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Argument from beauty

Robert Oz

Graduate Poster
Robert Oz
Joined
Dec 3, 2007
Messages
1,455
I was just re-reading Richard Dawkins' "The God Delusion" and reached the section on the "argument from beauty". Although I find most of "The God Delusion" to be well argued, I find the aforementioned section too short and ultimately unsatisfying.

Dawkins presents the argument from beauty as a "how" question rather than a "why" question - which, I think, is a little more difficult to answer.

Dawkins argues that Mozart's symphonies and Michelangelo's paintings, for example, would be beautiful with or without a god, which attempts to answer the question "How do you explain beauty?" I find the question Dawkins should have tried to answer is "Why do we appreciate beauty?"

Of course, I wouldn't invoke a god to explain beauty, because it's yet another example of filling a gap in knowledge with a supernatural being, but why do we appreciate beauty?

So, why do we find a string of musical notes beautiful? Why do we find certain arrangements of paint beautiful? Why do we find the design of a building beautiful?
 
I think it seems to be a learned behavior.
Do people from differing cultures consider beauty the same way?
Is there a universal appreciation of beauty?
 
Argument for God from Beauty is so flawed it doesn't really deserve a rebuttal.

You find X beauteous.

?????

Therefore, God exists.


There's no middle term you can posit which makes that argument make sense.
 
If we did not find things beautiful, then evolution would not be doing a very good job. Men find women beautiful because it aids reproduction. There are many other evolutionary reasons why we would find things beautiful, some of them useful in themselves and others misfirings of an evolutionary trait that was intended for something else. I would say that's why we find things beautiful, but your analysis of Richard Dawkin's discussion is flawed. His book is about why there probably is no God. You only have to explain 'how' for that, 'why' is just garnish on the side. And for an argument already explained by previous posters to be fallacious and a non sequitur, it's not really worth devoting the time to in a book that has bigger fish to catch.
 
It could be an hard wired emotional response to stimuli.
Crying and laughing is something we all do as a species but what we laugh and cry at is sometimes subjective and cultural.

It could be that the "beauty response" is neural chemical response to a visual or auditory stimulus. Certain combinations or sequences of sound frequencies or imagery induce the response.

So what's the evolutionary advantage to the beauty response? I don't know. What is the evolutionary advantage to laughing and crying? What is the evolutionary advantage of creating art? I think it may be an evolutionary accident. Something that popped up randomly but was not detrimental to the species as a whole so it was passed on.
 
paximperium said:
I think it seems to be a learned behavior.
Do people from differing cultures consider beauty the same way?
Is there a universal appreciation of beauty?
Click to expand...


I'm comfortable with and agree that beauty may not be universal. That's still not precisely what I was getting at.

The reason it's playing on my mind can probably best be illustrated with some examples:

1. Why do some people find the opposite sex beautiful?
Because it promotes sexual reproduction. If we didn't get aroused by the other sex we wouldn't pass on our genes.

2. Why do some people find the same sex beautiful?
Homosexual behaviour has been observed in many species of animal as a social bonding behaviour. Add to that our tendency to perform sexual acts based on our attraction and arousal for the reason given in the first question, it is understandable that these traits melded into sincere attraction and love for members of the same sex.

The above sort of explanations was more along the lines of what I was looking for.
 
ImaginalDisc said:
Argument for God from Beauty is so flawed it doesn't really deserve a rebuttal.

You find X beauteous.

?????

Therefore, God exists.


There's no middle term you can posit which makes that argument make sense.
Click to expand...

Locutus said:
If we did not find things beautiful, then evolution would not be doing a very good job. Men find women beautiful because it aids reproduction. There are many other evolutionary reasons why we would find things beautiful, some of them useful in themselves and others misfirings of an evolutionary trait that was intended for something else. I would say that's why we find things beautiful, but your analysis of Richard Dawkin's discussion is flawed. His book is about why there probably is no God. You only have to explain 'how' for that, 'why' is just garnish on the side. And for an argument already explained by previous posters to be fallacious and a non sequitur, it's not really worth devoting the time to in a book that has bigger fish to catch.
Click to expand...


I totally agree the argument of beauty does absolutely nothing to prove a god. I was hoping Dawkins would have gone into possible evolutionary reasons or evolutionary accidents that may have resulted in our appreciation of art and music, rather than merely saying "art and music would be beautiful with or without a god".

But I also understand that wasn't the purpose of the book. I suppose I just would have found it an interesting read.
 
Pattern recognition.

Our brain rewards us for finding patterns. The more complex the pattern the bigger the reward.
 
Tigers are beautiful!
Cozying up to a tiger in the wild is contra-productive!
 
Third Eye Open said:
Pattern recognition.

Our brain rewards us for finding patterns. The more complex the pattern the bigger the reward.
Click to expand...

So 2,4,6,8,10,12 is just as beautiful as

http://img.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2007/11_01/VanGoghES_700x533.jpg
?

Do not hotlink.
Replying to this modbox in thread will be off topic  Posted By: Cuddles


I wonder what's hanging above your mantel?

There are things we find aesthetically pleasing and beautiful, but it's not a good argument for God. It could be explained as an evolutionary by-product of finding a mate beautiful and pleasing: once you reach a certain cognitive level, you go from just evaluating potential mates to appreciating the beauty in everything. It's not a survival issue, it's just something sufficiently advanced minds do.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
I personally think that it's a side-effect of humanity's development of civilisation.

Once the focus for humanity moved off mere survival, people were free to pursue other activities, including art.
 
arthwollipot said:
I personally think that it's a side-effect of humanity's development of civilisation.

Once the focus for humanity moved off mere survival, people were free to pursue other activities, including art.
Click to expand...

Er...

Why would that cause us to care about art, or find it appealing, though?
 
Malerin said:
So 2,4,6,8,10,12 is just as beautiful as

[qimg]http://img.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2007/11_01/VanGoghES_700x533.jpg[/qimg]
?

I wonder what's hanging above your mantel?
Click to expand...


That reminds me of the scene in "Good Will Hunting" where the Professor who takes Will Hunting under his wing is trying to woo a student by describing a mathematical theorem like a beautiful symphony.


Malerin said:
It could be explained as an evolutionary by-product of finding a mate beautiful and pleasing: once you reach a certain cognitive level, you go from just evaluating potential mates to appreciating the beauty in everything.
Click to expand...


This may go towards explaining appreciation of the beauty in a painting or sculpture, but what about music? I am still baffled how we can enjoy music.

When my wife and I used to take our dog for a drive somewhere, we would always put "Hotel California" on the radio in the car and as soon as the song started playing, our dog would sit up and rest her head on one of the speakers. Very amusing.
 
Malerin said:
So 2,4,6,8,10,12 is just as beautiful as

(picture)
?

I wonder what's hanging above your mantel?
Click to expand...

2,4,6,8,10,12 is not a very complex pattern now is it?

I find it amazing that even though I only wrote two sentences you still managed to misunderstand them. You sure are a pro, malerin.
 
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