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

[Pallas_Athene]

But in rather a weak moment he said:

"I find myself incapable of believing that all that is wrong with wanton cruelty is that I don’t like it”.

Do you have some evidence for this? Because it sounds like an urban legend. But, IF he actually said it, all it proves that even usually great thinkers can be sloppy sometimes. The reason that MOST of us find wanton cruelty wrong is that cruelty causes objective HARM to others. However, psychopaths have nothing against wanton cruelty. (As long as they are not the victims of it).

We hear people chant the subjectivist mantra, “De gustibus non est disputandum.”

But I find myself incapable of believing that the Grand Canyon’s staggering beauty only exists because I like it.

I have seen three well-shaped, spotlessly white objects of made of smooth ceramic material affixed to the wall at an art exhibition. Some “uncouth” people (like me) just laughed. The reason: “they were three unattached URINALS”.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

Do you have some evidence for this? Because it sounds like an urban legend. But, IF he actually said it, all it proves that even usually great thinkers can be sloppy sometimes.

I agree that Russell could be a sloppy thinker, not just sometimes but lots of times.

But there is no warrant for saying that this is one of those times just because you don’t like what he said.

 

[Peter_Plato]

I have seen three well-shaped, spotlessly white objects of made of smooth ceramic material affixed to the wall at an art exhibition. Some “uncouth” people (like me) just laughed. The reason: “they were three unattached URINALS”.

So, you weren’t being an art critic, then, just having a plumber’s eye for the lack of proper pipe connections to the pieces?

I find that difficult to believe, actually. Deep down, I suspect, you were laughing at the fact that some artist - contrary to your expectations of art or beauty - actually considered three urinals as qualifying as art.

Despite the fact that you refuse to admit it, this actually demonstrates you believe beauty (and, by extension, art) has objective grounds for determination.

If you really thought art was as subjective as you claim, you would have no grounds for laughing, just as you would have no grounds for finding humor in someone claiming they liked the taste of, say, peanut butter and onion sandwiches.

You might be led to observe the definite differences in taste, but laughing or finding humour is quite a different matter.

 

[inocente]

When it came to morality, Bertrand Russell was a well known subjective emotivist.

But in rather a weak moment he said:

"I find myself incapable of believing that all that is wrong with wanton cruelty is that I don’t like it”.

…] But I find myself incapable of believing that the Grand Canyon’s staggering beauty only exists because I like it.

You realize that your paraphrase of Russell is faulty though?

By saying “the Grand Canyon’s staggering beauty exists”, you are making a claim, that a specific instance of beauty exists independently of you. Well, obviously if your claim is true, and the instance of beauty exists independently of you, it will exist whether or not you like it. But you’ve not said anything to prove your claim that the instance of beauty exists independently of you.

Put another way, you could instead have written, no more or less logically, “But I find myself incapable of believing that the Grand Canyon’s gross ugliness only exists because I don’t like it”.

 

[Peter_Plato]

You realize that your paraphrase of Russell is faulty though?

By saying “the Grand Canyon’s staggering beauty exists”, you are making a claim, that a specific instance of beauty exists independently of you. Well, obviously if your claim is true, and the instance of beauty exists independently of you, it will exist whether or not you like it. But you’ve not said anything to prove your claim that the instance of beauty exists independently of you.

Well, it would seem rather obtuse to claim that the “Grand Canyon’s staggering beauty exists” ONLY because and when he thinks of it. Which is the position YOU seem to be insisting that he takes by claiming determinations of the Grand Canyon’s beauty are merely subjective.

It would appear, by the fact that virtually every human who views the Grand Canyon is overwhelmed by the sight of it, that its beauty is not merely dependent upon any one subject, but does, indeed, exist “independently of you” or any other single subject.

What further proof is required other than to point out that insisting that the beauty of the Grand Canyon is subject dependent is patently as silly as claiming that the existence of the Grand Canyon itself is subject dependent.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

What further proof is required other than to point out that insisting that the beauty of the Grand Canyon is subject dependent is patently as silly as claiming that the existence of the Grand Canyon itself is subject dependent.

