Three General Theoretical
Approaches to Beauty
What does it mean to say that something is
obscene?
Ideal
Observer Theory Plus Context
The Evolution of Western Thinking On Beauty
The Origins of Beauty: Pre-Platonic Priming
Theory of Beauty: Eighteenth and
Nineteenth Centuries
Reasons for decline of Objective
Significance of “Beauty” During this Period
Upshot
of this Association of Ideas Theory
Three General Theoretical Approaches
to Beauty
When I make the claim that some object is beautiful what sort of claim am
I making? Am I stating something objective? Something subjective? Or is there some
third possibility? We are going to be looking at each of these but before that
I want to consider a related or at least similar question. When I claim that an
object is obscene what am I claiming? I think that understanding objectivity,
subjectivity and the ideal observer theory with respect to obscenity will
assist us in understanding these same concepts with respect to judgments of beauty.
1. What
does it mean to say that something is obscene?
·
Is
one making a claim about the object
itself? (i.e. An Objective Claim)
·
Is
one making a claim about one’s own personal reaction to the object? (i.e. A
Subjective Report)
·
Or is
one doing something else?
Here are four
possible scenarios:
According to this
view of obscenity, “obscenity” names a
mind-independent property. Things are
obscene or not obscene regardless of how any or all individuals react, or would
react to it. (i.e. whether anyone thinks it is obscene or not). If two individuals disagree about whether
something is obscene or not, one must be wrong and the other must be right
because, according to this view, they are disagreeing about an objective state
of affairs.
According to this
view of obscenity, “obscenity” names a
private, mind-dependent sensation or reaction.
This view holds that obscenity is in the "eye of the beholder." Essentially this is the view that when I
claim that some things obscene, I am only reporting my personal reaction to it.
According to this view it is quite
possible for one and the same thing "to be obscene" for me, but not
"to be obscene" for you, since this merely means that we are reacting
to the object differently. For that
matter, it is possible for the very same object to strike me as obscene one day
but not the next.
This view of
obscenity maintains that to say that something is obscene is not to report
one’s own personal response to the object, nor is it to claim that the thing
possesses some mind-independent objective property, but rather to predict the
subjective responses of (most) “normal” people.
According to this view, to say some image or object is obscene is to say
that normal, sensitive, unbiased, informed persons would have “the obscene
reaction” to it.
Ideal Observer Theory Plus Context:
This is the same
as the above, but it acknowledged that the subjective reactions to objects,
even of ideal observers, are predicated in part by the context of the
interaction- meaning, expectations, environment, etc. This view is mindful of the fact that even
ideally situated judges may react to the very same word, image or object
differently given a different context.
A bit more detail
on the Ideal Observer Theory
I mentioned ideal
observer theory briefly in my notes on alternatives to logical positivism. But I'd like to go into a little bit more
detail here. First of all, I see this as an alternative both to objectivism and
subjectivism. With regard to obscenity for
instance, the ideal observer theorist is not claiming that there is some
objective fact in the world such that objects are objectively obscene or
innocent. In this sense ideal observer theory agrees with the subjectivist. On
the other hand, unlike subjectivism the ideal observer theorist is claiming
that, when I assert that X is
obscene, I am saying more
than I personally find X obscene. In
that sense indeed I am making and objective claim about the world. In this
respect, the ideal observer theorist is agreeing with the objectivist. However
the objective fact that one is asserting when one claims that X is obscene is
not an objective fact about X. Rather, it
is an objective fact about the subjective reactions of a certain class of
observers.
In the same way, when
I say seawater is salty, I mean to say that seawater is such as to provoke a
salty taste in the experience of normal human perceivers when they taste it. Here too I am making an objective claim about
the world. Likewise, when I say stop signs are red or ambulance sirens are very
loud I am making true objective claims, but if you poke at them a bit you will
see that they are not claims about stop signs and sirens[1].
They are claims about the subjective
reactions of human observers when they perceive stop signs and sirens. We may have to further modify this further to
say that, they are claims about the subjective reactions of ideal
human observers under certain observation conditions. This is standardly done in science when I
claim that an object or a chemical etc. exhibits certain observable features. (e.g. All emeralds are green.) Scientists must always relativize to a set of
observers and a set of observing conditions. Notice dog whistles are not silent
to dogs. But they are to us.
