Mexicola

Yes, obviously. But the point is we don't then have to suppose that the beauty is merely the 'subjective' response; it is the object (or rather the features of it...) which is/are beautiful, not the response.
Then person A can ask 'Why?' :P

Dubin

And any response either person provides will be opinion rather than fact. They're still free to interpret the same properties X as beautiful or not beautiful.

Then again, that can be determined by properties X' about properties X, which can be determined by properties X" about properties X', which can be....

Yech, too many levels of properties. I concede defeat, except for the fact that it begs the question of whether properties of an object or idea are inherent or merely inventions of the human observer.

Mexicola

lol! Yeah, people can obviously still differ on whether or not they find something beautiful even after explaining why they do so. But sometimes, just sometimes, these explanations achieve something - someone is convinced and 'sees' the object 'in a new light'. Or at least sees how someone with such-and-such other beliefs/history would find the object/idea beautiful.
The point is, as Rorty would say, in the conversation. There are no absolute guarantees/logical proofs for these judgments (and, arguably, all others...) but that doesn't mean we can't have rational discussion and, crucially, reach agreement through this.
Beauty's being objective doesn't mean that there is any single, universally 'correct' judgment about beauty towards which we should aim (eg a God-given one), but it does mean that beauty is something which is not 'private' and which is accessible in the world, as opposed to something we just 'make up' however we want.
As for properties being 'out-there' or 'inherent' in objects, how are you using this description? They (natural properties, eg physical, social, etc) are inherent in that we can't simply change them by force of will alone. Arguably linguistic properties (eg meanings) are 'out-there' too , as they're normative and require this normativity simply to be meaningful; we can't change what words mean just by willing them to mean something else.

Pyrrho

One of the virtues of what I have been saying is that the word "beauty" is defined. It is a kind of emotional reaction in the observer. What is "beauty", if it is a something in the object? Without a definition, one would be speaking nonsense.

Tristan Scott

Beauty is an emotional reaction? WOuldn't that make it a verb? The definition you cited specified it as a noun.

See:

beau·ty ( P ) Pronunciation Key (byt)
n. pl. beau·ties

I would say that beauty could be something that elicits an emotional reaction.

Pyrrho

Yes. I just wanted to emphasis that beauty is not a thing in itself, but only something insofar as it elicits the appropriate reaction, or, perhaps, would elicit such the reaction if it were appropriately observed.

John Page

Mex:

I think you're wrong.
1) Experiments may be performed using images (of objects) that are constant over time. The only counter is then to propose that the images do vary over time and with it their beauty or degree of beautifulness.
2) It can be demonstrated that subject's perceptions alter over time and circumstances to demonstrate that beauty is relative. 3) To my knowledge, beauty has not been demonstrated as an intrinsic quality of anything. While I agree that (an instance of) perception of beauty requires an object for the quality to be conferred upon and a perceiver of that quality, it seems that a second perceiver can pronounce the same image as ugly.

I would conclude that beauty is a neuro-chemical subjective experience copmmon among humans. Furthermore, this experience is of a more abstract nature than, say, sweet or salt tastes - the physical senses that result from such tasting being judged against further (contextual) variables. A salt taste from a Margherita could be beatuiful but a salt taste with cream cake the opposite.

That we can contemplate and debate beauty at all indicates that the physiology of our intellect and emotions is the cause of that quality.

Cheers, John

Mexicola

Ok, I'll see how I can reply to these points.
1) That's not the only option. What could also change is the subjects' noticing the beauty, or noticing something else which negates the beauty.
2) Beauty is relative in the sense that people have different conceptions of what beauty is. I never denied this. But it doesn't follow that what all these subjects pick out as beautiful in the world does not objectively possess those qualities which make up (their conception of) beauty. Similarly, just because different species pick out different colours using their visual systems (eg some only have black and white, some are blind to certain of our colours, etc) it doesn't follow that these colours are 'all in the head'. The different species are just picking out different ranges/sets of the objective properties of the objects (reflected light wavelengths, etc). They just put the 'lines' in different places. They can all be right (picking out objective properties) even though they divide the world up differently. The same could be true of beauty judgments.
3) How would we go about demonstrating that beauty is an objective quality of anything? I think you're misunderstanding me. I don't claim that there is One Single Objective Characteristic Called 'Beauty' and that all others are wrong. I just claim that what people pick out when they claim something is beautiful can be an objective quality of the object. So we could pick out the lines of a picture as beautiful, or a particular musical arrangement. Now these are objective qualities. They are, you'll see, also relative to the viewer/listener. A mouse, to take an extreme example, wouldn't hear the same arrangement or see the same lines. But they're objective properties nonetheless, because they can't be changed just by our thinking they're different. The same is true of beauty judgments. I can't think something isn't beautiful just because I want to. Obviously I can lie and say I think so. I can even act like it. But in order to do this I've still picked out the quality and then deliberately not claimed it is beautiful. I can come to change my mind over time, yes. But this doesn't show that both the properties I pick out (now and then) aren't properties of the object.
I think the confusion here surrounds the idea that beauty's being an objective property must require there to be a single correct concept of beauty; that no disagreement must be possible. This idea is not what I'm defending. All I'm trying to show is that beauty isn't 'all in the head'. Yes it can depend on who's looking at an object. People obviously disagree about what is and isn't beautiful. But firstly, this shouldn't be overestimated. Almost everyone agrees that certain specific sunsets are beautiful. Secondly, the difference we notice is usually a result of people differing about their concept of beauty. For example, they might hate sunsets because they think they're cheesy and reminiscent of dodgy pseudo-romantic film endings. The question is: can the sunset be both beautiful and not beautiful? Obviously. But this doesn't show that neither of the beauty judgments are pick out objective qualities. They might equally both do so. They might both pick out qualities of the sunset which are objective, but be picking out different qualities; thus accounting for the difference in opinion. It might happen that most people only pick out the 'beautiful' properties of sunsets, ignoring any potential 'non-beautiful' ones.

Dubin

That's just the thing I'm confused about. Both the sunset-lover and the sunset-hater recognize that there is a certain combination of colors that is unique to a sunset. The lover may pay attention to the 'fact' that the colors are beautiful while the hater pays attention to the connection to pseudo-romantic film endings. Is the connection to film endings inherent in the sunset or is it a human creation born from watching too many of such films? Also, what is it about this unique combination of colors that makes it beautiful? Perhaps it is something else entirely; regardless of what makes the sunset beautiful, is it an inherent property of the objective property, or is it something that we humans made up by associating the objective property with something else?

John Page

How then should we differentiate between the qualities that are ascribed to an object and the qualities that are intrinsic?

I guess the difficulty I'm having is your inference that all qualities except beauty are intrinsic to the object in the world external to the mind. I am, however, agreeing, that our minds calculate beauty depending upon external sense-data and internal axioms of beauty.

Cheers, John