What are you comparing this world to, that you find it ugly? A different world? An ideal world? The past?
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Wed 12 Aug 2020, 1:35,
archived)
ugliness isn’t necessarily a comparative quality
your question demands the objective treatment of purely subjective rhetoric.
but you knew that.
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Wed 12 Aug 2020, 6:57,
archived)
but you knew that.
Ugliness is always and necessarily a comparative quality. Without ugliness there is no possibility of beauty, and vice versa.
Consider, if everything was blue, there’d be no word for blue. Blue is considered a distinct color only because there are other colors. If there were not, blue coloration would just be a universal state of being and would not be worth commenting on. Similarly, if everything was equally ‘ugly’, there would be no comparison to make, and ugliness would just be a universal state of being.
Additionally, there is not a single thing which can stand alone. You can test this yourself by attempting to think of just one thing. You’ll always fail, because things only exist in relation to other things. You imagine an apple... but in order to picture it alone, it is necessary to imagine it floating in space... and that is two things.
Thus, everything we perceive and imagine is necessarily dependent upon other phenomena, and in such a situation, literally nothing stands alone. Everything is both comparative and interdependent.
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Wed 12 Aug 2020, 13:50,
archived)
Additionally, there is not a single thing which can stand alone. You can test this yourself by attempting to think of just one thing. You’ll always fail, because things only exist in relation to other things. You imagine an apple... but in order to picture it alone, it is necessary to imagine it floating in space... and that is two things.
Thus, everything we perceive and imagine is necessarily dependent upon other phenomena, and in such a situation, literally nothing stands alone. Everything is both comparative and interdependent.
that which we subjectively describe as ugly may simply be an emotional and/or visceral response, which by communicating that response requires definition. beauty is no different and just cos they're at opposite ends of a qualitative spectrum doesn't indicate comparison.
by 'purely subjective rhetoric', i mean that i took bk's question to be rhetorical and made without objectivity. why shouldn't a response be considered purely subjective? an imagined apple is an object visualised, but the qualities of our experiences are quite abstract and i say they can be purely subjective. otherwise art would be very boring.
just cos you mention it, by the by, some folk seem to think that there wasn't a word for the colour blue until quite recently. radiolab did a nice thing.
but you probably knew that, too. :)
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Wed 12 Aug 2020, 14:15,
archived)
by 'purely subjective rhetoric', i mean that i took bk's question to be rhetorical and made without objectivity. why shouldn't a response be considered purely subjective? an imagined apple is an object visualised, but the qualities of our experiences are quite abstract and i say they can be purely subjective. otherwise art would be very boring.
just cos you mention it, by the by, some folk seem to think that there wasn't a word for the colour blue until quite recently. radiolab did a nice thing.
but you probably knew that, too. :)
Your first sentence there is the key.
Yes, our perception of ugliness might manifest as an emotional and/or visceral response. But such a response is wordless, in the gut. To communicate that response in words does usually require definition, and in naming the response we reveal the truth of the situation: I communicate the visceral feeling in terms which we all know and accept to be relative. “Looking at this gave me a bad feeling” necessarily requires knowledge of being able to look at something and get a good feeling, in order for it to make any sense.
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Wed 12 Aug 2020, 14:26,
archived)