If marterial conditions ultimately determine conciousness...

[condor]

Then why does the brain control the body? Also cannot an ugly building inhibit someone's creativeness as much as a cold one?...

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

It's not clear to me what you're asking. You're going to have to unpack it for us, I think; usually, when someone poses an "if... why..." question, they are implying that there is some incompatibility between the two clauses. I.e., if positive charges repel each other, why is the nucleus bound. (This would be contradictory were it not for the residual nuclear force.) So you're going to have to explain to us how the brain (the material brain, surely, not some kind of disembodied spirit) influencing the way the rest of the body acts (but not completely controlling it; e.g. try to not have your heart beat) is incompatible with the Marxist position that man's consciousness is determined by his social being. Or what ugly buildings have to do with anything.

[condor]

An ugly building is a not-materialist factor. If the brain thinks it is ill, then the body follows thereafter.

[Trap Queen Voxxy]

Then why does the brain control the body?

What if I told you your brain was a grey sponge?


Also cannot an ugly building inhibit someone's creativeness as much as a cold one?...

Do what? Lol

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

An ugly building is a not-materialist factor. If the brain thinks it is ill, then the body follows thereafter.

Ugly buildings seem quite material to me. What is ugly is, of course, a matter of how one organism reacts to its environment. You might as well say that people not wanting to eat unpleasant-smelling food is a non-material (non-materialist?) factor.

And no, if the brain thinks it is ill, the body doesn't "follow thereafter". There is any number of people who think they have coeliac disease, or Asperger's, or made-up conditions (Morgellons), who are perfectly healthy. What you're thinking about is the placebo effect, which is in fact a widely-studied material mechanism (although its relevance to medicine has been challenged recently).

[condor]

I still don't understand how an ugly building is material. Surely this is something art, not science, is best suited to answer.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

There are no "ugly buildings" in the abstract. There are buildings people find ugly - and if you want to know which buildings those are, you'd better ask people, instead of relying on your sublime poetic inspiration. Exposure to stimuli that are unpleasant to you affects your productivity, not some mystical "objective ugliness".

[Trap Queen Voxxy]

There are no "ugly buildings" in the abstract. There are buildings people find ugly - and if you want to know which buildings those are, you'd better ask people, instead of relying on your sublime poetic inspiration. Exposure to stimuli that are unpleasant to you affects your productivity, not some mystical "objective ugliness".

I beg to differ and would argue that 'ugly' or 'ugliness' is a distinctive aesthetic catagory. I will direct you to Umberto Eco's On Ugliness.

[Comrade Jacob]

Ugly is subjective.

[Strannik]

Body controls the brain as well. Also, brain is material, and mind in final analysis should be relationships between material neurons. Why can't ugliness be a material factor?

[Tim Cornelis]

How can art even answer anything at all? I don't understand this weird vaguely mystical obsession with art you have.

[condor]

Very well, if ugliness of a building is a material factor and the brain is material, then what factors aren't material?

[condor]

How can science determine if a building is ugly or not?

[Alet]

Very well, if ugliness of a building is a material factor and the brain is material, then what factors aren't material?

Reality is material. This is the whole point of materialism, and that's why we oppose any other conception of reality.


How can science determine if a building is ugly or not?

Science does not determine anything, it helps us to understand that ugliness is determined by environmental factors.

[Tim Cornelis]

How can science determine if a building is ugly or not?

How can art? Art isn't a method of analysis.

And ugliness is subjective. Science can't determine it. Why would it need to? What'd be the point of doing that? Science is about discerning objective reality in the closest approximation possible. It's not a scientific question.

[condor]

So ugliness is a material question without being objective? Isn't that contradictory?

[Trap Queen Voxxy]

How can art? Art isn't a method of analysis.


Art/aesthetics is exactly that?


And ugliness is subjective.

No it isn't.


