When you mentioned comparing the Holocaust to a really bad piece of art to demonstrate that morality seems intuitively more important, the first thing I thought of was: What if the Holocaust is an example of bad art? If aesthetic value permeates everything, then it includes actions and events, natural spontaneous stuff, and deliberately crafted stuff. We can also see how aesthetic judgments guide the actions that culminated in the Holocaust; some people wanted a particularly ordered world. From this perspective, it almost seems that the properties that make bad art are the same properties that make bad actions, as if all intuitions of the bad such as disgust, ugliness, suffering, etc., relate insofar as they are all aesthetically bad. Likewise, pleasure, beauty, etc. converge to aesthetic goodness. Maybe, moral realism can be interpreted as a subset of aesthetic realism that considers only the aesthetic valuation of human interaction, similar to how you explained that morality exists within the consideration of the social and aesthetics exists beyond the social. Moral intuitions would then be fundamentally aesthetic. Since oughts only relate to actors, oughts would necessarily relate more to the subset of aesthetic values of human interaction (the moral domain), except in actions of creating art (which could also be argued to fall under human interaction). A proper utilitarian then must consider not only the maximization of the moral domain but also the actions of creating art, arguing that one ought to craft the world to be as pleasurable as possible. Basically, after watching your video, I'm having trouble seeing the difference between aesthetic judgments and moral judgments other than their subject.
@KaneB
Жыл бұрын
One issue here is that disgust and ugliness can often make things aesthetically good -- think of Goya's Black Paintings or a film like The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, for instance -- while pleasure and beauty can be aesthetically shallow. A great deal of the best art deals with darker themes, and can prompt what would in everyday contexts be negative emotions.
@Paraselene_Tao
Жыл бұрын
Seeing as how he was a failed art student, it's ironic how Hitler's greatest, ugliest yet most beautiful artwork was WWII and the holocaust. I'm a secular Jew btw, and I am strongly anti-fascist. I also enjoy Dali's great, terrible, beautiful artwork, and he's known for being a supporter of Spanish fascism and perhaps universal fascism too. Go figure.
@skaihooks72
Жыл бұрын
@@KaneB Thanks for the response! I agree, that seems to be the case. I find it very strange to think about. I can't think of anything with pleasure and beauty that is aesthetically shallow, maybe an ugly-looking fruit that tastes good? However, Goya's paintings do seem aesthetically good despite the disgusting imagery. Regarding horror movies, would it be viable to argue that a good horror movie is not aesthetically good, but is a good use of aesthetic values (including the bad) to achieve the end of inducing fear and disgust in its audience? Is the skillful use of the bad aesthetically good or a different type of good, or neither? Maybe Goya's paintings are only aesthetically good because certain aesthetically good elements such as contrast and composition overpower the aesthetically bad elements? I'm definitely more inclined toward aesthetic anti-realism, but it's fascinating to imagine the contrary.
@lebecccomputer287
Жыл бұрын
This is along the same lines as my perspective on the problem of evil. Bach, the greatest known composer, introduced dissonances in all of his pieces that would be just fucking terrible if played in a vacuum, truly the cringe of the century. But he incorporated them wonderfully into the pieces by providing buildup and resolution, and it makes the music jaw-droppingly good. In modernity we have a much more survivalist, evolutionary idea of morality. But I think taking an aesthetic view is not only much more fulfilling, but is in line with how early Jews and Christians thought about it
@mega1chiken6dancr9
Жыл бұрын
calling the holocaust a work of art is fucking weird man, stop
@moonsweater
Жыл бұрын
I was thinking about this exact point and was surprised so little ink had been spilled about the topic! All I found was this one graduate thesis. Thanks for casting some more attention onto the idea ❤
@Phi792
2 ай бұрын
Louise Hanson's "Moral Realism, Aesthetic Realism, and the Asymmetry Claim" (or something like that) is a good article on this topic. It was published rather recently as well, I think :)
@93alvbjo
Жыл бұрын
One could argue that a realist simply holds that not all positive attitudes are created due to a subjective-internal criteria being met in engaging with an object. As an objectivist, some pleasures are aesthetic, not just arising due to personal sensibilities or a certain desire being met.
