Is beauty really subjective or is it objectively determined by God?

[Bradski]

Or if someone in your air-conditioned car says they don’t think it beautiful, you drive them straight to a mental hospital for "correction.

Peter can come and pick my wife up on the way. I have just asked her if she thought the Grand Canyon was beautiful (we were both there a couple of years ago) and the answer was a definite ‘No. But I thought it was impressive’.

But then she doesn’t like Pink Floyd, so what would she know…

 

[Aloysium]

@ inocente: It is not so much a matter of depending on personal beliefs, as it is of a relationship with the Ground of one’s being. Faith has to do with a connection to what is true. And, the ultimate truth has been revealed. God has established His church on earth that we might more clearly know Him and grow in the Way that is the incarnate Word of God.

 

[Peter_Plato]

And if early settlers got into the Canyon without realizing how long it extends, and almost died trying to find food and shelter, and didn’t see one second of the experience as beautiful, you would say they should have waited until it could be viewed as a theme park from an air-conditioned car, because only rich folk who aren’t having to keep themselves alive can appreciate True Beauty™?

Or if someone in your air-conditioned car says they don’t think it beautiful, you drive them straight to a mental hospital for “correction”?

I’ve not found any of your arguments convincing, they all seem to rest on “I think Pink Floyd is beautiful and anyone who doesn’t is wrong, so there”. As I said, thanks for the conversation, see you around.

Well, you see, I am not necessarily married to the idea that everyone has to see things exactly the same in order for a quality to be objective. That appears to be your view of things, not mine.

I can freely admit that the capacity of individual subjects to appreciate a quality depends upon subject differences, while at the same time holding that the quality itself exists independently of any and all subjects of the experience, even while the quality may be experienced differently.

You assume differing subjective views with reference to a quality amounts to a slam-dunk argument against the objective nature of the quality. It doesn’t.

The capacity of subjects to grasp, enjoy or appreciate any and all qualities is going to differ because of characteristics endemic to those subjects. The calibration of any particular faculty relative to each quality is going to make a difference in the ability of subjects to grasp, appreciate or enjoy the quality in question. That, in itself, is not sufficient to make the quality subjective, i.e., merely because different subjects with differing capacities do not view objects or objective things identically does not make those qualities or objects subjectively determined.

The fact that some students, for example, do not grasp math concepts or basic principles, while others easily do, does not make the truth of those concepts or principles subjective. No, the ability or disability of students to grasp the concepts is dependent upon differences in the subjects, themselves, but the objective truth of the math concepts is not determined by the capacity of subjects to grasp it.

I would argue that differing capacities, states of mind, level of development, emotional barriers, etc., all play a part in creating differing individual abilities to grasp, appreciate or enjoy beauty, goodness and truth, but that fact should alert us to the problem and cause us to hesitate in jumping to conclusions concerning the alleged “subjective” nature of qualities.

 

[Bradski]

These are all negative arguments. You haven’t done this, you cannot do that, one shouldn’t assume the other.

You have a problem in that you are trying to show that something is true with no earthly way of ever being able to back it up other than to simply say that it is true.

That in itself is no big deal. That problem affects us all. Except in this case.

Obviously it is impossible to prove that beauty is objective or subjective. All we can do is give our opinions and…offer some evidence. And here is the zinger. Every single person on the planet and their every opinion on all matters at all time indicate without any skerrick of doubt that beauty is subjective.

How you can hold to a position when literally everyone is an example of that position being false - including yourself, for heaven’s sake, is totally beyond me.

 

[Aloysium]

If beauty is subjective in the sense that it emanates from within oneself, as activity in the emotional centres of the brain, and is projected onto what the cortex puts together from sensory (name removed by moderator)uts, how much more so is truth. We are here merely sharing fantasies of what is, arguing about nothing, since nothing can truly be known. There were earlier a couple of threads on solipsism, and that is where this sort of thinking leads - a sort of functional insanity. I stick by what I understand: that the beauty that exists in an object has to do with its capacity to reveal something of our relationship with the Divine. This includes canyons, galaxies, art, literature, music, and a little baby.

 

[Bradski]

I stick by what I understand: that the beauty that exists in an object has to do with its capacity to reveal something of our relationship with the Divine. This includes canyons, galaxies, art, literature, music, and a little baby.

Trite examples which only show that you are not thinking this through.

Beauty, if it is objective, in inherent in everything. Even things that you would describe as ugly. Yet we only hear of canyons and paintings and cute babies.

But what about a cancerous lung? Or a corpse? Or the contents of a sewer pipe? If beauty is inherent in everything, then all these things have it.

But, I hear you say: ‘What? They have no beauty? Of course they don’t. And it’s not just my opinion. It would be everybody’s opinion’.

Case closed.

