Define "Caring"

[j654dgj7]

I remember watching a movie with a friend a while back, and pointing out a technical detail which I loved. We were talking about the movie as it went along. The details was an artistic decision to have a character's face seen both on the person and in a reflection from a piece of broken glass. This reminds people of the eeriness of the scene, and the duality of the choices that the character has to make. My friend told me to shut up because he didn't care. For a long time I felt stupid for having brought it up, because I could see why it was boring and pointless to bring up. Now that I think back on it, I think I might be wrong. It's not stupid to point of what makes a movie/song/painting/whatever great!

Most people know the feeling of looking at a painting, movie or song and not know why they don't like it, they just don't like it. Some times it's a matter of the details not being cared for by the people who made the product. If a movie is shot in a boring or careless manner, the movie never becomes interesting and exciting. If a song is too straight-forward, it's boring and pointless. If a painting is too homogenous, it doesn't touch you.

So with that in mind, how would you define "caring" and/or "caring for" something? If you care about something, do you have to care about every part of it?

 

[Flavus Aquila]

Perhaps in this instance, caring is about noticing with interest.

An artist can put care into a work: noticing a lot about a subject and trying to put that into a single painting/shot/etc.
A viewer of art probably responds to things being added to an artistic object, which are worth noticing, or are intriguing/interesting.


Most music also has a similar feature: A basic melody is introduced and repeated at least once. But then the melody is repeated with a variation, which shows that the original melody can maintain its identity, but with new aspects of sadness, joy, whimsy, power, etc. It's interesting and enjoyable to explore the expressive range of a simple melody. (What I can't stand is highly repetitive music, which you can skip to any point in and it is basically the same as every other part).

 

[sprinkles]

I usually know exactly why I don't like something. If I have to say "I don't know, I just don't like it" then I think it is time for me to reconsider.

If I think about it and want to do/see/hear it again, or have good memories of it, then I care about it. I don't have to care about every part, but when it comes to arts - especially music - I've learned to control my initial knee-jerk reactions and give things a try in order to appreciate what is going on. Therefore if I still can't get into something, I'm prone to figuring out exactly what the problem is because I gave it a chance and thought about it.

 

[Gaze]

I think we each notice various things in an object we find interesting or unique. When we notice it, it makes us enjoy it more. Nothing is wrong with enjoying art in a unique way. Your friend could have shown more respect for your interest. Just because he doesn't care, doesn't mean he can't take the time to listen or appreciate something you noticed. I'm sure you've listened to him mention things he thought was cool or interesting, so not sure it would be so hard to listen to something unique pointed out. Simply because he doesn't care doesn't mean he couldn't take the time to listen. My friend and I were discussing the movie Divergent yesterday when we came out of the theatre. There were things I noticed that I found interesting, while other aspects she found more interesting. I had to remind myself that simply because we didn't notice the same things doesn't mean we couldn't appreciate each others thoughts about the film and what made the experience of watching interesting from the other's perspective. For the record, I think what you noticed was something pretty cool. One of the most irritating is being around someone who can't appreciate something the same as you. Having to suppress what you think because the other person doesn't care is not fun. You should be free to share your thoughts on things that are interesting to you even if the other person doesn't think it's noteworthy.

 

[Average]

We all care different, i dont care for things the same way, so in what sense is care, i cant really make sense of care myself...... its sensational yet something else, i dunno, care dont always seem the same to me, i can define the action, say... "looking after something/someone with good measures"....still... dont mean to complicate things. I suppose i look at care as something we initiate and reciprocate like a commodity, but i like to identify care as a source of emotion too, infact more than anything else, what you care about makes you emotional, so the action of caring has different roots...and i think those roots formulate what kind of care is appropriate....so, i guess you dont necessarily have to care about the whole thing, depends how that makes you feel..

 

[j654dgj7]

Very good points so far!

I know it's a very low-brow philosophical discussion, but it's still one that has me thinking.

