Might beauty not be the product of both subjective and objective factors?
— Tom Storm
They are.

You're suggesting there are only two options here. 1) Intrinsic experience or 2) subjective experiences.
— Tom Storm
No, I am suggesting that the features of our experiences are either intrinsic or extrinsic. — MoK

Yes, but my point is that beauty may be the product of both. It's not an either/or.

Take a painting we agree upon as beautiful. There's the intrinsic - the skill of the artist and the use of subject, composition and colour, etc.

There's also the extrinsic - factors like social influence of critics and/or the painting's prestige; the lighting and presentation in a gallery or on a wall; cultural factors that lead to us being attracted to that particular painter's work or subject matter; personal factors, the painting my be one a parent first showed us and is therefore is imbued with further extrinsic qualities.

The idea of symmetry and health as contributors to human beauty appears rather memorably in an old BBC documentary presented by John Cleese (The Human Face) it presents a reasonably plausible account. I'm not sure it works for landscape as well since beautiful landscapes may well be terrifically dangerous - remote coastlines, deserts, war zones (there are beautiful depictions of ugly things). Extrinsic factors help form a person's aesthetic response and make them receptive (or not) to a subject.

I already argued for beauty and ugliness to be an intrinsic feature of experience in OP so they are objective (person-independent). What is left are like and dislike that are subjective so person-dependent and therefore extrinsic. — MoK

The redness of the rose belongs to the rose, not to me or my experience.
— Corvus
No, the redness of the rose is constructed by your brain. The flower does not have any particular color at all so it is just the feature of your experience. — MoK

The aromatic hydrocarbons belong to the rose, but the smell belongs to the nose. The reflective and absorbent signature belongs to the petals, but the redness is in the eye of the beholder.

But here, I think you have gone astray right at the beginning by talking about "experience". Surely experience is always at least mediated by senses, sensitivities and sensibilities?

Beauty can be both subjective and objective, it can be in both the debatable class and the undisputed class. If we define beauty as the good perceived by our senses, beauty as sensible goodness, then beauty is a feature of our perception and our experience. Subjectively, when we say that the rose is beautiful, we are saying that the rose looks good or that it smells good. Objectively, beauty in it's perfect form is in the undisputed class. What is debatable is our measure of beauty.

The aromatic hydrocarbons belong to the rose, but the smell belongs to the nose. The reflective and absorbent signature belongs to the petals, but the redness is in the eye of the beholder. — unenlightened

We don't say my experience looks red, or my nose smells nice. We say the roses are red, and the rose smells nice. It is the roses (objects) which provoke our sensation. Our sensations don't make roses look red or smell nice.

When Kant wrote the external objects excite our sensations via experience in CPR, he must have meant the above point.

Beauty and ugliness are reflective aesthetic properties we feel or judge on the objects after the perceptual experience. They are not intrinsic features of experience.

We don't say my experience looks red, or my nose smells nice. — Corvus

And yet some of us are colourblind, and some have lost their sense of smell and we do not blame the rose. Normal people talk about the world directly, and not about their experiences at all. One often talks about experience as a non-philosopher when one begins to doubt one's senses. "A common symptom of covid is the experience of a smell of burning." This does not mean that spontaneous combustion tends to occur around covid sufferers.

If the redness of the rose is constructed by your brain, can your brain construct the redness into pinkness or greenness? — Corvus

No, the color you experience depends on your sensory system, your eyes in this case, and how neurons are connected in your visual cortex.

Does it mean your brain can construct the colour of roses into any colour you want to construct? :chin: — Corvus

No, I have never meant that.

I agree with most of your statements that beauty is a sign of a better life that helps us to survive and evolve better. Women have larger hips and that makes them attractive to men. Women with larger hips can give birth easily and through evolution they became attractive to men. Like (attractiveness) or dislike, however, are extrinsic features of an object rather than intrinsic ones. A beautiful woman looks beautiful in the eyes of both men and women and that is the intrinsic feature. A beautiful woman may misbehave and people dislike her and that is the extrinsic feature. To summarize I think your answer is about the extrinsic features of an object rather than the intrinsic features so I think your answer does not address why an object is intrinsically beautiful. Let me know what you think so we can discuss things further.

No, the color you experience depends on your sensory system, your eyes in this case, and how neurons are connected in your visual cortex. — MoK

There must be something which makes red roses look red in the roses. Would you not agree?

