Talk:Aesthetics/Archive 1

message: A craftsperson or artisan differs from an artist in how they approach their creative activities.  Learn what values of each aesthetic element appeals to those people in the culture you are touching: this makes you a better artisan.  An artist, however, creates from a different foundation; sometimes they are driven by a muse, they often experiment like children, can be overtaken by their imagination, they disturb, and they use their art to liberate their own souls from the slings and arrows of their own personal life.  
If you are an artist visiting this page, you might also like to read the WikiPedia pages about a, b, c, d, e, and f.  You might also visit some of these external links:
link1
link2
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The links aren't working... :(
:Yep you have got it very mixed up from the point of view of the artist. firstly the realms of artist and craftsperson both deal with aesthetics - so there really is no need to get concerned about the professional differences here, is there?
:secondly - the terms artisan, craftsperson and artist are hotly contested, but not along the lines that you have described. i think you are trying to say that a craftsperson thinks about an audience while an artist just seems to ignore everybody else. think about that for a moment. and then consider why a craftsperson tends to be associated with making furniture and jewellery while artists are credited with encapsulating a whole cultures zeitgeist. No they both think about an audience and when they are good they both have a very subtle sense of aesthetic and how to manipulate other peoples emotional responses. The difference lies more in the nature of the problems they are trying to solve. 
:Now whether you subscribe to one or other being more noble than the other is a highly political issue and suprise, suprise, the terms artist and craftsperson have been given to us through a protracted political portrayal stretching back hundreds of years. to cut a long story short Artist as a word is the champion of the right while craftsperson is a term favoured by the left, implying the nobility of the person who grafts with thier hands and all that that implies. even prior to that there is an issue with the word craft itself, which meant power (it still does in germany where it originated, Kraftwerk = power station). the poor old kraft workers were even being relegated in the middle ages, only then the term was more often associated with witchcraft.
:I'm sorry that the artists that you seem to have come into contact with all seem to be working out some kind of personal gestalt, perhaps they are merely in denial about thier need for therapy.
DavidP 02:39, 16 Mar 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Disclaimer 

message: And there i was thinking that this page was doing OK - in a rather uncommited way, when i found you were all worrying about what to do when an artist read what you were saying. you were right it is annoying looking at pages written by people that are role playing, but I dont think there is a problem.
the answer is why bother getting wrapped up in art at all? 
it has its own wiki page, as does, visual art, craftsperson. beauty etc.
aesthetics is, as you point out, an issue of perception - just leave it at that! and let the specific pages deal with those other things.
so how do you avoid refering to art? - just get rid of the highly dubious para that Brianshapiro has a prob with too.
this one
::Someone's aesthetic has a lot to do with their artistic judgement. For example, an individual who wears flowered clothing, drives a flowered car, and paints their home with flowers has a particular aesthetic.
I was about to change it thinking that artistic judgement was a highly dubious nothingness, and considered taste, or style when i read Brianshapiro's comment and tried replacing it with the top definition - like so:
Someones that which appeals to the senses. has a lot to do with their... what...   erm... senses?
And then what follows
::Generally, art adheres to the aesthetic principles of symmetry/asymmetry, focal point, pattern, contrast, perspective, 3D dimensionality, movement, rhythm, unity/Gestalt, and proportion.
suddenly we are on an art page - or to be more precise a Visual Art page.
lets have a list of aesthetic principles instead
and the next bit is giving us a rather shambolic lesson in art criticism.
::One cannot take a sample of artwork, lay it down, critique it across aesthetic dimensions, and reach some kind of quantitative judgement as to its quality. Great paintings touch our souls; they may violate some guidelines or lend different weights to various aesthetic principles (sometimes a piece of art veers violently from an aesthetic principle specifically for effect; the "anti-art" Dadaist movement deliberately violated as many artistic principles as possible). Yet the principle of aesthetics gives us a basis for discussion.
Quality isn't an issue in "that which appeals to our senses" as much as depth of appeal, and you could argue that no painting appeals as much as the sublime sight of a massive stone cliff being eroded by storm tossed seas in a hurricane, we should try and leave art out of it here.
sorry to rant - why dont I just go and make some changes and see what you reckon.
DavidP 03:12, 16 Mar 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  An artist just dropped in 

message: I'm taking a Philosophy of Aesthetics course at the moment and there is nothing in this article that even resembles the material I'm learning. If this is a philosophy article then there should be a survey of the major philsophical authors in the field, linking to their own articles which go into further detail. This survery and analysis may be most appropriately organized chronologically (begrudgingly beginning with Plato, of course). Also, the way the article organized is not representative of the field of aesthetics, which mainly discusses principles relating to all forms of art. Please let me know what you think before I start to make bold changes!--Slac 00:38, 25 May 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I am not a philosophy student but I couldn't agree more, I came to the talk page to suggest the same.  Best of luck with your bold editing -- Tedneeman 04:25, 26 May 2005 (UTC)

text: I am interested in philosophy (I found this article through links from WikiProject Philosophy).  I think that the paragraphs entitled 'aesthetics in [some field]' are okay as far as they go, but that the article could use a better overall structure, and that those paragraphs should probably be left in at the bottom.  I agree the main article should be about aesthetics in philosophy, which is totally lacking at the moment.  I look forward to seeing upcoming changes.  WhiteC 20:34, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Is this a Philosophy article or not?? 

message: I took out the following section titles:
Ancient Greece, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, 18th Century, Kant, Hume, 19th Century, Hegel, Nietzsche, Tolstoy, 20th Century, Clive Bell, R. G. Collinwood, John Dewey, Susanne Langer, Arthur Danto
None of them contained anything, though a few were marked as stubs.  Leaving section headings followed by nothing is messy and meaningless.  We need information about these sections, not just their titles.  For that matter, this whole article needs to be cleaned up and improved, IMO  - J.S. Nelson 5 July 2005 01:55 (UTC)
: Yeah, no kidding. Forgive me for adding those empty sections, which were basically desperate cries for assistance. --Slac 5 July 2005 04:58 (UTC)
Yes, the article needs a major rewrite by an expert.  Knowing nothing of this topic, I came here via the Philosophy of art redirect hoping to get an overview, but the material here seems to cover only one small aspect.  Slac's contention that the article covers little of what's in a typical philosophy of aesthetics course is borne out by for example  which describes the content of a text on the subject.  I'll put a cleanup tag on the article in the hope of attracting the attention of someone who can do it justice.  -- JimR 10:37, 13 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Clean up 