Another thing that has me thinking about caring for every part of a greater whole is the case of The Beatles album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Most people would agree that they're fine songs and has some value as a whole to the development of music that came after it. Paul McCartney's bass playing on the album is very iconic and important to the sound that the album has. I wonder if people would care for the album as much if you took out the very different bass sound and put in "normal" bass parts for the time. My point is that if that is the case, then they must've cared about the bass .... subliminally? Does this phenomenon have a name or is it even a thing at all?

Edit:
Here's the isolated bass track on Lovely Rita from Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. I highly recommend hearing it if you haven't already:

[video=youtube;NZ6C3NerD0s]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZ6C3NerD0s[/video]

 

[Flavus Aquila]

[MENTION=5601]vandyke[/MENTION] The bass track on that clip seemed to be fusing the function of guitar and percussion.

 

[sprinkles]

[MENTION=5601]vandyke[/MENTION] The bass track on that clip seemed to be fusing the function of guitar and percussion.

That's what I like about bass, it can be used in different ways.

Using it as a bridge between percussion and the other instruments is actually pretty common, especially in rock music and dance music. Though in other cases such as orchestra it is more of an accompaniment to the melody and just seems to fill out the spectrum to add a bit more power.

Many forms of music also use complex polyrhythm in bass.

 

[dogman6126]

Perhaps in this instance, caring is about noticing with interest.

An artist can put care into a work: noticing a lot about a subject and trying to put that into a single painting/shot/etc.
A viewer of art probably responds to things being added to an artistic object, which are worth noticing, or are intriguing/interesting.

I must say I liked this definition. I definitely agree. If I may though, I would like to expand on this definition.
In a general sense, it seems to me that the definition to care about something is to have an interest in some respect related to the object of consideration. However we should differentiate the type of caring we are talking about here. Do we want to focus our discussion on the type of positive interest we would use the term care in to say "I care about my friend" or, "I care about my piece of pizza", or do we want to use the general sense of interest for then we must include the kind of caring that is also negative. An example of this might be when a person "cares" what a bully says for it is true that the bullied person does care as it does bother him (specific to the case of one who is annoyed which is certainly common).
I will go ahead and make a distinction to say that we are talking about care in the sense of positive interest in something. Now that we have the definition of care, we can discuss its application or to say "care for" something. It would seem to be that there are many respects in which a person can care for a single object (currently restricting to inanimate object for simplicity). Lets take the example of a vase. We could care for the vase because of its immediate appearance (drawing on its side or its specific shape). We could also care about the vase for association, for example it could have been your great grandmothers vase. We could care about the vase for the purpose for which it serves in the sense of extending the life of flowers that have been cut and brought inside and therefore brightening our room. We could perhaps say we care about it by association with our self if say we have owned the vase for 30 years (arbitrary number) and we associate it as a piece of who we are. However an argument could be made that this is an extension of the association with something else point.
These examples imply three ways to care for this vase. Its immediate appearance, its association towards something else, or its practical purpose.
Now lets try to extend our consideration towards a human. We could still have the same reasons to care for a person as we did the vase, however we must add some new types of caring. To determine what possible types of caring are added to the person, lets first consider what's different about the person from the vase. Well first the most obvious, that the person is alive. Another is that with a person we must accept this idea of personal identity in some sense. Another still would be that now we are considering the thing being cared of resembles the thing caring for.
From these points we can see that we can care for a person for the basic fact of being a life, we can care for something based on who they are as a person and even what they have done in the past (however a point could be made that what they have done in the past is what makes them who they are as a person), and we could also care for the person for being like us. However even these points seem to sound like the general points with the vase. Caring about a person for who they are is like caring for something for what it is of itself at that moment, caring for a person for things in the past is like caring by association, and even caring for being like us is a type of association. A point could also made that caring can also result from certain social dynamics in several unique ways, however I would say these are still like the caring for what it is like in of itself and caring for what it is associated with.

