Australasian Journal of Philosophy

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The Empirical Case for Moral Beauty

Panos Paris

To cite this article: Panos Paris (2018) The Empirical Case for Moral Beauty, Australasian Journal
of Philosophy, 96:4, 642-656, DOI: 10.1080/00048402.2017.1411374

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/00048402.2017.1411374

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AUSTRALASIAN JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY, 2018
VOL. 96, NO. 4, 642–656
https://doi.org/10.1080/00048402.2017.1411374

The Empirical Case for Moral Beauty

Panos Paris
University of St. Andrews

ABSTRACT
Although formative of modern value theory, the moral beauty view—which states that
moral virtue is beautiful and moral vice is ugly—is now mostly neglected by (analytic)
philosophers. The two contemporary defences of the view mostly capitalize on its
intuitive attractiveness, but to little avail: such considerations hardly convince sceptics
of what is nowadays a rather unpopular view. Historically, the view was supported by
thought experiments; and although these greatly increase its plausibility, they also
raise empirical questions, which they leave unanswered. Here, I offer a novel defence
of the moral beauty view, capitalizing on empirical evidence and arguing via an
inference to the best explanation.

ARTICLE HISTORY Received 29 March 2017; Revised 9 November 2017

KEYWORDS aesthetics and ethics; beauty; moral virtue; psychology; empirical; eighteenth-century aesthetics

1. Introduction
The moral beauty view states that moral virtue is beautiful and moral vice is ugly [Gaut
2007]. Among others, Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, and Hume seem to have held this or a
variant thereof. To illustrate, Shaftesbury wrote of ‘the Beauty of Honesty and the reality
of [its] Charms’ [1732: 88]; Hutcheson suggested that the ‘Author of Nature … has
made Virtue a lovely Form’, such that there is ‘a Beauty in Characters, in Manners’
[1726: 9]; and Hume, who believed that taste arbitrates matters both moral and aes-
thetic, often spoke of ‘moral beauty’, which, he thought, ‘closely resembles’ natural
beauty [1777: 291]. Contemporary defences of the moral beauty view [McGinn 1997;
Gaut 2007: 114–32] largely rely on intuitive considerations. But these defences have
failed to move contemporary philosophers to take the view seriously, despite its histori-
cal prominence and its radical implications for the relationship between aesthetics and
ethics.
Here, I offer an alternative defence, recruiting empirical evidence to argue for the
moral beauty view. I begin by introducing a type of thought experiment traceable to
the eighteenth century, drawing on which I proceed to reformulate the view into an
empirically-testable hypothesis. Subsequently, I present evidence in support of that
hypothesis. I then turn to address certain objections aimed at undermining the perti-
nence of the evidence to the moral beauty view, recruiting further empirical support
along the way. Finally, I argue that the moral beauty view emerges as the best explana-
tion for the evidence. I take it that if a view is supported by thought experiments, is
reflected in ordinary experience as confirmed by empirical enquiry, and aptly explains
relevant phenomena; then there is compelling reason to accept it.
© 2017 Australasian Association of Philosophy
 AUSTRALASIAN JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY 643

2. The Experience of Moral Beauty and Ugliness

Following Gaut [2007: 120], I construe the moral beauty view as follows:

Moral Beauty View (MBV) = If a trait, t, is a moral virtue, then t is beautiful; and,
conversely, if t is a moral vice, then t is ugly.

Read predicatively, rather than as an identity claim, MBV states that beauty and
ugliness are properties of the moral virtues and vices, respectively, without sug-
gesting that virtue and beauty or ugliness and vice are identical. It thereby side-
steps certain common objections, for instance, that it conflates the independent
spheres of moral and aesthetic values and judgments [Burke 1757: 101–2]; or
that it flouts the view whereby morality is a matter of reason [ibid.]. MBV neither
conflates spheres of value, nor does it preclude morality’s being a matter of reason,
since it is consistent with holding that beauty does not exhaust the essence of
moral virtue.
Although MBV cannot eschew another common objection—namely, that it violates
a thesis whereby aesthetic properties depend on sensory ones, and hence imperceptible
objects cannot be beautiful [Zangwill 1998]—I think that there are independent
grounds for rejecting this thesis, although this is not the place to discuss them.1 Suffice
it to say here that talk of beautiful literary plots, mathematical proofs, etc., by highly
competent folk, should give proponents of this thesis pause.
Now, contemporary defences of the moral beauty view mostly rely on linguistic evi-
dence and the view’s intuitive plausibility (see McGinn [1997] and Gaut [2007: 114–
32]). For instance, they cite the widespread practice of competent speakers using aes-
thetic terms to describe moral character. A morally good person can be described as
wonderful, angelic, or sweet, while immoral people may be called foul, monstrous, rot-
ten [McGinn 1997: 92–4]. Such usages are common in English and other languages
[Sartwell 2006].
However, I will not dwell here on such considerations, both because I am wary of
repetition, and because it is unclear what conclusions we should draw from them. Yes,
they support an intuitive link between beauty and goodness, ugliness and vice, and
MBV accommodates this. Yet one might think that heavy reliance on intuitions renders
such arguments rather tentative, which may be why contemporary philosophers have
not engaged with them.2
Another, relatively unexplored, argument, relying on thought experiments, is trace-
able to the eighteenth century. Shaftesbury writes thus [1732: 86]:
The Admirers of Beauty … wou’d laugh, perhaps, to hear of a moral Part in their Amours. Yet,
what a stir is made about a Heart! What curious search of Sentiments, and tender Thoughts!
What praises of … all those Graces of a Mind … They must allow …, there is a Beauty of the
Mind; … Why else is the very Air of Foolishness enough to cloy a Lover, at first sight? Why does
an Idiot-Look and Manner destroy the Effect of all those outward Charms, and rob the Fair-
One of her Power; tho regularly arm’d, in all the Exactness of Features and Complexion?

