"Anonymous fame" is an interesting idea. Authors who use pseudonyms, their works are well known, but if they strolled around town, they wouldn't be recognized. Online gaming is an easier example. Having people you don't know contact you or think they know you because of your position within the community, but when you leave the community... you lose that fame.
I think you dismiss knowledge-of way too quickly, or else mean something different from it than I usually do. If someone asked me if I know Kevin Bacon, I might say " I don't KNOW him, but I know OF him", meaning I am aware of his existence, I know that "Kevin Bacon is a thing" as people say, even if I may not know much ABOUT Kevin Bacon and haven't met him personally. That seems precisely what fame is about; many people know of famous things, they've heard of them, they're aware of their existence, or at least their nominal existence; fictional characters can still be famous, inasmuch as the untrue accounts of those characters are widely known-of, which solves the problem with Jesus as much as it solves the problem with, say, Darth Vader. Darth Vader is famous, many people know of him, in that they've heard of him and are aware that he "exists", as a fictional character ("...in those Star Trek movies or whatever I think?"), even if they know almost nothing about (the stories about) him.
Pfhorrest One problem though might be that there are famous people who you might not actually actually know with much surety to exist, like King Arthur. I doesn't seem like King Arthur's fame is conditional on whether or not he actually existed.
Actually this makes me think of a very simple clear-cut definition of fame: a thing is famous if its name signifies something to many people. The opposite of fame is when someone casually refers to someone or something by name and other people ask "who?" or "what is that?" because they don't have any referent for that name in mind. And that in turn highlights the "famous for being famous" phenomenon surrounding people like Kim Kardashian. I have almost no referent for that name in my head, other than as a name I have heard a lot. It's a name that I am familiar with as a name, but not as the name OF anything in particular. And apparently that's true of many people, which is how she ended up famous "for being famous".
Jonah that's exactly that I was talking about with Darth Vader etc. Wholly fictional characters widely known to be fictional can still be famous, because you've heard of them. "King Arthur" brings to mind some kind of referent, whether you think it's a real one or a fictional one, but you've heard of "King Arthur" either way.
Ahh it looks like I didn't see all of your comment at first--I'm on mobile so I probably just didn't notice the read more symbol--but yeah that might work well. Although characterizing "knowing about" famous figures as being aware that people have expectations, beliefs, stories about them (which I take to be how nominally knowing about a figure is supposed to work) seems like it might be equivalent to just knowing that a figure is famous. And if being famous is to be known for being famous, then we've ran into some circularity. But please let me know if I've misunderstood your points or missed something!!!
my favorite part in Infinite Jest talks about fame, how the reason we want to be famous because we look at famous folks and envy them and assume that there is some reciprocal feeling on the receiving side of envy, that as much as envy can be a fairly unpleasant feeling, the feeling of being envied must be nice in equal and opposite measure. this is what Wallace thinks is sort of the ultimate lie of fame
I've always wanted to do a lot of creative things to be a modern day Renaissance man from Painting to Stand up, from making music to being a writer-director. *I've seemingly always had these ambitions* but never wanted the expectations, the Fame. I've never wanted to be a big fish in a small pond, I can see myself moving further from home, getting more industry friends but I want my work to speak for itself. I'd rather not be a name on a billboard because people have expectations & I don't think the expectations and reality could ever meet because it's like trying to know an actor judging by the Roles they play
In your point about recognition, you focus on being able to visually recognize. I see your point, but I feel like it leaves out all other avenues of recognition. I would not know Orson Welles by face, but I would definitely recognize him when I hear his voice. I would say that he is famous. Alternatively, there are people who are famous for whom I would hold no expectation, while their name I would still recognize. Within that segment, you list names of people with fame. I have to admit that I doubt I would recognize any of them on the street, and for at least a few, I do not know what expectations I would have for them. but I would say that I still recognize their names. Or maybe, does this imply different criteria for acquiring fame and for keeping it?
What about famous images, famous songs, famous ideas? We don't expect a painting to do anything rather then being a painting, how does it get famous then?
Vinicius Morais we might expect them to be better than they are. I remember this episode of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, where they saw the grand canyon and the expectation is, that it's supposed to be this big spiritual experience and erm, it's not.
@@celinak5062 I believe you're misremembering that episode. They never even make it to the canyon. Charlie bails on the idea and asks a hitchhiker to deliver the remaining group to the canyon, only for the hitchhiker to deposit them back at the bar and steal the car left in his charge. It is fair to say that expectations are not lived up to in that episode, though.
Maybe we could think of "becoming famous" as a process by which a "icon" or "character" is created in the minds of a group, based on the actions and appearance of a real person. This widespread cognition can have the traits of the real person but isn't bound by the truth of that person it's based on. I think this model gives us enough flexibility to cover the way we talk about fame.
5:50 now, the thing is I do recognise the _name_ and based on how attached fans can be to a pseudonym, there is certain things we expect to recognise with famous stuff, like for example a name in and of itself. Or a drawing style? idk where I was going with this. Isn't it enough that the name is famous.
Olly, I am a huge fan of your videos! I was wondering, is there any philosophy on our dreams? Perhaps even further, the interpretation of them? If so, I was hoping you could do a video or two about it! Thanks and keep up the great work!
the definition of the word fame as expectation makes it applicable to most contexts in which it ends up being used. But it does not justify the popular connotation of the word fame as something desirable. And to justify that, I believe appreciative recognition is a fair enough definition of the word fame.
I like your idea of expectation. It also explains infamy, or the opposite (in some sense) of fame. i.e., Hitler was famous, and infamous, because he acted in a much different sense than we expect a leader to act. Going further on that path, though, is someone/thing famous because of expectations, or are there expectations because of the fame?
My interpretation of fame actually stems from one of your video series way back about names. I would consider George Orwell to be famous, but not Eric Blair. Additionally I would consider "Santa Claus" to be famous despite not being a real person. I consider "fame" to be the creation of a cultural identity that is separate from one's own personal identity, and the extent of that fame is how well that cultural identity is recognised.
Father Chirstmas is the universal spirit of giving with many different counterparts from different countries like the Christkind, Grandfather Frost Zwarte Peter.
Jacques Ellul, I believe, wrote that celebrity is the opposite of what this society usually creates. That is, automatons, or the un-individuated person. So fame is when a person stands out from the crowd and doesn't follow technique, rather be a faceless cog in the machine. (he was a bit taken with sociology, so this is like the opposite of the Nietzschean way of thinking, for example. the celebrity is still just a piece in technological society)
Very interesting video! It raises an also interesting equivalence. Whenever you substitute truth for plausibility, 'knowledge that' becomes fame. If you have a justified plausible belief about something, you're actually giving this something a specific fame. Because knowledge becomes expectation when truth is replaced with plausibility.
