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

[Charlemagne_III]

By some other “august” body of critics the movie by Sergei Eisenstein “Броненосец Потемкин (The Battleship Potemkin)” was the greatest movie ever made… go figure.

Not so that I am aware of.

“Battleship” was always considered an influential seminal film for photography and editing.

Unlike Citizen Kane, it was never repeatedly voted for several decades the greatest film ever made by an international poll of film critics. But it deservedly is still highly regarded as a breakthrough film that influenced other European and American film makers.

 

[LogisticsBranch]

All animals, mammals at least, have all five senses, but only humans have enhanced sight and sound.
LogisticsBranch;13169672:

Hello dear yppop. I beg to differ as I noted on the previous topic I was on. (1) My coonhound is most definately beautiful and can see (spot) a jack rabbit in high grass that is hundreds of yards away before I can, and she can hear better than a human. She is a natural hunter. You might be interested in reading about Gregory S. Berns, PhD. (2) He has done MRI’s on dogs.(3)

1. forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?p=13169672#post13169672

Edit : forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=971004&page=2Topic: “Determinism and animals”
Also on that topic, I’ll do the edit here. Jane Goodale is alive. No one corrected me there.
2. ccnl.emory.edu/greg/
3. neuropolicy.emory.edu/
Why The Brains Of Dogs & Humans Are More Similar Than You Think
collective-evolution.com/2014/04/10/why-the-brains-of-dogs-humans-are-more-similar-than-you-think/

I don’t think this is the meaning of “enhanced” that Yppop had in mind. He did not, as far as I can tell, mean “with greater acuity,” rather he meant something like “see into the reality of things that which a physical sense, unaided, cannot grasp.” More like “see into it” rather than “see it more clearly.”

I don’t agree with what you and Yppop have said as noted above nor do I agree with what yppop says below:

God has also provided specific configurations which when contemplated enhance the experience of objective beauty, such things as symmetry, balance, proportion, scale, unity. To behold beauty in that that pleases is subjective engagement of the soul. To find beauty objectively through contemplation of specific forms that God provided is an objective engagement of the mind. Beauty is pleasing both subjectively and objectively but is wondrously pleasing when both experienced and contemplated. God has provided both objective and subjective beauty for us to behold transcendentally and contemplate rationally.
Yppop

Thanks for the exchange!

 

[Charlemagne_III]

Every dish has a separate requirement for “tastiness”. Every chef (or cook) has her own recipe for creating “tasty” dishes. There is no “objective” tastiness.

Tastiness is an acquired taste. Discriminating taste buds will detect the tasty dish.

That is why food critics serve a useful purpose.

The same for art critics.

Some taste buds, as in the fly, are decidedly undiscriminating.

Some art critics, like some artists, can be corrupted by a bias that shows no love for great art and every indulgence in fake art. And there are as many fool patrons of the arts who will pay big dollars because an “esteemed” art critic has declared something new genuinely great when it is mere nonsense. That is, of course, subjectivism run amuck.

Such as this:

aliexpress.com/item/5x7ft-Vinyl-photo-studio-background-Scrawl-theme-photography-backdrops-SZ-037/32414058896.html

 

[Charlemagne_III]

On the other hand, not every alleged valuable art work that depicts objective tomato soup is necessarily great art, as below, scroll down when you get there.

alexalvis.wordpress.com/2012/05/10/what-do-thomas-kinkaid-and-andy-warhol-have-in-common/andy-warhol-tomato-soup-can/

While tomato soup may help to move the body, it has never deeply moved the soul.

 

[Mongo]

I don’t agree with what you and Yppop have said as noted above nor do I agree with what yppop says below:

Thanks for the exchange!

Do you think animals can see meaning and patters in things?

 

[LogisticsBranch]

Beauty, truth, and goodness are the foundation of knowledge. They are objective realities; or to be more precise they are the reflection of the objective reality of God. Through them you can know God. Without them, the reality of God becomes just an assertion. He becomes the big man in the sky. The reality is that God is reflected in his creation.

When beauty becomes purely subjective, so does truth and goodness. Morality is reduced to subjectivity and consequently just one opinion among many. If beauty is objective, then not only is one act objectively good while another is objectively evil, but one way of life becomes objectively more beautiful and better. Beauty isn’t just physical, although the physical is a necessary part of it.

