 But there’s a problem with this affirmation of the mind-independence of beauty. Shaftesbury relies on the idea that harmony will be harmony and symmetry will be symmetry regardless of how humans respond to advance the idea that virtue will be virtue regardless of how humans respond. But this line of thought seems to involve an illicit slide between non-normative and normative understandings of the key terms. It may be reasonable to grant that there are non-normative properties of harmony and symmetry that have a mind-independent existence—that some sounds would be harmonious and some objects would be symmetrical regardless of whether there were any human minds, or how human minds responded to them. But to say those sounds and objects are beautiful is to invoke a normative component. It’s to imply that the harmonious and the symmetrical are more valuable, are in some sense better than the dissonant and the lopsided. And Shaftesbury has given us no reason to accept that harmony and symmetry would continue to be normatively superior even if human minds were constructed to respond negatively to them and positively to dissonance and lopsidedness. Shaftesbury might have given us reason to believe there would be a non-normative difference between unified and disunified objects regardless of how anyone responds to them. But that’s not what he needs to establish the mind-independence of beauty as something normative. What he needs is to show that unity would be more valuable, would be better than disunity, even if our sensibility was constructed to respond positively to the disunified. The comparison with the non-normative properties of harmony and symmetry doesn’t help with that.