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Diane Ragsdale on what the arts do and why

The Value of Intrinsic Value in the Arts: A Guest Post by Carter Gillies

March 21, 2016 by Diane Ragsdale 3 Comments

carter gilliesIn recent years an artist named Carter Gillies has written to me with some regularity in response to Jumper posts. I have always valued his letters, which are invariably insightful, provocative, warm, and encouraging. Recently, Carter dropped me a line and mentioned that he had come across a Facebook post by Clay Lord soliciting a better framing of the intrinsic/instrumental distinction.

Carter then shared that he had been rather astonished by the manner in which the word ‘intrinsic’ was being used by arts types posting comments as it was quite different from the ways that philosophers and psychologists have tended to use it. He wrote, “It was as if an entirely new word had replaced the one I was familiar with.”

He elaborated.

Inspired by his letter, I suggested that if he hadn’t already done so he should write a reflection on the topic and I said that if he did so I’d love to post it on Jumper. He agreed. I won’t preface what Carter has written beyond saying that I believe it is truly worthwhile for those occupied with understanding and articulating the value of the arts as it seems that there is something fundamental to this endeavor that many of us have either forgotten or abandoned for political expediency.

(BTW, if you are so occupied you may also want to check out the recently published report, Understanding the Value of Arts and Culture.)

Carter has a blog of his own, which you can check out here. I asked Carter for a bio that I could share to introduce him along with his post. Here’s what he sent me:

At some point during philosophy graduate studies Carter found himself with a lump of clay and a potters wheel and immediately knew he was intended for a life in the arts. It also turns out that the things most worth thinking clearly about are the ones we care about, and so he spends his days making pots and asking questions about the nature of art, beauty, and their place in the world.

This is a long post; but, hey, Jumper readers are used to that. 😉

So grab a coffee and enjoy!

Engraving from Mechanic’s Magazine (cover of bound Volume II, Knight & Lacey, London, 1824). Courtesy of the Annenberg Rare Book & Manuscript Library, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AArchimedes_lever.png

I sometimes look at the arts landscape and feel we have gotten our wires crossed. Its not always easy to define, but for me, at least, there is a pervading sense we are making correctable mistakes.

Difficult questions can often be solved by either moving up or down a level. The problem, it sometimes turns out, is in the manner we are addressing things. We find a new framework for measuring or by setting different parameters. Sometimes, also, it can be in a refining of our terms, scrapping some and replacing others. Sometimes its knowing the right questions to ask. Even a tentative answer to a good question is better than a great answer to a bad question. It just feels as though in the arts we are occasionally asking the wrong questions.

An apparent issue facing us is how we understand values. I’m not just talking about our own values as opposed to other people’s, but the role and function of values and where values actually fit in a person’s life. We often seem to talk about values without knowing what they are there for.

One problem I ran across recently was our use of the word ‘intrinsic’. This term has a long and storied history in the fields of philosophy and psychology, and yet when used in the arts we are often left dissatisfied.

I have seen too many references to ‘intrinsic benefits’ and ‘intrinsic impact’ not to be aware of at least one wrong turn we have taken. The distinction we use this term for in the arts is, in this instance, the difference between things that are good for us personally and wider social benefits. We take ‘intrinsic impact’ to refer to our own individual benefits, and ‘instrumental/extrinsic’ to refer to external social goods and the like.

The problem is that ‘benefit’ and ‘impact’ are already the language of instrumentality. They denote an effect, what something can be good for, the means to ends, utility, and this is precisely what is meant by instrumental. When we use the word this way we are not making a contrast with instrumentality as much as we are defining the way in which a thing is instrumental.

The way this term gets used in philosophy and psychology is to make plain the difference between things that are justified by something  outside themselves and things that are justified in themselves. It is specifically the difference between means and ends. A means is whatever thing benefits or impacts some other thing. The value is derived from being a means. It serves some other end. The end is not valuable in that way. It is that from which the means takes its value. It represents the value itself.

