Beauty and ugliness are intrinsic features of our experiences
If beauty and ugliness are not intrinsic features of our experience, then we are biased and things are not beautiful or ugly in themselves. This means that something else, such as the subconscious mind, embeds the impression of beauty or ugliness in our experiences. But that other thing also must be biased toward beauty and ugliness otherwise the title holds. This leads to an infinite regress. The infinite regress is not acceptable therefore the title holds.
Comments (84)
Beauty and ugliness are features of the objects in the universe. We perceive and judge them. They are not intrinsic features of our experience. Experience captures what is given to us by the universe. Experience is a blank sheet with no features.
Yes, and no. Although beauty and ugliness are features of objects, things like ideas, arts (music for example that is not an object), etc. could also be beautiful or ugly. That is why I used experience instead of object since a beautiful object seems beautiful but beauty is not the feature of the objects only.
Quoting Corvus
Of course, experience has lots of features. How could recognize something is beautiful if your experience has no feature?
I think beauty and ugliness are universal features of the experience, whether humans' experience, aliens', or animals'. Something beautiful is beautiful in the eyes of anybody.
No disagreement here, but what is the underlying aspect that makes something beautiful? My apologies if I'm not volunteering my own thoughts, its more of a primer to take the subject and really philosophically examine it. I want to hear your thoughts.
I think it is a mixture of properties of an object, like symmetry, curvature, color, and the like.
Fantastic! Can you delve further? Why would symmetry, curvature, etc be beautiful? Is there a combination of object, color and the like which would not be beautiful? Is there a common theme between them?
It seems to me that if the argument works for beauty and ugliness, then it works for any other features of experience - veridical and illusory, or married and unmarried, for examples. Which would be inconvenient, if the intention is to say something about aesthetics that distinguishes it from science or mundanity.
Ideas are subjective thoughts. You say ideas are good or bad. You don't say ideas are beautiful or ugly. All arts are objects. Music is the songs and musical instruments performing coming to your ears in the form of the physical wave vibrations.
Quoting MoK
Again it is a bit odd to hear someone saying beautiful experience or ugly experience unless it is said in some metaphorical way. You always experience something, and the content of your experience could be beautiful or ugly. Experience itself has no properties.
That is an excellent question that made me think for a while! In the end, I concluded that it is what it is. When things come together in a specific configuration, the object looks beautiful otherwise ugly. Perhaps one person who is an expert in the philosophy of art can elaborate further.
Personally I don't really have a problem with infinite regress. :wink:
Quoting MoK
Isn't this false dilemma fallacy? Might beauty not be the product of both subjective and objective factors? You're suggesting there are only two options here. 1) Intrinsic experience or 2) subjective experiences. But there must be a range of other explanations. What about beauty being relational rather than inherent or subjective? Might beauty not arise from the interaction we have with an object? A phenomenological process. Also could beauty (and any general agreement we have about this) not simply be an intersubjective relationship - a contingent product of culture, experience and evolutionary factors?
Personally I think beauty is an umbrella term for many different things. We are attracted and repelled by the world we live in - by ideas, by people, places, animals, colours... we often call things beautiful when we don't know what else to say.
That is an excellent question! I think like and dislike for example are extrinsic features of our experience. Let me give you an example: A man could be handsome but he would not be sexually attractive to you since you are straight. Does that make sense to you? I am open to discuss this.
Of course, any experience has a set of properties, so-called Qualia.
Nope. Qualia comes after experience as perceived qualities of the objects. Qualia is not part of experience.
I don't have any problem with it either! :razz:
Quoting Tom Storm
I don't think so. The features of our experience are either intrinsic or extrinsic.
Quoting Tom Storm
They are.
Quoting Tom Storm
No, I am suggesting that the features of our experiences are either intrinsic or extrinsic.
Quoting Tom Storm
Yes, beauty arises from our interactions with objects.
Quoting Tom Storm
If beauty was completely contingent then we face the regress. I think that the effect of culture for example is extrinsic.
Just no. Could you have any experience without Qualia?
No I can't. I do need experience first, before having qualia. Qualia comes after the end of experience. Qualia is also contingent. It is not necessary. It can come, it can never come.