I recall a number
of years ago, the Miami City Commission brought in an and outside marketing
agency to help Miami promote itself as a tourism destination. Among other
things, this agency it developed posters and flyers to help promote Miami. One city commissioner objected vociferously to
a particular photograph included in the portfolio on the grounds that it was
obscene. However, this was not because it displayed scantily clad South Beachers or some such, but rather it was a photograph of a
plate of vegetables. Nevertheless, the commissioner insisted that the
vegetables were arranged in such a way and so suggestively that it was obscene.
Now I do not doubt that this commissioner was indeed having an obscene reaction
to the photograph. However, it seems to me that that alone is not enough reason
to deem the photograph obscene. In this case I believe that the commissioner
was being too sensitive. On the other hand, if someone told me
they saw nothing particularly wrong with certain sexually explicit or
graphically violent images I might suggest that that individual was not
sensitive enough. But if one claims that a person can be too sensitive
or not sensitive enough, one has already admitted that there is a sort of ideal
and when we deem something obscene not obscene, we do not mean that it is
offensive to the overly sensitive or that it's unoffensive to the
insufficiently sensitive, but rather that it would provoke the obscene reaction
in most normal sensitive informed and partial judges. This is the nature of the
ideal observer theory.
In addition to
using ideal observer theory in terms of cashing out what we mean when we make
judgments of obscenity, it often is common to use this same idea in judgments
of what is and is not sexual harassment. It's not that certain words are in all
contexts considered sexually harassing nor is it the case that any one who genuinely feels sexually harassed has
unimpeachable evidence that sexual harassment did in fact take place. Here
again there might be individuals who are too sensitive or for that matter not
sensitive enough. Also note that when juries are told to determine whether or
not the prosecution has proven its case beyond a reasonable doubt, what does
this mean? It means, “Would a reasonable person still have doubts about the
guilt of the accused after having canvassed all the facts and evidence?” Here
again we seem to see a trading on ideal observer theory. Would a normal
sensitive informed and impartial rational individual still have a doubt?
Notice the ideal
observer theory with regard to obscenity provides us with a kind of empirical
test as to what and what is not obscene. Presumably we put a bunch of ideal
observers in a room and start showing them the images. If all or most agree
that the image is obscene, that is, they have the obscene reaction, then the
object is obscene. If all or most fail to have the obscene reaction then the
object is not obscene and if there is no general consensus then the object is
neither considered obscene nor fully innocent. But this is because all we mean
by saying an object is obscene is that in such as to provoke the obscene
reaction in just such observers.
Now, as useful as
ideal observer theory is, and in fact I do think it's useful and we use it all
the time, it suffers from some serious shortcomings. For
instance, how old is the ideal observer? What gender is the ideal observer?
What sexual orientation? Socioeconomic background? Race? Ethnicity? What
religious affiliation? Of course these are rhetorical questions which I raised
to make the point that what one does or doesn't find obscene for instance may
have a great deal to do with what they've become accustomed to or any of these
other features I mentioned here. Consider, in order to conduct our
imagined research project we would have to determine who we would and whom we
would not allow in the room. Now you
might say that individuals whose sense of obscenity is affected by their
religious affiliations are not sufficiently impartial and therefore we wouldn't
allow them in the room. But the same
might be said about people whose
sense of obscenity is affected by age, gender, or sexual orientation. But is this realistic? Once sufficiently screen of all their
“prejudicing” influences, what if anything would determine the observers’
reactions? Further, we seem to be
conceptually constructing a nonexistent human being: a genderless, race-less, religion-less,
age-less, ahistorical creature. And
heaven only knows what the subjective reactions of that sort of being would be
(aside from fictitious I suppose 😊).
Given the
difficulties presented by the “Ideal Observer” theory (e.g. How old is the
“Ideal Observer?”) as a practical matter
we have relegated these questions to “Community Standards.” After all, the subjective responses of a
normal, sensitive, informed and impartial Kendallite
might be significantly different from the normal, sensitive, informed and
impartial Hialeahan, or South Beacher, or Pensacolan, etc. In
the US we have developed “The Miller Test” as a means to sort out obscene and
therefore unprotected free speech from speech protected under the US
constitution.
Miller v. California (1973)
In Miller there
was established a new constitutional test for obscenity, which remains the
governing standard today.
The three
criteria of this test are as follows:
1. whether “the average person, applying
contemporary community standards” would
find that the
work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest;
PRURIENT INTEREST: A morbid, degrading and unhealthy interest in sex, as
distinguished from a mere candid interest in sex.