Will Mistretta I think you were ' first' if you care for such things. This rhyme certainly doesn't; _first's the worst, second's the same, last's the best of all the game._
Expectations strike me as pretty essentially in the present/future which would raise problems with historical figures. I can't have any expectations for Queen Victoria, because she doesn't do anything anymore, but I think she'd still count as famous. Beliefs might work, as they're like knowledge but without the requirement of being true. And expectations tend to stem from beliefs, you expect someone to behave a way because of what kind of person you believe them to be.
If someone's name isn't already on this idea i believe you should publish it. This was very well thought out and discussed much like all topics you take the time to do. However you did come to a very interesting conclusion that makes alot of sense.
On the 'expectations' point. (7:45 - 8:12) A nice example: The MSc degree of Rowan Atkinson was something i knew about, just not which one it was. I expected it was Electrical Engineering, based solely on the fact it showed up in your list of examples (before the reveal, that was 'a true example')
Instead of linking fame to a particular person, I was wondering if events may be thought of in the terms Oliver described. Can you call an event famous? I'd assume so. If you were to asked to name three famous/infamous assassinations, elections, genocides or expeditions, I'm fairly confident many could provide responses off the cuff. Given the amount of popular command most folks have over big moments in history, what kind of knowledge might a person have about any particular event? From the example Oliver gave regarding knowledge "of", I figure unless one was at a particular event when it occurred, you would not have primary knowledge "of" the event. Knowledge "how" doesn't seem to make sense in for events either, so knowledge "that" would again be the only applicable type. Now we can ask how fame concerning events compares to fame concerning individuals. I think it's fairly obvious a famous event can also be negative or positive (Katrina vs the moon landing). But does the expectation theory hold true when applied to events? People don't seen to possess expectations of famous events like they do famous people. Any help on exploring this distinction would be welcome.
Two examples from literature come to mind: Virgil's allegory of Fama ("Rumor"), and Tennyson's "Ulysses," especially the line "I am become a name." Perhaps your concept of expectations could be in the place between an assumed Knowledge-of (in the way people can be intimately aware of a well-known's public face, i.e., name) and the reality or truth of their identity and existence. These are literally pub thoughts that I'd want to explore more.
To expound on "assumed Knowledge-of," I am reminded of how people believe God personally loves them and that Jesus is a good friend of theirs (from experience being American), even though, objectively, they do not know Jesus the person/entity. This is perhaps the most extreme example, but if we look at how people feel about their relationship with celebrities (or famous things), there can be an intimacy that echoes actual relationships (and these can include those of hatred, as it ties in with infamy), even though, to an outside observer at least, there is no actual "Knowledge-of" situation. One can hear people coo "oh, have you heard Mr. Well-known and Ms. Up-to-date are dating!?" or "My Joe Bigshot would never do that," as though these were friends or neighbors. I think it is interesting Ulysses says "I am become a name" and not "I have attained" or "I have earned" or simply "I have" a name. There is a way our actual identities or selves can be subsumed by a name, and Lord Tennyson frequently undercuts the common association of Ulysses/Odysseus with the Homeric man trying to get home to his wife, son, and Ithaca by making him snobbish/elitist towards his people ("who hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me"), dismissive of his son ("He works his work, I mine."), and may only care about his men to the extent they have helped enhance his name (" All times I have enjoy'd/Greatly, have suffer'd greatly, both with those/That loved me, and alone"). There is also Antony and Cleopatra, in which Cleopatra is both herself and someone playing the role of Cleopatra on the world stage. She has great command of both, but we are also privy to people's ideas of her, reminiscent of how Fama or Rumor works. And good heavens, how about the second part of Don Quixote? Too much there to get into here. In the end, these literary analyses still harken back to expectations. However, I wonder to what extent possession comes into play. Who possesses the name, who possesses the identity?
Somebody once said, "A celebrity is a person who is well-known for his well-knownness." I think it was Mark Twain or George Bernard Shaw, but I'm not sure.
I dressage, i think the best way of explaining fame is way that can be set in the context of both people, things, ideas etc. Your expectations work great for people, but too me it seams a bit hacky, and also hard to explain fame of things other than people. What i think is a better explanation is simply "that many people have the knowledge-that something exists". This can be applied to things and ideas too, like for example an idea or ideology, like communism, being famous.
i think it's more reputation among many people. "his reputation precedes him." when you think of someone who is famous you think of all the other people who also know of them. what people know can be made up but whatever they know or think they know, they tag that to the name. so whenever a situation arises in which a person is stimulated to call up the name of a person who they also think/know is tagged by many others, that person will be noted as famous. name recognition. brand recognition.
Essentially, if I understand you correctly, what you are saying is that fame means being the subject of a story or stories that people have knowledge of. That way you get around the problem of actually having to know a person intimately, as stories can be either factual or fictional. So people can be famous/infamous for something they never did, e.g. Marie Antoinette and her supposed suggestion of having the people eat cake. Or did you mean something else with expectations? Anyway, I thought expectation to be an odd way of phrasing it, because it seems to be a little strange to have expectations of the dead, just from the use of language.
For a second I thought you said that Serena Williams is Banksy was the true fact. I was Super pumped for a second. Side note, when you mentioned recognition as equal to fame, why not some combination of face recognition, recognition of work (like an artist, etc...), name recognition, and so on and so forth? This combination seems like a better conception of recognition and also seems closer to the mark for a definition of fame.
I think in your dismissal of 'knowledge-of' is rested on a faulty assumption that the 'who' or the 'what' that the knowledge is of is some 'authentic' person that is only knowable, somehow immediately and unmediated by the concepts we have of them, in direct personal experience. Who is to say that this elusive in-itself is or should be identical to the idea that we as a culture have constructed for them, or in most cases, by Hollywood or media agencies. We 'know-of' this idea of them, the shared concepts *and* expectations, that is communicable across entire communities through a simple image-concept. Knowledge of one does not necessarily entail the other, and so we become surprised when we learn their connection with the other.
About people nowadays having more limited fields for being knowledgeable, I think this is because now we have much more to know in each field than a Greek philosopher had in all fields combined.
I somehow don't get surprised (even slightly) when I found out that some famous people do/did things very different from what they are famous for. Yeah, it's a fun fact, but not really surprising to me .
Fame is just the fact that alot of people know something, the more they know about it, the more famous it is. Of course it happens in a context though, a "famous" philosopher like Heidegger might be known by name and ideas among philosophy nerds, but not by the general public.
hmm i think this could be delved into way more. maybe a 2 part series? :) for example, how does one gain those expectations in order to become famous? who or what deems a person worthwhile enough to share with the masses in order to procure expectations for this thing that is about to become famous? i guess im just trying to say that nothing is famous from the moment they start existing. so im interested in the transition and formation of these expectations.... of a few individuals and later on to the masses..... also, we have expectation for the sun to rise again tomorrow. does that make the sun famous?
