Frances to Cheerskep and Chris and Derek and others...
It seems to me that all and each and every felt or sensed or known object of aesthetics or ethics or logics in the world, that may be ordinary or extraordinary yet existent and whether extant or extinct, be they mystical or material or mental objects, and of such acts as art or tech or science, do not necessarily "have" beauty in their form or content or purpose, but will essentially "bear" beauty as an emergent property given uncontrolled and immediate and direct to experience, and for its own sake alone with no regard for any other sake. If the form of any object is held to bear beauty, but aside from say any disgusting material or obscene content or dangerous use of that object, then the form of any such object might also be held to bear what is ugly of the object, and even in the absence of any substantive beauty. This implies there can be a beauty of beauty or the dainty and nice, and a beauty of the ugly or dumpy and naughty. The property of beauty found mainly or usually in objects of art cannot however be used as a genus and as a species without causing some grave ambiguity. If there can be a formal beauty of any beautiful or unbeautiful object to some degree, then this must include objects that are of the ugly, to further include the evil or wicked and demonic or satanic. If the unbeautiful is of ugliness, but yet can be found beautiful, and the beautiful is of beauty or of ugliness, then the term beauty should not be held as both an umbrella label for both its ugly and beautiful members, and thus also as a species term. It might be best to call the formal property of all objects "aesthetic" under which would fall such properties as ugly and beauty and others like continuity or quality or sublimity or purity or unity. This alternate approach of using "aesthetic" as the main umbrella does not pit the poles of ugly and beauty against each other, and thus avoids the ambiguity otherwise created. The conclusion here in this little theory is that beauty as a factual property will be found intrinsically to some degree in the form of all ordinary phenomenal objects that exist; and if that property is sensed, then it will also be real in mind. The thought here is that all such objects found in nature or its culture and society will bear "aesthetic properties" like ugly and beauty and so on, and if such an ordinary object is further formally empowered to reflect worthy values and evoke intense responses, then it will also become an extraordinary "aesthetic object" to include works of art. The aesthetic properties of ordinary objects born with this reflective power and evocative force in their form will easily yield aesthetic forms and aesthetic objects and aesthetic experiences. If such experiences are furthermore immediate or direct and mainly emotional, rather than mainly technical or practical or intellectual, then they are likely born by lofty works of original fine art. Finding some assurance that these phenomenal things exist as aesthetic facts by being sensibly "real" should be the proper task of aestheticians. The key study of aesthetic properties like beauty should therefore perhaps turn on identifying and defining their existent reality, rather than on their factuality or actuality, which facts and acts may not and indeed need not ever be sensed. If a property or an object is not sensed, it may very well exist, but it simply will not be real. While the phenomenal factuality of an existent object may be a material construct, the phenomenal reality of that factuality will be a mental construct. The correct saying and calling and naming of what is found seeming as real to sense in mind should then yield a clear way of deeming objects as artistic. The subsequent assertion and proposition of what is truly beautiful or art then turns essentially on what is empirically discovered as aesthetically real. Finding the assurance of sensible and reasonable reality overcomes the global limits of determining things like beauty and art merely by notional and nominal subjectivity alone. The habit of merely saying an object is known as art is an opinion that must clearly be warranted and justified, and realism for now seems to be the best tentative way to do this. It is after all a sound empirical philosophy with a good historical tradition. Realism is a field of study requiring skeptical doubt and critical judgement and fallible belief about the objects it seeks and finds, making it a formal science of review. It is a process of collection and connection and correction.