@martinbennett2228
Жыл бұрын
Science involves a commitment to realism, but this includes value judgements, that the world can be understood, that it is worth understanding and that reality is universally consistent. Science worries little about this, nor does it worry that the more detailed is its account of reality, the more difficult it is to to make consistent sense of its characterisation of reality. In moral realism and aesthetic realism, the difficulty in identifying moral and aesthetic realities cannot be a valid reason to reject realism. In both ethics and aesthetics we can point to facts that like some scientific facts can point to as immutable. Examples could include that the Earth orbits the sun; that rape is wrong and that Bach is one of a handful of the greatest composers. For each of these statements there is effectively zero prospect that these judgements of science, morality and aesthetics will be overturned, consequently it is more important and more instructive to understand why they are true rather than whether they are true. That said, I think there are doubts about the language of judgements. In particular I think that the concept of beauty is elusive and am not sure it can be clearly characterised outside of a subjective impression. In contrast, artistic structure, technique and context could form the basis for aesthetic realism.
@norabelrose198
Жыл бұрын
At the end of the day I'm still anti-realist about all normativity, but I think you convinced me to take a vaguely more realist-ish attitude toward aesthetics than toward morality
@KaneB
Жыл бұрын
My actual goal was to get people to stick with aesthetic anti-realism and conclude that moral realism was even less plausible than they initially thought. Haha
@cunjoz
Жыл бұрын
I encountered your channel a few years ago through your video in defense of conspiracy theories. I found that it aligned very closely with my epistemology. This one aligns with my views on morality and aesthetics. Thank you for making these
@mjuky
Жыл бұрын
Great video as always! I get the feeling that people might confuse realism with universalism. An aesthetic realist believes that there are aesthetic facts. Period. Whether the facts are universally shared or not depends on the ontology of facts (a pluralist might contend that everybody has a different set of facts). Likewise, an antirealist might have universalist contentions, believing that our attitudes are structured in a way that just makes Milton aesthetically good.
@KaneB
Жыл бұрын
Yes, in principle it could be that everybody shares the same aesthetic preferences. That is consistent with aesthetic anti-realism. Maybe we evolved in such a way that everybody responds positively to Milton's style. Or maybe we decide to exterminate all the people who dislike Milton. Then everybody would judge Milton to be good, but this wouldn't do anything to establish aesthetic realism.
@mjuky
Жыл бұрын
Exterminate all Milton haters 😂 Frankly, I don't quite get what motivates the realist v antirealist debates. I understand that the debate centers around the notion of "the world" taken to mean "objective reality" or "that which stands against us as subjects". In the broader and perhaps more proper sense, "the world" stands for "the totality of things". I suspect that most antirealists agree that there are moral and aesthetic facts in the broader sense of "the world", since our attitudes belong to the totality of things. I also suspect that the antirealist wouldn't mind if our attitudes towards objective reality have a reality unto themselves, albeit a subjective one. I.e. if I really enjoy Milton, then my enjoyment is real. Perhaps what truly motivates both parties is the universalism v relativism debate?
