MIDWEST STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY, XVI (1991)

Ex: The fact that we say things like “Peaches are delicious.” does NOT prove that there must be a property of "deliciousness." It might merely be that the sentence "Peaches are delicious." is the linguistic equivalent of "Mmm, peaches!" If so the "delicious" doe not name a predicate/property; it merely exists as a linguistic device for expressing emotively.

Similarly, from the sentence “She danced a waltz.” we might presume that there exists such a “thing” as a waltz. (It uses a transitive verb which takes “waltz” as its direct object.) However, we express the same meaning with the sentence: “She waltzed.” This is an intransitive verb, has no direct object and thus does not commit us to the existence of “waltzes.”

Do aesthetic predicates designate “objective properties?” Or are they merely emotive devises? (e.g. “That painting is beautiful.” = “Yeah that painting!”)

Zemach argues: Yes, aesthetic properties are real, objective, mind-independent properties.

Five Arguments In Brief

A subjectivist account of aesthetic predicates cannot explain actual linguistic behavior.
Empiricist arguments show that we detect aesthetic properties in standard, objective ways; therefore we have to acknowledge their empirical reality. (Via Standard Observation Conditions - SOCs)
Arguments based on scientific realism show that inferences to the "best explanation" can decide among alternative accounts of aesthetic judgements. Aesthetic Realism has more explanatory power than non-realism.
Arguments based on scientific realism presume the objectivity of aesthetic qualities such as elegance. What is considered the "best" explanation is determined by aesthetic considerations- elegance, economy, dynamic power-. Since science crucially relies on aesthetic predicates a realistic interpretation for them is mandatory.
Argument from metaphysical realism: It is inconceivable that anything could be unamenable to aesthetic evaluation. Arguments assuming only metaphysical realism show that, unlike our science, we can know that our aesthetic properties name real properties. Since things in themselves have properties, we can know that they have aesthetic properties, too.

1) Argument from Aesthetic Relativism/ Subjectivism[KH2] (RELATIVISM)

Why do people doubt aesthetic realism and embrace aesthetic relativism (subjectivism).

Aesthetic judgments differ radically.
There seems to be no socially agreed upon method of resolving such disputes.
‘gaudy’, is different from ‘triangular’ it is claimed
Phenomenalism treats “Aesthetic Properties” as mere sense-data: (subjective report)

If ‘A’ is an aesthetic predicate, to utter a sentence of the form ‘X is A’ is to say that X appears A to one.

EX: Pretty: “X is pretty.” = “X appears pretty to me.”

This leaves open the question as to whether "pretty" is a property of X (objective) or merely the perception of X (subjective).

So far so good. But…

Even on the subjective account, we must be able to explain the fact that we all seem to mean pretty much the same thing when we use the term "pretty." After all, if al call a young woman pretty and you call her ugly, I know you to have said something insulting and I to have said something complementary- postmodernism aside.

Like ‘It hurts.’ aesthetic judgments seem to refer to private experience.

“If aesthetic terms apply to private objects, then Jones has never examined anything to which Smith ascribes any aesthetic predicate and vice versa. No one can know what objects Jones calls ‘gaudy’"

If this is so, then one can never know whether Jones (or anyone else) is applying the term rightly or even consistently. Frankly, even Jones can’t know what he means since he has only his unreliable memory to know whether that private sensation that he previously names "pretty" is the same as or anything like that private sensation he now names pretty.

(This is sort of an application of Wittgenstein’s private language argument.)

But if this is really what it going on, it raises all sorts of questions:

How can one know what property Jones designates by that term?

(How can we know what he means?)

How can we know that we are talking about the same property?

(How can we know what he means??)

How can children learn to use the term ‘gaudy’ if one cannot show them any example of what this term applies to?

(How anyone ever know what anyone every means?)

This is, of course, a Wittgensteinian point. If the consequence of relativism (subjectivism) is that it makes aesthetic predicates meaningless, then relativism (subjectivism) defeats its own suggested solution.

