The Value of Beauty Never Seen

G.E. Moore was the Professor of Philosophy at Cambridge in the early twentieth century when Cambridge was the center of the philosophical universe. Fellow Cantabrigians included Alfred North Whitehead, Bertrand (the 3rd Earl of) Russell (one of only a trio of philosopher winners of the Nobel Prize for Literature, the others being Camus and Sartre), and Ludwig Wittgenstein, later Moore’s successor in the Professorship.

The Moore thesis for today is that it is better that a Beautiful World (hereinafter “BW”) exist, even if so distant that no one will ever see it. In this Moore was trying to refute ethical hedonism, as then expounded by utilitarian theorists, who claimed that the good (what is valuable in a way relevant for morality) is exhausted by desirable states of consciousness. Henry Sidgwick, the most prominent of these theorists, specifically contended that there could be no value in any beauty apart from its contemplation by conscious beings. [Methods of Ethics, book I, ch. IX, s. IV, pr. II, p.114).]

Moore:

Let us imagine one world exceedingly beautiful. Imagine it as beautiful as you can; put into it whatever on this earth you most admire—mountains, rivers, the sea; trees, and sunsets, stars and moon. Imagine these all combined in the most exquisite proportions, so that no one thing jars against another, but each contributes to increase the beauty of the whole. And then imagine the ugliest world you can possibly conceive. . . . The only thing we are not entitled to imagine is that any human being ever has or ever, by any possibility, can, live in either, can ever see and enjoy the beauty of the one or hate the foulness of the other. Well, even so, supposing them quite apart from any possible contemplation by human beings; still, is it irrational to hold that it is better that the beautiful world should exist, than the one which is ugly? Would it not be well, in any case, to do what we could to produce it rather than the other? Certainly I cannot help thinking that it would . . . [Principia Ethica,  Sec 50.]

Sharing Moore’s intuition, I told class after class of students that I would be willing to kick in a couple of dollars towards the existence of the BW. My students thought I was nuts.

Student: I don’t get why you should care whether the BW exists. Are you thinking that some non-human observer, maybe space aliens, angels, or God might see the BW?

LC: No, that would be cheating. Although Moore expressly veils the BW only from “contemplation by human beings,” I take his underlying position to be that no perception of any sort by any being is required for the BW to be valuable.

Student: How about an autonomous space-drone flies by, probes the BW, and draws from it higher order aesthetic principles that it incorporates into the architecture of a public building of an alien people?

LC: Still cheating. The BW I think is to have value without having any effect at all, direct or indirect, upon any consciousness.

Student: So I guess you are just pro-BW as a matter of your personal preference structure. You can like haggis, rose wine in a box, and round squares for all we care.

LC: My personal preferences are immaterial. What I am claiming, following Moore, is that it would be an objectively better universe if it included the BW. It would be more valuable with respect to the kind of value that we all should care about.

Student: Then you are kidding yourself. My diagnosis is that you are imagining, in contributing your two dollars, performing a selfless act, for which you congratulate yourself. Or, because you’re a philosophy professor you further ennoble it as a “community-of-conscious-beings-less act.”

LC: Except that I concluded that the BW would be valuable first, and only penciled the $2 into my outline to emphasize the point for any of you whose attention at this time of morning might still be dulled by the effects of last night’s fraternity parties. Of course the BW could never really be the object of public subscription. Moore had tongue firmly pressed against cheek in asking whether it would “not be well, in any case, to do what we could to produce it?” He conceded that it would be “highly improbable, not to say impossible” that we could have any actual choice about the BW’s existence. The claim is simply that the BW would be intrinsically valuable. The hypothetical of doing something towards its existence is only a device for focusing the discussion.

Student: OK, but I still think it’s all in your head. Moore sketches a picture for you. The image that arises in your mind is beautiful and so it is valuable – as is, the $2 aside, what I still suspect is you get a kick out of being a fanboy of esoteric entities.

