Is Beauty Truth?

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Is Beauty Truth?

We start by defining the station of the words.
Is it a lie? (comes to mind, but not yet for these proceedings)
And coming with no thoughtful answer other than gut reasoning I will try and think this out if you dont mind.
Sure we can wax lyrical about how right beauty is, the golden mean (PSI), how beauty creates myth and magic and poetry (all three being in part the same thing), but for this we shall try not to capture the answer from the mere asking. Or nothing but asking.
Is beauty truth?
Does it cleanse or does it dirty?
Is it pure or is it tainted?
So to say dirty and taints is probably wrong but for the need to actualise the opposite faction or effect (if we have gotten to 'effect' yet) but cleanse and purify are effects also.
(Why do I think effect in the negative especially coined with with 'cause and effect' and find the need to do away with the negative first?)
Is beauty a cause or an effect?
Could it be both? (which is why i find it hard to refine)
Too the opposite of cleanse and pure, could this be mere intention?
No because intention is both negative and positive.
So what is the opposite of cleanse and pure?
As opposed to the uncoined 'negative' could be absence of intent?
No, not 'negative' when dealing in with causality.
So the deffinate opposite of cleanse and pure (which we dont yet or will know beauty to be, but do take for granted as the first not the opposite).
Opposite not dealing in causality.
(Does causality deal with 2 dimentional sided morality reasoning?)
Do we take for granted beauty is good?
Or is it meant to be good? (if good is what pure is? but not necessarily beauty)
So is beauty righteous or without right?
Does this characterise beauty?
Does this make beauty icon idolitry?
Does it humanise, anthropomorphise make a character of beauty? (other word)
Do we need to do this characterisation to understand equate any unquantifiable quality?
So we agree beauty is 'a' quality?
(making it quantity?)
Yes it is a quality, but still lacking boundary,
to keep things/items/ideas in and others out.
Boundaries are borders.
Borders allows things to thrive within and without.
Good to fence things in to protect so as to thrive, in as apart from that without (but not yet without, just outside).
But also to keep things in so as to not let contaminate the out.
So boundary is like beauty, used for both constraint/conform and liberate/unique.
Both under scrutiny can be used for good and bad, righteous without right.
So it is the reasoning 'used'.
What vehicle is utility? Used.
Use, used, useful, useless.
It is means, it is reason for its being.
So beauty to be defined is for reasonings sake, is for its purpose.
Define to refine to use for purpose. Or purpose for use.
So beauty is purpose?
At the least has purpose.
Yes.
So when we ask 'is beauty truth?' we are trying to simply attach purpose or reason for it being.
But this still is not the answer of what beauty is in order to expose its purpose use with truth, its attachment too truth.
Not concept? simply what is beauty?
(Or by asking do we automatically conceptualize?)
So too the dictionary definition?
But is this merely the word?
(Is the word of anything, the name of something it's own concept?)
Beauty; quality pleasing to the senses especially the eye or ear. 2 a beautiful woman or girl. 3 excellent example of something.
This is what it means.
What can we discount?
'2 a beautiful woman or girl', why?
Because it is the example of usage (context not concept?) rather than what the use represents other than it has one, its use is a purpose.
Purpose is a word, is a concept and meaning that has mainly righteous conotation.
What do we keep?
Quality and example.
But we are drawn back into the bi polarity as in 'clean-dirty', but here with purpose we expose not just what we need or want it to mean, but what it has as substance and right when used for the conotated positive.
It has task it has something that needs to be done, seen, believed, experienced.
Purpose give it need to be real.
(But does this make beauty real?)
Purpose is the making of anything travelled/traversed/trialed, real?
So if we can agree this we need not now go into (if only slight) the nature of beauty being 'real' or 'unreal' because we have asigned purpose/power to it, making beauty real by virtue of devise of vehicle for or toward something. Use.
It has use to do right and to do not right?
Yes, but purpose here has been asigned as a virtuous act of at least trying to devine right from not right.
Journey which includes experience even and as we all accept simply experience, although not not always good or bad must be a must be for virtue of not just purpose but reasoning.
Experience teaches what works and works not, could say good-bad, right-unright.
So you cant know beauty unless you experience it?
Yes.
But does this make it truth?
On to the next or just before this.
Is experience ever only perception?
No, because when it has purpose it has use.
We have been over this,
ok some more else where.
Purpose is realization, is goal, yes?
Depends on the goal, but for good if one experiences beauty as purpose virtue.
What about opinion?
What about it?
Is opinion only subjective?
Ah, but we have not yet come fully to truth.
Beauty here is the subject not the yet truth?
Beauty is here the reason for truth, is the subject, is the search, is the journey, is the use, is the experiment.
Now we can move onto truth if you like.
I do.
I have extolled that beauty is the search purpose and now onto the destination which is truth.
Is beauty truth?
What is truth?
What is not truth?
Why truth is not lie.
(is lie ever subjective?)
So what is truth coupled with the subject?
(what is truth without beauty)
(No, we are not here to deal in withouts, which could be lie, we are here to find not disguise)
(So lie is disguise?)
(No, and stop that)
The subject; What is truth but reality?
So what is reality?
Reality is what is and not what is not.
But is truth, reality a concept?
(Or both? Or neither?)
Because if it is concept over reality it becomes no purpose resolve, it become subjective, it becomes opinion.
Is truth other than opinion? even if consensus?
Worse perception?
No, because to perceive is the basis of all belief, all actualisation.
Yes, because perception is rooted in personal individualism.
But to be a person and to take as personal means some experience.
And personal experience proves reality?
Yes, but you decide whether your personal reality is every others experience of conjoined reality.
But we are seperately living our own reality?
Yes, but proof takes consensus, takes more than just ones own number, takes same outcome of experiment of more than just one so as to form prediction.
Can you prove prediction to just your own number?
Possibly.
Consensus then is truth?
Agreed-reality then is or not is truth?
But it is. IS.
(Yes but does it translate to beauty?)
Opinion, appearance subjective does not exist?
Not if it is the wrong one:D
So agreed-reality always makes more real?
If it is good. For the good.
How is one to know good from truth then?
Truth then is beauty recognised?
(Because beauty takes reference)
Reference of experiment can be single?
Can you prove something just to one, just to yourself?
Yes, but because it has been established in fact with prediction it has proof and is even by single experiment provenable by reference experience/experiment. It is viewable.
So truth is viewable reference?
Among other things and more or less.
So if your beauty is your purpose, your purpose is your beauty then as long as it is subject and predictable referenced, it is truth?
All be it your own proof truth.
So finally, is beauty truth?
I'm only one man, what are you asking me for.