The Defender of Aesthetic Relativism/ Subjectivism (the Anti-realist) might argue that subjective terms can be and are learned and have public shared meaning. There are three good ways to learn (understand and use) predicates attributable to internal items.

By Analogy from Common Stimuli

e.g. I know what you mean when you say "I stubbing my toe and it hurt." because I have stubbed my toe and it hurt (me).

But…

If the same stimulus may cause radically different aesthetic experiences in different people, then our use of the same aesthetic term for the same stimulus object does not indicate that we use it to convey the same meaning.

We can assume that by similar phonemes we refer to the same property only if we tend to make similar aesthetic judgments of similar objects. (most of the time). Yet relativists in aesthetics hold that they same stimulus brings about aesthetically distinct internal states in people. Thus no one can know what the others mean by any aesthetic term they use.

By Analogy from Common Reaction

I know what you mean when you say "I stubbing my toe and it hurt." Because you're holding your foot and moaning just like I hold my foot and moan when I stub my toe.

But…

(if the relativist/subjectivist is right then…t)he second way, using behavioral criteria, is also blocked, because no aesthetic predicate has a specific behavior that is typical to it. One cannot learn what ‘gaudy’ means from the way people behave with respect to objects that they see as gaudy, for there is no seeing-as-gaudy behavior.

Behavior makes sense when related to things we know; but relativism associates aesthetic reactions not with public objects but with unknowable subjective items. Had it been so, we could not make any sense of aesthetic reactions. Therefore, behavior cannot be used by relativists to make sense of our aesthetic terms.

By Analogy from Other Predicates

I know what you mean when you say you have a headache because you go on to say, "It like stubbing your toe, only in your head.

The third way, analogy from other predicates, is also closed to the relativist in aesthetics. One can learn what ‘gaudy’ means by comparison with other aesthetic predicates.

(You have already got to understand a set of analogous aesthetic predicates (via ways one or two) in order to have pre-understood predicates with which to set up the analogy. Note I might tell you that pink lies somewhere between red and white, but that will only work if your already understood "red" and "white.")

To explain aesthetic terms by non-aesthetic ones is like the proverbial explanation of colors by acoustic analogs.

Aesthetic Anti-realism Is Not True

Thus if relativism in aesthetics is correct;

Aesthetic terms can have no meaning, and
It is inexplicable how we can use them.
If there really were radical disagreement then we could not understand each other when we talk about aesthetic matters, and cannot disagree. Therefore relativism in aesthetics is self-contradictory.

To put this in the most simple terms:

If Aesthetic Anti-realism is true, we could have no understanding of what anyone means when they use aesthetic predicate (even one's self).

We DO have some understanding of what people mean when they use aesthetic predicates.

Therefore:

Aesthetic Anti-realism is not true.

There can be radical disagreement on the application of defined, non-observational, predicates; but aesthetic predicates are (relativists admit) observational, so there can be no radical disagreement about them.

2. Standard Observation Conditions

“Red,” is a property whose standard observation conditions (SOC) can be adopted by most people and require no instruments or special training.

By contrast Zemach suggests that aesthetic properties too have SOC’s but that the conditions that are standard for observing aesthetic properties involve experts[2].

“The very notion of empirical data involves SOC, for the findings of observations or measurements conducted under non standard conditions cannot be treated as data, detached from the conditions in which they were observed.”

Observational properties must always be understood to involve SOC: Some are specialized, but that is true both in and out of science.

To have empirical data at all, one needs, consciously or unconsciously to have in mind the SOC. Thus one need always to ask what observation conditions are standard.

C are SOC for a family of properties F iff for any member Fl of F, X would look F1 under C iff F1(X).

If we justifiably believe that F1(X) we may call the conditions C in which X appears F1 ‘standard’, but if X is not F1, C are nonstandard after all. [KH3]

This sounds really complicated but all he is saying is that some set of conditions are the proper standard observation conditions for some family of observational properties if and only if an object with one of those properties would appear to have that property and an object without that property would not appear to have that property.

