Tuesday, September 20, 2011

The argument from beauty

I just discovered the ‘argument from beauty’. There is a brief description in Wikipedia, and a more detailed one here. The argument may be summarised as follows:

Beauty exists in a way that transcends its material manifestations
According to materialism, nothing exists in a way that transcends its material manifestations
Therefore, materialism is false
I wonder if there is a fallacy here similar to the one about trees being made high enough so that giraffes did not have to lean down, or the sun moving the way it does in order for crops to be harvested at the right time.

Perhaps objects are beautiful in the way that food tastes good. It would be obviously fallacious to argue that God made food taste that way in order that we would enjoy it, would want to eat it, and so would not starve. Clearly, our nervous system has adapted that way. Are there similar reasons for things looking beautiful to us?

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