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Does the sense of the range of colors undermine beauty?

onesteptwostep

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In the animal kingdom we are only able to visualise colors from a certain color spectrum, but for dogs and even reindeers, their color spectrum could be smaller or eveb bigger (apparently reindeers can see ultraviolet rays). What I'm trying to get at is that since colors are not universal for all creatures, does this undermine the universality or apparent conservative stance of the objectivity of beauty? I ask this because colors I believe is one of the most fundemental dimension of beauty. What do you guys think? Or maybe is beauty only in the domain of humanity?
 

Cognisant

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Beauty is entirely subjective, like sexual preferences, we both may be into women but our taste in women may be different, likewise all humans can agree on a common sense of beauty but each person's personal taste will be slightly different.

I personally find grayscale images aesthetically pleasing.
 

Hadoblado

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Yeah I don't really see objective beauty as tenable. There are trends in beauty because there are trends in perception. Colour can have a big role in whether I find something appealing, but I think it's more about the relationship between the colours than the colours themselves.

You're sort of also treating it as if it's a sensory experience (changing the sensory input but not the perceptual). Can you experience beauty when you close your eyes?

I doubt whether most animals can experience beauty whether or not they've got the sensory receptors for it.
 

onesteptwostep

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Hmm let's try and set an example. Is the rainbow beautiful because of the order of its color spectrum, or would it be not beautiful if the ordering of the colors were different somehow?

I mean I guess it's possible that the wavelength orderings and the quilia of the color sense experience might still be considered beautiful, but for the sake of the argument, would a rainbow be beautiful if the order of the colors were not red, orange, yellow, green, and so on?
 

redbaron

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draw a bunch of rainbows with differently ordered colours

see which one people like more

and if it's the generic rainbow it's probably just internalized rainbogyny anyway
 

Hadoblado

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To me, the appeal of rainbows isn't the order of colours. I couldn't tell you what the order is (though I might be able to identify when a rainbow isn't of a normal colour palette, not sure).

It's about how nature do dat.

Same reason bubbles and fire and tornadoes and lightning are interesting, it's nature acting differently to how folk-physics would have you expect.
 

Polaris

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Same reason bubbles and fire and tornadoes and lightning are interesting, it's nature acting differently to how folk-physics would have you expect

I just read this as "Same reason bubbles and fire and tomatoes and lightning are interesting"

Well, I guess tomatoes are interesting. But the tomatoes looked a bit random in between the fire and the lightning. Those weird tomatoes, acting differently to what you would expect, like, not make your sandwich go soggy or something. Why do we spell tomatoes like that and not like: 'tomatos'? And then you see this sign at the fruit and veg store that says: CHEAP POTATOS. Is it potatoes or potatos?? Anyway, why is there an e in there? The English language is fucked.

I don't even remember what this thread is about anymore.

I need to sleep
 

aiyanah

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In the animal kingdom we are only able to visualise colors from a certain color spectrum, but for dogs and even reindeers, their color spectrum could be smaller or eveb bigger (apparently reindeers can see ultraviolet rays). What I'm trying to get at is that since colors are not universal for all creatures, does this undermine the universality or apparent conservative stance of the objectivity of beauty? I ask this because colors I believe is one of the most fundemental dimension of beauty. What do you guys think? Or maybe is beauty only in the domain of humanity?
no it does not.
beauty is form as much as palette, actually more form than palette cause the palette becomes part of the form.
for instance silhouettes, some of these are beautiful without any more details required.
one would also have a hard time justifying beauty pageants but i suppose the heavy left leaning collective would be on board with that cause they consider the contest invalid due to mistaking beauty with attraction.
attraction is subjective, always has been, for instance anyone here can note that adriana lima is beautiful but how many are attracted to her?
you can run this idea with any name you can think of i would imagine.
 

Rook

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I live in a rural backwater with many rural macguffins having their fields close together.

This is where I agree with Hadoblado.
You see, I weekly encounter rainbows in the miniature. If the sun is positioned right in terms of a center pivot's spray, or if a hose reel's thump thump of water catches the light, small dynamic rainbows ensue. I stopped the tractor or bakkie many times to stare but just for a second or five. The colours... lesser. The vitality! The fact of great star and human invention creating a free polychromatic spectacle, variant, droplets and torrents all reflecting upon the eye!

Beauty is subjective. Now, those that embrace universal aesthetic values, that is people who find flowers, corpses and desert wastes to be majestic, they may state that beauty is universal. How many of them, in our billion spawn, are there?

tmp-cam--1887291673.jpg
ofc big rainbows are magnificent
(poor quality photo due to forum att restrict, but there is rainbow over hills.
 

Ex-User (14663)

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probably anything with brain on earth considers beauty as anything complex yet orderly, like the peacock's tail. In that sense, the bigger the range of colors you see, the more complexity you're able to see and hence can assess beauty on a higher level. E.g. if you see things in grayscale only, you can appreciate certain aspects of peacock's tail but not all.
 

Rook

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@Serac True, true. Peacock tail by essence is a thing of colour and pomp.

But now: A silhoutte of a forest. Lets say the original picture was hues of green with intertwining vines. You know, a normal picture taken by a norm person. Now... many things turned to greyscale take on another aspect. I have watched films, toggled to be mirrored and in negative colours(vlc). How pretty, for me! Beauty is subjective. I admit that the classical painters had great skill, but It is simply not my preffered mode of art.

A biologist, artist, chef and farmer all see a mole. They see the mole in different ways within their minds. To say that more colour is the essence of beauty... your prediliction perhaps!

Charcoal etchings I like. Colours are left for your own imagining, only form is given!
 
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