I think becoming famous involves becoming a symbol. Whether it's your face or simply your name, this is what people "recognize" and therefore think they have "knowledge" about you, in other words, the type of symbol, the context in which it became one and the context it which people perceive that symbol and adquire expectations about it, is the process of becoming famous. This also applies to things that become famous.
I like this video and I especially like the comment that "fame" is relative to socioeconomic standards. Although I don't think your definition of "fame" is entirely sound because having expectations of doesn't necessarily make someone "famous," however credibility (i.e. having expectations of) I agree is a building block of "fame." anecdotally i used to go to a starbucks where I joked I was "famous" because all of the workers knew me (and even had expectations of me) but i wasn't "famous" in anyway that popstars are "famous."
but in most rural areas you, whoever you are, are expected to say hello and almost everybody expects you to do that so aren't we all famous by that definition? I don't intend to say or describe a better one I only wanted to point that out
The "recognition" definition works well if you're not limiting it to visual recognition. With the examples provided, you would indeed recognize their names or some fact about them, just not their faces
My personal theory regarding fame- The Jerry Springer effect, people will trade anything to be famous, including money, time, self respect even friends or family. I imagine there is a biological imperative that explains the desire for people to strive for notoriety. The more people know about you the more/ better mates that will be available. Even being famous for something awful somehow increases the chances of meeting a mate.
Why does recognition have to pertain to how people look? You can also recognise their voice, name or something they did/is attributed to them. If I say "the guy with the tongue and the math" a lot of people will probably recognise who I'm talking about even with that very minimalist (and kinda bad lol) desciption.
I think fame is equivalent to how many other sentient atomic structures interpret your existence. More recognition of your existence, and thought towards it = more fame. No matter the medium of transference.
You may find this interesting. The answer it provides to your first question, to my delight, is Aristotle. pantheon.media.mit.edu/rankings/people/all/all/-4000/2010/H15
Really cool, but I would say religious figures are probably at a bit of a handicap there as it's not wikipedia where people go most often to read about them and it's not the arts and sciences where any specific religious figure had their largest impact :p
Fame in the modern world is tautological, or as Daniel Boorstin wrote, "A celebrity is someone who is well-known for being well-known." The Kardashians, for example, trade fame for money, not vice versa.
Knowledge-that is the first step, expectations are formed from the gaps in the knowledge-that. I know that you exist, I know that you make content I enjoy, but I have expectations based on that and other things I can’t be certain are true. But that’s to an extent always true I can be sure beyond reasonable doubt that a lot of things are true but probably the majority of things I think I know are things that I expect to be true.
A created archetype or character in an "continuing historical narrative" maybe? I see famous people as the role that they are acting of. Maybe this creates expectation from those who know of their fame, or role they play(ed) in society.
It seems that using expectations as basis for fame would rule out "famous" dead people. If "expectation" is some belief about the future, there's nothing (reasonable) to expect from Henry Ford or Friedrich Nietzsche but for their corpse to rot someplace in the future (it would be absurd for using "rotting" as an expectation for fame, cause this would mean that every people who ever lived are "famous" as they are expected to rot). Well, there are different ways for the body to be preserved or decompose, but the point about expectations not for "famous" dead people still stands.
I don't think it's as much having expectations as having an idea of a person-it's not that we expect them to be something, we think we know they are something, made out of facts and assumptions. So fame would be a large amount of people having an idea of you. (it might not be the exact same idea, but it would have to have some common ground)
I didn't read thru all the comments (I'm working my way through your video history) so someone else might have mentioned the line from Krull, where Torquil describes fame. Not philosophical, perhaps, but poetic. "Fame? Nah. It's an empty purse. Count it? Go broke. Eat it? Go hungry. Seek it, and go mad."
Why does knowledge necessarily have to be true? Does knowledge necessarily have to entail some relationship with the outside world, or could it be simply a statement about the mind of the knower?
I can't help but thinking that every time philosophy attempts to define a loaded term like "fame" it tries to find a common feature among various things that are described by that work (in this case, fame). But I don't see why it isn't possible all of those "things" don't actually share a common feature and that our use of language in describing those things under the same word isn't actually hinting at the existence of a common feature.
I think the reason why you don't see a lot of people who are extraordinarily good at more than one thing is that society tends to try to force us to go down only one path and, those of us who have skill at multiple things, either have to choose one of them or, like me, get lost adrift in interests that pull us in multiple directions but get us nowhere. I also think that prejudice plays a bigger role in the lives of people who are good at more than one thing. White males are more likely to be able to explore all of their interests, whereas women are more like to be considered flighty or indecisive if we find that we are good at more than one thing. For me, the worst part is that I just can't decide between my talents and I also have some disabilities that limit how much I actually can do. Society hasn't helped at all, either, because they want a person to promote themselves to an annoying degree in order to get anywhere in the world. Of all the things I'm good at, I'm terrible at self-promotion.
There is also the phenomenon of the cult of personality that has come to symbolise the postmodern era. Walter Benjamin talks about how the cult of the movie star artificially creates a "phony spell of personality" through the movie industry in order to compensate for the "shrivelling of the aura" in an age of mechanical reproduction.
If you were to expect someone to do a certain thing, wouldn't you need a certain level of knowledge to do so? If so, wouldn't this mean that knowledge-of at least plays a part in fame. You can't expect me to do something because you don't know me. Furthermore, my teachers would be somewhat expectant of me to get certain grades, but does that mean I'm famous. I don't think you touch on who should be expectant in order to be famous. Is it societal expectation or is fame relative to the individual?
I would think the expectations argument would have similar ways of judging to the knowledge arguments in that it would depend largely on the number of people who have expectations, but wouldn't necessarily be proportional to the knowledge arguments in taking into account the size of the expectations and the surety that people have in them compared to the amount of knowledge that those things are based on. Expectations would certainly require some amount of "knowledge-that" about a person, but he's not claiming that knowledge is unnecessary, only that it's not the best metric. In terms of who it's relative to I'd say it's definitely relative to whatever group you're looking for it in. Richard Ayoade is definitely more famous in the UK than in North America, Prince Charles is by far more famous than Prime Minister Trudeau globally, and if you're only looking at Calgary's relatively tiny rave scene then DJs Double D and Eradik are way more famous than at least half of the bands on the Billboard Top 100.
Update: I've gone into my adsense settings and tried to block ads from PagerU, it should take about 24 hours to come into effect. Let me know if any more pop up after that - if possible, getting the ad URL would help me do that. Here's how to get it: support.google.com/adsense/answer/3382225?hl=en-GB&ref_topic=23390
Isn't expectations upon people reducible to recognition of their roles? I'm not expecting Che to always plan for proletarian internationalism or Earhart to always be flying, but I recognize strong aviatrixes and revolutionaries and the people are interchangeable.