Experience and Qualia are inseparable. It is not correct to say that the experience comes first and the Qualia comes after.
Could you demonstrate the point with some real life examples? Thanks.
Great example! I feel the same way about goats. But is it that I am blind to the sexual attractiveness of goats, whereas other goats can appreciate the intrinsic attractiveness, or is it that attractiveness is in some essential way relative to the observer, where handsomeness is not? How can one tell the difference?
You have the experience of a red rose when you are looking at one. The experience is gone if redness and other features of your Qualia are gone.
I think that attractiveness is the extrinsic feature of the experience whereas handsomeness is the intrinsic one.
What sets aesthetic experiences apart from other experiences is not intrinsic and extrinsic features but the fact that some experiences are attractive (or deterrent) for their own sake regardless of whether it serves other interests.
Well yes, I assumed that was what you wanted to say. But I was hoping you'd have some argument or rationale for saying it.
Quoting jkop
Yes, I've heard that before in latin "De gustibus non est disputandum" But that is rather wider than is being suggested here, and still both too vague and too unreasoned to be very helpful.
I'm tempted to suggest that the distinction being groped for here is between subjective and objective, such that matters of taste are to do with the subject, whereas matters of fact are features of the object. But therein lies a whole can of worms if not a pit of vipers.
When I am looking at a red rose, I am looking at a red rose. I am not experiencing a red rose at that particular moment. After looking at a red rose, when I reflect on the red rose, I could describe the red rose as my perceptual experience.
The redness of the rose belongs to the rose, not to me or my experience. The redness of the rose is a conceptual image in my memory which was posited by the red rose. The redness is not the intrinsic feature of my memory or my experience.
I already argued for beauty and ugliness to be an intrinsic feature of experience in OP so they are objective (person-independent). What is left are like and dislike that are subjective so person-dependent and therefore extrinsic.
No, the redness of the rose is constructed by your brain. The flower does not have any particular color at all so it is just the feature of your experience.
Then we'd better avoid those categories :cool: I think it's fairly clear that matters of taste refer to features of objects, and how an object affects subjects is one among other facts about the object.
If the redness of the rose is constructed by your brain, can your brain construct the redness into pinkness or greenness?
Does it mean your brain can construct the colour of roses into any colour you want to construct? :chin:
I'm glad! I find that whether I arrive at an answer or not, the thinking about it is sometimes the best part of the process. I've give my answer, though it doesn't mean its necessarily right. See if it sparks something new in your own mind.
There is at least one common marker, at least in evaluating biological creatures, that seems to overlap with beauty. Symmetry. Think of a person with a symmetrical face versus one with their left eye drooping an inch lower than their right eye. Why do we value symmetry in creatures? because it turns out symmetry aligns with health. Health is strength, survival, capability, and energy.
Sexually, beautiful people signal health, which means they can spend the energy and resources to have, raise, and protect a child. Beauty may very in sexual interactions as what is 'healthy' can change based on genetics, culture, or environment. In a culture where food is scarce, heavier people may be seen as more beautiful because it indicates they are capable of getting more resources. In a resource abundant culture, thin people may be more beautiful as it demonstrates their ability to use resources responsibly, will power, and an active amount of work on their appearance.
In nature, beauty may signify a healthy environment. Again, this may be based on what one needs. If you desire little interaction with other living things, a remote area may be beautiful. A lush healthy forest means there's plentiful water and food nearby.
We want to be around beautiful things because we hope to share in that health. If a beautiful person likes us, it means a healthy person with resources is on our side. Being in a beautiful environment gives us what we need and want. Ugly things and places indicate to us a lack of resources, sickness, or possible problems we might have to deal with. Ugly people may look to us to help fix their loneliness, health, or other issues. Ugly places are harsh to survive in. Beauty indicates an easy life, ugliness indicates a hard one.
What do you think?
Yes, but my point is that beauty may be the product of both. It's not an either/or.
Take a painting we agree upon as beautiful. There's the intrinsic - the skill of the artist and the use of subject, composition and colour, etc.
