A comment on "what is art?" on Sound of Philosophy آوای فلسفه Podcast in Youtube

Dear sir,

Incomplete knowledge becomes dangerous when it is mixed with carelessness, prejudice, and a touch of superstition. These tendencies unfortunately permeate your pseudo-philosophical commentary, especially in your implicit assumptions about Wittgenstein’s philosophy of language, his notion of language-games, and—crucially—his views on mathematics, probability, and randomness. These areas are not separate strands of Wittgenstein’s thought; they are deeply interconnected, and misunderstanding one leads inevitably to misunderstanding the others. This is precisely what occurs in your discussion, even if you never mention these subjects explicitly.

You begin with a mistaken belief that each phenomenon must have a single, correct definition. Wittgenstein spent his entire later philosophy dismantling this notion. Whether we speak of “number,” “probability,” “randomness,” or “art,” none of these concepts has a fixed essence. Their meanings arise from the practices—mathematical, scientific, or aesthetic—in which they are used. Definitions are not eternal truths but social agreements internal to language-games. This alone shows why art can have many definitions, why mathematics is not a discovery of metaphysical objects, and why probability statements depend on grammatical conventions rather than hidden causal mechanisms.

The problem becomes clearer when you appeal to the market value of Tracey Emin’s My Bed as proof of its status as “art.” Market inflation—often driven by speculation or tax-evasion schemes—cannot settle philosophical questions. If anything, this example reveals the danger of taking surface appearances as metaphysical truths. Wittgenstein repeatedly warned against this. Serious critics still debate whether works like John Cage’s 4′33″ or John Chamberlain’s Crash are genuine art or conceptual provocations. Wittgenstein would not resolve this through an absolute definition but by examining the use of the concept “art” across practices.

This is precisely where Wittgenstein’s views on mathematics, probability, and aesthetics meet. In the Tractatus, he held that ethical and aesthetic truths cannot be put into propositions; they must be shown. Later, in the Philosophical Investigations, he argued that meaning is not an essence but a function of use within a language-game. His anti-Platonist critique of mathematics reinforces this: mathematical objects do not exist in a metaphysical realm but within systems of rules we adopt. Infinity, sets, and numbers are not things but techniques.

Similarly, in his later remarks on probability and randomness, Wittgenstein insisted that randomness is not a property of sequences and probability is not a metaphysical measure. They are grammatical tools used within particular practices—science, finance, betting. Their meaning is inseparable from how we use them.

When we turn to art, the same structure applies. Aesthetic concepts gain meaning through practices of appreciation, training, and cultural experience. There is no essence of art to be discovered, just as there is no metaphysical object “number” or “randomness” hiding behind our words. Wittgenstein’s philosophy reveals that art is intelligible only within the forms of life that give aesthetic judgment its sense.

By overlooking these deep interconnections, your analysis reduces Wittgenstein to a caricature and treats art as if it required a single, rigid definition or could be settled by market prices. That is not philosophy but a misunderstanding presented with unwarranted confidence. A more faithful engagement with Wittgenstein—across language, mathematics, probability, and aesthetics—shows how fragile and mistaken your assumptions truly are.