The Aesthetics of Nature

The Aesthetics of Nature

Glenn Parsons*Ryerson University

Abstract

The aesthetics of nature is a growing sub-field of contemporary aesthetics. In thisarticle, I outline the view called ‘Scientific cognitivism’, which has been central inrecent discussions of nature aesthetics. In assessing two important arguments for thisview, I outline some recent thinking about key issues for the aesthetics of nature,including the relationship between nature and art and the relevance of ethicalconsiderations to the aesthetic appreciation of nature.

The aesthetics of nature is a sub-field of contemporary aesthetics focusedupon understanding our aesthetic responses to ‘nature’, in the broad senseof those objects and events whose character is not a product of humancontrivance (Budd 2–4). In focusing on aesthetic responses to sunsets, animalsand natural environments like mountains and meadows, nature aestheticsstands in contrast to most current work in aesthetics, which focuses uponresponses to artworks. Nature aesthetics is often categorized as one branchof environmental aesthetics, a larger sub-field focused upon environmentsin general, including non-natural environments such as cities (Berleant andCarlson forthcoming). Though it is but one part of this larger sub-field,nature aesthetics has been the locus of most recent thinking in environmentalaesthetics, with views on other environments being heavily influenced, ifnot determined, by views developed for the natural environment.

Although consideration of the beauty of nature is common in the classicaesthetic writings of the eighteenth-century, contemporary discussion inanalytic philosophy began with the publication, in 1966, of RonaldHepburn’s essay ‘Contemporary Aesthetics and the Neglect of NaturalBeauty’. The emergence of the field thus coincides with the rise of interestin environmental issues. These origins suggest that the aesthetics of natureis a hybrid discipline, concerned not only with the theoretical issues ofphilosophical aesthetics, but also with broader ethical and social issuesconcerning the natural world and our relationship to it. This view issupported by the fact that the recent growth of interest in the topic has comenot only from philosophers working in aesthetics, but also from writersin related disciplines, such as geography, environmental philosophy, andlandscape architecture (for a comprehensive review of work in natureaesthetics, see the introduction to Carlson and Berleant).© 2007 The AuthorJournal Compilation © 2007 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

Philosophy Compass 2/3 (2007): 358–372, 10.1111/j.1747-9991.2007.00073.x

In this article, I discuss two central debates in current nature aesthetics,each of which highlights one aspect of the field’s dual nature. The first debateconcerns the extent to which aesthetic judgements about nature can bethought of as ‘objective’. Since the objectivity of aesthetic judgement istraditionally one of the central issues in the philosophy of art, this debatebrings out the field’s connections with mainstream aesthetics. The seconddebate relates to the role of nature’s aesthetic value in arguments for thepreservation of wild nature. Although closely related to the former debate,this issue focuses on the especially close connection to ethics that ischaracteristic of the aesthetics of nature. Recent discussion of these issueshas centred on an influential conception of the aesthetic appreciation ofnature that has been developed in detail by Allen Carlson. Thus, beforeconsidering the two debates mentioned above, I will briefly sketch somehighlights of this view.

Carlson’s Cognitivism

Carlson describes his view as follows:

to appropriately appreciate [natural] objects or landscapes . . . aesthetically . . . itis necessary to perceive them in their correct categories. This requires knowingwhat they are and knowing something about them. In general, it requires theknowledge given by the natural sciences. (90)

This view is sometimes referred to as ‘Scientific cognitivism’. In thisdescription, the latter term suggests that, generally speaking, belief about theobject of aesthetic appreciation can alter its aesthetic qualities. In otherwords, aesthetic appreciation is cognitive in the sense that our beliefsconcerning the kind of object that we are perceiving can change the waythe object looks or sounds to us, and hence can change the way it appearsaesthetically to us. The term ‘scientific’ expresses Carlson’s view that scientificknowledge about natural things, such as that delivered by biology, geologyand natural history, can produce this change, in effect ‘shaping’ an object’saesthetic appearance for us. Carlson argues, for example, that in the absenceof such knowledge, many natural environments look visually chaotic, lackingdiscernible pattern or order and, a fortiori, any positive aesthetic qualities.Knowledge of natural history and ecology, in such cases, may allow us toperceive the environment differently, as containing a pleasing order, patternand visual coherence that would otherwise be hidden from us.