Thanks for your time. Add your own commentary where you will it or ask it.
Where have i not fullfilled and where have i overstuffed?
Still Trying.

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@sometime sun,

The true, the good, the beautiful.
Do you believe in transcendent values?
or
Are all such judgements mere subjective cultural conditions and personal opinions?

2 Replies

@prothero,

Beauty is a value derived from the senses and perception. A truth is a logical and parsimonious consistency with evidence and other truths. There is no evidence or anything that would imply that beauty is anything more than a subjective notion that is based on the sensual and perceptual pleasure of a conscious observer.

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@sometime sun,

... if beauty is truth, is ugliness untruth? ... or is ugliness also truth? ...

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@hue-man,

hue-man;102692 wrote:

Beauty is a value derived from the senses and perception. A truth is a logical and parsimonious consistency with evidence and other truths. There is no evidence or anything that would imply that beauty is anything more than a subjective notion that is based on the sensual and perceptual pleasure of a conscious observer.

It seems to me that there are works of art, music and literature which transcend time, culture and personal taste.
Likewise it seems to me that "the notion of truth" and "the goodness of its possession" transcends the pragmatic concept of truth as correspondence.
I am a believer in transcendent values, but then I am a theist as well, and a rationalist not an empiricist.
So for me beauty is a form of truth, and its possession a form of value.