There's also the extrinsic - factors like social influence of critics and/or the painting's prestige; the lighting and presentation in a gallery or on a wall; cultural factors that lead to us being attracted to that particular painter's work or subject matter; personal factors, the painting my be one a parent first showed us and is therefore is imbued with further extrinsic qualities.
The idea of symmetry and health as contributors to human beauty appears rather memorably in an old BBC documentary presented by John Cleese (The Human Face) it presents a reasonably plausible account. I'm not sure it works for landscape as well since beautiful landscapes may well be terrifically dangerous - remote coastlines, deserts, war zones (there are beautiful depictions of ugly things). Extrinsic factors help form a person's aesthetic response and make them receptive (or not) to a subject.
Quoting MoK
The aromatic hydrocarbons belong to the rose, but the smell belongs to the nose. The reflective and absorbent signature belongs to the petals, but the redness is in the eye of the beholder.
But here, I think you have gone astray right at the beginning by talking about "experience". Surely experience is always at least mediated by senses, sensitivities and sensibilities?
We don't say my experience looks red, or my nose smells nice. We say the roses are red, and the rose smells nice. It is the roses (objects) which provoke our sensation. Our sensations don't make roses look red or smell nice.
When Kant wrote the external objects excite our sensations via experience in CPR, he must have meant the above point.
Beauty and ugliness are reflective aesthetic properties we feel or judge on the objects after the perceptual experience. They are not intrinsic features of experience.
And yet some of us are colourblind, and some have lost their sense of smell and we do not blame the rose. Normal people talk about the world directly, and not about their experiences at all. One often talks about experience as a non-philosopher when one begins to doubt one's senses. "A common symptom of covid is the experience of a smell of burning." This does not mean that spontaneous combustion tends to occur around covid sufferers.
No, the color you experience depends on your sensory system, your eyes in this case, and how neurons are connected in your visual cortex.
Quoting Corvus
No, I have never meant that.
I agree with most of your statements that beauty is a sign of a better life that helps us to survive and evolve better. Women have larger hips and that makes them attractive to men. Women with larger hips can give birth easily and through evolution they became attractive to men. Like (attractiveness) or dislike, however, are extrinsic features of an object rather than intrinsic ones. A beautiful woman looks beautiful in the eyes of both men and women and that is the intrinsic feature. A beautiful woman may misbehave and people dislike her and that is the extrinsic feature. To summarize I think your answer is about the extrinsic features of an object rather than the intrinsic features so I think your answer does not address why an object is intrinsically beautiful. Let me know what you think so we can discuss things further.
There must be something which makes red roses look red in the roses. Would you not agree?
Quoting MoK
Well, your post "redness is constructed by our brain" sounded like, brains actually build the redness out of nothing, which gave impression that, brains can change and create the colours as they like.
Is your first language not English?
I think we have two things here, 1) Beauty and ugliness, and 2) Like and dislike. To me, beauty and ugliness are intrinsic features of an object whereas like and dislike are extrinsic features. A painting may be beautiful but you dislike it because of extrinsic factors like culture or presentation. You may like an ugly painting due to extrinsic factors as well.
Some cases of sensory disorder of few folks shouldn't change how the the external world objects look and smell in general. Should they? Of course, if you wear brown sunglasses, and look into the world, it will look brown. But you wouldn't say, now the whole world is brown, would you?
Yes, a red rose has a set of properties that make it look red. A red rose absorbs all the color from the light and reflects red light. Red light however does not have any color. It is just the light with a specific frequency. The red light is absorbed by the retina of your eyes and a specific pulse is created by the retina. This puls moves from your retina to your visual cortex by the nerve system. It is in the visual cortex that the color of red is created. One can create a hallucination of a specific color by stimulating the visual cortex of a person using an electromagnetic field.
Well, that is my point. Without that set of properties in the roses, red roses will not look red at all. Therefore it is not our brains, which construct the redness, but it is the roses which excite our brains to see the redness.
I think we are on the same page if you agree that a red rose is not red. By this, I mean that redness is not a property of a rose.
Beauty and ugliness are objective as I argued in OP. Like and dislike are subjective though.
Our judgements and expressions are also based on the customs, traditions and linguistic phenomenon. We call red roses red, and it is the universally accepted truth, whether one agrees or not.