Let's try again: A set of conditions is the SOC for color properties if and only if red object appear red under the these conditions and non-red object do NOT appear red.

Some set of conditions as the SOC for observing “color” if and only if for “red’ something (X) would appear red under that set of conditions if and only if it (X) is red.

Nonstandard conditions are external and internal conditions that induce illusion.

External Conditions: when a stick is half submerged in water, when light is tinted or dim, etc.)

Internal Conditions: when the observer is sick, hypnotized, hallucinating, etc.)

People understand each other only if there is general agreement on the paradigm cases of observational predicates. Without such agreement ‘F’ can have no sense, and the question whether ‘F(X)’ is true or not is strictly senseless.

Therefore the fact that we understand one another and seem to disagree about the application of aesthetic predicates implies that there are paradigm cases of these predicates.

Experts are those who, due to personal genius, proper training, or possession of the right instruments, have those SOC; they are standard observers. (Both in and out of science- think X-rays, sonograms, microscope slides. Etc.)

The theory, art movement, or school that explains which objects are F and why it is better to take the conditions under which these objects appear to be F as standard trains experts, who determine, in accordance with that theory, which objects are F and which are not.

Unless aesthetic terms are given realistic interpretations they cannot be understood or be used in language.

Aesthetic terms obey DLL (i.e. division of linguistic labor ) They operate in standard ways with respect to belief formation and revision.): that is how they can have meaning despite the fact that distinct observers often diverge when they apply them by direct observation.

Instead of general uniformity in observing aesthetic properties, there are experts who have the SOC for them. Thus despite the (considerable, but not radical) disagreement on the application of aesthetic terms, we can learn them and teach them to others.

3. Proofs from Scientific Realism

In Sum: Scientific realists hold that if theory T is better than its rivals, we are justified in believing T. It follows that under the observation conditions C that T decrees standard, things appear as they are, and hence if, under C, X appears A, then X is A. The theory that explains the behavior of the artist, predicts how the experts will see X, and also the observations of nonexperts (who see X as ugly, boring, messy, etc.) is worthy of credence.

Scientific realists hold that we are justified in believing that the best theory is true and its theoretical entities really exist.

We may say that Atomic Physics Theory is true because it’s the best among its competitors. If that’s correct then we are further justified in saying “atoms” refers to real mind independent items and that “strong force” is a real, mind independent property of things.

If Freudian Theory were the best theory of human psychology, we would have justification for claiming that ”ego” refers to a real mind independent property and that “neurotic” was a real, mind independent property of things. Since there are better competitors to Freudian Theory, we lack that justification.

“A theory is better than another if it explains facts that the other cannot derive from general principles and the antecedent conditions.”

Some (good) explanations of human behavior use aesthetic predicates:

“S dislikes the A style of the era; that is why her works are so anti-A

“S plays X in that way to make it more A.”

“S will not like X because it is too A.”

“Explanations and predictions such as these are derived from full-fledged, or mini, theories that use A (aesthetic) terms. As their place in everyday life as well as in the academia shows, these theories are successful in doing what a theory should do.”

“A naturalistic theory that makes no use of aesthetic predicates can neither explain nor predict what goes on in art. (“Art behavior.” Art history in general or the actions and choices of individual artists, critics, etc. in particular.)

“It cannot explain why art exists at all.”

Even so, the question of which aesthetic theory one should adopt remains.

A scientific realist should not only adopt the best aesthetic theory, but also believe that, if it says that A(X), then probably X is really A.

The best theory, the one most worthy of acceptance, would adopt other SOC, saying that sticks are not seen as they really are when observed in a state of half-submergence in water.

A theory that explains why some oratorio would seem boring to a teenager who has had no musical education, even though it is not truly boring, is methodologically superior to a theory according to which the said oratorio is really boring.

The first theory

1. has greater explanatory power.

2. it is simpler

3. more concise

4. it connects with other good theories better than its rival.