1
See Gaut [2007: 124–7, 2010]. Elsewhere [Paris 2017b: ch. 2], I defend the conceptual and metaphysical possi-
bility of MBV.
2
One might also suspect that such usages are metaphorical, and so do not support MBV. Since McGinn [1997:
102–4] and Gaut [2007: 124–7] have addressed this objection, I will not discuss it here; anyway, my argument
relies neither solely on linguistic considerations nor solely on the intuitive plausibility of MBV.
644 PANOS PARIS

Echoing Shaftesbury, Hutcheson observes [1726: 168]:

Pride, Haughtiness, Sourness, Ill-nature, Discontent, Folly, Levity, Wantonness; … when
brought by Custom upon the most regular Set of Features, have often made them very disagree-
able; as the contrary Airs have given the strongest Charms to Countenances, which were far
from Perfection in external Beauty.

Recently, Nehamas [2007: 58–60] rekindled this thought experiment in discussing The
Elephant Man, a film about John Merrick, whose appearance—grossly disfigured by
neurofibromatosis—initially strikes us with its ugliness. However, as the film pro-
gresses, and we come to know Merrick as kind, respectful, and honest, we also come to
experience him as somehow beautiful.
Conversely, Davies invites readers to ‘[p]icture an outwardly beautiful woman who
when she speaks, reveals that she is embittered, nasty, and vicious. Not only does she
become less desirable, she … is revealed as less beautiful than was supposed’ [2012: 12].
The foregoing thought experiments reveal an important pair of phenomena:

(i) Physically ugly people can, upon acquaintance or continued experience, come to
be experienced as beautiful, in virtue of their morally virtuous character.

(ii) Conversely, physically beautiful people can come to be experienced as ugly, in vir-
tue of their morally vicious character.3

(i) and (ii) are not just the stuff of thought experiments. Instead, they raise empirically
answerable questions, including the following. Do people come to experience physically
ugly people as beautiful and physically beautiful people as ugly, on knowing their char-
acters? If so, do such experiential shifts reflect what we should predict if MBV is true—
namely, that moral and (some) aesthetic qualities covary in a principled way, as though
moral virtue were beauty and vice ugliness? In sum, do the phenomena underlying
MBV stand up to empirical scrutiny? To address these questions, I shall reformulate
MBV into an empirically testable claim.

3
These can be interpreted in at least three ways:
Physically ugly (beautiful) people can … be experienced as
(a) physically;
(b) non-physically; or
(c) overall beautiful (ugly) in virtue of their morally virtuous (vicious) character.

The ambiguity between (b) and (c) is intended, because both are likely implications of MBV, provided that we
understand judgments of beauty in the style of pro tanto principles, which can be combined in an overall evalua-
tion. Understood thus, (c) suggests that physical ugliness and non-physical beauty, for example, can make for
overall beauty (or lesser overall ugliness, provided that this is understood as an increase in beauty). Although (b)
may seem odd, making talk of an experiential shift difficult to square with aesthetically evaluating different things
(i.e. physical appearance and character), ‘shift’ in this case indicates a change in our experience as a whole, upon
experiencing a person as both non-physically beautiful and physically ugly. This phenomenon is familiar; we
undergo such shifts, for instance, in coming to experience a literary passage that was previously experienced as
ugly because of the coarseness of its expression, as beautiful due to the thoughts it expresses. While (a) is not
intended by (i) and (ii), I think that our overall aesthetic experience and evaluation may, as it were, colour even
our perceptual experience: as suggested above, for example, although we might at first be repulsed by Merrick’s
deformity, as we come to know him, and see him as kind, honest, etc., we might experience even his appearance
as less ugly (see also note 11).
 AUSTRALASIAN JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY 645

3. Reformulating the Moral Beauty View

Any Poussin painting is more beautiful than my doodles, while someone with a severely
burnt face is, to that extent, uglier than James Dean. Likewise, people can differ in how
morally good or bad they are: Hitler was more vicious than petty thieves are. In short,
beauty and ugliness admit of degrees, as do moral virtue and vice.
Now, if (i) and (ii) above are anything to go by, and beauty, ugliness, moral virtue,
and vice all admit of degrees, then if MBV is true it would be reasonable to predict that
the more virtuous or vicious one is, ceteris paribus, the more beautiful or ugly one is.
That is:

Covariance Claim (CC) = If X is more (or less) morally virtuous (vicious), then,
ceteris paribus, X is more (or less) beautiful (ugly).

