#15 - It is often said that beauty is subjective. But this

[smile22]

In this weaken question, I understand that the author is stating that beauty is objective. This conclusion is based upon the fact that modern standards of beauty are very similar to the standards of beauty of earlier cultures. I am confused as to how C weakens this conclusion. I appreciate any feedback that you can provide.

[Emily Haney-Caron]

Hello,

The author is saying that we know beauty is objective because different cultures across time have all had similar beauty standards, and therefore there must be some "true" definition of beauty. C is offering another explanation for the similarity of our beauty standards with that of earlier cultures: our standards were influenced by the standards of previous cultures.

Hope that helps answer your question!

[ericj_williams]

Hello,

The author is saying that we know beauty is objective because different cultures across time have all had similar beauty standards, and therefore there must be some "true" definition of beauty. C is offering another explanation for the similarity of our beauty standards with that of earlier cultures: our standards were influenced by the standards of previous cultures.

Hope that helps answer your question!

Can you help me understand where I am going wrong. If the author is saying that different cultures have similar standards of beauty, and out standards are beauty of heavily influenced by the same source, wouldn't that seem to strengthen the idea of objective standards? In other words, since we have the same source, our beauty standards ARE similar (we can objectify them).

[sdb606]

Can you help me understand where I am going wrong. If the author is saying that different cultures have similar standards of beauty, and out standards are beauty of heavily influenced by the same source, wouldn't that seem to strengthen the idea of objective standards? In other words, since we have the same source, our beauty standards ARE similar (we can objectify them).

I'm going to try answering. If I understand you correctly, you're saying that it's possible for us and the ancients to draw standards of beauty from the same objective source, lending support for the idea that there exists an objective standard of beauty. But by saying this, all you're doing is rephrasing the stimulus without addressing the flaw which is that our standards of beauty may have been influenced by other standards of beauty. If indeed our standard of beauty was influenced by another, you can't make the argument that beauty is objective as evidenced by two different standards of beauty that are independently drawing their standards from an objective source of standards. Granted, it's possible that there still exists an objective standard of beauty, the ancients derive their standards from it, and we derive our standards from the ancients. But a Weaken answer choice does not have to destroy the argument to be correct. It just has to weaken the connection between the premises and the conclusion.

C does that by taking out the possibility of two sources independently coinciding on a single standard of beauty by tying one standard to another.

[Poonam Agrawal]

Thanks for jumping in, sdb606! That's a good explanation.

Basically, the author of the stimulus argues that beauty cannot be subjective. The support for this is the fact that art that was considered beautiful in the past is very similar to art that is considered beautiful today - there must be some objective measure of beauty.

However, answer choice (C) weakens this argument by saying: of course beautiful art will be similar in both times because what we consider to be beautiful today is strongly influenced by what was considered beautiful in the past. So, it is possible that the past measure of beauty was subjective, and we just use this same subjective measure of beauty when considering the art of today.

Hope that helps!