@geraldharrison5787
Жыл бұрын
Very interesting. I must say, I don't - at the moment anyway - see that there's any substantial difference in terms of ontological demandingness between the aesthetic and the moral. (I would describe myself as a moral realist - by which I mean that I think moral claims are truth apt and that some of them are true and that their truth makers are not our subjective states). Aesthetic reasons are normative reasons, as are moral reasons, and both come with the same ontological demands (and the same seems true of aesthetic value). That's true even if one of the distinctive features of a moral reason is that it is a categorical reason. For unconditional biddings or commands -so, the command to do something irrespective of whether you want to - are as much commands as conditional ones. And it is that commanding nature that requires positing something over and above natural features. Aesthetic reasons can also generate moral reasons and aesthetic values can generate moral values. That is to say, we can have moral reason to do something 'because' there is aesthetic reason to do it (and something can be morally valuable 'because' it is aesthetically valuable). Things can be aesthetically valuable without being morally valuable and vice versa. But nevertheless, some things are morally valuable 'because' they are aesthetically valuable. And aesthetic reasons do seem to me to be categorical, at least in the sense that they make no appeal to your ends. One has aesthetic reason to adopt a certain attitude towards a beautiful painting irrespective of whether one wants to. One ought - aesthetically ought - to stop and look appreciatively at the north front of Blenheim palace if one is walking past it, even if you one doesn't want to. That is, the presence of the aesthetic reason does not depend upon you having any particular end that satisfying it would serve. This is not to deny that there are differences between moral reasons and aesthetic reasons - moral reasons trump aesthetic ones, for instance - but they seem as categorical. Indeed, surely the only kind of normative reason that isn't categorical is the instrumental reason? For the defining feature of an instrumental reason is that it is a reason to do or believe something 'because' it serves your ends or satisfies some desire or yours or whatever. That is, instrumental reasons are what you are bid do 'for your sake' rather than for the sake of others, or for the sake of beauty or for the sake of truth. I agree that those with artistic ability are under no positive obligation to exercise it. But this actually seems to parallel the moral case. In the aesthetic case, we are under no obligation to create beautiful things. Nevertheless, we are obliged not to destroy any beautiful things that already exist (other things being equal). And in the moral case, we are under no moral obligation to bring into existence morally valuable things (there is no moral obligation to procreate, for instance). Yet we are morally obliged not to destroy any morally valuable things that already exist (other things being equal).
@aaronchipp-miller9608
Жыл бұрын
Yep, there is a parallel because aesthetic realism is true too 👍
@SciFiPhiChiPsi
Жыл бұрын
this is the correct take
@Elisha_the_bald_headed_prophet
Жыл бұрын
Got any proof or evidence?
@gugugugugu4514
Жыл бұрын
Hey Kane, great video! I find ur channel to be a gem of online philosophy, especially because you deal with "real" philosophical issues, while other channels often pick mostly topics from political philosophy or other closely related domains. I got a question though. In older videos you used presentations to make clear the arguments by providing the premises one by one and discussing them. Nowadays you seem to enjoy to talk without a presentation. However, I find it helpful often to have the premises written down somewhere. I know this would be (a lot) more work on your part, but what do you think of bringing this back? yours sincerely, 🔴
@KaneB
Жыл бұрын
I still do those kinds of videos... The last two videos were in that style. But sometimes I like to just talk to the camera.
@gugugugugu4514
Жыл бұрын
@@KaneB Oh, sorry, I seem to have missed them then. Thank you for your reply!
@mf_hume
Жыл бұрын
Awesome video. Thanks, Kane!
@KaneB
Жыл бұрын
Glad to hear you enjoyed it!
@MitBoy_
Жыл бұрын
While im antirealist about both, moral realism seems more plausable to me because at least I understand what it is supposed to entail. It would entail that I should or should not do certain things regardless of my desires or opinions. Aestheric realism seems completely incomprehensible to me. Like, something being beautiful regardless of anyone's opinions? What that would even mean? To me this is like saying that a length of a kilometer smells like orage, a category error.
@Ansatz66
Жыл бұрын
It would mean that the word "beautiful" refers to some objective properties of an object, much like how the word "hot" refers to the energy of an object's particles. I don't know what those objective properties would be, but I must admit that I have only vague ideas about what the word "beautiful" means, so maybe the aesthetic realists could be right.
@MitBoy_
Жыл бұрын
@@Ansatz66 well yeah, the only description for the word beautiful I could think of is "pleasing to the observer". But objective beauty can't feature neither pleasure nor observer
@quackstack4246
Жыл бұрын
Aesthetic realism entails that you call certain things beautiful or culturally elevate them in some way regardless of your goals or opinions, and call certain things bad/ugly and devalue them even if you like them. As Kane points out, people actually already do this to an extent when they say "2001 is good but not for me". They also do this with "bad" movies which are fun to watch with friends. Since you're a moral antirealist I imagine you must think that intrinsic goodness/badness makes no sense when you remove the subjects from the equation, no? Same deal with "intrinsic beauty".
