Panos Paris: "Beauty & Pleasure: Internalising Ends, Experiencing Value"

Panos Paris, Cardiff University: "Beauty & Pleasure: Internalising Ends, Experiencing Value"

Abstract
I try to explore a puzzle that emerges from reflecting on my account of functional beauty, namely that while functional beauty is partly a matter of an object’s wellformedness for function, it seems that not all objects that are well-formed for their function are beautiful. This is because, as has been argued in the literature, some of them fail to please competent appreciators and, eo ipso, pleasure being a sine qua non for beauty, are not (found) beautiful. I argue that the solution to this puzzle emerges when we remind ourselves that our experience of pleasure is a matter of our self’s reward-oriented psychology and that, on this basis, wellformedness for function will only be experienced as with pleasure when the appreciating subject finds the object’s end(s) rewarding. I trace the philosophical-psychological mechanism underlying encounters with functionally beautiful objects as what I call instances of teleological alignment between an object and the appreciator’s internalised end(s). I then explore the notion of internalisation itself, which elucidates species of beauty that are based on biological, cultural, and personal ends. Time permitting, by way of concluding, I might gesture towards how I think that this account can lay the foundation of a unified theory of beauty.