Think of it like this: We are measuring something and we wonder what measurement is justified. We take out a tape measure, hold it in place, and see that this here thing is two feet four inches. The operation of measuring has been successfully carried out.

But what exactly have we done? This is an important question. There are things in the world that we measure, and this becomes an empirical issue, but there is also the measure itself, the thing from which we derive measurements. That thing exists in the world too, but the role it has is different. It’s not thing being measured but that which does the measuring.

By Pink Sherbet Photography from USA [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Common

‘Two feet four inches’ is how something else measures up, is justified, by our use of the measure. We question how things will be measured, but we do not have the same uncertainty about the measure itself. That stands in a different relation to what we do. It is the ground we assume when we evaluate things in the world. It’s not a question, even an empirical question, but a definition. It’s the standard itself. It is the logic that connects things.

That may take some time to process, but it absolutely relates to the distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic values. And this is crucial for us.

Consider: The world is full of things with instrumental/extrinsic value to us. There are plenty of means to our ends. But where does the value of our ends come from? If a means is valuable because it serves that end, where does the value of ends come from?

Ends function for us in much the same way as our yardsticks and tape measures do: The ends are that which measures the value of means. They are a logical aspect of the way we confront the world rather than an empirical question to be decided. Ends function for us by being accepted as intrinsic values, as things not needing to be justified. They are part of the definition. This is simply how we value the world. We deem these things worth holding onto. Its the scaffolding we hold in place to make sense of things.

And it turns out there are many such values. We put them in our important documents. “Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” are not things we look to justify in some other way: They are the grounds upon which our actions are measured. Not every value is a means, and most others come to a place that requires no further justification: This is simply what we do. It describes a way of acting, a culture.

When we determine that something is beneficial for something else we have solved an empirical connection: “Yes, the arts are good for the economy!”. What we have not done, the thing we don’t always question, is what form of value the economy takes. The relationship we have proposed is that the arts are a means, and we are using the economy and its like to justify the arts.

But if we are saying the arts are important “because of their benefit to the economy” are we really saying that’s why the arts are important?

I don’t want to suggest that the arts are not worthy in this role, as the servant to other established goods. I simply question whether the arts are only that. We have given the arts as a means, but can we claim them also as an end? The role of servant is respectworthy, undoubtedly, but I know few in the arts who value the arts merely as the means to some further end. Additionally, perhaps yes, but not only on those terms.

There is a confusion here, and I’m not sure it is only by omission.

For most people in the arts the value of the arts does not need to be explained. The arts themselves are a measure of value. The arts are worthy in their own right. The arts have intrinsic value. They do not need to be justified.

But then, how is it we spend so much time talking about the instrumentality of the arts? Well, because not everyone gets it. Not every person values the arts as a centerpiece of how they think and behave in the world.

For many people the arts are not only incomprehensible but are entirely without value. So when we talk to these people we are talking to folks who do not yet have a meaningful role for the arts. It holds no significant place in how they look at the world. Its not a part of their scaffolding. It’s handing them a tape measure when they have no cultural practice of needing things measured.

How do we talk to them, even? How do we get them to see value in the arts? We know it as part of the foundation of our own values. How can we communicate that to others?

This is where advocacy steps in. And unfortunately these core values are not transferable in an immediate sense, like putting on a new coat. We are discussing the foundation of a person’s world view, so its not as simple as getting them to switch between metric and the US version. Its not a difference between two standards that do exactly the same thing. Its not just a matter of translating from one set of units to another. Rather, it’s the whole idea of measuring itself. And there is no simple translation for that. Core values are an integral part of who people are.

So how do we talk to people who are fundamentally different from us? Well, our intrinsic values are hidden from them, and theirs from us, but there are empirical connections between things in the world. And the arts have done a good job identifying where some of the overlap may exist.

The way we mostly talk to these people is we have found that our ends, the things we value in themselves, can be the means to their own ends. They value the economy? Well, the arts are good for the economy! They think that cognitive development is important? Well, the arts are good for cognitive development! We make our own ends the means to their ends.

