Another thread on Objective Beauty

[wolly.green]

And yet they are still flowers - there is morphological similarity that we recognise.


'You say human beings evolved to digest cooked meat, and yet there are humans who don't eat meat. They've been doing it for thousands of years.'

What is this argument really? The existence of a behavioural adaptation is not disproved by that behaviour not being exhibited in certain environments - in those cases, other drives take precedence.

'Men live in the Arctic, therefore we didn't evolve in the savannah.' Come on, Wolly, it's just silly.


Of course it does. Those novel species have morphological or behavioural similarities to species we've been adapted to respond to in certain ways after hundreds of millions of years of evolution (don't just focus on the transition to anatomically modern humans in E Africa).

A 'snake thing' is a snake for as much as our instincts care.

These arguments don't work either.

You say we are attracted to flowers and animals all over the world because they have 'morphological and behavioural similarities to species from our own natural habitat. But this doesn't make sense. How would this increase the rate of reproduction of our genes? If we evolved to be attracted to certain features that exist in all kinds of environments all around the world, including uninhabitable ones, why should we believe this will improve our inclusive fitness? Developing an attraction to individuals of our own species or species that directly benefit us is something different.

Indeed you are correct that just because certain behaviors are not exhibited, does not mean they did not evolve. But the absence of said behavior does cast doubt. Anyway, this example is not even relevant. You said we evolved to find flowers attractive because they are a good indication of a healthy environment suitable human habitation. But so are the roots, trunks and leaves of a tree. We consistently and reliably write: songs, poems, and stories about flowers. Draw, paint and sculpt flowers on a regular basis. We even pick and bundle flowers into bouquets and give to give as presents to our loved ones. But we do no such thing with roots, trunks and leaves. We rarely ever -- but not never -- write poems about trunks, compose songs about leaves and make beautiful paintings of roots. Not so with flowers. This can't be a coincidence! There must be an explanation beyond evolution for our reliable attraction to flowers.

 

[Deleted member 16771]

But we do no such thing with roots, trunks and leaves.

That's more to do with the inconvenience of giving your bae a treetrunk for Valentines, than anything about their inherent beauty.

Trees have been worshipped and admired for millennia, too, and I'm sure that if I carved my love a chair from a treetrunk she'd be equally delighted.


However, I have to say that the rest of your post is filled with glaring logical errors and you're making my brain hurt. I haven't slept very much, but I'll return to this conversation tomorrow if you don't mind the tone of my posts here (I'm being a bit blunt - are you OK with this? I still think you're a cool and interesting guy, of course, and I enjoy your topics).

 

[wolly.green]

That's more to do with the inconvenience of giving your bae a treetrunk for Valentines, than anything about their inherent beauty.

Trees have been worshipped and admired for millennia, too, and I'm sure that if I carved my love a chair from a treetrunk she'd be equally delighted.


However, I have to say that the rest of your post is filled with glaring logical errors and you're making my brain hurt. I haven't slept very much, but I'll return to this conversation tomorrow if you don't mind the tone of my posts here (I'm being a bit blunt - are you OK with this? I still think you're a cool and interesting guy, of course, and I enjoy your topics).

Well what are the logical errors?

Also, I didn't say that tree trunks are never "worshiped". That isn't the point I was trying to make. Maybe going for a sleep will help.

 

[John K]

These kinds of arguments were once used to deny the existence of objective truth. They almost put an end to science. So why should they be persuasive here, but not in when rejecting science?

Well again, I'm not really making an argument as such - just an observation that some of the things we experience seem to be independent of the mechanisms of our perception, while others seem to be partly constructed by it. On balance, beauty seems to me to be in the latter category but I'm open minded and willing to change my view on this - would like to even. For example showing me an objective way of detecting beauty and measuring it in a consistent and reproducible way, independent of any particular observer, would be one way of persuading me - though there may be other less stringent ways that I don't conceive of that would appeal to me if they were presented to me.

 

[wolly.green]

Well again, I'm not really making an argument as such - just an observation that some of the things we experience seem to be independent of the mechanisms of our perception, while others seem to be partly constructed by it. On balance, beauty seems to me to be in the latter category but I'm open minded and willing to change my view on this - would like to even. For example showing me an objective way of detecting beauty and measuring it in a consistent and reproducible way, independent of any particular observer, would be one way of persuading me - though there may be other less stringent ways that I don't conceive of that would appeal to me if they were presented to me.

I doubt beauty can be measured. It isn't a scientific theory, its a philosophical proposition. And philosophical propositions can't be observed. They can only been argued for and criticized. Just because you can't observe it though, does not mean it doesn't exist. Beauty is probably more like a mathematical truth. With mathematics, you can't observe it, test it or experiment on it. But we know its truths exist. When you ask for reproducible means to observe beauty, I believe you are asking for the wrong thing. We are not dealing with a scientific theory here. We are dealing with abstract entities, much like mathematical theorems.

 

[wolly.green]

Minor asymmetry, at least with respect to human faces.

Wat?