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Philosopher Roger Scruton presents the documentary and explains about the importance of beauty in the arts and in our lives. Much has been made of the allegedly universal appeal to the human eye of savannah-like landscapes Jarrett Allen Jersey , and our supposed inheritance of this instinct from our distant ancestors. But how do we explain the universal appeal of other landscapes--alpine mountains, for example. They offered some survival advantages, such as heights to overlook terrain. The adaptations to savannah-like landscapes are certainly consistent with the ability to survive in other areas, and those adaptations must somehow transfer to the appeal of those other landscapes.
If we look at courting behavior in modern times we find that beauty and attractiveness are very much twisted and shaped by culture Jahlil Okafor Jersey , even though the "fundamental" reasons are typically explained in biological terms. For example, females are supposed to be skinny these days, as being thin is typically depicted as "healthy", whereas in other times being thin and skinny was considered ugly Dzanan Musa Jersey , as skinny people were typically poor (same with skin colors, dark was once considered ugly). Being healthy or being poor are then explained as being good or bad for potential offspring. While this seems to make sense, I am skeptical if our "sub-consciousness" really knows so much. But it illustrates that beauty-ideals actually change through the times.

Perhaps there are some "ideal concepts" hardwired in our brains, such as finding a landscape memorable (landmarks? navigation?) or advantageous in some other sense Drazen Petrovic Jersey , and the rest is taken over and shaped by culture.

I also think that we like things that are close to our concepts, a quality we may call "iconic-ness". Perhaps they are familiar, or easier readable and we like this better than "alien" or entirely "unknown" things. But we also like the unfamiliar, the new thing—but it must be new within a reasonable margin DeMarre Carroll Jersey , so that it makes us interested to explore more of it. These two ends "known" and "unfamiliar" already provide a "scale" where our taste gravitate to some state somewhere in-between, dependent of our mood (both could be explained with evolution).

The problem is that great many such scales seem to exist. They make it easy to overanalyze our sense of beauty (too much data all over the place). What is safe to say, and that's wrong in the video: I don't think that certain art really is considered beauty at all times. Try playing jazz before a king in the 13th century and you probably end up a head shorter. It is not even a matter of a higher culture to like jazz, as some elitists surely like to believe. Jazz and other arts are difficult and require some kind of special training (which itself is not a quality argument either). Other art forms do not and are more accessible. But we see a similar scale here as well. Jazz is difficult to play and it was suggested that seeing mastery is beautiful to us. But then we need to understand enough of it to appreciate ("too alien" problem). On the other hand straight rhythm and chords are beautiful for "familiarity" reasons Caris LeVert Jersey , and thus more accessible etc. But as I look into the lower level mechanics of consciousness (functionally, of course, nobody yet as offered to let me peer into their brain to poke around) it begins to make a certain amount of sense. Emotion is motivation to action; my posited mechanism of consciousness is commitment to memory of the selected among competing short term simulations of the future. But higher level consciousness requires "background" data to integrate into future simulations that are too long reaching to be successfully computable and comparable.