Thoughts from 05.12.2011:
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Emotion must play a central role in any discussion of aesthetics because all aesthetic decisons and aesthetic judgements are, in some sense, emotionally directed. When we see a color we like or a particular style of art that pleases us, we can make a decision about it based on how it affects us.

This is why any computer program will have a hard time, without some similar emotional routines, of making any kind of aesthetic decisions whereas they can make mathematical or deductive logical choices based on simple right or wrong applications therein. There is, in some real sense, no right or wrong answer when it comes to which of two musical scores or which of two movies is better.

The reasons are myriad for such choices but central to these decisions must be an emotional background that is primarily related to the thing being observed by some observer; be it a human observer or a machine, a god, a ghost, or an alien life form observer- should all these or any of these entities exist.

Thoughts from 2009-2011:
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Aesthetics is the branch of philosophy that deals with judgements about art, artistic experience, and beauty. Axiology is the study of judgements concerning value and of value itself. Both ethics and aesthetics, each with vast sub-disciplines, fall under axiology.

The study of something as subjective as beauty seems, on the surface, almost impossible. In order to know much about what any being will find pleasing in terms of music or visual art would require great or perhaps complete knowledge about that being's composition, development and history.

What is beautiful, then, is a question that can only be answered by looking at an individual being at a moment in time because any new experience could fundamentally alter that being's concept of beauty.

Something can be beautiful to an observer for only a moment or perhaps for only a few hours while under the influence of some psychoactive substance. Perhaps feces can be beautiful if, in observing it, someone finds the undissolved capsule of cyanide that he or she was forced to swallow. For just a moment, the sight of the feces-covered poison capsule means survival.

It may be widely held that the Michaelangelo's statue of David is one of the most beautiful of human creations. But, perhaps someone who finds the statue breathtakingly beauitful one moment could find it terrifying the next.

Maybe an earthquake topples the statue onto the observer, who, partially crushed and permanently paralyzed from the statue's fall, never again entertains that the statue is or was ever beautiful. This points to the importance of the conceptual cascade that any observation causes in the observer.

Perhaps blue was my favorite color until I was attacked by a shark against the backdrop of deep blue water. My conceptual architecture would have been fundamentally altered with respect to the representations I would associate with hearing the word "blue" in the future. It could be said that all of these examples do not point to the experience of something apart from the perhaps catastrophic examples I have presented.

Perhaps blue is still, apart from my experience of being attacked by a shark in blue waters, my favorite color. But I would argue that what I like, at the deepest level, is precisely related to a complex association between representations formed from experience and memory.

I do think there is a possibility that generalizations about aesthetic preference can be made when the features of the observing being are defined. Humans, for example, share general characteristics and may have some universal mode of deciding what is beautiful. Perhaps we can not talk so much about that which is beautiful to an individual as we can the state of the observer at the time they find something to be beautiful. We can talk about the state of the observer but not necessarily the composition of that which is observed.

A woman who is in a pleasantly elevated mental state can be said to like a painting if we know that the painting caused the pleasant state. But, while the painting is static, the woman's mind is dynamic. Perhaps she notices, in the painting, a hidden and disturbing image in a small corner of the canvas. It could entirely change her state in relation to the art.

Beauty is in relationships, not in things. Beauty is dynamic and fleeting. Some of the best discussions of beauty and art that I have encountered thus far are in Nietzsche's discussion of the subjective and objective, or Dionysian and Appolonian forces, in The Birth of Tragedy and in Kant's Critique of Aesthetic Judgement where he discusses the sublime. (See the page here on sublime emotion).

The sublime is a feeling of total awe. Looking back at the Earth while standing on the moon or standing on the edge of the Grand Canyon come to mind. There is a component in the sublime that includes a realization of the incomprehensible expanse of being and one's insignificant place in it.

