now had a bit of spare time on our hands.
wild elephants spend the majority of their time eating or moving to look for food., which does not leave much time for painting. and painting certainly would not occur to them, i guess, unless you showed them first of all how to do it and then supplied a brush and paint! but wild African elephants do have at least one protoart feature that shows they have th idea or the ability: they have been known to play with and rearrange the tusks and bones of their dead, and return again and again to a place where one of their group has died, perhaps to remember them.
[quote=“urodacus”]I’m certainly not saying that art is the preserve of bored, fat types. I was referring to the idea that art probably arrived ater we humans had got things going well enough that we no longer had to worry about where our next meal was coming from, and we now had a bit of spare time on our hands.
[/quote]
The abundance of Paleolithic cave paintings points up that thesis wrong. Art seems to have been around for as long as humans have evolved self-consciousness.
As for elephants not taking up painting, I would suppose that would be for the simple reason that they don’t have the physical ability to forage for paint materials nor opposable thumbs to construct tools like paint brushes.
Besides, it’s a myth that wild animals spend most of their time hunting and foraging. It only takes a few hours to find enough sustenance for the day. Like most animals, elephants have loads of free time doing nothing on their hands. Lions sleep for 20 hours a day and no one has ever observed them creating art, despite lions being fat, well-fed, and lazy.
Yeah, but lions fail the mirror test and so are most likely not self aware enough to create art.
Yeah, but lions fail the mirror test and so are most likely not self aware enough to create art.[/quote]
And as I understand, Lions will use almost all their reserve energy in short bursts of speed and strength that take down prey, adn then in the gorging and digesting process. So they need all those hours of sleep–no time to wake up and paint a nice gazelle, or the venus de lion. Theoretically, a lion would be relatively easy kill 30 minutes to an hour or so after a huge meal.
elephants DO spend most of their waking hours searching for food or eating it. they need to take in a vast amount of food, much of which is of low calorific value.
i would also argue that cave paintings of the Lascaux type and so on are strong evidence of the fact that art evolved AFTER food supplies became more readily available, and when humans were already in a situation of excess availability, and especially coupled with spare time (which may have been enforced on them by long winter nights). the paleolithic phase of human evolution came a LONG time after the evolution of humans. which is why they are termed Homo sapiens by that time…
it is indeed true that not all animals spend all their time eating, and many have free time for other things, like sleeping or social networking. then again, many of those same animals like some apes and monkeys, which may have food enough, can also ‘paint’ in captivity. chimpanzees and gorillas certainly can. koalas on the other hand, do rest a lot, again because their food is not high value and they need to conserve energy, and they show no proclivity for art at all.
I’ve seen this before. Done a lot of research on elephants since I love them so much. They are amazing, magnificent creatures. Thanks for sharing this:)
[quote=“Quentin”]
But is it art?[/quote]
Oh oh, I think he’s better than me, I"m still stuck at match-stick man phase.
By all accounts elephants are pretty smart. I know they are trained to paint but I’m sure they all exhibit a different ‘flair’ for it.
This reminds of this dog …it arranged it’s stuffed toys in different geometrical formats in the yard…
dobermansden.com/donnie-the-dobe … nges-toys/
Although it may be related to herding it shows they do have conceptual skills.
Yeah, but lions fail the mirror test and so are most likely not self aware enough to create art.[/quote]
And as I understand, Lions will use almost all their reserve energy in short bursts of speed and strength that take down prey, adn then in the gorging and digesting process. So they need all those hours of sleep–no time to wake up and paint a nice gazelle, or the venus de lion. Theoretically, a lion would be relatively easy kill 30 minutes to an hour or so after a huge meal.[/quote]
The miror test is just a mirror test, it doesn’t mean the animal doesn’t know ‘himself’, it simply means he can’t recognise himself in the mirror! Even if a dog can’t recognise himself in the mirror he will understand when you call ‘his’ name.
Animals have a lot going on in their brains.
My dog was able to anticipate my reaction and ‘pretend’ to be sleeping in his sleeping mat when I came out to check if he was sleeping on the sofa (which was not allowed). He would hear me coming out and jump down on his mat and pretend to be asleep. The only reason I could prove it (after being suspicious many times that I had heard him jump down) was I put my hand on the sofa and could feel it was warm. The other way I knew was because he wasn’t good at pretending to sleep, with half an eye open 
Other interesting things is that almost all animals have dreams, you can even see them acting out their dreams if they sleep-walk, that also indicates there ability to conceptualise situations.
How do flies know when you have the fly swatter? They disappear real quick. And they have tiny brains.
They don’t disappear, they can easily evade your fly swatter because it pushes the air in front of it and their reactions are much faster than humans. They don’t actually ‘recognise’ a fly swatter but they could easily be trained to.
My example of my dog above is different. I didn’t train him to do anything, he independently figured out a way to avoid me figuring out what he was doing, to do that he had to understand my thought processes and conceptualise me as another thinking being and how to fool me. Therefore it’s highly likely he also thinks of himself as an independent thinking being.
Birds are a great example of a smart animal with a small brain. Many species like to decorate their nests with shiny things, this helps them to attract a mate. Art for humans could be an extension of this instinct.
We shouldn’t always try to judge animals on our terms. Of course it’s normal for most animals not to paint, they don’t have any ‘hands’ FFS. Dogs are mostly not interested in TV? Are they dumb, no, it’s because unless they are old it looks like a load of images jumping around on the screen due the way their visual system is different than ours. Plus it has humans talking in a strange language, not very interesting to a dog. In the same manner dogs do not see in ‘black and white’, they just see in a different colour spectrum than we do.
They disappear. The fly will be buzzing around being a pest and as soon as you get the fly swatter you cannot find him anymore.
So you hang the fly swatter back up, and here he comes again.