I hope my response to your comment will answer your above post. I don’t “see” God, but I love God (The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit). I would say that truth, goodness, beauty. and morality is taught in the Animal Kingdom.

Your comment, “Do you think animals can see meaning and patters [patterns]in things?” All mammals (examples: dog, human, dolphin, etc. have a mind) In the world outside the internet we (the above mentioned examples) have rational minds and are known to be playful. Nice of you to stop by. Time to for us (me and my dog) to run. Exercise is essential for her and I keeping healthy and wise.

 

[Peter_Plato]

I don’t agree with what you and Yppop have said as noted above nor do I agree with what yppop says below:

Thanks for the exchange!

Another way, perhaps, of understanding this is that humans have access, via our intellects, to the significance or meaning of objects in the bigger scheme of things. That is the kind of access that mere sentience on its own, no matter how acute, does not permit. It is that significance or meaningfulness that can have different facets when we attempt to express it - truth, goodness and beauty are modes by which the deeper meaningfulness of reality can be conveyed.

I wouldn’t suppose sense capable beings have the capacity to apprehend that meaning merely by virtue of possessing greater sense acuity. Just using a pair of binoculars, a telescope or microscope to access greater detail or using various sound augmenting devices or filters to “hear” better wouldn’t permit access to greater meaningfulness unless the being had the capacity to ascertain via insight or intellection the significance of the additional information that those modalities would make accessible in the first place.

Again, just seeing or hearing things better does not necessarily allow a greater depth of understanding with regard to the significance of what is being seen or heard. I am not sure this is even a contentious point.

Yppop’s point was that some sense modalities - taste, touch, smell - may convey less or very little of that underlying meaning or significance by their very nature. Whereas sight and hearing may provide better or more direct glimpses into that meaning.

 

[Protestor]

Is this perhaps a case of only one instance wherein one thing is comparatively more beautiful than another?

This is probably the most you can safely glean from this. One argument that could be made is that anything that is a creation of God will be more beautiful than a creation of man.

What are your thoughts on beauty as objectively determined by God vs. as subjectively determined by men?

Is a thing more beautiful because god says so or is there something intrinsic to that thing that makes it more beautiful? Are these intrinsic qualities something that can be only observable by God or are they available to all? Why is God’s view objective and a humans view subjective? I may be okay with you proving that God’s aesthetic tastes are objective, but you cannot just claim that they are because he is God. Is God immune to partiality in the case of aesthetics(pls don’t quote Rom2:11 in response to this ?)? Just because something is objective to God does that mean that it can also be objective for you or everyone in some mass revelation scenario? Who is to say that God’s usage/definition of aesthetics is similar to ours or that he would have to be bound by the def we have or that we would have to be bound to his def.

 

[Peter_Plato]

All mammals (examples: dog, human, dolphin, etc. have a mind) In the world outside the internet we (the above mentioned examples) **have rational minds **and are known to be playful.

This is an assertion which I am not sure holds up to scrutiny.

Certainly animals are neurologically capable of making associations, sorting data, and responding appropriately. Those are not quite the same as the ability to reason intentionally, however.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

This is probably the most you can safely glean from this. One argument that could be made is that anything that is a creation of God will be more beautiful than a creation of man.

Is a thing more beautiful because god says so or is there something intrinsic to that thing that makes it more beautiful? Are these intrinsic qualities something that can be only observable by God or are they available to all? Why is God’s view objective and a humans view subjective? I may be okay with you proving that God’s aesthetic tastes are objective, but you cannot just claim that they are because he is God. Is God immune to partiality in the case of aesthetics(pls don’t quote Rom2:11 in response to this ?)? Just because something is objective to God does that mean that it can also be objective for you or everyone in some mass revelation scenario? Who is to say that God’s usage/definition of aesthetics is similar to ours or that he would have to be bound by the def we have or that we would have to be bound to his def.

God, being omniscient, obviously does not see things the way our limited senses and understanding allow.

 

[Kurisu35712]

God, being omniscient, obviously does not see things the way our limited senses and understanding allow.

Also, depending on one’s interpretation, beauty is not so much something God sees in other things as it is something created things reflect about the nature of their Creator. God would, no doubt, see the beauty and value in all of His creations exactly as He intended them to be, which is no doubt far outside of our own perception. The artist will always see all of the most successful parts of their own painting and understand the inherent symbolism better than any observer. God is the source of the beauty we see in the universe, and He is also said beauty’s most complete realization, at least from a Catholic perspective.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

God is the source of the beauty we see in the universe, and He is also said beauty’s most complete realization, at least from a Catholic perspective.