2. whether the work depicts or describes, in a
patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable
state law; and
3. whether the work, taken as a whole,
lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.
In this case the
Court proclaimed:
“There is no evidence, empirical or historical, that the stern
19th century American censorship of public distribution and display of material
relating to sex . . . in any way limited or affected expression of serious
literary, artistic, political, or scientific ideas.”
The Miller test
also appeared to shift the focus of the “community standards” test:
The “appeal to
the prurient interest” and “patent offensiveness” are both to be judged with
reference to contemporary community standards.
Justice Brennan
strongly dissented realizing the repressive potential of this standard.
Cashing out how
the “ideal observers” is to be understood was shifted to a “community or
majoritarian standards” as opposed to those of a “reasonable person.” This then allows for the tyranny of the
majority. While harm against women has
often been cited as the motivation for the restrictions on pornography, male
gay images have been targeted by this approach.
This suggests that discriminating against a (reasonable) minority it not
only a possibility but altogether likely.
Brennan:
“the outright suppression of obscenity cannot be reconciled with
the fundamental principles of the First and Fourteenth Amendments.”
No definition of
obscenity could ever be formulated with sufficient clarity that it would target
only constitutionally unprotected speech. Experience had demonstrated that
“almost every [obscenity] case is ‘marginal’” and “presents a
constitutional question of exceptional difficulty.”
In sum: As we shall see, judgments of beauty can be
understood in each of the four ways addressed above. One might claim that a judgment of beauty is a
statement about an objective feature of the beautiful object. It is mind-independent and if two people
disagree as to whether or not an object is beautiful, at least one of them must
be wrong. An alternative to this view is
subjectivism which holds that, to claim that something is beautiful is nothing
other than to report that one finds it visually pleasing. On this view, it is entirely possible for
something to cause in me a beauty response, but not cause it in you. In this case, the object would be beautiful
for me and not be beautiful for you.
Neither one of us is right or wrong since there is indeed no objective
fact for us to be right or wrong about. The
ideal observer account would suggest that to say an object is beautiful is to
say it is such as to provoke the beauty response in all or most suitably
sensitive ideal observers. Finally, the
ideal observer plus context account would recognize that even ideal observers
might disagree about whether or not an object is beautiful or not depending on
the context within which the observation occurs.
The Evolution of Western Thinking On Beauty
The Origins of Beauty: Pre-Platonic Priming
In Classical
Times in Western Culture there was thought to be an affinity (if not an
identity) among three concepts: Truth,
Goodness and Beauty.
·
Probably
it’s much broader than Western Culture.
·
In
all cultures Heroic characters are generally presented as beautiful.
We can take even
our own Folktales and Myths as examples:
·
The
gods (except the comic or monstrous ones) were breathtakingly beautiful.
·
The
“Evil Witch” is an ugly old crone.
·
Good
Fairies are beautiful.
·
Monsters
were the result of moral corruption.
·
Even
vampires are ugly once Buffy stakes them.
So predating
Plato, there is a tradition to thinking of beauty, goodness and truth as
related, signs of one another. Or
perhaps in some mystical way, these three are identical. There may in fact be biological hardwiring
for this tendency to identify the beautiful with the good and the true. Modern scientists have long documented the
“Halo Effect.”
The halo effect
occurs when a person's (or a product’s, etc.) positive or negative traits
"spill over" from one area of their personality to another in others'
perceptions of them. This can manifest
in pretty people being thought more honest; ugly people being thought more
devious or less trustworthy.
American
psychologist Edward L. Thorndike (1874 – 1949), for instance, documented that
when soldiers were asked to rate their commanding officers, he found high
cross-correlation between all positive and all negative traits. People seem to rarely think of each other in
mixed terms; instead we seem to see individuals as universally roughly good or
roughly bad across all categories of measurement.[2]
[3]
Another common
example of the halo effect is that good-looking schoolchildren (or a good-looking
person versus a more plain looking person) are perceived to be more clever even
when they present no evidence of this.
In marketing, a halo effect is one where the perceived positive features
of a particular item extend to a broader brand.
It has been used to describe how originally the IPod
and then later the Iphone have had positive effects
on perceptions of Apple's other products generally.
