Robust Aesthetic Realism (RAR) is distinguished from its Modest counterpart in holding that aesthetic qualities are independent o f our responses. In Lockean terms, RAR characterizes aesflietic properties as primary qualities, while MAR as secondary. To call aesthetic properties primary qualities is to say that those properties have their nature
independent o f any experiencing subjects and invariant across experiential conditions. If all aesthetic properties were response-independent, objectivity would easily be secured
(skeptical worries aside). A painting’s elegance, a poem’s triteness, or a concerto’s stirring bravado would be there for anyone to detect, and once detected, would be the same for everyone who did. Thus, there would be no worry about the meaning o f aesthetic
predicates, since theit successful use would require only the detection o f their corresponding properties— additional questions about an individual’s epistemic credentials, or about the conditions o f experience would be superfluous. Judging these artworks aesthetically would logically be no different than, say, determining that this book has a mass o f 2.5 kilograms.*® We could be wrong about the measurement due to inattention, or a faulty measuring device, but we would be right to expect anyone else, regardless of their particular sensibilities or envkonments, to arrive at the same measurement. Any divergences would simply be wrong.
Aesthetic Properties of Theories
Eddy Zemach offers an argument*® that aims at the conclusion that some aesthetic properties are primary. Such a conclusion would lend considerable support not just to
4.1: Response-Independence
realism, but to its robust subspecies. Under the Lockean conception o f the
primary/secondary quality distinction, primary qualities are those whose nature is
independent of the subjective conditions for their qualitative character. So while blueness implicates a certain perceptual apparatus and observation conditions in its specification (even an ostensive one), primary qualities are perspective-invariant. The primary/secondary quality distinction certainly has a troubled history, and there is a real question as to whether we can name any properly primary qualities. Zemach’s argument, however, does not seem to
involve itself in these issues. Rather, he argues that in some sense, at least some aesthetic
qualities are basic response-independent constituents o f the universe. Throughout I have been examining only aesthetic features of artworks, but o f course if it were true that aesthetic properties were instantiated in the natural world, then it would be a short argument to
establish their residence in artworks.
Zemach points out quite rightly that the acceptability o f a scientific theory depends in part on its aesthetic merits. What seems to have encouraged the gradual acceptance o f the Copernican model of the solar system over the Ptolemaic model was not its predictive power—indeed, until the formulation o f Kepler’s Laws, the Copernican model was a worse predictor that the dominant one. The Ptolemaic system was incredibly complex, and required numerous epicycles to explain the appearance o f retrograde motion and other seeming anomalies. Rather, theoretical simplicity and elegance encouraged the acceptance o f the Copernican model, which over time was vindicated as a better one. In general, according to Zemach, “unity, simplicity, scope, elegance, dramatic power (prediction), all o f them aesthetic virtues, make them beliefworthy. Now, if a theory’s beauty is what justifies believing it is true, then some aesthetic propositions need to be true in order for us to be justified in believing any other proposition is true.”^® He goes on to provide a reductio against the view that there are no aesthetic properties. “If no aesthetic properties exist, then all attributions o f beauty are false, and thus the theory that denies the reality o f aesthetic properties is not beautiful. But a non-beautiful theory is unworthy o f acceptance.”^*
Zemach’s argument is unsuccessful. His sample Hst o f aesthetic virtues is not limited to the aesthetic. Dramatic power, for instance, is a prejudicial re-construal o f theoretical or
make it that much more beliefworthy, the move to the claim that such a theory is true requires a further premise— tliat o f the set o f competitor theories, the most beautiful one is the closest to being true. And that premise is simply false. Without that premise, all Zemach has given is an argument for acceptability, which on the realist conception, is insufficient to establish truth. A great many mathematical results can be given a number of proofs, and while it is the case that the more elegant and simpler ones wiU typically become canonical, they are no more or less true than the others. What Zemach calls the aesthetic virtues o f unity, simplicity, and elegance overlap with broader coherence constraints on theory formulation and acceptance. Zemach asserts that “our tlieoretical constraints are all aesthetic: there are no other criteria for judging theories.”^^ To the objection that coherence is not an exclusively or purely aesthetic quality, Zemach might respond that we do indeed delight in the discovery o f new coherences, and in the activity o f bringing our beliefs into coordination with one another. But if this is what makes coherence a purely aesthetic quality, Zemach seems to be involved in a confusion, one analogous to the psychological hedonist’s, as exposed by Butler. Butler rightly claims that while we do take pleasure in performing aU sorts o f actions, this in itself does not show that pleasure is the end at which we aim in all those actions. So the mere presence of pleasure is insufficient to establish that we only act to experience our own pleasure. Similarly, that we take delight and find aesthetic merit in theoretical coherence does not establish that aesthetic considerations are the only ones in theory formation. Coherence can be non-evaluatively characterized as a term of degree: given two domains o f belief statements, one is more coherent than another only when it contains fewer logical contradictions. O f course coherence as analyzed here cannot be an adequate criterion o f the epistemic worth o f a domain, since a domain might be more coherent than another simply by containing far fewer, or only one, belief statement. But it remains the case that aesthetic delight is at best an accompaniment to, and not an intrinsic component of, theoretical coherence.
Zemach’s view is actually rather complicated. He contends that all aesthetic properties are tertiary, and further that some o f those are primary. This claim requires unpacking. Zemach
draws a three-fold distinction: "'‘‘primmypwpeiiies are properties o f noumena (real things);
secondmy properties are properties o f phenomena (appearances o f real things to minds); teHiaiy properties are properties o f significant phenomena (phenomena mediated by interest).
4,1: Response-lndependenee
Zemach’s claim that some tertiary properties are also primary seems to mean that that
interest-mediated phenomena are identical with properties o f ‘real things’, that is, are strongly mind-independent. How can this be so? He writes that we perceive an object as having certain aesthetic properties only if we perceive it conatively. But the phenomenology o f such a perception does not locate the quality in us, but in the object we are perceiving. Still, the observation involves “desire perceptually interpreting nature”^**; “specific aesthetic
properties are then phenomenal properties of desite-constituted aesthetic objects.. ,”3^ So
on Zemach’s account, our desires (or more generally, our interests) play a constitutive role in our qualitative experience o f things regarded aesthetically. This appears to be a
straightforward antkealist rendering o f aesthetic qualities, because not only are the aesthetic qualities we meet in experience available only when we have certain interests, but because those interests play a role in forming those aesthetic qualities. To take two o f his examples; an object is “ostentatious or g^udy only if it satisfies a deske for self-assertion and self- aggrandizement. Sublime and awesome things are only those that are mightier than we are, things that may harm us and that we cannot force to comply with our deskes.”^** One can ignore the obvious errors in the necessary condition for gaudiness and ostentetiousness; what is important here is the logical structure and the fact that what fills in the necessary condition is a contingent set o f deskes and interests. This sort o f tertiary property story seems to be a concession to the antkealist challenge. How Zemach aims to avoid an antkealist conclusion is by noting the role o f subjective interests, but then continuing on to establish an identity between some o f these and the purportedly primary aesthetic properties o f nature, as expressed in true scientific theories. But without Zemach’s conclusion about the properties o f scientific laws, it is hard to know in some non-question begging way when we could identify our deske-mediated phenomena as also being something strongly mind- independent. It does not, for instance, debar the conclusion that the properties o f scientific theories themselves are tertiary.