A really interesting theory. It'd explain the reason the flash in the pan famous, like Ken Bone, is requested to appear in that same sweater - why he fell out so quickly when the wholesome, ironic narrative structured for him clashed with the revelation of his Reddit browsing history - perhaps he didn't lose fame as much as his fans turned to infamy and he became unwilling to meet those expectations. So, if this theory is true, then the person who controls the narrative controls the type of fame. How accountable, then, are the media and society for the breakdowns famous people experience? Was Brittney Spears more victim than deviant? It's an especially important question for Americans who elected a president more interested in fame/ratings than in leadership. Do our expectations reflect our ethics - which behaviours we passively encourage? Great video! Thank you!
I don't know if the conflation of fame and infamy is entirely justified. I think I wouldn't actually say that, for instance, Stalin is famous, but rather that he is infamous, which at least in some sense appears to be completely the opposite. I think that in that sense the difference between being famous and being *well-known* is exactly that to be famous, you must be admired. This might turn out to be a minor linguistic quibble (just replace 'famous' with 'well-known'), but maybe some of the issues with other accounts stem from the conflation of being widely known and being famous.
Big fan here, but I do have to offer one criticism as a Spanish teacher. Che Guevara's name is pronounced as "they" but with a /ch/. (And if you're being super particular shorten the "y" at the end.) Love ya brotha. Keep up the hard work--it does not go unappreciated.
I have one query. Is it abuse if the person being abused don't consider it to be abused. Like people say wearing hijab is oppressive towards woman but if woman say she is fine with it, should consider her a free willing person or under influence of culture norms to realize that it is abuse.
can we say famous is having your any kind of image in people's mind that leads them to consider you as being with quality. that way imaginary characters are also famous.
Couldn't by recognition we mean familarity of the name? People may have heard the name of famous people but have no idea what they did. Also if we have no idea of who they are except for their name could we really have specific expectations of them?
i feel like the expectation thing can fit into other forms of.. fame isn't the right word, but, how do i say it. like.. if someone works in a physics lab or is a teacher, is also a sex worker, they can often really worry about being seen and figured out, because that's a combination people don't expect, and will try to punish, precisely because they believe that these expectations must be related, so obviously that person must be bringing sex into the situation.
A problem that crops up with using expectation to define fame: is Lady Di famous, or Lemmy Kilmister, or Steve Jobs, MLK, or Avicii? We can't exactly have expectations from the dead. They don't do anything from beyond the grave. These people _were_ famous, sure, but did that fame die the day they did?
I think another good definition of fame is that if someone occupys the public mind. So that communist guy occupies the mind of the public because his photo is so popular. and Amelia Airhart occupies the public mind because of her occomplishemnts in aviation. What I'm saying is that to be famous the person has to occupy the minds of many people in some way. So I think it doesn't matter what the expectations of famous people are. what matters is that the famous person has found some way to occupy the minds of the masses.
What about influence? The capacity of a person to change the perception of others? I mean I don't really expect anything of Socrates, he's not writing anything (assuming he did) anymore, he isn't going to and there's really nothing that is going to change what he wrote, so what can you expect from that person? With influence however, Even if a person is deceased, you can still influence other people's point of view, ideas and still be discussed about even when we don't expect anything from them anymore.
I was wondering what about people who become posthumously famous? They never had anyone have expectations of them. Could it then be that fame is more of a social image based off a selfhood that bears resemblance to its orginator but has a life of its own? In fact enough to maybe severly detach the identity of the individual (say the possible actual individual that Jesus Christ is based on) from the public image of the individual over time. Maybe its better to say fame is a attribution and (usually positive) misattribution of characteristics many of which lead to expectations because we assume that that person has the ability and resources to see those expectations through(whether they do or not doesnt necessarily hurt their fame status)??
Your reasoning for the claims in this video seemed... a little off, in a few places. First, you seem to define "knowledge-of" as familiarity, but why? Surely you can know of some thing's existence without further details - to know it exists is knowledge by itself, regardless of anything else. Unless I misunderstood your dismissal of knowledge-of, in which case I would be happy to have it further explained. Second, why is your criterion for recognition completely visual? That would suggest the core attribute of a person is his face. Aren't names, deeds, relations, opinions and others valid attributes as well? Can't you recognise someone as "the guy who did that thing"? And lastly, what expectations do you have of Jesus, Muhammad or fictional characters? Do you expect some further details to be discovered, or learned about by you? Also, I think it's a shame you talked about fame wholly in the context of people, without referring to famous works of art, sites, ideas, etc..
I think if you included the recognition of one's name as well as one's image, then recognition works well a criteria for fame.
I still hope that Serena Williams is Banksy.
"Anonymous fame" is an interesting idea. Authors who use pseudonyms, their works are well known, but if they strolled around town, they wouldn't be recognized. Online gaming is an easier example. Having people you don't know contact you or think they know you because of your position within the community, but when you leave the community... you lose that fame.
"I don't know how to Owen Wilson"
Simple just say WOW for every word of your life
Everyone knows that fame is defined by the existence a Wikipedia page about you. Der! ;P
Good point!
I think you dismiss knowledge-of way too quickly, or else mean something different from it than I usually do. If someone asked me if I know Kevin Bacon, I might say " I don't KNOW him, but I know OF him", meaning I am aware of his existence, I know that "Kevin Bacon is a thing" as people say, even if I may not know much ABOUT Kevin Bacon and haven't met him personally. That seems precisely what fame is about; many people know of famous things, they've heard of them, they're aware of their existence, or at least their nominal existence; fictional characters can still be famous, inasmuch as the untrue accounts of those characters are widely known-of, which solves the problem with Jesus as much as it solves the problem with, say, Darth Vader. Darth Vader is famous, many people know of him, in that they've heard of him and are aware that he "exists", as a fictional character ("...in those Star Trek movies or whatever I think?"), even if they know almost nothing about (the stories about) him.
Pfhorrest One problem though might be that there are famous people who you might not actually actually know with much surety to exist, like King Arthur. I doesn't seem like King Arthur's fame is conditional on whether or not he actually existed.
Actually this makes me think of a very simple clear-cut definition of fame: a thing is famous if its name signifies something to many people.
The opposite of fame is when someone casually refers to someone or something by name and other people ask "who?" or "what is that?" because they don't have any referent for that name in mind.
And that in turn highlights the "famous for being famous" phenomenon surrounding people like Kim Kardashian. I have almost no referent for that name in my head, other than as a name I have heard a lot. It's a name that I am familiar with as a name, but not as the name OF anything in particular. And apparently that's true of many people, which is how she ended up famous "for being famous".