@KaneB
Жыл бұрын
I don't find the idea of things you should or should not do any more comprehensible than what the aesthetic realist says. And both moral and aesthetic realists commit to realism about values -- there are values without valuers; properties that are good independently of the reactions of any particular individuals. What it would mean for something to be good regardless of anyone's opinions? If you can understand that, aesthetic realism is at least intelligible. If you can't understand that, moral realism is off the table also.
@FreeWill_is_unintelligible
Жыл бұрын
Hi Kane! Normally i don’t leave any comment on any video at all… like… ever…. but watching your content is something that truly makes me yearn for more! So i was wondering; will you ever make a video on something like radical skepticism or perhaps one where you specifically analyse and criticise the three main forms of justification (infinitism, coherentism and foundationalism)? But personal requests aside, i also wanted to let you know that your channel is a real gold mine! It is indisputably one of the best (if not the actual best) channels of philosophy on this platform! Keep up the good work
@MyContext
Жыл бұрын
I don't find that there is a there there for either moral realism or aesthetic realism - I find no justification for the idea that either is objective. Currently, both seem to be motivated by an attempt to acquire psychological/sociological standing (and/or appeal) by the use of the term objective without actually supporting such as the case. Each seems to be an appeal to popularity.
@Paraselene_Tao
Жыл бұрын
The section named "Dependence on Perceptual Capacities" at 37:45 is extremely interesting to me because it reminds me of one of my responses to the weak & strong versions of the Anthropic Principle and also the Fine-Tuning Argument. My response is that intelligent life could exist in a myriad of possible universes, and it would look and act differently in these different universes with different laws of physics. It's not important that there be a finely-tuned universe or that the universe needs an Anthropic principle. Conscious beings naturally emerge without these superfluous concepts. It's more like conscious beings emerge to fill an empty niche in possibly all imaginable universes with all imaginable laws of physics: it just looks different in each universe. This feels oddly similar to what you're saying about aesthetics and different perceptual capacities. There's always aesthetics, but it's differently valued. There's possibly always intelligent, conscious beings, but it takes on different forms. 😁
@Paraselene_Tao
Жыл бұрын
Honestly, I'm not well-learned enough to figure out how or why my opinion on the matter isn't more common. Maybe there are historical reasons or well-planned out reasons for supporting the FTA or Anthropic Principle, but I haven't been persuaded to believe either of these. Perhaps I'm making some obvious error that someone could help me fix.
@conradlistman1481
Жыл бұрын
What if you were trying to convince me to be a moral anti-realist, but instead you just convinced me to be an aesthetic realist?
@wenaolong
Жыл бұрын
To you I say that is a great summation and elaboration of the theme! Especially in distinguishing the moral and aesthetic scope of application viz practical and personal ramifications. As to 2001, whether A Space Odessey or the calender year, is objectively better than any Marvel moview whatsoever to date. And 2001 was a very bad year geopolitically and socially (from a ponerological angle). So that's saying something about Marvel movies. Yet many people adore them religiously. 🤷♂ Well, since the world could end at any morment, and since world events reliably indicate that people are tragicomically steering the world in that direction even without asteroidal assiatance (which may be a blessing if it hits the right part of the earth at the right time, and it might even be aesthetically beautiful and morally poetically just), I suppose I'll drop my 45 cents into the comment section if you don't mind, since I usually do listen all the way through your wonderful lectures with entusiasm and attention. If I'm in a solipcistic node on the internet, covertly censored, or if everyone sees it and hates it, well I enjoyed thinking it and typing it out anyway. I need to practice my composition and keyboarding anyway (been a long time since UT forced me to care about either skill). But more importantly, I enjoy philosophy and do it in the face of this world's destruction and turn away from it. Unlike Heraclitus, I'm rather past caring for it, phenomenalogically. But at the same time, I can't look away.... Like some sort of incredible and tragic yet in places hypnotically beautiful phantasmogoria. Perhaps moral and aesthetic judgements have a coordinate relation on some scale such that what someone "likes" is a reflection of what they "are like" on that scale, which may be both internal to them and external in its reference. Internally, there are two poles of subjective relation to a given phenomenon, and that phenomenon can exist on a scale of objective features which is also on a similar scale of relations to another set of "metric poles". So the deed or situation seems right