message: Greek Speculations -
"Ancient Greece supplies us with the first important contributions to aesthetic theory, though these are scarcely, in quality or in quantity, what one might have expected from a people which had so high an appreciation of beauty and so strong a bent for philosophic speculation. The first Greek thinker of whose views on the subject we really know something is Socrates. We learn from Xenophon's account of him that he regarded the beautiful as coincident with the good, and both of them are resolvable into the useful. Every beautiful object is so called because it serves came rational end, whether the security or the gratification of man.  Socrates appears to have attached little importance to the immediate gratification which a beautiful object affords to perception and contemplation, but to have emphasized rather its power of furthering the more necessary ends of life.  The really valuable point in his doctrine is the relativity of beauty. Unlike Plato, he recognized no self-beauty (auto to kalon) existing absolutely and out of all relation to a percipient mind." --From the 1911 Encyclopedia (Public Domain)
Would this section be appropriate? The same encyclopedia also has entries for Plato, Aristotle, and Plotinus. Famous German philosophers also each get a section. If it gets used then the template "open curly open curly 1911 close curly close curly" should be included. See my talk page for more of the 1911 entry. Jeff 23:47, 3 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: New Heading

message: Might it be a good idea to replace the current article entirely with the 1911 one, then make whatever changes are necessary to incorporate modern developments? That article is quite well done and treats many subtle points that we're missing here. inkling 05:22, 2 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Since no one has objected, I've now created /Brit1911 as I proposed, and will do some work on it, I hope with other people's help.  -- JimR 06:29, 10 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: TimNelson 10:05, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

text: Nobody has opposed this suggestion, so I've moved the Britannica material to History of aesthetics (pre-20th-century) and linked it from Aesthetics#See also.  -- JimR 03:41, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: 1911 Britannica as a starting point

message: How so? How is it difficult to understand. Also, please Wikipedia:Sign your posts on talk pages. Hyacinth 10:04, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  this should be easier 4 9yr olds to understand 

message: "Any person's aesthetic response to a work of art will be unique to that individual, but many aesthetic principles can be identified and used by the creator of the work to achieve specific aesthetic effects."
1) How is an "aesthetic response" different from a generic "response"?  This is not clear from the introductory paragraph.
2) Saying that "many aesthetic principles can be identified and used by the creator of the work to achieve specific aesthetic effects" seems meaningless.  I could substitute any other word for "aesthetic" in this phrase, and have an equivalent statement.  Ex: "many scientific principles can be identified and used by the creator of the work to achieve specific scientific effects".  It may (or may not) be true, but it doesn't help you understand what "aesthetic" means.
I thought I would post these comments here, rather than simply deleting the sentence in question, in the hope that someone might be able to do something with it.  I think aesthetics can be useful, but I really don't think this sentence is helpful in explaining it.  WhiteC 02:16, 10 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: No defenders... I cut it out.  WhiteC 05:27, 17 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: The second sentence of this article needs serious work

message: I just finished reading the aesthetics article on The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.  It is far superior to this Wikipedia article.  Anyone interested in making improvements might consider using this resource as a guide.  --Gavin 15:16, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy aesthetics article is excellent 

message: Hi all.  I came here looking for "Aesthetic", the noun, not "Aesthetic" the adjective.  The word "Aesthetic" redirects here to "Aesthetics" (and rightly so).  
An example of the difference:
# (adjective) relating to or dealing with the subject of aesthetics; "aesthetic values"
# (noun) (philosophy) a philosophical theory as to what is beautiful; "he despised the esthetic of minimalism"
(lines above taken from Googling "define:aesthetic").  I'd been reading about Cool, which is defined on the Cool disambiguation page as an African philosophy and aesthetic.  I came here to try to answer the questions "What is an aesthetic?" (the noun), for which I had to go to Google to get the above definition, and "What other aesthetics are there" (which, now that I know the meaning of Aesthetic (noun), can be rephrased as "What different theories of the attractive are there", with "Cool" being one of these.  I've attempted to answer these, by defining "Aesthetic" as separate from Aesthetics at the top of the page, and by adding the "Schools of Aesthetics" section.  Unfortundately I only had one entry for that list (and the discussion page for that article shows some controversy); if anyone has anything different to add, please feel free.
TimNelson 09:47, 8 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Aesthetics vs. Aesthetic 

message: In response to numerous comments, I am taking a couple of days to run a major copyedit of the article OFFLINE; I will also incorporate some elements from the 1911 Britannica history.  I should slightly simplify the language as well (shooting for an 11th grade audience).
Note that any changes made ONLINE to the article between now and the update will be lost.
JeffC 15:05, 11 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Offline Rewrite 

message: → A couple of sections had Definitions of the word Aesthetic; I combined these into a top "Definition" section;
→ I added in some of the Britannica info into the existing History and Philosophy section, arranging it more chronologically with sub-section headings.  As the first couple paragraphs of the Visual Arts section appeared to talk about Modern views on Aesthetic philosophy, I moved those paragraphs from Visual Arts to the Philosophy section;
→ I removed many of the wikified words leaving primarily propper nouns and large concepts wikifield;
→ I combined the sections of Information Technology and Digital Aesthetics;
→ The Mathematics section had a tone as if it were trying to justify the beauty in math.  We already accept that; I repurposed the section to try to delinieate the aesthetic elements of said beauty;
→ Various grammar and clarity corrections.
JeffC 17:03, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Summary of Copyedit changes 

message: Certainly people apply aesthetic values to their own personal hygiene and beauty.  In what section should we discuss this?  Is Personal Aesthetics an Art, Science, or Engineering?
JeffC 12:37, 14 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  What About '''Personal''' Beauty? 

message: I removed older notes in the Talk page that are no longer relevant.
JeffC 12:37, 14 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Talk Note 

message: I've thought and read about these issues for a long time but i had a bit of an epiphany afew days ago. I was looking at a Youtube of Thera, there were the masses of rock that make up the island, the camera panned over the roof of a church; something caught my eye. I rewound and saw it was an embossed flower, white on white, reversed geometrically because it was on the convex side of the dome. It made a Pattern. I put it to you that the mind (think of the formation of consciousness in a child) craves patterns in nature. It has been said, "Nature is barren without man", looking at the rocks or much of the cosmos without life, pattern is minimal or not apparent to the naked eye, as we develop we crave perceptions which organize experience, such a process is essential for survival and is thus instinctual. Thus we are gratified, as we are by the exercise of the other instincts (this harkens to the Greeks' question of the "Good").  Wblakesx (talk) 13:28, 26 November 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Things that I have thought and read 

