I. In which is rendered the outline of the original and significant philosophical question, with thoughts left-open for discussion.
II. Of what transpired during the initial engagement with the original post and an account of the progress Monooq made toward sorting and combating Faust's confusion about 'objectivity'.
III. Of what befell the ambitious Faust upon deciding to reject an important distinction after its having been adequately clarified for him.
IV. In what fashion Monooq creatively improved upon the form of an example introduced by the jester Chester, with pictures included, and the first of a series of embarassments for the blackguard and hardened relativist iambiguous.
V. In which a trifling argument is opposed to mine and in what manner it was refuted as nonsensical as necessary to a true understanding of the history of this thread.
VI. In which is recorded the thought experiment which shifted the burden of proof for the relativity of judgements into the subjectivist's court.
VII. A continuation of the embarassing episode of iambiguous and with mention of how Faust and iambiguous formed an unlikely alliance, which ended with grave pronouncements by both.
VIII. In which is presented the argument that remains unblemished to this day.
IX. On the first sally forth of the noble thinker MathIsACircle.
X. Which tells of the corruption of our noble thinker and what strange things he began to say.
XI. In which is concluded our short history which contains more truth than wisdom.
XII. Other notes.
- - - -
Prefatory Verses:
O book, if this were but your pur-pose,
To reach the wise and virtu-ous,
He won't say, the babbling boo-by,
That your fingers are awry:
But if your loaf is not a-cook-ing,
To cram the maws of all the ass-es,
Look how their fingers they are suck-ing
To show that they are in the know-ing
And ready to gobble the fare you've giv-en.
(Alonso Alvrez de Soria)
- - - -
I. In which is rendered the outline of the original and significant philosophical question, with thoughts left-open for discussion.
In my original post, I presented what seems to be a problem for proponents of an objective conception of beauty. The problem is that atoms and the periodic table (or whatever the constituents of a scientific outlook) do not seem fit to capture a thick concept like 'beauty'. I ended with the hope that someone would explain to me how such a view might work.
II. Of what transpired during the initial engagement with the original post and an account of the progress Monooq made toward sorting and combating Faust's confusion about 'objectivity'.
A few initial comments attempted to explain the objectivity of beauty with reference to the concept 'elegance'. I then patiently counselled those posters, on behalf of the rest of us, that to explain 'beauty' in such a way would be to exchange one problematic term for another, and get us no closer to understanding. At which point Faust entered and laid forth a number of his initial confusions about the concept 'objectivity'. Faust wrote, "An 'objective property', huh.......No idea what that means, but I am, after all, an ILP mod, which puts me at a disadvantage" (1). Faust's confusion provided a good opportunity to get clear about objectivity, early on.
Faust initially thought that nothing could be objective because supposed objective properties "are descriptions, which means that someone has to be doing the describing" (1). To this claim I adeptly explained that properties are actually attributes of a thing—using 'thing' in the most non-committal sense. If beauty were objective, then "it would be like an attribute that the world possesses, and you can sense it—but its existence doesn't originate in your head. Or it could 'supervene' on other properties (like natural ones—kind of like people say the mind 'supervenes' on brain" (1). And with that, I provided the grounds for the definition that I was to use throughout the rest of the thread.
III. Of what befell the ambitious Faust upon deciding to reject an important distinction after its having been clarified for him.
After having made the subjective/objective distinction clear to Faust, in typical Faustian fashion, he decided to reject the entire thing; "the dichotomy gets us nowhere in the end" he says (2). At the time, I was worried that next he'd want to eliminate the distinction between left and right, or up and down. (Which, as a matter of fact, he later tried to do). Uglypersonfucking, more temperate person that he is, stepped in to tell us what "intersubjectivity" was. At which point, I explained to the both of them that the world was not flat, when everyone thought it was flat. And so, I washed my hands for a while.