 

[Peter_Plato]

And if early settlers got into the Canyon without realizing how long it extends, and almost died trying to find food and shelter, and didn’t see one second of the experience as beautiful, you would say they should have waited until it could be viewed as a theme park from an air-conditioned car, because only rich folk who aren’t having to keep themselves alive can appreciate True Beauty™?

It appears to me that you view trial and hardship through a “Woe is me” lens, as if human beings trying to find food and shelter will be ultra self-absorbed and self-pitying because of their hardships. On the other hand, you also, stereotypically view “rich folk” in air-conditioned cars as being fully appreciative of the beauty of things outside of their own domain.

I suspect both pictures you attempt to portray as “reality” are simple-minded and fraught with your own prejudices, not only regarding “early settlers” and “rich folk,” but beauty, as well.

And here…

Or if someone in your air-conditioned car says they don’t think it beautiful, you drive them straight to a mental hospital for “correction”?

Your capacity to simplify and misrepresent according to your prejudices knows no bounds, apparently.

I’ve not found any of your arguments convincing, they all seem to rest on “I think Pink Floyd is beautiful and anyone who doesn’t is wrong, so there”. As I said, thanks for the conversation, see you around.

They all seem to “rest on” it because it is this same lense that permits you to tritely dismiss the experiential capacities of others by referencing air conditioning, mental hospitals, food and shelter.

Could you reference, by the way, where I proposed Pink Floyd music as a paradigm example of beauty? I don’t recall ever having done so. Enjoyable, certainly. Revealing, sure. Good music, yup. Beautiful? Not sure about that.

You also confuse the requisite ability to recognize “objective” reality with what you suppose ought to be done to remedy a lack of that ability. You do understand the value of education, yes?

Obviously, defining “beauty” as “whatever anyone likes,” would be a major element causing confusion. The inability to separate out what is appealing to the senses from the idea of beauty, treating them as if they are one and the same phenomenon would be problematic for some.

Recall that philosophy is the art of making distinctions. A major problem, I would suggest, with regard to doing philosophy well, is that a difficulty making the necessary distinctions to carry on a discussion may come from prejudices and a willful lack of precision.

 

[Peter_Plato]

Trite examples which only show that you are not thinking this through.

Beauty, if it is objective, in inherent in everything. Even things that you would describe as ugly. Yet we only hear of canyons and paintings and cute babies.

But what about a cancerous lung? Or a corpse? Or the contents of a sewer pipe? If beauty is inherent in everything, then all these things have it.

But, I hear you say: ‘What? They have no beauty? Of course they don’t. And it’s not just my opinion. It would be everybody’s opinion’.

I suppose you might say the same thing about another transcendental – goodness.

Actually, I would say goodness fits your examples better than beauty because you seem to major on this “beauty is in everything” theme as if it follows logically and necessarily from the claim that beauty is an objective quality. Whether it is or isn’t is a good question but would need to be answered relative to how beauty is resident in things before we try to find it in things like “the content of sewer pipes.”

If goodness is objective and, ultimately, is identical to beauty at an ontological level, then we could ask a very similar question. If goodness is inherent in the “being” of things then how is goodness present in 1) a cancerous lung, 2) a corpse or 3) the content of a sewer pipe?

How about…

1. …in the lung qua lung as a functional aspect of a human body – what a cancerous lung doesn’t do or is incapable of certainly highlights what a healthy lung is capable of. If A&E heartfully desired “knowledge of good and evil” they obviously needed the full experience of good contrasted by evil, which is what is being had in this case.
2. …a corpse as representative (again by contrast) to a human life lived and, hopefully, lived well.
3. …the content of a sewer pipe is a functional aspect of a system designed to bring necessities and carry away waste. What is a sewer pipe but an artificial large intestine?

Case closed.

The case has barely been opened and you are declaring it closed? Sounds like your prejudices, like inocente’s, are raging.

 

[Peter_Plato]

If beauty is subjective in the sense that it emanates from within oneself, as activity in the emotional centres of the brain, and is projected onto what the cortex puts together from sensory (name removed by moderator)uts, how much more so is truth. We are here merely sharing fantasies of what is, arguing about nothing, since nothing can truly be known. There were earlier a couple of threads on solipsism, and that is where this sort of thinking leads - a sort of functional insanity. I stick by what I understand: that the beauty that exists in an object has to do with its capacity to reveal something of our relationship with the Divine. This includes canyons, galaxies, art, literature, music, and a little baby.

My agreement with you on this ought to cast “a skerrick of doubt” on Bradski’s claim that beauty is subjective.

 

[Peter_Plato]

Peter can come and pick my wife up on the way. I have just asked her if she thought the Grand Canyon was beautiful (we were both there a couple of years ago) and the answer was a definite ‘No. But I thought it was impressive’.

But then she doesn’t like Pink Floyd, so what would she know…

We probably disagree on flavours of ice cream, but what does that have to do with the price of putty in China?