This is related
to another well documented phenomenon- The Beauty Bias[4]. We tend to pay more attention to good-looking
people. Arizona State University
researcher Douglas T Kenrick’s eye-tracking research has shown that both men
and women spend more time looking at beautiful women (cultural norm) than at
less attractive women.[5] Babies as young as 8-months-old will stare at
an attractive female face of any race longer than they will at an
average-looking or unattractive female face.[6]
Certain human
traits appear to be universally recognized as beautiful:
1. symmetry (bilateral- not radial 😊)
2. regularity in the shape and size of
the features
3. smooth skin
4. big eyes
5. thick lips
6. (for women, and an hourglass figure)
–perhaps a cognitive association with fertility.
Researchers
suggest that Men have evolved to select for these featured as they are
associated with health and reproductive fitness. Nancy Etcoff, author
of Survival of the Prettiest[7],
claims that Women’s responses are more cognitively complex. She claims that Women stare at beautiful
female faces out of aesthetic appreciation, to look for potential tips—and
because a beautiful woman could be a rival worth monitoring. There are numerous studies that demonstrate
that physical attractiveness affects our perception of a person’s morality and
truthfulness. While this operates
largely at the unconscious level, we even have evidence of it happening at the
(nearly) conscious level.
Ted Bundy:
But why?
Maybe because there is something
contradictory about a beautiful evil (ugliness).
All this is say
that, not only has there been a cultural conceptual link between Beauty, Truth
and Moral Goodness, there may even be a biological explanation for this.
So Plato
formalized the notion common to many (if not all) cultures that Beauty was tied
to Truth and to Goodness. Much of
Platonic Philosophy deals with distinguishing between appearance and reality. And just as not everything that appears
true is true, and not everything that appears good is in fact good, so
too…for Plato and those who followed him on this, not everything that appears
beautiful is beautiful.
For Plato
then, Beauty is divorced from “Appearance." That something has a pleasant appearance
tells you nothing about whether it is
beautiful or not.
Beauty ≠
Pleasant Appearing
Plato makes a
similar point about “goodness.” He notes
that not everything that tastes good is good (for you). There is an important difference between the
cook and the dietician, the beautician and the physical therapist. His view on beauty is importantly different
from the view of beauty that most people have today (i.e. That “X is beautiful.” = “X is visually
pleasing (to me).”). For Plato. the wise
person must distinguish between:
·
apparent truth and real truth, and
·
apparent goodness and real goodness,
·
apparent beauty (glamour) and REAL BEAUTY.
Hence the
branches of Philosophy: Epistemology, Ethics and Aesthetics
Aesthetic Ramifications of this Metaphysical View:
When we recognize that something is beautiful we do so because we recognize that it participates in the eternal form of beauty. Beauty names a transcendent object which does not exist in the world of sense objects, but of which beautiful objects are mere imperfect copies. Further, since whether an object participates in the form of beauty or not is an objective relation with no logically necessary consequences for perception, it follows that judgements about whether an object is beautiful or not are not mere subjective reports, but rather claims about objective states or affairs. They cannot be based solely on sensual appeal and are subject to revision and correction.
Nevertheless, “recognizing” beauty, like recognizing truth seems to be a phenomenological revelation or epiphany.
An Intuition- a non-evidentially grounded certainty of an objective truth.
All A is B
All B is C
Therefore?
All A is C
… but how do you know?
In a similar way, I judge “X is beautiful. “ Or “X is more beautiful than Y.”
…but how do you know?
Under
the influence of Plato, classical philosophy meditated extensively on what was
termed “the transcendentals,” specifically The True, The Good, and The Beautiful. Classical philosophy regarded these
transcendentals as qualities of “Being-as-such.” Truth is Being as knowable; goodness is Being
as lovable; and Beauty is being as admirable, attractive, and desirable.
Now,
it is common for us today to think of “truth” as a property that applies only
to propositions or sentences. Similarly
we think the adjective “true” is an adjective that only applies to propositions
or sentences, etc. But a more classical
understanding of “truth” holds that true is a property that describes things. Things are true, in the sense of a “true
friend” or a “true love” or a “true blade.”
Under this older understanding of true, to say a thing is true is to say
that it approaches its own perfection as the sort of thing that it is (that it
“be”). For instance, a true friend is a
friend who exemplifies friendship most fully, a friend who “be” friendship
fully. To the extent that your friend
is/be a friend, be as a friend, he exemplifies the ideal of
friendship. And the more fully he “be” a
friend, the more fully he exemplifies this ideal of friendship. Thus, to the extent something is true, it has
a greater degree of reality. Things are
true to the extent that they “be,” and they “be” (exist) to the extent that
they are true. But note further, this
means that to that very same extent, they are unimpaired and thus it true, good
and beautiful.