For several y ears now I have come to believe the aesthetic argument for the existence of God is a powerful one.

This universe in its natural state is so incredibly beautiful. Why would it be so beautiful if God did not intend by his Creation to give us such profound and awesome experiences of his power as artist?

Last year at 6 o’clock one morning I woke to a splendid sunrise over the ocean near Jensen Beach, Florida. I could hardly believe my eyes that such beauty could exist. It is no coincidence that ancient men confusedly assigned the various powers of nature to their separate gods. It was inevitable that sooner or later polytheism would give way to monotheism as a way to explain how to harmonize all these various powers and their beautiful expressions in nature.

As God has given us the beauties of nature in this world he will give us the beauty of himself in the next. The scales will fall from our eyes when we behold him as he truly is.

 

[yppop]

I don’t agree with what you and Yppop have said as noted above nor do I agree with what yppop says below:

Thanks for the exchange!

Logis…
You of course are entitled to disagree with my contention that only humans of all the mammals (including dogs) possess what I refer to as “enhanced” sight and sound.

Peter observed that my adding the adjective “enhanced” implied a distinction between the “outstanding” ability of your coondog and the ability of every normal human to engage with what I call “rational” reality by which I mean the “collective knowledge” of mankind, sometimes called the noosphere. A miniscule part of rational reality exists in every normal human mind; the rest exists objectively outside minds. The collective knowledge, "however’ exists differently than the space, time, matter, and energy that compose that which we normally refer to as objective reality. Thus rational reality, a third modality of reality I call is called for. No need for me to go into what I refer to as transcendental reality.

If you don’t accept the argument that rational reality, which is based on “enhanced” sight and sound, exists, and that humans possess a vastly greater intellectual ability than all other mammals, then there is no need to engage in further discussion.

Dogs may react to signs and signals but not to symbols. It is use and understanding of symbols that raises the human intellect far beyond whatever minimal intellect certain dogs can and do exhibit.

Thank you Peter for you supportive post and thank you Logis for reading my post.

Yppop

 

[LogisticsBranch]

Logis…
You of course are entitled to disagree with my contention that only humans of all the mammals (including dogs) possess what I refer to as “enhanced” sight and sound.

Peter observed that my adding the adjective “enhanced” implied a distinction between the “outstanding” ability of your coondog and the ability of every normal human to engage with what I call “rational” reality by which I mean the “collective knowledge” of mankind, sometimes called the noosphere. A miniscule part of rational reality exists in every normal human mind; the rest exists objectively outside minds. The collective knowledge, "however’ exists differently than the space, time, matter, and energy that compose that which we normally refer to as objective reality. Thus rational reality, a third modality of reality I call is called for. No need for me to go into what I refer to as transcendental reality.

1. If you don’t accept the argument that rational reality, which is based on “enhanced” sight and sound, exists, and that humans possess a vastly greater intellectual ability than all other mammals, then there is no need to engage in further discussion.
2. Dogs may react to signs and signals but not to symbols. It is use and understanding of symbols that raises the human intellect far beyond whatever minimal intellect certain dogs can and do exhibit.

Thank you Peter for you supportive post and thank you Logis for reading my post.

Yppop

Who is Logis? I have highlighted in red my concerns. Here is my response:

1. There are more abortions made by women. Dogs don’t abort their pups. People kill people in wars. Dog’s don’t kill people unless to protect a beloved human.
2. Well, my coonhound knows that a red light (symbol) means stop. There are guide dogs that are trained to assist people that are blind and deaf. People use symbols and dogs are trained by those symbols.

My dog is very smart since I trained her. You mentioned the noosphere. You seem to be a Teilhard de Chardin fan. I’m not a big fan of his. I have a library of books that fill up the space on four walls. I’m in a rush got to go. . .

 

[Kurisu35712]

Who is Logis? I have highlighted in red my concerns. Here is my response:

1. There are more abortions made by women. Dogs don’t abort their pups. People kill people in wars. Dog’s don’t kill people unless to protect a beloved human.

True, but the points others have brought up is not that dogs are not intelligent creatures. Rather, that dogs are not of the same intellectual level or type as humans are. They cannot think in the abstract in the same way that a human does. They do not have a sense of morality in terms of spirituality and religion. If a dog seems to believe something to be bad, it is because they were trained to understand that the action is bad and should not be repeated.

