Do We Learn To Love Bad Art?


Selene

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It takes a certain blindness not to the see beauty of her inner character expressed in her face.

You're advocating the pseudoscience of physiognomy. One can imagine seeing "beauty of inner character" in anyone's face, including those who completely lack character. One reason that douchebag politicians succeed in getting elected is because those who vote for them fool themselves into believing that can see great "inner character" in their faces.

Shall we test your belief in physiognomy? How about if I post images, from my local newspaper, of people you've never met -- and therefore whom you don't anything about and can't project what you already know about them onto their images? Do you seriously imagine that you can know anything about their "inner character" when being limited to the photos, and not being allowed any other information?

Now, what about phrenology? Do you also believe that "it takes a certain kind of blindness" to not see the "inner character" expressed in the shapes of people's skulls?

See how we each have already chosen?

Yes, I do see how we've chosen! You've chosen pseudoscience. Which forms of inner ugliness made you do so? How has that innerly ugly preference of yours for something as untruthful and foolish as the pseudoscience of physiognomy affected your tastes in art? I mean, a person really has to have some issues to be foolish and evil enough to go around promoting pseudoscience. I would imagine that you have to see quite a lot of things as ugly when they're actually "objectively beautiful," and vice versa.

J

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This reminds me of the "who wore it best" fashion feature in the trash tabs, where they judge the relative attractiveness of starlets in identical dresses. The "experts" usually all choose different in the different magazines.Myself looking at the photos I don't see much difference as the girls are all pretty; except sometimes the dresses are so ugly I can't imagine how they were persuaded to wear them.

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Do you realize that in answering in the negative, you're admitting, based on your previous comments on "internal resonance," to sometimes having a mistaken affinity with that which is not beautiful, and therefore to possessing an inner ugliness which resonates with the ugliness that you observe and which you misidentify as beautiful?

J

How do you think I learned the value of the objective beauty of truth?

The discussion is not about the subcategory of "beauty of truth," but about the larger category of beauty in general, with an emphasis on visual beauty. You appear to be attempting to extrapolate your opinions about what is beautiful in that smaller subcategory of "beauty of truth" and impose them on the larger category of beauty in general, including on the subcategory of visual beauty. It's like if we were discussing the category of animals, and you were to say that you've found that birds can fly, and therefore you conclude that, since birds are animals, all animals can fly, including cattle. It doesn't logically follow.

But it is not a "mistaken affinity". Inner ugliness will always choose a matching outer ugliness. Realizing this truth in itself is the resolution, because it puts an end to blaming (unjustly accusing) what is outside for what is inside.

I'm interested in hearing examples of your inner ugliness choosing a matching outer ugliness in visual art. Please give us examples of when you thought that visually ugly things were beautiful, and explain the specific inner ugliness that you possessed which made you think that those visually ugly things were visually beautiful.

J

Sure. When I was a stupid teenager I actually perceived the "psychedelic rock" art of the time to be beautiful. That adolescent love of ugliness was discarded with maturity.

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Sure. When I was a stupid teenager I actually perceived the "psychedelic rock" art of the time to be beautiful. That adolescent love of ugliness was discarded with maturity.

How do know that it wasn't beautiful, and that your current subjective opinions about it aren't wrong? How do you know that with age you haven't drifted further from the "objective beauty" that you've only asserted without evidence that you can somehow magically access as a standard of judgment? I mean, you currently believe in the pseudoscience of physiognomy! That suggests to me that age hasn't improved your judgments and opinions, but quite possibly made them worse.

You still need to identify and explain how it is that you imagine that you're accessing knowledge of "objective beauty."

J

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Moralist has not yet answered anything, he just repeatedly begs his own question.

Yup. And repeatedly begging the question is yet another example of "inner ugliness." I wonder how his inner ugliness of question-begging manifests itself in his tastes in art. Which ugly things does it make him think are beautiful?

J

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"Character expressed in the face" is so meaningless without context, that I cannot believe anyone except the young Ayn Rand could have believed in it.

Looking at those two photos, if I were told that the first was Leni Riefenstahl and the second a young girl being tortured, I would have believed it absent contrary evidence or knowledge.

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"Character expressed in the face" is so meaningless without context, that I cannot believe anyone except the young Ayn Rand could have believed in it.

The philosopher, Arthur Schopenhauer, believed in physiognomy, the art of face reading. Schopenhauer wrote a whole essay on physiognomy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physiognomy

http://www.readbookonline.net/readOnLine/22567/

There is a story about Socrates. I don't know where I got it from and I don't know if it's true. It goes something like this.

There was a man in Ancient Greece who claimed he could tell character from the face. The friends of Socrates had a plan to show him up as a fraud. They invited the face reader to look at Socrates and tell them the character of Socrates. The face reader did not know Socrates. The friends of Socrates 'knew' that Socrates was of saintly character but he was homely looking. The appointed day came and the face reader said:

"Socrates is a glutton."

"Socrates is lazy."

"Socrates is lustful."

"Socrates has a bad temper."

The friends of Socrates laughed loud and long, with the laugher of the gods of Olympus. They 'knew' Socrates was a man of saintly character and they figured they had proof that the face reader was a fraud.

After all the laughter quieted down, Socrates said:

"His art is no sham. Those are exactly the enemies I fight against every day."

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Sure. When I was a stupid teenager I actually perceived the "psychedelic rock" art of the time to be beautiful. That adolescent love of ugliness was discarded with maturity.