Science can't determine it. Why would it need to? What'd be the point of doing that? Science is about discerning objective reality in the closest approximation possible. It's not a scientific question.

This literally has nothing to do with the natural sciences but of art/aesthetics and philosophy. There's nothing 'mystical' about it and I am profoundly disappointed with the responses thus far.

[Alet]

So ugliness is a material question without being objective? Isn't that contradictory?

What is objective about ugliness is the fact that it is a material question. Subjectivity is also determined by material factors. Different people have different experiences, that's why they get different ideas of ugliness and beauty.

[The Intransigent Faction]

So ugliness is a material question without being objective? Isn't that contradictory?

Erm, no. It's a material question of how a certain visual stimuli triggers a certain reaction in a subject or subjects. Different classes in different periods will obviously react to the same piece of artwork differently. Hence, "ugliness" is in that sense subjective, but the basis for those different reactions is not in some religious or quasi-religious realm. Beauty is not something we decide without any point of reference for what is beautiful, and those points of reference are material.

The brain is the central nervous system of the body, and it develops and functions in a broader environmental context. I don't see how this in any way contradicts material conditions determining consciousness. The brain is not some mystical active agent imposing its ethereal "will" on the body. It is as much a part of the body as any organ, but one of central importance.

[Rafiq]

Then why does the brain control the body? Also cannot an ugly building inhibit someone's creativeness as much as a cold one?...

HOW does the brain control the body? It does not. The mind does, that which is facilitated by the brain. Where does the human mind come from? "The brain"?

Only if you are a solipsist. Instead, the mind facilitates the social which... Wait a second, I went over this in a previous thread extensively when condor asked the same question, now didn't I.

Everyone please ignore condor, who makes 5 new threads a day about the most ridiculous nonsense. If someone's thread title is literally basically a part of the OP which constitutes just a sentence, they are probably just a troll.

Move along everyone: I humbly advise we ignore threads like these.

[Hit The North]

Whether something is ugly or not is obviously not a "material question" (whatever that is!) but a question of aesthetics.

Also, I agree that aesthetic sensibilities are not subjectively constituted but are culturally conditioned; whilst there is also scope within culture for individuals to differ over their evaluation of an object as either beautiful or not.

..........

[Armchair Partisan]

Then why does the brain control the body? Also cannot an ugly building inhibit someone's creativeness as much as a cold one?...

Your questions are strangely banal for someone who has joined in 2007 and has sporadically posted ever since.


No [ugliness] isn't [subjective].

Remind me, why exactly?

[RedMaterialist]

Then why does the brain control the body? Also cannot an ugly building inhibit someone's creativeness as much as a cold one?...

I think the mistake is the wording of the premise. It is not any material condition which determines consciousness, it is the material conditions of production which determine consciousness. Thus, Marx in The Poverty of Philosophy, the water mill gives you feudalism, the steam engine gives you industrial capitalism, and, I suppose, the computer gives you finance capitalism.

Besides, the brain itself is part of the body. It is the mind, consciousness, which is controlled by the brain, the body, and the social and material relations of production in which you live. According to Marx, human, social relations under capitalism become objectifived and fetishized. Everything you look at is a commodity.

[Trap Queen Voxxy]

Remind me, why exactly?

While there are certainly historical, cultural and other considerations 'ugliness' describes what's repellent, monstrous, foul, askew, etc and objectively this can be determined across the board. Personal interpretations aren't relevant considering we're talking about aesthetic/art theoretics. Am I seriously the only one here who's on this rn? Lol whyyyyyyyyyy

[Rafiq]

Subjectiive might just be a poor choice of words. The dichotomy which prevails are things which are "subjective", that is, arbitrary matters of 'opinion', etc. and things which are "objective", i.e. innate, essential facts (i.e. biological ones).

That is why when you attack philistines and their essentialist filth (i.e. the notion of "race and IQ"), they will accuse you of hyper-relativism.

What these both ignore is a third category - that of the social and historic.

