On Aesthetic Theory and Statistical Representation

  Aesthetic theory is perhaps worth placing as a discipline with the category epistemology. Aesthetic theory if considered a value theory of sense impressions or better of the empirical world of sense impression referents  should be placed as a theory of knowledge sub-genus. Do we admire beautiful curves, fast ships, the smell of freshly cut lawns or vistas from the mountain trail–these are aesthetic values that we have, perhaps innately like an embedded computer program on a new computer. Would aesthetic values if converted or reduced into statistical representation nullify the aesthetic values? Are aesthetic values at all reducible to statistical representations, or would the statistics purported to represent a particular aesthetic point of view simply be an aesthetically satisfying value for-itself?

Human values or value theory in the axiology field of philosophy might be regarded as being concurrent with aesthetic values. The referents of aesthetic value theories must have some sort of a structure–even if it is a nominal rrepresentation that can be abstracted for it’s translation into statistical representation. Interestingly the various options for statistically representing an aesthetic referent vary considerably in regard to their relationship to the referent. If one were to encode the Mona Lisa into one of a thousand forms of representative form would any at all not actually keeping the original values in-themselves have meaning? The meaning seems naturally to fall into the perception of the aesthetic thing for itself rather than in a statistically representative translation.

Mathematical representation of forces of the Universe may have an abstract beauty in-themselves not only in form but in epistemological elegance. If the meaning of words is within the pragmatic ontology of use-existence, perhaps there is an epistemological intelligence that is beautiful too as an aesthetic thing-in-itself regardless of its being statistically represented in math equations or simply understood as an explanation of the way thing cosmologically seem to be. If there are unified physical theories of aesthetic values and sense impressions that may exist as universals perceptible from several ontological points of view, perhaps the boundary conditions of realism may exist as well in a satisfying aesthetic apprehension of a transcending referent.

If one accepts an epistemological criterion such as the Ontological Relativity of W.V.O. Quine and considers some of the history of mathematical advances in group theory such as were described in the 2008 book ‘Why Beauty is Truth’, and perhaps even considers pre-big bang theory cosmological theories as mostly abstract mathematical structures representing the historical matter of the Universe etc. it becomes evident that aesthetic values seem to correspond with pragmatic premises for rating sensory impressions with cogitation that is found primordially. If the abstract, statistically represented structure of the Universe considered has aesthetic beautiful because of its self-consistent logic, or if it doesn’t,but just provides an answer to native curiosity, abstract ontological criteria provide our aesthetic value-making content. Perhaps we cannot be sure of what that is?

 It would be a post hoc ergo proper hoc sort of fallacy to determine that aesthetic valuation at any level corresponds arbitrarily to a primordial bio-physical inheritance however. The advance of human reasoning skills and evaluation of  sensory impressions may become the implicit valuing criterion in-itself regardless of, or consistent with initial theistically evolved aesthetic criteria that human beings have for conferring aesthetic values.