Jonah that's exactly that I was talking about with Darth Vader etc. Wholly fictional characters widely known to be fictional can still be famous, because you've heard of them. "King Arthur" brings to mind some kind of referent, whether you think it's a real one or a fictional one, but you've heard of "King Arthur" either way.
Pfhorrest Or even if you know someone who knows someone who knows someone who knows someone who knows Kevin Bacon...
Ahh it looks like I didn't see all of your comment at first--I'm on mobile so I probably just didn't notice the read more symbol--but yeah that might work well. Although characterizing "knowing about" famous figures as being aware that people have expectations, beliefs, stories about them (which I take to be how nominally knowing about a figure is supposed to work) seems like it might be equivalent to just knowing that a figure is famous. And if being famous is to be known for being famous, then we've ran into some circularity.
But please let me know if I've misunderstood your points or missed something!!!
my favorite part in Infinite Jest talks about fame, how the reason we want to be famous because we look at famous folks and envy them and assume that there is some reciprocal feeling on the receiving side of envy, that as much as envy can be a fairly unpleasant feeling, the feeling of being envied must be nice in equal and opposite measure. this is what Wallace thinks is sort of the ultimate lie of fame
This comment section is basically a classroom discussion, I love it.
I've always wanted to do a lot of creative things to be a modern day Renaissance man from Painting to Stand up, from making music to being a writer-director. *I've seemingly always had these ambitions* but never wanted the expectations, the Fame. I've never wanted to be a big fish in a small pond, I can see myself moving further from home, getting more industry friends but I want my work to speak for itself. I'd rather not be a name on a billboard because people have expectations & I don't think the expectations and reality could ever meet because it's like trying to know an actor judging by the Roles they play
In your point about recognition, you focus on being able to visually recognize. I see your point, but I feel like it leaves out all other avenues of recognition.
I would not know Orson Welles by face, but I would definitely recognize him when I hear his voice. I would say that he is famous.
Alternatively, there are people who are famous for whom I would hold no expectation, while their name I would still recognize.
Within that segment, you list names of people with fame. I have to admit that I doubt I would recognize any of them on the street, and for at least a few, I do not know what expectations I would have for them. but I would say that I still recognize their names.
Or maybe, does this imply different criteria for acquiring fame and for keeping it?
What about famous images, famous songs, famous ideas? We don't expect a painting to do anything rather then being a painting, how does it get famous then?
One might say that we have expectations on how we are to perceive/experience the painting. Or, to say it colloquially: We expect it to be 'good'.
So the expectation in this case, is about the influence caused by the famous thing then? That actually answer it, thanks.
Vinicius Morais we might expect them to be better than they are.
I remember this episode of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, where they saw the grand canyon and the expectation is, that it's supposed to be this big spiritual experience and erm, it's not.
@@celinak5062 I believe you're misremembering that episode. They never even make it to the canyon. Charlie bails on the idea and asks a hitchhiker to deliver the remaining group to the canyon, only for the hitchhiker to deposit them back at the bar and steal the car left in his charge. It is fair to say that expectations are not lived up to in that episode, though.
Maybe we could think of "becoming famous" as a process by which a "icon" or "character" is created in the minds of a group, based on the actions and appearance of a real person. This widespread cognition can have the traits of the real person but isn't bound by the truth of that person it's based on. I think this model gives us enough flexibility to cover the way we talk about fame.
5:50 now, the thing is I do recognise the _name_ and based on how attached fans can be to a pseudonym, there is certain things we expect to recognise with famous stuff, like for example a name in and of itself.
Or a drawing style? idk where I was going with this. Isn't it enough that the name is famous.
Olly, I am a huge fan of your videos! I was wondering, is there any philosophy on our dreams? Perhaps even further, the interpretation of them? If so, I was hoping you could do a video or two about it! Thanks and keep up the great work!
the definition of the word fame as expectation makes it applicable to most contexts in which it ends up being used. But it does not justify the popular connotation of the word fame as something desirable. And to justify that, I believe appreciative recognition is a fair enough definition of the word fame.
The Compiler +
I've never considered the word "expectation" to be used yup define fame but it really works.
I know how to Owen Wilson! Borrow money from Wilson, and until its paid back you're owen' wilson😋
I like your idea of expectation. It also explains infamy, or the opposite (in some sense) of fame. i.e., Hitler was famous, and infamous, because he acted in a much different sense than we expect a leader to act.
Going further on that path, though, is someone/thing famous because of expectations, or are there expectations because of the fame?
what about Poe and Galileo and Van Goh all became famous after they died
And we have expectations about how their lives were, how their works were, etc.
sometimes people are not realised worthwile until their gone
My interpretation of fame actually stems from one of your video series way back about names. I would consider George Orwell to be famous, but not Eric Blair. Additionally I would consider "Santa Claus" to be famous despite not being a real person. I consider "fame" to be the creation of a cultural identity that is separate from one's own personal identity, and the extent of that fame is how well that cultural identity is recognised.
Father Chirstmas is the universal spirit of giving with many different counterparts from different countries like the Christkind, Grandfather Frost Zwarte Peter.
Hmm... That would make them different cultural identities with their own fame then.
it depends on the level of awareness
Jacques Ellul, I believe, wrote that celebrity is the opposite of what this society usually creates. That is, automatons, or the un-individuated person. So fame is when a person stands out from the crowd and doesn't follow technique, rather be a faceless cog in the machine. (he was a bit taken with sociology, so this is like the opposite of the Nietzschean way of thinking, for example. the celebrity is still just a piece in technological society)
Very interesting video!
It raises an also interesting equivalence. Whenever you substitute truth for plausibility, 'knowledge that' becomes fame.
If you have a justified plausible belief about something, you're actually giving this something a specific fame.
Because knowledge becomes expectation when truth is replaced with plausibility.
Lao Tzu and other Taoists also have a lot to say about the true sage not wishing to stand out.
Will Mistretta I think you were ' first' if you care for such things.
This rhyme certainly doesn't; _first's the worst, second's the same, last's the best of all the game._
Fantastic line reads on Schopenhauer and Boethius. You really capture the... contemptuousness? Of their positions.
Expectations strike me as pretty essentially in the present/future which would raise problems with historical figures. I can't have any expectations for Queen Victoria, because she doesn't do anything anymore, but I think she'd still count as famous.
Beliefs might work, as they're like knowledge but without the requirement of being true. And expectations tend to stem from beliefs, you expect someone to behave a way because of what kind of person you believe them to be.
Talking about Rowan Atkinson having an electrical engineering degree reminds me of how in real life Dolph Lundgren is a chemical engineer.
I have watched a LOT of your videos, this is the only one where it seems like you're providing your own philosophy rather than teaching others'.
