Objectivity of Beauty

[jawdirk]

We should distinguish between “objective” in the scientific sense, and the philosophical sense. In the scientific sense, it merely means observable, with some small margin of error. Varlos V defines it in the philosophical sense, which is not really applicable to the OP (post-clarification).

The question is, why do people agree (as scientifically measured) on what is beautiful?

The answer is that it is evolutionarily beneficial to be discriminating – you must discriminate in mate selection, food selection, etc.

The side effect to being disposed to discriminate is that this creates a feedback mechanism. Preference itself is selected for, and at the same time, what is preferred is selected for. Sometimes, the preferences truly matter. For example, all the antelopes mate with the strongest buck. Sometimes the preferences don’t matter at all. For example, there are thousands of variations in coloring among coral reef fish; any specific coloration works as long as it distinguishes the fish. But the key trait is to have the ability to prefer.

When a species has the ability to choose based on a preference, then it can evolve quickly. With successive generations, any genetically possible trait that the species can imagine can evolve. Again, sometimes the preference ends up being crucial to survival, and other times, the ability to prefer essentially “treads water” producing arbitrary evolution.

Human beings recognize what is beautiful, in the same way that we recognize what is red, blue or green. Everyone can do it to some degree unless they are crippled. However, some humans have an exceptionally refined sense of what is beautiful, and this is called taste. If what they prefer ends up being evolutionarily beneficial, then that sense of taste is selected for. If it doesn’t, then it dies out. There is no reason why there can’t be various competing/cooperating tastes in one population. The balance is that if you are too discriminating, you won’t make a crucial selection (such as a mate). However, if you are just discriminating enough, and about the right thing, then your survival improves.

But without some basic notion of beauty, your offspring are doomed to stagnate, and that is why we all have it.

[ambushed]

@lissener

And ambushed, I’ve read most of those titles, and I can’t see how they’re even relevant to this discussion, much less probative.

Your statement frankly astonishes me! Wow!

How could you not understand that all of those works – whether they explicitly describe in so many words the fundamental universality of the human sense of beauty/aesthetics or not – established beyond all reasonable doubt that there exists a fundamentally universal (i.e., species intersubjective) Human Nature? And that this fundamentally universal/fundamentally non-subjective Human Nature must by definition include our sense of beauty/aesthetics? That our tastes in this arena are thus extremely far from subjective? (which does not imply that they’re 100% universal, of course).

You really need to re-read those books, since you clearly missed their main thesis! Wow!

Here’s a good, if very basic, summary sentence: "Further, Professors Leda [Cosmides] and John Tooby state, “the basic premise behind this new evolutionary theory is that all humans share certain views and assumptions about nature of the world and human action by virtue of evolved, universal, internal cognitive programs. Concepts such as friendship and beauty are not cultural inventions, but are universal themes expressed by the human mind upon culture.”

– The Evolution Channel

[ambushed]

@VarlosZ

ambushed, I think you’re misunderstanding what is generally meant by the statement, “beauty is subjective.”

I’m afraid I can’t agree. What people mean by any statement of the form “X is subjective” is that “X” is effectively infinitely variable. It is arbitrary. It means that there is no fundamental commonality, no universality at all. Thus the statement “beauty is subjective” is a falsehood, even if it is a widely believed falsehood.

@VarlosZ

I’d agree with the above statements, but they simply don’t speak to the universality of beauty.

But we’re not talking about the “universality of beauty”, per se. We’re talking about the universality of the human sense of what is beautiful! And those words of mine you quote speak precisely to the universality of the human sense of beauty. Even the dictionary defines “universality” as: “universal inclusiveness in scope or range”. Here are my words again:

Sure, culture plays a large role in influencing precisely what a given individual finds beautiful, but these come as fairly minor variations (even if they can seem huge) on top of the human evolutionary baseline.

Universality in the human sense of beauty does not mean or even imply that every human being finds exactly the same things beautiful, but rather that there is an extremely strong similarity among all sane humans as to what is considered beautiful, and from an objective view there are extremely narrow limits to what all sane humans find beautiful. The scientific evidence from evolutionary psychology and related fields demonstrate beyond reasonable doubt that the human sense of beauty is very, very far from subjective.

@VarlosZ

Surely there is at least some divergence among individuals regarding genetic predispositions to judgements about beauty.

Is that not just what I’ve said here and in my previous posts?

@VarlosZ

Further, even if we were to posit complete gentic uniformity among humans in this regard…

(which is something no one here has ever claimed)

@VarlosZ

…in seems arbitrary to limit ourselves to considerations of human predispositions.

What?? Over and over I’ve specified (and I quote myself here) the “human sense of beauty”. There’s nothing “arbitrary” involved in humans talking only of human tastes, especially when we’ve made it abundantly clear that we’re only talking about humans! You can start some other thread to talk about the Neptunian or bacterial sense of beauty if you like, but here we’re only talking about humans here.

@VarlosZ

Animals may not experience the world in the same way that we do, but assuming with any degree of certainty that they do not have their own sense of beauty is foolish.

Perhaps, but assuming they do – and that they’re relevant here – is downright silly!

@VarlosZ

If judgement about a thing’s beauty varies from person to person and species to species – as it clearly does – then I don’t think we can say with any confidence that the thing is inherently beautiful, and that is what is generally meant by objective beauty.

No, it isn’t! Furthermore, we’re not talking about “inherent” or “implicit” beauty, which strikes me as a nonsensical, metaphysical notion. No, we’re talking about the human sense of beauty and what is beautiful.

@VarlosZ

I know you meant no offense, but this statement lends itself (rather strongly) to accusations of arrogance. I’d suggest being more circumspect in the future.

Forgive me if I offended you, but again I can’t agree with your premise. If I had said that the subjectivists here were unschooled, that would be offensive and arrogant. But I didn’t say any such thing. I said they were unschooled on the scientific facts of the human sense of beauty as revealed by the recent findings of evolutionary psychology. What can possibly be offensive and arrogant about telling people who voice mistaken ideas about a subject they’re unfamiliar with, say, the physics of Einstein-Bose condensates, that they’re unschooled in the physics of Einstein-Bose condensates?

[HardlyHuman]

Truth, goodness, and beauty form a triad of terms, which have been discussed together throughout the tradition of western thought. They have been called “transcendental” on the ground that everyting which is is in some measure or manner subject to denomination aas true or false, good or evil, beautiful or ugly. But they have also been assigned to special spheres of being or subject matter- the true to thought and logic, the good to action and morals, the beautiful to ejoyment and aesthetics.

They have been called the “three fundamental values” with the implication that the worth of anything can be exhaustively judged by reference to these three standards and no others. But other terms, such as pleasure or utility, have been proposed, either as additional values or as significant variants of the so-called fundamental three; or even sometimes as more fundamental. Pleasure or utility, for example, has been held by men like Spinoza or Mill to be the ultimate criterion of beauty or goodness.
Truth, goodness, and beauty, singly and together, have been the focus of the age-old controversy concerning the absolute and the relative, the objective and the subjective, the universal and the individual. At certain times it has been thought that the distinction of true from false, good from evil, beautiful from ugly, has its basis and warranty in the very nature of things, and that a mans judgment of these matters is measured for its soundness or accuracy by its conformity to fact. At other times the opposite position has been dominant. One meaning of the ancient saying that man in the measure of all things applies particularly to the true, good and beautiful. Man measure truth, goodness, and beauty by the effect things have upon him, according to what they seem to him to be. What seems good to one man may seem evil to another. What seems ugly or false may also seem beautiful or true, to different men or to the same man at different times.