John Ruskin once wrote: “Seek not the nobleness of the man and hence the nobleness of the delights, seek the nobleness of the delights and hence the nobleness of the man.” Is there a consensus on this? Does moral goodness automatically derive from sound aesthetic judgment, or is it possible to be virtuous person and still like reality television? --Patrick Tucker

I suspect that there is near universal agreement on one thing, namely that 'moral goodness' does not automatically derive from sound aesthetic judgement. As Kant (with uncharacteristic wit) puts it: "virtuosi of taste, who not just often but apparently as a matter of habit, are vain, obstinate, and given to ruinous passions, can perhaps still less than others claim the distinction of being attached to moral principles" (Critique of Judgement , par. 42) . Much more controversial is whether what you call sound aesthetic taste might have some less direct relation to or influence upon moral behaviour. But in order to answer the question, we would first need a good, solid definition of its key terms: 'sound aesthetic judgement' and 'moral goodness', and you could hardly have picked two more debated ideas! Let me suggest just two possible ways of approaching the question in order to illustrate something of the variety: First, might some forms of art (particularly narratives in novels or...

The word 'color' has three meanings, as far as I can tell: 1, certain properties of atoms and molecules that make them emit electromagnetic radiation in the so-called visible range; 2, mixtures of frequencies of this electromagnetic radiation that go to the eye of the observer and produce an image on his/hers retina; and 3, sensations of color that this observer experiences. So if I am looking at a green leaf, which of these three meanings of 'green' am I experiencing?

John Locke makes a similar distinction between primary qualities -- roughly your (1) and (2) -- and secondary qualities -- your (3). On his analysis, this is between qualities that actually inhere in things, and qualities that are only in our ideas of things because they are a result of the relation of a thing and our senses. It seems to me that your question already answers itself. You define meaning 3 as 'sensations of color that this observer experiences'; but your question reads 'which of these three ... am I experiencing?' Perhaps though you meant to use the word 'experience' in two different senses. The first sense (used in definition 3) would be 'the purely mental content that results from the external influence'; the second sense (used in the question) would be 'what is most immediately encountered, rather than inferred.' Current common sense would tend to answer in the same way you already did, inadvertently. It is the color sensation that I encounter immediately and thus...

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