Although CC is not the same as MBV, if the former is true, then, plausibly, so is the lat-
ter. Importantly, CC has an empirically testable implication:

Empirically-Testable Covariance Claim (EC) = If a subject, S, judges that subject X is

more (or less) morally virtuous (vicious), then, ceteris paribus, S will judge X to be
more (or less) beautiful (ugly).

Inferences between EC and CC are valid under two assumptions. (1) People are reliable
judges of human beauty. (2) People are reasonably accurate moral judges; for, were
people wildly inaccurate or held false moral beliefs, EC could hold while CC is false.
(1) seems plausible because people generally have considerable experience of others’
appearances and manners, have exercised their judgments on multiple occasions, share
an interest in others as being aesthetically evaluable, and so can more confidently and
sincerely issue verdicts on people’s beauty than on, say, artworks, where considerable
expertise is plausibly required of reliable judges. After all, there is no special knowledge
or training required for correctly experiencing the beauty of human beings (except, if
MBV is true, knowing them).
As for (2), philosophers routinely rely on their own moral judgments or intuitions. It
therefore seems unreasonably sceptical to deny that ordinary folks’ judgments are reli-
able, at least in straightforward cases, concerning, say, the goodness or badness of kind-
ness, respect, cruelty, fairness, injustice, or behaviours like stealing, helping others, etc.
Under the foregoing assumptions, if MBV and CC are true, then EC should also
hold; conversely, if considerable evidence supports EC, then CC is true, since whether
someone is beautiful or not can partly be decided on the basis of whether people find
one beautiful. Moreover, MBV can be drawn from EC via an inference to the best
explanation. But first we must test EC.
Before testing EC, though, allow me some brief remarks on my dialectical strat-
egy. It is safe to say that attempts to define beauty, or even analyse it philosophically,
have not been very fruitful so far (see Gaut [2007: 126–7]). Furthermore, an attempt
to specify a subvening basis for beauty, or to offer an analysis thereof, would be pre-
mature and would take us well beyond the remits of this paper. Nonetheless, a
recent resurgence in philosophical literature on beauty shows that a construal of
beauty as a response-dependent property, identifiable (at least partly) by the pleasure
that it evokes in suitably qualified judges under appropriate circumstances, is a
646 PANOS PARIS

widely shared—and, I think, eminently plausible—assumption (see Mothersill [1984:

271–5], Armstrong [2005], Sartwell [2006], Gaut [2007: 127], Nehamas [2007: 75–
80], and Scruton [2009: 5]).
If the reader grants that beauty is response-dependent, then it is at least in princi-
ple possible to tell whether something is beautiful, by examining whether it elicits
the relevant responses in competent judges of the relevant sort of thing, under
appropriate circumstances, which, in the case of moral judgments, are ordinary cir-
cumstances. If, additionally, normal people are reasonably accurate moral judges
and accurate judges of other people’s beauty, then their responses should count as
criterial of whether MBV is true. It is in this spirit that, below, I offer evidence for
EC. Moreover, as I will subsequently suggest, MBV emerges as the best explanation
of all of the evidence put forward, taken together. This suggests a final caveat: I take
it that if a single hypothesis explains all of the evidence at once, it is preferable to
alternatives, or to combinations thereof.
I do not wish to underplay the weightiness of these assumptions. But I beg the read-
er’s indulgence while I advance my case.

4. The Empirical Case for Moral Beauty

Several studies support EC,4 but I limit my discussion to two, both for brevity and
because most studies are quite similar to those presented below. With that said, in sub-
sequent sections I will adduce further support for MBV.

4.1 Study 1
Nisbett and Wilson [1977] divided 118 subjects into two groups. Each group
watched one of two videotaped interviews with the same teacher answering ques-
tions concerning his pedagogical approach. In one of the videos the teacher came
across as ‘respectful’, ‘flexible’, and ‘enthusiastic’; in the other as ‘distrustful’, ‘rigid’,
and ‘doctrinaire’. This was achieved by altering his responses to questions. For
instance, the teacher would say either that he encouraged discussion and tailored
exams to students’ preferences and benefit, or that he discouraged discussion and
gave multiple-choice quizzes because ‘you can’t trust them’ to prepare [ibid.: 252].
Besides the content of his responses, the experimenters ensured that the videos were
as similar as possible audio-visually, especially in terms of mannerisms, facial
expressions, and accent.
After watching their respective videos, subjects were asked to rate the teacher on sev-
eral attributes, including how much they liked him, and how physically appealing they
found him. Results showed that personality had a ‘very pronounced’ [ibid.: 251] effect
on physical attractiveness, with a ‘substantial majority’ [ibid.: 253] having watched the
‘warm’ version finding the teacher’s ‘physical appearance’ appealing, and most having
watched the ‘cold’ version finding him unappealing. Thus, the authors conclude, ‘a per-
son’s appearance may be perceived as more attractive if we like the person than if we
do not’ [ibid.: 250].

