The Extreme Cases are Extremely Important

A few weeks ago, I finished a Phil 339 class at UBC. Phil 339 is the Philosophy of Arts, that is, what is the definition of art and what makes things in general art. For example, there is an intentional definition of art which states that art is anything that is intended to be art. If you think about it for a while though and as with any definition of art now in existence, there is an example where intuition does not seem to agree with the definition. For example, with this definition comes the fact that anybody can create art, not just artists as long as they have the right intention. A kid who draws a picture with crayons for their parents depicting their whole family has the right intention - he wants to make the art aesthetically pleasing so that he can please his parents with the drawing. If this is the intention, then that picture is art.

What I noticed, and this may be obvious, is that whenever we encountered new definitions of art, we would always look at the extreme cases as counterexamples. For instance, in this intentional definition of art - and the papers we wrote used these exact examples - there are several cases where the intentional definition of art seems to fail or is a bit muddled.

One example is in the case of Duchamp's Fountain or Warhol's Brillo Boxes. For those not familiar with either, Duchamp's Fountain is a urinal that was taken by Duchamp, signed R. Mutt and then placed on a pedestal in a museum. Warhol took a Brillo Box, which is just a cardboard box that is mass produced, and made it art. In both of these examples, it is the artist's intention to make these art, but it seems weird does it not? Anyone can take a urinal and have the intention to make it art and in a sense, recreate Duchamp's Fountain. Or take any object and make it art.

Another example is things like souping up cars or motorcycles. The owner intends for this car to be aesthetically pleasing, but this does not make the car art. It seems he has the right intention - he paints the car with care and adds-on different accessories all to make the car look good. Intuitively, this is not art, even though it has the right intention.

Since we always consider the extreme cases in this class, it started to get me thinking about other times where we use extreme cases to either prove or disprove something. Of course, the one example that came to my mind first was calculus and finding the maximum point. In order to find the maximum point, we need to take a look at where the curve has a derivative equal to zero AND we need to consider the boundary values (the extreme cases). If nowhere along the curve is the derivative zero, we take a look at the boundary values and find the maximum there.

It seems that we as humans are always interested in what happens at the very extreme end of things. Physicists first discovered black holes and the physics behind a black hole. They then wanted to figure out the boundary of the black hole or the event horizon. In physical terms, what was happening at the event horizon?

I was listening on the radio the other day about drug testing on animals. I agree that it is horrible, but then I thought about how many lives the research saves. Let's say that drug testing on animals is bad, in fact, absolutely terrible. What if a scientist had a vaccine for HIV say, and needed to test it on animals in order to make sure it worked. If there is no other alternative, what would you say? I'm not trying to say that animal testing is good or bad, but rather, these extreme cases really force you to take a side on an issue and even if you are strongly for or against that issue, it seems that there are very extreme examples which can make you jump sides.