or wrong just as the the atmosphere is sublime or crude. They seem to overlap as well. Such as when a deed can seem valorous to those who support it, or vile to those who oppose it, and that will bring a corresponding feeling of satisfaction and pleasure or dissatisfaction and displeasure. Good deeds are seen as beautiful and evil ones as horrific. But what counts as such will vary with different agents/appreciators. What seems different than something plainly objective is that these evaluations may change according to contexts and circumstances in ways that physical reality does not. Mount Meru is varyingly beautiful even to one who appreciates the beauty of mountains generally or Mt. Meru in particular. Yet its height is measurably the same or different without respect to the spectacle and its experience (or personal proximity to it when it is exploding). But the correspondences between the objective features and their evaluation (ethically or aesthetically) seem to consistently gauge on a scale which with a well-ordered range. The further I am from Mt Meru when it explodes, the more beautiful it will look. There will be this effect rather consistently. Still people's positions on that gauge vary. Yet that only underscores their orderly correspondence, once correlations between these people (with respect to one another) is correlated with correlations between these phenomena they judge. Some artiste out there will stand in awe of Meru's explosion though he is well aware that it will kill him if he doesn't flee. He's just dedicated savorer of sights like that. Or someone who is resigned to his fate, perhaps because he is far too close, may stand in a similar awe but perhaps taking less pleasure in the situation, and even being in a state of disbelief. Or if I am in a swell mood, then food tastes better, though it tastes "good" even if I encounter my worst nightmare while tasting the same mouthful (which all this is by now), and I will be "numb" to that flavor perhaps (as one's will to push on through this word wall may be also). But if I were watching this happen to someone else (in a Marvel movie perhaps), then the food might even taste better. Or if I hate any Marvel movie whatsoever and never watch any of them, I may enjoy every single review of them by Critical Drinker, who watches horrible moives so I don't have to and then transforms them into a very amusing story of his own personal suffering which he can only numb with a fifth of whiskey, at the end of which he tells us "go away now". That's an interesting "overlap" case where a domain of disgusting phenomenon is translated through the perspectival twisting of mockery into something entertaining! A sort of psychological distance is created between what is offensive and the viewer that "safely exposes" it as ridiculous when seen a certain way. And since the artist (Criticial Drinker) does the work for us, we enjoy the pleasure of his wit doing all the transformational work. But to an afficionado, it would be like drilling teeth for them, wheras the movie is to them ambrosia. Yet a third part, disinterested in the art or its critic, is able to get a kick out of seeing a fan's abreaction to scene, as he stands "safely away" from it. As you well pointed out, some sort of distance from personal relevance does augment some aspects of aesthetic experience. I would say this is parallel to how one's ability to objectify a situation and take other positions in the ethical equation creates a kind of distance between the "personal prerogatory/impactfulness" of a situation and one's assessment of it. A creation of distance from the phenomenon of evaluation enhances the ability to perceive its value outside of an instinctual bodily relation. To appreciate what is fair in a situation does not anchor itself around my own interest, yet it takes it into account (or I wouldn't be being fair, and I wouldn't have a real motive if I didn't have a stake). But to appreciate what is beautiful in an experience it helps that it not overwhelm me bodily, although it is essential that it captivate me perceptually and in some ways emotionally. The former has more to do with what I would do or have done, but the latter doesn't necessarily require that I do anything but pay attention. But I could find some structural overlapping between these domains of evaluation, such as in the "judgment" aspect, which tells me whether to proceed along a given course or deliberate further (ethically) or to continue to engage an experience and contemplate it or to what degree in a given situation (aesthetically). There is it seems an ethics to aesthetics and vice versa. Axiology is remarkably akin to epistemology in its orderliness, or at least its availability to orderly study is very simliarly structured. And it seems reality works this way as a whole, or we have available to our minds the option to think of it that way and it seems cogent to do so, if these correlative correspondences I've suggested bear out any consistency with reality. 🔚
@berick0176
Жыл бұрын
i love you
@galahadsoundscape6365
11 ай бұрын
Review of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood?
@11kravitzn
Жыл бұрын
Why is it so hard to say "I like that", instead of "that's objectively beautiful"?