IV. In what fashion Monooq creatively improved upon the form of an example introduced by the jester Chester, with pictures included, and the first of a series of embarassments for the blackguard and hardened relativist iambiguous.
iambiguous does recognize that most will view one woman more beautiful than the other (5). Now what we want to ask is why that is the case, and whether there are any good reasons for supposing that it is not because one woman actually is more beautiful than the other. Later, iambiguous argues that the woman that you see to be less beautiful is actually possibly more beautiful---just in case she was your mother! I see no reason to argue against iambiguous on this point, as he has sufficiently done that against himself, in the form of a reductio. Recall that in all of this we are trying to decide what we have good reasons to believe about the objectivity of beauty, not a demonstration of absolute truth---which is likely impossible in any area. At the time, I took this to to be an empirical claim---I wrote, "Empirical claims are objectively decided. They refer to the world. I made an empirical claim" (6).
V. In which a trifling argument is opposed to mine and in what manner it was refuted as nonsensical as necessary to a true understanding of the history of this thread.
Someone (e.g., phyllo) might present a bunch of pictures for which we are not sure whether to call them beautiful or not (6). The question was raised; What should we take these pictures to be an example of? The answer, I suggested, was just that we're not sure whether to call them beautiful---and nothing more. If beauty were objective, that would not imply that we know everything about it, or that people could not reasonably disagree. For a long time iambiguous took up the mantle of this sort of argument. It may still not have occurred to him that disagreement is not a proof of subjectivity any more than disagreement about whether the earth heating up is a proof that facts about global warming are subjective. It was to this end that I introduced the concept of 'incommensurability', from my wealth of philosophical knowledge, in a generous effort to help iambiguous understand. I failed in that regard, but that was no fault of my own.
VI. In which is recorded the thought experiment which shifted the burden of proof for the relativity of judgements into the subjectivist's court.
Monooq wrote:Imagine someone who risks his life to save a helpless suffering person, when no one is watching, and no one will hear about it. Should we call that brave? Yea, probably. Is it just our opinion? ---Doesn't seem like it, does it?
Imagine someone raping and killing while he makes their loved ones watch. Should we call that cruel? Yea, probably. Is it just our opinion? ---Doesn't seem like it, does it?
The point: There are very clear cases where we want to say that our judgements are more than mere matters of opinion. Moral judgements are often like the above. AND: there are less clear cases, where we're not really sure what to say, about whether our opinion is doing the deciding. The reason we're not sure in those cases, is because people disagree. However, the fact that people disagree is no reason to think that all judgements are relative---only that it's "too close to call", that the values in play are incomparable, or etc. BUT: In clear cases like the ones above---it becomes obvious that the burden of proof is in the relativists court---that should be clear! So, offer an explanation as to how the above cases really are a matter of opinion---that'll put the burden back in my court. Although, be careful how you argue it... you know, reputations, and so on...
VII. A continuation of the embarassing episode of iambiguous and with mention of how Faust and iambiguous formed an unlikely alliance, which ended with grave pronouncements by both.
Having read my thought experiment, Faust proceeded to declare that someone may call the rape righteous, and the brave man stupid (8). I was stunned. Iambiguous caught a whiff of the rotting nihilism and joined the fray. Faust is a cultural relativist, (He wrote, "But since my personal view is that morality is a social construct, it's up to a given group to decide" 9).
Once again, iambiguous had found a friend—he again repeated his old mantra, "every behavior can be rationalized given a particular frame of mind" (9). At this point, d63 joined the conversation to imply that there was something dangerous about beauty being objective—and not the flagrant relativism in the air. I was surprised and disappointed. Thus, the three amigos were banded together upon a self-contradictory and morally reprehensible dogma, and began to spout other really unfortunate things. For instance:
1. Iambiguous claimed that Kant's moral theory led to "killing fields"—and never bothered to justify it in anything but a nonsensical way. Anybody who has actually read Kant (which iambiguous hasn't) will think lowly of iambiguous for that pronouncement.
2. Faust claimed that the only 'ism' that applies to his view, is logical positivism—which was surprising, since he self-applied a number of isms before.
VIII. In which is presented the argument that remains unblemished to this day.
The Argument:
P1. If you attempt to describe a "beautiful" object (e.g., painting), then your description refers to cognitive beliefs about objective (mind-independent) facts in the world. (E.g., the colors, the brush technique, the canvass, etc).