Plato on “Beauty”- Two kinds of beautiful things:
·
Simple
beautiful things. (e.g., pure tones and single colors),
·
Complex
beautiful things.
Simple things have
“unity” in that they are simple.
Complex things
have measure and proportion of parts and by means of this, achieve a sort of
unity as well. Later aestheticians refer
to this as a “Unity in Difference.”
But Plato does
not mean to identify beauty with unity.
It is simply a discoverable fact (allegedly) that all beautiful things
are unified. Instead, he seems to
believe that beauty is a simple, un-analyze-able property, (which means that
the term cannot be defined at all) and that we can learn only by direct
experience. Nevertheless, his emphasis
on measure and proportion set an important precedent for all subsequent
philosophers.
Under
the influence of Plato, classical philosophy meditated extensively on what was
termed “the transcendentals,” specifically the true, the good, and the
beautiful. Classical philosophy regarded
these transcendentals as qualities of “Being-as-such.” Truth is being as knowable; goodness is being
as lovable; and beauty is being as admirable, attractive, and desirable.
Now,
it is common for us today to think of “truth” as a property that applies only
to propositions or sentences. But a more
classical understanding of “truth” holds that it is a property that describes things. Things are true, in the sense of a “true
friend” or a “true love” or a “true blade.”
Under this older understanding of truth, to say a thing is true is to
say that it approaches its own perfection as the sort of thing that it is (it
“be”). For instance, a true friend is a
friend who exemplifies friendship most fully, a friend who “be”s
friendship. To the extent that your
friend is/be a friend, be as a friend, he exemplifies the ideal
of friendship. And the more fully he “be”s a friend, the more fully he exemplifies this ideal of
friendship. Thus, to the extent
something is true, it has a greater degree of reality. Things are true to the extent that they “be,”
and they “be” (exist) to the extent that they are true. But note further, this means that to that
very same extent, they are unimpaired and thus beautiful and good.
Now this is
somewhat heavy metaphysical theorizing[8],
but
Some theorists thought
of beauty as an object that does not exist in the world of sense at all.
(Neo-Platonists) Others identified
beauty with measure and proportion as we find it in our sensuous experience
(Aristotelians).[9]
Another important
result of the theory of Plato was the establishment of the notion of
contemplation as a central idea in the theory of beauty and, consequently, in
the theory of aesthetic experience. (a
kind of meditation that brings about an awareness of some non-sensuous
entity). Likewise, is the notion that
beauty brings to us a kind of “awareness” of an objective truth. Thus, for those following in the Platonic
tradition, the experience of beauty is a cognition of an intelligence or
rational order. This is very different
from a mere pleasurable affective response (i.e. the sensuously agreeable).
Something of the
Platonic sense of “Contemplation” remains in modern aesthetic theories. American philosopher George Dickie (1926 –
2020) argues that this is responsible for the solemn and pompous attitude
toward art and beauty that some persons display.[10] But, he points out, many of our experiences
of art and nature are NOT contemplative in Plato’s sense. For what it’s worth, I do not agree with
Dickie here.[11] I think the solemnity we adopt when in the
presence of things of great beauty arises from the conviction that we are in
the presence of something of real value.
This conviction I take to be an integral part of the beauty/sublime
experience.
So then we have
in this tradition that “beauty” names a real, mind-independent property of
things and if two people disagree as to whether something is beautiful and/or
to what degree, they cannot both be correct.
This “Objectivist” account of Beauty hung on for quite some time. Eventually it lost ground to its ancient
rival, Subjectivism.
“De gustibus non disputandum est.”
There is no “accounting” for taste.
But this was a
long time coming.
As late as the 15th
century you find plenty of advocates of the roughly Platonic view of beauty
with it quasi-religious and metaphysical significance.
·
Italian
Neo-Platonist philosopher
·
Translated
into Latin the works of Plato and Plotinus making these accessible during the
Renaissance.
·
Fascinated
with classical mythology and magic.
·
Promoted
a synthesis of Neo-Platonic thought with the doctrines of Christianity.
For Ficino the
visual arts were especially important. Their function was to remind the soul of
its origin in the divine world by creating, through art, resemblances to that
world. Ficino's insistence on the
importance of this with respect to painting has been credited with raising the
status of the painter in Florentine society to that nearer the poet (rather
than that of the carpenter, where it had been previously).