@AFastidiousCuber
Жыл бұрын
Because those statements mean different things.
@11kravitzn
Жыл бұрын
@@AFastidiousCuber The latter is never true, however. It's a reification and projection of your subjective preferences. Suppose I disagree that it's "objectively beautiful": who is right? How can we tell? We can't. Stop projecting/reifying and own your preferences.
@AFastidiousCuber
Жыл бұрын
@@11kravitzn You could make this same sort of argument against almost any sort of realism about any subject. Suppose I disagree that inductive logic and the scientific method are legitimate means of obtaining knowledge. Am I wrong? How can you tell? Stop projecting/reifying and own your preferences.
@11kravitzn
Жыл бұрын
@@AFastidiousCuber Disagreements in math and science can be resolved by proof or experiment. Hence why most people are realists about those.
@AFastidiousCuber
Жыл бұрын
@@11kravitzn People make arguments for and against aesthetic claims all the time. We can absolutely resolve at least some aesthetic disputes. Also, if I am skeptical about scientific method, you cannot prove me wrong with a scientific experiment. That is circular reasoning. It's like using the bible to prove Christianity is correct.
@vaclavmiller8032
Жыл бұрын
Here's a thought experiment to motivate aesthetic oughts: One of the following artworks will be eliminated from existence: 2001; the latest Marvel movie. Is there a fact about which one it should be?
@KaneB
Жыл бұрын
I don't have the intuition that there is but maybe that's just my general anti-realism talking.
@mustyHead6
Жыл бұрын
I think all great artists accept aesthetic realism some way or the way. I mean i don't it is as simple as "this is good" or "this is bad"; or "this is red" or "this is blue" but i think all artist starve for an aesthetic ideal. Whenever I'm writing poetry or painting i actively, carefully choose one word over the way; one brush stroke, or point of view over the other. It is an active process of choosing one thing's superiority over the other. If vladimir nabokov didn't feel like aesthetic ideality of pale fire isn't some how better than writting of a 5 year old, he wouldn't have wrote the book. I believe all artist are egoistic in some sense; they actively try to better themselves over themselves and over others. Or at least my favourite artist and writers are.
@KaneB
Жыл бұрын
You can judge that X is aesthetically better than Y, or you can hold X to be an aesthetic ideal, without being an aesthetic realist. The aesthetic realist will say it is a stance-independent fact that X is better than Y, or a stance-independent fact that X is the aesthetic ideal. I have plenty of aesthetic views -- I think Paul Klee's with is aesthetically better than Thomas Kincaid's -- but I don't view these judgements as correct about some objective reality; they are just my own preferences.
@quackstack4246
Жыл бұрын
It's true that artists are egoists but that's why I think what you're describing is artists trying to make their work match their artistic preferences. Cause imagine the Dark Nabokov - a writer who is extremely talented at writing, decides that they want to write like a 5 year old with no regard for quality & no inhibitions but finds it very hard to do. Getting closer to that goal could require a lot of work & feel like betterment, even if by your standards they'd be regressing. An example of this could be Picasso. It seems like he had to unlearn a lot of fundamentals to develop his style, he has the well known quote "It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child."
@hypercortical7772
10 ай бұрын
I was doing some creative writing this morning. I'm an anti-realist but when I'm crafting my sentences, choosing my words, and structuring my narrative, I'm thinking about how those choices create certain reactions in my potential audience. I know certain words carry associations through connotation or even through the sound of the syllables of the word. and those choices can be more or less harmonious with the view of a scene or character I'm trying to convey. I could take a class where I learn how I can better use these choices. There will be objective facts about which words or phrases or most likely to evoke which sensations. There can even be fact about which narrative structures are most likely to create suspense and emotional investment. And with my understanding of what kind of story I want to tell and what kind of feelings I want to create, I can leverage those facts (if I can learn them) to achieve my goal for my audience (or for myself if I'm writing just for myself). But all of that relies on typicalities about human cognition. A word won't have the same meaning, or connotation, or even perceptual sound, if you feed it to a sufficiently different cognitive system. If the goodness of the art relies on the psychological effect it creates in audiences, then it is necessarily mind-dependent (subjective). And if you wanna say, maybe the goodness of art has nothing to do with the psychological effect; maybe all the objectively good art in the world could be art than no single person values... then I think we're just dodging the sense of the word "good'.