But this never teaches them why we value the arts. It is not a conversation that discusses the arts the way we feel about them. Its not a picture of the intrinsic value of the arts, because in talking about instrumentality we always make the arts subservient. That’s never only what they are to us. Sometimes we just have to make the case for a lesser value as the expedient means to secure funding or policy decisions. It’s better than not making any sense at all.

The question, then, is whether discussing the arts this way is a path to truly persuading folks to our point of view, to appreciating the arts in themselves.

Why is this an important question? Well, we are trying to convert folks to our cause, that the arts are not extravagant, and it’s a legitimate question whether this can be done by the rational instrumental means we are offering.

At some point in the 18th century Scottish philosopher David Hume rather conclusively argued that it cannot. You cannot simply derive an ought (intrinsic value) from what is (facts). You don’t become aware of the intrinsic value of the arts by pointing to the benefits they have. Things that measure value (oughts) have a different role from the things that are measured (what is). One is the foundation, the other what gets built from it. One is the definition, the other how that definition applies. Its a categorical distinction. And persuasion stumbles over even the best placed facts.

is-ought

In crafting the Ripple Effect report the folks at ArtsWave came to approximately this conclusion. As Margy Waller stated in a great guest post on Createquity, don’t try to change minds, change perspective:

Instead of reviving an old debate, we sought a new way to start the conversation – based on something we can all be for, instead of something we’re defending against an attack. And importantly, we aren’t trying to change people’s minds, but present the arts in a way that changes perspective……

Members of the public typically have positive feelings toward the arts, some quite strong. But how they think about the arts is shaped by a number of common default patterns that ultimately obscure a sense of shared responsibility in this area.

In other words, the arts may make folks feel good, but they are not thereby recognized as a good in themselves. The common default patterns are simply the mental habits that devalue the arts or cast them as at best merely means to other ends. Defending the arts with facts about the arts is not actually going to change people’s minds. Rather, what is needed is a new perspective in which the value of the arts are already seen as vital.

Arts Midwest published a report last year that also acknowledged the issue:

The public will building model posits that long-term change is accomplished by connecting an issue with the deeply held values of the audiences and stakeholders a movement seeks to engage. The theory is rooted in the understanding that people generally make decisions about what to think and do based on their core values and their assumptions about how the world works. They accept facts and data that support their existing worldview and values, and they tend to reject facts and data that stand in contradiction. To create—and sustain—public will for any issue, a movement needs to find the optimal values alignment that connects their audiences to the issue.

A few years ago there was an article in Mother Jones that explained “the science of why we don’t believe science.” The whole article is brilliant and insightful and well worth a read. The conclusion is this:

You can follow the logic to its conclusion: Conservatives are more likely to embrace climate science if it comes to them via a business or religious leader, who can set the issue in the context of different values than those from which environmentalists or scientists often argue. Doing so is, effectively, to signal a détente in what Kahan has called a “culture war of fact.” In other words, paradoxically, you don’t lead with the facts in order to convince. You lead with the values—so as to give the facts a fighting chance.

It is simply the case that the arts have been preoccupied in leading with the facts. As the ArtsWave and Arts Midwest reports demonstrate this is a gambit that plays for very low stakes. Its not a strategy that even remotely stands a chance of scoring on the level of fundamental values. Facts are disputable, despite the conviction with which we ourselves hold onto them. We find certain things obvious, and the reason we do is that the facts we hold dear always reflect our values. We ignore facts that don’t line up or contradict our core intrinsic values. Blame the human temptation for motivated reasoning. Instrumentality only gets us so far. It’s not the measure of value itself, but a fact aligning with some other value.

Studies the arts have conducted have barely begun describing the surface phenomena, and this is not yet an explanation. Yes the patient is sick, but we do not know the disease. We are confused about intrinsic and instrumental values so we blur the lines and fail to distinguish their radical difference. This is a category mistake, and not knowing this difference has too often blinded us.

