@CJDOUGLAS,
CJDOUGLAS;137592 wrote:Aesthetics was definde to me as, "The branch of philosophy that deals with the nature and expression of beauty." Art deals exclusively in the nature and expression of beauty.
Art deals exclusively in the nature and expression of beauty, but aesthetics doesn't exclusively deal in the nature and expression of art.
CJDOUGLAS;137592 wrote:You may aruge that a sunset or a woman can be beautiful but these are metaphysical facts. While I agree that both can be beautiful it is our minds that inderpret the sensory data and relates the conclusions to our metaphysical value judgements.
Arguing that a woman can be beautiful has nothing to do with metaphysics. An argument about the beauty of a woman would be aesthetic. Beauty has nothing to do with facts. Beauty is only a value judgment. No offense, but where are you getting this from?
CJDOUGLAS;137592 wrote:While Moral values are involved in art, as art is also a representation of the artists etchics, they are involved ony as a consequence. Art may embody and concretize an ideal but only because the artist has a conceptual theory of ethics.
Moral values are not always involved in art. Where did you get this notion from? I can paint a picture that has nothing to do with morality (right or wrong action) and everything to do with my opinion of beauty.
CJDOUGLAS;137592 wrote:While I agree that ethics would remain in a position of theoretical engineering if art did not bring it to life, I do not believe that ethics reduces in any way to aesthetics or vicea versa.
Well you're not agreeing with me, because I did not say that ethics would remain in a state of theoretical engineering without art.
CJDOUGLAS;137592 wrote:Aesthetics deals in Metaphysics and ethics is the consequence.
How does aesthetics deal in metaphysics any more or less than any of the other fields of philosophy?
CJDOUGLAS;137592 wrote:For Instance, when you observe a metaphysical fact, say a woman walking down the street, You note the essentials of what makes her beautiful; the fall of her hair, its body and color, posture, style of dress, etc.
You choose by essentials what is beautiful. Now what you have are floating abstractions. You concretise them by expressing what essentials make her beautiful, thus giving her aesthetic value.
You're confusing aesthetic valuation with epistemological or metaphysical fact. The discussion of the existence of a woman and her properties deals with metaphysics and epistemology, while the valuation of a woman deals with aesthetics and/or ethics.
CJDOUGLAS;137592 wrote:You speak of beauty as a concrete but it is an abstraction.
When did I ever speak of beauty as being a concrete object?! Seriously, where are you getting this from?! I'm an axiological subjectivist, which would make me an aesthetic non-realist or an aesthetic fictionalist.
CJDOUGLAS;137592 wrote:Aesthetics as dealing in "sensori-emotional values", and thus because ethics is determined by "sensori-emotional values", namely pleasure/pain, and so we conclude the two are the same is an error in judgement.
I never said that ethics and aesthetics are the same. You've made an error in judgment.
CJDOUGLAS;137592 wrote:Emotion cannot be the guiding factor in ethics.
If it were than naything goes. By that argument rape is moral because sex is pleasureable. I believe the purpose of the question, weather you fully realize it or not, is to destroy ethics by reducing it to aesthetics and drowning it in an emotional haze where the only moral debate is weather something is pleasureable or not.
Disagree? Ask yourslef, what would happen to human life if we reduced ethics to aesthetics? What would happen if our only moral guidance was weather or not something is pleasureable? If our only aspiration was to attain an undefinable beauty absent of rationality.
That wasn't your intention? I misunderstand and am being over dramatic?
Why the attempt to prove aesthetics as over ethics, emotion as the moral compass, morality as a cheap token for pleasure and beauty? Morality isn't always pleasurable and that which is pleasureable isn't always moral.
In conclusion I stand firm in my answer. No. Ethics does not, Cannot and never will reduce to Aesthetics.
You're speaking of ethics as if it is anything more than a value judgment. Is ethics a concrete object? Emotion can be a guiding factor for ethics just as much as reason can. In my humble
opinion, an ethical system with too much emotion is just as bad as an ethical system with too much reason. I believe that there should be a balance between the two. After all, psychopaths operate in ways that we consider immoral because of their lack of a certain emotion (empathy). You're also assuming, quite frantically, that an ethical system based on pleasure and pain (which all ethical systems are already directly or indirectly based on) would make it moral to rape a woman because it's pleasurable. I can counter by saying that raping a woman is unethical because it causes her pain and pain is undesirable. I could also say that the act of rape is ugly. I can also say that it's unethical because it would increase my likelihood of going to prison, which would be unpleasurable.