Or that when a tree falls in a forest there is no sound subject to being heard unless there is someone there to hear it.

 

[Pallas_Athene]

Or that when a tree falls in a forest there is no sound subject to being heard unless there is someone there to hear it.

The vibration of the air molecules IS there. If there is an abandoned CD player, which plays the same CD over and over again… the vibration of the air molecules is there… but there is NO music.

Do you have evidence for your claim about Russell?

 

[Peter_Plato]

The vibration of the air molecules IS there. If there is an abandoned CD player, which plays the same CD over and over again… the vibration of the air molecules is there… but there is NO music.

Well, you can’t claim there is NO music without assuming something about the way that the mind creates rather than receives the experience of sounds. Your claim is based upon a metaphysical assumption that the material world is ALL that exists.

You haven’t proved THAT in your claim, you merely assume it.

You don’t KNOW there is no sound, and you can’t just assume there isn’t in order to validate your argument – which doesn’t and can’t prove what you merely assume.

 

[ynotzap]

Do

I have seen three well-shaped, spotlessly white objects of made of smooth ceramic material affixed to the wall at an art exhibition. Some “uncouth” people (like me) just laughed. The reason: “they were three unattached URINALS”.

As I stated before beauty has many facets like a diamond, and when you got to go, there is nothing more beautiful than a urinal maybe that’s what the guy who placed them in an art exhibit was thinking.

 

[ynotzap]

You just don’t get it. Ideas and concepts are abstractions. Reality is not the same as abstractions. The concepts and ideas MAY reflect reality, or they may not. Some ideas reflect imaginary “beings”, some may even reflect other ideas. Using the “Snow White” example, someone’s “imaginary Snow White” might be blond girl, while someone else’s “imaginary Snow White” could be a brunette or redhead. Which one is the “real” Snow White? None, because Snow White is just an imaginary character, who does not exist as a real person.

Do you realize the difference between actual objects and imaginary ones?

An actual object exists apart from the mind, external to it. Imaginary objects exist in the imagination as “real ideas” even though they are the subjective interpretation of the objective world. The fact is that both actual objects, and imaginary ones both exist otherwise you could not have an imaginary story, and we do. Even to make up an imaginary story or object, one has to borrow from objective reality to create it, so even an imaginary story has some basis in reality- like Jules Vernes-20, ooo leagues under the sea, or his imaginary flight to the moon before there was an actual flight to the moon.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

The vibration of the air molecules IS there. If there is an abandoned CD player, which plays the same CD over and over again… the vibration of the air molecules is there… but there is NO music.
Do you have evidence for your claim about Russell?

Put a CD recorder in the forest as the tree crashes and tell me when you turn on the recorder you can’t hear the tree crashing.

Same for an empty symphony hall practicing Beethoven’s 9th. There is music, even if you can’t hear it at the time of performance, the CD recorder can.

Which claim about Russell are you referencing?

Is it the one about his being “incapable of believing that all that is wrong with wanton cruelty is that I don’t like it”. This is a well known quote of Russell, but you need to find it on your own. I am too old to be doing your homework.

Russell like G.E. Moore was in his early days a moral objectivist, but after reading Santayana’s “The Winds of Doctrine” he converted to moral subjectivism. Santayana was an atheist; so was Russell though he never called himself one and preferred to be called an agnostic.

I have found moral subjectivism more compatible to atheists than moral objectivism, with the notable exception of Ayn Rand, who was certainly a moral objectivist.

 

[Bradski]

Which is the position YOU seem to be insisting that he takes by claiming determinations of the Grand Canyon’s beauty are merely subjective.

Meanwhile…back at the OP someone is still asking if it’s subjective or objectively determined by God.