So it seems to me that the main ways of caring for something are:
Caring for what it is
Caring for what it represents/is associated with
Caring for its practical purpose

As for the question of do you have to care about every part of something, that seems to me to be unnecessary because things have many different parts. For example you could care about the vase because it was your great grandmothers, but you could still think the thing is as ugly as could be. At this point though we should differentiate the way we care about something. With the vase we would say that "we care about the vase because it was my great grandmothers". You could also care about something in several respects and these respects can be different from someone else's. For example in the case of you caring for the vase because it was your grandmothers, a friend who didn't know it was your grandmothers vase and thought that the drawing was actually good might care for the vase because of they thought it was beautiful, and maybe also because of its ability to extend the life of flowers indoors (lets assume you have allergies so you also did not care for it for its ability to hold flowers).
By this logic, care is highly situational and subjective. Now we can talk about the different ways we care about the vase to say we create a set representing the different ways we care about something. In the case of your movie, there are a set of ways your friend and you both cared for the movie (assuming you liked the movie), but its also true that each of your sets were different. In your case your set included that specific point you pointed out. As for a discussion of who cared more or less, well that's another discussion entirely.

Well that's my two cents. Hopefully that was helpful

 

[flower]

I think it's about empathy. You can feel yourself in the other person's position.

 

[Flavus Aquila]

I must say I liked this definition. I definitely agree. If I may though, I would like to expand on this definition.
In a general sense, it seems to me that the definition to care about something is to have an interest in some respect related to the object of consideration. However we should differentiate the type of caring we are talking about here. Do we want to focus our discussion on the type of positive interest we would use the term care in to say "I care about my friend" or, "I care about my piece of pizza", or do we want to use the general sense of interest for then we must include the kind of caring that is also negative. An example of this might be when a person "cares" what a bully says for it is true that the bullied person does care as it does bother him (specific to the case of one who is annoyed which is certainly common).
I will go ahead and make a distinction to say that we are talking about care in the sense of positive interest in something. Now that we have the definition of care, we can discuss its application or to say "care for" something. It would seem to be that there are many respects in which a person can care for a single object (currently restricting to inanimate object for simplicity). Lets take the example of a vase. We could care for the vase because of its immediate appearance (drawing on its side or its specific shape). We could also care about the vase for association, for example it could have been your great grandmothers vase. We could care about the vase for the purpose for which it serves in the sense of extending the life of flowers that have been cut and brought inside and therefore brightening our room. We could perhaps say we care about it by association with our self if say we have owned the vase for 30 years (arbitrary number) and we associate it as a piece of who we are. However an argument could be made that this is an extension of the association with something else point.
These examples imply three ways to care for this vase. Its immediate appearance, its association towards something else, or its practical purpose.
Now lets try to extend our consideration towards a human. We could still have the same reasons to care for a person as we did the vase, however we must add some new types of caring. To determine what possible types of caring are added to the person, lets first consider what's different about the person from the vase. Well first the most obvious, that the person is alive. Another is that with a person we must accept this idea of personal identity in some sense. Another still would be that now we are considering the thing being cared of resembles the thing caring for.
From these points we can see that we can care for a person for the basic fact of being a life, we can care for something based on who they are as a person and even what they have done in the past (however a point could be made that what they have done in the past is what makes them who they are as a person), and we could also care for the person for being like us. However even these points seem to sound like the general points with the vase. Caring about a person for who they are is like caring for something for what it is of itself at that moment, caring for a person for things in the past is like caring by association, and even caring for being like us is a type of association. A point could also made that caring can also result from certain social dynamics in several unique ways, however I would say these are still like the caring for what it is like in of itself and caring for what it is associated with.