message: I took out the following section titles:
Ancient Greece, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, 18th Century, Kant, Hume, 19th Century, Hegel, Nietzsche, Tolstoy, 20th Century, Clive Bell, R. G. Collinwood, John Dewey, Susanne Langer, Arthur Danto
None of them contained anything, though a few were marked as stubs.  Leaving section headings followed by nothing is messy and meaningless.  We need information about these sections, not just their titles.  For that matter, this whole article needs to be cleaned up and improved, IMO  - J.S. NelsInsert formula hereon 5 July 2005 01:55 (UTC)
: Yeah, no kidding. Forgive me for adding those empty sections, which were basically desperate cries for assistance. --Slac 5 July 2005 04:58 (UTC)
Yes, the article needs a major rewrite by an expert.  Knowing nothing of this topic, I came here via the Philosophy of art redirect hoping to get an overview, but the material here seems to cover only one small aspect.  Slac's contention that the article covers little of what's in a typical philosophy of aesthetics course is borne out by for example  which describes the content of a text on the subject.  I'll put a cleanup tag on the article in the hope of attracting the attention of someone who can do it justice.  -- JimR 10:37, 13 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Clean up 

message: Greek Speculations -
"Ancient Greece supplies us with the first important contributions to aesthetic theory, though these are scarcely, in quality or in quantity, what one might have expected from a people which had so high an appreciation of beauty and so strong a bent for philosophic speculation. The first Greek thinker of whose views on the subject we really know something is Socrates. We learn from Xenophon's account of him that he regarded the beautiful as coincident with the good, and both of them are resolvable into the useful. Every beautiful object is so called because it serves came rational end, whether the security or the gratification of man.  Socrates appears to have attached little importance to the immediate gratification which a beautiful object affords to perception and contemplation, but to have emphasized rather its power of furthering the more necessary ends of life.  The really valuable point in his doctrine is the relativity of beauty. Unlike Plato, he recognized no self-beauty (auto to kalon) existing absolutely and out of all relation to a percipient mind." --From the 1911 Encyclopedia (Public Domain)
Would this section be appropriate? The same encyclopedia also has entries for Plato, Aristotle, and Plotinus. Famous German philosophers also each get a section. If it gets used then the template "open curly open curly 1911 close curly close curly" should be included. See my talk page for more of the 1911 entry. Jeff 23:47, 3 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: New Heading

message: Might it be a good idea to replace the current article entirely with the 1911 one, then make whatever changes are necessary to incorporate modern developments? That article is quite well done and treats many subtle points that we're missing here. inkling 05:22, 2 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Since no one has objected, I've now created /Brit1911 as I proposed, and will do some work on it, I hope with other people's help.  -- JimR 06:29, 10 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: TimNelson 10:05, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

text: Nobody has opposed this suggestion, so I've moved the Britannica material to History of aesthetics (pre-20th-century) and linked it from Aesthetics#See also.  -- JimR 03:41, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: 1911 Britannica as a starting point

message: How so? How is it difficult to understand. Also, please Wikipedia:Sign your posts on talk pages. Hyacinth 10:04, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  this should be easier 4 9yr olds to understand 

message: "Any person's aesthetic response to a work of art will be unique to that individual, but many aesthetic principles can be identified and used by the creator of the work to achieve specific aesthetic effects."
1) How is an "aesthetic response" different from a generic "response"?  This is not clear from the introductory paragraph.
2) Saying that "many aesthetic principles can be identified and used by the creator of the work to achieve specific aesthetic effects" seems meaningless.  I could substitute any other word for "aesthetic" in this phrase, and have an equivalent statement.  Ex: "many scientific principles can be identified and used by the creator of the work to achieve specific scientific effects".  It may (or may not) be true, but it doesn't help you understand what "aesthetic" means.
I thought I would post these comments here, rather than simply deleting the sentence in question, in the hope that someone might be able to do something with it.  I think aesthetics can be useful, but I really don't think this sentence is helpful in explaining it.  WhiteC 02:16, 10 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: No defenders... I cut it out.  WhiteC 05:27, 17 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: The second sentence of this article needs serious work

message: I just finished reading the aesthetics article on The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.  It is far superior to this Wikipedia article.  Anyone interested in making improvements might consider using this resource as a guide.  --Gavin 15:16, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy aesthetics article is excellent 

message: Hi all.  I came here looking for "Aesthetic", the noun, not "Aesthetic" the adjective.  The word "Aesthetic" redirects here to "Aesthetics" (and rightly so).  
An example of the difference:
# (adjective) relating to or dealing with the subject of aesthetics; "aesthetic values"
# (noun) (philosophy) a philosophical theory as to what is beautiful; "he despised the esthetic of minimalism"
(lines above taken from Googling "define:aesthetic").  I'd been reading about Cool, which is defined on the Cool disambiguation page as an African philosophy and aesthetic.  I came here to try to answer the questions "What is an aesthetic?" (the noun), for which I had to go to Google to get the above definition, and "What other aesthetics are there" (which, now that I know the meaning of Aesthetic (noun), can be rephrased as "What different theories of the attractive are there", with "Cool" being one of these.  I've attempted to answer these, by defining "Aesthetic" as separate from Aesthetics at the top of the page, and by adding the "Schools of Aesthetics" section.  Unfortundately I only had one entry for that list (and the discussion page for that article shows some controversy); if anyone has anything different to add, please feel free.
TimNelson 09:47, 8 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Aesthetics vs. Aesthetic 

message: In response to numerous comments, I am taking a couple of days to run a major copyedit of the article OFFLINE; I will also incorporate some elements from the 1911 Britannica history.  I should slightly simplify the language as well (shooting for an 11th grade audience).
Note that any changes made ONLINE to the article between now and the update will be lost.
JeffC 15:05, 11 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Offline Rewrite 

message: → A couple of sections had Definitions of the word Aesthetic; I combined these into a top "Definition" section;
→ I added in some of the Britannica info into the existing History and Philosophy section, arranging it more chronologically with sub-section headings.  As the first couple paragraphs of the Visual Arts section appeared to talk about Modern views on Aesthetic philosophy, I moved those paragraphs from Visual Arts to the Philosophy section;
→ I removed many of the wikified words leaving primarily propper nouns and large concepts wikifield;
→ I combined the sections of Information Technology and Digital Aesthetics;
→ The Mathematics section had a tone as if it were trying to justify the beauty in math.  We already accept that; I repurposed the section to try to delinieate the aesthetic elements of said beauty;
→ Various grammar and clarity corrections.
JeffC 17:03, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Summary of Copyedit changes 

message: Certainly people apply aesthetic values to their own personal hygiene and beauty.  In what section should we discuss this?  Is Personal Aesthetics an Art, Science, or Engineering?
JeffC 12:37, 14 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  What About '''Personal''' Beauty? 