Anything that we might describe as beautiful is not a single entity. A painting is made up of a myriad of brush strokes and different paints. A tree is made up of many parts. The Grand Canyon is made up of rocks and dirt (and could be described as beautiful by what isn’t there as opposed to what is there). A symphony starts with one note or one chord.

None of these items came fully formed. The painting was just a rather plain canvas and tubes of paint, then maybe rough charcoal marks. A tree starts off as a rather nondescript, spindly looking twig. The Grand Canyon was originally just a muddy stream meandering through some rocks.

If beauty is objective (then apart from the hierarchy of beauty which no-one seems to want to comment on) then this ‘objective beauty’ isn’t an original, integral and fixed part of whatever it is we are describing. For God to be involved in any way, as the OP is asking, then He must be constantly adjusting the ‘degree of beauty’ constantly for everything. It is not static.

The tree becomes, very gradually, more beautiful (and then less so as it withers and dies). The painting becomes more beautiful as the artist adds more paint. The Grand Canyon becomes grander as the river eats away at the ground.

So not only is there a hierarchy of beauty that God has decided, He is constantly adjusting the degree of beauty in everything.

The Grand Canyon was a dirty river at some point. We could agree it wasn’t beautiful. Then the Colorado gradually cut through the rocks and the dirt and it became less ugly and more beautiful. The more the canyon grew, the more beautiful it became. And God was there slowly turning the Beauty Dial so that we could all correctly appreciate the correct amount of beauty at every stage – and maybe turning it back a little if there was an ugly rock fall or the flow of the river dropped.

And of course, He’s there on a daily basis, turning up the dial if it’s a beautiful blue-sky day or down if it’s cloudy and overcast.

I don’t think you guys have thought it through.

 

[Peter_Plato]

Meanwhile…back at the OP someone is still asking if it’s subjective or objectively determined by God.

Anything that we might describe as beautiful is not a single entity. A painting is made up of a myriad of brush strokes and different paints. A tree is made up of many parts. The Grand Canyon is made up of rocks and dirt (and could be described as beautiful by what isn’t there as opposed to what is there). A symphony starts with one note or one chord.

None of these items came fully formed. The painting was just a rather plain canvas and tubes of paint, then maybe rough charcoal marks. A tree starts off as a rather nondescript, spindly looking twig. The Grand Canyon was originally just a muddy stream meandering through some rocks.

If beauty is objective (then apart from the hierarchy of beauty which no-one seems to want to comment on) then this ‘objective beauty’ isn’t an original, integral and fixed part of whatever it is we are describing. For God to be involved in any way, as the OP is asking, then He must be constantly adjusting the ‘degree of beauty’ constantly for everything. It is not static.

The tree becomes, very gradually, more beautiful (and then less so as it withers and dies). The painting becomes more beautiful as the artist adds more paint. The Grand Canyon becomes grander as the river eats away at the ground.

So not only is there a hierarchy of beauty that God has decided, He is constantly adjusting the degree of beauty in everything.

The Grand Canyon was a dirty river at some point. We could agree it wasn’t beautiful. Then the Colorado gradually cut through the rocks and the dirt and it became less ugly and more beautiful. The more the canyon grew, the more beautiful it became. And God was there slowly turning the Beauty Dial so that we could all correctly appreciate the correct amount of beauty at every stage – and maybe turning it back a little if there was an ugly rock fall or the flow of the river dropped.

And of course, He’s there on a daily basis, turning up the dial if it’s a beautiful blue-sky day or down if it’s cloudy and overcast.

I don’t think you guys have thought it through.

I am sorry Bradski, but I read this through a few times and each time I came to your last sentence with a perplexed aura surrounding my brain.

So God “turns up and down” the “volume” of beauty observable to human beings? This means what exactly?

In some sense, he also turns up and down the “amount” of light, the “amount” of life and the “amount” of goodness in particular things around us that are within the realm of our experiences.

A human being begins life barely able to sustain itself, becomes more and more competent to recognizes beauty, goodness and truth by the very fact that conscious experience gets “turned up” on “God’s dial” and then “turned down” again as we slowly age and die. What’s up with that, Bradski?

