A Thought About Aesthetics

I was reading Sen's Idea of Justice today. In the second chapter of the book there is a section where he asks whether a theory of justice like Rawls' or Kant's (which he calls a transcendental theory of justice (which basically means it deals with a perfect conception of justice and is not entirely concerned with day to day ongoings of justice)) is necessary or sufficient for giving answers about comparative questions of justice (like whether one country's political economic system is more just than another). He thinks that the answer is no for both. In talking about whether a transcendental theory of justice is necessary for doing comparative justice he brings up a thought experiment that uses aesthetics. The thought experiment runs "imagine you have decided that the best painting in the world is the Mona Lisa. Now you have to choose whether a Van Gogh or a Picasso is a better painting. He says it is crazy to go back to the Mona Lisa, determine what makes it the best painting and then apply whatever those criteria are to determine whether the Van Gogh or the Picasso is better.

I think Sen might be playing loose and fast with our intuitions about aesthetics to serve his point, but I think he is right anyways that many transcendental theories do not give specific or analytic entailing ways of comparing theories only based on a perfect conception of justice.

Anyways. I had an interesting thought thinking about aesthetics. If one were going to come up with an theory of art here is the question I think they would need to answer: "What makes what you value in a specific piece of art more valuable than what another person values when looking at a specific piece of art." The possible answers to this question could be that 1. there is nothing that makes what you value any better than what anyone else values (complete relativism about art). 2. You could say that there is a plural amount of good things to have reasons for liking about some specific piece of art (for example it reminds you of the past, or it depicts something that you value in other parts of your life (like returning to nature or intellectual abstractions or how wonderful and beautiful your country is) 3. Finally you could say that there is really only one acceptable reason for liking some piece of art work (I don't think this kind of theory is plausible, but it might say something like "art that is more symmetrical is better" "or only art that produces a huge emotional response is really good") On 3, you could possible get vague enough such that you would capture all the values that are listed in 2, but then you just have a vague theory. Identifying all the reasons that people have for valuing some particular kind of art seems like a worthy pursuit.

A question that arises out of this is whether there are unreasonable reasons for liking some particular piece of art. This is possible. Sometimes people get mocked for liking some kind of art because they don't have a wide enough taste. For example, young kids are mocked for liking Justin Bieber. Is there anything particularly bad about Justin Bieber? No it is the reason that people like Justin Bieber that that we can criticize them for. If they like Justin Bieber because it is all they have ever heard then we are right to criticize them for not having a discerning taste. Or if they like Justin Bieber only because all their peers like Justin Bieber. This is where one can get critical in art. Are there good reasons for liking Justin Beiber? Sure, if someone likes Justin Beiber because they can emotionally relate to a high school romance, then that seems like a valid reason for enjoying that song.

So without going into too much more detail, here is what I want to say about where any theory of art should start. It should start with reasons. What are the reasons that someone likes some particular piece of art? I have pointed to a few things which might serve as exemplar cases of good and bad reasons for liking some particular piece of art, and I have not identified exactly what makes some reason a good or bad reason for liking or disliking some piece of art. Finding out exactly what what makes something a good or bad reason for enjoying a particular piece of art I think would be the end to a theory of aesthetics.

A final thought. What does this say about pieces of art themselves. If it is whether or not we have good reasons for liking some piece of art that matters, does this mean we can say that if some piece of art gives someone no reason for liking it, then it is a bad piece of art. And conversely, is it true that if some piece of art gives people lots of good reasons for enjoying it, then that piece of art is a better piece of art?

Food for thought.

A Brief Analysis of the Golden Rule

The Golden Rule : Do unto others as they would do unto you. Or treat others the way you would like to be treated.

Often when talking about morality to people, I run into them saying that all that is needed for morality is the golden rule. Or they will argue that religions, despite the crazy metaphysics, have good moral rules associated with them (like the golden rule). The golden rule gets pointed to as this wonderful principle that all religions have discovered independently. "Surely then! It must be something profound!" They cry. Here I show that the golden rule is not all that profound, nor a good moral rule.

Here are a number of counter examples that show that the golden rule is not a good moral rule (at least in some cases).

Counter-examples:

1. Masochism – Say for example that I am a masochist (someone who loves receiving pain). I would like to be treated in such a way that I would be punished and beaten by any random stranger. Therefore, according to the golden rule, I should punish and beat any random stranger. This is contrary to most reasonable systems of morality.
   