The alternative view ( that the oratorio is not really aesthetically interesting) would have to show how a monotonous drone (as the work looks to the said teenagers) causes an elaborate hallucination of fictitious (since unperceivable by the teenagers) properties. It needs to expose the mechanism that causes not otherwise delirious adults to be so deluded that they seem to hear rich emotional and spiritual features in a dull drone.

By contrast, a theory that chooses as standard those conditions under which Bach’s work appears aesthetically good can predict both that Bach would appear aesthetically good under SOC and would look boring under observation conditions that do not conform to SOV: e.g. an ability to follow a melodic line, tonal variations, nuances, and spiritual meaning.

It explains why performers do what they do and makes sense of behavior that a rival theory describes as pathological: to make such a fuss over dull noise! It can explain the relation of a given work to its predecessors and ties it to historical movements and events. It uses art to explain other cultural and sociological phenomena, and vice versa.

“One may hold that our admiration for Bach is due either to a delusion, a hallucination, or else to a secret plot of a cabal, passing off junk as a thing of great merit (as in Anderson’s The King’s New Clothes). However, psychopathic behavior and the behavior of conniving crooks have manifestations that are missing in the Bach case; these theories are therefore weak.

Are Aesthetic Explanations Impotent?

Objection: aesthetic properties are explanatorily impotent, isolated, and odd.

J. L. Mackie argues that aesthetic and other value properties are not “part of the fabric of the world,” in the sense that mass, velocity, charge are part of it. Value predicates should be reduced to terms used in psychology and physics.

Gilbert Harman concurs: “scientific principles can be justified ultimately by their role in explaining observations.” Protons can be posited by a good theory because “facts about protons can affect what you observe”; but value properties should not be posited, for “there does not seem to be any way in which the actual rightness or wrongness of a given situation can have any effect on your perceptual apparatus.”

Value theory “completely irrelevant to our explanation of why the theory in question was suggested whether the moral (and, I suppose, aesthetic) theory judged to be true is true or not.”

Response:

1.There is no explanation of our value judgments in purely physical and psychological terms.

Mackie and Harman might say that although no such explanation as yet exists, future science may provide it. But how do they know this?

The supervenience of the aesthetic on the nonaesthetic does not make the aesthetic property explanatorily redundant, for science gives no explanation, none at all, neither in fact nor in principle, for why brain events of kind K result in our making these specific phenomenal observations. Why do we observe qualia? “patterns of cell spiking”

Whether we like it or not, the best explanation we have for our having phenomenal experiences is still, as it was in the days of Aristotle, that these are observations of properties of some entities. A Cartesian will say that these entities are mental, not physical, but that does not change the basic feature of the theory: intentionality. The intentional theory of experience is not only the best we have; it is our only working theory. We should accept, therefore, the reality of the properties posited by that theory.

The purported elimination of sense-terms eliminates the core of science, its distinction between an empirical observation and a mere opinion. It reduces science to a story, a legend with no empirical content, for we lose the means to express the difference between the two. Eliminating phenomenal terms is therefore the end of science; the expurgated language cannot distinguish dogma, or fairy-tale, from empirical data.

He agrees that moral theory and aesthetics are relatively isolated from the physical sciences.

True; but so what? A theory that is successful in its field, but only marginally interfaces with other theories, is not discarded and the said field left unattended to until that day (which may never come) when a better behaved theory comes along. (The (dis)unity of science)

But, …

4. Proofs from Scientific Realism 2

Argument: If Scientific Realism is True, then Aesthetic Realism must be true too.

Scientific realists hold that the best theory is probably true. The best theory is one that passes all methodological tests with flying colors: it is simple, powerful (has a wide range) and dramatic (we prefer a theory T that has successfully predicted to a theory T1 that has only postdicted: both explain the data, but T is more dramatic).

These properties are aesthetic; thus theories have aesthetic constraints, and these are their only constraints.

Theories cannot be refuted: incompatible data and prediction failures make a theory less general and inelegant, that is, uglier, but not false.