Again, you have lost me with your point. It may be because my mental faculties are declining as I age as if someone is turning down the dial on them.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

Meanwhile…back at the OP someone is still asking if it’s subjective or objectively determined by God.

Anything that we might describe as beautiful is not a single entity. A painting is made up of a myriad of brush strokes and different paints. A tree is made up of many parts. The Grand Canyon is made up of rocks and dirt (and could be described as beautiful by what isn’t there as opposed to what is there). A symphony starts with one note or one chord.

None of these items came fully formed. The painting was just a rather plain canvas and tubes of paint, then maybe rough charcoal marks. A tree starts off as a rather nondescript, spindly looking twig. The Grand Canyon was originally just a muddy stream meandering through some rocks.

If beauty is objective (then apart from the hierarchy of beauty which no-one seems to want to comment on) then this ‘objective beauty’ isn’t an original, integral and fixed part of whatever it is we are describing. For God to be involved in any way, as the OP is asking, then He must be constantly adjusting the ‘degree of beauty’ constantly for everything. It is not static.

The tree becomes, very gradually, more beautiful (and then less so as it withers and dies). The painting becomes more beautiful as the artist adds more paint. The Grand Canyon becomes grander as the river eats away at the ground.

So not only is there a hierarchy of beauty that God has decided, He is constantly adjusting the degree of beauty in everything.

The Grand Canyon was a dirty river at some point. We could agree it wasn’t beautiful. Then the Colorado gradually cut through the rocks and the dirt and it became less ugly and more beautiful. The more the canyon grew, the more beautiful it became. And God was there slowly turning the Beauty Dial so that we could all correctly appreciate the correct amount of beauty at every stage – and maybe turning it back a little if there was an ugly rock fall or the flow of the river dropped.

And of course, He’s there on a daily basis, turning up the dial if it’s a beautiful blue-sky day or down if it’s cloudy and overcast.

I don’t think you guys have thought it through.

I’m not getting this.

You seem to confuse the issue by bringing in dirt as something ugly, when in fact it is part of the grandeur God is always making from day one of the Creation. Would an atom be ugly to you also, because it is so low on the scale of ascending beauty that it cannot even be seen? If you could see it in all its dynamic complexity might you be profoundly moved? Are the constellations not really so beautiful because they are mere mixes of fire and gas? Is Beethoven’s 9th not really so beautiful because it begins with one lonely note?

God is “adjusting the degree of beauty in everything”? So is that a problem for you?

Have you thought through why this is a problem for you?

 

[Colorad007]

I was going to ask the same question. Beauty changes with the times. Hundreds of years ago, a thin woman would not have been deemed attractive at all (think of all those heavy-set women painted by Rubens and Titian), and men had to be muscular (I guess not much has changed there). Today, an “Rubenesque woman” would be deemed “fat” by most males and some females. Although most men seem to find long hair most attractive, I have known men who prefer short hair and call long hair a “rat’s nest” even if it is perfectly groomed.

Human beings aside, I think objective beauty is possessing what should be there, and possessing what should be there in the most perfect form. A tree’s shape, a flower’s petals, a perfectly formed orange, etc. A misshapen tree, a wilted flower, a withered piece of fruit, will be perceived as “not beautiful” by almost everyone.

Don’t confuse the popular portrayal of sexual attractiveness with beauty. The culture today confuses brash eroticism with a warped understanding of beauty and it obviously demonstrates in that way that it doesn’t understand beauty at all.

 

[Bradski]

So God “turns up and down” the “volume” of beauty observable to human beings? This means what exactly?

The question is: Does God determine beauty?

If He does, and on the not unreasonable assumption that everything is not equally beautiful, then He must decide how much beauty to give to one thing over another. That’s always been the case during the discussion. No-one has disputed this even though I have brought it up multiple times and specifically asked for comments on it.