[Alan OldStudent]

If marterial conditions ultimately determine conciousness...Then why does the brain control the body? Also cannot an ugly building inhibit someone's creativeness as much as a cold one?...

Comrade Condor,

The brain is physical organ, a part of the central nervous system, which controls the body. Consciousness is not the brain, although it cannot exist independently of the brain. So your first question lacks meaning because it conflates consciousness with the brain.

What do you understand the word “consciousness” to mean? If you mean the way a human experiences herself as a functioning human member of a human society at a particular point in time, you must concede physical and social reality set the parameters of our consciousness. The only other alternative would be to believe that some kind of nonmaterial spirit that animate our body, some sort of a “ghost in a machine,” as Dr. Ryle described Descartes’ mind-body dualism. Another alternative explanation might be that acquisition of knowledge comes from a realm other than the material universe. Such theories have no possible evidence and are not testable.

About ugly buildings: Yes I think living in surroundings one finds to be ugly can in many cases constitute material conditions that would inhibit creativity. Being cold and hungry might do likewise. However, I wouldn’t want to speculate about whether ugly surroundings or cold surroundings would have the greater impact on creativity. Many other factors go into creativity. What do you think and why?

I agree with other posters that our sense of esthetics, e.g. ugliness, is not some transcendent quality, has no clear-cut, either-or definition. Notwithstanding that, many cultures have incorporated the mathematical golden mean in their sense of architecture. I don’t have an explanation for this interesting phenomenon. Do you?

Personally, I react much more favorably to classically designed buildings than to what I consider to be ugly hideous monstrosities such as Seattle’s EMP museum. I like to call it “the space turd.” I also like western classical music and jazz much more than rap music. I love the classical guitar and Latin American music, Klezmer music, opera, Indian classical music, the Monte Vista Social Club, Satie, even folk music. Others have different tastes, and that’s fine by me.

I’m much more partial to the Dutch masters than much of Pablo Picasso. I love Frieda Kahlo, and Mexican art.

Marx loved Shakespeare and had memorized many passages. He loved poetry and good writing. I think our sense of aesthetics is intimately tied up with our evolution as social animals who create and then recreate culture in our quest to live in the material world.

If it’s not too personal a question, Comrade Condor, do you consider yourself a Marxist? Have you read much Marx? If you have, what have you read, and do you feel that you understood what you have read?

***AOS***

[Guardia Rossa]

Comrade Condor, do you consider yourself a Marxist?

No, he is not a Marxist, he criticized Marxism on the ground that Marxism doesn't takes in account the only (and obvious!) true mean of understanding the world, the only concrete analysis of reality: Art;

That said, and considering his random blablabla, I ask frankly what is the difference between this specific kind of anti-marxist "artist" troll and the Khalistani, anti-marxist religious-nationalist kind of troll.

Except that one has been banned and the other is posting five stupid posts per day.

[Lord Testicles]

While there are certainly historical, cultural and other considerations 'ugliness' describes what's repellent, monstrous, foul, askew, etc and objectively this can be determined across the board. Personal interpretations aren't relevant considering we're talking about aesthetic/art theoretics. Am I seriously the only one here who's on this rn? Lol whyyyyyyyyyy

But what is repellent, monstrous and foul is down to personal interpretations, no?

"De gustibus et coloribus non est disputandum" and all that.

[RedMaterialist]

But what is repellent, monstrous and foul is down to personal interpretations, no?

"De gustibus et coloribus non est disputandum" and all that.

When Ulysses and Lady Chatterly's Lover were first published they were considered repellent, monstrous and foul. Picasso was grotesque. How has popular opinion (except for the extreme philistine) changed to accept this art as "great?"

[Rafiq]

I've been notified condor may be a fascist troll from iFunny. I knew he was a troll from the "critique of marxism" thread (check out my explanation) but it would not surprise me if he was a fascist.