4
See Gross and Crofton [1977], Urbaniak and Kilmann [2003], Lewandowski et al. [2007], Swami et al. [2007],
and Zhang et al. [2014].
 AUSTRALASIAN JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY 647

4.2 Study 2
Kniffin and Wilson [2004] conducted three experiments to test whether someone
acquainted with a person’s character in real life would judge that person’s physical attrac-
tiveness differently from how strangers do.
In their first experiment, twenty seven subjects were asked to rate photographs from
school yearbooks of several former schoolmates of theirs, in terms of familiarity, liking,
respect, and physical attractiveness. The attractiveness ratings were then compared to
strangers’ ratings of the photographs.
Results showed that knowledge of a person’s character was as strong a predictor as,
and often stronger than, strangers’ ratings of how attractive targets would be found to
be. According to the researchers, despite individual variations, a clear and powerful
trend in the results indicated that what is known about persons’ inner lives, but not
mere familiarity, shapes judgments of their physical attractiveness.
In the second experiment, ten male and eleven female members of a rowing team
completed a questionnaire which asked them to rate other members of their team for,
inter alia, effort, liking, respect, and physical attractiveness. Ten female and ten male
strangers were also asked to rate the physical attractiveness of each of five (uniformly
attired) male rowers from a group photograph.
The results showed that liking and respect were stronger predictors of the attractive-
ness ratings provided by the rowers than strangers’ ratings, and hence that knowledge
and evaluation of a person’s character were the most significant factors informing the
rowers’ physical attractiveness ratings. The authors offer the following example to illus-
trate their findings. One rower who was a ‘slacker’ was uniformly found ‘ugly’ by fellow
rowers, while another, with the contrary trait, was uniformly found attractive [ibid.:
96]; crucially, these differences were not reflected in strangers’ ratings of their physical
attractiveness.
In the third experiment, fifteen members of a six-week-long archaeology course,
working at a dig site for five eight-hour days a week, rated one another for physical
attractiveness, liking, etc., at the beginning and the end of the programme.
Results showed changes in ratings as subjects learned about others’ characters. To
cite the experimenters’ telling examples, one woman who was initially found attractive,
but was lazy and uncooperative, was in the end found significantly less attractive. Con-
versely, another woman, initially found unattractive, with an attractiveness mean score
of 3.25 out of 9, who proved cooperative and hardworking, in the end received a mean
of 7.00.
Kniffin and Wilson conclude that judgments of physical attractiveness encompass
‘what is known [about a person] and how it is evaluated in terms of liking and respect’
[ibid.: 94].
Jointly, the foregoing evidence offers strong support for EC, showing that those
whose characters are morally better are found to be more beautiful, whereas those
whose characters are morally worse, or bad, are found to be less beautiful, or ugly.
However, the bearing of the evidence on EC may be questioned on various grounds.

5. Objections
In this section, I discuss some objections against the pertinence of the foregoing evi-
dence to EC.
648 PANOS PARIS

5.1 Beauty and Physical Attractiveness

In the studies summarized above, subjects were asked to rate people’s attractiveness, or
physical attractiveness, not beauty. Now, the statement ‘He’s certainly attractive, but I
wouldn’t call him beautiful!’ seems perfectly intelligible. Traditionally, moreover, phi-
losophers identified beauty with a specific kind of property. So, according to ordinary
usage and philosophical tradition, attractiveness is distinct from beauty.
This objection can be countered by distinguishing between two senses of beauty. In a
narrow sense, ‘beauty’ refers to a particular aesthetic quality, or kind of quality; how-
ever, in a wider sense, ‘beauty’ refers to positive aesthetic qualities or to aesthetic appeal
in general [Beardsley 1981: 505–6; Scruton 2009: 16].5 Even if attractiveness is distinct
from beauty in the narrow sense, there is no reason to think that the wider sense of
beauty excludes attractiveness; this wider sense of beauty suffices for MBV.
A recent positive psychology study seems to support the foregoing suggestion.
Diessner et al. [2008] devised a questionnaire intended to measure subjects’ engage-
ment with, or sensitivity to, beauty. Questionnaire items were divided into ‘natural’,
‘artistic’, and ‘moral’6 beauty. Setting aside issues concerning the comprehensiveness or
genuineness of these distinctions, or the validity of questionnaire items, two points are
noteworthy, before mentioning any results.
First, among other questionnaire items, the first for each kind of beauty concerned
the extent to which people noticed different kinds of beauty (‘I notice natural/artistic/
moral beauty’, measured on a 7-point Likert scale from ‘very unlike me’ to ‘very much
like me’). Some mainly phenomenological items followed [ibid.: 329].
Second, the questionnaire was prefaced with the following instruction, cautioning
subjects to ensure that their responses pertained to beauty as such and experiences
thereof [ibid.: 328; emphases in the original]:
In regard to all responses below: Keep in mind that we are only asking about your experience
with perceiving and feeling something as beautiful. We are not asking if you like something;
we are not asking if you think something is important; we only ask if you feel it as beautiful.

