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JGWeissman comments on Atheism = Untheism + Antitheism - Less Wrong
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Beauty is an interpretation assigned by physical systems such as human brains. An explanation would be in the realm of science, even though it may be complex enough that we haven't figured it out yet.
Beauty most definitely is not a fundamental property of the universe that is protected by some mysterious God or "meta-pattern". What we call beauty is not even likely to be considered beautiful by other intelligences, such as an AGI not specifically designed to share our notion of beauty, which would happily disassemble the Mona Lisa for paperclip parts.
Scientific rationalism not opposed to us having a concept of beauty, and assigning value to the concept and objects that embody it, but we cannot depend on the universe to protect these values for us, we have to do it ourselves. Note, this is not nihilism, scientific rationalism accepts that we have values, seeks to explain why we have those values, and enables us to protect those values.
I agree with every sentence you've written except for this one:
Beauty may be context dependent (I don't know what it is actually) but if we have a concept of beauty, then it has evolved naturally within the physical universe. The concept is a property of some minds (human minds), thus its a property of the natural world. I would predict that perhaps not every kind of sapient being, but certainly some subset of all sapient beings, would also develop a concept of beauty. If beauty is an actual property of the natural world, then it has a pattern. It would be easier to understand this pattern if there were other sentient beings with concepts of beauty to compare with. A sentient being could use the meta-patterning of beauty, once identified, to perceive and measure beauty outside its own specific context. I have "faith" that meta-beauty would be beautiful to all sentient beings that appreciate beauty -- this is identical to saying that there is a meaningful pattern.
I could conceivably have a theory of the baby-eaters' concept of beauty, that lets me accurately predict how beautiful they will find the act of ruthlessly eating their sentient young, but I will not find beauty in it, I will not see it as some universal meta pattern of beauty that I can appreciate like my own native concept of beauty. I simply do not find it beautiful that an adaption that evolved in harsh conditions to be cruel to sentient beings would persist beyond those harsh conditions and even become the centerpiece of a moral system. But that is a fact that must be included in any universally beautiful meta-beauty.
Something that is made up isn't part of the natural world and doesn't have to fit any pattern.
Then part of your faith is that nothing like the baby-eaters could possibly exist?
Not that, but that you can't deduce anything about the pattern from things that are made up. The patterns result from having to follow physical laws.. things you imagine don't have to.
Could your view be falsified if baby-eaters or a similar species turned out to be real?
No.
At least one of the following statements has to be true:
Which one do you think is true?
I think (3) is true.
It works like this. I have faith that human beauty isn't completely arbitrary. While some aspects may be arbitrary, there are some rules to it that would be shared by other species that have a concept of beauty. The only reason why there wouldn’t be a common rule is if beauty is completely arbitrary, in which case we wouldn’t expect other species to have the concept anyway. The common rule would validate beauty in different contexts (if the rule applies in a context, then beauty is validated in that context) and would provide the possibility of a common universal beauty (if it is possible to satisfy the rule in a way that is context independent).
(edit: a hypothetical description of this applied to baby-eaters with a pretend meta-rule was taken out because I thought it was inane)
This doesn't make it a fundamental property of the natural world. I suspect it's just a label we use for a certain fuzzy class of emotional responses. I'm skeptical that it's all that different from other emotional responses. Consider that humans also share a concept of "creepiness". Do you also have faith that "meta-creepiness" would be creepy to all sentient beings capable of being "creeped out"? It may be tempting to ascribe your reaction to something like a house centipede to a fundamental property of the critter, but "creepy", like "beautiful", seems firmly situated in the class of 2-place words.