CFI: A Working Hypothesis

Aim of this research’s draft is to understand the place and meaning of the arts in the human frame and society. The main hypothesis is that the role of the arts consists above all in producing objects of interpretation. This is not only a “role”; actually, it is an identity and a meaning. Artworks are tools to be interpreted, meaningful structures that live only to be understood. The rule of the game is that the artwork must be per se significant (even when representing the senselessness of the world). Thus, the artwork activates inevitably a Call for Interpretation (CFI), which is the fulfillment of its identity. The essay explores the fields of music/poetry and of cave arts, to get a preliminary setting of the scientific proposal.


Introduction
Aim of this research's draft is to understand the place and meaning of the arts in the human frame and society.The main hypothesis is that the role of the arts consists above all in producing objects of interpretation.This is not only a "role"; actually, it is an identity and a meaning.Artworks are tools to be interpreted, meaningful structures that live only to be understood.The rule of the game is that the artwork must be per se significant (even when representing the senselessness of the world).Thus the artwork activates inevitably a call for interpretation (henceforward CFI), which is the fulfillment of its identity, its entelechia.Arts are created by humankind for humankind; they do not anyway transcend the secular dimension-even though it might seem like so-and they have a certain function within the community life.Their function is to provide meaningful structures in a world that does not guarantee a meaning.
Consequently, the aesthetic pleasure must be reconsidered as an enthusiasm arising during the process of having the sense of the artwork.Grasping a meaning is coexistent with the aesthetic emotion.the same thing.How to demonstrate this assumption?
We want proceed towards two main goals: 1) Defining the meaning of music 2) Understanding the function of the prehistoric cave pictures Why these two fields?Because: 1) concerns the birth of the artistic production by humankind (artistic, not merely "aesthetic"), as to say the origins of every discussion about the identity of arts; and 2) singles music out because the debate on meaning in music (particularly about absolute music) has been crucial through centuries to understand the meaning of an artwork tout court.The demarcation of these boundaries we deem suitable for the deepening of the matter and the approaching the result of a hypothetical-deductive itinerary.Why working hard in such an abstract realm?Because within the human society, the place of the arts is not an abstract place, but a terribly concrete field for challenges.

Preliminaries
Which is the function of art (arts) in human society?We start from that question.Let us declare immediately that we have an answer.The explanation and verification of this answer will be the goal of the proposed research.It is evident, therefore, that the development of our inquiry will be formally "hypothetical-deductive".Nevertheless, we shall avoid every preconception (not pre-comprehension) and every ad hoc procedure, obviously.

What We Want
The ambition of our inquiry will be gaining a theory of everything in the aesthetic realm.A paradigm that may be applicable to any artistic production of any time.

Importance of the Proposal
Before summing up the working hypothesis, few words about the very consequence of this research.
Theories about the meaning and purpose of art have been following one another through the Centuries.It is a contradictory historical frame, never ending until nowadays.Unfortunately, most of these theories are not always appropriate to all artistic forms.Furthermore, some classical paradigms-as the mimesis theory-blew up during the late modernity.Kinds of conceptual art overturned previous certainties.
Historical fault lines annihilated or conversely unearthed past models.Not to talk about the idea of beauty: exalted, violated and "enlarged" or "enriched" in many ways.Thus, the suspect of the implausibility of an aesthetic science arises.Moreover, the brutal suspect of a needlessness of art as well.The latter suspect is a real danger.Artistic productions have been realized by humankind since Prehistoric ages.
That is a sufficient supporting document to erase suspects such as the above mentioned.The artistic productions are made by men for men; they are part of the activity of human community.They are not Published by SCHOLINK INC. absolute.Therefore, they have a precise relevance for all of us.And consistently they are suitable object of scientific inquiry.This said we might deem truly important the search for an overall meaning of the Arts.Meaning and function, within the non-absoluteness of our life, are inseparable.Therefore, henceforward, when we talk about meaning we involve also function, and vice-versa.

First Provisional Conclusion
Finding the meaning of Art entails finding a relevant part of our identity.It is impossible to ignore it.On the other hand, the increasingly reduction of separateness between humanistic and hard sciences offers an additional motivation for such a research as our one.Then we must understand the function of the artistic production in our world.And we believe that without an interpretative model available for Art itself (not only for single forms, genres, "techniques"), we could not get to substantial results.

Working Hypothesis
We just said to have an answer to propose an answer to the demand about a scientific definition of art.We think that the fact of the interpretation is not simply one of the phenomena related to the so-called fruition of artistic objects.We are firmly persuaded that the interpretation has a role unique to define the sense of Art.Interpretation is the identity's structure of the artwork, of its function.That is not a variation on hermeneutics.The thinking line from Schleiermacher to Gadamer and beyond is undoubtedly very precious for our work.However, our work operates in a further space, perhaps more radical, perhaps very different.Therefore, we shall use the term interpretation and never the heavy word hermeneutics.We want to move the interpretation back to the origin of the artistic function and history.In a nutshell: we think that every artwork, as such, activates a Call for Interpretation (CFI), destined for every human being, and in this way the artwork fulfils its own role in the society.Naturally, there is no transcendent call; nobody is calling from a metaphysical realm.The artwork is a tool made for the community by an author (willing or unaware he be), and the sense of this creation is just activating a CFI.The reader/spectator/listener, etc., stimulated by an artwork of every cultural level, knows, by virtue of a shared convention, that the artwork must signify something.He receives the strong CFI without exception, because this is the rule of the "game", a serious game of course.The artwork questions us, and the consequence is that we look into it, unavoidably.