Plato asserted that in all things there is one truth, that is the
light of the One itself, the light of Deity, which is poured into all minds and
forms, presenting the forms to the minds and joining the minds to the forms.
Whoever wishes to profess the study of Plato should therefore honour the one truth, which is the single ray of the one
Deity.
This ray passes through angels, souls, the heavens and other
bodies ... its splendour shines in every individual
thing according to its nature and is called grace and beauty; and where it
shines more clearly, it especially attracts the man who is watching, stimulates
him who thinks, and catches and possesses him who draws near to it.
This ray compels him to revere its splendour
more than all else, as if it were a divine spirit, and, once his former nature
has been cast aside, to strive for nothing else but to become this splendour.
It is worth
noting that Sandro Botticelli
(c. 1445 – 1510) knew and was influenced by the aesthetic theories of
Ficino. With this philosophy in mind, Botticelli’s pagan gods are seen in
a new, sanctified context. The pagan
gods are representations of the ideals of Christianity. Thus, Ficino seemed to
offer the perfect solution to the dilemma of the Renaissance, how to find a
sanctified place for the art and aesthetic values of the pre-Christian
classical world.
Tangential Aside:
Sandro Botticelli’s
works embody the spirit of the Renaissance.
By this point in Western history, traditional Medieval Christianity and
its renunciation of the worldly (pleasures, interests, concerns) had lost much
of its appeal, perhaps due in part to the disappointment of the 1st millennium
and later the Crusades. The Ancient
pagan ideals of beauty and “the good life” began to reassert themselves. Consider Primavera; this is a thoroughly
Pagan picture, an exuberant revival of embodied natural forces in an era of
total control by the Church. The style
is reminiscent of classical styles of art, similar in style to roman frescos.
·
Botticelli
was permitted to paint such images (when previous artists could not) because of
Ficino's philosophy/theology.
·
Ficino
argues that the "celestial Venus" and the Virgin Mary were
expressions of "Divine Love"
·
He
spoke of “emanations” from (of?) God into the Noetic world.
·
With
this philosophy in mind, Botticelli’s pagan gods are seen in a new, sanctified
context.
·
The
pagan gods are representations of the ideals of Christianity.
·
Thus
Ficino seemed to offer the perfect solution to the dilemma of the Renaissance.
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The Three Graces: Ancient Pompei
Fresco |
Fresco de la Primavera |
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Primavera Botticelli |
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Theory of Beauty: Eighteenth
and Nineteenth Centuries
The analysis of beauty furnished by the eighteenth‑century philosophers of taste shifts the basis for objective judgments of beauty. Such judgements/experiences are now attributed to an alleged faculty or faculties with which individuals react to certain features of the objective world. The theories of Beauty that arose at this time both reflected and were influence by the intellectual trends of this period, principally modern philosophy and modern science’s rejection of the classical world view. (See Enlightenment and Locke’s Theory of Perception)
Let’s Get Scientific
This was practically the motto of the “Enlightenment.” If they had tee-shirts in those days, they’d have all been wearing this slogan across the front. And on the back it would say, “There’s got to be a rational explanation.” With this mindset, what do we imagine is going on when we see something beautiful? What does it mean when I judge something to be beautiful? That It participates in the transcendental Platonic form of Beauty?
I don’t think so. The classical world view, that “beauty” names an undefinable
and transcendental concept or form, was simply unacceptable and far too
“mystical” to the British philosophers, who were committed to empiricism.
Alexander Baumgarten (1714‑1762) coined the term "aesthetics," and conceived of “Aesthetics” as the science of sensory cognition. He exploited the medieval tradition of explaining behavior and mental phenomena by attributing each kind of phenomenon to a distinct “faculty of the mind.” Baumgarten’s basic view (and those who followed him in this) is that our minds have the capacity to be stimulated to have a “beauty experience.” It was kind of like “salty taste.” When I taste something salty, my tongue has been stimulated by a physical, formal structure in the world (i.e. the shape of the sodium chloride molecule) in a particular way which causes that sensory affect.[12]
Three Main Types of Theories of Taste:
1.
The
apparatus of taste is conceived of by some of them to be a special single
faculty (the sense of beauty)
2.
The
apparatus of taste is composed of several special faculties (the sense of
beauty, the sense of the sublime, and so on)
3.
The
apparatus of taste is simply the ordinary cognitive and affective faculties
functioning in an unusual or unique way.
