How do we recognize beauty?

Question

I mean, I just saw the most amazing sunset. Why does it look so beautiful to me? How does our brain determine what is pleasing to our eye and what isn't? Is this something instilled in us when we are born or do we learn from others what is considered beautiful?

Thanks.

Answer 1

> How do we recognize beauty?
We look at your picture.

Answer 2

I don't know. This really is one of the puzzles I never really got around to solving. Beauty seems to be just as much a matter of judgment but not entirely without objectivity. The first guy said you had a beautiful picture. And I'm sure most guys agree. There might be those who don't (shame on you!). Also, you are certainly not the first person to say that a sunset is beautiful.

There are probably instincts based on usefulness. For example, there was a psychological test which showed that guys who have just eaten tend to find the slimmer girls prettier, while those who are hungry tend to like those with a bit more weight.

But what practical purpose can there be in acknowledging a beautiful sunset. Its even deceptive since its pollution in the air that makes sunsets so damned beautiful.

Answer 3

I can't answer all those questions but I think, as previous people have said, that it is your own personal response to stimuli. Your own response to colour, shape, touch, sound... is, I assume, all related to your own experiences and association with that stimuli.

Take for instance, I am a drummer and a pianist. When I hear a beautiful tune or a fantastic drum fill, it calls out to me and I could almost say there is this moment of pure happiness and a perfect connection with the music, because I know how it works, I can appreciate and interpret the music from my own experiences with it. There was one particular drumfill in a musical of which I was part of the chorus, and it was the most simple of drumfills, but everytime, and I mean every single time, I heard the fill, I would break out into this massive smile in the middle of singing because I found it just beautiful. Yet if you asked someone else who didn't play drums, or didn't like drums, they would not have the same reaction.

The colours of the sunset may have stirred a response in you based on your own previous experiences with the colours, your own experiences with sunsets, perhaps you once saw an image (not necessarily a sunset) with the similar blend of colours that you found pleasing. Perhaps it is an awe of nature itself ... I would say that this is all on a subconscious level.

Not sure if any of this makes sense lol but hope I managed to help in some way.

Answer 4

Linz,
it is taking the time to notice the beauty we are viewing. I for one do not think this is either a learned, taught, or something instilled genetically or by any other mean. "We are who we are". I was discussing tonight with a person of how I miss the American south west for example. How I could look at the mountains in Southern Cal and at sunset see the haze of purple on either the San Gabriel or San Bernardino mountains and know that between the golden hills of grass that could use water that the haze of purple was actually a sage of brush of desert that combined a purple'ish small flower and a deep green plant of another form and also a combination of the earth that holds it there. I also see beauty in your photo (which is NOT the reason I answer your questions by the way) - your questions are all "upstairs" and I see much more beauty in this.

Best to you!

Gerry

Answer 5

I thought that you mean phycial beuty. But as far as what's beautiful like that I think that part of it is instilled in us. Partly from our parents and partly as something that's been in our DNA. At the same time I think that it might have to do with the chemistry of ourselves.

For hundreds of thousands of years prior to the industuial reviolution. Now that goes back pretty far but before that we used to work by the sun. Even during part or through most of the industrial revolution we still mostly did things by the sun.

With that in mind I guess that the evening for the most part ment that people should go to sleep. You can't really sleep if you are exicted. So you tend to go to sleep a lot easier when you see something that is realaxing. At the same time it was probally a clear day when you saw this sunset and there probally wasn't a drop in barmotic pressure which in and over itself doesn't really signify much but it does kind of tell you that there is no storm coming in a way. So with all of that in mind with no impending danger you were able to enjoy the moment. And feel kind of happy.

Of course that's just one way to look at it. I think the other way to look at it would be that it would be time that you could give thanks to the day that you just had and relize that in the whole that tomorrow is another day and hopefully it will be like the moment that you had looking at the sun.

Answer 6

That is a deep question, and not one that is easily answered in this little box or indeed at all. I tend to take a natural view of the universe (no gods, no souls, nothing but very complex turing machines that started from very simple beginnings, and which are reading and writing to their environment and each other). So I expect to find a natural explanation at the heart of it all. But what is it?

There are many different kinds of beauty (natural, artificial, accidental, geometrical, chaotic), and different people find different things beautiful. So somewhere in a lifetime of a person there must be experiences that set up a potential to find something beautiful. Your example of sunsets is a good one, there is lots of literature and romantic ideas surrounding sunsets that you've been exposed to, either unconsciously or consciously while you were growing up to become the Linz you are today. Do babies appreciate sunsets?

And I do think most of these potentials are set up below the line of consciousness, and in the case of sunsets and other feats of nature (as opposed to man-made beautiful things) I suspect we might have been programmed by billions of years of evolution.

Answer 7

I remember, when I was younger and an avid science fiction fan, reading some line in a story about a robot that had "pleasure circuits." It struck me as very hard to understand how how a particular combination of wires could lead to any kind of experience, positive or negative. Now that I'm older and have taken (long ago) courses in physiological psychology and other "brain-related stuff", I still can't fathom how a particular combination of electrical and chemical events can lead to an experience of pleasure, pain, or self-awareness. It's one of the reasons why I'm willing to suspend judgment on the idea that there may be more to us than purely the material universe that we can measure and experiment upon.

Answer 8

That is a question for the Aesthetic Philosopher, Aesthetics being "What is art, what is beauty?"

Many people can give you an answer, and some may even back it up with documentation, but then again, how do we really know? Humans are (we believe) unique in the fact that we are so multidimensional. We appreciate beauty (again, what is beauty) and art (what defines art?).

One thing we know to be true is that beauty and art, between two people, can mean completely different things. Just ask an 8 year old boy what he thinks is beautiful, or what he considers art. The answer will undoubtedly be different from you, me or the girl next door.

You asked a question that Socrates asked, Plato, and even Aristotle asked. The greatest thinkers of an era, and still, centuries later, we still do not have a concise answer. We all respond to stimuli differently. Celebrate that mystery of your unique ability to perceive "beauty" in your own meaning.

Bryanne~

Answer 9

Beauty serves a specific purpose in nature. It attracts living creatures to something. Namely: It attracts us to everything healthy, natural, beneficial so that we live a longer, happier and healthier life. If something is beautiful, then, most likely, it contains something that an observer needs, perhaps even for the future generations - though the act of procreation.

Answer 10

We choose for ourselves what is beautiful. Our choice is of course influenced by society and culture to great lengths, but it's not controlled by either. We find beauty in everything if we choose to see it, a great example would be the movie "American Beauty".

Personally what I find beautiful is nature, people, and art. Not everyone, not all of nature, and not a lot of art, but it's within them I see gems that sparkle to me and make me consider that the world is a beautiful place worth living in.

Answer 11

i think we are born with an idea or sense as to what is beautiful to us though as we grow and learn about the world, we learn to appreciate other peoples views and perhaps find beauty in things we never thought of before.