Great vid! Currently writing my bachelor's thesis on Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments and this is very inspiring
If someone's name isn't already on this idea i believe you should publish it. This was very well thought out and discussed much like all topics you take the time to do. However you did come to a very interesting conclusion that makes alot of sense.
Awh thanks for the mention in this on, I've been thinking about this one a lot recently ^_^
On the 'expectations' point. (7:45 - 8:12)
A nice example:
The MSc degree of Rowan Atkinson was something i knew about, just not which one it was.
I expected it was Electrical Engineering, based solely on the fact it showed up in your list of examples (before the reveal, that was 'a true example')
Instead of linking fame to a particular person, I was wondering if events may be thought of in the terms Oliver described. Can you call an event famous? I'd assume so. If you were to asked to name three famous/infamous assassinations, elections, genocides or expeditions, I'm fairly confident many could provide responses off the cuff. Given the amount of popular command most folks have over big moments in history, what kind of knowledge might a person have about any particular event? From the example Oliver gave regarding knowledge "of", I figure unless one was at a particular event when it occurred, you would not have primary knowledge "of" the event. Knowledge "how" doesn't seem to make sense in for events either, so knowledge "that" would again be the only applicable type.
Now we can ask how fame concerning events compares to fame concerning individuals. I think it's fairly obvious a famous event can also be negative or positive (Katrina vs the moon landing). But does the expectation theory hold true when applied to events? People don't seen to possess expectations of famous events like they do famous people. Any help on exploring this distinction would be welcome.
Two examples from literature come to mind: Virgil's allegory of Fama ("Rumor"), and Tennyson's "Ulysses," especially the line "I am become a name."
Perhaps your concept of expectations could be in the place between an assumed Knowledge-of (in the way people can be intimately aware of a well-known's public face, i.e., name) and the reality or truth of their identity and existence. These are literally pub thoughts that I'd want to explore more.
To expound on "assumed Knowledge-of," I am reminded of how people believe God personally loves them and that Jesus is a good friend of theirs (from experience being American), even though, objectively, they do not know Jesus the person/entity. This is perhaps the most extreme example, but if we look at how people feel about their relationship with celebrities (or famous things), there can be an intimacy that echoes actual relationships (and these can include those of hatred, as it ties in with infamy), even though, to an outside observer at least, there is no actual "Knowledge-of" situation. One can hear people coo "oh, have you heard Mr. Well-known and Ms. Up-to-date are dating!?" or "My Joe Bigshot would never do that," as though these were friends or neighbors.
I think it is interesting Ulysses says "I am become a name" and not "I have attained" or "I have earned" or simply "I have" a name. There is a way our actual identities or selves can be subsumed by a name, and Lord Tennyson frequently undercuts the common association of Ulysses/Odysseus with the Homeric man trying to get home to his wife, son, and Ithaca by making him snobbish/elitist towards his people ("who hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me"), dismissive of his son ("He works his work, I mine."), and may only care about his men to the extent they have helped enhance his name (" All times I have enjoy'd/Greatly, have suffer'd greatly, both with those/That loved me, and alone").
There is also Antony and Cleopatra, in which Cleopatra is both herself and someone playing the role of Cleopatra on the world stage. She has great command of both, but we are also privy to people's ideas of her, reminiscent of how Fama or Rumor works.
And good heavens, how about the second part of Don Quixote? Too much there to get into here.
In the end, these literary analyses still harken back to expectations. However, I wonder to what extent possession comes into play. Who possesses the name, who possesses the identity?
Pretty good video, Olly :)
Would you consider making a series on Kripke's Naming and Necessity's core concepts?
Somebody once said, "A celebrity is a person who is well-known for his well-knownness." I think it was Mark Twain or George Bernard Shaw, but I'm not sure.
you could argue that Julius Caesar and that chap are not quite famous but their names are thats why you wouldn't recognize em on the street
I dressage, i think the best way of explaining fame is way that can be set in the context of both people, things, ideas etc. Your expectations work great for people, but too me it seams a bit hacky, and also hard to explain fame of things other than people. What i think is a better explanation is simply "that many people have the knowledge-that something exists". This can be applied to things and ideas too, like for example an idea or ideology, like communism, being famous.
i think it's more reputation among many people. "his reputation precedes him." when you think of someone who is famous you think of all the other people who also know of them. what people know can be made up but whatever they know or think they know, they tag that to the name.
so whenever a situation arises in which a person is stimulated to call up the name of a person who they also think/know is tagged by many others, that person will be noted as famous.
name recognition. brand recognition.
"Knowledge-That requires truth. You cannot know things that are false." Citation needed.
You should speak about the philosophy of love
Essentially, if I understand you correctly, what you are saying is that fame means being the subject of a story or stories that people have knowledge of. That way you get around the problem of actually having to know a person intimately, as stories can be either factual or fictional. So people can be famous/infamous for something they never did, e.g. Marie Antoinette and her supposed suggestion of having the people eat cake. Or did you mean something else with expectations? Anyway, I thought expectation to be an odd way of phrasing it, because it seems to be a little strange to have expectations of the dead, just from the use of language.
For a second I thought you said that Serena Williams is Banksy was the true fact. I was Super pumped for a second.
Side note, when you mentioned recognition as equal to fame, why not some combination of face recognition, recognition of work (like an artist, etc...), name recognition, and so on and so forth? This combination seems like a better conception of recognition and also seems closer to the mark for a definition of fame.
I think in your dismissal of 'knowledge-of' is rested on a faulty assumption that the 'who' or the 'what' that the knowledge is of is some 'authentic' person that is only knowable, somehow immediately and unmediated by the concepts we have of them, in direct personal experience. Who is to say that this elusive in-itself is or should be identical to the idea that we as a culture have constructed for them, or in most cases, by Hollywood or media agencies. We 'know-of' this idea of them, the shared concepts *and* expectations, that is communicable across entire communities through a simple image-concept. Knowledge of one does not necessarily entail the other, and so we become surprised when we learn their connection with the other.
About people nowadays having more limited fields for being knowledgeable, I think this is because now we have much more to know in each field than a Greek philosopher had in all fields combined.
I somehow don't get surprised (even slightly) when I found out that some famous people do/did things very different from what they are famous for. Yeah, it's a fun fact, but not really surprising to me .
Fame is just the fact that alot of people know something, the more they know about it, the more famous it is.
Of course it happens in a context though, a "famous" philosopher like Heidegger might be known by name and ideas among philosophy nerds, but not by the general public.
Thank you for this!... not a lot of people ask these types of questions... this one has been on my mind recently!
hmm i think this could be delved into way more. maybe a 2 part series? :)
for example, how does one gain those expectations in order to become famous? who or what deems a person worthwhile enough to share with the masses in order to procure expectations for this thing that is about to become famous?
i guess im just trying to say that nothing is famous from the moment they start existing. so im interested in the transition and formation of these expectations.... of a few individuals and later on to the masses.....
also, we have expectation for the sun to rise again tomorrow. does that make the sun famous?
