The 'Ethics and Esthetics' Thread

[Shucks]

So, here, without further ado, is a thread in which to discuss all things related to ethics, morality, goodness, beauty, originality and conversely all things ugly, bad and evil (like fake rick leathers, murder and taxes) as well.

Starting it off with a post by casem83 on the subjectivity of beauty and my reply. Feel free to move other broadly relevant posts to this thread and then add whatever.

Can't we just agree that meaning is constructed from a social context (discursive formations, yo!) so of course nothing can be truly objective in that it can contain an inherent meaning that will be read similarly across cultures, time, space etc. Yet knowing this, understand that if we are to have any meaningful debate we must agree upon some shared meanings even for something as intangible as beauty. SZ is it's own community with a set of shared meanings and to waltz in and not recognize the context within which you are arguing is to bang your head against a wall. Resorting to "well everything is subjective" is a pretty unimaginative way of ending an argument you are losing.
(I'm so tired of Mr(s). Everything-is-subjective giving post-modernism a bad name, clearly I'm not on the side of Faust's modernist avenger )

Zamb, I'm not sure even murder is as clear cut as you make it. Our society sanctions murder by the state (death penalty) so even whether murder is good or bad seems to change depending on the time and place.

^this is similar to the short ethics discussion/rant i had in the curiouos and unusual gift ideas thread, so i'll borrow some more arguments from boyd and throw them in here:

even if there are all sorts of different perspectives on goodness and beauty, i'd say there are a few quite interesting arguments why we should be moral realists (i.e. arguments why there may be universal truths for goodness, beauty...).

first of all, the theory of a universal beauty helps us in practice. it seems to work quite well. even if we as of yet do not have the tools to define it exactly, we can have an 'approximate' understanding of beauty (just as for the concept of 'porn', which i said earlier ).

our experiments in creating beauty on SZ seem to work well - we seem to get quite successful results when we treat beauty as an objective truth. i believe this is supported by the notion that just because we cannot measure something, it does not mean it does not exist (the theories of germs and electrons were developed and applied successfully before we could measure and prove them. both theories are now pretty much accepted by all as scientific reality...). applying the theory of an objective beauty seems on SZ to be more successful in practice than applying theory of the opposite (i.e. 'there is no universal beauty'), and it makes sense to say that this is so because the theory of an objective beauty approximates the truth more than the opposite theory does.

in fact, the more we keep applying the theory of an objective form of beauty in our experiments, the more accurate and successful these experiments become and hence also the closer we seem to get to being able to measure/understand beauty accurately or at least near-approximately.

and (although this last point doesn't prove that beauty is objective), accepting the theory of an objective beauty gives meaning to our experiments here. otherwise, why even bother posting in [the WAYWT] thread?

[michael_kard]

The WAYWT doesnot indicate that there is an uniform understanding/link between between members as different outfits are criticized in different ways by different people who have different tastes. And this difference in taste and the concept of what's beautiful among people suggest that beauty is subjective (imo). Yes, there are similarities as Merz pointed out, and that's because humans are very much similar to each other.

Beyond that, I find your scientific perspective inherently problematic, as fashion cannot satisfy positivist criteria. What experiments are you talking about?

[Shucks]

The WAYWT doesnot indicate that there is an uniform understanding/link between between members as different outfits are criticized in different ways by different people who have different tastes. And this difference in taste and the concept of what's beautiful among people suggest that beauty is subjective (imo). Yes, there are similarities as Merz pointed out, and that's because humans are very much similar to each other.

Beyond that, I find your scientific perspective inherently problematic, as fashion cannot satisfy positivist criteria. What experiments are you talking about?

our experiments in trying to attain an expression of beauty. take a small example: the HOF can be argued to represent a certain shared understanding of 'beauty' (it is at least a sign that we are striving to attain it...). the theory that objective beauty may exist explains the phenomenon of a HOF thread more than a theory that 'all beauty is subjective'. we may not as individuals or a community (or even species) be at a point where we can measure beauty objectively yet, but that does not mean that it does not exist...

[Shucks]

taking the liberty of quoting some more interesting posts from the waywt thread, to get this thread off to a good start:

Originally Posted by zamb
One man might find something gross, while another find the same thing beautiful, but that doesn't change the definition (objective properties) of beauty. The difference between the two individual is that they have a different perspective, but what about the thing itself, outside of each mans perspective, does its qualities or properties change?

I feel this makes more sense than what we were approaching before, but I still fail to see how beauty is an objective value, as opposed to a sociocultural one? And I don't mean what specifically is beautiful, rather the concept of beauty itself being a distinctly human thing. I don't think that any certain thing has the property of beauty. I think that's more of an individual synthesis based on the perceived object, no? Closer to linguistics than to ontology... It's like saying that "The Good" exists in reality in my opinion.