After examining several hundred responses, and re-testing it, the authors found the
questionnaire to yield high internal validity and test-retest reliability: both individual
items and the overall correlation between subjects’ answers concerning the extent to
which they experience and acknowledge these different kinds of beauty were strongly
intercorrelated. Moreover, the actual range of responses was roughly the same between
kinds of beauty, while mean responses to questionnaire items also suggested that people
who reported noticing one kind of beauty were highly likely to report experiencing
other kinds also.7 Of course, intercorrelations or similarities between average scores
could have resulted from an unprincipled distribution. Perhaps some claimed not to
notice moral beauty but experienced the relevant feelings; or noticed artistic beauty but
disagreed with other items in the questionnaire. But the evidence so far renders this
highly unlikely.8 On being asked directly about moral beauty, then, people will claim to

5
Likewise for ‘ugliness’ [Paris 2017a: 141].
6
Where ‘moral beauty’ refers to beauty predicable of morally good behaviour or character.
7
Possible and actual ranges for ‘natural’ and ‘artistic’ beauty were between 4–28; the possible range for moral
beauty was 6–42; the actual range was 10–42. The mean scores were as follows: ‘natural beauty’, M = 20.7, SD =
5.1; ‘artistic beauty’, M = 16.7, SD = 5.9; ‘moral beauty’, M = 31.4, SD = 7.4.
8
Actually, the significant intercorrelations between items concerning whether people notice each kind of
beauty (see previous note) effectively rule out this interpretation.
 AUSTRALASIAN JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY 649

notice it no less than other kinds of beauty, even when warned that they are being asked
specifically about beauty.9
In light of the foregoing, it would be implausible to insist that ‘attractiveness’ in the
studies discussed in section 4 should be contrasted with beauty.10

5.2 The Influence of Non-Moral Qualities

Empirical studies often combine moral and non-moral traits indiscriminately. For
instance, in Nisbett and Wilson [1977], the teacher came across not only as ‘respectful’
or ‘distrustful’, but also as ‘enthusiastic’ or ‘rigid’; the latter traits are not moral. So, we
cannot establish that moral traits are responsible for differences in judgments of beauty,
since perhaps non-moral ones alone can account for them.
First, however, moral traits, and their role in shaping judgments of beauty and ugli-
ness, are clearly central in thought experiments such as those considered in section 2.
The moral is also key to Diessner et al. [2008], discussed in section 5.1 (see also Moore
et al. [2013]).
Second, independent evidence suggests that specifically moral traits inform judg-
ments of beauty. Using personality descriptions attached to photographs, Paunonen
[2006] asked 256 subjects to rate people in photographs, accompanied by personality
descriptions, for physical attractiveness. He found that, whereas presenting people as
either independent or intelligent had no effect on ratings of attractiveness, presenting
them as honest or as dishonest resulted in their being judged as more or less attractive,
respectively.11 Honesty is a moral virtue both according to philosophical tradition, and
under narrower specifications such as Gaut’s [2007: 41–8], whereby the moral com-
prises only other-regarding attitudes and actions.
Third, if, as is plausible, other-regardingness partly delineates the moral domain,
then in Kniffin and Wilson [2004], discussed in section 4.2, moral traits should pre-
sumably also have been most influential, given their focus on groups, wherein coopera-
tiveness, respect, etc., are crucial.
Jointly, the foregoing considerations suggest that differences in judgments of beauty
are at least partly attributable to differences in moral traits. This is all that EC requires.

9
People may understand ‘beauty’ differently. But the experimental instruction should give them pause. Without
good reasons to reject their usage, we should take them seriously.
10
Likewise, I take ‘unattractiveness’ to refer to ‘ugliness’.
11
One might object that this is unenlightening: the fact that descriptions of personalities affect changes in peo-
ple’s ratings of others’ attractiveness in photographs merely evinces people’s poor or unreliable judgment. This
worry might stem from thinking that judgments of people’s attractiveness on the basis of photographs are not
reliable indicators of that attractiveness [Nehamas 2007: 64–71]. This is far from obvious, however: while subjects
judging the attractiveness of someone in a given photograph might not be judging how attractive that person is
overall, they are judging how attractive that person is in that photograph. The upshot of such experiments, then,
is that attractiveness in photographs plus information concerning the personality of people in photographs yields
higher or lower attractiveness ratings, depending on the evaluative valence of the personality information. Alter-
natively, the worry might be that photographs offer neither evidence for, nor epistemic access to, personality
traits. Since subjects in such experiments are not acquainted with the personalities of those whom they rate, they
are probably confused. It is true that people have not interacted with those whose attractiveness they rate. Still,
they have access to allegedly reliable personality information, so they are acquainted with some personality frag-
ment or other, which they can contemplate, and in light of which they can experience the photographs anew.
This can be explained by the mechanism whereby knowledge about the object of our experience can condition
our experience thereof, including its beauty. A considerable portion of our ordinary experience is experience-as,
in this sense, and to assume that experiential shifts like those showcased above are objectionable or merely
evince confusion is to beg the question against exponents of MBV.
650 PANOS PARIS

