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Philosophers, artists, and other thinkers have written about aesthetics for thousands of years. Truly answering your question would take a long time, but a sho

Philosophers, artists, and other thinkers have written about aesthetics for thousands of years. Truly answering your question would take a long time, but a short version might be something like: the collective opinions of a diverse group of highly informed and experienced (not necessarily educated as in a university) individuals. But that's just one approach and there are many others. Even then, anything is probably superior to using monetary value as equivalent to anything other than what the market currently prices it as. I certainly don't think the most expensive painting is the most beautiful one, although it may be not be totally uncorrelated. If you're interested in these kinds of questions, definitely look into the philosophical field of aesthetics.

Steer 5y ago
This reminds me of a debate we're having in Sweden presently around architecture. Most contemporary architects seem to prefer buildings as big concrete blocks while most "common folk" would prefer something... less modern? A perfect example is the new art museum which you can see here https://www.svd.se/liljevalchs-tillbyggnad--ett-bankvalv-for-konst https://www.svd.se/liljevalchs-tillbyggnad--ett-bankvalv-for.... I personally find it revolting, but am I then the person without taste?
- blacktriangle 5y ago
  It's not you, it's them. That building is revolting.
  - nuclearnice3 5y ago
    I looked up the architect, Gert Wingårdh. Wikipedia reports his father owned the local cement factory.
- keiferski 5y ago
  I think much of contemporary art and architecture is stuck in a monocultural loop. There is no input from aesthetically-educated people that are outside the academy or architecture/art industry. It is extremely anti-diverse, especially compared to previous centuries where you had the entire swath of society working on a structure. Hence you’ll get things like that building. And no I wouldn’t say you have no taste. Most aestheticians throughout (global) history would likely dislike that building. It’s only a recent phenomenon that such styles became so prevalent, largely out of ignorance or rejection of previous things.
- kyleee 5y ago
  Here's a direct link to the image: https://svd.vgc.no/v2/images/f5f90c1d-319d-475b-8988-15ca80c8487c?fit=crop&format=auto&h=551&q=80&upscale=true&w=980&s=3b977a684b00860cc0c7ccaf61cda578056bf8a1 https://svd.vgc.no/v2/images/f5f90c1d-319d-475b-8988-15ca80c... Since the modern web is terrible, I was confronted with a pop-up dialog in Swedish (I assume) which prevented seeing the image
kqr 5y ago
I have some experience with the philosophy of aesthetics from my stints as a slightly more active amateur photographer. I'm sure there's much I could still benefit from learning, though. Do you have a recommendation for a book? A sibling comment to yours pointed out a critical flaw in using price as a measure: it gives different people very unequally sized votes. Measuring instead in something like logarithmic uttiles would instead give all people a similarly-sized vote. My problem with all measures of aesthetics that do not give everyone an equal vote (like your proposal for a committee of experts) is the fat selection bias inherent. I can think of no way to produce that committee that doesn't involve self-reinforcing feedback loops that bias the committee toward a local optimum that doesn't actually reflect the standards of all of humanity. ---- But. Then again, maybe this is one of those situations Weisberg talks about where trying to find the "main effect", i.e. the aggregate opinion of all humans, is meaningless. Maybe it's more interesting to find out what specific groups of people think, and then I'm sure a committee of such people works. But one has to be up-front about what is then measured.
- keiferski 5y ago
  Unfortunately I don't know of any introductory aesthetics books that aren't heavy on the philosophical language. For that reason I would just recommend reading this IEP article. It covers the standard traditional Western conception of aesthetics, the basic ideas, and so on. https://iep.utm.edu/aestheti/ https://iep.utm.edu/aestheti/ If you don't mind reading a dictionary, The Dictionary of Aesthetics by Dabney Townsend is also a good overview of many different ideas and terms. Otherwise, I am a big fan of Japanese aesthetics, which is much more "in the world" than the more abstract Western philosophical approach. For this, I really recommend the short essay A Tractate on Japanese Aesthetics by Donald Richie. Also, one of my favorite novels is My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk. It is about Ottoman miniature painting and has extensive discussion on aesthetics, painting, and similar topics. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Name_Is_Red https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Name_Is_Red -- On your other comment, I might agree with Weisberg that we aren't really going for an aggregate opinion of everyone. Instead, we need a way to measure the opinions of a diverse group of experts, whatever that might mean specifically. A good analogue might be military strategy. If we were to ask "Who was the best general of all time?", we'd likely want to ask military historians (academic experts), actual generals (experiential experts), as well as amateur enthusiasts that are extremely knowledgeable but don't have the right credentials. We'd also probably want various other groups of people like soldiers, politicians, (resurrected) great generals like Napoleon or Hannibal themselves, etc. As long as we had a decent method for validating membership of these different groups, I think we'd get a reasonably decent answer. In terms of architecture, this expert-only approach might have some limitations and we would need to add the townspeople and library readers to our analysis. But this is more because buildings are something practical used in the world and not just art in a gallery.

