Response to TA's question 06

"Give reasons for and against the proposal that things, which are not human-made, could be called art. At which point do we call something human-made? (We make sculptures out of marble, but we don't make the marble, so could putting driftwood in a museum be sufficient to be called "human-made"?)"

I think we call something art when we take the materials that we did not make, and put lots of effort and time into them. Simply taking driftwood and putting it in a museum isn't really art. People do, however, take driftwood, and they put time and effort into it, and at a point, it becomes art.
But, take for instance, gems. There are gems in museums that are large and uncut. They are simply taken from the earth, maybe cleaned up a bit, but that's it. People view them, and they might be considered art. I'm still not sure if they are art, but I'm sure some think they are so. Gems are very precious though. They're many factors in gems that people prize. Gems are almost universally attractive, too. In this case, I think we apply these non-artifacts as art, and subtract the need for it to be human-made.