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

[Oreoracle]

I don’t think this is true. People may be very certain about the beauty of some things, highly certain of the lack of beauty in others and** uncertain about a whole whack of things in the middle**.

People always know what is beautiful when they see it. If others don’t recognize that beauty, that does not mean it ceases to be beautiful; it only means it is not beautiful for them.

I seem to be receiving mixed messages!
Peter Plato:

I am not sure that songs are generally thought of as “beautiful.” Some music perhaps, but not songs. In fact, I think if you ask specifically about the “beauty” of a song, most people WOULD express uncertainty.

I’m using “song” vaguely here to mean any musical piece. I’m not sure what it would mean to find music beautiful without being able to judge individual songs. I mean, are you suggesting all music is beautiful? Only certain genres?
Peter Plato:

I suspect most of those hypothetical people you ask assume you mean to inquire whether they prefer the song or not – i.e., do they like it – because most would feel inadequate to express an objective judgement regarding the aesthetic qualities of the music. Ask a professional musician to provide an expert judgement and see what the response would be.

So instead of just admitting that my definition is more commonly used, you’re insisting that people substitute mine for the real definition–yours–which they never state but refrain from using due to feeling ill-equipped to use it. That’s not convoluted at all.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

I seem to be receiving mixed messages!

You did manage to leave out the following sentence.

People always know what is beautiful when they see it. If others don’t recognize that beauty, that does not mean it ceases to be beautiful; it only means it is not beautiful for them. A blind man cannot recognize the beauty of a marvelous sunrise. That does not mean the sunrise ceases to be beautiful.

The aesthetic relativist confuses blindness to beauty with the absence of it.

Beauty exists as a thing in its own right. You cannot hear a song and confer beauty on it by sheer exertion of will. Yet sheer exertion of will can create the beautiful. The sheer exertion of God’s will created a beautiful universe. God saw that it was good. And everything that is good is beautiful, just as everything that is true is beautiful. Sin and lies are ugly because they are neither good nor true.

 

[Peter_Plato]

So instead of just admitting that my definition is more commonly used, you’re insisting that people substitute mine for the real definition–yours–which they never state but refrain from using due to feeling ill-equipped to use it. That’s not convoluted at all.

So your claim is that only simple ideas (i.e. “not convoluted” for you) can be true.

Admittedly, that, itself, is a simple idea, but, I would suggest, also NOT sufficient to make it true.

 

[Oreoracle]

You did manage to leave out the following sentence.

People always know what is beautiful when they see it. If others don’t recognize that beauty, that does not mean it ceases to be beautiful; it only means it is not beautiful for them. A blind man cannot recognize the beauty of a marvelous sunrise. That does not mean the sunrise ceases to be beautiful.

For one thing, your first sentence contradicts the second. If people know what is beautiful when they see it, how could anyone fail to recognize beauty? Clearly not everyone knows beauty when they see it if that is so.

Unless of course you mean “see” in a metaphorical sense, but then your statement is really just a tautology. It’s like saying “everyone is correct when they’re right”.

So your claim is that only simple ideas (i.e. “not convoluted” for you) can be true.

No, I just think that my explanation works at least as well as yours with fewer assumptions. And your assumption that people would not feel qualified to have their opinion hold objective weight if it could is absurd. People speak as if their opinions of music, sports teams, nations, and celebrities are objective all the time. Most people really are that arrogant. But for some reason people seem to be more consciously aware of the subjectivity of beauty than, say, the subjectivity of one’s nationalism.

 

[Peter_Plato]

No, I just think that my explanation works at least as well as yours with fewer assumptions.

In that case, an explanation with NO assumptions – i.e., a bald assertion – should be the most correct one.

I suspect that claiming your explanation works “at least as well” as mine is fraught with its own myriad of unacknowledged assumptions.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

For one thing, your first sentence contradicts the second. If people know what is beautiful when they see it, how could anyone fail to recognize beauty? Clearly not everyone knows beauty when they see it if that is so.

They could fail to recognize what is beautiful because they have a warped soul.

I have known many such people who are sensory deprived of the beautiful because they have been corrupted by false values.

Mozart had a beautiful soul reflected in his music. He could never have composed ugly acid rock because his soul was not ugly.

Those who love acid rock cannot possibly love Mozart. They are blind to beauty.

 

[Mike_from_NJ]

Those who love acid rock cannot possibly love Mozart. They are blind to beauty.

I love both.

 

[Faithdancer]

Since God determines all things, both may be true; beauty may be both objective and subjective, simultaneously.

 

[Mike_from_NJ]

Since God determines all things, both may be true; beauty may be both objective and subjective, simultaneously.

How would that work?

 

[Pallas_Athene]

Without that thing, there would not exist anything beautiful.

That is trivially true - not worth to mention. Objects exist on their own. They have certain objective attributes and those attributes also exist objectively - whether there is an observer or not. Some attributes evoke certain feelings in the observer, other attributes might not. Those attributes which we find exceptionally aesthetically pleasing will be called “beautiful”. Those attributes which the observer finds repulsive, will be called “ugly”. The mother may find her child beautiful, while others find it repulsively ugly.

While it is obvious that the object and its attributes exist independently from the observer, the qualification of the attributes cannot happen without an observer. There is on object with a certain temperature, and the temperature is described with a number on a scale (whatever it might be, Celsius, Fahrenheit, Reamur or absolute or something else. But the evaluation of “hot”, or “cold”, or “pleasant” is nonsense without a certain observer, whose subjective evaluation is described by the adjective he chooses.

