humanities.philosophy.objectivism

On Thu, 03 Apr 2008 06:07:20 -0700, David Schwartz
wrote:

>On Apr 3, 5:55 am, Malrassic Park wrote:
>
>> > Once you have standards for beauty,
>
>> This is a singular expression, and it states that standards
>> for beauty are acquired somehow by the individual.
>
>Right. And obviously we don't yet have the technical knowledge to
>answer that in the degree of detail you might like. People see things,
>and if that triggers a certain chain of events, that thing is
>beautiful to them. If not, not. It's the same with "harmful".
>
>The result is an effect of the interaction of their construction with
>the construction of the thing that may be beautiful. It's an objective
>process, but not one we completely understand.

In my vast experience with Objectivism spanning decades, I have
come to equate its use of the term "objective" with "scientific," at
least in many of its contexts. Your explanation above was crudely
general (as with crude oil, it is unrefined), but it appears to be
mostly psychological - thus "scientific" - thus "objective." It is an
example of how Objectivism tries to base the philosophical in the
scientific, without however getting around to mention any particular
scientific studies. Thus they are assertions.

So in response to your assertions, all I need to say is the following:

1. I agree that "people see things."

2. I don't know that this seeing "triggers a certain chain of events,"
especially in the absence of any kind of scientific studies to
establish this. It is an assumption.

3. I agree that "the thing is beautiful to them," sometimes anyway.

4. I disagree that not-beautiful is the same as harmful, because the
antonym for "beautiful" is "ugly." I suppose one could say that the
ugliness harms one's aesthetic sensibilities to a degree, although I'm
not sure how.

5. I don't know what "the construction of the thing" means. But if
you're saying that the mind contributes something (a priori) to the
aesthetic experience, isn't that a Kantian idea?

>> > It's like asking if hemlock would still be poisonous to men if there
>> > were no men. Clearly it would still be "poisonous to man" in the sense
>> > that if you had a mean, it would kill them. But it wouldn't be
>> > "poisonous to man" in the sense that it could actually case a man
>> > harm, since there are no men to harm.
..
>> That argument was in the plural. It assumes by some analogy that
>> the standards set by one man are the standards for all men.
..
>Well, hemlock is poisonous to all men, as far as I know. Perhaps
>someone might consume an antidote and at least for some period of time
>hemlock might not be poisonous to them.
..
>Hemlock is poisonous to someone if, should they be exposed to hemlock,
>they would suffer deleterious affects. The same is true of beauty --
>something is beautiful to someone if, should they be exposed to it,
>certain specific events (that we do not completely understand) take
>place. We don't currently understand these processes well enough to
>measure or confirm them, but it is quite likely that we will some day.

I've heard that kind of thing before. "Wait for the science." Well,
I'm still waiting......

>Beauty is like "appearing blue" in the days before we understood color
>as relating to frequencies of light. We know some things appear blue
>to most people and some thing don't and assume that something about
>the way those things interact with those people results in them
>appearing blue.

That's yet another analogy, like the hemlock one.

Let's just say that hemlock is poisonous to everybody (antidotes don't
matter in this), and so everybody would agree that, on a personal
level, hemlock is poisonous. But not everybody agrees, on a personal
level, on the standards for beauty.

Yet everybody does agree on this one Kantian observation: that
what one person feels to be beautiful is concomitantly *thought* to
be beautiful, this latter becomes an objectifying principle set
a posteriori to the experience, through reflection, but the standard
is imposed by the aesthetic feeling. And, if it is objective, then
shouldn't everybody agree with that principle, that feeling, or that
aesthetic judgment of beauty? If objective, then why shouldn't
everybody feel the same way about the beautiful object? Or is this a
question to be answered, "some day," when someone gets around to
deconstructing the aesthetic experiences in the brains of living
subjects?

>> > Removing men from the equation removes the standards, which sort of
>> > does and sort of does not eliminate the ability of things to meet
>> > those standards.
..
>> It's unclear from your hemlock example if you're saying that every
>> man has different or the same standards for beauty.
..
>Different with some similarities.

That's a vague response. But obviously, the standards for beauty are
imposed by the aesthetic feeling which is in the subject, not in the
object. The poison, on the other hand, is in the object (the hemlock)
- the fact that there are required living subjects with a certain
physiology that can be poisoned by it is obvious and irrelevant. So,
we can all agree on the poisonous object, which in this case is
hemlock, because it makes us all feel very bad when ingested. But
nobody can seem to get together on what makes for a beautiful object.
The only thing, or event, people seem to have in common in this is the
aesthetic feeling itself, which is the pleasure derived from
contemplating the object of beauty, whatever it may happen to be for
any particular individual.

But all is not lost, i.e., subjective.

In the act of aesthetic appreciation there is a certain intellectual
category involved - intellectual, thus objective - which is this: the
viewing subject approaches the object from the standpoint of a certain
indifference, in that the aesthetic experience *draws us out of our
personal, subjective perspectives* and places it purely in the service
of the contemplation of the object. The object of beauty seems to
demand our contemplation and our fullest aesthetic appreciation which
is more feeling than thought; and furthermore, it seems to demand the
objective judgment that it IS beautiful rather than merely appearing
beautiful in the subjective sense, for this or that person. And in
this regard, the beautiful object also seems to demand a certain
inter-subjectivity, in that what is beautiful for one person must be
deemed beautiful for all people who contemplate it.

That is not to say that the beauty of the object is intrinsic to the
object, but it is intrinsic to the experience which involves both
subject and object, although the subject has for the moment
become indifferent to his own subjectivity. And I disagree that it is
objective simply because it is neither intrinsic nor subjective but,
somehow, "both." It is objective because of the attitude of
indifference toward our own personal perspectives, our subjectivity,
because the beautiful object seems to draw us "out of ourselves," so
to speak. To put it more generally, or let's say, more romantically,
the contemplation of the beautiful object puts us in touch with a
deeper part of ourselves expressed through the purity of the feeling
upon which is based the thought, the judgment, and the reflection that
the object is beautiful.

>> But before that there's the problem of how those standards are acquired in
>> the first place.
>
>The standards are simply potentials. Nothing special is needed to
>acquire them. Nothing special need be done for hemlock to be harmful
>to me -- it just means that if I ingest hemlock I will suffer a
>deleterious result. It does not require me to ever go near hemlock.
>
>What must a person do such that the sky would appear blue to them if
>they looked at it?

I would certainly agree that nothing special is required in the
acquisition of aesthetic standards, nothing, that is, in respect of
something like a special genius or higher capacity for aesthetic
experience. You can however see this tendency in certain social
groups, where it has to do with the refinement I wrote about earlier
in this post, although in this case it is aesthetic and not
intellectual refinement. These types come to think that they have a
certain higher potential for aesthetic contemplation then the common
run of humanity. And I would agree that Objectivism tries to get away
from this kind of snobbishness; however, in the long run, it bears
many aspects of elitism. See, for example, the Objectivist forum (or
"meta-blog") I have come to call OhOh.net, and the rigid, overly high,
and ultimately self-defeating standards the admin has set as posting
rules there.

--
How was chirch this morning? - Michael Gordge