It is important to emphasize that Carlson’s view is a normative one:although we may, and often do, engage in aesthetic appreciation of naturalthings that is not shaped by scientific understanding of those things, Scientificcognitivism deems this to be less correct, or less appropriate, appreciationthan aesthetic appreciation that is so shaped. Thus, to use another of Carlson’sexamples, one might find the flora of an alpine meadow visually uninterestinguntil one considers that it is subject to high-altitude conditions that constrainthe possibilities available to its plant species. Without such knowledge,© 2007 The Author Philosophy Compass 2/3 (2007): 358–372, 10.1111/j.1747-9991.2007.00073.xJournal Compilation © 2007 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

The Aesthetics of Nature . 359

Carlson says, ‘we might neither appreciatively note their remarkableadjustment to their situation nor attune our sense to their subtle fragrance,texture, and hue’ (xix–xx). Aesthetic appreciation of the meadow’s florathat is uninformed by scientific knowledge, he maintains, is less appropriateappreciation. Another way to put Carlson’s point is that scientificallyinformed aesthetic appreciation serves as a normative standard for theaesthetic appreciation of nature.

In setting scientifically informed appreciation of nature as a normativestandard, Scientific cognitivism goes against a long philosophical tradition.In this tradition, the aesthetic appreciation of nature is viewed as free of allnormative constraints and so essentially subjective (for a review of thistradition, see Parsons, ‘Freedom and Objectivity’). This sets up a sharpcontrast between nature and art, since aesthetic judgements of art are widelytaken to be subject to at least some normative constraints. David Humefamously noted the strength of our intuition that some aesthetic judgementsare more correct, or appropriate, than others. ‘Whoever would assert anequality of genius and elegance between Ogilby and Milton, or Bunyan andAddison’, Hume wrote,‘would be thought to defend no less an extravagance,than if he had maintained a mole-hill to be as high as Teneriffe, or a pondas extensive as the ocean’. Many philosophers have agreed with Hume onthis point, holding it highly implausible, at least in many cases, to think thatconflicting aesthetic judgements about an artwork are equally well-justified.It is common, in other words, to accept the existence of a normative standardfor the appreciation of art, or what Hume called a ‘Standard of Taste’.

When it comes to nature, however, the need for such a standard appearsto vanish. Whereas conflicting aesthetic judgements concerning artworkscan be evaluated as better and worse, analogous judgements about natureare all to be accepted as equally valid. As an illustration of this line of thought,consider the treatment of natural beauty by one of the more prominentfigures in early twentieth-century aesthetics, Benedetto Croce. ‘As regardsnatural beauty’, Croce writes, ‘man is like the mythical Narcissus at thefountain’. This image is apt, according to Croce, because nature becomesbeautiful only when we ‘dress it’ with imaginative associations that bestowmeaning upon it. But we are free to bring whatever imaginative associationswe like to nature: as he puts it,

the same natural object or fact is, according to the disposition of the soul, nowexpressive, now insignificant, now expressive of one definite thing, now ofanother, sad or glad, sublime or ridiculous, sweet or laughable. (99)

When people disagree over the beauty of some natural thing, it is becausethey differ in the imaginative associations that they bring to it. But this is anirresolvable debate, since neither’s imaginative associations are ‘more correct’than the other’s. ‘They may dispute for ever’, Croce tells us, ‘but they willnever agree, save when they are supplied with a sufficient dose of aestheticknowledge to enable them to recognize that both are right’. (99–100)

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© 2007 The Author Philosophy Compass 2/3 (2007): 358–372, 10.1111/j.1747-9991.2007.00073.xJournal Compilation © 2007 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

This traditional view, then, holds a ‘bifurcated’ account of aestheticappreciation, accepting normative standards for aesthetic judgements aboutart, but rejecting them for nature. This view has much prima facie plausibility.For although we have strong intuitions that not all aesthetic judgementsabout an artwork are equally valid, as Hume noted, we seem to lackanalogous intuitions concerning nature. This point is well-taken, but doesnot seem sufficient to support the traditional view. In the case of art, notonly do we frequently appreciate artworks, but we also routinely compareour aesthetic evaluations of artworks with those of our friends, as well aswith those of art critics. When it comes to nature, however, not only dowe engage in aesthetic appreciation less frequently, we also spend less timeevaluating our responses critically or comparing them to those of others. Inshort, it is possible that we find the idea of normative standards for naturalbeauty intuitively implausible only because we have, as yet, devotedinsufficient attention to natural beauty. After all, as mentioned at the outset,it is only recently that the natural environment has attracted any widespreadinterest. Thus, we cannot rely solely on our intuitions here, but must alsoweigh the arguments for and against the acceptance of such standards. Whatgrounds, then, might be given for accepting a view, such as Scientificcognitivism, that attributes normative standards to the aesthetic appreciationof nature, as well as to the aesthetic appreciation of art?