LC: But I do have a clear intuition that the BW itself would be valuable. I can certainly separate out the (very slight) value of my vague image of the BW. I have images in my mind of Laocoön and His Sons. But, even though I spent some time walking around that sculpture in the Vatican Museum, my memory images are foggy. The value of the sculpture itself is orders of magnitude greater than the value of what is in my mind. Were you right about my narcissistic self-congratulation in upholding the value of the BW, that would be even more easily separable from the value of the BW.

Student: The reason I think your intuition is, in fact, contaminated by what you mistakenly believe you can separate out is that I don’t see how something can be valuable at all if it doesn’t have any relation to beings that are valuing. Are you claiming that if there never was or would be consciousness, still a universe with a BW would be more valuable than one without?

LC: Plato would have said so. For him beauty was an objective feature of reality valuable because of the relation of the form of beauty to the form of the good. The value of a beautiful object, independent of appreciation of its beauty, is easy on that theory.

Student: If your intuition has it that the BW is intrinsically good, surely it is a big good. It’s a whole planet! Why then would you be willing to pay only a measly $2 to bring it into existence?

LC: Well, Moore was even cheaper. He imagined making a choice (hypothetical remember) between the existence of the BW and an ugly world if absolutely nothing else turned on it. In effect, he only committed himself to the modest claim that if it were costless it would be rational to call the BW into existence. I’ll concede that the BW gets a discount for its inaccessibility. 

Student: I’d say it should be a “100%-off sale,” but on the Platonic theory the BW shouldn’t get any discount at all. It’s its closeness to the good that counts, not closeness to us, wandering around in this world of mere shadows of the really real.  Anyway I can’t believe you want to rest your BW claim on Platonism. Won’t you admit that morality and what counts as value for morality are human constructs, answering to our specific individual, cultural, or species interests and purposes?

LC: I’ll go along with you that value and morality are in some sense “constructed,” although that word as used by post-modernists may be more trouble than it is worth. Let’s just agree that we are using “constructed” in a very capacious sense to recognize the humanness of value and morality and to exclude at least the full strength versions of Platonism, divine command theory, and the like.

Student: What if we were talking about something delicious instead of something beautiful? I don’t have to resort to goodies on distant planets. Suppose I make my best triple chocolate cake for a friend who is coming to visit. The deliciousness of this cake, I humbly submit, would be at least as widely acknowledged as the beauty of Moore’s mountains and moons. However, the friend doesn’t come. The low life! I smash the cake, pour vinegar on the mess, and throw it into the garbage. No one ever tasted that delicious cake. Was it better that its deliciousness existed? Was there more value to the world because of it?

LC: Well, in the period between baking and the vinegaring there was one more delicious thing in the world, but I am not sure that made it a better world except in ways that Sidgwick’s theory could easily absorb. Hedonism can lay full claim to your pleasant anticipation of the cake and your friend’s visit. So there does seem to me to be a difference between your cake and the BW.

Student: It can’t be the difference between the beautiful and the delicious that makes a difference. One appeals to one sense, the other to others. That’s all. What I think is that Moore suckered you in with the romantic grandeur of the beautiful planet shtick. Suppose on a lonely ocean beach the surf threw together what you would regard as a beautiful arrangement of driftwood and seaweed. If you had been there you would have said “Wow” and reached for your camera. But you weren’t there.  No one else was either, and the next wave washed it away. Was there more value in the world because of that beauty for those few seconds?

LC: It’s a better world where there is such ephemeral beauty, at least in that each of them has some probability, even if a small probability, of being seen and appreciated.

Student: But that doesn’t help Moore against Sidgwick. Moore ruled out any “possible contemplation” of the BW, and even the smallest probability implies possibility. If the best you can say for the beachscape is it had some probability of conscious appreciation, then your defense of your intuition is Sidgwickian not Moore-ish .

