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From: janw@inmet.UUCP
Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc
Subject: Re: poetry and philosophy, beauty a
Message-ID: <117400086@inmet>
Date: Fri, 3-Oct-86 16:43:00 EDT
Article-I.D.: inmet.117400086
Posted: Fri Oct  3 16:43:00 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 11-Oct-86 10:15:49 EDT
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Nf-From: inmet.UUCP!janw    Oct  3 16:43:00 1986


[cher@ihlpf.UUCP ]
>> >... but how about this assertion: "humans have
>> >evolved from lower animals" (no tricks with word "lower", please).
>> >True or false? Beautiful or ugly? Can one still say "both, yes and no"?

>>  True and beautiful. It harmonizes an awful lot of  seemingly
>>  independent facts. 

>Truthfulness of this statement does not depend on what we think or know 
>about it, whereis 'beauty' is never divorced from human perception
>(in every usage of the word except for Jan's, it seems).

NO. Common usage recognizes intrinsic beauty as well  as  beauty-
to-somebody.   Consider  the statement: "I have never noticed be-
fore how beautiful this is." Does it  jar  your  ear?  The  usage
seems  quite common to me. This proves the beauty is *not* in the
eye of the beholder. Otherwise, it would not have been *there* to
notice until it *was* noticed.

But it was, just as the fact of human descent - ascent, rather
 - from lower animals was always there to be  discovered  in  its
truth, and its beauty.

Truthfulness of this *statement* *does* depend, however, on what
else we know. One could modify the language so that the statement
would be blatantly false. Truth of a statement is the function
of the statement *and* external reality *and* the background
of the person who understands the statement.

"Antipodes, if they existed, would have to walk  upside  down"  -
true  or  false? Depends on what up and down mean to you. Yet the
meaning changes with knowledge; there was a time when that state-
ment was enough to disprove the existence of antipodes.

The way human evolution shocks some sensibilities is  similar  to
the  way  the  existence  of  antipodes used to clash with common
sense. The *statement* is all right, *potentially* true and beau-
tiful *in the right context*.

Beauty is no more subjective than truth. 

		Jan Wasilewsky