Thus, scientific realism comes down to this: ugly theories are probably false.

A theory that is rich, powerful, dramatic, and simple, i.e., beautiful (Unity in Variety is the oldest definition of Beauty) is probably true.

Scientific Realism requires that we have objective justification for the preference of some scientific theories over others.

The properties that actual scientists most often to recommend one theory over another turn out to be “aesthetic.”

If beauty (et alia) is not a real property it can provide no objective justification for the preference of a given theory and the preference of any theory would be unjustified. (That would also entail the belief in the theoretical commitments of the theory is also unjustified.)

Either Aesthetic Realism is true or we have no reason to suppose that there are such things as electrons, protons, quarks, etc..

Once consequence of this is that aesthetic reduction is impossible:

“We may believe that there are no aesthetic properties only if we can establish that some theory T (the theory that says that there are no aesthetic properties) is beautiful.”

5. Proofs for Metaphysical Realists

Critics of scientific realism argue that methodological excellence, that is, beauty, does not guarantee truth. The world in itself may be ugly, so why believe an account that presents it as pretty? A beautiful model may explain all that needs explaining, and yet be false, for the world satisfies an uglier model. Thus the metaphysical realist thinks that beauty is irrelevant to truth.

Non-realists such as Dummett and Putnam think that a methodologically impeccable theory, say, one that would be accepted by ideally rational beings, cannot be wrong.

These thinkers identify truth with justified assertabilily.

Metaphysical realists, on the other hand, insist on a distinction between truth and justifies assertability

Given that position, can we know whether things in reality have aesthetic properties?

Is it possible, that is, to be a metaphysical realist and a realist in aesthetics?

Zemach: "Yes"

No description of reality can fail to include aesthetic predicates.

"it cannot fail to be pretty or ugly, dramatic or monotonous, dainty or sublime. "

It is inconceivable that anything could be unamenable to aesthetic evaluation.

"If space is Einsteinian nothing in it can be circular; if it is Newtonian nothing in it can be central. But things can be gaudy in any manner of space. Under no circumstances is it a category mistake to ascribe aesthetic properties to objects. "

Further phenomenal predicates can be satisfied in a world where no perceivers exist

Argument:

Every possible world has features

Any arrangement of features satisfies some aesthetic predicate.

Therefore

Every possible world has aesthetic properties.

Claims we can put greater trust in aesthetic than in scientific theories.

Inference to the best hypothesis does not guarantee truth if one adopts a metaphysical realist notion of truth

But aesthetic theory need not rely on an inference to the best hypothesis since there is an independent proof that our aesthetic views cannot possibly be all wrong.

It is incoherent to maintain that we usually misapply the aesthetic predicates.

our theoretical constraints are all aesthetic: we have no other criteria of acceptability of hypotheses and theories.

To "refute" a theory, one must show that it is ugly (cumbersome, narrow, devoid of dramatic power)

To deny the truthfulness of aesthetic judgements (that what we believe to be lovely is in fact ugly) undercuts the standard but which theories (all theories) are shown to be good or bad.

One is left with the position that even an atrociously bad theory may not be false

By doubting our ability to accurately distinguishing beauty (adequate theories) from ugliness (inadequate theories) one simultaneously doubts our ability to tell a good argument from a bad one.

Conversely, if we are to consider any theory, including the skeptic’s and the metaphysical realist’s, we need to assume that we apply aesthetic predicates correctly- aesthetic realism

"Any argument, including the argument that our aesthetic judgments are wrong, that we misapply aesthetic concepts, is worth considering only if we trust our ability to distinguish a good argument from a bad one, that is, to apply aesthetic concepts and tell the beautiful from the ugly. Thus our aesthetic theory cannot be coherently conceived to be false."

Consider: Can I prove to you –via logical argument- that you are utterly mad?

(This is similar to the stalemate that exists between the philosopher and the mystic.)