No, I would say the whole world looks brown, not the whole world is brown. You are equivocating here how things look and how things are, which is exactly what the language is distinguishing. :yikes:
Couldn't we agree that red rose is not red but it just looks red?
It was your argument claiming that because the covid patients smell something burning when there is nothing burning, the burning smell must be in our nose.
You seem to agree with the fact that there was nothing burning around the covid patients in reality. It was their damaged sensory organs causing the burning smell. The world is still intact with no changes in its smelling whether the covid folks can smell something burning or not.
Likewise, the world exists with no colour changes, whether you wore brown sunglasses or not.
The truth here is that the properties of the objects in the world remain the same, even if your sensory organs get damaged or malfunction. Would you not agree?
Yes, I am sure we can come to some agreement. But there are a few more points to clarify here. You say you want to say that the roses look red. But they are not red. I still don't agree.
Why do you say they look red? What is the rational ground for saying the roses look red? Isn't it because they are the red roses? Why are they red roses? Isn't it because they have a set of properties which make them look red? Isn't that what redness means?
I see, so you think there is something apart from what causes the emotion of beauty, to instead believe that beauty is something as a property which exists independent of our emotions. To me, this is mostly a semantic difference, but an important one.
I believe that what a person interprets as healthy or conducive to health is objectively what causes the emotion of beauty. But if there were no living beings to experience beauty, the emotion wouldn't exist. Its not that things healthy to life wouldn't exist, and we as feeling beings could ascribe beauty as, 'that which is healthy and conducive to life." But the objective part is the definition, which doesn't need the identity of the word 'beauty' attached.
So what I'm saying is that beauty being intrinsic or extrinsic I don't feel quite captures what beauty is. Beauty yes can have an underlying objective definition, but it is mostly known as a subjective emotional experience. You could use the word beauty with an alien race that doesn't have the emotion, and they would understand objectively what you mean when you use the term 'beauty'. To them, its just a word with an objective definition. To you, it also contains the subjective emotional experience.
So, if we wanted to use the terms 'intrinsic or extrinsic', I think more accurately we're defining beauty as "beauty without the emotional component," and "beauty with the emotional component". Does that make sense?
Again your expression equivocates; The world does not have any absolute colour independently of the visual apparatus and the ambient light. When I am a bee, I can see ultraviolet, by starlight I can see only monochrome. Colour is not a term of physics, but of vision. Looking through a microscope does not change the world, but it changes what can be seen; colour is a feature of what can be seen and it changes.
This is already demonstrated to you.
Let me give you an example to see if we can agree with the definitions: A Bulldog is ugly but one can like it. The ugliness is intrinsic and the like is extrinsic. Let me know what you think and we will see where we can go from here.
Hmm... to me it sounds like you have added the notion of 'like' here to find a way out of subjectivism. How can it be that some people find ostensibly 'ugly' things beautiful? Surely they can't be beautiful, so it must be about 'like' instead.
But what do you make of those who sincerely believe that a bulldog is beautiful, or that a photo of a WW1 scarred battle landscape is beautiful? Are you forced into saying that they are wrong about this? I believe that the ability to apprehend beauty is intrinsic to a person's aesthetic imagination and capabilities. It isn't limited to an object/text/person/etc
Quoting GregW
Are considered by some people to be beautiful. I don't think goodness comes into it, no matter how big a rose fan someone may be. My father, for instance, bought a house and removed all the rose bushes that were in flower in the garden. He held that roses were ugly plants and was indifferent to the flowers. I tend to share that indifference. I believe a sunflower is more beautiful to a rose.
Sounds good to me. We can like things even if they're ugly.
Correct.
Quoting Tom Storm
Parents love their children whether they are beautiful or ugly. The same applies to those who adopt a pet.
Quoting Tom Storm
I think they mix love, affection, and the like with beauty.
Of course, but my question was why do you want to say the red rose looks red, instead of saying the rose is red? Isn't the reason that you say the rose looks red is because it is red?
You must understand that the way we capture the meaning of the world is largely via semantic. If you didn't have semantic, then you will no longer understand the way world works and how it is structured. I was trying to clarify rather than equivocate, but obviously you seem to be unenlightened on the semantics.
