Aesthetic Preferences Disguised As Reason

Aesthetic Preferences Disguised As Reason

The World now worships Reason. Well, this is what everybody must say to get by in what everybody pretends is a Rational World. But actually, if one examines closely, one finds that Aesthetics actually have the wider sway.

I’ve noticed that often Posts are criticized for not being sufficiently rational. And yet the critiques are not rational in and of themselves. Reasons are not given for why these Critics object, or explanations are not fleshed out with anything substantial. Essays are not answered with Essay of Refutation, but with declarations with no more content then simple expressions of disgust.

Well, this would seem to indicate that the problem these critics have is not one of Logic but of Taste – of Aesthetics, not Reason.

In a sense they are falling back to some very Ancient Trends in Philosophy. It was once thought, by the Platonists and others, that Aesthetic Taste was an indicator of Truth – that Truth and Beauty were one and the same – that what Sounded Good was for that very ‘Reason’ most likely to be correct. But such a Philosophy would assume that there is never any Unpleasant Truth.

Young People especially want with all their hearts to be optimistic and to suppose with a Faith that they would be embarrassed to admit that All Truths are Beautiful, and that anything that happens to offend them must be, for that very reason alone, ‘irrational’, ‘unreasonable’, and ‘illogical’… even though they can’t explain in rational terms why. But their instincts tell them that what violates Taste can never be correct. I suppose they think that no Truth can have any real power over them unless they give it the endorsement of Belief. Again, it is a kind of Religious Behavior which their atheism would be ashamed of if they were more conscious of its dynamics.

One can have sympathy for the sensitivities of such fledgling Philosophers, but it really needs to be pointed out that such Philosophy, as an accepted System was discredited Ages ago, and then every time it has ever resurfaced. Aesthetics is fine for picking out shoes, and shirts, and even for appreciating the Looser Arts such as Music and Poetry, Painting and Photography. But in the Rational Sciences we should adhere to actual empirical observation or experimentation for the mining of our Truths.

No, and not just Logic. Logic by itself is insufficient. Logic, if we think about it, we discover that it consists only of Mathematical Consistency. But Mathematics are based entirely upon purely Conceptual Principles – that is, Imagination. Yes, in a great good many instances, there is some actual correspondence to Reality; however, simply because a sequence of assertions, premises and conclusions follow themselves consistently, we have no certainty that they are anchored into any point of any actual Reality. For instance, Einstein’s graphs and charts representing Time as a forth dimension. Logical? Yes. Consistent? Yes. Representing anything that is in any way true, real or substantial? No. So, Logic and Mathematical Consistency, though clever and fascinating in the same way as a good Chess Game is fascinating, still, such consistency to imaginary principles is no guaranty of any actual Working Truth. Indeed, it is the Fascination with Consistency for the sake of Consistency that makes groundless Logic something of a cousin to Aesthetics – appreciated only because of the warm and pleasant feeling it provides. But for any actual Truth we must consult the Real World. Empiricism. And what the Real World sometimes shows us is not always pleasant.

But we should learn to be grownup about such things and stop our bitching.

I enjoyed reading this. It's actually got a nice point in it. Unfortunately it was so voluminous and all encompassing I can't think of a more constructive comment. :|

I think I know what you mean but much like Kaniaz I can't think of anything even remotely worth saying in reply to it.

Well, actually I can sum up the basic point by identifying the crucial problem and that is that the Modern Scientific Advocate supposes, even insists that Truth can only be found in the laboratory was demonstrated though peer reviewed double-blind Studies.

They confuse Protocol and Procedure with ordinary Empircal Knowledge.

It was said that Roger Bacon discovered the principal of Refrigeration when in the winter season, with snow on the ground, Mr. Bacon had observed for several days in a row that a dead duck was not undergoing decomposition and decay. He saw it, he thought about it, and all at once he knew it. The Knowledge Part had already been achieved.

So of course he he got a few other dead ducks, and set some aside where it was warm, and put a few others in a box packed with snow and ice, so he could DOCUMENT HIS FINDINGS.