2 Replies

@prothero,

prothero;102715 wrote:

It seems to me that there are works of art, music and literature which transcend time, culture and personal taste.
Likewise it seems to me that "the notion of truth" and "the goodness of its possession" transcends the pragmatic concept of truth as correspondence.
I am a believer in transcendent values, but then I am a theist as well, and a rationalist not an empiricist.
So for me beauty is a form of truth, and its possession a form of value.

Well that explains your position. The question is which position holds more water. The proof is in the pudding when it comes to empiricism, the scientific method, and the pragmatic concept of truth. I can't say much for rationalism and theism, though.

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@sometime sun,

prothero wrote:

It seems to me that there are works of art, music and literature which transcend time, culture and personal taste.
Likewise it seems to me that "the notion of truth" and "the goodness of its possession" transcends the pragmatic concept of truth as correspondence.
I am a believer in transcendent values, but then I am a theist as well, and a rationalist not an empiricist.
So for me beauty is a form of truth, and its possession a form of value.

Even if we agree that art is a form of truth, truth, like beauty, has to be perceived, recognized, by a conscious observer, in order to be meaningful. If it's not perceived or recognized, you could still say it's truth, just as you could say the painting is still beautiful, but then it's simply meaningless.

I don't see how you guys even disagreed though.

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@Zetherin,

Zetherin;102796 wrote:

Even if we agree that art is a form of truth, truth, like beauty, has to be perceived, recognized, by a conscious observer, in order to be meaningful. If it's not perceived or recognized, you could still say it's truth, just as you could say the painting is still beautiful, but then it's simply meaningless.

I don't see how you guys even disagreed though.

My disagreement is with the notion that it is true that something is beautiful. The only truth to be found in this notion is the fact that people value beauty, but that says nothing about the thing in itself being objectively beautiful.

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@hue-man,

hue-man;102804 wrote:

My disagreement is with the notion that it is true that something is beautiful. The only truth to be found in this notion is the fact that people value beauty, but that says nothing about the thing in itself being objectively beautiful.

But truth does not have anything necessarily to do with objectivity.

If prothero states, "Michelangelo created some beautiful sculptures", I may say, "That's true, his work is some of the best", or I may say "I don't think that's true, his work was rather uneasy on the eyes". Though, we are speaking of subjective evaluations, we can still speak of what's true or false.

We claim many things are true in colloquial speak daily, and many of them do not have anything to do with things you'd interpret as objective. Not everything true has to have ontological properties, if that's what you're referring to. Definitions of words can be true or false (it's false that the definition of "cat" is, "A piece of furniture consisting of a seat, legs, back, and often arms that people sit in"), premises in deductive arguments can be true or false (unsound: all cats are made of aluminum), someone being funny could be true or false (George Carlin is truly funny), mathematical equations could be true or false (1+1=2 is true), and none of these things, I think, would fit into your "objectivity" notion.

It's important you clarify what it is you mean by "truth", lest you begin arguing with someone over nothing. And that's what, I feel, this would turn into. It would be a semantic issue over "truth".

2 Replies

@Zetherin,

Zetherin;102807 wrote:

But truth does not have anything necessarily to do with objectivity.

It's important you clarify what it is you mean by "truth", lest you begin arguing with someone over nothing. And that's what, I feel, this would turn into. It would be a semantic issue over "truth".

John Keat's poem "Ode on a Grecian Urn" (1819) contains the famous line, ' "Beauty is truth, truth beauty," -that is all. Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know'. Keats, like his fellow poet and friend, Shelley, were Platonists. (See Shelley's "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty"). The "Ode" is a very Platonistic poem.Plato held that all the Forms (Ideas) were really one and the same, and so, the two Forms, truth and beauty were identical with one another. And this is what is expressed by Keat's line. Outside of this context, the notion that beauty and truth are one and the same makes little if any sense.