It is pragmatically paradoxical to doubt our basic aesthetic judgments, for if we do, we should doubt that that doubt itself is well founded.

NOTES

I. The classical expositions of that view are in three articles in W. Elton’s influential anthology, Aesthetics and Language (Oxford, 1954): J. A. Passmore, “The Dreariness of Aesthetics,” Arnold Isenberg, “Critical Communication,” and Stuart Hampshire, “Logic and Appreciation.”

2. 1 have suggested a defense of realism in aesthetics ba.sed on the notion of standard observation conditions for aesthetic properties in my articles “A Stitch in Time,” Journal of Value Inquiry 1 (1967—8): 223—42 and “Taste and Time,” Iyyun 20 (1970): 79—104 and in my books, Analytic Aesthetics (Tel Aviv, 1970), and Aesthetics (Tel Aviv, 1976). A more recent defense of realism in aesthetics along similar lines is given in Philip Pettit, “The Possibility of Aesthetic Realism,” Pleasure, Preference and Value, edited by Eva Schaper (Cambridge, 1983).

3. 1 discussed that point in “Seeing, ‘Seeing’, and Feeling,” Review of Metaphysics 23 (1969): 3—24.

4. J. J. C. Smart, “Sensation and Brain Processes,” in The Philosophy of Mind, edited by V. C. Chappell (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1962), 166.

5. Hilary Putnam, “The Meaning of ‘Meaning’,” in his Mind, Language, and Reality (Cambridge, 1975).

6. J. L. Mackie, Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong (Harmondsworth, 1977).

7. G. Harman, The Nature of Morality (New York, 1977), 9.

8. Ibid., 8.

9. Ibid., 7.

10. Supervenience does not jeopardize the ontological reality of aesthetic predicates. Take the pair of particles that feature in the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen experiment. The properties of each particle supervene on those of the other, for it is impossible to affect one of them without the other being affected (the famous “collapse”). That does not mean that only one of the particles is real and the other is “reducible to it” (whatever that means); both are real. Indeed logical relations between real things are unusual, but phenomenal-physical relations are unusual in any case; we cannot expect them to follow the laws of classical mechanics.

11. See Scientific Realism and the Plasticity of Mind (Cambridge, 1979); Matter and Consciousness (Cambridge, 1988); “The Direct Introspection of Brain States,” Journal of Philosophy 35 (1985): 8—28.

12. In “Churchland, Introspection, and Dualism,” Philosophia, forthcoming.

13. I have argued this point in my “Truth and Beauty,” Philosophical Forum 18 (1986):

21—39.

14. “On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme,” in D. Davidson, Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation (Oxford, 1984), 223—42, and “A Coherence Theory of Truth and Knowledge,” in Truth and Interpretation, edited by E. LePore (London, 1986).

15. Suppose that a spaceship lands here; its nonhuman crew is obviously highly intelli gent. They learn English in a matter of days and converse with us on a variety of topics. However when we ask them to translate some of their writings into English they explain that they cannot do so, for theirs is a language that we cannot understand. The reason is that while we have six senses, they have sixty. They show us the bodily organs for these senses and explain that the simplest word in their language denotes a combination of deter minations of at least twenty different kinds of sensation. Further, suppose that their children take a few hundred years to learn the simplest logical formula expressible in their language (they live for a hundred thousand years), and hence it is reasonable that there can be no English translation of even the simplest expression in their language. Is that impossible? But Davidson would have us believe that our galactic friends are no more intelligent than trees, and that they cannot have a language!

[1] Zemach, Eddy M. “Real Beauty” Midwest Studies in Philosophy Volume 16, 1991 Philosophy and the Arts Pages 249-265 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-4975.1991.tb00242.x

[2] JJ Smart’s defines the expert in terms of "sensitive to make more distinctions." Zemach criticizes this (while agreeing that experts observe more aesthetic distinctions than laymen), by pointing out that a person who makes myriad distinctions that all others find capricious is not the most normal percipient, who sets the standard for correct attribution of properties. He is merely mad.