Signification and Pleasure
It is a matter of significance.The real life is not compelled to be significant for us.We may find some daily experience, which is not semantic, from the exigent human point of view.Someone goes further, stating the life to be definitely meaningless.That is because the existence does not need necessary an interpretation.Being is self-justified.To be is to be is to be is to be.Conversely, an artwork-which is real, obviously, but as human artifact-is created exactly to have a meaning.We all agree on that.Someone ingenuously yaps on about the message.This is the lowest degree of argumentation.Meaning is something solid, but not merely practical.If we (homo sapiens) have created an artistic activity oriented to make significant objects and thus to arouse an effort of interpretation, this does not exclude the pleasure in enjoying an artwork.Pleasure exists in aesthetic realm: this is a truism.How to harmonize the grasping of a sense with the delight of the contemplation, when making use of an artwork?This problem could seem the most difficult to solve.By contrast, it is a quasi-fake problem.
First, scientists and philosophers have shown that thoughts and passions are overlapped, concurrent and-poetically said-"made of the same stuff".Thoughts are strictly related to meanings, and the meanings of passions are siblings of the formers.Meaning is the key-concept to understand our civilization and our way of thinking and feeling.The reaction to the CFI is a blend of aesthetic emotion and yearning to catch a meaning.The interpretative ecstasy is the fulfillment of the artistic process, we might say.
Obviously, there are many (though not infinite) interpretations, not only one, least of all the intentio auctoris.But also this is a fake problem.

The "Beauty"
Another fake problem is the beauty's one.Ascertained that the ideas of beauty have been marvelously contradictory through the centuries up to now, we have to rephrase that concept.Briefly, the intensity of the CFI is proportional to the so-called "beauty" of the artwork.F. i. a commercial b movie may stimulate a minimum of CFI; a film by Tarkovskij or Kubrick drives the CFI to the maximum of intensity.
Therefore, we have different levels of pleasure-and-thought, depending on the expressive complexity of the artwork.

Building a Research
How to verify the CFI theory?We want to confirm that every artwork is born to arouse a CFI and that the value, importance and beauty of an artistic production are measured up because of the intensity of CFI.
The two main lines of inquiry will be primarily: 1) Interrogating an art that is often considered "meaningless", "beautiful in itself": music.
2) Interrogating the function of the primordial art, the Cave painting.

Music and Interpretation
The problem of the meaning of music is so complex and centuries old that some musicologists confess to be bored by it.In any case, it is still a matter of debate, indeed.The two opposite positions in this regard are the formalist one, against the refusal of auto-telic definition of music, on the other hand.The bibliography, as obvious, is huge.In this synopsis, we shall privilege only some aspects of the discussion.
We start again from a point of view to demonstrate: we think that a "meaningless" art, namely, in the case of music, an art that means only itself, is a un-logic data.If there is the possibility of formulating a theory of everything in the area of artistic productions-and there is-we cannot conceive one kind of art absolutely separate from the parameters of all other arts.The so-called "enriched formalism", which recently intends to go beyond classical formulations as those by Hanslick, does not change the state of art.

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It is impossible to presume that the slightest extra-musical indication may transform the absolute (meaningless) music in a music linked to a concept or to a narration and so on.We shall produce some examples in our proposal below.Now we simply say that music (a quartet, a symphonic poem, a melodrama etc.) is always an art like other arts, and therefore it is subject to the same general aesthetic institution (CFI).Understanding well this particular argument will be a qualifying point of our inquiry.

Cave Art: A Mystery?
The option for the second line of research might look like an odd and incongruous choice.We think in lieu that, after having deepened the situation of an art that is said to be totally "autonomous", for explaining a contrary opinion, we must turn to the early form of artistic expression in the history of mankind.The CFI system will be tested just on the cradle of human artistic creation.The hypotheses on the function/meaning of Prehistoric cave painting have been a lot, since 19 th century.We think that, beyond every geo-historical differentiation during thousands and thousands of years, beyond every possible religious, ritual, apotropaic, augural, magic function, the cave figurations are the crib of artistic expression of homo sapiens, that is, of our history.Thus, the challenge is this: may we adopt the CFI theory even to the blurred and mysterious birth of artistic creativity?We think yes.

Statements
The meaning of arts is an object of inquiry that we can see from different points of view.I select preliminarily some areas and conceptual frameworks.

A.
Other perspectives have been offered by the history of Aesthetics through Centuries.Our intention is to verify the hypothesis that meaning and social role of arts dwell in the activation of a call for interpretation, and first we have to resume this working hypothesis.Then we shall explain how to actualize that theoretical positioning.

Working Hypothesis
The aim of our research is then to show that the substance of aesthetic experience is a sort of CFI and our fundamental inescapable answer to it.However, as we said above, there is nothing or nobody calling from another dimension: artworks are tools for human beings, made by themselves.The aesthetic dimension does not transcend humankind: art-craft is a creation of men for men.It is social invention of Homo sapiens, hence a thing with peculiar functions describing its identity.The target of our inquiry is just defining these functions.We think that the main purpose of artistic activities is on one side enabling the CFI (author's side), and on the other trying to give original answers (consumer's side).An artistic