1 upvotes, 1 direct replies (showing 1)
View submission: Is-Ought Problem responses
One can try to argue that beer behooves an organism by "making folks look more sexually attractive"
I think one could, yes. So what constitutes the biological unity of an organism? Two things, I'd say - the capacity to maintain itself as an organism, and the capacity to reproduce, to make new organisms. The first is obvious, we maintain the literal boundaries of our skin by eating, drinking, sleeping, etc. The second is evolutionary - the features of organisms are greatly shaped by the necessity of propagating the species. I think a plausible argument could be made for the adaptive value of drinking beer, and therefore a way in which it contributes to organismal unity in the second (evolutionary) sense. I don't have a study ready to hand, but anecdotal evidence suggests a causal connection between drinking beer and having more sex. That is one way in which drinking beer would contribute to organismal unity precisely through its intoxicating effects.
Sometimes, but not always.
I agree.
One could stretch "maintain internal unity" in an emotional sense
I actually think this is really good suggestion, despite your reservations. I would have said cognitive rather than emotion unity, to include both emotional and non-emotional aspects of our personhood. Just like organisms need to maintain their literal physical boundaries, people need to maintain their cognitive/emotional sense of themselves - their narrative of themselves as an agent in the world.
Or say someone describes a horror movie as "good" due to its ability to scare and cause fright, which is a diminishing of internal unity.
I'm not sure what metric of 'internal unity' you're using here. Can you spell it out in more detail? In one sense, I'd say that for a modern western person who lives a comfortable life like mine, getting scared at the movies could enhance even their biological unity. Currently, those parts of my brain that fire up in an emergency situation aren't performing that function. My life is so nice, those particular circuits can go unused for long periods. It does not seem wildly implausible to me that this state creates a disconnect between the neural circuits I usually use, and those ancient primal parts of myself. So the horror movie switches those 'holy s*** we're gonna die' circuits on for a while, and you feel more whole after.
It seems weird, to me, to think that when a heroin addict says "Heroin is good" the addict means "Heroin supports my efforts to maintain internal unity."
This is important to address, for sure. If I'm claiming that evolution is what connects unity to aesthetics (which I think is probably true in the biological but not cognitive cases) then the fit between what we experience as rewarding and what supports our biological unity won't be perfect. It will be possible to hijack our aesthetic sensibilities to undermine our unity, as with heroin and very refined foods.
This goes back to your point that unity and aesthetic preference sometimes but not always go together. The question is whether that is a deal-breaker for trying to understand aesthetics in terms of biological or cognitive unity. I suspect not, but you seem to think so.
Comment by Quidfacis_ at 25/07/2016 at 03:27 UTC
1 upvotes, 1 direct replies
I read your fully reply, and generally agree with / see the merits of your response. All your questions can, I think, be answered by my addressing one quote.
So what constitutes the biological unity of an organism? Two things, I'd say - the capacity to maintain itself as an organism, and the capacity to reproduce, to make new organisms.
This is a reintroduction of the problem OP wanted to solve. OP's concern was that "the criteria themselves must be propped up with value-laden language", that folks tend to have different criteria for what makes an artwork good or bad, and those criteria are justified by value-laden language.
That problem is functionally identical to the question you asked in the above quote: Different folks have different criteria for what "constitutes the biological unity of an organism". Some folks with agree with you, picking 'maintain itself' and 'reproduce'. Folks who subscribe to Antinatalism with leave out 'reproduce'. Drug addicts and professional athletes will bicker over what 'maintain itself' entails.
For each of those conflicts we can try to dismiss one of the parties. Say antinatalism is obviously correct and folks who want to reproduces are sadistic assholes who want to force entities into this shithole we call existence. Dismiss the drug addicts by saying they are mentally inferior or intellectual damaged, etc.
But now we're back at the problem OP wanted to solve: How do we articulate the criteria without value-laden language, without constructing categories out of the biases we're trying to remove? The short answer is that we can't.
Unless we have a clear criteria for "biological unity" that is unimpeachable, we haven't actually solved OP's problem. We're just restating the problem using more sciency jargon.
As I said in another reply, look at the Rotten Tomatoes score for Transformers 'Dark of the Moon'[1]. 55% of people liked it, 45% disliked it. Articulate a criteria by which we can assess whether Transformers 3 is good, to which all those audience folks would agree, without utilizing value-laden language. A criteria that would cause either the 55% or the 45% to change their minds about the quality of the film. That is what OP asked for.
1: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/transformers_dark_of_the_moon/
I think that is impossible. And " biological unity of an organism" definitely cannot do that.