I already mentioned that one can create the hallucination of seeing red by stimulating a person's visual cortex with the electromagnetic field. Therefore, any visual experience is created in the visual cortex.
Oh ha ha! You made a little joke about my handle! No one ever did that before; I should have thought about that when I chose the label.
Sure you did. However, it doesn't quite explain why you want to say the rose looks red, when it is red.
Quoting MoK
This sounds like some scientific experiment report, but it sounds mysterious and has some problems to clarify.
Is the redness created by stimulating a person's visual cortex with the electromagnetic field, the same redness of the rose? Are all redness are the same redness? If the experimental creation of redness was possible to "a person", could the result be replicated with all other folks on earth? Or could it have been just one off event by chance?
I am delighted that you got the joke. :nerd:
MoK, I can't seem to be able to select your quote to Tom Storm "I think they mix love, affection, and the like with beauty." This is not true. Love is inexcorably linked to beauty. Beauty and good is exactly what is loved. Parents love their children because they believe that their children are beautiful and good. People love their beloved not just for their looks or other extrinsic features but also for the intrinsic "beauty in the inward soul". This is what those who love see in their beloved regardless of whether others see them as beautiful or ugly.
There are no problems here. You can google it yourself.
Quoting Corvus
Yes. It could be lighter or darker though.
Quoting Corvus
Yes.
Don't parents of a disabled child love him/her?
Google, all the ChatBots and AI parrots are not good source for knowledge. Most of the times, they talk nonsense. I don't use them at all.
Quoting MoK
Please show us the photo evidence of the different images in the cortex for lighter and darker reds which are from the electromagnetic stimulation, and the ones from the red rose.
Quoting MoK
With whom were the replicating experiments carried out? Please submit all the names and the details of the results which the experiments have been conducted to support your claims, from which the validity of the claims would be judged and accepted, or thrown out as unfounded claims.
If you spent a little time googling then you could find many scientific articles on the topic.
Sure, but I try to think on them by myself reading the classic philosophical books. Google and A.I. parrots can be ok at times for finding best price for things or catching up with the news and weather forecasts.
But most importantly, blindly accepting the information from the popular media services whatever they throw to folks, and presenting them as absolute truths is not a good way doing philosophy in principle.
I am not saying "don't use them", but just saying, if you chose to use them, then back them up with concrete evidence. :)
I am not talking about Google but scientific articles published that you can find using Googling. Do you believe in science?
Remember you asked me to Google? That's why I gave you the reason why I don't Google.
Well, Science. Of course I do believe in Science, but only the parts which is reasonable and making sense. If it is not reasonable or shady in their claims, then it must be put onto the table of the philosophical investigations, before accepting it.
You shouldn't believe in science as a whole, just because it says "science". That would be then religious beliefs you are having. Bear in mind, in the ancient times, science and religion were one subject.
I am not interested in what the popular media services saying unless they were really assisting in solving critical problems. I would be rather more interested in what each individual as a person thinks on the issues with his / her own mind. I believe that is the philosophical methodology and principle.
There is nothing that you can do for you anymore if you don't want to read the articles published on the topic.
I am done with you!
Good luck to you too. :)
I wish you a fruitful endeavor!
MoK, I don't know why my tablet would not allows me to select your full question "Don't parents of a disabled child love him/her?" It is because they love their child that they can overlook their child's (outer and inner) deformity and see the intrinsic beauty and goodness of their child.
Don't you think that the parents believe that their child is disable yet they love him/her?
Yes. I think that the parents can love their child even though they believe that their child is disable. The parents see their child through their "minds eyes" which overlooks deformity and sees the intrinsic beauty and goodness of their child.
My point was the love of parents for their children is not affected by whether their children are ugly or disable. A disable child is disable and cannot look in the eyes of parents otherwise.
Your point is partly true, but it is not the complete truth. The intrinsic love of parents for their children is not affected by whether their children are ugly or disabled because loving parents see their children through their "minds eyes" which overlook their children`s disability and sees only the intrinsic beauty of their children. If the parents were not able to look past their children`s extrinsic ugliness or disability, then they only love their children`s extrinsic beauty and not their intrinsic beauty and goodness.