Beauty is Objective

I'll first address a few of my opponent's points and finish up with a recap of my own and a little more. P1: Partial Attractiveness Earlier in the debate the concept of a "scale" of beauty was brought up, and while I dismiss these ratings as subjective judgments, Pro believes there is something deeper. As to Pro's point about whether the world could be "partially" attracted to a given person, I believe this point essentially becomes meaningless because even rating someone as a 4 out of a 10 indicates "partial attraction" as would a 2 or 3. Even a 1 doesn't preclude the possibility of partial attraction if going by a 1-10 scale. Secondly, Pro tries to frame beauty in a universal context, but these attempts unfortunately fall flat when faced with cultural realities and the vast number of ways that individuals have construed aesthetics values through a cultural framework. Pro briefly elicits the idea of evolutionary traits as a potential objective framework, but the idea of quickly dropped in favor of the "partial" attractiveness argument. In response to Pro's large nose/large breasts argument, what if I introduce a third culture that values small breasts and a small nose? Clearly in that culture the large breasted, large nosed woman would be out of luck. What Pro must do here, to account for the cultural discrepancies in beauty, is to be able to make value judgments about how one culture's standards are objective better than another in terms of aesthetics. Instead of going this difficult (but necessary) route for proving objectivity, Pro relies on this "partial attractive" argument that logically becomes meaningless given the degrees of the term. P2: Brain States/Further Appeal to Evolution Note how Harris actually lays down a broad, but concrete framework for determining whether action X is ethical. That standard is well-being, and while Harris moves from there, Pro has yet to establish a starting point beyond majority appeal. We must know more than simply that a group of individuals think about aesthetics values to lay down an objective beauty standard, even if these judgments can be corroborated in the brain. Even if we conducted an fMRI on the entire world at t1 and somehow learned, through an immense amount of time an effort, which people were found most and least attractive this says nothing about whether these standards would remain constant if tested later at t2. Pro has hinted at an evolutionary objective standard, but unfortunately since this is the last round it's not clear if he has thrown down the gauntlet and claimed evolutionary traits as objective. It would be a little peculiar for Pro to claim this, and yet not follow evolutionary ethics (I'm pretty certain he does not as Harris does not.) I'm not sure whether I should address this since I'm not even sure Pro is making the argument that evolution objectively determines our beauty standards. Nonetheless, evolutionary theory implies that women prefer taller men, particularly men taller than themselves [1]. In this sense, would it be sensible to even expect a universal standard for say, a 5'7 male? A 5'2 female might find the man's height perfectly acceptable and given him an 8 of 10 while the same man might immediately be excluded as a potential mate by a 6'0 female. This standard would appear objective only to the individual and fail at universalization, which is a necessary component at an all encompassing objective standard. Conclusion: In conclusion, I thank Pro for the insightful debate on a philosophically pressing topic. While I feel I answered all of his arguments sufficiently, I am well aware that there may be those who disagree. My role in this debate as the "agnostic" was simply to counter his arguments, as someone who is arguing that "Bigfoot does not exist" as Pro can not provide direct evidence against Bigfoot's existence. Pro has repeatedly appealed to majority opinion and the occasional hypothetical scenario to make his point, but arguments concerning "partial attractiveness" fell into meaninglessness and a discussion on the evolutionary influence of objective beauty would have been fascinating, but unfortunately only appeared briefly in the last round as a semi-argument. I encourage a vote for Con, but wish the best for Pro in his future debates. [1] http://www.dailymail.co.uk...