5.3 The Role of Liking

A final objection is that the foregoing studies show only that it is whether one’s charac-
ter is liked that determines how beautiful one is found to be. It is therefore unclear
whether differences in judgments of beauty are due to moral qualities as such, or just to
personal preferences.12
Of course, ‘liking’ is used in many ways, of which the following are important here
(see Dewey [1923], Coleman [1964], and Rachels [1969]). On the one hand, ‘I like’ can
express mere personal preferences, often unreflective and possibly idiosyncratic. Such
liking may be at odds with reflective judgment. For example, I might like a joke which I
know is in poor taste, or perhaps is even a bad joke. This is the sense of ‘liking’ under
which the present objection would threaten my argument. On the other hand, one
might like something upon reflecting on it, and finding it to be worthwhile or valuable.
For instance, I like and dislike many artworks, although not unreflectively, and my likes
and dislikes in these cases are not merely expressions of preference (although they are
that, too) but are inseparable from corresponding judgments of beauty and ugliness.
So, while some preferences (and corresponding usages of ‘liking’) do not necessarily
reflect judgment, others ground or undergird evaluative judgments (and ‘liking’ also
expresses these).
In the experiments above, liking is plausibly of the sort that is pertinent to evalua-
tion, not just because, consistently with our normative expectations, subjects converge
(well above chance) on liking the morally good and disliking the bad; but also because
such convergence, and the evaluative valence that it reflects, is unlikely to be the result
of mere idiosyncratic inclination, totally unsupported by reasons and judgments. Most
of us are educated in our moral preferences and have been internalizing reasons for
them since childhood (regardless of how good or how bad we have turned out to be).
Therefore, I maintain that expressions of liking in the experiments above reflect evalua-
tive judgments rather than mere personal preferences.
Now, one of the grounds for liking, in the sense that is pertinent to judgment, is
moral, and it is at least partly on moral grounds that liking seems to drive changes in
aesthetic evaluations in the experiments above. So, liking’s role poses no threat to the
pertinence of the evidence to EC. After all, EC points to a connection between beauty
and moral virtue, ugliness and vice; it does not specify the mechanism whereby this is
forged. Since people normally like both the good and the beautiful, perhaps liking does
link such judgments (pending compelling reason to think so). It does not follow from
this that there is anything wrong with the link itself, provided that, as I assume here,
people are reliable judges.
Having answered several objections, I conclude that, ceteris paribus, the morally vir-
tuous are judged to be beautiful and the morally vicious to be ugly, as per EC.

6. From EC to MBV
Earlier, I suggested that CC follows from EC under the assumptions that people are rea-
sonably good judges of human beauty and morality, and that, plausibly, if CC is true

12
See Meskin et al. [2013: 13], although they grant that ‘preference often is an expression of what grounds evalu-
ative appraisals or judgments of artistic value (e.g., pleasure in appreciating a work).’ This relates to my discussion
below.
 AUSTRALASIAN JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY 651

then so is MBV. However, we cannot get conceptual (CC or MBV) from empirical
claims (EC). I thus propose to draw MBV from EC via an inference to the best explana-
tion. To this end, I shall argue that the following likely candidate explanations for EC
fail: first, that EC can be explained by the so-called ‘halo effect’; second, that EC stems
from conceptual confusion; third, that it holds because moral virtue and vice, although
not themselves beautiful or ugly, respectively enhance and diminish beauty; fourth,
that it results from judgments of attractiveness based on yet further irrelevant
considerations.

6.1 The Halo Effect

The ‘halo effect’ usually refers to the phenomenon of people forming positive or nega-
tive beliefs about others’ personalities on the basis of their physical appearance. But
Nisbett and Wilson [1977] suggest that the phenomenon might be more pervasive than
that. They claim that their findings, cited earlier in support of EC, show that global
judgments can distort our judgments concerning things, such as physical attractiveness,
for which we have adequate evidence on which to form an accurate judgment [ibid.:
250–2]. One might think that this is not implausible, since, if looks can exert powerful
influence on judgments about one’s personality, then the converse seems highly likely.
However, there are good reasons to resist this explanation.
For this proposal to have any plausibility, and to count as a distinct explanation, sev-
eral conditions must obtain. We must understand the halo effect (a) normatively: judg-
ments that are its products must either be false or, when they are true, this must largely
be owing to chance [ibid.]. Otherwise, the halo effect would be not an explanation for
EC, but rather a redescription of the explanandum. Related to (a), the halo effect must
(b) be unconscious and, presumably, remain unconscious [ibid.: 252, 256]. (a) and (b),
moreover, suggest that (c) when an instance of the halo effect is exposed to a rational
person, she or he must reject, revise, or at least reconsider the initial judgment. Now, to
simply assume (a)—that is, that the judgments in the experiments summarized in this
paper are mistaken—would be blatantly question-begging vis-a-vis MBV. So, let us
examine (b) and (c).
Concerning (b), it is important to observe that being unconscious of the grounds of
a decision is consistent with the decision’s content being accurate: that is, (b) does not
entail (a). Many of our decisions rely on automatic processing, which can be very reli-
able indeed, as in the case of driving, where decisions are often taken without conscious
reflection. This is likewise true of many of our aesthetic judgments, which rely on felt
responses, to the grounds of which we might be blind. It is therefore a mistake to think
that, because people are sometimes unaware of the fact that their judgments are
informed by certain features, these judgments are unreliable.
Anyway, it is not true that people are generally unaware of EC-type experiential
shifts. When they are aware of them, moreover, they hardly seem to take this as under-
mining the reliability of their judgments, as shown by the following three
considerations.
First, the thought experiments cited in section 2 clearly indicate that some people
have noticed these changes in judgments of beauty and taken them very seriously
indeed.
Second, in one of Kniffin and Wilson’s studies [2004], presented above, the authors
decided to enquire about the judgment of a woman who had rated as ugly a person
652 PANOS PARIS