LC: OK, yes, for your cake and your seaweed I guess my intuitions are like yours. Their deliciousness and beauty, if they have no probability of affecting any consciousness, are not valuable. So I admit that there is conflict among my intuitions. But my intuition about Moore’s BW is stronger than my intuitions about your cases. As I take the BW to be highly supportive of the proposition that some states of affairs are valuable even if they never have any effect upon any consciousness, I can simply revise my intuitions in your cases. The cake and seaweed are valuable. My initial intuitions, I now see, were erroneous in that they are not consistent with the best theory of value. It’s an exercise in the method of “reflective equilibrium” as Rawls describes it, as I hope you remember from last semester.

Student: Wasn’t the revision of an intuition to reach reflective equilibrium supposed to take place if the errant intuitions were inconsistent with a well-considered moral theory? What is your well-considered theory that implies that the BW, my cake, and ephemeral surf scene are all valuable?

LC: Well the theory starts out from the inherent connection between beauty (or deliciousness) and value. You have no problem with the idea of unperceived beauty, so because the connection is so close, you should have no problem with unperceived value either.

Student: I am accepting unseen beauty for the sake of the argument. It is not on me to commit either way on the noislessness or noisiness of Bishop Berkeley’s tree falling in the lonely forest. Moore and you both recognize it’s an additional step to conclude from the BW’s beauty to its making the universe a better place. Moore gives us only his “cannot help thinking” in support of that step and you haven’t yet helped him out with a supporting theory. By admitting contrary “initial” intuitions that had to be reconciled, you are in even more need of a theory than was Moore.  

LC: The theory I was starting to sketch, before your interruption, is that our construction of value for purposes of morality is very like our construction of beauty. They are so much alike, that the never to be perceived value is no more impossible than never to be perceived beauty.

Student: In what ways are they alike?

LC: You’ll grant, won’t you, that they are both positive sorts of constructions?

Student: Usually.

LC: And that “valuable” has the wider scope, in that beautiful, delicious, pleasant and the like are all valuable, at least usually valuable to stick with your reservation. In any event, there must be some significant overlap between the construction of beautiful and that of valuable.

Student: Some overlap, but that the beautiful is only usually valuable is important. If everything beautiful were valuable, you and Moore would win automatically. But a naked eye view of an eclipse may be beautiful and a poisoned cake may be delicious.

LC: Right, even for constructions closely aligned, the more specific doesn’t always overlap the more general as neatly as “square” overlaps “rectangle.” Still, there may be an “in the main” overlap. You accept, don’t you, that other things being equal what is beautiful is valuable?

Student: Yes, but that “other things being equal” is crucial.

LC: The clause excludes your dangerous beauties and delicious poisons, and more generally, many things that are a mixture of good and bad. But there is nothing like an associated pain or other evil for the BW.

Student: So is your theory that the short lived seaweed and driftwood scene, and every beauty everywhere and at any time is valuable for the concept of value relevant to morality so long as it is uncontaminated by any serious negative value?

LC: That’s it, at least roughly. I would add, to borrow lawyers’ language, that anything beautiful starts out with a presumption of valuableness, and, unless that presumption is rebutted, must be valuable full stop.

Student: I think it’s more a bald claim than a theory. In any event, I have two objections, one from the side of beauty; one from the side of morality.

LC: Fire away.

Student: First beauty: You have already, in effect, conceded that the ultimate touchstone of beauty is that an observer would regard the object as beautiful. What I wonder about is who the observer is to be. I was bothered by Moore’s PR job for the BW. Don’t you find it suspicious that Moore describes the details of the BW in terms that cry out “modern European tourists’ idea of beauty.” You can’t tell me that every culture at every time agreed on what “the most exquisite proportions” of moon to mountain would be, and I’m sure some people think mountains are scary and ugly.

LC: You misunderstand Moore. His argument doesn’t depend upon everyone’s accepting the mountains-sunsets-stars paradigm of beauty. Look again at the text. He asked his reader to “Imagine it as beautiful as you can; put into it whatever on this earth you most admire.” So the mountains and stars were merely examples.

Student: So Moore is a relativist about value?

