Ichneumonwasp,
Interesting name by the way, what does that mean?
Anyway, to recap
Ojective Reality is external reality
Subjective Reality is internal reality.
That is one sense of objective/subjective.
This is the only sense of o/s that I use.
But that is not the sense in which one can speak of "Angelina Jolie as objectively beautiful".
It is the only sense we can speak of Angelina Jolie as objectively beautiful, that is what I suggest. Yes, we have a conflict of idea here.
For her to be objectively beautiful in the sense of "objective is external reality", then beauty would necessarily be an integral part of the universe. It would not depend on anyone's particular viewpoint.
Agreed. That is what I am indeed suggesting and quite capable of rational explanation that suggests this is indeed a logical one.
Unfortunately, objective has many different meanings.
Yes, agreed, that's what I have been arguing about with many people on this issue. The common understanding of objective. It's not a very clear idea, and I have found that most people have very contradictory ideas regarding Objective reality when you break them down.
Then it is vitally important that we not shift the definition to other connotations of objective and subjective. If objective means "that which we can observe in external reality", then where does valuation come into play?
From a point of view of that external reality.
Beauty is a value judgment.
Sure, but it's also a mathematical evaluation, calculation, that our eyes and nervous systems are hardwired to react to and develop appreciation for. This appreciation of beauty could also be argued as a necessary component of society and social structures.
Are you saying that external reality already contains those values within it, and people disagreeing about various beauties demonstrate that one person is right and another is wrong?
Well, to a certain extant, yes, but not right or wrong, rather objective or subjective.
I think the confusion here is perhaps that because some people find different things beautiful, then this disqualifies the repeating characteristics in all forms where beauty is found for certain to be beautiful. It is both objective and subjective.
Look, if someone is having a bad day, they are in a real funk, self obsessed and stressed, and they could walk by the most beautiful object in the world and fail to notice anything special. Does that mean the object isn’t beautiful? If the man was 'clearer', would he not see what he missed?
Not finding beauty is not proof of absence! Objective reality has many distinctions that we miss all the time, due to our own subjective nature, or ideas about objective reality.
haven’t you ever had an 'opinion' about a quality of something, perhaps music or a film, that once you didn’t see anything wonderful about, but perhaps you discover something about it years later that you didn’t get? If so, was it really never there at all then? Of course not, it was always there, and found by others.
If beauty isn’t objective, then it cant be discovered. If beauty can't be discovered, then the term 'hip' would never have any cultural significance.
Again we need to be very careful about how we use the words objective and subjective here. There is clearly an process theoretically observable to others involved in the process of our valuations.
I am strictly staying inside of external/internal reality. I actually don’t even like using the word 'reality', it sounds too deep or complex, rather, I prefer the word 'environment'. external/internal environments are o/s.
We have a wiring diagram that is shared by most of us (there are always exceptions, unfortunately), so we tend to see the same things as beautiful.
Yet the wiring is consistent in significant number for identifying symmetry as beautiful. And 'symmetry', harmony, balance, elegance, synergy, union, all of these words, which are inferred from each one, also have very critical and specific meanings that are also relatable mathematically, which 'looks' beautiful only to mathematicians in their language. To most of us, it just looks like a bunch of symbols, numbers, and letters. We can't see the symmetry in the mathematical expressions, are they then not beautiful? No, of course they are b beautiful to those that can perceive them. And they perceive elegance in structure, and naturally call it beautiful.
That idea contains two senses of the word "objective", both slightly incorrectly. The fact that we see things pretty much the same is nice, and this allows us to talk about beauty together and make sense of it; but how many people must see things the same way for beauty, or value, or whatever to be "objective"?
any significant number
Edit: This may lead to further argument, but please dont think i am saying concensus reality is objective reality, it just functions as if it were objective reality.
Is it objective (meaning inter-subjective agreement) if 99% of us agree? Or 72%? Does it require 100%? Objective is a very strong word. I think it implies 100% concordance.
It implies 100% in potential, yes, but it's impossible in concordance, that would mean all of us would see the same reality each other sees, relative to education, training, culture, etc
I cant see the beauty in the mathematics of String Theory. I do hear how they talk about it though, even those that don’t think String Theory will amount to much. Everyone agrees on the elegance in the math. But I don’t see it, but I don’t know mathematics either. It is assumed that if I had the proper training, I would see what they see too.
The other issue is the process by which we arrive at this seeming consensus, which is theoretically observable -- we can look at some of the process in neuron firings, but we only describe what happens from the outside. We don't actually observe the valuation. We observe the process that creates the valuation. We don't feel the valuation itself -- which is what constitutes beauty.
We don’t see the logical structure of ideas forming when we wire someone's brain while they are performing calculus either, yet we will see neurons firing as well, but calculus is still objective.
Everything has an experience attached to it, you cant just separate the objective from the subjective in experience. The experience of the internal environment is completely and almost perfectly sealed off to an outside point of view.
I'm not so sure that beauty can be discovered in things.
Of course it is discovered in things, just as much as we discover any other things, like logic, geometry, creative skills.
haven’t you ever had a special creative friend who always turns you on to a good movie or piece of music that you didn't get before?
I'm an artist, and also have many many artist friends. Actually most people I know are artists of some kind. My favorite artists are the cartoonists. They always have the most amazing taste in so many different areas of art, and have constantly turned me on to more beauty in form that I may have missed otherwise. If someone finds something beautiful truthfully, and I can see they are really moved, and if I cant see what they see, I want to know what I am missing!
Beauty seems, to me, to arise from an interaction between the observer and the object observed.
Me too, but our difference is, I think, that you don’t think beauty really exists, and I am saying that beauty is not just the connection between the two, which is another harmony, but it is also represented in both of them.
