I can't tell you whether these preferences are innate or acquired. Do we think that a statue of Apollo from the classical era is beautiful because the ancient sculptor captured innate beauty, or have we been taught that classical sculpture is beautiful? — Bitter Crank

I'm not sure if I believe in beauty being an innate concept. From an evolutionary standpoint I don't see much value to beauty. I find it to be more logical for beauty to be an idea that was conceived as a way to swindle someone for personal gain and ended up being a very contagious idea.

Our concept of what is beautiful is in the eye of the beholder, and we all have unique tastes in what we consider to be beautiful . . . — MonfortS26

That something is what I'd call subjective, which simply means that it's a phenomenon that obtains via your brain working in mental ways, doesn't imply that it's an illusion.

However, our sense of self is an illusion

No it isn't.

Illusions obtain when (a) some object or event phenomenally seems to be like x, but (b) it turns out upon further inspection that what it seemed like was in error, it was really like y, not x (where x doesn't equal y of course).

Our sense of self isn't like that.

and everything that makes up any of our preferences is simply the outer world reflecting back into us.

This just seems nonsensical to me. Your preferences are factors of your brain working the way it does. It works the way it does via a combination of genetics and the influence of environmental factors (including, for example, what you ingest). None of that amounts to your preferences "simply being the outer world reflecting back into you."

The majority of people are looking to fit in and don't put a terrible amount of thought into their lives.

Not that I'm agreeing with you, but it seems like you're ignoring that for one, they might be putting a lot of thought into looking to fit in.

Constantly looking for approval in others would do very little to create any diversity in ones concept of beauty

That would only be an issue if one's concept of beauty was transfered to you from external sources, but that's not how it works.

That would only be an issue if one's concept of beauty was transfered to you from external sources, but that's not how it works. — Terrapin Station

What makes you say that?

Which part, the "that would only be an issue" part, or the "that's not how it works" part?

the "that's not how it works" part

Thanks. Okay, so what makes me say that is knowledge of what aesthetic judgments are gained by years of thinking about, reading about, etc. the issue.

Would you mind sharing some of that knowledge with me?

I'm not sure if I believe in beauty being an innate concept. From an evolutionary standpoint I don't see much value to beauty. — MonfortS26

If you deny that beauty is an objective property, and deny that humans are able to develop a theory of that property, then how do you explain why only bees and humans are attracted to flowers?

Well that's what I've been doing. For example, I was explaining preferences to you in my first post in this thread.

If you deny that beauty is an objective property, and deny that humans are able to develop a theory of that property, then how do you explain why only bees and humans are attracted to flowers — tom

What I'm not figuring out is why you'd think that only bees and humans being attracted to flowers would imply anything about whether beauty is objective.

What I'm not figuring out is why you'd think that only bees and humans being attracted to flowers would imply anything about whether beauty is objective. — Terrapin Station

Try this:

I can't stand Deutsch. I have an extremely low opinion of him functioning as a philosopher. I'm not listening to him for an hour to see if he might address the question I asked. So where, specifically (give me a time stamp), does he say sometihng about why only bees and humans being attracted to flowers would imply anything about whether beauty is objective?

This is a particularly interesting talk, given at the Irish Museum of Modern Art. Give it a few minutes and complain when you encounter something objectionable!

I listened to seven minutes of it, actually. There are tons of problems with Deutsch's comments to that point--it's loaded with fallacious thinking, unjustified assumptions, etc., and nothing addressed the question I had asked in response to your earlier comment.

It seems kind of like you decided to take the track of "Here's instead something that I find interesting/persuasive re claiming that aesthetic judgments are objective in general"

So, you disagree that scientific discovery and artistic creation involve the same process?

In the respect of being directed towards discovering objective things, yes.

And just for context, by the way, I make my living as a musician/composer/arranger, I've made my living with that for decades, I make some money on the side as a visual artist, as well, and the vast majority of people I interact with as friends and colleagues are artists in various fields. So I have some experience with what many people believe when they're creating stuff.

So, is Beethoven fooling himself that when he thinks the final version is better than previous versions of his symphonies?

First off, just out of curiosity, what is the source we're using for Beethoven's aesthetics, and specifically his opinion on the issue that we'd contemporarily characterize as the subjective/objective question with respect to aesthetic judgments?

Let us just assume that Beethoven chose his final version based on whatever criterion he choose. Was he wrong?

I listened to the video it was interesting. The impression I got is that he thinks beauty is that which is aesthetically pleasing, and he runs through an analogy of life in nature to human life. I don't think there is any beauty in Nature (Hegel), I do think beauty may follow some rules, and sure it is aesthetically pleasing, but pleasing how?

My impression is that Deutsch thinks beauty is pleasing in the same way a mathematician is able to solve a complex equation with elegant insights, beautiful novel ideas. The development of new art is similar to the development of new science since both progress by experimentation.

Fine, but I doubt spontaneously new ideas. I think that similar to science, art depends for its sustenance on those who came prior to them, their historical context. When I say "spontaneously new' I mean completely novel ideas. Art & Science progress historically. Newton and Leibniz developed calculus separately, Darwin & AR Wallace--Theory of Evolution...and many other cases. The basic concepts these men needed to achieve their advances were available to them. They changed the syntactical structure of man's thought with their ideas. The pieces where there, and it was by the rearrangement of some essential parts that a new whole was formed. I think this can be imagined as a plan, as an accidental, dreamed, and so on.

My guess, he is no fan of Jackson Pollock.

I think that beauty is a broad term, unlike Mr Deutsch I tend to agree with Keats

”Beauty is truth, truth beauty,” – that is all/Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.' Ode on a Grecian Urn.

Among many other things, I think the 'truth' Keats is talking about is truth as a force which opens a range of possibilities, the establishment of a domain in thought (similar to the fictive domain of the Urn he creates in his poem) which illuminates life as it rearranges it in a novel manner, this process and the poem are beautiful.

It's not something one can be wrong or right about. Beethoven would have simply had whatever preferences he had. Him preferring A to B is A being better than B to him.