But indeed, good does exist in reality, our conception of these things, is a recognition of things that exist, whether we perceive them or not.
A lack of perception, or articulation of a concept does not mean the nonexistence of the thing, it means a failure of the human mind to grasp the concept or to verbalize and communicate in a way that others can understand.

take for example a child, even before the child knows how to communicate verbally, if you treat the child with love and care it knows, of you hurt the child it knows.............therein is an example of an instinctual understanding of "goodness" before the mind of the child is able to grasp or verbally communicate anything.

The sociocultural aspect of beauty is how we are educated to perceive different things as being beautiful at different times, but that doesn't dismiss beauty itself.........the concept is objectively constant and cannot be altered, Our perception might be different over time.
Beauty exist independent of our appreciation of it, and isn't or shouldn't be limited to things visual.
There is such a thing as a "beautiful act"..............It is beautiful actions, why an ugly man like me can have a pretty wife without being rich , cause my treatment of her is immensely attractive and desirable, which are the traits of beauty................

It is rather interesting to me though, that those in the camp of no objective reality, easily adjusts this perspective when it is necessary or convenient.

I would love to see the "subjectivists" walk out in the street when a truck is coming and say, well, "death is really subjective, so I'm not really gonna die if I'm hit by this truck at 85m/ hr"...............

Originally Posted by zamb
The sociocultural aspect of beauty is how we are educated to perceive different things as being beautiful at different times, but that doesn't dismiss beauty itself.........the concept is objectively constant and cannot be altered, Our perception might be different over time.

This is absolutely true, and I fully agree with you, however, I'm seeing this from a post human view, as I said,

Originally Posted by BeauIXI
I don't mean what specifically is beautiful, rather the concept of beauty itself being a distinctly human thing.

What I'm saying is that beauty as something existing outside of human reality either doesn't exist, or if it does, it doesn't look like anything we would perceive as beautiful on a fashion forum, you know? It's not about aestheticism, it's about an ontological, universal existence of the pure concept (not subjective conception, but the most basic understanding) of beauty.

Originally Posted by zamb
I would love to see the "subjectivists" walk out in the street when a truck is coming and say, well, "death is really subjective, so I'm not really gonna die if I'm hit by this truck at 85m/ hr"...............

I feel that death and beauty occupy two different planes of properties. Nonexistence at a certain point in timespace and beauty are of differing magnitudes, I would say.

[gavagai]

this could get pretty interesting.

The very idea that there are forms (things existing in and of themselves) that are as they are independent of human experience that have qualities or exhibit the "form" of Beauty seems obsurd to me. We as humans ascribe properties to "things." I suppose we could argue over whether physic or pure mathematics are necessarilly true, but beauty cerainly seems completely reliant upon society/region.

I'll have moe to say but I'm at work so i'll keep this short (none of the above should be considered as anything more than a half-assed opinion at this point

[zamb]

this could get pretty interesting.

The very idea that there are forms (things existing in and of themselves) that are as they are independent of human experience that have qualities or exhibit the "form" of Beauty seems obsurd to me. We as humans ascribe properties to "things." I suppose we could argue over whether physic or pure mathematics are necessarilly true, but beauty cerainly seems completely reliant upon society/region.

I'll have moe to say but I'm at work so i'll keep this short (none of the above should be considered as anything more than a half-assed opinion at this point

[genevieveryoko]

this could get pretty interesting.

The very idea that there are forms (things existing in and of themselves) that are as they are independent of human experience that have qualities or exhibit the "form" of Beauty seems obsurd to me. We as humans ascribe properties to "things." I suppose we could argue over whether physic or pure mathematics are necessarilly true, but beauty cerainly seems completely reliant upon society/region.

I'll have moe to say but I'm at work so i'll keep this short (none of the above should be considered as anything more than a half-assed opinion at this point

even animals have been recorded to show elevated levels of mood-enhancing neurotransmitters when watching a beautiful sunset

[Servo2000]

I'm not sure what your anecdote is supposed to prove but vision itself seems as much a social construct as anything else. I think if you're looking for some relationship between the natural world and inherent standards of beauty it would be good to start by looking at what different cultures consider valuable in their gardens or landscape images.

[BeauIXI]

Furthermore, those neurotransmitters we observe in animals are just the same ones we find in ourselves. Science is not infallible. It can be just as anthropocentric as anything else. I wouldn't call this proof of an objective beauty, rather that the same feelings we felt eight thousand years ago have "recently" (speaking biologically) become signified by the concept of beauty. It seems like a chicken or the egg question now, but if you're taking a scientific view, it ought to be the neurotransmitter that's the original signifier of what [advanced?] life perceives as beauty. The secondary level of signification is the linguistic concept of beauty, the tertiary is the particular societal criteria of what makes beauty, and the quaternary is up to the individual.

[michael_kard]

/\ Interesting point about what remains the same over time;

The most advanced archaeological theories claim that people would inhabit areas for completely different reasons than ours, and that what they considered real in a landscape was different to what we consider real now. In fact, looking at the past on our terms is generally disapproved. The neurotransmitters you're referring to probably exist, but they react to different things over time.