whom strangers had found average-looking. Thereupon, ‘her face became contorted
with disgust’, although she explained her judgment by listing that person’s ‘unfavorable
qualities’ [ibid.: 93], even if those were imperceptible. Since a judgment’s being uncon-
sciously influenced involves failure to identify such influence and to explain its grounds
or direction, this example demonstrates that our judgments of physical attractiveness
are not always unconsciously influenced, even whilst encompassing character traits.
Third, evidence suggests that the alteration of judgments of beauty in light of knowl-
edge of people’s characters becomes more conscious, and is embraced, with time. In
one study, 141 subjects who were in newly formed relationships, were asked to com-
plete a survey about experiential shifts such as those that we are examining. Results
revealed that 92% of them thought that, when interaction reveals a potential romantic
partner to have positive qualities, the partner appears more physically attractive
[Albada et al. 2002: 27]. In another study, participants who had noticed such changes
were selected and interviewed about their experience. On consciously reflecting upon
these experiences, subjects embraced the shifts in question. A couple of examples from
interview extracts illustrate this. One man said of his wife of twenty years that he ini-
tially saw her as ‘pretty average in physical attractiveness … But after … I fully appreci-
ated how well we related to each other, I saw her as much more physically attractive… .
Now, I can’t see her as any less physically attractive’ [ibid.: 9]. Similarly, one lady
described her experience as follows: ‘He is not hot! But … he’s a good person, so he
looks more attractive to me because of [this]’ [ibid.: 27–8].
Since people are often aware of EC, the phenomenon is not always unavailable to
consciousness; hence, (b) does not obtain. Moreover, the last study suggests that people
can become aware of changes in their judgments. Crucially, when this happens, they do
not seem willing to revise their judgments, even though they might be aware that their
judgments may differ from those by people who are unacquainted with the persons
being evaluated. This suggests that (c) is not invariably true in cases where EC holds.
Thus, none of the conditions obtain that would be required for the halo effect to serve
as an adequate explanation.
Additionally, whereas the halo effect, understood as the ‘beauty-is-good’ stereotype,
obviously rests on a mistaken inference or distortion of judgment, the same is by no
means obviously true of EC, or its conceptual counterparts, which not only have been
philosophical orthodoxy for millennia, but which we also have independent grounds to
believe, as the thought experiments in the beginning of this paper indicate.
Finally, the phenomenon whereby people draw unwarranted inferences from others’
appearances to their personalities is frequently caricatured. For instance, experiments
concerned with its effects frequently lump together different personality qualities in
their results. Results from two meta-analyses, however, indicate that the effect in ques-
tion is more complex than slogans like ‘halo effect’ or ‘beauty-is-good’ suggest [Eagly
et al. 1991; Feingold 1992]. Importantly, both meta-analyses found that the phenome-
non has no purchase on moral qualities. Specifically, judgments of physical attractive-
ness have zero (or near-zero) effect on judgments of personality such as ‘concern for
others’, ‘compassion’, ‘generosity’, ‘empathy’, ‘trustworthiness’, ‘faithfulness’, ‘honesty’
[Eagly et al. 1991: 116]. So, it looks like the evidence seriously undermines the plausibil-
ity of an appeal to the halo effect as a likely explanation for EC.
Jointly, the foregoing considerations suggest that the halo effect is a poor candidate
explanation for EC.
 AUSTRALASIAN JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY 653

6.2 Conceptual Confusion

Above, I suggested that even when people are aware of their judgments’ changing as EC
would predict, they do not revise such judgments; I took this as a reason against
explaining EC by reference to the halo effect. However, someone might object that peo-
ple use terms like ‘beauty’ in many ways, including as a substitute for ‘liking’ or ‘being
pleased by’ something. They might exclaim ‘beautiful!’ while tasting chocolate, on win-
ning the lottery, etc. Thus, people’s criteria of application for ‘beautiful’ seem especially
loose, so much so that people often evince conceptual confusion, which might well be
underway in the studies discussed above. But is it?
One way to find out whether someone is conceptually confused is to challenge them
on some claim of theirs—for instance, that chocolate, or their lottery victory, is beauti-
ful. Most people would probably admit to speaking loosely in calling these things beau-
tiful, or would at least acknowledge some discrepancy between such usages of
‘beautiful’ and those involved in evaluating artworks, say. If, upon being invited to
entertain seriously the possibility of being mistaken, there remain isolated cases of peo-
ple insisting that they are speaking literally, this might be down to conceptual confu-
sion. Conversely, if people converge on their usage and insist on it after having
seriously considered the possibility of being confused, then it would normally be
implausibly sceptical and uncharitable to dismiss their judgments as conceptually
confused.
We have seen evidence of people being conscious of their aesthetic judgments of
someone being altered in light of knowledge of that person’s character. More impor-
tantly, recall the positive psychology study summarized in section 5.1. Subjects there
were cautioned to ensure that it was beauty about which they were being asked, as
opposed to liking, importance, etc. Consequently, they had to entertain seriously the
possibility that they were conceptually confused. As already mentioned, the results
of this study suggest that people nonetheless insist that they experience moral
beauty. Indeed, people do so neither with diminished certainty nor less frequently
than they experience natural or artistic beauty. Short of independent reason to think
that everyone in the experiments cited herein is conceptually confused, we had bet-
ter reject this explanation, on pain of being ad hoc, of begging the question against
the exponent of MBV, or of being excessively uncharitable towards, and sceptical of,
people’s testimony.

