An interesting issue is whether animals appreciate beauty and it seems they do. Darwin thought so. After a while it was considered a code for health, etc. But now animal appreciation of beauty is making a comeback in the scientific community. nytimes.com/2019/01/09/maga … nimal.html
Again, there’s no doubt that nature has programed one or another rendition of beauty into animal interactions. Including us.
Call it, say, the “peacock syndrome”.
But peacocks and all the other critters out there don’t contend with the vast multitude of historical, cultural and experiential memes that shape and mold our nature into clearly far, far, far more complex and convoluted and conflicting assessments.
Yes, I am avoiding addressing your point and I do so because I think that by addressing your point I would initiate an off-topic discussion.
I said nothing about what method should be used to discover what is “truly beautiful”. But I do have a rough idea. Note that it’s a rough idea. It’s not an idea you can take and implement straight away. Some details are missing and must be filled in. In other words, further work is required.
I also told him to provide an argument in favor of his claim (which is “Magnus Anderson is a dogmatist”) and he didn’t do that either.
Basically, he ignored everything I said
Only moderators can stop him – and they aren’t doing their job.
MagsJ
(..a chic geek -all thoughts are my own-)
26
So, then what? Someone claims that someone is beautful and that someone is not, and the only criteria they need to “demonstrate” this is the fact that they believe it?
Well, when the work is finished note any definitive conclusions you come to in regard to objective beauty.
What’s this supposed to mean? If the moderators here were doing their job, what would you advise them to do?
On the other hand, the only moderator that’s left [to the best of my knowledge] is Dan.
Or Carleas. But if you click on him it notes this: Last visited: Mon Nov 02, 2020 12:57 pm
And if you click on The Team
MODERATORS
Dan global moderator
Flannel Jesus global moderator
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Oh, right, you’re working on a more definitive alternative.
So you’re saying that my posts on this thread should be moved? That I should be warned?
If so would mind explaining your reasoning more in depth?
MagsJ
(..a chic geek -all thoughts are my own-)
30
…that I’m not on there?
Neither is Tent though… he didn’t want to be, and I don’t ‘give a shit’, and I already mentioned Carleas’s misogyny issue on these here boards a very long time ago, but no-one reacted back then, and I currently have huge fish to fry.
They should be moved because they are off-topic. Recall your first post in this thread. Let’s break it down.
PART 1/3:
The subject of this thread isn’t morality, so my opinion on whether morality is objective or not is irrelevant.
PART 2/3:
This is closest you come to being on-topic.
PART 3/3:
The subject of this thread isn’t Magnus Anderson, so this too is off-topic.
Are you a fan of statistics?
There are 124 words in your post. 69 words are off-topic, 55 words are on-topic. In other words, statistically speaking, your post is largely (56%) off-topic. And that’s merely your first post in this thread. Your subsequent posts aren’t any better (indeed, some are worse.)
The other problem is that it’s not only you who’s being off-topic. You pull everyone else with yourself. This post right here is also off-topic but at least it is an attempt to squash present off-topic diversions. (It would be nice if each thread had two pages where one page contains the main discussion and the other page contains the meta-discussion i.e. discussion about the discussion itself such as whether this or that member violated this or that rule in this or that post and so on. But since such a feature is not present, people have no choice but to either 1) start a separate meta-thread (rarely happens), 2) turn the active thread into a meta-thread, or 3) simply ignore the “bad” guys.)
I have the impression that you have no interest in actual philosophical subjects. Rather, your are merely interested in those who participate – their psychology, specifically. You are looking for those who behave in a way that leads you to conclude they are authoritarians (i.e. guys who expect others to accept their opinions without any kind of questioning.) And when you spot one, which happens often enough, you will do anything you can in an effort to make them make an attempt to prove to you that they are worthy of your blind obedience.
This thread is about beauty. There’s not a single post of yours where you explained your understanding of beauty. Not a single one. Instead, all we get is what we usually get – you accusing others of being authoritarians and asking them to prove to you they are worthy of your worship.
Come on, just because you insist a reference to morality is off topic doesn’t make it so. I don’t make that distinction myself. From my perspective, all value judgments are intertwined in the assumption I make regarding dasein, conflicting goods and objectivism.