I don't think the object itself has any intrinsic beauty. If there were no observer would the word "beauty" mean anything?
But there are observers, and the answer to your question as what would really exist if there were not is not comprehensible in any meaningful or rational sense, according to my point of view. We simply are limited to modeling reality with observers in it. It is impossible for us to model a reality with no observers, for even the model itself would be a contradiction.
Making sense of anything in the universe, and this includes the possibility of making valuations, depends critically on the internal structures of the observer. A computer without instructions to "see" beauty could never make sense of the concept. There would be no such concept.
A computer doesn’t have concepts about computers either, or anything. Computers do not have experience.
We happen to share a common way of evaluating what is beautiful, so we tend to agree on most things. We share a common program, as Malachi put it.
program would be more cultural influence, and I don’t think our hardwiring could reasonably be modeled as a 'program'. We are programmed to make distinctions in our environments. We gravitate towards distinctions we find appealing and easy to assimilate. We naturally find symmetry appealing in all forms, either conceptually, metaphysically, experientially, sonically, radiantly, emotionally, erotically, philosophically, mathematically, and visually. It's not just limited to pretty faces and a nice tush!
But not everyone has exactly the same program. Valuations differ from culture to culture and between individuals because of these differences in "programming". So, the valuations depend on subjective evaluations.
I agree that subjective programming, and I think programming is actually a good word here to model the subjective component, is utilized by our hardwiring, or vice versa.
If I spent a few years with some tribe in bora bora learning their traditions and see things from there point of view, I would be able to find beautiful what they agreed was mutually beautiful amongst them.
Take Samoans. HUMONGOUS PEOPLE! I went to Hawaii once and hung out with a number of them. Now, if I am a Samoan, my sense of symmetry in female form is going to be different than say, um, anyone else's! But it's still a symmetry relative to their culture and genetics.
For example, here in America, many African American Males, or at least the ones that I know, simply may love a 'big booty'. A big booty is still holding symmetries, even though Paris Hilton would not find those set of symmetries hot, she finds a different set of symmetries hot, the symmetries of thinness.
Our ability to perceive outer symmetry is dependent on the internal construction of our nervous system that extracts information in its own peculiar way. Symmetry is beautiful to us because symmetry confers very useful information -- as far as faces go, genetic "perfection". As many have previously said, part of our hereditary heritage is this orientation toward symmetry because symmetry means something. Those who chose symmetrical mates tended to leave behind more offspring. Now that does not mean that we will forgo a slightly asymmetrical mate since having sex is more important than waiting for that perfectly symmetrical Sheila, or Angelina. But all things considered.......
genetics can only account for the physical mating beauties. What about all other beautiful things? How is it that great music is so elegant and harmonious?
I'm afraid that I don't quite understand what you mean by metaphysical symmetry. Are you suggesting that our thinking is somehow tied to the structure of the universe (I mean beyond the fact that we are part and parcel of the universe) such that there is some metaphysical property of symmetry that transcends everything?
No, I'm not suggesting that. I'm not denying it either, I don’t know, that's a mystery to me if there is. I am saying that our internal environments are indeed modified by two •quarks• in the universe, thinking and feeling. I used the word 'quark' artistically there, not analytically.
I am saying that thinking and feeling are metaphysical, are ontological, yet objectively they exist in the universe because they are indeed components of ourselves that operate reality, we know they exist because we experience them, and there empirical quality is uniquely subjective, but mutual, and thus, thinking and feeling do objectively exist as metaphysical structures.
Our perception/experience internally is distinguishable by thinking and feeling, or some layer that relates to thinking and feeling. That's a coupling, a set of harmonies, mutually experienced and perceived. when one is experiencing beauty, joy, inspiration, or any set of pleasant experience or focus, or a nightmare, when one is experiencing anxiety, confusion, depression, etc etc.
In their balance or harmony, we find beauty. In their disruption or conflict, we find misery. That may sound poetic, but it's meant simply as an objective observation that can in potential be agreed upon and experienced/experienced.
All fine in its expression, but the bottom line is this.....there is clearly a cultural aspect to beauty valuations.
agreed
It doesn't matter that there is an underlying algorithm that almost all humans use in beauty valuations as far as deciding that beauty is "objective".
I don’t agree. I think it's very relevant to consider, especially in philosophy, art, and science.
There is clearly a component that is culturally biased. I doubt you could find everyone within a single culture who would agree that Angelina is beautiful, in part because one of the subjective aspects of this is that different people have different cut-off points for "beautiful". In other words, there is again a subjective component to this.
agreed, there is a subjective component. a subjective component can culturally or personally, in principle, not perceive or frame something that does indeed exist.
Remember those cheesy drawings that when you stared at them after a few minutes, some trick would happen in your brain where the object would take on depth of field? I forget what they were called. Some people couldn’t see it, no matter how long they looked. So tell me, was it really not there in objective reality, or did they simply not have the framework, for what ever reason, to view the floating Tiger?
How was the depth of field perceived to exist when it really didn’t on the flat picture, unless there was some mutually viewable pattern going on that produced a depth of field illusion in the brain of most people?
I now submit those cheesy depth of field illusions as proof of the objective/subjective coupling of environment, and a good example of 'beautiful'
Total agreement inter-subjectively or true independent of any observer (the earth revolves around the sun).
so when I say objective reality, just translate that into your 'absolute reality' and we should have understanding.
But don’t assume that total agreement is the only thing there is to confirm about absolute reality, we don’t have total agreement on evolution, right? But evolution is still a function of objective reality regardless. It's just agreeable in potential when all parties are rational agents.
To find beauty in art and science, one must be a rational and/or intuitive agent. To find something means that it exists. We cannot find anything that is not there.
Beauty Exists. It is internal and external.
Beautiful discussion, eh?
Bubblefish