6.3 Moral Virtue and Vice as Enhancers or Inhibitors of Beauty

Another explanation might proceed as follows: people judge others to be more or less
beautiful (or ugly) in so far as they judge them to be more or less morally virtuous (or
vicious), because moral virtue enhances, and moral vice diminishes, a person’s beauty
(or increases one’s ugliness). On this explanation, character traits are not themselves
beautiful, but merely contribute to (or detract from) the beauty or ugliness of their
possessor.
However, while this can explain the experiments discussed in section 4, it cannot
explain why people claim that they experience moral beauty, on pain of questioning
my assumption that people are competent judges of basic morality and human beauty,
either by rejecting it outright, or by accusing people of conceptual confusion, which, we
have seen, is ill-advised.
654 PANOS PARIS

But the explanation of moral virtue and vice as enhancing or inhibiting beauty and
ugliness merits discussion, for it seems to me symptomatic of a more general tendency
that is responsible for the neglect of MBV by analytic philosophers. This problem can
be traced to views that deny that imperceptible objects, and character traits in particu-
lar, can be beautiful or ugly, and which I briefly mentioned in section 2 (see Zangwill
[1998]). As I said there, I think that there are overwhelming reasons to reject such views
(see Gaut [2007: 124–7, 2010] and Paris [2017b: ch. 2]). Yet it is a tacit assumption to
this effect that seems to motivate the present explanation. For qualities that might
enhance something’s beauty, but which are not themselves beautiful, such as shininess,
rarity, and expensiveness, are, more often than not, qualities that cannot themselves be
beautiful or ugly. By contrast, when it comes to body parts in humans, colours in paint-
ings, and composition in films, it is most likely that when these enhance the beauty of
the object of which they are a component, they are either themselves beautiful, or they
enhance the beauty of the person, painting, or film as a result of their interaction with
other contextual factors. Now, it is implausible that moral virtue and vice respectively
enhance or diminish people’s beauty due to context or because of how they befit a
whole person, because they seem to do so consistently, regardless of other personality
or physical features of the person or, in short, of context. Thus, one must either deny
that moral virtue and vice can themselves be beautiful or ugly; or, in granting that
moral virtue and vice increase people’s beauty or ugliness, one must either additionally
concede that they themselves are beautiful or ugly; or find yet another explanation for
the evidence, consistent with the claim that they are not.

6.4 Other Explanations

No doubt, other explanations for EC can be concocted. Perhaps EC is said to be the
outcome of yet further illegitimate influences on aesthetic judgment. We have seen, for
instance, that experiments often speak of ‘attractiveness’ rather than ‘beauty’. More-
over, the fact that an object will, or promises to, confer some advantage is a ground for
attraction to that object. Such prospects of advantage, or similar considerations, can
explain why one might find someone who is morally good to be attractive, although
such prospects are hardly sound grounds for predicating beauty of an object.
But this explanation, and others like it, look like attempts to re-introduce the con-
ceptual confusion explanation. Assuming that prospects of advantage are not sound
grounds for predicating beauty, the claim must be that, to the extent that subjects are
predicating beauty in light of such prospects, they are confused and mistaken. But recall
that available evidence undermines explanations that simply attribute EC to a mistake,
or to illegitimate inference. Thus, pending independently good reasons to interpret EC
as the product of conceptual confusion, or illegitimate influences on judgments, I sug-
gest we look elsewhere for an explanation.
A combination of the foregoing explanations might, of course, adequately accom-
modate all of the evidence. However, as aforementioned, I take it that if a single expla-
nation can perform that task at least as well, then it is preferable, ceteris paribus.

6.5 The Moral Beauty View

Having ruled out alternatives, MBV emerges as the best explanation for the phenom-
ena. Thought experiments such as those advanced by Shaftesbury and Hutcheson seem
 AUSTRALASIAN JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY 655

eminently plausible; people judge others to be more or less beautiful (or ugly) in so far
as they judge them to be more (or less) morally virtuous (or vicious); and people claim
to experience beauty in moral virtue. This is because the moral virtues are beautiful
character traits, and the moral vices are ugly character traits; hence, those who possess
moral virtues are more beautiful in so far as they have a more beautiful character, while
the vicious are ugly in so far as their character is ugly. By contrast to other explanations,
each of which fails for different reasons, not only does MBV aptly explain all of the rele-
vant phenomena, but it does so in a single, economical, stroke; although it is possible
that there are other explanations that do so just as well, I see none forthcoming. Addi-
tionally, we have independent grounds for believing MBV: it has received enduring
endorsement from prominent thinkers, and enjoys a priori support from thought
experiments. I conclude that MBV best explains the available evidence.

7. Conclusion
After reformulating MBV into an empirically testable hypothesis (EC), whereby people
find each other more or less beautiful or ugly in so far as they are more or less morally
virtuous or vicious, respectively, I presented empirical evidence for EC. Subsequently, I
responded to objections aimed at undermining the pertinence of the evidence to EC,
and argued that the moral beauty view best explains the relevant phenomena. Thereby,
I hope to have made a cogent case for the moral beauty view.13

ORCID
Panos Paris http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2549-1075

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13
I am grateful to Berys Gaut and Sarah Broadie for invaluable feedback on previous versions of this paper. I
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