Everyone, please ignore all of condors threads and posts until we can confirm/deny this with the BA (I told the user to notify them).

[olahsenor]

Well, a hungry man if he still insists on bourgeoisie ideology despite his misery is really out of touch of reality. That is why religion is the opium of the people which propagandists portray as atheistic. There are Orthodox churches in the old Soviet Union during the heydays of Stalin. The Soviet constitution declares freedom of religion in its Bill of Rights.

[Trap Queen Voxxy]

But what is repellent, monstrous and foul is down to personal interpretations, no?

"De gustibus et coloribus non est disputandum" and all that.

Well generally, and accross the board culturally things like plague, death, deformation, things be geometrically/mathematically/architectural askew, dilapidation/decay of shelters and things, and people, rot, the smell of waste, death, filth, filth in general, etc. a lot of this is again covered in detail in Umberto's book.

[cyu]

a hungry man if he still insists on bourgeoisie ideology despite his misery is really out of touch of reality

Any person who loses their job, then kills themselves because they believe they have no future without stealing and that "stealing is wrong", is a victim of capitalist brainwashing.

[condor]

I am not a fascist. I see Marxism as a tool rather than a belief system which is very useful but I do not believe Marxism on its own is enough.

[Trap Queen Voxxy]

I am not a fascist. I see Marxism as a tool rather than a belief system which is very useful but I do not believe Marxism on its own is enough.

You could try a theoretic speedball and just do some Marxism and Juche at the same time. Gitchu fucked up.

[Comrade #138672]

Then why does the brain control the body? Also cannot an ugly building inhibit someone's creativeness as much as a cold one?...As someone said before in this thread, the brain is material.

End of story.

[Comrade #138672]

I am not a fascist. I see Marxism as a tool rather than a belief system which is very useful but I do not believe Marxism on its own is enough.You are right. Marxism is not a "belief system". It is a methodological framework. Not sure what you mean by "Marxism on its own is not enough". I guess that's true. We also need math.

[condor]

The brain controls the body, not the other way around. Materials conditions are something which science can measure and test: diet, temperature, wind, humidity, etc.

Acne is caused by boredom, not diet
Creativity is stifled by ugliness more than cold
Hair falling out is caused by stress, not diet
If the brain believes the body has an illness, it will manufacture symptoms to follow suit
All of these factors mentioned (stress, ugliness, boredom) are non-material factors, they cannot be measured by science...

If dialectical materialism isn't false, then scientific socialism definitely is

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

Acne is caused by boredom, not diet


In that case you can make millions offering a low-cost alternative to various chemical treatments for acne, so what are you doing wasting your time here? It's strange how often idealists will make grandiose claims, but fail to do anything with them. For that reason alone Novalis, bless'im, was the last honest idealists - the people who came after him were charlatans to one degree or the other.

[ckaihatsu]

The brain controls the body, not the other way around. Materials conditions are something which science can measure and test: diet, temperature, wind, humidity, etc.

Acne is caused by boredom, not diet
Creativity is stifled by ugliness more than cold
Hair falling out is caused by stress, not diet
If the brain believes the body has an illness, it will manufacture symptoms to follow suit
All of these factors mentioned (stress, ugliness, boredom) are non-material factors, they cannot be measured by science...

If dialectical materialism isn't false, then scientific socialism definitely is



Your purported truisms aside, all of these factors you've referenced would *all* be considered 'material' -- as differentiated from that which is *imagined* / improperly-abstracted / idealized.

[Emmett Till]

....(ugliness subjective) No it isn't....



Though arguing with foolish nonsense from trolls is a waste of time, TQV is not a troll, so this is worth addressing.

Actually, TQV is right, sort of. Forms we find beautiful are ultimately those that remind us of ideal female forms. (Ideal male forms are usually associated more with strength and power than beauty). Female beauty is usually considered the ultimate form of beauty, that's why historically so many paintings have been of female nudity. A natural side consequence of Darwinian evolution, for reasons that should be obvious. Funny thing, the landscapes we find beautiful are of those most conducive to human survival, another natural Darwinian development. Second most common type of painting.

