Re: Is talent born or created with hard work and practice

"Aesthetically, talent is just when someone else likes your stuff."
"Someone else" may have nothing at all by which to base what talent is.

The only thing by which talent, aesthetically, can be determined is someone else's opinion. If they like a piece and think it good, aesthetically, they think or say, "Oh, I like that. That artist is [aesthetically] talented." There is no other way to determine if something aesthetically shows talent. You can't show me one. And everyone has all they need for a basis of such determination, to their own preference and liking. You saying that they might not is an unsupported claim that leads nowhere, even if you squint your eyes and look hard.

People liking something as an argument is going to fail logically once it's amplified to 'this many people like it/that many people hate it' as the informal fallacy 'argumentum ad populum'.

This is an improper application of the concept of argumentum ad populum. It should only be applied to a logical fallacy in an argument about something that can be factually true. One person saying, "Mike is talented [aesthetically], and another person saying, "Mike is not talented," is not an argument--it is only the stating of opinions, which is all there is when it comes deciding if someone is talented aesthetically. There is nothing else to it--it has not been shown in this thread.

" Regarding the assertion "someone's" enjoyment is our rule of thumb, that assessment may be hard to defend or just mistaken. Perhaps someone has performed something our arbiter of talent is just entirely familiar with, showing a comfort in familiarity and upon examination we find nothing more as an argument for it.

There is no defending opinion on what someone likes or does not like and it can't be mistaken--only possibly changed from moment to moment.

Conversely, we immediately saw a funny sort of agreement: someone doesn't like "gangsta rap" so it must be that those people cannot be talented. No, liking something or not does not determine anything about talent

I addressed that earlier in this post.

if we start respecting that as a truism we may as well not talk about it, everything is subjective now, and we're never going to have a definition.

I've given a definition; it's just that there isn't any other one. It is subjective. If you dare try to bring some "objective" criteria as to what makes something reveal talent, aesthetically, apart from other types of talent as I described in my post before (physical skill, intellectual skill, ability), then I will dare to point out that all of the criteria, when it comes to aesthetics, are based on individual, subjective likes and dislikes. Two or more may find they have the same criteria and state that they have identified standards, but that changes nothing.

The level of accomplishment,

As determined by?

as proceeding from the ease of and/or the aptitude for the work that makes accomplishment a thing are our signs of talent.

This goes to the other types of talent I mentioned.

If a child does something we didn't expect to happen so early we'll say 'talented'. We may not be able to see it for some years, with some it may be rather latent...

The unexpected in a musical piece or performance no doubt has led some people to declare talent in some cases.

"that unarguable point" - inarguable
I just argued it. Here's another form of that argument:

"But what will the general public think about it?"
"The 'general public' voted for Hitler and likes Coldplay."

You made an unsupported claim and misapplied a label of a logical fallacy. Look at you now.

Statistics: Posted by jancivil — Thu Jan 04, 2024 5:56 pm