Steer 5y ago

This reminds me of a debate we're having in Sweden presently around architecture. Most contemporary architects seem to prefer buildings as big concrete blocks while most "common folk" would prefer something... less modern? A perfect example is the new art museum which you can see here https://www.svd.se/liljevalchs-tillbyggnad--ett-bankvalv-for-konst https://www.svd.se/liljevalchs-tillbyggnad--ett-bankvalv-for.... I personally find it revolting, but am I then the person without taste?

blacktriangle 5y ago
It's not you, it's them. That building is revolting.
- nuclearnice3 5y ago
  I looked up the architect, Gert Wingårdh. Wikipedia reports his father owned the local cement factory.
keiferski 5y ago
I think much of contemporary art and architecture is stuck in a monocultural loop. There is no input from aesthetically-educated people that are outside the academy or architecture/art industry. It is extremely anti-diverse, especially compared to previous centuries where you had the entire swath of society working on a structure. Hence you’ll get things like that building. And no I wouldn’t say you have no taste. Most aestheticians throughout (global) history would likely dislike that building. It’s only a recent phenomenon that such styles became so prevalent, largely out of ignorance or rejection of previous things.
kyleee 5y ago
Here's a direct link to the image: https://svd.vgc.no/v2/images/f5f90c1d-319d-475b-8988-15ca80c8487c?fit=crop&format=auto&h=551&q=80&upscale=true&w=980&s=3b977a684b00860cc0c7ccaf61cda578056bf8a1 https://svd.vgc.no/v2/images/f5f90c1d-319d-475b-8988-15ca80c... Since the modern web is terrible, I was confronted with a pop-up dialog in Swedish (I assume) which prevented seeing the image

kqr 5y ago

I have some experience with the philosophy of aesthetics from my stints as a slightly more active amateur photographer. I'm sure there's much I could still benefit from learning, though. Do you have a recommendation for a book? A sibling comment to yours pointed out a critical flaw in using price as a measure: it gives different people very unequally sized votes. Measuring instead in something like logarithmic uttiles would instead give all people a similarly-sized vote. My problem with all measures of aesthetics that do not give everyone an equal vote (like your proposal for a committee of experts) is the fat selection bias inherent. I can think of no way to produce that committee that doesn't involve self-reinforcing feedback loops that bias the committee toward a local optimum that doesn't actually reflect the standards of all of humanity. ---- But. Then again, maybe this is one of those situations Weisberg talks about where trying to find the "main effect", i.e. the aggregate opinion of all humans, is meaningless. Maybe it's more interesting to find out what specific groups of people think, and then I'm sure a committee of such people works. But one has to be up-front about what is then measured.

keiferski 5y ago
Unfortunately I don't know of any introductory aesthetics books that aren't heavy on the philosophical language. For that reason I would just recommend reading this IEP article. It covers the standard traditional Western conception of aesthetics, the basic ideas, and so on. https://iep.utm.edu/aestheti/ https://iep.utm.edu/aestheti/ If you don't mind reading a dictionary, The Dictionary of Aesthetics by Dabney Townsend is also a good overview of many different ideas and terms. Otherwise, I am a big fan of Japanese aesthetics, which is much more "in the world" than the more abstract Western philosophical approach. For this, I really recommend the short essay A Tractate on Japanese Aesthetics by Donald Richie. Also, one of my favorite novels is My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk. It is about Ottoman miniature painting and has extensive discussion on aesthetics, painting, and similar topics. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Name_Is_Red https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Name_Is_Red -- On your other comment, I might agree with Weisberg that we aren't really going for an aggregate opinion of everyone. Instead, we need a way to measure the opinions of a diverse group of experts, whatever that might mean specifically. A good analogue might be military strategy. If we were to ask "Who was the best general of all time?", we'd likely want to ask military historians (academic experts), actual generals (experiential experts), as well as amateur enthusiasts that are extremely knowledgeable but don't have the right credentials. We'd also probably want various other groups of people like soldiers, politicians, (resurrected) great generals like Napoleon or Hannibal themselves, etc. As long as we had a decent method for validating membership of these different groups, I think we'd get a reasonably decent answer. In terms of architecture, this expert-only approach might have some limitations and we would need to add the townspeople and library readers to our analysis. But this is more because buildings are something practical used in the world and not just art in a gallery.