A dog does not refrain from killing people even if it benefits them because they are domesticated and have been selectively bred to function alongside humans as companions and to perform various functions specific to their breed. They have been raised to view humans not as a foreign species like wolves do, but as members of their pack, and as leaders of their pack. Dogs do not have a sense of morality as humans do. As a result, a dog cannot sin, no matter how destructive their behavior can occasionally be. They are not bound to a system of morality, and they are unable to truly understand what a system of morality is. They are intelligent, but they are not human. They can be family, but they are still animals.

1. Well, my coonhound knows that a red light (symbol) means stop. There are guide dogs that are trained to assist people that are blind and deaf. People use symbols and dogs are trained by those symbols.

When the poster in question said symbols, they did not mean literal signs and symbols like a red light or a stop sign or a hand signal that means sit. Obviously dogs recognize those, they have been domesticated over millenia to understand human body language enough to interpret it, just as they would signals from another dog.

Symbols in this context refers to inherent significance that requires insight. A dog does not have this kind of insight or intellect. A dog cannot read Lord of the Rings, much less understand that Sauron is a reference to Satan, nor can they recognize the symbolic nature of the Book of Genesis. A dog cannot look at the Annunciation by da Vinci and see that the painting is to be viewed at an angle to correct the perspective, much less understand that it is an image representative of St. Gabriel telling Mary that God wants her to be the mother of the Savior of the World.

 

[Pallas_Athene]

Tastiness is an acquired taste. Discriminating taste buds will detect the tasty dish.

What one person finds delicately seasoned, the next one will declare bland and tasteless. Give a Habanero pepper to an average person (without telling what he will get) and the reaction will be pretty violent. Gagging, gasping for air, drinking copious amounts of water to dampen the fire in his throat. Give the same type of pepper to someone from India, and he will declare that… it is pretty good. It is all about personal preference.

Some art critics, like some artists, can be corrupted by a bias that shows no love for great art and every indulgence in fake art.

Since you could not give the epistemological method to separate the wheat from the chaff, you are not in the position to declare someone’s taste “corrupted”.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

Since you could not give the epistemological method to separate the wheat from the chaff, you are not in the position to declare someone’s taste “corrupted”.

Not sure what you are talking about. Epistemological method?

Are you saying that there a method to distinguish true art from fake art?

Yes, I agree with that.

The method is to have a cultivated soul able to make the distinctions. There is no distinct epistemological method for cultivating soul. But it’s clear that “Jack and Jill,” though a poem, is not in the same class of distinguished poems as “Trees”. It was written for children, who are little people with as yet uncultivated souls. The cultivation comes with growing up and experiencing sadness and joy and everything in between so that by the time you get to reading poems like “Trees” you have acquired a taste for the beautiful and the ability to distinguish poems for children from better poems for adults.

In every genre of artistic creation the principles that distinguish good art from bad art are learned partly from other artists whose “epistemological method” (learning the technique of drawing hands, for example) has served them well, and partly from an original instinct and intuition for creating the beautiful.

Creative intuition in itself has no “epistemological method” that you can put your finger on. Even the creative person is often at a loss to explain what drives his modus operandi. And this is what separates the critic from the artist. Very often the critic is more adept at explaining a work of art than the artist himself. This is because he is once removed from the art, whereas the artist has been wholly absorbed in it. But every artist is also something of a critic. He not only knows what to do, but also what not to do with his creation. If he does not have that objectivity, to see his work as it really is rather than as he would like to think it is) he is likely to be a failed artist. As Hemingway put it, the successful artist is one who has a “built-in sh-t detector.” But what the artist needs to detect and eliminate from his work is a really failed style or technique. The artist has to strain to create genuine beauty in his work. It does not arrive on command, nor is it necessarily beautiful just because he has subjectively convinced himself that it is.

If this does not answer your question about “epistemological method,” try explaining your question in more depth. Describe what you mean by “epistemological method” as it applies to art as opposed to science, for example.

 

[Pallas_Athene]

Not sure what you are talking about. Epistemological method?

Are you saying that there a method to distinguish true art from fake art?

You left out the verb from the previous sentence. There is NO universal method to make such a distinction, just like there is no universal method to distinguish between properly seasoned and bland dishes.