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@kennethamy,

kennethamy;102813 wrote:

John Keat's poem "Ode on a Grecian Urn" (1819) contains the famous line, ' "Beauty is truth, truth beauty," -that is all. Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know'. Keats, like his fellow poet and friend, Shelley, were Platonists. (See Shelley's "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty"). The "Ode" is a very Platonistic poem.Plato held that all the Forms (Ideas) were really one and the same, and so, the two Forms, truth and beauty were identical with one another. And this is what is expressed by Keat's line. Outside of this context, the notion that beauty and truth are one and the same makes little if any sense.

I never said beauty and truth are "one and the same". My point was that we should consider the context of all truth claims.

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@Zetherin,

Zetherin;102816 wrote:

I never said beauty and truth are "one and the same". My point was that we should consider the context of any truth claim.

I never said you did. I was just explaining the Platonic context of Keat's line. Nothing to do with what you wrote.

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@Zetherin,

Zetherin;102807 wrote:

But truth does not have anything necessarily to do with objectivity.

To say that truth doesn't have anything to do with objectivity is to reduce truth to mere opinion, in which case there would be no truth.

Zetherin;102807 wrote:

If prothero states, "Michelangelo created some beautiful sculptures", I may say, "That's true, his work is some of the best", or I may say "I don't think that's true, his work was rather uneasy on the eyes". Though, we are speaking of subjective evaluations, we can still speak of what's true or false.

In these examples, you are indeed speaking of what is true or false, but I see no verification for the objectivity of the sentiments.

Zetherin;102807 wrote:

We claim many things are true in colloquial speak daily, and many of them do not have anything to do with things you'd interpret as objective. Not everything true has to have ontological properties, if that's what you're referring to. Definitions of words can be true or false (it's false that the definition of "cat" is, "A piece of furniture consisting of a seat, legs, back, and often arms that people sit in"), premises in deductive arguments can be true or false (unsound: all cats are made of aluminum), someone being funny could be true or false (George Carlin is truly funny), mathematical equations could be true or false (1+1=2 is true), and none of these things, I think, would fit into your "objectivity" notion.

Indeed we do claim that many things are true in our common daily speech, but that doesn't mean that they are true. Being a philosopher, I am much more conscious than the average person when I say that something is true or when I say that I know something. Indeed the definitions of words can be true or false because they are analytic propositions or a priori. Whether or not something is funny is dependent on whether or not someone finds it pleasing, in which case laughter is usually the reaction. Of course, what is funny is a matter of personal or cultural sentiment, not objective truth. Mathematical equations are a priori.

Zetherin;102807 wrote:

It's important you clarify what it is you mean by "truth", lest you begin arguing with someone over nothing. And that's what, I feel, this would turn into. It would be a semantic issue over "truth".

By truth I mean logical and parsimonious consistency with evidence and other truths; a verifiable claim that is independent of personal sentiment.

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@sometime sun,

hue-man wrote:

To say that truth doesn't have anything to do with objectivity is to reduce truth to mere opinion, in which case there would be no truth.

I didn't say that truth doesn't have anything to do with objectivity. I italicized "necessarily" for a reason. Truth doesn't necessarily have anything to do with objectivity. There's a difference.

Quote:

By truth I mean logical and parsimonious consistency with evidence and other truths; a verifiable claim that is independent of personal sentiment.

Let it be known that I do understand what you're saying, I'm just very hazy when it comes to "truth".

I think you should come to the thread, "Is knowing a mental event?". Here, we are contemplating what access to truth really entails or means, and what kinds of accesses to truth there are.

