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Re:Universal theories of beauty 2 Years ago
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YadaYada wrote:
Why would you need to ask what is beautiful, why wouldn't you just know?
That is the whole problem, I don´t know what is beautiful in the "hard-wired" sense and what is cultural or personal taste, although I have some pretty strong convictions. I am pretty sure the beauty of a cathedral, a sunset or Angelina Jolie is hard-wired, while beauty in minimalist art and architecture, postmodern weirdness etc is cultural.
f.eg: I find Kalashnikovs AK-47 beautiful. It is a very simple, yet powerful weapon, robust, easy to use, easy to produce, cheap, it fulfils all of the criteria for a great design. But I am pretty sure it is not beautiful in the original sense, the sense independent of culture and time period. And if a human right activists finds the rifle terribly ugly, I have no problems understanding that. If this person, on the other hand, finds Angelina Jolie, Canterbury Cathedral or northern lights ugly, I would be very surprised, and assume there are specific cultural or personal reasons for this view.
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Re:Universal theories of beauty 2 Years ago
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Szavieur wrote:
Partly based on Kant as well as my own reflections, it recently came into my head that people experience something as beautiful when they feel/think of it as harmonizing with them. Inasmuch as people's personalities differ, this explains the relativity but also the objectivity of beauty. And if something could be identified as harmonizing with human nature in general, we could show that it was universally beautiful.
Does any of this sound relevant to your interests, PaleBlueDot?
The problem with this theory (on the face of it) is that I cant think of any predictions it makes. There is no way to test it, and it is too vague to really understand. How can you falsify such a theory?
The idea that we have beauty hard-wired into us, based on what would be an evolutionary advantage to enjoy, and culture can distort art to become out of touch with our nature makes predictions that can at least in theory be tested. You would, for example, present photographs of different motifs, faces, buildings, landscapes to a lot of people across cultures (or infants, before culture gets them), and expect certain patterns. Landscapes that are very inhabitable would be preferred over desert scenes, young-and-clean-symmetrical-healthy "mating-worthy" faces would be preferred over the opposite, and cathedrals would maybe be preferred over Wall-Marts.
Some such experiments has already been carried out, and it turns out people, and especially infants prefer green landscapes over desert scenes.
The point is, the theory is testable, and not all results would necessarily confirm it, although I can easily point out flaws in the example I used. Bias from scientists could have a huge impact on the results. But I think this is a very interesting direction.
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Re:Universal theories of beauty 2 Years ago
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PaleBlueDot wrote:
The problem with this theory (on the face of it) is that I cant think of any predictions it makes. There is no way to test it, and it is too vague to really understand. How can you falsify such a theory?
It wasn't a theory in that sense, more like a conceptual analysis of our experience of beauty. But it could be adapted to the epistemology of falsification, maybe, by checking to see if when people regard something as harmonizing with them, do they also regard it as beautiful?
The idea that we have beauty hard-wired into us, based on what would be an evolutionary advantage to enjoy, and culture can distort art to become out of touch with our nature makes predictions that can at least in theory be tested. You would, for example, present photographs of different motifs, faces, buildings, landscapes to a lot of people across cultures (or infants, before culture gets them), and expect certain patterns. Landscapes that are very inhabitable would be preferred over desert scenes, young-and-clean-symmetrical-healthy "mating-worthy" faces would be preferred over the opposite, and cathedrals would maybe be preferred over Wall-Marts.
Some such experiments has already been carried out, and it turns out people, and especially infants prefer green landscapes over desert scenes.
The point is, the theory is testable, and not all results would necessarily confirm it, although I can easily point out flaws in the example I used. Bias from scientists could have a huge impact on the results. But I think this is a very interesting direction.
One question I'd raise, here, is whether something is truly(?) beautiful because it's been hard-wired into us to think that it is. Now you might say, "It's not about what I think, it's the feeling/similar experience I get from looking at this beautiful thing." But that experience is roughly the same even for the cases you'd describe as biased by culture or something. But then why are hard-wired feelings truer(?) than culturally affected ones?
On the other hand, maybe it's not so much a question of true beauty that you're asking?
