What Do Philosophers Believe? Survey: Part I

http://wmbriggs.com/blog/?p=2150 ^ | William M. Briggs

[mattstat]

What are the answers to The Big Questions? A survey was taken to discover what professional philosophers thought. We’ll have fun going through the questions and answers.

3. # Aesthetic value: objective or subjective? Take any blank piece of paper and any (real, instantiated) sharpened pencil. Hold the pencil to the paper, close your eyes, and in less than two minutes draw a picture of, say, the Last Supper; then open your eyes. Is your artwork beautiful? Is it as beautiful as da Vinci’s?

If you hesitated for more than a microsecond to say “No!” to either question, then you are a subjectivist, along with 45% of academic philosophers. That set argues that beauty really is in the eye of the beholder and is nowhere else. This attitude might be what accounts for a lot of what passes for “art” today.

But 41% of philosophers say that beauty can be objectively defined, even if we fail to define something as beautiful in a particular circumstance. Objectivists do not say that subjectivity has no role—as subjectivists do say objectivity has none—but they do insist that one thing can be more beautiful than another. As one piece of music can be more beautiful than another. For example, an objectivist would say the Beatles are what Mozart scrapped off his boot.

I say objectivity is correct, but that does not necessarily mean that “beauty” is a platonic ideal. It could be that beauty is objective because what is beautiful conforms to something innate in our biology. Beauty, therefore, might not be unique but would exist is a narrow range...