A few examples: In the ancient Egyptian times, the people were depicted in a stylized fashion, head from the side, torso from the front, arms and legs from the side. That was considered the way to create “beautiful” art.

In the Medieval times the pictures of the Madonna displayed her with ugly, protruding eyes, which was the ideal beauty back then. The reason was a deficient amount of iodine in the drinking water.

In the times of Rubens the women with huge bosoms were considered “beautiful”, nowadays the almost emaciated girl represent beauty.

The prevailing ideal of “beauty” is culturally driven. People find something “beautiful” if they are exposed to it day by day.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

You left out the verb from the previous sentence. There is NO universal method to make such a distinction, just like there is no universal method to distinguish between properly seasoned and bland dishes.

A few examples: In the ancient Egyptian times, the people were depicted in a stylized fashion, head from the side, torso from the front, arms and legs from the side. That was considered the way to create “beautiful” art.

In the Medieval times the pictures of the Madonna displayed her with ugly, protruding eyes, which was the ideal beauty back then. The reason was a deficient amount of iodine in the drinking water.

In the times of Rubens the women with huge bosoms were considered “beautiful”, nowadays the almost emaciated girl represent beauty.

The prevailing ideal of “beauty” is culturally driven. People find something “beautiful” if they are exposed to it day by day.

You still haven’t defined “epistemological method.” It seems that for you an objectively beautiful thing must be universally recognized as such.

So if a six-year old doesn’t recognize “Trees” as a beautiful poem, it cannot be objectively beautiful because the boy’s taste has proven there is no universal appeal of the poem?

Yes, cultures change. And the ideal of beautiful might also change. But that does not mean that the objects of art cease to be beautiful. What it means is that people have altered their tastes. We no longer build churches like the Vatican. That does not mean the Vatican is no longer a beautiful piece of architecture.

I think beautiful women have lived in every age, and have been appreciated for their beauty in every age, though not everyone finds the same woman beautiful due to a cultural or personal bias.

There is hardly anyone heterosexual who ever said Marilyn Monroe was not voluptuous.

As for the peculiarities of ancient Egyptian art, you have to remember that the Egyptian style was party determined by the as yet undiscovered principle of three dimensional art.

Art historians have likewise noted that the paintings of women in the Middle Ages often showed ugly hands. Again, not a matter of changing taste, but rather a matter of not yet having discovered how to render the curvatures of the fingers.

 

[LogisticsBranch]

This universe in its natural state is so incredibly beautiful.

A joint Fermilab/SLAC publication:

July 28, 2015

Is this the only universe?
Our universe could be just one small piece of a bubbling multiverse.

By Laura Dattaro

Human history has been a journey toward insignificance.

As we’ve gained more knowledge, we’ve had our planet downgraded from the center of the universe to a chunk of rock orbiting an average star in a galaxy that is one among billions.

So it only makes sense that many physicists now believe that even our universe might be just a small piece of a greater whole. In fact, there may be infinitely many universes, bubbling into existence and growing exponentially. It’s a theory known as the multiverse.

One of the best pieces of evidence for the multiverse was first discovered in 1998, when physicists realized that the universe was expanding at ever increasing speed. They dubbed the force behind this acceleration dark energy. The value of its energy density, also known as the cosmological constant, is bizarrely tiny: 120 orders of magnitude smaller than theory says it should be.

For decades, physicists have sought an explanation for this disparity. The best one they’ve come up with so far, says Yasunori Nomura, a theoretical physicist at the University of California, Berkeley, is that it’s only small in our universe. There may be other universes where the number takes a different value, and it is only here that the rate of expansion is just right to form galaxies and stars and planets where people like us can observe it. “Only if this vacuum energy stayed to a very special value will we exist,” Nomura says. “There are no good other theories to understand why we observe this specific value.”

For further evidence of a multiverse, just look to string theory, which posits that the fundamental laws of physics have their own phases, just like matter can exist as a solid, liquid or gas. If that’s correct, there should be other universes where the laws are in different phases from our own—which would affect seemingly fundamental values that we observe here in our universe, like the cosmological constant. “In that situation you’ll have a patchwork of regions, some in this phase, some in others,” says Matthew Kleban, a theoretical physicist at New York University.

. . .]

symmetrymagazine.org/article/july-2015/is-this-the-only-universe

Kurisu35712, I will get back to you later. Busy day today!