There is no objective concept of "beauty"

Cupressus said:
Cypress just wants to attack. He's in a snit, as usual.

A rational person would understand that when one says beauty is NOT universally acknowledged that it means beauty is NOT a universally objective truth.
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Have fun with it, C.
We're not discussing world peace.
 
AProudLefty said:
You missed my point.
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Fair enough, I must have.

In reality there's a great study that was done about "great art" that found that when a piece of art is deemed to be great art it is usually NOT because it is somehow technically better or more "beautiful" but because it developed a sort of popularity driven by social forces rather than the art itself.

There was a story on NPR about it: https://www.npr.org/2014/02/27/282939233/good-art-is-popular-because-its-good-right

That which is popularly deemed "beautiful" is not always so. Hence there is likely no universal aspect to "beauty", but the popularity of an object can be more the result of chance in a social setting.
 
Cypress said:
Virtually all normal mentally stable humans would call this objectively beautiful.

Social deviants, the mentally unstable, schizophrenics, sociopaths, and the emotionally stunted either can't or won't have the aesthetic sensibility to recognize intrinsic beauty.
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"Virtually all" =/= universal.

Just a lot. Popular is not universal.

That's the key.

And if only one person fails to find this scene "beautiful" it means it is not universal. But calling that person a schizophrenic sociopath is most definitely a No True Scotsman Fallacy.
 
Cupressus said:
In another thread sunsets and other "beautiful" things are being discussed as if they have some intrinsic "beauty" that is universally acknowledged. This is not true. Beauty is purely subjective at every level. Just because a LOT of people find a sunset beautiful does not mean it is necessarily so. For many people a sunset isn't really "beautiful"...it just is.
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If a LOT of people find a sunset beautiful it's not just preference there must be some elements contained in that which they find beautiful. I'm not sure why some people have to find an exception which they in turn thinks negates the rule.
 
Yakuda said:
If a LOT of people find a sunset beautiful it's not just preference there must be some elements contained in that which they find beautiful. I'm not sure why some people have to find an exception which they in turn thinks negates the rule.
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Yes there is something quite common to the belief, but as noted in the NPR story I linked to (HERE) a lot of what is "generally agreed to be beautiful" may be nothing more than a socially-driven popularity contest.

Even if that isn't the case, the fact that even ONE person might find a sunset to not be beautiful (not that they find it ugly, just not beautiful) would make it a non-universal concept.

When I look at most sunsets I don't see beauty...I see a sunset.

When some people see the land that I grew up in they are in awe and find it beautiful...I found it boring and dull so I left to go somewhere that I found beautiful.

It's all subjective, even if there is a degree of popularity.
 
Cypress said:
Here's my challenge to you!

Find one single mentally stable person on this board ( No Hawkeye10s, no Into the Night) who will truthfully say that photo of Banff is ugly, unappealing, or lacking in any aesthetic value.
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That's an argument from popularity.

And it risks being a "No True Scotsman" fallacy if you go out and simply decree that anyone who might disagree with the idea is a "mentally unstable" person or they are "lying".
 
Cypress said:
Here's my challenge to you!

Find one single mentally stable person on this board ( No Hawkeye10s, no Into the Nights) who will truthfully say that photo of Banff is ugly, unappealing, or lacking in any aesthetic value.
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That's giving me an "assignment" when I barely have the energy to type.

Finding the mentally stable person would be task enough
even before trying to anticipate what said person might say about something.

The internet is not my preferred venue for locating sane people, Cypress.:whoa:
 
Cupressus said:
"Virtually all" =/= universal.

Just a lot. Popular is not universal.

That's the key.

And if only one person fails to find this scene "beautiful" it means it is not universal. But calling that person a schizophrenic sociopath is most definitely a No True Scotsman Fallacy.
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Sophistry.

If 99.9 percent of normal, mentally stable humans recognize the intrinsic aesthetic appeal in that photo of Banff, that's as good as calling it universal.

Mountains-region-Ten-Peaks-Moraine-Lake-Alberta.jpg
 
We have no clue how others see the world. Some people are color blind so of course they might find some sights bland.

The point is there is something there that a person find beautiful, even isolated from society.
 
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