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Aesthetics Are Moral Judgments | Sarah Constantin

srconstantin.github.io · 905 words · saved by 1 readers

I often hear people say things like “It’s ridiculous to judge that someone’s a bad person because of his musical taste!” People assume it’s obvious that aesthetic judgments have no moral weight. For me, aesthetic judgments are a kind of moral judgment. I understand “morality” to basically cash out as “priority structure”, “values”, and related concepts. What matters most to me, and what would matter most to me if I knew more and thought more clearly. With that definition, when I say that kindness is “good” and I say that Camembert is “good”, I’m not using two unrelated meanings of the word — cheese and kindness are both valuable to me. Aesthetic preferences aren’t really arbitrary; they say things about what you value and how you see the world. For example, I like Bach. There’s a pretty well-established correlation between liking Bach and liking math. Godel, Escher, Bach is a pretty strong marker of membership in my tribe. And I don’t think that’s arbitrary. The words I’d use to descri

cognition and psychology I often hear people say things like “It’s ridiculous to judge that someone’s a bad person because of his musical taste!” People assume it’s obvious that aesthetic judgments have no moral weight. For me, aesthetic judgments are a kind of moral judgment. I understand “morality” to basically cash out as “priority structure”, “values”, and related concepts. What matters most to me, and what would matter most to me if I knew more and thought more clearly. With that definition, when I say that kindness is “good” and I say that Camembert is “good”, I’m not using two unrelated

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