How do know that it wasn't beautiful, and that your current subjective opinions about it aren't wrong?

The same way I know that Ayn Rand was beautiful and that M Cyrus is ugly.

It's your own responsibility to deal with your own interpretations of ugliness and beauty, I can't make your decisions for you... only for myself.

You still need to identify and explain how it is that you imagine that you're accessing knowledge of "objective beauty."

Your request is too full of mistaken premises to even begin to try to answer. "Imagination" has nothing to do with it, and neither does "accessing knowledge".

You're on your own.

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We know beauty , also truth.

Truth is the lie that ugly is beauty... is ugly.

Can you possibly be clear because even I am getting tired of your apparent semantic psycho-babel, or, worse, your inability to clearly communicate with several of the posters that have asked you very targeted questions.

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We know beauty , also truth.

Truth is the lie that ugly is beauty... is ugly.

Can you possibly be clear because even I am getting tired of your apparent semantic psycho-babel, or, worse, your inability to clearly communicate with several of the posters that have asked you very targeted questions.

Sorry. That sentence needed a comma.

Truth is, (meaning it is the truth)

Claiming that ugly is beauty is an ugly lie.

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We know beauty , also truth.

Truth is the lie that ugly is beauty... is ugly.

Can you possibly be clear because even I am getting tired of your apparent semantic psycho-babel, or, worse, your inability to clearly communicate with several of the posters that have asked you very targeted questions.

Sorry. That sentence needed a comma.

Truth is, (meaning it is the truth)

Claiming that ugly is beauty is an ugly lie.

what is ugly or beautiful is a matter of judgement or opinion, not a matter of fact. There is nothing in the physical laws of the cosmos that defines beauty or ugliness.

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what is ugly or beautiful is a matter of judgement or opinion, not a matter of fact. There is nothing in the physical laws of the cosmos that defines beauty or ugliness.

For example this dog, who won first prize in an ugliest dog in the world competition, is ugly or beautiful according to subjective taste. Maybe this is the most beautiful dog you ever saw, according to your subjective taste.

worlds-ugliest-dog.jpg

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I do not -think- that mutt is beautiful, but that is just my opinion.

The sentence: "That dog in the video shot is an ugly brute" has no meaning with regard to the physical laws of the Cosmos.

Ba'al Chatzaf

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We know beauty , also truth.

Truth is the lie that ugly is beauty... is ugly.

Can you possibly be clear because even I am getting tired of your apparent semantic psycho-babel, or, worse, your inability to clearly communicate with several of the posters that have asked you very targeted questions.

Sorry. That sentence needed a comma.

Truth is, (meaning it is the truth)

Claiming that ugly is beauty is an ugly lie.

Greg, it's hard to keep up with you, since you are veering between the physical and the metaphysical, at will. There is a distinction, and knowing the one, does not imply knowing the other.

I agree that character can be visible in a face, which lends itself a beauty - to one who searches for it. Also that conventional beauty is certainly not necessarily a signifier of character. So, agreed, we seek that which is of value to ourselves, sometimes finding in reality correspondence to our inner state.

Anything more is intrinsicism and wishful thinking, which is where I think you're going wrong.

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Greg:

Beautiful? Why?

Ugly? Why? Please answer succinctly and clearly.

Corpus Hypercubus
by Salvador Dali

Dali_CorpusHypercubus1954.jpg

A...

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We know beauty , also truth.

Truth is the lie that ugly is beauty... is ugly.

Can you possibly be clear because even I am getting tired of your apparent semantic psycho-babel, or, worse, your inability to clearly communicate with several of the posters that have asked you very targeted questions.

Sorry. That sentence needed a comma.

Truth is, (meaning it is the truth)

Claiming that ugly is beauty is an ugly lie.

what is ugly or beautiful is a matter of judgement or opinion, not a matter of fact.

I totally agree with your statement..

...and our totally subjective judgments or opinions will either agree or disagree with what is objectively ugly or beauty.

There is nothing in the physical laws of the cosmos that defines beauty or ugliness.

Again, I totally agree this has nothing to do with objective physical laws...

...but it has everything to do with objective moral law.

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Greg:

Beautiful? Why?

Ugly? Why? Please answer succinctly and clearly.

Corpus Hypercubus

by Salvador Dali

Dali_CorpusHypercubus1954.jpg

A...

My subjective opinion is beauty. :smile:

Interpreted on a personal micro level...

To me it represents the beautiful moral principle of men loving women enough to do what's morally right by them.

Interpreted on a macro level...

That picture portrays only one part of the total narrative of Christ... dying. But the story does not end there. For Christ did not die... he only experienced death in order to fulfill a moral purpose which was greater than himself. And everyone of us should also fulfill a moral purpose greater than ourselves because it makes us better people.

Interpreted on a symbolic level. A cross is the intersection of vertical line and a horizontal line. This represents the point of contact between physical (horizontal) and spiritual (vertical). And a human body superimposed upon it demonstrates the intersection. Note where the shadow of the body actually falls. That locates the intersection at the heart.

Now, whether or not my subjective opinions agree or disagree with objective moral law is not within the power for either me or for you to decide, although you are perfectly free to also offer your own subjective opinion which also will either agree or disagree with objective moral law. And your own subjective opinion is also beyond the power of both of us to render the final verdict.

There is only one judge which holds the power to render the final objective verdict upon our actions...

... and that is the reality of the just and deserved consequences we set into motion by our own actions.

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