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Re:Universal theories of beauty 2 Years ago
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PaleBlueDot wrote:
Motorcyclist wrote:
Pale Blue Dot, I think you are largely right on modern art, where an experimentalism replaced universals. It's cultural and parochial. I think something can be art once, but it's a lot less enduring than the patterns that drive consensus on beauty.
I would appreciate you expanding on why you don't care what Nietzsche thinks about art. Thanks
I don´t know what Nietzsche wrote about art, I just naturally assume it is not worth attention. In my experience, philosophers older than 100 years are pretty much either wrong, or they teaching are common sense. But if you think his views on art are interesting in this context, I would be very happy to hear about it.
Adrian, no malice intended, but you are assuming wrong on a number of levels. Yes, Nietzsche did write about art! In my view, Nietzsche is a prerequisite for any discussion about aesthetics (beginning with the Birth of Tragedy). You should seriously check it out. For Nietzsche, art was the ultimate expression of the human spirit. Second, older philosophers are frequently far more interesting - and particularly relevant for your apparent interest(ancient Greeks, turn of the 19th century)
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Re:Universal theories of beauty 2 Years ago
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Szavieur wrote:
One question I'd raise, here, is whether something is truly(?) beautiful because it's been hard-wired into us to think that it is. Now you might say, "It's not about what I think, it's the feeling/similar experience I get from looking at this beautiful thing." But that experience is roughly the same even for the cases you'd describe as biased by culture or something. But then why are hard-wired feelings truer(?) than culturally affected ones?
On the other hand, maybe it's not so much a question of true beauty that you're asking?
I don´t mean to say that the hard-wired sense of beauty is any truer, deeper, more meaningful or better than the cultural one. You might get just as much pleasure from a picture by Mondrian as a national romantic painting. However, I think the latter is much less affected by culture, more universally beautiful. I suspect that a stone age man, a baby and an indigenous Indian in Brazil all would prefer the latter. In art, this is not a huge issue, art is easy to replace if fashion or taste changes. In architecture, however, the culturally determined fashioned might sweep across the profession, and only affect a small elite group, say architects and their peers. In this case, you get modernist disasters such as Cabrini Green. When starting my studies, I used to feel upset when people such as my parents looked at awesomely modern, simple, cool architecture with flat roof and fancy windows, and say "its ugly". Then they would look at a boring, old-fashioned, over-decorated temple and say its beautiful. Now however, I have a lot of sympathy with their views.
The second reason why this interests me is out of pure, scientific curiosity.
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Re:Universal theories of beauty 2 Years ago
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Motorcyclist wrote:
PaleBlueDot wrote:
Adrian, no malice intended, but you are assuming wrong on a number of levels. Yes, Nietzsche did write about art! In my view, Nietzsche is a prerequisite for any discussion about aesthetics (beginning with the Birth of Tragedy). You should seriously check it out. For Nietzsche, art was the ultimate expression of the human spirit. Second, older philosophers are frequently far more interesting - and particularly relevant for your apparent interest(ancient Greeks, turn of the 19th century)
I am not surprised that Nietzsche wrote about art, but I would be surprised if his views are very enlightening, although this is fully possible.
My experience from my lessons in philosophy is that the older the philosopher, the less likely am I to agree with him/find his views relevant/learn something new. This is not to say ancient philosophers are stupid, but what they got right, the world now takes for granted. Besides, the world has moved on a lot since. Learning psychology, politics or evolutionary theory by reading Freud, Jung, Marx and Darwin is at best historically interesting. Their theories have been improved, rejected, adjusted etc many times. That is why I by default find it a lot more interesting to hear a modern view on the subject. What Wittgenstein taught us about language is great, but id rather learn by listening to Noam Chomsky or Steven Pinker. That is not to say reading Darwin is a waste of time, his masterpiece is well written and almost funny at times, but for the purpose of learning the subject, I would much rather read Gould or Dawkins.
One other reason why I prefer modern writers, is that they have been through the lessons of Popper. You could write any theory about anything, and it would fit perfectly every observation you make, as long as it is vague enough, if you add some ad-hoc ideas or don't attempt to make it testable, falsifiable.
But again, it may well be true that Nietzsche was awesome and had great theories about art, which could make accurate predictions and had a lot of explanatory power.
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