Now we have the not unreasonable assumption that things become more (or less) beautiful during the course of their existence. That means that beauty is not fixed. And if God is determining it, then he is constantly ‘turning it up and down’ as the situation dictates.

Comment on both as you see fit.

 

[Bradski]

Don’t confuse the popular portrayal of sexual attractiveness with beauty.

I think that you’ll find that the two are invariably linked.

You are presented to a group of women. One Chinese, one Tongan, one native American, one native Australian, one Nigerian, one Scandinavian. If beauty is objective, and if you accept the fact that not all women are equally as beautiful, then one of these women is THE most beautiful. If beauty is objective, then that is an objective fact.

Firstly, do you accept that? And secondly, how do you tell which one it is?

 

[Peter_Plato]

The question is: Does God determine beauty?

If He does, and on the not unreasonable assumption that everything is not equally beautiful, then He must decide how much beauty to give to one thing over another. That’s always been the case during the discussion. No-one has disputed this even though I have brought it up multiple times and specifically asked for comments on it.

Now we have the not unreasonable assumption that things become more (or less) beautiful during the course of their existence. That means that beauty is not fixed. And if God is determining it, then he is constantly ‘turning it up and down’ as the situation dictates.

Comment on both as you see fit.

Let me give you another paradigm that might help.

Suppose we talk about complexity. Would it not be accurate or appropriate to speak of varying complexity, say, in the range of species of animals? That an amoeba is far less complex as an organism than an orangutan? In a similar sense, God would have to “turn up” the complexity of different species. So like your issue with beauty, why would it be unspeakable of God to decide how much complexity to give to one thing over another such that everything is not equally complex?

Why couldn’t God determine beauty in much the same way he determines complexity, for example?

Complexity may express some facet of God, while beauty expresses another, goodness another and truth, yet, another. In the end, however, if the idea of transcendentals and divine simplicity is correct, all of these may be different ways of expressing in their own distinct ways the Pure Act (Actus Purus) or Absolute Perfection of God.

That is not to accept that current or past views of beauty were necessarily correct, merely that these glimpsed something of the quality without providing a complete accounting, which would only be known fully - as with truth and goodness - in the beatific vision of God.

 

[Peter_Plato]

I think that you’ll find that the two are invariably linked.

You are presented to a group of women. One Chinese, one Tongan, one native American, one native Australian, one Nigerian, one Scandinavian. If beauty is objective, and if you accept the fact that not all women are equally as beautiful, then one of these women is THE most beautiful. If beauty is objective, then that is an objective fact.

Firstly, do you accept that? And secondly, how do you tell which one it is?

When qualities are evaluated why is it necessary to think these are one dimensional?

A good story, for example, involves character development, a compelling theme, plot development and integrity, adept use of language, etc., etc.,

Why couldn’t the beauty of a woman involve more than one facet or feature? Furthermore, since being a woman is more than mere physique or physical characteristics, the beauty of a woman could involve far more than physical features. The fact that it would be necessary to take all these into account and assign some “weighting” criterion would make the task quite challenging. To what end, precisely?

How would the beauty of facial features, for example, be weighed against the beauty of personal virtues or character?

Furthermore, why are comparisons necessary? Why couldn’t the beauty of each woman be appreciated for its own sake rather than relative to the beauty of another woman?

 

[Aloysium]

Never having seen the Grand Canyon, but listening to people’s descriptions, I thought I’d give a try at explaining its beauty.
I imagine the immensity, dwarfing the individual. While some see the dirt that is beneath them, others gaze in wonder at what is beyond themselves. We are not ants; it is huge!!
The river that cut through the rock, has carved out a history of the world. Ancient sediments formed of what once was surface, and buried layer after layer, deep into the ground, in time are there for all to see and remember what was before we were.
The Grand Canyon speaks of infinite spaces and infinite time. It’s beauty lies in its revelation of the Beauty that lies within and encompasses all spaces and all times.
Some see a collection of rocks. Look up!!