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Pigeons can tell good art from bad

From:     aesthetics
Category: Art
Date:     03 July 2009
Time:     03:39 AM

Review:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/5724883/Pigeons-can-tell-good-art-from-
bad.html

Basically don't see how this shows pigeons have any aesthetic sense or tells us anything about how 
people distinguish good from bad. The pigeons can see the difference between two types of things, 
that's all, but those differences have no meaning for them. Pigeons have eyes yes.

"The concept of beauty is based on two properties.
Firstly, humans derive pleasure from viewing aesthetically pleasing art and experience negative 
emotions from aesthetically unappealing art. Secondly, we can tell the difference between "good" or 
beautiful paintings and "bad" or ugly paintings and therefore form a concept of what is aesthetically 
pleasing."

This quote at the end of the article seems to have no justification in the previous part, the pigeon 
experiment is based on rewarding the pigeons for when they come into one category of picture 
(decided by the experimentor). It doesnt cast any light on why we find some art pleasing in the first 
place. 


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