P2. Your description of the "beautiful" painting will not make reference to your subjective mental phenomena (i.e., desires, wishes, past history).
P3. Therefore, (from P1 and P2) the simpler explanation of "beauty" will make reference only to cognitive beliefs about objective (mind-independent) facts.
P4. Ockham's Razor---The simpler explanation is the better one.
P5. Inference to the best explanation (from P3 and P4)---The best explanation of "beauty" is that it refers to objective (mind-independent) facts about the world.
C. Therefore, 'beauty' is objective.
It was my own humility that kept me from giving my full assent to this argument. Nevertheless, what we are debating is whether or not we have good reasons to think that beauty is objective—and this argument stands, with the thought-experiment, and with the case study of the pictures, as the only good reasons presented on either side of the debate. The response to some fumbling objections are there for anyone to see, on page 12. Ask someone why they find 'beauty' in the object that they find beautiful. In every case---every single case---the person is going to refer to publicly accessible phenomena. The color, the symmetry, the brush stroke, the canvas. Nobody is ever going to say, "my mother used to beat me".
IX. On the first sally forth of the noble thinker MathIsACircle.
The new participant begain by claiming that, Beauty, i.e. the objectively pleasing quality in all art is generally centered around The Golden Section/ Fibonacci sequence" (16). That was an original contribution to the thread. A page later he rehearsed my claims about incommensurability, and argued for beauty in Tchaikovsky---the same tact that I had already taken with my pictures. This is all fine. More examples lend more plausibility to the case for objective beauty. Shortly thereafter, the noble thinker began to get pissy with iambiguous (18) because his argument was being ignored. I believe it was being ignored because his argument had already been agreed with---when I presented it, earlier in the thread.
The noble thinker asks iambiguous, "Iams, are you even trying to understand what I'm writing? … Do you think for yourself, or are you an erudite parrot?" (19). On top of referring to his argument as "dog food" and "semantic tautological bullshit pedantry" (19).
X. Which tells of the corruption of our noble thinker and what strange things he began to say.
At this point in the thread (page 25), I was talking to phyllo who asked me why genocide was wrong. I gave him the obvious answer; suffering, etc. I hope this would remove the piece of idiotness that thinks morality is bunk without a god. Fact is, we only need morality because there is no god. Unfortunately, it had the opposite effect. Phyllo replied to me by writing, " A group becomes powerful, they portray themselves as superior, they portray the victims as subhuman, they exterminate the others. It's good, it's essential, it's necessary, it's right" (25).
To my total shock, MathIsACircle then claimed, " I do not approve of genocide; I find it revolting. Whether or not it is "wrong" is an entirely different matter" (25). This confused me, because I have never myself found something revolting unless I thought it actually was revolting. To this day, I have not been able to locate the exact point where the noble thinker became corrupted. Within the space of a few pages, there was objective beauty in Tchaikovsky, but not even genocide was objectively immoral. Perhaps there's just a divide betwixt beauty, and morality. Though, that can't be the case---because he's also claimed, now, there's nothing objectively beautiful about Tchaikovsky.
XI. In which is concluded our short history which contains more truth than wisdom.
This brings the reader nearly to page 30. I assume the rest will be fresh enough in his memory not to need to be recounted.
XII. Other notes.
A straightforward exposition of my theory used in this thread can be found here: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=176400&p=2251144&hilit=fictionalism#p2251144
1. On page 3, you can find argument that, if Faust is a perspectivist, then he is either a subjectivist, or a solipsist. This was significant, because Faust thought he was neither.
2. In light of #1, on page 4 it is discovered that Faust is not a perspectivist, in any normal use of the term.
3. MathIsACircle has often held me to the position of hedonistic utilitarianism----based solely off of this comment intended to be funny: "I was once a nihilist, before a pair of tits made me a hedonic utilitarian." (4)
4. On page 14, you can find iambiguous arguing that a bowl of diarrhoea is more beautiful than a tuna nicoise.