So what determines female beauty? There was a scientific study a couple decades ago, with all the usual double-blind large-sample techniques. The human lab rats viewed images of all possible configurations of the female face.

Turned out that those female faces found most beautiful were those that came closest to the mathematical norm. Why should this be? Because human facial configurations as close as possible to the mathematical norm reflect the least possible level of genetic mutation, and most mutations are anti-survival.

Bodily beauty, whether of males, females or other genders, according to most measures corresponds remarkably well to health.

So, that's what beauty is objectively all about.

[cyu]

Forms we find beautiful are ultimately those that remind us of ideal female forms. (Ideal male forms are usually associated more with strength and power than beauty). Female beauty is usually considered the ultimate form of beauty, that's why historically so many paintings have been of female nudity.

Who paints the pictures? Who controls the media?

http://izquotes.com/quotes-pictures/quote-the-ideas-of-the-ruling-class-are-in-every-epoch-the-ruling-ideas-i-e-the-class-which-is-the-karl-marx-120985.jpg

As mentioned in an earlier post, I would recommend that if powerful old wrinkly men want to be considered good looking, they should flood all visual media with only old wrinkly male faces, until that becomes the new standard of beauty. Whoever controls the most media, should flood their media properties with their own doppelgangers - until everyone is drooling at them and people who look like them :lol:

[ckaihatsu]

Just the messenger here....





Body scent[edit]

Main article: body odor

A number of double-blind studies have found that women prefer the scent of men who are rated as facially attractive.[51] For example, a study by Anja Rikowski and Karl Grammer had individuals rate the scent of T-shirts slept in by test subjects. The photographs of those subjects were independently rated, and Rikowski and Grammer found that both males and females were more attracted to the natural scent of individuals who had been rated by consensus as facially attractive.[52] Additionally, it has also been shown that women have a preference for the scent of men with more symmetrical faces, and that women's preference for the scent of more symmetrical men is strongest during the most fertile period of their menstrual cycle. Within the set of normally cycling women, individual women's preference for the scent of men with high facial symmetry correlated with their probability of conception.[53]




https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_attractiveness

[cyu]

Two possibilities off the top of my head (there could be more).

A purely genetic explanation might assume that genes for symmetry often occur with a certain scent, so you get this result.

A psychological explanation based on Pavlovian conditioning might state that people are conditioned to be attracted to an average of all faces, and people who are used to being considered attractive give off a "confidence" scent, that is also associated with symmetry by conditioning.

[ckaihatsu]

Two possibilities off the top of my head (there could be more).

A purely genetic explanation might assume that genes for symmetry often occur with a certain scent, so you get this result.

A psychological explanation based on Pavlovian conditioning might state that people are conditioned to be attracted to an average of all faces, and people who are used to being considered attractive give off a "confidence" scent, that is also associated with symmetry by conditioning.


So do you wanna know which one mine is -- ?


= D

[cyu]

For all I know, I've been quarantined by the NSA, thinking I'm posting on the internet, when in fact all I ever do is interact with NSA agents all day about their fake news and sciences reports :lol:

[ckaihatsu]

For all I know, I've been quarantined by the NSA, thinking I'm posting on the internet, when in fact all I ever do is interact with NSA agents all day about their fake news and sciences reports :lol:


Yeah, if it wasn't for the NSA I'd *never* be listened to -- !


= )

[Sibotic]

But what is repellent, monstrous and foul is down to personal interpretations, no?

"De gustibus et coloribus non est disputandum" and all that.
Um, we're communists. That's not 'mere opinion,' itself a bourgeois illusion based around a desperate attempt to normalise the state of things under capitalism where people were to be seen as atomised monads who could have such opinions inconsequentially. Of course that isn't 'down to' such, no.