Yes, I believe it does make the sun famous. Also, I am pretty sure that (almost) everyone recognizes (the existence of) the sun.
The height thing happens t a lot of youtubers, it has something to do with the way youtubers film themselves.
I think becoming famous involves becoming a symbol. Whether it's your face or simply your name, this is what people "recognize" and therefore think they have "knowledge" about you, in other words, the type of symbol, the context in which it became one and the context it which people perceive that symbol and adquire expectations about it, is the process of becoming famous. This also applies to things that become famous.
Imagine if you found out...that Brian May (the guitarist of Queen) is actually an astrophysicist.
I like this video and I especially like the comment that "fame" is relative to socioeconomic standards. Although I don't think your definition of "fame" is entirely sound because having expectations of doesn't necessarily make someone "famous," however credibility (i.e. having expectations of) I agree is a building block of "fame."
anecdotally i used to go to a starbucks where I joked I was "famous" because all of the workers knew me (and even had expectations of me) but i wasn't "famous" in anyway that popstars are "famous."
So good amazing, I like the expectation theory, but then, every one is famous then, because we all have expectations right
but in most rural areas you, whoever you are, are expected to say hello and almost everybody expects you to do that so aren't we all famous by that definition?
I don't intend to say or describe a better one I only wanted to point that out
The "recognition" definition works well if you're not limiting it to visual recognition. With the examples provided, you would indeed recognize their names or some fact about them, just not their faces
My personal theory regarding fame- The Jerry Springer effect, people will trade anything to be famous, including money, time, self respect even friends or family. I imagine there is a biological imperative that explains the desire for people to strive for notoriety. The more people know about you the more/ better mates that will be available. Even being famous for something awful somehow increases the chances of meeting a mate.
Why does recognition have to pertain to how people look? You can also recognise their voice, name or something they did/is attributed to them. If I say "the guy with the tongue and the math" a lot of people will probably recognise who I'm talking about even with that very minimalist (and kinda bad lol) desciption.
I think fame is equivalent to how many other sentient atomic structures interpret your existence. More recognition of your existence, and thought towards it = more fame.
No matter the medium of transference.
You may find this interesting. The answer it provides to your first question, to my delight, is Aristotle.
pantheon.media.mit.edu/rankings/people/all/all/-4000/2010/H15
Paul Kennedy +
Really cool, but I would say religious figures are probably at a bit of a handicap there as it's not wikipedia where people go most often to read about them and it's not the arts and sciences where any specific religious figure had their largest impact :p
Terrific video, Olly!
It's flexible enough theory though that it would include all work, a person having a certain fame from whatever busy-ness they are engaged in
“Say the line Bart”
Feels like that episode of the simpsons was onto something.
Fame in the modern world is tautological, or as Daniel Boorstin wrote, "A celebrity is someone who is well-known for being well-known." The Kardashians, for example, trade fame for money, not vice versa.
Awesome talk! Thanks heaps Olly !
Knowledge-that is the first step, expectations are formed from the gaps in the knowledge-that. I know that you exist, I know that you make content I enjoy, but I have expectations based on that and other things I can’t be certain are true. But that’s to an extent always true I can be sure beyond reasonable doubt that a lot of things are true but probably the majority of things I think I know are things that I expect to be true.
For one to know about Fame, one must study the meme that lies beyond...
A created archetype or character in an "continuing historical narrative" maybe? I see famous people as the role that they are acting of. Maybe this creates expectation from those who know of their fame, or role they play(ed) in society.
"Everyone is always like 'you're so much taller and broader than I expected'"
What expectations fo past things/people have?
It seems that using expectations as basis for fame would rule out "famous" dead people. If "expectation" is some belief about the future, there's nothing (reasonable) to expect from Henry Ford or Friedrich Nietzsche but for their corpse to rot someplace in the future (it would be absurd for using "rotting" as an expectation for fame, cause this would mean that every people who ever lived are "famous" as they are expected to rot). Well, there are different ways for the body to be preserved or decompose, but the point about expectations not for "famous" dead people still stands.
Wow, this was very interesting, Olly. Sharing this.
I don't think it's as much having expectations as having an idea of a person-it's not that we expect them to be something, we think we know they are something, made out of facts and assumptions. So fame would be a large amount of people having an idea of you. (it might not be the exact same idea, but it would have to have some common ground)
I didn't read thru all the comments (I'm working my way through your video history) so someone else might have mentioned the line from Krull, where Torquil describes fame. Not philosophical, perhaps, but poetic.
"Fame? Nah. It's an empty purse. Count it? Go broke. Eat it? Go hungry. Seek it, and go mad."
Why does knowledge necessarily have to be true? Does knowledge necessarily have to entail some relationship with the outside world, or could it be simply a statement about the mind of the knower?
I can't help but thinking that every time philosophy attempts to define a loaded term like "fame" it tries to find a common feature among various things that are described by that work (in this case, fame). But I don't see why it isn't possible all of those "things" don't actually share a common feature and that our use of language in describing those things under the same word isn't actually hinting at the existence of a common feature.
I think the reason why you don't see a lot of people who are extraordinarily good at more than one thing is that society tends to try to force us to go down only one path and, those of us who have skill at multiple things, either have to choose one of them or, like me, get lost adrift in interests that pull us in multiple directions but get us nowhere. I also think that prejudice plays a bigger role in the lives of people who are good at more than one thing. White males are more likely to be able to explore all of their interests, whereas women are more like to be considered flighty or indecisive if we find that we are good at more than one thing. For me, the worst part is that I just can't decide between my talents and I also have some disabilities that limit how much I actually can do. Society hasn't helped at all, either, because they want a person to promote themselves to an annoying degree in order to get anywhere in the world. Of all the things I'm good at, I'm terrible at self-promotion.
There is also the phenomenon of the cult of personality that has come to symbolise the postmodern era. Walter Benjamin talks about how the cult of the movie star artificially creates a "phony spell of personality" through the movie industry in order to compensate for the "shrivelling of the aura" in an age of mechanical reproduction.
If you were to expect someone to do a certain thing, wouldn't you need a certain level of knowledge to do so? If so, wouldn't this mean that knowledge-of at least plays a part in fame. You can't expect me to do something because you don't know me. Furthermore, my teachers would be somewhat expectant of me to get certain grades, but does that mean I'm famous. I don't think you touch on who should be expectant in order to be famous. Is it societal expectation or is fame relative to the individual?
