People with various versions of color blindness see different color where you see what you call "red". Thus "red", as descriptor for what frequency gets reflected / emitted, is arbitrary. Arbitrariness of the name as such is a given, but even the actual perception is merely what human majority perceives. Thus it's all a human consensus -- we say that a particular frequency is red because most of us perceive it as such (and you can manipulate your own perception so that you perceive the same frequency differently).

The same holds true for aesthetic assessments. Whether they are positive, negative, or a nonstarter. Sure, my concentration on positive aesthetic values was a patently wrong example. But even etymology of the word aesthetic is along the lines of "pertaining to sense perception". And there are no objective / absolute perceptions. On top of it, aesthetic "sense" is even less rigid than aforementioned vision.

As for symbolic thinking -- the remnants of original animistic societies don't seem to be bothered with meaning. Despite their rich symbolic vocabulary they are concerned with its pragmatic application.