message: Shouldn't this article also deal with issues of art like what the definition is; or it's value (see the "case against art" article which can be googled). 64.113.106.153 05:11, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  what the article should deal with 

message: Hopefully the tag added to this article will entice someone to add more intellectual rigor to the subject.  Right now, the article is unsatisfactory, not particularly informative, and disorganized.  Let's use the 1911 Britannica article as the main text and piece together subsequent philosophical ideas to fit into the article.  A massive rewrite is definitely called for...
Wipfeln 22:55, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Request for Expert Philosophical Assistance 

message: no pictures lol --AnYoNe! 18:01, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  » 

message: Thank you.  That's expert enough for me.  I originally sought the wikipedia article for the purpose of learning something about aesthetics, and it was a disappointment.  Today, literally, my first and second impressions of this new version were "oooooh.  Pretty pictures." and then "Ew!  Bugs!"  Then I read the text, and it's informative, thoughtful, and clearly knowledgeable.  
Anyway, now I'm more informed about aesthetics, and the wikipedia resource has a beautiful article with well-placed pictures, references, and an authoritative treatment of an important field of study.  Good job!   Wipfeln 06:23, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Aesthetic Relief 

message: Hello friends,
I think that this article is /almost/ to the point where it might be acceptable to nominate it as a Featured Article.  I am somewhat blinded though by my personal involvement... can we get some other opinions?
JeffC 02:49, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: For me, this article feels different to other articles I have read on Wikipedia (and I've read many, like I'm sure we all have) and I really like it. There is a subtle change of vocabulary and I say with a coy tongue-in-cheek voice, I like the aesthetics of the "long" question mark headings. The text is written like a wiki/encyclopedic page with with a certain element of Philosophical textbook which the newest novice could understand. I think it is nearly ready, at worst. 80.47.196.152 22:02, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

text: Based on the treatment that the Hilary Putnam article got as a feature article candidate, I'd say that a much better copy-editor than me needs to go over this with a fine tooth comb, and someone needs to fill this puppy with a large number of in-line reference citations, before we consider it for FA.  It think the overall structure and feel is pretty good, but the detail-language may need a bunch of ironing. Bmorton3 14:43, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  I made the formatting more pleasing in accord with WP:FN and WP:MOSHEAD. It's still rather imbalanced on the citations, all of which are early in the text. A scattering of reference marks in every section seems implied by Featured Aesthetics. Gimmetrow 16:53, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

text: Most of this article is okay as it stands, but parts of it appear to be incomplete - I was redirected here from a search for the Philosophy of Art, which meant that I expected to find more about the Philosophy of Art than there currently is. In particular, the section on the value of art is appalling - by being just a paragraph of questions, it implies that there's been no significant work done in this area to answer those questions, because (to the mind of the average reader) otherwise it would have been mentioned. I've only recently begun studying the Philosophy of Art so I'll try pulling something together when I've learned more (unless someone else can do it sooner?), but until then because that section needs expanding I'd say this article isn't ready for nomination for featured article. Anria 12:38, 18 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Maybe it is my bias here, but if we want to expand the Philosophy of Art angle much let's create a philosophy of art page, move the redirects and link it from here.  There is a lot of work done in philosophy of art, but there is very little consensus.  Serious attempts to answer the many questions I mentioned would be of the form X argues Y about topic Z, A argues B about topic Z, D argues E about topic Z, and I worried that would clutter up a page that already almost too long, and very prone to each discipline coming in and cluttering.  As we have done with most other disciplines, lets try to keep philosophy to a short paragraph here and allow an expansion page for all the arguing betwen Brand, and Cohen and Blocker and whatnot. Bmorton3 13:10, 18 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I assumed that there was a reason for the Philosophy of Art search to redirect here - something along the lines of a discussion leading to a redirect, I think (relatively new Wikipedian; please forgive silly assumptions :)) - but that suggestion is definitely a better one in the interest of avoiding clutter to an already long article. This page would still need editing, but that could wait until a Philosophy of Art page was up. Anria 13:58, 18 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Yes I suspect there are 2 main reasons.  1) Philosophy is in bad shape on WP, the Aesthetics Project folded for lack of anyone willing to work on it, (I was the only active member last time I checked) and much of the rest of philosophy is struggling.  2) It is a common mistake to think that philosophy of art and aesthetics are synonymous, or perhaps this is a  common position and it is my POV (and others) that they are not synonymous. Bmorton3 14:11, 18 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Nominate for a Featured Article? 

message: I think the golden ratio is relavent to this article and it should be at least mentioned somewhere. 71.250.35.162 15:10, 13 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The kittens are there because cuteness is a variety of aesthetic judgment, and it is important to understand that beauty is NOT the only form of aesthetic judgment, a common error.  But how's this compromise, we put the Partheon up front, move the kittens next to the maggots, and ax the Mona Lisa (which is too long for the text, and we already have plenty of paintings anyway)? Bmorton3 18:05, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think this is a great idea. And I love coming across the phrase "move the kittens next to the maggots." I'll suggest that to my wife when I get home from work. Cheers, -Anthony Krupp 18:38, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: ROFLMAO-- ExpImptalk con 22:07, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: When we are at it, why not scrap the Walkman in "Industrial Design" and replace it with the Barcelona chair or the original iMac?-- ExpImptalk con 22:15, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Golden ratio 

message: "Seeing a sublime view of a landscape may make us stop and softly say "wow" while our heart skips a beat and then races faster and our eyes widen." - Changed to "Seeing a sublime view of a landscape may give us a reaction of awe, which might manifest physically as an increased heart rate or widened eyes." I felt that the former was too informal and read clumsily.
"Perhaps we judge a Lamborghini to be beautiful partly because it is desirable as a status symbol. Perhaps we judge it to be repulsive partly because it signifies for us over-consumption of gasoline and offends our political or moral values." - changed to "We might judge a Lamborghini to be beautiful partly because it is desirable as a status symbol, or we might judge it to be repulsive partly because it signifies for us over-consumption of gasoline and offends our political or moral values." The "perhaps we judge" gives possible reasons for a judgement that we actually hold, rather than speculating about judgements that we might hold.
I also added paragraph breaks where appropriate. Anria 08:46, 18 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Factors in aesthetic judgement cleanup 

message: An Aesthetician is someone that is skilled in giving facials, manicures, pedicures, and other beauty treatments.  It's someone involved in human aesthetics.  They should have their own entry.
:Thanks for pointing this out. I've turned the page into a disambiguation page, as both meanings are valid. —Pengo 22:48, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  aesthetician shouldn't take you to this page 

message: Aesthetics in Industrial Design is itself a large topic. A separate  topic should be added with cross-referencing. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Nitinmittal (talk • contribs) 06:56, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Industrial Aesthetics 

message: "For John Dewey, for instance, if the writer intended a piece to be a poem, it is one whether other poets acknowledge it or not. Whereas if exactly the same set of words was written by a journalist, intending them as shorthand notes to help him write a longer article later, these would not be a poem."
Where did he write this? Art as Experience? Or someplace else? If it was in A as E, could we get a chapter or page number or the like? --Christofurio 01:47, 17 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  The John Dewey Reference 

