This isn’t a political topic more philosophical.I know it has nothing to do with Libertarianism ,I was just curious about people’s thoughts.
Can there be an objective form of aesthetics?
Ayn rand tried to asser there was and yet her theory was flawed.
I mean can you truly say this art is good and it be more than a mere opinion?
can if ever be a fact? if so,how?
would anyone like to attempt to formulate a way of doing this?
It seems that aesthetic value is subjective.
Another thing, How can you define art in an objective way?
I mean how can you say what art is in a factual way that is not opinion.
Now don’t get me wrong I’m not aesthetic postmodernist but I know it’s just an opinion.I don’t think any definition of art can be anything more than opinion.
I agree with your last statement, however, there is a mathematical measure of aesthetics, which makes it somewhat objective-ish. Jurgen Schmidhuber details his “Low Complexity Art” here. The mathematics is pretty involved (computer theoretic maths). It is notable that one’s choice of representation is still arbitrary, even if the measure of complexity is not (within a fixed constant), given the chosen representation.
The reason this is significant, in my opinion, is not to serve as a philosophical foundation for trying to do the Rand (proving Ought from Is) but, rather, to explain why we mostly think the same kinds of things are beautiful given the apparent arbitrariness of beauty. Why is static on a television disinteresting, but a Michelangelo sculpture fascinatingly beauteous? Why are the infant offspring of non-human species cute, even to humans? (It would seem an evolutionary advantage to feel no empathy towards them as we will likely soon be eating them). Why are animals beautiful in a way that rocks are not? Why do almost all animals possess bilateral symmetry and why does bilateral symmetry appear aesthetic to us? Why do certain musical ratios (2:1, 3:2, 4:3, etc.) sound so fundamental, so much more “beautiful” than other musical ratios which sound harsh and grating? I think algorithmic complexity goes a long way to explaining why these are so.
The way to escape from being forced to accept that aesthetics is objective is to note that simple patterns are more “beautiful” than more complex patterns only to beings of limited computational capacity (like ourselves). To an unlimited being, for example, God, there would be no beauty since every pattern would be as intriguing and unique as every other pattern. In fact, the patterns we find beautiful would be particularly uninteresting to God because they comprise such a small portion of the space of all possible infinite patterns. Unless an unlimited being chooses from the outset a bias towards simplicity, there is no objective reason to prefer simplicity since it is no more difficult to comprehend a complex pattern than a simple one. So, our preference for simplicity (beauty) is a consequence of our finitude but beauty is not an a priori (objective) fact.
The evolutionary road might be one way of heading towards a natural law style aesthetics(possibly genetics inclines us for whatever evolutionary purpose to find certain patterns shapes etc more appealing) or maybe we could work on the basis of the golden ratio but again even that isn’t perfect.
Aesthetics is a branch of philosophy dealing with the nature of beauty, art, and taste, and with the creation and appreciation of beauty, It is more scientifically defined as the study of sensory or sensori-emotional values, sometimes called judgements of sentiment and taste. More broadly, scholars in the field define aesthetics as "critical reflection on art, culture, and nature. Aesthetics is a subdiscipline of axiology, a branch of philosophy, and is closely associated with the philosophy of art.
I wasn’t sure, so I looked up the definition. Commenting on this definition, individuals sensory response to stimulae is individual and must always be. A person who is tone-deaf so I can not appreciate music as most people do. They could find classical music lovely to listen to, but I cannot find beauty in it.
Studies have found that people usually choose more regular patterns as beautiful than chaotic patterns. For example, a human face is more beautiful when the features are very regular then when they are mishappen. The math formulas simply hunt for more regular patterns.
However, for me there is a big difference between pretty and beautiful. Yes, regular patterns and single focus is pretty. But to be beautiful the object or scene must also include a deep if hidden truth or truths.