Aesthetic Preferences Reveal One's Moral Nature

The claim makes falsifiable predictions about reality. If aesthetic preferences reveal morality, then we would expect to be able to judge morality from aesthetic preferences. The morally just would like some things and the morally repugnant like others. This is obviously wrong. Just LOOK at the world; it doesn't look this way. Theory falsified. If you think something makes sense philosophically, but the world just doesn't look that way, well, what else is there to say? Just admit that you're describing something other than the world, something other than reality, something NOT REAL! Note: The above is sufficient for the terms of the debate. The following is just for educational purposes. Again, the preceding has already established with high certainty that the claim in question is false. If you want to understand WHY reality doesn't look like your philosophical schema, even though it just makes SO much sense, then it might interest you to know a little about the actual causal history behind human aesthetics. A study of evolution, of cognition, etc...might interest you. But it's not actually necessary to understand why you're wrong to know THAT you're wrong. For that, it is sufficient to look at the world, and notice that it doesn't look like the theory says it should. If you want to know about free will insofar as it actually exists in a deterministic universe, I might recommend Escher's "Good and Real." Again, I remind you that you cannot go from "this belief (no free will) is held only by the philosophically 'bankrupt'" to "this belief is false." The two are not logically connected. It's like you're taking any sort of "Boo, we don't like you" statement about the belief, and then deciding to interpret it as evidence that the belief is false. You cannot prove falsity by proving meanness or scariness, or dirtiness, etc. All you can do is look at reality, and report what you find. That's how you find truth. Not by finding lots of reasons to say "boo, we don't like you" at an idea. I remind the reader that only the beginning portion of this argument is necessary to determine the truth of the claim in question. What we've just looked at is more for the sake of understanding HOW certain mistakes are made, rather than for the sake of determining IF they are mistakes or not. The same applies to the following. I just want to note the beautiful example of a thinking error revealed in the following excerpts: "Question: Are not aesthetic judgements of different constitution from moral judgements? For is it not so that aesthetics are biologically, not morally, based? Answer: Wrong again, friend. All of this ignores that one does not have to create that which is pleasant; one has equal opportunity to create the disgusting (and many exploit this opportunity). Therefore, even if all this holds true, a moral choice must still be involved in determining whether or not one"s preconceptions guide one"s brush. TO THAT DEGREE Question: Your theory is dented by the fact that despicable men can like virtuous art, yes? Answer: No. One can be immoral on the whole but moral insofar as they choose one piece over another; aesthetics is only a window." Okay...it sounds like they mean that you could make something you didn't like, so if you don't, that was a moral choice. If you chose to make something nice, then your moral choice was to make something nice. Something aesthetically pleasing. And that's the moral choice. So, is it okay for Hitler to like pretty music? They say that you can be "immoral on the whole" but still be moral in the lesser sense of choosing nice aesthetic things. So, if I understand, Hitler would be bad on the whole, but could be moral in a limited sense in that he makes moral choices as far as aesthetics go. So, if someone makes good aesthetic choices, it doesn't tell you about their morality as a whole, but only about their morality in choosing good aesthetic choices. I think I have this right. Have I? So, then, there are lots of kinds of morality. There's probably social morality (being nice to people). And aesthetic morality (making nice aesthetic choices). And maybe others, but these suffice. When it is said that "aesthetic preferences reveal morality," presumably it means a specific kind of morality: aesthetic morality. So, it could be rewritten to be more precise as "aesthetic preferences reveal aesthetic morality (making nice aesthetic choices)." What is aesthetic morality? It's the degree to which you make nice aesthetic choices. ... ... Umm...soo...WHAT do "aesthetic preferences reveal" again? Why, aesthetic morality, of course! :/ So, in other words, you're just saying that "aesthetic preferences reveal to what degree someone makes nice aesthetic choices." :/ Yeah. So, that makes sense. It's practically a tautology. I really might recommend Escher's "Good and Real." Just the introduction on how to use words in a clear way when philosophising. So, since it's obviously true that aesthetic preferences reveal aesthetic choices... You mark (in your mind) that statement as true. Then, since aesthetic choices can be called "aesthetic morality," you substitute OUT "aesthetic choices" and replace it with "aesthetic morality." And you mark that statement as true, too, since it's substituting synonymous terms. Then, and here comes the big mistake, you abbreviate "aesthetic morality" to just "morality." And then you mark that as true. If you don't see the problem here, let me recommend VERY much that you take five minutes and read... Actually, I'll just post it here; I've got a few thousand characters left. I recommend it. The entire work is available free at http://people.mokk.bme.hu... "There need not be any deliberate deception or dishonesty involved in the sleight-of-hand conflation of an unspoken, implicit definition with an explicitly proposed definition. On the contrary, in the absence of careful effort to avoid it, the mistake is easily made without even noticing the back-and-forth substitution. And nowhere does that happen more readily than in discussing matters of right and wrong. Many definitions of right and wrong have been proposed. For example, right has been defined as that which causes the greatest overall pleasure, or as that which respects the fundamental interests of all people (or all beings), or as that which complies with scriptural claims about God"s commands, and so on. Or, as discussed above, right can be defined relativistically as that which society promotes or the like. ... Thus, we tend to think that whatever action meets the proposed explicit definition of right is not a mistaken action to take"there is no reason not to do it if we want to (and inversely, to do what is not right is somehow mistaken). But that equivocation is illusory. We cannot make two concepts equivalent (here, the explicit and implicit definitions of right) just by defining the same word to represent the two, any more than we can make leaves be the same color as coal just by defining the same word both as the color of leaves and as the color of coal. Suppose, though, that we made a further effort to establish the equivalence of the implicit not-mistaken-to-do sense of right with, say, the utilitarian greatest-pleasure sense (once again selecting that particular sense at random for the sake of illustration): To pursue that effort, suppose we were to define right as that which is not mistaken to do and which brings about the greatest pleasure. Would that do the trick? It would not; given that conjunctive definition, we"d need to establish (somehow) that an act is not mistaken to do and that it promotes the greatest pleasure in order to show that it"s right. Merely establishing the latter would not suffice. Well then, suppose instead we were to define right as that which is not mistaken to do or which promotes the greatest pleasure (using or inclusively, to denote either or both). In that case, we could indeed establish that an act is right merely by showing that the act promotes the greatest pleasure. But given that disjunctive definition, just establishing that something is right no longer establishes that it"s not mistaken to do (it merely establishes that it is not mistaken or that it promotes the greatest pleasure). The imperviousness of truth to these tricks of definition is reassuring. If concepts yielded to our attempts to equate them just by our proclaiming definitions in that manner, then definitions would be like magic spells, capable by their mere incantation of somehow rearranging the substantive facts of the world. Obviously, definitions have no such power. As long as we take care not to allow sleight-of-hand substitutions to go unnoticed, definitions are (at least in principle) inconsequential and need not be argued about.6 In particular, for instance, defining right in the above utilitarian manner is inconsequential, if we"re careful enough: if we fastidiously use just the stated definition, avoiding the smuggled-in implicit definition, then the stated definition tells us nothing about what behavior is or is not mistaken, nothing about what we should or should not do." This excerpt is not as clear as it is in context, and I recommend reading section 1.2 starting on page 12 to fully understand the concept which is hinted at here.