Closest? A reference to beauty constitutes 90% of my entire post.
To the extent I react to your argument as an example of objectivist thinking about beauty, I think it is. You have your focus in posting at ILP, but don’t expect it to be mine.
No, seriously.
As for this:
It’s what I call Stooge Stuff. Focusing the discussion and debate not on the substantive points that I make about beauty but insisting instead that I make no substantive points because I don’t “do” philosophy like you do.
Your “thing” seems to be capturing “beauty” in an exchange of intellectual contraptions in which words define and defend other words but never actually make any reference to this face, or this body or this work of art.
So, from my frame of mind [and that’s all it is, my own personal opinion], you encompass the worst of both worlds here: the objectivist who is also the abstractionist.
It’s not a mere reference to morality. You didn’t merely mention the word. You actually asked an irrelevant question. You asked “Is morally objective?” as if the answer to that question can lead anyone to find the answer to the question posed in the OP which is “What is beauty?”
Again, the answer to the question “Is Magnus Anderson a dogmatist?” does not lead to the answer to the question “What is beauty?” It’s completely irrelevant. There’s a word for making such questions and I think it goes something like “ad hominem”.
The bottom line is that you do not agree that you’re being off-topic. I am not sure I can convince you otherwise, so I will make no further effort. The consequence is that I will simply ignore some if not all of your questions and statements. And there’s also the question of what moderators think about your posts (since it is them who are in charge of this forum.)
I don’t think you understood anything about what I said.
I’m happy that you have your own set of opinions (like everyone else) but please note that these opinions of yours have nothing to do with the subject. So don’t be surprised if people choose to ignore you.
I give you my own subjective take on this. You don’t accept it. Fine.
Focus your philosophical assessment of beauty on a particular face, a particular body, a particular work of art. Explain to us why you think it either is or is not “truly beautiful”. Express how you are likely to react to another who insists that you are wrong. Someone who employs very different criteria. Then note how you imagine mere mortals in a No God world would go about resolving the dispute.
I still maintain that our contention here could be more clearly examined if you were willing to bring your intellectual contraptions above down out of the scholastic clouds and focus instead on your reaction to a particular entity that might elicit conflicting assessments of beauty.
Using logic here as you understand it, is she or is she not “truly beautiful” herself?
In other words, since what you said is predicated entirely on words defining and defending other words placed in a particular order, it all comes down to that. The words don’t make reference to something concrete and well known to most of us here.
Well, any number of objectivists ignore my questions because, in my view, they tug them in the direction of understanding the relationship between their own identity and their own value judgments more as I do. And I know this in part because it had already happened to me. I know what is at stake for the “ego” in regard to confronting the “psychology of objectivism”.
I connect the animal sense of beauty to the similar tastes, political positions of twins. IOW we have inborn tendencies to like certain things and to certain attitudes. None of this means these atttitudes and tastes are objective, but rather that we have strong innate tendencies to have certain values. Naturally (puns intended) nurture (that is experience) plays a strong role also. These two ‘factors’ affecting what we end up thinking is beautiful, for example the clothes we will be drawn to wear, our aesthetic take on fashion. But tabula rasas vi are not.
I suppose I interested in how much of a person’s potential engagement is elicited by something considered beautiful. Like the different between kitschy beauty vs. more complicated forms of beauty. The large eyed animal paintings vs. a Van Gogh, say. One can get all tied up in knots trying to prove that the latter is objectively more beautiful, or one can approach the issue as how many ways can the latter engage a person, potentially change a person’s perception, thinking, memory, etc. The high low dichotomy need not be a debate about objective aesthetic values, but about how diverse the effects are of a certain work of art. How much of one can be engaged and what is engaged. So given the goals, tastes and self-awareness of the viewer, different works of art will do the trick better or worse.
MagsJ
(..a chic geek -all thoughts are my own-)
39
Lol… I don’t intend to tango in Paris, plus, I’m dairy intolerant.
I don’t find Iam’s belligerence annoying, but him veering off-topic is…
…he’s gone god damn renegade on ILP’s ass. Someone go fetch a lasso!
or knock his senses back into him
I am going to try to filter through his posts and see how James handled him in the past.
I haven’t been looking into his opponents yet but maybe it’s time.