I enjoy Pink Floyd, but that doesn’t mean, necessarily, that any particular piece is self-evidently an example of beauty.

With regard to the Grand Canyon, there are lots of subjective determiners that might cause anyone not to see beauty in it. Perhaps, like you, apparently, she has a confused notion that beauty merely equates to what is enjoyable or enjoyed. Perhaps she has a fear of heights. Perhaps beauty is a quality that takes us out of ourselves but we are reticent to allow that to happen psychologically at certain times.

I am not saying, these apply to her, necessarily, just that subjective factors or limitations may not permit an objective reality – such as beauty – from being appreciated, enjoyed or grasped all the time. I find it difficult to believe she found NOTHING about the Grand Canyon beautiful.

Furthermore, the fact that she can answer the question at all means she must have a concept of beauty in mind and the Grand Canyon doesn’t fit the concept. It would be more enlightening to have her explicate what she means by the word “beauty.” If she means by it, something like “enjoyable to my senses or sensual nature,” The question then becomes, “Is THAT what beauty is, essentially?”

I suspect a large part of the problem lies precisely there – what is meant when anyone speaks of “beauty?”

 

[inocente]

@ inocente: It is not so much a matter of depending on personal beliefs, as it is of a relationship with the Ground of one’s being. Faith has to do with a connection to what is true. And, the ultimate truth has been revealed. God has established His church on earth that we might more clearly know Him and grow in the Way that is the incarnate Word of God.

But that too is a personal belief. You would not and could not say that if you were a Muslim or Buddhist.

If beauty is subjective in the sense that it emanates from within oneself, as activity in the emotional centres of the brain, and is projected onto what the cortex puts together from sensory (name removed by moderator)uts, how much more so is truth. We are here merely sharing fantasies of what is, arguing about nothing, since nothing can truly be known. There were earlier a couple of threads on solipsism, and that is where this sort of thinking leads - a sort of functional insanity. I stick by what I understand: that the beauty that exists in an object has to do with its capacity to reveal something of our relationship with the Divine. This includes canyons, galaxies, art, literature, music, and a little baby.

And that too is a personal belief. I would argue instead that for God, beauty not a question of human aesthetics, nothing to do with canyons or 1970’s pop music:

*“Stop judging by mere appearances, but instead judge correctly.” - John 7

"Your beauty should not come from outward adornment, such as elaborate hairstyles and the wearing of gold jewelry or fine clothes. Rather, it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God’s sight. " - 1 Peter 3*

If beauty for God is the inner self, then there is no way for us to judge such inner beauty objectively.

“He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,
nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.
He was despised and rejected by mankind,
a man of suffering, and familiar with pain.
Like one from whom people hide their faces
he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.” - Isaiah 53

 

[Charlemagne_III]

Any my evidence for subjectivity? Well, that will just need you and me and a simple question: Which is more beautiful? Wish You Were Here or What Is And Never Should Be?

That was a tiring rant against the objectively more beautiful and the objectively less beautiful.

Which is objectively more beautiful?

“You Ain’t Nothing but a Hound Dog” or “Ave Verum Corpus”?

youtube.com/watch?v=CiY5yE3TBgA

youtube.com/watch?v=6KUDs8KJc_c

Since you are an atheist, you’ve already closed off your mind and heart to the latter.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

You have a problem in that you are trying to show that something is true with no earthly way of ever being able to back it up other than to simply say that it is true.

Obviously it is impossible to prove that beauty is objective or subjective. All we can do is give our opinions and…offer some evidence. And here is the zinger. Every single person on the planet and their every opinion on all matters at all time indicate without any skerrick of doubt that beauty is subjective.

I seriously doubt that even you will defend this last remark, since it requires your belief that you are in possession of an objective truth without any way in the world to prove it.

The fact that we cannot prove that something is more beautiful than something else is related to the fact that beauty requires no proof. It is experienced in the heart, not in the head. If the atheist has no heart for God, he will have no heart either for sacred music, because he will consciously repudiate it as having and objective heart value. A case of the head censoring the heart.

 

[inocente]

The capacity of subjects to grasp, enjoy or appreciate any and all qualities is going to differ because of characteristics endemic to those subjects. The calibration of any particular faculty relative to each quality is going to make a difference in the ability of subjects to grasp, appreciate or enjoy the quality in question. That, in itself, is not sufficient to make the quality subjective, i.e., merely because different subjects with differing capacities do not view objects or objective things identically does not make those qualities or objects subjectively determined.

The fact that some students, for example, do not grasp math concepts or basic principles, while others easily do, does not make the truth of those concepts or principles subjective. No, the ability or disability of students to grasp the concepts is dependent upon differences in the subjects, themselves, but the objective truth of the math concepts is not determined by the capacity of subjects to grasp it.