So it seems to me that the main ways of caring for something are:
Caring for what it is
Caring for what it represents/is associated with
Caring for its practical purpose

As for the question of do you have to care about every part of something, that seems to me to be unnecessary because things have many different parts. For example you could care about the vase because it was your great grandmothers, but you could still think the thing is as ugly as could be. At this point though we should differentiate the way we care about something. With the vase we would say that "we care about the vase because it was my great grandmothers". You could also care about something in several respects and these respects can be different from someone else's. For example in the case of you caring for the vase because it was your grandmothers, a friend who didn't know it was your grandmothers vase and thought that the drawing was actually good might care for the vase because of they thought it was beautiful, and maybe also because of its ability to extend the life of flowers indoors (lets assume you have allergies so you also did not care for it for its ability to hold flowers).
By this logic, care is highly situational and subjective. Now we can talk about the different ways we care about the vase to say we create a set representing the different ways we care about something. In the case of your movie, there are a set of ways your friend and you both cared for the movie (assuming you liked the movie), but its also true that each of your sets were different. In your case your set included that specific point you pointed out. As for a discussion of who cared more or less, well that's another discussion entirely.

Well that's my two cents. Hopefully that was helpful

I think caring has to be differentiated from loving.

Caring seems to be more about knowing something - including its connection/association with other things/persons. Loving is more about our intention, elicited by feelings, or otherwise towards/about an object/person.

In respect of positive and negative caring, I think it is true that some of us especially notice what we find unpleasant, other of us especially notice what is pleasing to us. This gives rise to two types of sayings: keep your friends close, your enemies even closer (familiarity); and stop and smell the roses (notice the pleasant). In either case, special care, or attention is paid to what is seen as either a threat, or a possibility.

When we say that we don't care for something, it is an expression of wish, in respect of our knowledge: "I don't care for rude people", is saying I wish I didn't know any rude people. This is not contradictory to paying close attention to rude people, as wishing people were not rude is precisely about being interested in people enough (or caring about people enough) to notice whether they are polite, or rude.

 

[dogman6126]

I think caring has to be differentiated from loving.

Caring seems to be more about knowing something - including its connection/association with other things/persons. Loving is more about our intention, elicited by feelings, or otherwise towards/about an object/person.

In respect of positive and negative caring, I think it is true that some of us especially notice what we find unpleasant, other of us especially notice what is pleasing to us. This gives rise to two types of sayings: keep your friends close, your enemies even closer (familiarity); and stop and smell the roses (notice the pleasant). In either case, special care, or attention is paid to what is seen as either a threat, or a possibility.

When we say that we don't care for something, it is an expression of wish, in respect of our knowledge: "I don't care for rude people", is saying I wish I didn't know any rude people. This is not contradictory to paying close attention to rude people, as wishing people were not rude is precisely about being interested in people enough (or caring about people enough) to notice whether they are polite, or rude.

Yeah I would agree with you. I supposed you could include the negative caring of something or someone. However (on a slightly different note) I feel we should also leave room for those things which are not cared about at all and these then would be things that we find irrelevant or unnecessary. On this note though I would most defiantly stray away from some Platonic sense of there is a constant of what should be cared about or should not be cared about. I hate it when people try to do that, we can't use current philosophical methodology in my opinion to describe human motivations. I have yet to hear any good philosophy that encompasses the emotional side in connection with the logical further than some weighing of arithmetic. I do not think that to be sufficient. Topics like these are certainly difficult

Your note of noticing that which is more positive and more negative sides. I wonder what causes this. For example you could have small talk with someone at lunch, and lets say they have the bad habit of talking with their mouth full, you could find them very annoying no matter what it was they were saying even if it was pleasant conversation. That one seemingly insignificant fact outweighed the multitude of pleasant conversation. I'm not entirely sure how to explain this in philosophy, maybe here we should turn to psychology. Perhaps the fact that the annoyingness of the talking with a full mouth pervaded the entirety of the pleasant conversation and therefore tainted it as a whole? This would of course depend on how annoying the listener finds a person who talks with their mouth full. Well that works as an explanation of this singular case, but I can't seem to form a more generalized explanation. Maybe suffice it to say that unique to each person is a set of what makes them annoyed or happy, and the way in which this is applied will affect this level of caring we have towards the object of consideration? This is so generalized it seems obvious. How could this not be true, lol.

Although I just now thought our language can have a different meaning when we say care about or care for. To care about could simply mean this interest we are talking about. To care for could imply a "budding" emotional connection. Would that seem reasonable?