No, I have never meant that. — MoK

Well, your post "redness is constructed by our brain" sounded like, brains actually build the redness out of nothing, which gave impression that, brains can change and create the colours as they like.
Is your first language not English?

Yes, but my point is that beauty may be the product of both. It's not an either/or. — Tom Storm

I think we have two things here, 1) Beauty and ugliness, and 2) Like and dislike. To me, beauty and ugliness are intrinsic features of an object whereas like and dislike are extrinsic features. A painting may be beautiful but you dislike it because of extrinsic factors like culture or presentation. You may like an ugly painting due to extrinsic factors as well.

"A common symptom of covid is the experience of a smell of burning." This does not mean that spontaneous combustion tends to occur around covid sufferers. — unenlightened

Some cases of sensory disorder of few folks shouldn't change how the the external world objects look and smell in general. Should they? Of course, if you wear brown sunglasses, and look into the world, it will look brown. But you wouldn't say, now the whole world is brown, would you?

There must be something which makes red roses look red in the roses. Would you not agree? — Corvus

Yes, a red rose has a set of properties that make it look red. A red rose absorbs all the color from the light and reflects red light. Red light however does not have any color. It is just the light with a specific frequency. The red light is absorbed by the retina of your eyes and a specific pulse is created by the retina. This puls moves from your retina to your visual cortex by the nerve system. It is in the visual cortex that the color of red is created. One can create a hallucination of a specific color by stimulating the visual cortex of a person using an electromagnetic field.

Yes, a red rose has a set of properties that make it look red. — MoK

Well, that is my point. Without that set of properties in the roses, red roses will not look red at all. Therefore it is not our brains, which construct the redness, but it is the roses which excite our brains to see the redness.

Well, that is my point. Without that set of properties in the roses, red roses will not look red at all. Therefore it is not our brains, which construct the redness, but it is the roses which excite our brains to see the redness. — Corvus

I think we are on the same page if you agree that a red rose is not red. By this, I mean that redness is not a property of a rose.

Beauty can be both subjective and objective, it can be in both the debatable class and the undisputed class. If we define beauty as the good perceived by our senses, beauty as sensible goodness, then beauty is a feature of our perception and our experience. Subjectively, when we say that the rose is beautiful, we are saying that the rose looks good or that it smells good. Objectively, beauty in it's perfect form is in the undisputed class. What is debatable is our measure of beauty. — GregW

Beauty and ugliness are objective as I argued in OP. Like and dislike are subjective though.

I think we are on the same page if you agree that a red rose is not red. By this, I mean that redness is not a property of a rose. — MoK

Our judgements and expressions are also based on the customs, traditions and linguistic phenomenon. We call red roses red, and it is the universally accepted truth, whether one agrees or not.

Some cases of sensory disorder of few folks shouldn't change how the the external world objects look and smell in general. Should they? Of course, if you wear brown sunglasses, and look into the world, it will look brown. But you wouldn't say, now the whole world is brown, would you? — Corvus

No, I would say the whole world looks brown, not the whole world is brown. You are equivocating here how things look and how things are, which is exactly what the language is distinguishing. :yikes:

Our judgements and expressions are also based on the customs, traditions and linguistic phenomenon. We call red roses red, and it is the universally accepted truth, whether one agrees or not. — Corvus

Couldn't we agree that red rose is not red but it just looks red?

No, I would say the whole world looks brown, not the whole world is brown. You are equivocating here how things look and how things are, which is exactly what the language is distinguishing. :yikes: — unenlightened

It was your argument claiming that because the covid patients smell something burning when there is nothing burning, the burning smell must be in our nose.

You seem to agree with the fact that there was nothing burning around the covid patients in reality. It was their damaged sensory organs causing the burning smell. The world is still intact with no changes in its smelling whether the covid folks can smell something burning or not.

Likewise, the world exists with no colour changes, whether you wore brown sunglasses or not.

The truth here is that the properties of the objects in the world remain the same, even if your sensory organs get damaged or malfunction. Would you not agree?

Couldn't we agree that red rose is not red but it just looks red? — MoK

Yes, I am sure we can come to some agreement. But there are a few more points to clarify here. You say you want to say that the roses look red. But they are not red. I still don't agree.

Why do you say they look red? What is the rational ground for saying the roses look red? Isn't it because they are the red roses? Why are they red roses? Isn't it because they have a set of properties which make them look red? Isn't that what redness means?

To summarize I think your answer is about the extrinsic features of an object rather than the intrinsic features so I think your answer does not address why an object is intrinsically beautiful. — MoK

I see, so you think there is something apart from what causes the emotion of beauty, to instead believe that beauty is something as a property which exists independent of our emotions. To me, this is mostly a semantic difference, but an important one.

