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Can we measure or evaluate the aesthetic sense of a person? Like, can we statistically say that Person A has a superior aesthetic sense to Person B? Since beauty is relative, can we truly 'grade' someone's aesthetics?

Clarification

My question is not a duplicate like a kind user suggested in the comments, my question asks for the measure of a person's aesthetic sense, while the other question, that the user pointed out my question is a possible duplicate of, questions the existence of objective criteria for judging beauty (of art).

I apologize for the confusion.

ojassethi
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    We can, the question is how objective such evaluations are. The topic is controversial, but many thinkers (e.g. Kant) argued that there is some measure of normativity to tastes that makes them not merely subjective, see SEP Aesthetic Judgment. – Conifold Jun 26 '19 at 11:38
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    Possible duplicate of Are there objective criteria for aesthetic judgment? – Jordan S Jun 26 '19 at 12:02
  • @Conifold thanks for the answer. But the measure of normativity, I believe, translates to popular opinion, doesn't it? And it doesn't necessarily mean that popular opinion is always the most objective. – ojassethi Jun 26 '19 at 12:08
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    I don't think this is a duplicate. One question suggested as a duplicate wants objective measures for a work of art. This asks for an objective measure of the person experiencing the art. – Frank Hubeny Jun 26 '19 at 13:02
  • The measure of normativity is expressed in popular opinion, just as judgments about colors are, it does not reduce to it, unless one is a skeptic about aesthetics. Popular opinion can be wrong, as with kitsch, for example. We know that colors have an objective basis that common judgements roughly reflect, the same for aesthetic tastes is bound to be more complex, but that it is purely "accidental", in some sense, is unlikely. There might be some evolutionary basis to it, etc., we know there is for good/bad tastes and smells of food, for example. – Conifold Jun 26 '19 at 17:37
  • you would need an authority on aesthetics! that's problematic, i'd guess, though not interminably so (most people accept that successful art critics have it). you would probably have to measure the 'sense' in one (of many) frameworks... though being shown to be reliable in some given framework (even as success is debatable therein) would be a positive quality (if not a virtue) –  Jun 27 '19 at 05:53
  • @Conifold that does make sense now that I think about it. – ojassethi Jun 27 '19 at 07:21
  • @another_name hahaha an authority on aesthetics sounds like the worst problem we can create in the world of beauty and art. How do you propose we measure the 'sense' of aesthetics in a person? – ojassethi Jun 27 '19 at 07:23
  • without some form of authority wouldn't it be impossible? isn't that exactly what you're arguing for (or saying we should be able to find) anyway? i'm a little confused tbh @ojassethi i'm not saying don't make up your own mind, but without an external authority (as in the answer) be that a person of computer i can't see how you could do so, not without an untenable assumption like 'aesthetic sense is measured by sensitivity to pain' (just a silly suggestion) –  Jun 27 '19 at 09:37
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    @another_name the thing is that I don't think we can find grade a person's aesthetic sense. To be able to truly do that, we need a perfectly unbiased authority, which is impossible, cause, let's face it, we are humans. Even if we create some sort of computer systems, they're still created by us and are bound to have some bias. I think that you CANNOT truly judge a person's aesthetics. I feel it's extremely relative. I appreciate your comment. – ojassethi Jun 27 '19 at 10:01

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Taking your assumption that beauty is relative and subjective. Meaning no one can claim that the statement: "Object A is more beautiful than object B." is true or false since it would have no truth value.

If it were impossible to graduate beauty (notice degrees of beauty) it would be impossible to judge one's aesthetic sense (ability to measure beauty).

However, if there are objective criteria for measuring beauty there could be imperfect methods of judging aesthetic sense.

For example. Taking the Formalist or Structuralist Approach to objectively grading art. Present different artworks, previously graded by a committee on its beauty (taking into account symmetry, composition, etc.), to a person and calculate the graded person's precision using statistics. Then compare his RMSE, AUC or whatever is applicable to others.

I am by no means an expert. Here's an in-depth analysis of beauty by one of the most cited philosophical sources.

Glorius
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