Did you think things were whatever someone said it was? If you didn't, then why would you say it was? (shout-out to ckaihatsu's post in this thread, previously.)

Weird things happen when you try to separate aesthetics from what is good and such, such as that art itself is posited as without purpose, and hence the producer ignored in truth, which was again merely an illusion of the past.


Who paints the pictures? Who controls the media?
Strictly speaking, though, that would be a fairly valid response to the rest of their post, if that's how it was meant, because obviously people think things instinctively like robots (who are these people that are supposed to do this? They sound horrid and barely human or conscious.) and at the same time this is supposed to somehow immunise them from social influence. Obviously such views of humanity as you were responding to begun as apologetics. Humans are not this passive void that actively make decisions by abstaining from them, they were merely rendered so and not helplessly. And, by the way, it would be more characteristic of those who had been 'more successful' in such a system rather than less, absolutely and on average, simply by necessity of what they have to lack in order to do that.

After this, humans do not or cannot be said to work like that.

That said, it needn't negate the discussion of beauty and so on, although evidently norms of attraction and etc. - and it seems inconsistent to say that people find females beautiful and that they are only attracted to this for what it represents - are manipulated in such formats and by overall social pressure, which is of course normative rather than only spam of images without characterisation. To take issue with this is, of course, to say that beauty is not that. Obviously it is also inconsistent to claim that beauty is something and then that it isn't - and in reality this thing that beauty is supposed to be (the search for an 'ideal form,' somehow kept wholly apart from art and aesthetics although this is evidently an artificial distinction) is something else proposed in lieu of it. Robinsonades aside, though, the connection between beauty and 'ideals' was already a weakness in such ideologies, because 'ideals' were identified as 'weak' (while 'dreams' were important to CVs but otherwise disliked?) and at the same time this recognises how 'beauty' was not connected to the social interest in 'success,' or couldn't be equated to such despite their attempt to do so, which was of course especially fervent when they attempted to do so for females. (As capital was based around externality, you suspect that most sports based around self-control and such would have been accompanied by high degrees of fakery.)

This does mean that 'beauty' might be something worth discussing in some way, but obviously in a better one than was responded to.

[Zoop]

Two possibilities off the top of my head (there could be more).

A purely genetic explanation might assume that genes for symmetry often occur with a certain scent, so you get this result.

A psychological explanation based on Pavlovian conditioning might state that people are conditioned to be attracted to an average of all faces, and people who are used to being considered attractive give off a "confidence" scent, that is also associated with symmetry by conditioning.

It is still completely subjective. It's impossible for it to be objective, by definition.

If everybody found something beautiful, that is still subjective. There's nothing inherently beautiful in an external object; it is just how we react to it.

[ckaihatsu]

Two possibilities off the top of my head (there could be more).

A purely genetic explanation might assume that genes for symmetry often occur with a certain scent, so you get this result.

A psychological explanation based on Pavlovian conditioning might state that people are conditioned to be attracted to an average of all faces, and people who are used to being considered attractive give off a "confidence" scent, that is also associated with symmetry by conditioning.





It is still completely subjective. It's impossible for it to be objective, by definition.

If everybody found something beautiful, that is still subjective. There's nothing inherently beautiful in an external object; it is just how we react to it.


Jesus, you're even more of hard-line subjectivist / behaviorist than even *cyu*...(!)

What you're both overlooking, of course, is that, with the first -- 'purely genetic' -- explanation, the favored genes for facial symmetry could only *be* / remain-competitive, and even possibly be in the demographic majority, if they caused more attraction and 'subjectively'-favored *mating* in the first place, for their continued existence and social expression in the population -- thus demonstrating a timeless / *objective* set of preferences for mating that we could empirically call 'beauty'.

(In other words, it's *not* just an arbitrary, random category -- there's a consistent objectively-physical 'symmetry' to the faces of this preference, which are chosen-for en masse over thousands of generations of mating preference-making.)