I would think the expectations argument would have similar ways of judging to the knowledge arguments in that it would depend largely on the number of people who have expectations, but wouldn't necessarily be proportional to the knowledge arguments in taking into account the size of the expectations and the surety that people have in them compared to the amount of knowledge that those things are based on.
Expectations would certainly require some amount of "knowledge-that" about a person, but he's not claiming that knowledge is unnecessary, only that it's not the best metric.
In terms of who it's relative to I'd say it's definitely relative to whatever group you're looking for it in. Richard Ayoade is definitely more famous in the UK than in North America, Prince Charles is by far more famous than Prime Minister Trudeau globally, and if you're only looking at Calgary's relatively tiny rave scene then DJs Double D and Eradik are way more famous than at least half of the bands on the Billboard Top 100.
Hey Ollie, why do you have Prager U videos advertising on your channel?
I don't have any control over who advertises, sadly. I expect Prager U has paid TH-cam a lot of money to get access to my audience
Update: I've gone into my adsense settings and tried to block ads from PagerU, it should take about 24 hours to come into effect. Let me know if any more pop up after that - if possible, getting the ad URL would help me do that. Here's how to get it: support.google.com/adsense/answer/3382225?hl=en-GB&ref_topic=23390
Philosophy Tube okay I will!
Sorry for late reply and I have not seen any PU ads
Isn't expectations upon people reducible to recognition of their roles? I'm not expecting Che to always plan for proletarian internationalism or Earhart to always be flying, but I recognize strong aviatrixes and revolutionaries and the people are interchangeable.
Thank you for this video its perfect for grabbing ideas for my next video i was planning to make which i was going to talk about fame
A really interesting theory. It'd explain the reason the flash in the pan famous, like Ken Bone, is requested to appear in that same sweater - why he fell out so quickly when the wholesome, ironic narrative structured for him clashed with the revelation of his Reddit browsing history - perhaps he didn't lose fame as much as his fans turned to infamy and he became unwilling to meet those expectations. So, if this theory is true, then the person who controls the narrative controls the type of fame. How accountable, then, are the media and society for the breakdowns famous people experience? Was Brittney Spears more victim than deviant? It's an especially important question for Americans who elected a president more interested in fame/ratings than in leadership. Do our expectations reflect our ethics - which behaviours we passively encourage? Great video! Thank you!
I don't know if the conflation of fame and infamy is entirely justified. I think I wouldn't actually say that, for instance, Stalin is famous, but rather that he is infamous, which at least in some sense appears to be completely the opposite. I think that in that sense the difference between being famous and being *well-known* is exactly that to be famous, you must be admired. This might turn out to be a minor linguistic quibble (just replace 'famous' with 'well-known'), but maybe some of the issues with other accounts stem from the conflation of being widely known and being famous.
I wonder how the criteria of expectations works for the deceased??
Exactly the same way. You probably won't meet most famous people so the expectations are about what they would do/be (or would have done/been)
judging by how the catholic church treated relics of the corpse of jesus, exactly the same
@@TaylorjAdams same comment ;^)
Big fan here, but I do have to offer one criticism as a Spanish teacher. Che Guevara's name is pronounced as "they" but with a /ch/. (And if you're being super particular shorten the "y" at the end.) Love ya brotha. Keep up the hard work--it does not go unappreciated.
Any Chance for a video about accelerationism?:D
that made hella sence at the end
I have one query. Is it abuse if the person being abused don't consider it to be abused. Like people say wearing hijab is oppressive towards woman but if woman say she is fine with it, should consider her a free willing person or under influence of culture norms to realize that it is abuse.
can we say famous is having your any kind of image in people's mind that leads them to consider you as being with quality.
that way imaginary characters are also famous.
Couldn't by recognition we mean familarity of the name? People may have heard the name of famous people but have no idea what they did. Also if we have no idea of who they are except for their name could we really have specific expectations of them?
i feel like the expectation thing can fit into other forms of.. fame isn't the right word, but, how do i say it. like.. if someone works in a physics lab or is a teacher, is also a sex worker, they can often really worry about being seen and figured out, because that's a combination people don't expect, and will try to punish, precisely because they believe that these expectations must be related, so obviously that person must be bringing sex into the situation.
A problem that crops up with using expectation to define fame: is Lady Di famous, or Lemmy Kilmister, or Steve Jobs, MLK, or Avicii? We can't exactly have expectations from the dead. They don't do anything from beyond the grave. These people _were_ famous, sure, but did that fame die the day they did?
But what about the Spanish Inquisition? It's famous but no one expects it! ;)
Also, Donald Glover might be considered a modern day polymath. He's an actor, a comedian and a musician!
I'd put Elon Musk on the list, too.
I think another good definition of fame is that if someone occupys the public mind. So that communist guy occupies the mind of the public because his photo is so popular. and Amelia Airhart occupies the public mind because of her occomplishemnts in aviation. What I'm saying is that to be famous the person has to occupy the minds of many people in some way. So I think it doesn't matter what the expectations of famous people are. what matters is that the famous person has found some way to occupy the minds of the masses.
Do you know Emile cioran ? If yes..... what do you think of him ?
What about influence? The capacity of a person to change the perception of others? I mean I don't really expect anything of Socrates, he's not writing anything (assuming he did) anymore, he isn't going to and there's really nothing that is going to change what he wrote, so what can you expect from that person?
With influence however, Even if a person is deceased, you can still influence other people's point of view, ideas and still be discussed about even when we don't expect anything from them anymore.
Prince George was famous before he was born
Thy reputation precedes thee.
I was wondering what about people who become posthumously famous? They never had anyone have expectations of them. Could it then be that fame is more of a social image based off a selfhood that bears resemblance to its orginator but has a life of its own? In fact enough to maybe severly detach the identity of the individual (say the possible actual individual that Jesus Christ is based on) from the public image of the individual over time. Maybe its better to say fame is a attribution and (usually positive) misattribution of characteristics many of which lead to expectations because we assume that that person has the ability and resources to see those expectations through(whether they do or not doesnt necessarily hurt their fame status)??
A perfect example of this is actually Brian May being an Astrophysicist
Your reasoning for the claims in this video seemed... a little off, in a few places.
First, you seem to define "knowledge-of" as familiarity, but why? Surely you can know of some thing's existence without further details - to know it exists is knowledge by itself, regardless of anything else. Unless I misunderstood your dismissal of knowledge-of, in which case I would be happy to have it further explained.
Second, why is your criterion for recognition completely visual? That would suggest the core attribute of a person is his face. Aren't names, deeds, relations, opinions and others valid attributes as well? Can't you recognise someone as "the guy who did that thing"?
And lastly, what expectations do you have of Jesus, Muhammad or fictional characters? Do you expect some further details to be discovered, or learned about by you?
Also, I think it's a shame you talked about fame wholly in the context of people, without referring to famous works of art, sites, ideas, etc..