But what needs to be realized is that Bacon already knew the Truth, if not all the tiny little details.

Likewise, any person who experiences a Miracle KNOW THE TRUTH. The Lab and the Studies are only for Quantification and to sort out the nut and bolt details. But Pure Empirical Observation is sufficient for the assertation of Knowledge.

Seeing the Dead Duck in the Snow was enough.

I think I understand what you're saying.

Do you mean that science (if we use it as an example) only quantifies information that humans don't necessarily know how to use or technically understand, but has already been around? Would the following example be fair to your point of view.

A few centuries before Maxwell "discovered" the relationship between electricity and magnetism, scientists assumed that electricity and magnetism were two seperate forces. But once Maxwell unified the two forces into a single force, electromagnetism, he did not really do much. Maxwell simply pointed out something that was already there. So, science does not necessarily deserve the credit for combining the two forces into electromagnetism, it simply wrote the word electromagnetism into textbooks. The single force of electromagnetism however has always been around. The fact that electormagnetism is a single force is in itself elegant and "beautiful" because its been reduced to a lower term (maybe not the lowest). But because electromagnetism is now generally accepted to be one force, we're simply taking the egg heads word for it that its undisputed truth. But what you're saying is that, the accepted scientific "proof" isn't creadible so to speak because its based more on observation and figures but the numbers have already been established before they were written in textbooks. Artistic tastes are said to be qualitative not quantitative, but you're showing that they're similiar (perhaps the same) as science because science uses qualitative information to "prove" the obeservation even though that qualitative information is closely related to lets say art appreciation (your chess game).


Perhaps I'm not expressing myself correctly but I do believe that I understand what you mean. Very interesting.

Man, while my previous post was lost to a computer freeze, I can't help but retype it a day later seeing that this topic is still at the top of the forum (and thus viewable from the index). Well, not all of it, but the relevant parts.

First off, no, science doesn't establish truth, and verifying something with science that you believe to be true doesn't make it any more or less true than it actually is, so if you think something true at first, and it actually is, then it doesn't matter whether or not you employ the scientific method. However, since you don't know that, science is useful in determining whether it'd be appropriate to operate under the assumption that it is--not whether or not it's true, but whether or not it's rational to "believe" it. Or were you stating that the aesthetic sense had by folks such as Bacon can only respond to what's true? If that's the case, then I'd refer you to another dead guy, famous spiritualist Arthur Conan Doyle, who to his death was convinced that his good friend Houdini was lying and did, in fact, perform real magic; while it doesn't make a difference to Arthur that after his death historians have discovered the ways in which he executed many of the experiments which were specifically responsible for causing Doyle to believe that the man was an esper, since Arthur is, of course, very much dead, it does make a different to you and me because we see that what a person truly feels, or truly believes they feel, can be very wrong. If it's the case that some people may have a true aesthetic while others have false aesthetics, then it's not a universally applicable skill and can't hope to in the slightest override science as a method for making good judgments. And hey, wouldn't it just be more reasonable to believe that aesthetics are actually just positive mental assocations that are a function of instinct and relate to concepts of symmetry and ideal conditions, since that's pretty much the accepted view last time I checked? Of course, that doesn't account for the goth aesthetic or even a fraction of all aesthetics directly, but indirectly it should, if you do some looking into cognitive science.

Oh, and if you don't mind, can you tell me what the reason behind your capitalization of various nouns is? I've seen mystics do that, but I've never understood quite how it makes sense. If there were a disclaimer attached to such posts, then maybe it would be a way to note that you're qualifying those words in some way, but since there isn't, the only reason I can see to type that way would be that you yourself compose your thoughts better when you're capitalizing those words, but if that's the case and you aren't planning on attaching disclaimers to explain the sense of your capitalizations, you should after you've finished composing the text go back over it and decapitalize all the words, because all it does otherwise is throw off the way to detect the beginnings of sentences employed by lazy people such as myself who aren't very good at seeing dots. lol i have to wake up in five hours =\