message: Islam is as exotic as this debate gets, African Aesthetic no mention, India no mention, no dedicated chapters to any non-European view, save a few lines on Islam, which if was properly written would be longer than this article. worldview needed.--HalaTruth(ሀላካሕ) 16:22, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Thank you for helping, can you document some of those claims before you forget where you found them? Bmorton3 20:46, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Worldview it is not

message: No mention of environmental aesthetics? see here for a reference. —Pengo 22:43, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I will do one.  See environmental aesthetics. -- Alan Liefting-talk- 04:46, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Environmental aesthetics 

message: The Kandinsky painting that illustrates this section is nice (aesthetic judgement!), but I think it's inappropriate to categorise it as post-modern, and is therefore somewhat misleading in this context (the same image is also used to illustrate the 'Creative Impulse' and 'Symbols' sections of the main article on Art). I'm new to editing WP, so maybe somebody else could replace the image with another that is generally agreed to be representative of post-modern art (perhaps work by Jeff Koons, Sherrie Levine, Damien Hirst, or some site-specific art instead of a traditional painting?)
--Birkinstein 18:02, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Post-modern Aesthetics 

message: In some of the early parts of the article there are quite a few statements stated as fact that derive from Kantian Aesthetics. I've got nothing against Kant. The single joke in the Third Critique makes me laugh every time. I think though that the Kantian parts should be properly referenced so readers can see where these ideas come from. I've added a quote about agreeable wine drinking.--Ethicoaestheticist 00:08, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Kant 

message: The article concentrates too much on Art. Of course that is important, but many other areas need to feature also.
1. Science. The aesthetic appeal of a scientific theory or model is widely acknowledged to have a huge effect upon the likelihood of its being researched and promoted. The beauty of the double helix; the elegance of the periodic table, etc. etc.
2. Nature. What are the mechanisms that tell us which 'landscapes' to admire/be moved by? (but I'm talking slices of the natural world, not paintings). e.g. Why does a 'good view' generally have to be a very extensive one?
I don't feel qualified to write this, but someone should.
Michael Talibard 19:21, 24 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Aesthetics is not just Art 

message: Can someone change the titles that have questions in them.  The style of writing does not really suit an encyclopaedia article and seems to give a sense that it is actually just an essay. --pizza1512 Talk Autograph 15:44, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Subtitles 

message: In the section concerning the list of traits that something must have to be art, it mentions that it must imitate life (with a few exceptions, such as music and modern art).
This is absurd, the statement doesn't acknowledge that the goal of both music and modern art is still to imitate life, or at the very least to communicate some point about life. Even color-studies could be considered an imitation of life, as in historical context, they coincide with a period in human existence where there was intense study of the fundamental make-up of all things (human genome project, new physics, etc.)
maybe it's just my musician and artist side complaining here, but come on. Give credit where credit is due. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 141.164.81.191 (talk) 13:30, 7 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree.  Music imitates singing, which animals do.  "Modern" art, which probably means anything after Impressionism, is usually studying physical reality.  Furthermore, there's a lot of religious art that doesn't seek to represent reality.  Even old cave paintings sought to represent abstractions of reality, or visual representations of myths. 66.245.192.245 10:27, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Music Doesn't Imitate Life? 

message: To my mind, there is an important misconception in the article. At the beginning of the article, it is claimed that "The term aesthetics…was coined by the philosopher Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten in 1735 to mean 'the science of how things are known via the senses.' " This is not true, even though it is supported by a citation to "Kivy, Peter ed. The Blackwell Guide to Aesthetics 2004." It was the ancient Greeks who used the name aesthetics to designate sensations or reactions to the stimulation of the sense organs. In this way, they distinguished sensations from thoughts in the mind. This is reflected in the word anesthetic which means that which results in insensitivity or the absence of sensation and feeling. In a totally unrelated way, Baumgarten appropriated the word to mean the supposed objective laws of the appreciation of natural or artistic beauty. In the Wikipedia article on Baumgarten, this can be understood from the quotation from Kant's work. 
The ancient Greeks used the reactions from one sense, that of touch, to represent all of the others. (This is in accord with Schopenhauer's statement that all five senses are forms of the one sense of touch.) In this way, they considered aesthetic to mean feeling (sensation), as opposed to mental thought. All sensations are, in this wider meaning, felt. Similarly, Baumgarten used the sensation of taste to represent his attempt to derive laws regarding the beautiful in nature and art. Taste, in this wider meaning, is the estimation of the beautiful. In his Metaphysic, § 451, Baumgarten defined taste, in its wider meaning, as the ability to judge according to the senses, instead of according to the intellect. Such a judgment of taste is based on feelings of pleasure or displeasure. The relevant passage from the Wikipedia article on Baumgarten is as follows:
Baumgarten used the word aesthetics to mean taste or "sense" of beauty, instead of meaning the ability to receive stimulation from the five bodily senses. A science of aesthetics would be, for Baumgarten, a deduction of the rules or principles of art from individual "taste." In 1781, Kant declared that Baumgarten's aesthetics could never contain objective laws or principles of natural or artistic beauty. 
Nine years later, in his Critique of Judgment, Kant use the word aesthetic in relation to the judgment of taste or the estimation of the beautiful. For Kant, an aesthetic judgment is subjective in that it relates to the internal feeling of pleasure or displeasure and not to any qualities in an external object. 
In a nutshell, aesthetic means: 
* Ancient Greeks ---------Sensation-----------Called "Feeling" 
* Baumgarten -----------Principles of Beauty--------Called "Taste"
(Note: For Kant's speculative philosophy, transcendental aesthetic is the description of way in which an object is given to the mind. This occurs through sensations that are arranged in sequence [time] and juxtaposition [space].)  
*Lestrade 14:24, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Extremely Serious Error