A host of Theory of
Taste accounts arose during this period, but we’ll only look at one in a bit of
detail, one that conforms to an “ideal observer” theory of beauty, that of 18th
century philosopher David Hume (1711 – 1776).
“Though it be certain, that beauty and deformity, more than sweet and bitter, are not qualities in objects, but belong entirely to the sentiment, internal or external; it must be allowed, that there are certain qualities in objects, which are fitted by nature to produce those particular feelings.”[13]
So according to Hume, beauty (and it’s opposite,
deformity) is not in objects, but are
feelings
linked by the nature of our human constitution to "certain qualities in
objects." Like an earlier
aesthetician Francis Hutcheson (1694 – 1746) and other faculty of taste
theorists, Hume blends subjective and objective elements to account for
judgements of beauty. Objective
judgements about what is and is not beautiful are possible on Hume’s account. These are judgements about what is “such as
to elicit universal agreement among normal competent subjects under ideal
conditions of perception.” These are stable and predictable because
they are based on certain alleged objective features of the world and stabilities
in human nature and human perception. Because he refers to the judgements to “Ideal
Judges,” his theory is NOT a mere subjectivism account of beauty judgements (beauty
judgement = a mere subjective report) but rather something more objective. Beauty judgements are empirical predictions
about the responses of normal perceivers under ideal conditions.
Hume suggests "certain qualities in objects" that cause pleasure. Unlike Hutcheson, he does not try to reduce them to a formula like Hutcheson’s “uniformity in variety.” Unlike Edmund Burke (1729 – 1797), Hume does not try to specify a complete, short list of beauty-making qualities. Hume mentions in passing some twenty or so beauty-making qualities (e.g. uniformity, variety, luster of color, clearness of expression, exactness of imitation[14]). He also does allow for variations of taste. But since they are due to age and temperament (Young men prefer "amorous and tender images," but older men prefer "wise philosophical reflections." Etc.) rather than aberrations in the nature of the perceiver, no standard of taste exists to rate one preference as better than the other. Hence there is an irreducible relativism to Hume’s realism. Nevertheless, to say that something is beautiful is to make an objective, empirical prediction. Specifically, it is to claim that all, or most, suitably situated ideal judges would find the thing pleasing. Now, either these ideal judges would find it pleasing, and thus one’s judgment is correct, or they would not, and thus one’s judgement is incorrect. But what makes one’s judgment correct is not one’s own subjective feeling, but the accuracy of one’s empirical prediction.
Reasons for Decline of Objective
Significance of “Beauty” During this Period:
Initially these theorists suggested that there were certain objective features of the world that would trigger the beauty experience. So long as this is the picture of aesthetic experience then aesthetic experience is keying us into some objective feature of the world and one could reasonably claim, not only that some things are beautiful and somethings are not, but that these are objectively true judgments, just as, in a similar way, we might say that it is an objective truth that sea water tastes salty. And since the taste of salt does tell us something that is likely to be objectively true about the chemical on our tongue, it does inform us.
But note that if I taste sweet, I might be in the presence of sucrose or fructose or for that matter saccharin or aspartame. So the sweet taste gives us sort of disjunctive information. The question then becomes, what specific objective features of the world provoke the beauty experience. Note further that those objective features which generally provoke certain subjective experiences say like sodium chloride and salty taste can be overridden by a faulty sensory system and may differ from perceiver to perceiver. So even on this quasi-objectivist account of beauty, the potential arises for subjectivism and radical relativism with respect to beauty judgements. As the theories articulated themselves, judgements of beauty were seen to be less and less objective and thus less and less informative.
Three main reasons
1. Objective features which account for beauty are elusive.
2. Close attention to “Beauty” splinters it into many “aesthetic” qualities.[15]
3. Evolution to Association of Ideas Theories made beauty less and less informative.[16]
1.
Theorists of
taste attempted to specify the objective features that evoke the experience of
beauty. But neither a reliable nor
comprehensive list of features could be specified nor a reliable formula could
be found (such as unity in variety, etc.)
2.
In addition,
the more precise we sought to get about what “beauty experience” actually
consists in, the concept became exceedingly diffuse (beauty vs sublime vs pretty
vs picturesque, etc).
Initially, these various differences between these various experiences
were papered over with terms such as “aesthetic experience.” Nevertheless, they do reflect a diverse set
of experiences. This then suggests that
there is no one set of objective conditions/ formal features which can explain
them all.
3.