I believe that what a person interprets as healthy or conducive to health is objectively what causes the emotion of beauty. But if there were no living beings to experience beauty, the emotion wouldn't exist. Its not that things healthy to life wouldn't exist, and we as feeling beings could ascribe beauty as, 'that which is healthy and conducive to life." But the objective part is the definition, which doesn't need the identity of the word 'beauty' attached.

So what I'm saying is that beauty being intrinsic or extrinsic I don't feel quite captures what beauty is. Beauty yes can have an underlying objective definition, but it is mostly known as a subjective emotional experience. You could use the word beauty with an alien race that doesn't have the emotion, and they would understand objectively what you mean when you use the term 'beauty'. To them, its just a word with an objective definition. To you, it also contains the subjective emotional experience.

So, if we wanted to use the terms 'intrinsic or extrinsic', I think more accurately we're defining beauty as "beauty without the emotional component," and "beauty with the emotional component". Does that make sense?

Likewise, the world exists with no colour changes, whether you wore brown sunglasses or not. — Corvus

Again your expression equivocates; The world does not have any absolute colour independently of the visual apparatus and the ambient light. When I am a bee, I can see ultraviolet, by starlight I can see only monochrome. Colour is not a term of physics, but of vision. Looking through a microscope does not change the world, but it changes what can be seen; colour is a feature of what can be seen and it changes.

This is already demonstrated to you.

Let me give you an example to see if we can agree with the definitions: A Bulldog is ugly but one can like it. The ugliness is intrinsic and the like is extrinsic. Let me know what you think and we will see where we can go from here.

The extrinsic features of the rose, its color, shape, or scent are consider beautiful and good because we enjoy it. It brings us pleasure. The beauty of the rose has intrinsic value because it increase the beauty in the world.

Let me give you an example to see if we can agree with the definitions: A Bulldog is ugly but one can like it. — MoK

Hmm... to me it sounds like you have added the notion of 'like' here to find a way out of subjectivism. How can it be that some people find ostensibly 'ugly' things beautiful? Surely they can't be beautiful, so it must be about 'like' instead.

But what do you make of those who sincerely believe that a bulldog is beautiful, or that a photo of a WW1 scarred battle landscape is beautiful? Are you forced into saying that they are wrong about this? I believe that the ability to apprehend beauty is intrinsic to a person's aesthetic imagination and capabilities. It isn't limited to an object/text/person/etc

The extrinsic features of the rose, its color, shape, or scent are consider beautiful and good because we enjoy it. — GregW

Are considered by some people to be beautiful. I don't think goodness comes into it, no matter how big a rose fan someone may be. My father, for instance, bought a house and removed all the rose bushes that were in flower in the garden. He held that roses were ugly plants and was indifferent to the flowers. I tend to share that indifference. I believe a sunflower is more beautiful to a rose.

Goodness comes into beauty because beauty is a part of good. Whether we think that the rose or the bulldog, for that matter, look good or smell good does not affect the intrinsic beauty of the rose or the bulldog. We are merely debating our (subjective) measure of the beauty of flowers and dogs.

Let me give you an example to see if we can agree with the definitions: A Bulldog is ugly but one can like it. The ugliness is intrinsic and the like is extrinsic. — MoK

Sounds good to me. We can like things even if they're ugly.

Hmm... to me it sounds like you have added the notion of 'like' here to find a way out of subjectivism. How can it be that some people find ostensibly 'ugly' things beautiful? Surely they can't be beautiful, so it must be about 'like' instead. — Tom Storm

Correct.

But what do you make of those who sincerely believe that a bulldog is beautiful, or that a photo of a WW1 scarred battle landscape is beautiful? — Tom Storm

Parents love their children whether they are beautiful or ugly. The same applies to those who adopt a pet.

Are you forced into saying that they are wrong about this? — Tom Storm

I think they mix love, affection, and the like with beauty.

This is already demonstrated to you. — MoK

Of course, but my question was why do you want to say the red rose looks red, instead of saying the rose is red? Isn't the reason that you say the rose looks red is because it is red?

Again your expression equivocates; — unenlightened

You must understand that the way we capture the meaning of the world is largely via semantic. If you didn't have semantic, then you will no longer understand the way world works and how it is structured. I was trying to clarify rather than equivocate, but obviously you seem to be unenlightened on the semantics.