It has been stated over and over in this thread that you do not subjectively confer beauty on anything. The thing is either beautiful or it is not.

And no matter how many times this nonsense is repeated, it will not turn to be true. Just substitute “hot” for beautiful, and “cold” for ugly, and it will become obvious that the evaluation cannot be separated from the observer. The same temperature will be “too hot” for some, and “too cold” for others. The same song will be inspiring for some and boring for others. The same dish will be perfectly spiced for some, and bland for others. The same weight will be heavy for some, and light for others. The same distance will be too far for some and easily covered by others.

**We are talking about the subjective evaluation of the objective attributes of objects. ** How many pages have been wasted on such trivial matters?

 

[Charlemagne_III]

I love both.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

**We are talking about the subjective evaluation of the objective attributes of objects. ** How many pages have been wasted on such trivial matters?

Yes, we have been talking about the subjective evaluation of objective attributes.

At last! Thank you!!!

 

[Charlemagne_III]

That is trivially true - not worth to mention. Objects exist on their own. They have certain objective attributes and those attributes also exist objectively - whether there is an observer or not. Some attributes evoke certain feelings in the observer, other attributes might not. Those attributes which we find exceptionally aesthetically pleasing will be called “beautiful”. Those attributes which the observer finds repulsive, will be called “ugly”. The mother may find her child beautiful, while others find it repulsively ugly.

You didn’t quite go far enough, did you?

The same excrement will smell horrible to some and sweet to others?

Again, only to a corrupted sense of smell.

 

[Peter_Plato]

How would that work?

Beauty exists objectively, but the capacity of each human to accurately “detect” objectuve beauty depends on the correct “calibration” of the faculties that are beauty detection capable.

This is no different from the competent assessment of moral principles and moral behaviour by a well-formed conscience.

In fact, the phenomenon is almost universal. Human beings become more “expert” in areas that are made accessible by human faculties. Their “expertise” is subjectively determined by interest, aptitude and effort, but grounded in objective reality.

To claim beauty is only subjective is a determination that ignores and, in fact, denies objectivie grounds for the determination of beauty purely because few are expert but many think they are based on the presumption that the determination is merely a subjective one, anyway.

 

[Pallas_Athene]

You didn’t quite go far enough, did you?

The same excrement will smell horrible to some and sweet to others?

Again, only to a corrupted sense of smell.

Not “sweet” - pleasing, exciting, mouthwatering. Dogs have a much better sense of smell than humans… and YES, they find the smell of excrement very pleasing. So much so that they throw themselves into the excrement (to the annoyance of their “masters”). So, whose sense of smell is “corrupted”? The smell of a good Limburger cheese is pretty “strong” And many people like it - myself included. Most people would say that it stinks to high heaven.

A subjective evaluation to an objective odor.

 

[Peter_Plato]

Not “sweet” - pleasing, exciting, mouthwatering. Dogs have a much better sense of smell than humans…

Well, now, that is a value judgement you claim CANNOT be made since the sense of smell is merely “subjective” to the recipient. On what grounds CAN you claim BETTER?

I’ll grant you “more acute,” but that is hardly BETTER without qualifying how you can possibly determine what BETTER means.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

Not “sweet” - pleasing, exciting, mouthwatering. Dogs have a much better sense of smell than humans… and YES, they find the smell of excrement very pleasing.

Define “pleasing”?

What is pleasing to one dog may not be pleasing to another.

A dog may find one master pleasing and another not so much. Do you not think there is some objective quality of the two masters that makes one pleasing and the other not?

 

[Peter_Plato]

Not “sweet” - pleasing, exciting, mouthwatering. Dogs have a much better sense of smell than humans… and YES, they find the smell of excrement very pleasing. So much so that they throw themselves into the excrement (to the annoyance of their “masters”). So, whose sense of smell is “corrupted”? The smell of a good Limburger cheese is pretty “strong” And many people like it - myself included. Most people would say that it stinks to high heaven.

A subjective evaluation to an objective odor.

A refutation of your view is found here…

youtu.be/tX5e6eSkaMc

 

[Oreoracle]

Define “pleasing”?

What is pleasing to one dog may not be pleasing to another.

A dog may find one master pleasing and another not so much. Do you not think there is some objective quality of the two masters that makes one pleasing and the other not?

I would agree that objective qualities contribute to finding something pleasing or beautiful. For example, let’s say a man prefers curvy women. If we were really pressed to do so, we could devise a strict definition of “curvy” that would make it objective (perhaps we require the woman to have certain measurements). However, declaring such women beautiful is subjective in the sense that not everyone prefers curvy women. The women are objectively curvy, but subjectively beautiful.

So beauty, I think, is best understood as a relation between preferences and objects. To be seen as beautiful, the object must have features preferred by the subject. It’s like being annoying. No one is objectively annoying, but they can have objective traits that are annoying to you.

Perhaps you could say that “beauty-to-Charlemagne III” is objective and that “beauty-to-Oreoracle” is objective in the sense that our preferences objectively exist (that is, we really do prefer certain things) and that these relations are fixed because of this. But “beauty” in general is subjective until we decide whose preferences are being used as our standard.

So “This painting is beautiful” has no truth value but “This painting is beautiful to Oreoracle” does.

 

[Peter_Plato]

So “This painting is beautiful” has no truth value to Oreoracle] but “This painting is beautiful to Oreoracle” does.