@darcyone6291
Жыл бұрын
1) This is a point similar to a one you've made (that aesthetic value is everywhere). It seems that some aesthetic judgments have more concensus than any moral judgement. It seems to me that if you take a bunch of people from different cultures (across space and time) and put them in a place like the norwegian coastline and fjords (or pick your favourite natural scenery), there will be more concensus on its beauty more than any moral judgement ever made in history (Although I think this concensus will be restricted only to natural beauty). Do you find this as an extra reason for breaking the symmetry in favour of aesthetic realism? 2) You made two points that I think the moral realist could use to their advantage. Earlier, you mentioned the case when someone says something like "I don't like that piece of art, but I recognise it is good" in favour of aesthetic realism. Later you mentioned the case where someone could say "I want to break into this bank, but I recognise that It'd harm other people". Can't this be used in favour of moral realism? 3) You've mentioned that a point in favour of aesthetic realism was that it demands less, it doesn't require aesthetic ought. I imagine that the aesthetic anti realist could use this to turn the table and say that this actually shows that aesthetic realism is false, for if it was true, there would be some aesthetic ought connected to it. What do you think?
@KaneB
Жыл бұрын
(1) This is an interesting idea, but there are a couple of ways to resist it: First, arguably there are some moral judgements that you will find near-universal agreement on, for instance, "it is bad to torture innocent babies"... Of course, there will be plenty of disagreement about what counts as "innocence", there will be disagreement about whether the costs of that act can ever be outweighed by some potential good, etc. But there are general rules of thumb that crop up in most societies. Second, there might be less agreement on the aesthetic judgements than you are suggesting. From the early modern period to industrialization, many people regarded wilderness areas in general with indifference or even fear. It was commonly thought that human beings had been commanded by God to tame natural areas and make the whole Earth productive. I'm not sure people in that kind of culture would be so attuned to natural beauty. (2) Yes, I think you're right that aesthetic and moral realism can appeal to similar linguistic data here. (3) I suppose the question is whether it makes sense to separate values from oughts. Can there be non-prescriptive values? If so, it seems that aesthetic realism is on stronger footing, in that it commits only to values. Many standard antirealist arguments, such as the queerness argument, have less force. On the other hand, if there is a conceptual connection between values and oughts, then the absence of aesthetic oughts would be a serious problem for the aesthetic realist. (I think that values and oughts do come apart, even in moral thinking, so I tend to favour the aesthetic realist on this specific point.)
@darcyone6291
Жыл бұрын
@@KaneB 1) I think I did actually overestimated how much people appreciate nature aesthetically, but not to the point you seem to suggest. Even when people think nature was given for them by God to utilise, that isn't necessarily going to stop them from seeing that it's beautiful. These two attitudes are completely compatible. Similarly, people could have felt fear from the wilderness because of it being a source of danger, but again their appreciation of its beauty seems independent of that fear. I can use the volcano example you gave. Personally, when I watch a video of an erupting volcano, I feel anger because of the destruction and harm it causes, yet at the very same time I feel astonished by how beautiful it looks! 3) Yes you got my question right, but it seems to me that we have different intuitions on this one, since I find it to be the case that when I value something, I'm motivated to act in accordance to what maximises/actulizes such value. That being said, I act in accordance with these values even when I actually think of them as subjective rather than objective. So, maybe this is different from "ought" in the categorical normative sense?
@AndrewPetersonGameDev
Жыл бұрын
Hey, this video is unlisted but it's in the playlist for "Philosophy of Art", I was wondering if that was intentional?
@KaneB
Жыл бұрын
Yes, that is intentional. It's going to go live in a couple of days. I try to spread out the release schedule
@realSAPERE_AUDE
Жыл бұрын
Definitely a hot take that a particular movie was worse in some sense than the holocaust lol glad you backtracked a bit on that one. Interesting topic and well rounded explanations as usual. Thanks, Kane. Cheers
@tmrttrn
Жыл бұрын
Kane, have you moved to Iceland?😢😢
@KaneB
Жыл бұрын
No lol. Iceland does seem like a cool place though.
