Comment 24 by Schrodinger's Cat :

Comment 13 by CEVA34

Re comment 4 "I recommend John Carey's 'What Good are the Arts?' - which makes a compelling case for aesthetic relativism. One person can get the same thrill out of Kylie Minogue's music as another can get from Wagner's operas. High-brow art and low-brow art are just subjective social constructions."

This whole approach seems to me absurd, and the case is not 'compelling' at all. Simply making the aesthetics relative begs the question of how anyone possibly knows that the 'thrill' is of the same kind or quality.

I gave a few examples... you could survey a statistically significant random sample of people and ask them to rate the work on a 10-point scale, or you could measure neural activity (dopamine) when the artwork is being viewed/heard.

Not perfect, but more reliable than some self-appointed critic declaring that 'Shakespeare is superior to Dickens'