Aesthetic Preferences Reveal One's Moral Nature

My apologies for the forfeiture; I was too quick to think the debate abandoned. The argument made is in a complicated and dense style, and I expect that most readers will not take the trouble to piece it together into coherence. In the interests of the understanding of the audience, and to allow my opponent to correct any misunderstandings I may have of their argument, I shall first attempt to put into clear terms the essence of the argument. My notes, to be addressed by my opponent when appropriate, will be placed in parentheses alongside the point to which they apply. Artists must create. (Do you simply mean that no one can be an artist unless they create?) They choose what to create. The act of choice is an act of judgment, as it selects one option from among alternatives, implicitly judging the selection as the best. (Then, a false dichotomy is presented) Either you accept that the artist is implicitly proclaiming each aspect of their creation as superior to any other possible substitution or you accept that "reality is, at its core, nothing more than a procession of terrors, and no moral person can do anything about it, being crushed into the dirt whenever they even so much as try." It is then expounded that: "Not only is belief in the inherent animosity of the cosmos indicative of philosophical bankruptcy, the idea that, even if such a belief were correct, writing must reflect it is absurd." (Allow me to point out the fallacy of judging truth by its consequences. It is irrelevant whether or not this belief is "indicative of philosophical bankruptcy." When it comes to judging the truth of the idea, only the truth matters. You can't conclude that the idea is false on the grounds that "only philosophically bankrupt losers believe that, haha." I hardly think the point deserves to be defended, but if you wish to do so, I recommend using evidence to do so. More importantly, as I said, a false dichotomy has been presented. The writer presents their own idea (bereft of evidence, I may say), and then says "If you don't believe this, you must believe the universe is terrors, being crushed into dirt, (insert visceral and repulsive imagery), etc etc. You wouldn't want to believe THAT, would you? Of course not! So you must believe what I said about artists judging their works to be the greatest possible form of them." It's silly, and I hope it is transparently so now. You have ignored the possibility of an alternative THIRD explanation. Indeed, there may be thousands of possible other explanations, so that we may, in good conscience, reject the dirt and terrors universe, and then continue to ALSO reject YOUR idea). The argument continues with the most aesthetically pleasing paragraph of the bunch, which I will reproduce here in its entirety: "My point can be seen here: every stroke of the artist must carry significance. Every word the writer lays down reflects their deepest convictions. Making art is the act of asserting that one vision is more worthy of existence than another. It is simultaneously creation and destruction. A piece of art is, at its heart, the result of the values the writer holds. Aesthetics, therefore, cannot be separated from systems of value " the artist creates with a full explication of his values as his aim. For this reason, works of art can be judged in the same way that all people can be judged: based on their moral merit." Beautiful, isn't it? It carries something of the aesthetic appeal of G. K. Chesterton, or Hugh Nibley, or C. S. Lewis, or Christopher Hitchens or Nietzche. Nonetheless, the idea is silly. And yet, the writing is so lovely, Can these two things be true at the same time? Of course they can. The basic problem throughout the entire argument is the idea of thinking aesthetics flow in human brains from the same place as their moral judgments do. Is there any evidence of this idea? It would be quite a revolution in cognitive science if it was true. Our psychology is the result of dumb evolution. There's absolutely no reason to expect that natural selection favored aesthetic preferences ONLY when they were attached to morality. Why do we like pleasant landscapes? Because it is to our reproductive benefit to like them, and so choose to live there. That's why we happen to enjoy landscapes that are good for living in, with water and vegetation and animal life, birds singing, bees buzzing about lovely flowers, etc. It's obvious, no? Our ancestors who liked such environments tended to live better and out-survive their fellows who (theoretically) might have preferred less inhabitable environments. And so, if an artist reproduces such a scene, they may find it pleasant, and expect other humans to find it pleasant, REGARDLESS OF THEIR MORALS, because of aesthetic preferences encoded into the neural structure of our brains. From infancy, we betray our preference for certain aesthetics; we like sweet things, and pretty music, and pretty faces. Infant toys tend to be bright and colorful because of our natural aesthetic tendencies. Or did Hitler prefer drab ugly blocks to play with as a child? Perhaps you think he must have preferred music made by smashing dishes against decomposing carcasses? Hitler liked pretty flowers and birds singing as much as anyone, no doubt. He was even something of an artist. Morally bankrupt people don't suddenly stop liking pretty music or beautiful figures of the human body, or exquisite cooking or sweet perfumes, etc, etc. In other words, if someone wants to be king of the world, I don't think it would work to judge their morality by how pretty they sculpt or write. There's no evidence for the idea. And an understanding of evolutionary psychology suggests it's extremely unlikely to be true. Additionally, as obvious and relevant points, the writer seems to suppose that EVERY touch of the brush, every word in the manuscript is selected because of the morality of the writer, or painter. Take a pretty painting, with blues and purples "Starry Night," perhaps. Put one purple line where there was a blue one, and show the two paintings to a thousand people. Do you really think they'll be judging the one line as superior in one painting than in the other? Even if you can imagine a case where it COULD happen that way, your argument seems to suggest it will ALWAYS happen that way. If you want to stick to your guns, I'd bet money that we could alter paintings in such a minor way and find people none the less appreciative of them. Look, people don't always know which of many possibilities is really the best one. They couldn't tell you if the meal would have been better with .05 grams of salt less or not, or if the music would have been better if a low G note was inserted seven and a half minutes into the symphony, or if the manuscript would be better if it said "Of course" instead of "Indeed." Furthermore, you seem to be assuming that the artist has considered every possibility, so that their selection carries the implicit suggestion that it was the best of all possible selections. What if they just didn't think of things? Do we really think that they considered every possible shade of color for every possible spot on their painting? The basic problem, I might say, is an attempt to make humans rather neater than they are. No, we don't always make sense. We're probably not coherent all the time. We don't know every possibility. We don't know what we'll like down to perfect detail. We don't know why we like what we like. And it is in the attempt to make this idea work that you are forced to bite the bullet and you end up having to assert that morally repugnant people must not like pretty music and flowers. When your reasoning is leading you to conclusions like that, it's probably time to recognize that your premises or reasoning are flawed somewhere. Case closed, no? (note, I may have misunderstood the argument made. My language has been somewhat harsh against the idea as I have understood it. If what I think is your idea, and what your idea actually is are not the same thing, then naturally, my language aplies toward one and not the other)