Aesthetics concerning the human form in modern society:
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Culture and biology influence what is beautful. In some cultures, a fat figure is beautiful because it signifies wealth and fitness. In the current western culture of 2009, an extremely thin figure, to the point of sickness, is considered beautiful by large segments of the media and population. What is beautiful is dynamically related to the culture that determines what is beautiful.

Fifty years ago in western culture, a much more full figure was considered attractive to the same classes of society that would now see such figures as fat. The artist Peter Paul Rubens' paintings of the female nude form in the 17th century would be considered obeise by the standards of 2009. In some places, like American Samoa, being fat is more attractive than being thin.

I have no doubt that if the world became a place where food were scarce, fat would be beautiful because fat would indicate abundance. But, at the moment, a slender figure is most closely associated to wealth and control and beauty though this bias has no necessary relation to any wealth or control or beauty in my mind.

I have heard a famous female model and actress once say, "I would rather die than be fat" and I think many other models and actresses have taken the former option. Out of all the women I've ever known, more than half have had eating disorders and some have almost died from bulemia and anorexia. And, we should not forget the men who think this way also but keep it hidden all the more because such things are not, society says, the problems of men.

I am not saying that thin people can not be or are not beautiful but that I think anyone of any shape can be beautiful and that causing physical health problems because of size-related obsessions is disasterous to both mental and physical health of humans.

This same critique can be applied at the other end of the spectrum where we have taken for granted our health related to how and what we eat and what we do actively. I find cities designed for walking are one of the best ways to get exercise so that the exercise can be seen as part of rather than extraordinary to daily life. And, it is not so much what we eat but in what quantity related to the quantity of physical exertion in a day that seems to matter.

But, some people have metabolisms that make it very difficult to lose weight for one reason or another. Some of these reasons include organ deficiences. Some people have metabolisms that make it near impossible to acquire weight. Some people are addicted to food like people are addicted to drugs. Everyone gets some satisfaction towards continuing life from eating and we could say that food, like music, can be one of the most pleasurable art forms. But, too much of anything can be a bad thing. After all, although we must have it regularly and in enough quanities, people have died from drinking too much water.

Overall, I would appeal to a simple, more comfortable concept of ourselves. It's ok to not be perfect because what perfect actually is, is nothing more than the cover of a magazine. It is like belief in religion this belief in the perfection of the human physical form. It is precisely our subtle differences and scars and imperfections that make us perfectly who each of us is.

In all, our obsession with physical appearance is part of our objectification of each other (especially women) and a sign that we are shallow as a people. When I lived in Los Angeles, these pressures caused widespread disorder in the minds and relationship to food of a great percentage of the population. The pressures on women in Latin American populations has resulted in the highest concentrations of voluntary disfigurement (implants, surgeries, etc.) in the world.

There is nothing wrong with moderate diet and exercise for fitness, but to begin cutting ourselves open and inserting various plastic parts and to sculpt away normal aging is near insanity. I would certainly not say I am against reconstructive surgery for injuries or deformities, but to think that you are deformed when you are actually, perfectly, normal and beautiful, is what I am pointing to. If a woman or man, for instance, has to have breast tissue removed, one could reasonably say that to replace it with an artificial replacement is not obsession. But to go to the lengths of some today seems to at least border on obsession if not completely define it.

That being said, people of consenting age should be allowed to do what they want with their bodies because it is theirs to do so. But, the perfection that is being sought will never be attained and it will soon fade. I think we can find beauty in all shapes of all people and in all the forms and shapes and sizes of all parts of all people because love cares nothing for such insignificant aspects of them.

Being shallow is like being addicted to cocaine. It feels great at first, but then, when you eventually realize that it wasn't real, you feel horrible. On the other hand, if you are too deep, you'll likely drown down there, alone. Many philosophers tend towards sinking.

About aesthetics sub topics (listed on the left hand of the page):
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There is a topic page related to art and to color. The art page is, itself, a secondary topic with sub-topics of its own like music and movies.