I have heard it expressed that data and arguments in favor of the arts are like arrows we cast at the problems facing us: We hope some will stick. When the arrows fail we assume we just need better arrows, more armor piercing facts. The problem, unfortunately, isn’t the arrows but mistaking the target for a thing that can be reached in this way…..

Perhaps this is a better way of looking at it: In the third century BCE Archimedes said, “Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it and I shall move the world.” Facts are like levers, but they do not function to move things unless resting on a congenial foundation.

fulcrum

In the arts we have thrown facts together, constructing the longest possible lever, but have seemingly forgotten we also need somewhere to place it. Those facts need to rest on values that can act as a fulcrum. The facts without value, or the wrong value, will simply have no leverage. They will fail to motivate. Something needs to hold fast. A lever hung on a speck of dust won’t work. Facts without a decent fulcrum are not even a lever, just a wobbly stick…..

The arts have mustered plenty of cogent facts as to why the arts are amazing, and yet we spend too much time scratching our heads wondering why our efforts fall on deaf ears. What’s at stake for us is not facts about the arts but the value of the arts. The sooner we embrace this the sooner we avoid playing losing games and spinning our wheels without significant traction.

To turn the tables on what Margy suggested, perhaps it is WE who need a change in perspective. The confusion we are mired in is thinking that our difficulty is practical when in fact the impediment is structural. We need to better understand this to make appreciable headway. We can celebrate both the good art does and the good art is, a structural difference, the lever and the fulcrum. That is the value of intrinsic value for the arts.

***

Archimedes’ Lever: Engraving from Mechanic’s Magazine (cover of bound Volume II, Knight & Lacey, London, 1824). Courtesy of the Annenberg Rare Book & Manuscript Library, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AArchimedes_lever.png

Tape Measure Photo Attribution: By Pink Sherbet Photography from USA [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

David Humes Is-Ought Attribution: From the Website John Ponders: https://johnponders.com/2012/11/15/humes-guillotine/

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Comments

  1. Ian David Moss says

    March 30, 2016 at 11:52 pm

    I very much agree with the notion that values are fundamentally separate from facts and that the interpretation of facts can only be made coherent in the context of values. That’s why at Createquity we invested time in defining our vision for a healthy arts ecosystem before embarking on our large scale research synthesis to identify the most important issues in the arts. The healthy arts ecosystem definition functions as the values statement guiding the research process, and he facts that we uncover in that process can only be interpreted in the context of those values.

    Regarding the notion of intrinsic vs. instrumental, I guess I’ve come to believe that the arts have no intrinsic value by your definition. While recognizing its limitations, Createquity embraces the emerging scholarship around wellbeing as a way of defining and measuring what is good about human life and progress. One specific definition of wellbeing is the capability approach, which (to greatly oversimplify) argues that a good life is one in which people have the capability to do the things they want to do. It is easy to see that many people increase their wellbeing by participating in the arts, but this does not bestow intrinsic value upon the arts any more than it bestows intrinsic value on such things as sports or going to church, both leisure-time activities that make many people’s lives better but may not have the same resonance to you or me.

    There is, I feel, one gap in your argument that bears addressing. In the essay, you implicitly conflate the arts with arts funding, in sentences like “I have heard it expressed that data and arguments in favor of the arts are like arrows we cast at the problems facing us:” Arguing for the value of arts funding is a very different thing than arguing for the value of the arts to society, even though many of our advocates see expediency in treating them as the same. While arts funding undoubtedly has a role to play in the arts ecosystem, every society has art whether government or philanthropic funding exists for it or not. I think the reason why the arguments sometimes don’t stick is because policymakers aren’t stupid and realize this. Amazing as it is to write this, I very rarely see arguments for the arts that are specifically tailored to what funding can uniquely do for the arts, and why that might be a good thing to invest in.

