PT94 S2 Q21 Beauty is in the eye of the beholder

toucan335

Hello! Does someone have some insight on this problem?

I selected E. fails to consider that the individuals judging and disagreeing about works of art may be experts in making such judgements.

I chose this because it demonstrates an "objective" or at least standardized professional manner of reviewing art.

The correct answer is D. fails to consider that people who disagree about the artistic value of a given painting may be incorrectly applying the same evaluation criteria to that painting

elipgarcia992

Hi! I just got this question wrong myself, so don't take my word for it, but after some review I think I understand why. The argument states: for some art, beauty is in the eye of the beholder BECAUSE 1) the same form of art can be valuable to one person and valueless to another and 2) there is no objective standard for determining value. This implies that two people who disagree over the artistic value of a given painting use different sets of standards for determining artistic value. This does not have to be the case, as D implies, where two people could be using the same criteria to evaluate a piece of art, but one or both could be implementing that criteria correctly, thus proving that beauty is NOT in the eye of the beholder.

With regard to E, I believe it is wrong because expertise is irrelevant to the argument. Even if you are an expert in making these judgements, that does not detract from the claim that there is no objective standard for making judgements.

jbantony

Hello, the reason that E is wrong is because this AC is largely irrelevant to exposing any flaw in the argument. Assuming both disagrees were experts, why is that relevant? if anything it kind of strengthens the conclusion of the argument. The fact that even experts are disagreeing sort of shows how there is no objective standard.

AC D on the hand does expose a potential flaw. If it is true that both parties are have applied the criteria wrong, that essentially proves the disagreement is due to a user error not because of the lack of an objective criteria or the objectiveness of the used criteria. Since AC D highlights that there is another reason that the disagreement happens for reasons not involving the criteria, the stated conclusion becomes a lot more unfounded.