2. Snarky and rude mannered – When I converse with other people I like them to be snarky and rude with me, or I like to be treated in a way such that when I am in conversation with people, I like them to be snarky and rude (because everyone knows snarky and rude people are so much fun!). Therefore I should be snarky and rude with other people. This seems contrary to morality or at least common courtesy.
3. Sadism – Imagine I am a sadist, someone who loves giving pain to other people. I like to be treated in such a way that I am allowed to beat people wherever I go. I should treat other people such that they are allowed to beat people wherever they go. This is absurd.

Here is an exemplar case of the golden rule and why I think the golden rule has no force in explaining our moral intuition about why some particular action is right or wrong.

Exemplar Case

I would like to be treated in a way such that no one steals from me, therefore, I should treat people in such a way that I do not steal from them. Or, because I don't like people stealing from me, I shouldn't steal from them. The rule does not actually provide any moral force in this case. Imagine a contrary case where there was a person who liked having things stolen from them all time. In such a case, that person would reason that because he wants to be stolen from all the time, he should steal from other people all the time. Of course the reply to this bizarre case might be something along the lines of “But no one wants to be stolen from!” I think the fact that no one wants to be stolen from is true (more or less), but I also think that this is the place where the moral force of the golden rule comes from. Instead the rule should read “do not do x because every human being does not want x done to them". So, do not steal because no human wants to be stolen from. Formulated as such, it applies a general rule to a particular case, which is a good form of inference. The golden rule makes a general moral rule from a particular case (one’s preferences), which is usually not a great form of reasoning. Why would one expect that one's own preferences would apply to everyone else?Just because you like being treated in a way such that other people give you ice cream does not mean you should treat others in such a way that you give them ice cream, (maybe they are allergic to ice cream, or despise it!)

Analysis

The golden rule strangely assumes that you should treat other people according to whatever preferences you have. Because some people have strange preferences, the golden rule outright does not work for them as a reasonable moral rule (because it does not capture some of what most people accept as the core features of morality (like not beating random strangers)). In the cases where the golden rule does work, it only works because that case is a case where every human being does not want x done to them, in which case the golden rule needs to be reformulated, reformulated as “do not do x because every human being does not want x done to them". But notice that now it is an empirical question about what human preferences are rather than an a priori search of one’s own preferences that determines how one ought to act. I think that this is a step in the right direction. Getting empirical information about human preferences, or working with value theory into what humans value and then coming up with an ethical theory based on that is much more appropriate than checking what your preferences are and then making moral rules out of them.

I think one last interesting thing that may or may not be the case is that the reformulated golden rule relies on the idea that nobody would like x. This reminds me of social contract theory. Social contract theory has many forms and maxims but I will take Thomas Scanlon’s which is that morals just are what people would reasonable agree to. I think in most accounts of what would be reasonably agreed to in a hypothetical society forming experiment is that people would agree that stealing is not something they would want in their society. I think in the case of stealing, it is if (historically) all societies have agreed that stealing other people’s property is wrong. I think this is really where the moral force comes from. “Nobody likes being stolen from so don't steal” amounts to “society has agreed that stealing is wrong, so don’t steal”.

Conclusion

The golden rule does not work for a number of cases and where it does work it only works because it tacitly assumes that all human beings have some preference. It then infers that because all human beings have that preference we should treat them according to whatever that preference is. The golden rule doesn't work in cases where people all don't have the same preferences (ice cream example). In cases where people all do have the same preferences it seems as if the real moral force comes from the idea that everyone has that preference rather than that you as an individual have that preference.

Need to Write

It's been a while and I need to write, so I'm going to talk about a few things that I've been thinking about lately. I want to say something about truth.

It's nothing new or interesting (the the world of philosophy), but I've stumbled across the redundancy theory of truth through my own thinking about truth. I started thinking about people saying that sentences like "that cat is brown" is a true sentence. To me saying that "that cat is brown is true" is saying the same thing as "that cat is brown" the "is true" adds nothing to the sentence; "is true" is redundant. Another good example of the redundancy of saying that's true is the way we in English say "that's true" in response to claims that people make about the world. So for example when I say "it's a bright and sunny day outside" and then you respond by saying "that's true", what have you said? Are you simply agreeing with that I previously said?

Even though there is some appeal to the redundancy theory of truth, the correspondence theory of truth creeps in when I want to abandon it completely. When I say "It's bright and sunny outside" and you respond with "that's true" aren't you saying something like "yes that is correct, you are describing the world correctly and in a way I understand"? Saying "you are describing the world correctly" seems like its saying something. What is it saying? Your theories and use of language is in accordance with my own beliefs about the world.