message: The word aesthetics is now used to describe concepts that it was never originally meant to describe. For example, in the field of mathematics, it is said that some equations are elegant and aesthetically beautiful. This may be a misuse of the word aesthetic. In Gilbert Ryle's book, The Concept of Mind, he examined this type of misuse. For Ryle, every concept legitimately belongs to a specific category. He defines categories as logical types. The way that a certain concept belongs to a specific category (logical type), is the same as a set of logically legitimate ways of operating mentally. His book tries to show how mental operations occur that are in violation of logical rules. Thus, Ryle thinks of philosophy as replacing bad category habits with a lawful discipline. The use of the word aesthetic to describe non-perceptual beauty may be a violation of logical rules. That would explain why it is incomprehensible to say that a mathematical equation is beautiful, instead of simple, correct, or valid. Many people may defer to authority and accept such a judgment without really know what is meant or what reference it has to real experience.Lestrade 00:43, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Simply because something does not concretely exist does not mean it cannot be beautiful. Mathematics are considered to be aestically beautiful by those who understand them. There is a logiclally sublime aspect to the mandelbrot set or a tesseract equal to any pianting or composition.  The idea that these are two different aspects of beauty is not beyond conception, but to say that they are not aestetically beautiful is to deny an aspect of humanity.  Reguardless of what an individual may consider most pleasing, a large group of people who understand these equations find them to be beautiful.  The argument the these are "non-Perceptual" is a fallacy. As the philosopher Kant established, anything which we concieve of is by definition percieved. Whether or not it actullaly exists is besides the point. One could just as easilly argue that a painting is not aesthetically beautiful because it is only a representation of what it depicts, or that a symphony is not beautiful because it is merely a collection of sounds pleasing to the human brain, evanescent and without physical form. The equations which are considered beautiful are not merely correct, valid, or simple. They are elegant. They reveal, like many of the greatest works of art, some fundamental aspect of life or reality. They may be, like the Fibonacci sequence, present in unexpected aspects of reality. They may be, like the simple musical masterpiece Pachelbel's Canon, consisting of three intertwining harmonies only nine measures each upon which the entire song varies, far more than their simplicity may at first suggest. They may be equations which give us a window into a world far more complex and wonderous than we can possibly understand, like the hypercube. Yes, mathematics can be beautiful.--Scorpion451 15:55, 16 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Category Mistakes

message: Perhaps it could be called "computer art", which has a pretty long history, and, contrary to what the author may believe, is established in the fine arts.  The idea that it's painting "done on a computer" is too narrow.  Computer art should include computerized music, video games, art produced from algorithms, music produced by algorithms, artificial intelligence "chats" with computer programs, artists interactions with software to produce computer assisted art, kinetic sculpture with computerized control, computerized animation, "virtual reality", "perl poetry" or computer code as language, hypertexts, "net art", algorithmic "cut ups", visual representations of mathematical calculations, online communities producing collaborative works, storytelling kiosks, websites, website defacements, graphical user interfaces, and the computer as a subject within works of art.
I don't think there's any dispute about whether art on a computer is real art, except among people who debate whether photoshop is "real".  Nearly 100% of commercial art is in an electronic form.  Additionally, chemical photography and contemporary paints are advanced technology, but nobody claims that photography or acrylic paints disqualify a work as "art".  The reaction against "digital" art should be dismissed as a backwards response to the rapid advance of computers in visual arts.
All that said, does the topic even belong in this article?  66.245.192.245 10:48, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I would like to add that in case you were refferencing the art page in asking if this section belonged here, it belongs because as a philosophical question under the heading of asthetics it is very pertinent today, for the reasons I mention above.  The section is not meant to be a consideration of digital art itself, but of its implications in and on aesthetics, including the refusal of some "traditional" artists to accept it as true art.--Scorpion451 23:35, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Digital Aesthetics 

message: "Art Is (sic) a form of expression that only you as one person can show or express."
I don't really understand what this is trying to get at. Is it implying that art is individualistic and subjective? If so, what does this have to do with aesthetics (other than the fact that the previous sentence notes that "Aesthetics is closely associated with the philosophy of art"?) Wouldn't "Aesthetics is closely associated with the philosophy of art, another subjective field" make a bit more sense? -Wooty [Woot?] [Spam! Spam! Wonderful spam!] 04:00, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: IP removed it. Moot point now. :) -Wooty [Woot?] [Spam! Spam! Wonderful spam!] 04:53, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Art is..what? 

message: Lead section on top of article needs to be expanded.
also inserted by ip is quoted here: citation/relevancy of this content is doubted.
:George Sand famously describe aesthetics thus: "Art for art's sake is an empty phrase. Art for the sake of truth, art for the sake of the good and the beautiful, that is the faith that I am searching for.
Expert help is sought. Thanks. Lara_bran 04:14, 6 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: In a letter to Alexandre Saint-Jean, George Sand famously stated: http://www.evl.uic.edu/caylor/RUIMTE/RuimteE2.html#RET12
Lara_bran 09:59, 19 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Lead section 

message: This section is particularly poor. suggest complete deletion or a serious edit--Jai alai (talk) 03:40, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Gastronomy 

message: This section is also marked as citing no sources and as original research, but it seems entirely extraneous to me, not to mention obviously contradictory, so I am going to delete it.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ratiuglink (talk • contribs) 17:50, 22 June 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Principles of aesthetics" section 

message: I think there should be a section on Aesthetics and Information Theory on the work of Abraham Moles and Frieder Nake and others. Fleabox (talk) 18:25, 2 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Aesthetics and Information Theory 

message: And there also should be a section on Aesthetics and Algorithmic Information Theory and  Jürgen Schmidhuber's algorithmic theory of beauty (1997), which takes the subjectivity of the observer into account and postulates: among several input patterns or pattern sequences classified as comparable by a given subjective observer, the subjectively most aesthetically pleasing one is the one with the shortest description, given the observer’s previous knowledge and his particular method for encoding  the data. This is closely related to the principle of minimum description length. One of his examples: mathematicians enjoy simple proofs with a short description in their formal language. Another very concrete example describes an aesthetically pleasing human face (1998) whose proportions can be described by very few bits of information. He links this to previous, less detailed proportion studies of Leonardo da Vinci and Albrecht Dürer.
Schmidhuber's theory explicitly distinguishes between what's beautiful and what's interesting, stating that interestingness corresponds to the first derivative of subjectively perceived beauty. Here the premise is that any observer continually tries to improve the compressibility of the observations by discovering regularities such as repetitions and  symmetries and fractal self-similarity. Whenever the observer's learning process (which may be a predictive neural network) leads to improved data compression such that the observation sequence becomes describable by fewer bits than before, the temporary interestingness of the data corresponds to the number of saved bits. This compression progress is proportional to the observer's internal reward, also called curiosity reward (1990). A reinforcement learning algorithm tries to maximize future expected reward by learning to execute action sequences that cause additional interesting input data with yet unknown but learnable regularities. The principles can also be implemented on artificial agents which then exhibit a form of artificial curiosity. Some of the references:
J. Schmidhuber. Low-complexity art. Leonardo, Journal of the International Society for the Arts, Sciences, and Technology, 30(2):97–103, 1997. http://www.jstor.org/pss/1576418
J. Schmidhuber. Facial beauty and fractal geometry.  Cogprint Archive: http://cogprints.soton.ac.uk , 1998
J. Schmidhuber. Curious model-building control systems. International Joint Conference on Neural Networks, Singapore, vol 2, 1458–1463. IEEE press, 1991
J. Schmidhuber. Developmental robotics, optimal artificial curiosity, creativity, music, and the fine arts. Connection Science, 18(2):173–187, 2006
J. Schmidhuber. Papers on artificial curiosity since 1990: http://www.idsia.ch/~juergen/interest.html
J. Schmidhuber. Papers on the theory of beauty and low-complexity art since 1994: http://www.idsia.ch/~juergen/beauty.html
J. Schmidhuber. Simple Algorithmic Principles of Discovery, Subjective Beauty, Selective Attention, Curiosity & Creativity. Proc. 10th Intl. Conf. on Discovery Science (DS 2007) p. 26-38, LNAI 4755, Springer, 2007. Also in Proc. 18th Intl. Conf. on Algorithmic Learning Theory (ALT 2007) p. 32, LNAI 4754, Springer, 2007. Joint invited lecture for DS 2007 and ALT 2007, Sendai, Japan, 2007. http://arxiv.org/abs/0709.0674
Schmidhuber's theory of beauty and curiosity in a German TV show: http://www.br-online.de/bayerisches-fernsehen/faszination-wissen/schoenheit--aesthetik-wahrnehmung-ID1212005092828.xml
Fleabox (talk) 17:40, 12 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Aesthetics and Algorithmic Information Theory 