@Ansatz66
Жыл бұрын
The problem with aesthetic realism is that all we have to support the idea is intuition. Maybe to some people it feels intuitive that aesthetics are real, and that is fine, but to really settle the matter we need to get down to the objective facts that underlie our aesthetic opinions. If aesthetic realism is true, then we need to be able to define the word "beautiful" in terms of objective properties of a beautiful object. Not only should an aesthetic realist be able to present such a definition, but they have to claim that such a definition is already in broad use by most people when they say the word "beautiful". Until the aesthetic realist can come up with a definition of "beauty" based in objective properties, she has no real case to make for her position.
@KaneB
Жыл бұрын
It seems plausible that, whatever view you have of what the objective properties are, there will be some objective properties that tend to prompt people to judge things as beautiful. This strikes me as at least as plausible as the objectivist naturalism you favour for moral judgements.
@Ansatz66
Жыл бұрын
@@KaneB : The big difference is that for moral naturalism we can list the actual properties rather than just supposing that they plausibly exist. Under moral naturalism, we are talking about health and prosperity and peace and so on. People may dispute whether such natural properties are truly definitive of morality, but at least we know which properties we are talking about. In contrast, the properties that make a thing beautiful have to work on a I-know-it-when-I-see-it basis.
@KaneB
Жыл бұрын
@@Ansatz66 I could easily list a bunch of properties that most people judge to be beautiful -- e.g. simplicity, symmetry, particular formal structures such as the golden ratio, etc. It doesn't seem to me any harder to do that for aesthetic properties than moral properties.
@Ansatz66
Жыл бұрын
@@KaneB : If someone could use properties like that to create a plausible definition for "beautiful" that seems to match how people use that word in real life, then that would be a major step toward convincing people of aesthetic realism. Unfortunately it is often easier to say that something is easy than to actually do the thing. Symmetry is often present in beautiful things, but not always. Some beautiful things are simple, while others are complicated. I'm not saying that it cannot be done, but I don't know how and I cannot accept aesthetic realism without knowing that.
@KaneB
Жыл бұрын
@@Ansatz66 I think moral naturalists have exactly the same problem with the definitions they propose of moral goodness. It doesn't strike me that there is significantly more agreement on term usage there than in the aesthetic domain.
@esquizofreniasobrenatural
Жыл бұрын
Aesthetic realism applied on epistemology is really stupid, and a fallacy. First of all, we shall use theories that are the nearest to reality explanations, those theories are models that aim be analogical to what are studying. The beauty of the models we use is linked to subjective appreciation of those, as an example me, a chemist, i found beautiful the equilibrium model because is a priori, but others like a biologist, for example, will think that is not beautiful because is not alive.
@hamperhamp895
Жыл бұрын
Your audio was _really, really_ bad this time. 😮💨
@KaneB
Жыл бұрын
No it wasn't lol
@Voivode.of.Hirsir
Жыл бұрын
True
@screamofortnite123
Жыл бұрын
Love the beard
@AminTheMystic
Жыл бұрын
Maslow's hierarchy of needs. When you have sorted out morality, what do you enjoy, art. Moral realism is a more basic need. When it is met... what do you do in life?
@norabelrose198
Жыл бұрын
How fucking cold is it in your house
@KaneB
Жыл бұрын
Yeah it's pretty cold
@ceterisparibus42
Жыл бұрын
I asked one of my philosophy teachers about this topic and he said that he thought that aesthetic realism was more likely to be true than moral realism. He liked black metal and had a Darkthrone shirt which I thought was a little funny (I also like black metal).
@valentinoa1001
Жыл бұрын
Doblaje en español
@Mon000
Жыл бұрын
Don't mind me just feeding the algo by saying that 2001 a space odyssey is an absolute masterpiece.
@KaneB
Жыл бұрын
My favourite movie!
@esquizofreniasobrenatural
Жыл бұрын
I found that movie boring, i prefer others genres than the genre of that movie.
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