LC: Better to say Moore was a partial relativist. Too much arguing about relativism of value and much too much about relativism in morally has been simple-mindedly binary. Moore would concede, I think, that there are individual differences and cultural differences for beauty and other components of the good, but within a universal theme. The differences come from different biographies or cultural histories, the commonness from shared genetics, shared environment in the large, and shared parts of the cultural past.

Student: So some people might think the BW beautiful and others not. Where does that leave the question whether it would be right (hypothetically) to bring it into existence? Are you giving up on your “objectively better universe” claim?

LC: I think Moore would probably follow Sidgwick and sum up the preferences, but that is beside his point here. Just take the population who agree that the BW is beautiful. That population should join me in making that hypothetical contribution towards the existence of the BW. This Moore would assert and Sidgwick deny. It is an objective question these two would fight about: whether there can be morally relevant value without an effect on consciousness.

Student: Then I will focus on Moore’s European tourist subgroup. Even for their notion of beauty, something beautiful but never to be seen, does not even begin to be equal to Mt Fuji. It is visual appreciation that ties the beauty into value. Take away the appreciation and what is good about it? The number 6 isn’t beauty-valuable in that it cannot be visually appreciated. A never-to-be-perceived object is other things unequal where it counts, and so not valuable.

LC: 6 is mathematically attractive in a couple of ways certainly isn’t visually beautiful, but that is because it is not of the right ontological type. Wrong category things are very different from the BW, which is only unperceived in practice. The BW might be the inspiration for volumes of image filled poetry in some other possible worlds.

Student: I obviously have no problem with the value of the BW in a possible world where lots of people view its scenery every day. That something is good in another possible world doesn’t make it good in this one. I just don’t understand your saying “only unperceived in practice.” Unperceived is unperceived, and the unperceived beauty has its connection to value broken. The catalogue of all the beautiful things of zero probability of ever being perceived would not be of much aesthetic interest. It would not be of any interest at all “in practice,” which leads me to my second objection, one from the side of moral value as part of the human practice of morality.

LC: Have at it.

Student: Isn’t morality a practical business, about what is the right thing to do?

LC: That’s a conception of morality, one with which Moore and Sidgwick would agree, but there are other conceptions that would, for example, emphasize not doing wrong things, or doing the right thing for the right reasons, or developing a virtuous character.

Student: Even the virtuous character theorists would say that the person of virtuous character acts well, correct?

LC: That’s fair enough, so long as the emphasis is put in the right place.

Student: Well, the telling thing against the thesis that the BW is good is that it doesn’t make any possible difference for any action. You admit that there is nobody you can pay towards the existence of the BW, and there is no other way its existence or non-existence will affect anybody’s action. Therefore, what you and Moore call the BW’s “good” or “value” cannot be “good” or “value” for morality, certainly not for morality as Moore and Sidgwick conceived it.

LC: But Moore’s thesis that the BW is valuable does lead to conceptual clarification and to fruitful discussions about value and morality.

Student: Fallacy alert!  If there is any conceptual clarification, it comes from seeing why Moore’s thesis is wrong. That value is the product of the concept of a BW, not of the BW.  The concept of the greatest prime number is valuable for the proof that there is no greatest prime number.  And if you think our discussion of the BW has been valuable, you’ll have to wait for our class evaluation forms to see.

LC:  Calm down. I was joking.

Student: But that alleged joke was as close as you have gotten towards a theory that would support revising your initial and sensible intuitions about uneaten cakes and ephemeral beach scenes to bring them into line with your and Moore’s weird views about never perceived planets. So, without your promised theory, your attempt at reflective equilibrium fails, and Sidgwick and hedonism win the day.

LC: Even were I to concede so much, you would have won only a battle for hedonism, not the war. For additional anti-hedonism see Nozick’s description of the “experience machine” in Anarchy, State, and Utopia, and my argument that we desire really to be loved or really to accomplish things more than we desire the perfect counterfeit. (Analysis, “Egoistic Hedonism,” Vol. 36, No. 4 (Jun., 1976), pp. 168-176.)

Student: So have you at least given up on the BW?

LC: I see that we are out of time. For Wednesday please read . . .