message: This section seems contentious and lacks in references.
Artistic Judgement is not restricted to art work, and the recognition of art work involves aesthetic judgement.
It is not uncommon to find aesthetics used as a synonym for the philosophy of art, although it is also not uncommon to find thinkers insisting that we distinguish these two closely related fields. In practice we distinguish between aesthetic and artistic judgements, one refers to the sensory contemplation or appreciation of an object (not necessarily an art object), while the other refers solely to the recognition, appreciation or criticism of an art work.Research Method (talk) 17:00, 29 October 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Aesthetics and the philosophy of art

message: Did I miss it? His own late writings, one of them explicitly devoted to the question "what is art?" need some treatment here. --Christofurio (talk) 15:02, 6 November 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: There is an adequate Wikipedia article on What is Art?. Tolstoy criticized the kind of art that is applauded today. People who believe that today's art is of value will not want to call anyone's attention to Tolstoy's book.Lestrade (talk) 17:18, 10 November 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: The article is not good, and sourced additions would be welcome, imo.Peas & Luv (talk) 05:48, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Nothing about Tolstoy here? 

message: I am puzzled by the distinction this article makes between these concepts. Are they not the same?Research Method (talk) 03:25, 10 November 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Art Object/Work of Art

message: There were some  tags after the  template, causing a cite error to appear on the page. They linked to reviews of Kelly's Encylopedia of Aesthetics. My hunch is that they're not really necessary in this article - if we had one on that encyclopedia itself they'd fit there, but they seem superfluous here. Pasting them over here anyway in case someone can make use of them.
----
reviews: Encyclopedia of Aesthetics. - book review | Art Bulletin, The | Find Articles at BNET http://books.google.it/books?id=sHwYAAAAIAAJ http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0021-8529(200022)58%3A3%3C291%3AAOSGCA%3E2.0.CO%3B2-A <ref>http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0021-8529(200022)58%3A3%3C298%3ATEAALT%3E2.0.CO%3B2-L http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-362X(200002)97%3A2%3C94%3AEOA%3E2.0.CO%3B2-Q IngentaConnect Encyclopedia of Aesthetics 
----
Gonzonoir (talk) 22:34, 4 February 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Reference maintenance 

message: if you are dealing with an aesthetic you cannot then start using terms like sub-Africa because aessthtics do not wrap around colonial terms. These r not real boundaries religiously or culturally so why would they be aesthetically. There is far more difference between Ethiopia and SA  than Ethiopia and SUdan and Egypt. So lets just deal with an African aesthetic including the North or alternatively split it into each country (which isnt practical). But the aesthectic of Sudan and Mali is worlds apart from Congo and Angola.--Halqh حَلَقَة הלכהሐላቃህ (talk) 15:49, 15 March 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: African

message: "Perhaps (as in Kennick's  theory) no definition of art is possible anymore." <-- who's Kennick? 99.185.125.57 (talk) 10:29, 10 October 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Who's Kennick? 

message: While I agree, in the last edit, that the last lines do not belong, that does not mean it should be deleted entirely from the article. It can be placed somewhere else, especialy the part about axiology and difining the difference between the philosophy of art and aesthetics, which is challenging and should not be avoided. Shabidoo | Talk 04:19, 2 February 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  intro edit 

message: In this section statement that in Islamic culture portrayal of animal and people was forbidden is inaccurate. Article never mentions such important art form in Islamic Civilization as miniature(Persian miniature, Ottoman Miniature and Mughal miniature) in which we can see numerous examples of animal and human depiction.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Shahin44 (talk • contribs) 05:32, 18 June 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Errors in the Islamic aesthetics section 

message: These are my cynical, very amateur observations, theories and questions. I welcome criticism, advice and syntax/editing improvements. I mention 3 points here and if any are perhaps worthy of including in the article proper, I will clean it up and add verification sources. 
I felt compelled to write this because (1)the biological roots were not mentioned, and (2)similarly the relevance of the old saw of "form follows function" was missed. These are primal and relevant roots of aesthetics. Point(3):Good scientific methodology has shown evidence of much self deception amongst probably sincere aesthetes. Personally I find anaesthetics is more interesting and fun!  
Point (1)Some aesthetic values are biologically based: a "healthy" looking and thus usually very fertile "mate" is a "good" choice to breed with and thus evolution has retained a successful, genetic "library" of what we consider as beautiful. Similarly, because it signals a greater probability of quick mating, a sexually aroused woman appears more beautiful, hence the use of lipstick, rouge, nail polish and earrings (which attract the gaze to possibly suffused earlobes) are thought of as enhancing beauty.    Conversely we have evolved a natural distaste and uneasiness for that which may potentially cause us to be dis eased (sic - because I am trying to point out the construction of the word "disease")
The above evolutionarily derived preferences can be overshadowed by the temporally dynamic and culture specific traits that we notice our peers perceive as beautiful and thus desirable while we are maturing . Note how the "ideal woman" has changed from Rubenesque (which is probably the most natural) to the present day shaved early pubertal look and shape foisted on us by profit driven advertizing primarily because so few woman can maintain that image without great expenditure of money. (The Rubeneque chubbiness was also probably a status signal from the husband, "Look! I am successful enough to overfeed my wife!") 
Point (2)I do not think I read anything in the article or discussion about how all "forms that follows function efficiently" are beautiful, either in nature or even when "efficiently" designed by humans. Everything (including mathematical proofs) that is minimal and functions perfectly is elegant! (especially to engineers)(Sharks, because they exhibit dangerous looking teeth, AND appear so perfectly adapted are an example that elicits paradoxical simultaneous disgust/fear and admiration in many people.
Babies even when dirty, smelly and noisy are considered to be "beautiful" due to genetic programming. The alternative is extinction.
Point (3)Is it possible that most of the "art and culture world" is unaware that the emperor's clothes they wear might be imaginary? Is perhaps the bulk of accepted art and aesthetics just due to placebo effects? (As mentioned, much of it differs in different cultures. Is it self sustaining only because so many people have so much of their social, material and spiritual (read egotistical) lives invested in it? (The US criminal justice industry is analogous to this.) Wine tasting and appreciation is notorious for blatant inconsistencies and errors of judgment, even with the "experts," especially when double blind tested. This is so embarrassingly obvious that wine "experts" in recent decades refuse this mode of aesthetic judgment and declaration. This has also occurred with self proclaimed expert audiophiles and sound equipment quality judgment.   
"Fashion is designed to be so abominable that it must change every 6 months." Oscar Wilde paraphrased? 
I have been told that I am SO unfashionable that I have style. I was intentionally and neatly left with doubts of the speaker's sincerity.
Ecstatist (talk) 01:05, 24 August 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:   Child in the crowd and nudity. 

