Further Support for Objectivism in Human Appraisals of Beauty

 

Norberto M. Grzywacz and his colleagues published their article “Is Beauty in the Eye of the Beholder or an Objective Truth? A Neuroscientific Answer” to examine and illuminate the age-old discussion of subjectivism vs. objectivism from a neurological perspective. While acknowledging a distinct difference between the philosophical definition of objectivism and the measures used in the study, the results suggest that both subjective and objective components of aesthetic appraisal exist internally. Additionally, these results prompted a reevaluation of subjectivity and objectivity as they function in a psychological context. Subjectivity could realistically be defined because of reinforcement learning and environmental influence, whereas objectivity might simply reflect rigid evolutionary standards which can be generalized across many individuals. This information exists mostly in the realm of human perspective and evaluation. However, an original component of the philosophical debate posed by the likes of Socrates and Plato remains unanswered. Is there an objective beauty beyond what is universally appreciated by human minds?

            Ellen Winner, Jenny Nissel, and Lior Shamir were also interested in comparing individual appraisals of beautiful artwork to a universal standard. In their psychological study “Distinguishing between Abstract Art by Artists vs. Children and Animals: Comparison between Human and Machine Perception” Computer algorithms were used, introducing a nonhuman component to the analysis. Participants were asked to tell the difference between abstract art composed by a professional painter and art created by an animal or child. It was hypothesized that while abstract, professional artwork would exhibit more aesthetically pleasing arrangements of visual stimuli. Therefore, participants would correctly evaluate which painting were created by artists and which were not. The hypothesis was supported by the results, as a statistically significant percentage of participants correctly identified professional paintings vs. child or animal produced art. A computer program was also subjected to the same task, deciding which paintings were intentional and which patterns were created by an untrained hand. The algorithm came to the same result, correctly evaluating a significant majority of the paintings.

            Overall, the study conducted by Ellen Winner et. Al reinforces the objective view of beauty using a method which is more consistent with the older philosophical debate. The original objectivists believed in an external set of ideal characteristics which define beauty, independent of human thought. This study provides no conclusive evidence for this notion by any means, but the focus on structure, alongside the accurate mathematical analyses of these artworks, further supports objectivism in human expression of beauty.

Aleem, H, Pombo, M, Correa-Herran, I, and Grzywacz, N. M. (2019, November 16). Is Beauty in the Eye of the Beholder or an Objective Truth? A Neuroscientific Answer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24326-5_11

Shamir, Lior & Nissel, Jenny & Winner, Ellen. (2016). Distinguishing between Abstract Art by Artists vs. Children and Animals: Comparison between Human and Machine Perception. ACM Transactions on Applied Perception. 13. 1-17. 10.1145/2912125.