    Reply
    • Richard Kooyman says

      April 11, 2016 at 1:05 pm

      John F. Kennedy believed that “If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his vision wherever it takes him. We must never forget that art is not a form of propaganda; it is a form of truth.”
      In 1962 Kennedy created the position of Special Consultant on the Arts which would become the precursor to the NEA. He said that artists held a unique position in our economic model. He called for public funding of artists because of the unique difficulties they faced in capitalism. He realized that if we wanted a cultural society we need to pay artists to be artists.

      Today the NEA dosen’t directly fund artists (other than for writers). Today most states don’t directly fund artists. Here in Michigan less than 10% of all the money spent on “the arts” in the state goes into a category that the Pew Cultural Data Project calls -programing. How much of that 10% actually ends up in the pockets of artists is unclear.
      Think about it. 90% of all the federal, state, private, and philanthropic monies that funnels into the Michigan arts (over $500 million) isn’t used to support artists. It’s used to supporter organizations. 90% of all that funneling pays for the salaries and buildings, utilities, supplies and benefits of arts organizations.
      Kennedy was right. If you ever want to know what the arts could do for a society you need to pay the artists to be artists. We will let you know what we do. We will entertain you, inform you, thrill you, and stimulate you. But you have to help us do that. You have to help support us. We don’t need an organization to approve of our projects. We don’t need babysitting or a social intermediate. We need time, space, and money to do what we do.
      The conversation needs to change from what funding can do for “the arts” to what it can do for artists. And the answer is simple. Funding for the arts should fund the artists.

      Reply
  2. Carter Gillies says

    April 1, 2016 at 3:55 pm

    Something to ponder:

    When I was an undergrad a professor made the point that in the ancient Greek world life was taken for granted and death was not understood. They needed to explain death. Meanwhile, in the modern scientific world life is anything but taken for granted. Rather, death/non life is accepted as the natural state of the Universe and it is life itself which needs to be explained. To the ancients the world was populated with gods and miracles. That the world is alive was a given. Today we know that most of the universe is dead. Life itself is the miracle. We accept the inert foundation and admit that life itself is the exception. And it seems a much better explanation than the Greeks gave us.

    But today’s world is also much more complex than things were back then. There is so much more to know, things to do, and places to be. The more we encounter the greater our need to make sense. There are still things we take for granted and others we feel the need to explain. And possibly its true that we take some of the wrong things for granted. Possibly its true we look for explanations where there are none. But this is how we interact with the world. What the world means to us is predicated on how we interact with it, what we are doing, what we believe in, and where our interests lead us.

    Value is one such thing that plays a role in our lives. It is understood only so well at times. We take some things for granted that may not be wise and we question other things that require no explanation. Here is what I like to call “A Short And Fanciful History Of Value”:

    Nothing is all there is. Is isn’t. The Big Bang explodes the universe into being. Matter spins out from the center. Stars coalesce, galaxies form, and bits of matter cool and become planets. On one or more planets the climate moderates to where an atmosphere forms. Waters pool in low spots on the surface. Billions upon billions upon billions of years pass, and then life forms. Something new. Quickly life spreads out and diversifies, mutating into a plurality of forms, becoming larger, and moving to new environments, adapting to different circumstances and evolving from suitability and disposition. Consciousness quickly follows, and self consciousness exerts itself among a select few. Species become social. There are now herds, schools, prides, and families. Among some few cognitive development turns to reflection. Instinct and self awareness are joined by abstraction. Social forms and non biological situations become more a matter of choice, and with it the Universe is introduced to caring. Some things now matter. Basic needs, instinctual desires, and other primitive biological functions now have to contend with reasons. The Universe welcomes value to its list of accomplishments. Beings begin caring about pragmatic things, not only what is good, but what is good for the good things. Beings invent ends and means. Culture grows up around the values that are held and the practices which manifest them. These beings continuously invent a bizarre array of things to believe in and practices to enact what they believe. The gods become known. Tribes become political. Wars are fought because different groups can’t agree what things constitute value. Populations spread and misunderstanding proliferates. The world becomes ever more complex and our values more complicated. Humans lose sight of where these values came from. The end.