There was a
drift away from theories that conceive of the apparatus of taste as a single
sense or a set of special senses specifically related to certain kinds of
objects. Associationist
theories began to appear where the mechanism of the association of the ideas
provides a means for indefinitely extending the range of things that can be
judged beautiful. Thus the traditional
way of defining (i.e., by looking at all the things denoted by the term and
then finding something common to all) becomes impossible in the case of beauty
since anything, or nearly so, could be a member of the set
provided the right associations. This
situation is similar to that of the present‑day aesthetic‑attitude
theories that maintain that anything can be aesthetic if only it
is experienced while in the aesthetic attitude.
Upshot
of this Association of Ideas Theory
Any aspect of the material world may become associated with a quality of mind and evoke the simple emotion responsible for the beauty experience. Thus, any aspect of the material world can become beautiful (even ugly ones- Joke… sort of). This is because it is not objects' perceptible qualities that cause them to be beautiful, but rather their associations. [17] Such an account appears to provide a cognitive basis for explaining the richness and complexity of the experience of art and nature. However, it amounts to the claim that anything in the material world can be beautiful if it has the right associations and thus a judgment of beauty tells us NOTHING remotely objective and does not inform us at all.
Summary of Eighteenth-Century Theories of Taste
Lost their “taste” for faculties of taste. (ha, ha)
Faculty of Taste Philosophies subjectivize beauty, but only partially. Each claimed that some specific feature of the objective world triggered the faculty of taste. Associationist theories, by contrast, place the lion’s share for the responsibility of the beauty experience on the viewer.
Arthur
Schopenhauer 1788-1860
According to Schopenhauer, a thing is said to be beautiful because it is the subject of someone's aesthetic contemplation. He claims that there are no objective criteria whatsoever.
“When we say that a thing is beautiful, we thereby assert that it is an object of our aesthetic contemplation...it means that the sight of the thing makes us objective, that is to say, that in contemplating it we are no longer conscious of ourselves as individuals, but as pure will-less subjects of knowledge."[18]
Schopenhauer not withstanding… Let’s Reconsider
There may be limits (the obscene and nauseating)
Thus, any aspect of the material world can become beautiful even ugly ones. This amounts to claiming that the only difference between the beauty of a parrot and the beauty of a turkey vulture is how I am processing the experience. But this may be going too far. After all, some objects are more readily seen as beautiful. It takes a lot of work to “see” the beauty of a possum. Less so a cat.
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There is some very interesting work being done now suggesting that Hume and something like the Ideal Observer Theory of Beauty is basically right. It suggests that we are biologically “hard wired” to react positively or negatively to certain visual stimulation. For instance, V.S. Ramachandran and William Hirstein have written a paper[19] suggesting a neurological explanation for art we find visually compelling and attractive.
Without getting too much into the details here, they propose ten principles of art. The principles are:
1. Peak shift
2. Perceptual Grouping and Binding
3. Contrast
4. Isolation
5. Perceptual problem solving
6. Symmetry
7. Abhorrence of coincidence/generic viewpoint
8. Repetition, rhythm and orderliness
9. Balance
10. Metaphor
Our visual system is designed, in large part, to make coherent experience out of a world of noise. And our very survival depends on doing so in a way that allows us to navigate and otherwise interface with the world. In visual cognition thus requires “binding” some features of visual perception together, but not others. Success in making “visual sense” out of our visual field (like solving a riddle) is itself a rewarding, pleasant experience. Nature has made it so in order to keep us doing it.
Thus, while “Beauty” names an “idea raised in us,” as faculty of taste theorist Francis Hutcheson has said, owing to our biologically similarities, we should expect (and we do observe) broad convergence of judgment among normal, informed and unbiased human perceivers. This explanation also coheres with research on face and body attractiveness. This view also can make good sense of the role of syntax in music composition and appreciation as well.
Nevertheless, a comprehensive science of beauty and art does not appear to be in the offing. Daunting questions bedevil any such research attempt:
· What precisely is “the beauty experience?”
· There is a large gap between galvanic skin response and “aesthetic enjoyment.”
· Who are the Ideal observers?
· What we see is not just the result of “bottom-up” biological processing but also (to a surprising degree) a result of top-down cultural priming and expectations. Sorting all that out is very difficult.
· Even if we are, is some respects, programmed to find some things more pleasing than others, is that, in and of itself any reason to think we should?
As Plato cautioned us so long ago, maybe we should not mistake glamour for beauty. Maybe it’s worth reconsidering whether “real” beauty is always, apparently, “beautiful”