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@kennethamy,

[QUOTE=hue-man;102794]Well that explains your position. The question is which position holds more water. The proof is in the pudding when it comes to empiricism, the scientific method, and the pragmatic concept of truth. I can't say much for rationalism and theism, though.[/QUOTE]Well all the data in the world is useless without the application of reason. Rationalism supersedes empiricism. The application of reason is not limited to empirical data as metaphysics and philosophical speculation show. I would never deny the value of science and empiricism in the analysis of the material properties of the world. The empirical and scientific analysis of love, beauty, truth, and goodness are much less impressive and as in the scientific analysis of "experience" in general the "objective" analysis really misses the point almost entirely. If you wish to "know" about beauty and love go to the theater, listen to music, visit the art museum, read a book forget the objective scientific empirical explanations for they capture only a partial and very fragmented aspect of the "experience" and hence of the truth and beauty of art.

[QUOTE=Zetherin;102796]Even if we agree that art is a form of truth, truth, like beauty, has to be perceived, recognized, by a conscious observer, in order to be meaningful. If it's not perceived or recognized, you could still say it's truth, just as you could say the painting is still beautiful, but then it's simply meaningless. [/QUOTE]

Zetherin;102796 wrote:

I don't see how you guys even disagreed though.

We did disagree and profoundly. One who believes in transcendent values also believes in something approximating Platonic forms and "things" are true and beautiful only insofar as they approximate the "ideal" form. The belief in transcendent values is in essence a theistic form of belief in a universe with inherent purposes, and inherent value significance and meaning (hence the true, the beautiful and the good) are not purely subjective human judgments but the recognition of the transcendent form by the experiencing subject. The true, the beautiful and the good exist independently of human values and judgments. The universe is beautiful independent of our perception of it.

[QUOTE=kennethamy;102813]John Keat's poem "Ode on a Grecian Urn" (1819) contains the famous line, ' "Beauty is truth, truth beauty," -that is all. Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know'. Keats, like his fellow poet and friend, Shelley, were Platonists. (See Shelley's "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty"). The "Ode" is a very Platonistic poem.Plato held that all the Forms (Ideas) were really one and the same, and so, the two Forms, truth and beauty were identical with one another. And this is what is expressed by Keat's line. Outside of this context, the notion that beauty and truth are one and the same makes little if any sense.[/QUOTE] The beautiful is also a form of the true. In the unity, monism, oneness or interconnectedness of all things "the beautiful is truth". It is the empirical objective scientific approach to beauty, truth and goodness that "makes little if any sense" and results in explanations that are devoid of the value they seek to explain. I am not anti science, anti empirical, or anti reason but I am also not anti experience. Science and empiricism give only a partial and incomplete view of "reality" and at that not the aspects of reality that have the most "value". Creation has value and purpose in its own right, humans are not required. All the romantics rejected the mechanistic, deterministic machine like view of the universe in favor of enchanted mystery. At the very least they did not confine themselves to mechanistic views.

1 Reply

@prothero,

prothero;102871 wrote:

Well all the data in the world is useless without the application of reason. Rationalism supersedes empiricism. The application of reason is not limited to empirical data as metaphysics and philosophical speculation show. I would never deny the value of science and empiricism in the analysis of the material properties of the world. The empirical and scientific analysis of love, beauty, truth, and goodness are much less impressive and as in the scientific analysis of "experience" in general the "objective" analysis really misses the point almost entirely. If you wish to "know" about beauty and love go to the theater, listen to music, visit the art museum, read a book forget the objective scientific empirical explanations for they capture only a partial and very fragmented aspect of the "experience" and hence of the truth and beauty of art.

Yes, but reason would be nothing without sensori-perception. Imagine that you could not see, hear, feel, taste, or smell. What would you reason about? The answer is nothing at all. Therefore, sensori-experience is primary. Knowledge, actual justified true belief, cannot be attained by introspection alone.

As for experiencing (not "knowing") and enjoying beauty and aesthetic values, I agree completely, but science is the only discipline that can give us definitive answers as to why we value the theater, music, literature, and art museums.

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@prothero,

prothero;102494 wrote:

The true, the good, the beautiful.
Do you believe in transcendent values?
or
Are all such judgements mere subjective cultural conditions and personal opinions?