And, with the second -- 'average of all faces' -- explanation, you're just pulling shit out of your ass, cyu, with that 'average of all faces' stuff. (Why would you think you could just summarily equate facial symmetry to being 'an average of all faces' -- ? Do you have empirical statistical data to back up this assumption of correlation -- ?) (You're basically saying that a 'confidence' scent is an 'average of all scents'.) (So, purportedly, 'an average of all faces' = 'facial symmetry' = 'confidence scent' = 'socially conditioned to be seen as being attractive'.)

I think -- to boil it down -- this is essentially an issue of *semantics* -- if society is both favoring *and* conditioning us to see facial symmetry as being attractive, then that means it *is* 'beauty'. (Are there double standards at work, where those promoting 'the attractiveness of facial symmetry' are secretly *not* going with facial symmetry themselves -- ??)

So, then, symmetry is beauty.

[cyu]

Seems this thread is devolving into trolling, but at least I was reminded of http://www.autodidactproject.org/quote/hitch1.html

Fish come from far away, or so I'm told. Or so I imagine I'm told. When the men come, or when in my mind the men come in their six black shiny ships do they come in your mind too? And when I hear their questions, all their many questions do you hear questions? Perhaps you just think they're singing songs to you. Perhaps they are singing songs to you and I just think they're asking me questions. Do you think they came today? I do. There's mud on the floor, cigarettes and whisky on my table, fish in your plate and a memory of them in my mind. And look what else they've left me. Crosswords, dictionaries and a calculator. I think I must be right in thinking they ask me questions. To come all that way and leave all these things just for the privilege of singing songs to you would be very strange behavior. Or so it seems to me. Who can tell, who can tell.

My Universe is what happens to my eyes and ears. Anything else is surmise and hearsay. For all I know, these people may not exist. You may not exist. I say what it occurs to me to say.

But it's folly to say you know what is happening to other people. Only they know. If they exist.

When the ruling class controls all the mass media, they can only turn into solipsists, since they realize if they can't trust what their own media tells them, it becomes impossible to know what is real and what is not. You can only prove you exist - everything else may or may not be an illusion, perhaps created intentionally by your obedient followers.

[condor]

What is a material condition? Something science (rather than mathematics or art) can measure and test.

There are plenty of things science cannot measure such as aesthetics, because something is not material does not mean it is idealist...the materialism-idealism argument is a false dichotomy.

[ckaihatsu]

What is a material condition? Something science (rather than mathematics or art) can measure and test.

There are plenty of things science cannot measure such as aesthetics,


Actually, science *could* measure something as intangible as 'aesthetics', the same way we could approach the 'bushiness' of a tree, or the 'twistiness' of a river -- it would require a *statistical* (relativistic) basis, though, and everything would hinge on how the model and terms were set up in the first place.





because something is not material


'Aesthetics' *is* material. (But abstract and intangible.)





does not mean it is idealist...the materialism-idealism argument is a false dichotomy.


Materialism and idealism *are* mutually exclusive -- if one thinks that ideas, for example, are what determines the development of the social world, then that is idealism because it doesn't bother to examine what *material forces*, such as class antagonisms, may actually be underlying the flows of paradigms of dominant ideas ('superstructure').

[condor]

What is the scientific explanation for the appeal of the golden section in buildings?

[ckaihatsu]

What is the scientific explanation for the appeal of the golden section in buildings?


There's another thread from awhile back that delved into this kind of topic:


Why are certain specific patterns so common in the universe?

http://www.revleft.com/vb/why-certain-specific-t190085/index.html?t=190085


(The general operational idea here being that nature favors / uses certain forms in its various designs, for reasons of effective functionality, like the golden section being the ratio that generates a golden spiral, as seen in seashells.)

[cyu]

If you are dreaming, you can only base your universe off of things you saw when you were awake.