message: This is a shock. Absolutely no mention of Marxist aesthetics? This article is not a very good one without including in it the most devastating critique of existing ideas about things, of states of affairs, which remains the Marxist one.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.81.5.140 (talk) 04:45, 1 December 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Do you have any verifiable references from reliable sources to back up that claim?    — Jeff G. ツ (talk) 04:48, 1 December 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Marxist aesthetics?

message: This article is written in a style that is neither encyclopedic or consistent with Wikipedia's style of articles. Questions are used too frequently throughout the text, and at some points, the articles starts to should like a thesis paper (issues with style are more apparent because there are also fluctuations, which can be quite jarring to the reader). Especially see sections with interrogative titles.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.62.115.180 (talk) 21:59, 29 February 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Incorrect Style 

message: Aesthetic Realism [www.aestheticrealism.org] is not a religious organization but a philosophy.  It is based on principles, a key one of
which is "All beauty is a making one of opposites, and the making one of opposites is what we are going after in ourselves."  
The Terrain Gallery in SoHo, NYC, founded in 1955, has run continuously since that date.  It is based on a landmark investigation about the nature of beauty by Eli Siegel, founder of Aesthetic Realism, "Is Beauty the Making One of Opposites?"    Its current exhibition, titled 
"Surface to Begin With," features works by, among others,Robert Blackburn, Harold Krisel, and Ken Kimmelman.    
The first sentence of this Wikipedia entry states that aesthetics "is a branch of philosophy dealing with the nature of beauty, art, and taste, and with the creation and appreciation of beauty."  So it is right for Aesthetic Realism to be here. Nathan43 (talk) 04:12, 28 March 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Re recent editing   

message: This section needs major revision since it cites a summary of universals from Steven Pinker, rather than Dutton's own work, The Art Instinct. In that book he describes a list of cluster criteria (and expands them to 12). None are necessary or sufficient characteristics of art, but the more an artifact has, the better it fits into the category. This covers the majority of things called art without becoming bogged down in accounting for the edge cases, such as Duchamp.
The section also needs to include other authors that have similar lists.FigureArtist (talk) 04:16, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Dutton and Aesthetic Universals 

message: Rome should not be included in this list, as it is not unique, for its culture is very derivative of that of Greece. There are other significant civilizations that were far more unique than Rome: for example, the Andean Chavin culture. The inclusion of Rome seems eurocentric, when so few civilizations are mentioned from the Americas, and none are mentioned from sub-Saharan Africa.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.111.205.121 (talk) 22:17, 30 July 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  The "nine great civilizations" 

message: It isn't clear why 'experimental aesthetics' suddenly appears in the sub-category 'post-modern aesthetics', it either needs to be stated why or removed or made in a different place on this page (another sub head 'experimental aesthetics' could include the Graz school and Meinong e.g.).
Plus, a fair amount of the material seems like original research amd non neutral opinion.
Ninjabeard (talk) 20:42, 1 January 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Experimental aesthetics 

message: Virtually the whole page is truly awful. I didn't stop cringing. Amateurish (although that denigrates amateurs), frequently ungrammatical, just embarrassingly bad. Most of it reads like a first-week uni student's paper. Or high school. Is this the best that we can do?! Geez. I just deleted a sentence/paragraph on 'pneumaist' aesthetics that seemed a obscure joke. Who knows. A total shambles. Can someone tag the page with something indicating that it desperately needs work? Yes, it is that bad.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 110.20.158.134 (talk) 09:53, 24 May 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Awful 

message: This article needs a cleanup, including, but not limited to: 
* the presence of the Aesthetics#Aesthetics_in_Non-Western_cultures section is a symptom of the article's Eurocentrism.
* referencing needs a cleanup, there is much WP:REFBLOAT as well as much WP:ORIGINAL (original research)
* the writing style is not encyclopedic e.g. interrogative section headings
* MOS:SEEALSO, WP:FURTHER, and WP:EXTERNAL guidelines are not followed.
I'll try to improve it based on WP:STYLE and WP policy in general.
--Cornellier (talk) 15:44, 31 January 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: I recommend trying a bit harder to communicate with possibly interested editors before simply deleting 85% of the article content. This is highly problematic.  Mr.choppers | ✎  05:25, 19 August 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cleanup needed: suggestions 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: In the "Etymology" section it is, like, declared that αἰσθάνομαι (aisthanomai) means "I perceive, feel, sense." When I saw that I was, like, “Oh, my God!” This is a common error. αἰσθάνομαι means “I feel or sense.” Like, you know, it does not mean “I perceive.” Perception is the apprehension of an object in space and stuff like that.173.72.115.21 (talk) 03:13, 23 February 2017 (UTC)
thread_title: Sensation is not perception

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: I suggest removing the quotation "Aesthetics is for the artist as Ornithology is for the birds"(in the section "Aesthetics and the philosophy of art.") If I understand what it means, it seems to refer more to artists than to aesthetics itself. I'm be interested to know how others see this. Nathan43 (talk) 13:04, 8 January 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: Don't agree really. Johnbod (talk) 16:33, 8 January 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: Can you expand on that please? Nathan43 (talk) 05:21, 9 January 2019 (UTC)
thread_title: Quotation by Barnett Newman

message: Perhaps we could add the aesthetics that a lot of people are in to today, like Cottagecore and Goblincore? --Eclectic-Polymath (talk) 19:07, 30 May 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  The Aesthetics of Today