Do I believe in transcendent values?
Yes, but are they ever provable expereinced experiment to more than just self?
Can you translate transcendent experience, can you just make another believe if they have not experienced the value as you have?
Is it truth if is has not been personally lived?
Is virtue one of these transcendent values?
Is transcendent value truth?
Is a commandment a value when it is coupled with subjective cultural conditioned?
Do I believe in judgements, subjective cultural conditions and personal opinion?
Is a judgement a truth?
This may be a truth and certainly a reality, as judgements are nothing if not impossition,
even if it becomes a reality does it make it truth?
So yes i believe in this also, if not for the fact we all live by judgements.
Does this mean i agree with my current reality?
Does this mean that i can choose to not believe in the truth that my reality exists?
Impossition; is it truth? nothing but the only form of truth there is?
But I said that i believed in the values of that which is transcendent.
Is truth one thing or another? or both? or neither? or more?
Is truth the reality of things?
Is reality the truth of things?
So there are more than one form of reality?
Value personal and opion judgement are the two truth you describe.
But are they two descriptions of a one encompassing truth?
Cann they even stand alone?

Do lies not always eventually die?
For is not 'truth' the only thing all things live by and are even made up of from?

Thanks

---------- Post added 11-10-2009 at 11:24 PM ----------

hue-man;102692 wrote:

Beauty is a value derived from the senses and perception. A truth is a logical and parsimonious consistency with evidence and other truths. There is no evidence or anything that would imply that beauty is anything more than a subjective notion that is based on the sensual and perceptual pleasure of a conscious observer.

Yes but is truth something that is experienced and in so experiencing whether logical or not does it make it (parsimonious consistency with evidence) any more of a truth than as prothero said transcendent values which are not always logical or proved evidential, merely experienced?
Is this experience that i speak of truth or a form of truth?
Or as you say a notion, (and nothing more?).
Can you prove (therefore making logical truth) of your own experience?

Thanks

---------- Post added 11-10-2009 at 11:29 PM ----------

paulhanke;102701 wrote:

... if beauty is truth, is ugliness untruth? ... or is ugliness also truth? ...

You missed out 'is beauty untruth?'

You see our preconceptions guide us to remark and feel that beauty is nothing if not truth, at least first conception or as forgotten its untruth.

Thanks

0 Replies

@sometime sun,

Truth is the bones and beauty is the skin...No imagination can put skin on bones, and only fools look past the skin to the bone... While the truth lives it is beauty, and life itself.. Yesterday's truth, old truth, or dead truth is poison to the living...I am not kidding you here: We must know truth to have life, but those who say truth is worth dying for are the worst liars in the world... We look with joy upon a newly discovered truth as though it were a newborn because we love life, and life is everything to us...It is no abstraction, and there is no absolute truth... And we do not need it in any great quantity, and yet we need all we have... Truth is like money in the bank... Any more than enough is an impediment to a happy life...

0 Replies

@Zetherin,

Zetherin;102796 wrote:

Even if we agree that art is a form of truth, truth, like beauty, has to be perceived, recognized, by a conscious observer, in order to be meaningful. If it's not perceived or recognized, you could still say it's truth, just as you could say the painting is still beautiful, but then it's simply meaningless.

I don't see how you guys even disagreed though.

Many things (all things) without perception, recognition (cognition), conscious (ness) have truth, hold truth are our truth as much as their own.
A rock is truth, because it is.
So is this rock real or truthful only by its perception?

Use of 'meaingful'.
Because meaning is personal not always interchangeable experience, because it is not agreed upon does this remain truth?
Can all art just be trying to bridge this gap?
(So is not everything real and with truth art?)
Is all art an experiment (waiting for others to solve find), sharing in any particular truth?
And those who dont meet this truth (in art) are they less because there is ever less truth?
If we do not find meaning, are we less truthful?
Is it again only form of truth?

0 Replies

@sometime sun,

Without our observing and analyzing, the rock just is.

We are the ones with the semantic capacity to assign the rock to be "true" or "meaningful".

But, I sort of see what you mean. Sure, the rock would be "truth", I guess.

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