Episode 50: Mereology, Subjectivity, and Movies & Novels: talkPOPc Resident Philosophers Carolina Flores & Martina Botti discuss Art as Cognition

In answer to Flores' question, "What's the latest art piece that spoke to you?" Botti answers Robert Altman's Three Women, which is about conveying emotions instead of telling a story. Flores asks if movies can express pure emotion as well as music? Botti answers that movies rely so much on music, pictures, etc., that are borrowed from other art forms, and it brings up the question whether the movie creates that emotion or is it just a conglomerate from other sources? This question elicits Flores' (smiling) response: can the movie be expressing something over and above the components of the movie? to which Botti makes the metaphysical joke that the "whole is the same thing as the parts", but then explains more seriously that it would either be that the music, the images, the text, are parts of the movie or that they are general sources on which the movie is going to be grounded, but not related as parts to the whole. But Flores points out that the meaning of an image depends on the context of the other images around it. The conversation then introduces the contrast with novels, and they discuss the difference in narratives usage in a film versus a novel, agreeing that the camera forces a perspective on the viewer,  with Flores stating that movies can force us "into complicity with perspectives we don't want to take", and then asks Botti if that is really different from novels? After some discussion they agree  that first-person narration in novels gives the "inner chatter" version of subjectivity, whereas movies give subjectivity through "a take on the outer world". Support the showWebsite: talkpopc.orgInstagram: @talkpopcEmail: [email protected]