I would argue that differing capacities, states of mind, level of development, emotional barriers, etc., all play a part in creating differing individual abilities to grasp, appreciate or enjoy beauty, goodness and truth, but that fact should alert us to the problem and cause us to hesitate in jumping to conclusions concerning the alleged “subjective” nature of qualities.

That sounds elitist - those students who agree or pretend to agree with your notion of beauty will pass your exam, those who don’t will be labelled less capable. Math doesn’t depend on such artificialities, nor should any art, music or literature class. The aim is to help a student improve her craft and creativity, not fill her head with rulebooks. Art is alive, not in dead committees.

Could you reference, by the way, where I proposed Pink Floyd music as a paradigm example of beauty? I don’t recall ever having done so. Enjoyable, certainly. Revealing, sure. Good music, yup. Beautiful? Not sure about that.

You have a short memory. Here it is:

Well, no, Bradski, if I were to attempt a “simplistic” version of what is going on, I would surmise that God has created certain sounds, captured in Gilmour’s music and vocals, that resonate with the human soul in such a way as to put listeners into touch with the beauty that is integral to the essential nature of Being itself.

You don’t remember Brad’s reference to Pseud’s Corner? A 1970’s pop combo resonating “with the human soul in such a way as to put listeners into touch with the beauty that is integral to the essential nature of Being itself”.

:takeoff:

 

[inocente]

Which is objectively more beautiful?

“You Ain’t Nothing but a Hound Dog” or “Ave Verum Corpus”?

youtube.com/watch?v=CiY5yE3TBgA

youtube.com/watch?v=6KUDs8KJc_c

Not sure about the notion of making comparisons between fiesta music and sacred music as if they have anything in common.

But imho the first piece has a better beat sung by the original artist, Big Mama: youtube.com/watch?v=JvbSXVc451Q

Imho Bernstein is too saccharin on the second piece, this a-capella is fresher if you forgive the audio quality: youtube.com/watch?v=pLJXJCmrzQE

Which version of each piece do you prefer, and why do you think your preference objectively more beautiful?

 

[Aloysium]

. . . Beauty, if it is objective, in inherent in everything. Even things that you would describe as ugly. Yet we only hear of canyons and paintings and cute babies. . . But, I hear you say: ‘What? They have no beauty? Of course they don’t. And it’s not just my opinion. It would be everybody’s opinion’. Case closed.

There is suffering in this world.
In the larger picture, suffering plays a key role in the power and magnificence of that in which we participate. It calls us to courage, patience, tolerance and caring for one another. In the grand scheme, what is ugliness in itself becomes transformed.
You may be forgetting because you so easily deny it, that we are eternal beings on a journey to heaven. The challenges of this world are transformed by its end.
But, I can see how if this life is seen as standing alone forever, then ugliness as an isolated evil, can have no beauty associated with at all.
It is the totality that is wondrous, reflecting He who is its Source.
But, the beauty and ugliness of an object is inherent in that objects existence, which is in the context of all creation and one’s relationship with it. They are hardly merely subjective if that is what you are arguing.
Sorry for any typos - on my cell phone.

 

[Peter_Plato]

You have a short memory. Here it is:

You do realize that all music is comprised of “certain sounds” such as chords, melodies, harmonies, vocal richness and expression, etc., etc., which is why music is listened to by virtually every human being on earth. It is those elements I was speaking of.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

Not sure about the notion of making comparisons between fiesta music and sacred music as if they have anything in common.

But imho the first piece has a better beat sung by the original artist, Big Mama: youtube.com/watch?v=JvbSXVc451Q

Imho Bernstein is too saccharin on the second piece, this a-capella is fresher if you forgive the audio quality: youtube.com/watch?v=pLJXJCmrzQE

Which version of each piece do you prefer, and why do you think your preference objectively more beautiful?

As I said in my last post.

“The fact that we cannot prove that something is more beautiful than something else is related to the fact that beauty requires no proof. It is experienced in the heart, not in the head.”

The fact that a thing of the heart cannot objectively be proven to others to be more beautiful than another thing is no warrant to say that it therefore cannot be objectively more beautiful than another thing.

If you want to reduce all propositions to being proven by logic when logic does not even apply, go right ahead. It’s a waste of time. You cannot objectively prove to the complete satisfaction of others that God exists. Does that mean to you that objectively God does not exist, and is only a figment of subjective imagination?

 

[Charlemagne_III]

Not sure about the notion of making comparisons between fiesta music and sacred music as if they have anything in common.

Ah, but they do. Both are musical. What separates Presley from Bernstein is the vulgarity of “Hound Dog” and the sublimity of “Ave Verum Corpus.”.

But of course for a Protestant the sublimity of “Ave” cannot be allowed since it is either false, saccharine, or downright Catholic.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

Does “Hound Dog” trump this?

youtube.com/watch?v=rCEB8JWSnU4