Take for example the oldest statues from the cyclades from around 3500 BC - they all look like obese women. Why? That was the idea of beauty in an area where people had to hunt for hours everyday to survive and the only source of water was small springs and rain.

/thread derail

[Faust]

I would like Macro to develop his idea of "beauty is entirely subjective" in this thread. Before I argue, I want to know what it is I am arguing against. Otherwise, my previous argument stands - "beauty is subjective" (as well as "you don't understand") is used by artists to defend their bad art.

[Johnny]

This is interesting to me. I don't have the right background knowledge or vocabulary for this sort of discussion at a particular level, but my thoughts on it are that the notion of beauty is a signifier for certain other more empirically demonstrable qualities or attributes. In other words it's what "we" (by which I mean probably most people or a common set of a number of people) call something when it exhibits certain characteristics. The things I'm thinking of are such things as proportion, symmetry, complexity, balance, functionality, or a combination of these. Those things can have some kind of objectivity attributed to them. However even those things can change due to subjective elements, perhaps set by a particular group's sociological norms or propensities (like the relatively rotund female beauties of Renaissance art). There's definitely more to it than this, but just some random thinking anyway.
What I can't see making any sense, outside of a religious context, is a notion of absolute beauty that can be accepted by everyone, because, well, there isn't.
One other thing, There is an arrogance in bandying around the notion of beauty since it appeals to the idea that the person making the identification has the qualities to be able to spot it. Does it really matter. It’s not the only thing that can make something appealing – more rational ideas like functionality or ability to enhance wellbeing seem like better starting points, and less open to abuse.

[genevieveryoko]

Furthermore, those neurotransmitters we observe in animals are just the same ones we find in ourselves.

so...?

[beardown]

I think bad taste and mediocrity are such epidemics that I don't consider much of what the universal truth is in terms of beauty anymore.

Most things created today are done so with mass consumption in mind, popular culture and that kind of thing and it bends to meet the lowest common denominator. I'm saying as opposed to earlier eras where art was created as an expression of religion or solely for the sake of expression. Honestly I don't feel like we see that much and as a result, we have ended up with houses and closets full of mediocre shit.

I'm not a big Banksy fan but I like this quote:

"The thing I hate the most about advertising is that it attracts all the bright, creative and ambitious young people, leaving us mainly with the slow and self-obsessed to become our artists. Modern art is a disaster area. Never in the field of human history has so much been used by so many to say so little."

It's a good point. If you're really looking for true beauty in modern culture, you almost have to venture into the sublime... beauty that is timeless, unmolested, untainted..and that's most commonly found in nature more than in something being produced these days.

I also like this Ira Glass quote:

"Basically, anything that anyone makes… It’s like a law of nature, a law of aerodynamics, that anything that’s written or anything that’s created wants to be mediocre. The natural state of all writing is mediocrity. It’s all tending toward mediocrity in the same way that all atoms are sort of dissipating out toward the expanse of the universe. Everything wants to be mediocre, so what it takes to make anything more than mediocre is such a fucking act of will. Anyone who makes something for a living, or even not for a living, if they’re really excited about it… You just have to exert so much will into something for it to be good."

And I simply think that as society has moved forward, we've lost a lot of what once made artists and designers who make things of brilliance and real beauty.

In terms of critique, the internet has made everyone a critic because everyone has a voice as loud as the next person. The guy who has never studied the history of garments, fashion or clothing can speak as loudly as the person who has dedicated a lifetime to it and as a result, we end up with distorted views unless you can filter out the bullshit.

It happens within politics more than anything but it also happens within art and fashion and design and literature and film. Since everyone is a critic, nobody can really be a critic. You are just either qualified to discuss something or you're not. Personally, I don't give two shits for random opinions anymore because it's like static to me. But if I stumble onto someone who knows what the fuck they're talking about, I really enjoy being exposed to information that way.

I think one of the most underrated statements when it comes to online discussion is, 'you don't know what the fuck you're talking about.'

Because, let's face it: Most people do not. But that doesn't stop them from blathering on ad nauseam.

You know...like me right now.

The bottom line I suppose is that if something moves you...really moves you in a visceral way that you respond to emotionally outside of the context of consumerism and labels, it obviously has some meaning to you. I guess the question is whether or not humans are still capable of being moved anymore by something visual. With the way people are inundated with images and visuals...I'm not sure the average person is capable of viscerally connecting with something only by its appearance.

I'm honestly not sure if that's an option for the average person anymore.

That may sound pretentious but it's not...it's just a reality of what modern culture has created where most things are created for convenience over aesthetic. I don't believe anyone can argue that we don't live in a world that's suffering from serious apathy and the bottom line is that I don't think you can be apathetic and still really feel beauty. I'd be more inclined to say that someone who chooses utility over aesthetic would open to beauty.

But I'm of the opinion that you find very little beauty in a culture ruled by apathy and convenience.


ps: I'm drunk again.

[BeauIXI]

Keep drinking, friend. Makes sense to me. A prof of mine cried the other day while speaking about Rembrandt's Christ. It's haunted me since.