    When I hear that the arts do not have intrinsic value it seems what is being said is a fact about the arts. A fact like “Cats don’t have wings”. It seems to be something put forward that we should be able to check. You pick up some art, look at it, feel how heavy it is, check the density, and conclude that it lacks intrinsic value. Or perhaps when it is said that the the arts do not have intrinsic value it is meant as a logical impossibility. Like saying that numbers don’t have mass. More scientists in lab coats get together, study the problem, and determine rightly that it was never capable of intrinsic value, by definition.

    The history of value may tell us otherwise. Whether the arts have intrinsic value or not isn’t a fact about the arts, its a fact about us. It asks the question “Do WE value the arts intrinsically?” When you are looking for intrinsic value you do not check the status of the world, you ask people: “Do you believe the arts have intrinsic value? Do the arts have a place in your life that does not require them to be justified? Do you treat the arts as worthy in themselves? Do you believe the value of the arts needs to be explained? Are the arts something alive for you, or are they dead?” What we are looking for is a system of beliefs, a culture.

    The Short And Fanciful History Of Value suggests that it is WE who bring value to the world. It is WE who make of the world something valuable. It is our actions and our beliefs that invent value for the world. Culture is the propagation and manifestation of these values. And the things valued can be anything. It doesn’t have to make sense to us, only to those people for whom it matters. Some people throughout history have worshiped or venerated the spirits of their elders. This is what they value. This is what they do. We don’t need to check the Aether for ectoplasm. We need to ask them, “Is this what you value?”

    When the Universe is mute on value it is humans who need to tell the stories of why certain things matter. This is not exceptional or unusual or unexpected. If you are looking for value you ask people. You look at a culture as evidence that these things are taken seriously. It can be anything. I repeat, anything. The arts are no more preposterous than anything else. And if you believe in the arts it can seem entirely reasonable that they should require no explanations, no justifications. Doubt is misplaced if we imagine this is a factual condition of the arts themselves. When people behave as if the arts mattered, the arts matter. Facts may tell us the world is not always as we imagine it, but if no one behaves as if something mattered, if no one actually cares, that is the only evidence a thing has no value for us.

    Reply

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Diane Ragsdale

A speaker, writer, and advisor on a range of arts and culture topics, Diane Ragsdale is director and co-lead faculty of the Cultural Leadership Program at Banff Centre for Arts & Creativity. Diane also teaches a workshop on Cultural Policy at Yale University for its Theater Management MA and is a doctoral candidate at Erasmus University Rotterdam (in the Netherlands), where she lectured 2011-2015 in the cultural economics and sociology of the arts programs. Diane additionally provides a range of advising, research, and education services to the arts and culture sector (in the US and abroad); and is a frequent provocateur or interlocutor at arts conferences and symposiums around the world. Read More…

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A Few Things I’ve Written

"Surviving the Culture Change", "The Excellence Barrier", "Holding Up the Arts: Can We Sustain What We've Creatived? Should We?" and "Living in the Struggle: Our Long Tug of War in the Arts" are a few keynote addresses I've given in the US and abroad on the larger changes in the cultural environment and ways arts organizations may need to adapt in order to survive and thrive in the coming years.

If you want a quicker read, then you may want to skip the speeches and opt for the article, "Recreating Fine Arts Institutions," which was published in the November 2009 Stanford Social Innovation Review.

Here is a recent essay commissioned by the Royal Society for the Encouragement of the Arts for the 2011 State of the Arts Conference in London, "Rethinking Cultural Philanthropy".

In 2012 I documented a meeting among commercial theater producers and nonprofit theater directors to discuss partnerships between the two sectors in the development of new theatrical work, which is published by HowlRound. You can get a copy of this report, "In the Intersection," on the HowlRound Website. Finally, last year I also had essays published in Doug Borwick's book, Building Communities Not Audiences and Theatre Bay Area's book (edited by Clay Lord), Counting New Beans.

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