Carlson’s work suggests two arguments, the first of which I will call the‘analogy with art argument’. This argument goes as follows:

(1) Aesthetic judgements concerning artworks are subject to normativestandards.

(2) If accepting a particular view of aesthetic appreciation allows us to offersimilar accounts of the aesthetic appreciation of both art and nature,then we have a reason to accept that view.

(3) Scientific cognitivism holds that aesthetic judgements concerning natureare subject to normative standards.

(4) Therefore, we have a reason to accept Scientific cognitivism.

This argument can be viewed as following up on an idea just mentioned:the idea that, so far, the aesthetic appreciation of nature has been neglectedin relation to that of art. Given that it is possible to develop the aestheticappreciation of nature in a way analogous to that in which we have alreadydeveloped the aesthetic appreciation of art, this argument says that we oughtto avail ourselves of this opportunity.

A second argument for Scientific cognitivism, which I will call the ‘ethicalargument’, focuses not upon the relationship between nature and art, buton the ethical implications of aesthetically appreciating nature. Aestheticappeal seems to be a powerful determinant of human behaviour toward thenatural environment. For example, people travel long distances to seebeautiful natural areas, pay more money for homes and cottages with ‘scenicviews’, and often express their connection to particular locales in aesthetic



terms (‘O beautiful for spacious skies’, and so on). However, environ-mentalists have often found aesthetic value an enemy rather than an ally inthe struggle for environmental protection. For example, the developerwishing to turn a wild river valley into a golf resort may insist that it ismerely a waste of boring trees with no aesthetic value. Aesthetically, hemight maintain, it would pale in comparison to a carefully manicuredlandscape of dyed golf greens, stone bridges, and rustic lodges. Theenvironmentalist will surely object, but on the traditional view of natureaesthetics, as articulated by Croce for instance, the developer’s judgementcannot be gainsaid. For on that view, in our aesthetic assessments we arefree to conceive of nature in whatever way we please. So if the developerchooses to see the undeveloped river valley as an empty wasteland, ratherthan as a rich, intricate habitat, then this judgement apparently cannot bechallenged or rejected as ‘mistaken’. Thus aesthetics may seem only to stultifyattempts at wilderness preservation.

Scientific cognitivism, however, yields a different picture, for it requiresthat appropriate aesthetic appreciation of nature be guided and informed byscientific understanding. On that view, claims that this particular wild rivervalley is ugly, or of no aesthetic value, carry little weight if they are madeby people who know nothing about that particular valley. Rather, it is tothose knowledgeable concerning the flora, fauna and natural history of thearea that we must look for a more accurate assessment of its aesthetic value.And it seems plausible to think that the aesthetic response of these observersto the undeveloped river valley will be a good deal more favourable. If so,then instead of thwarting environmentalist aims, aesthetic considerationsmight aid in realizing them. Thinkers concerned with ethical treatment ofthe environment, then, may find the following an appealing argument:

(1) If accepting a particular view of aesthetic appreciation allows us to betterfulfil our ethical obligations, then we have a reason to accept that view.

(2) If we accept Scientific cognitivism, we will be better able to protectwild nature.

(3) We have an ethical obligation to protect wild nature.(4) Therefore, we have a reason to accept Scientific cognitivism.

My formulation of the ethical argument may raise the following concern:this argument suggests grounds for ‘accepting’ Scientific cognitivism, buteven if it does, what evidence does it give us to think it is true? It may seem,in other words, that the ethical argument prevents us from basing ouraesthetics of nature on purely aesthetic considerations, requiring us to shapeit in response to certain moral imperatives instead. This is clearly the attitudetaken by proponents of the argument. Carlson, for example, writes that

this ethical line of argument does not by itself clearly establish that there arecorrect and incorrect categories in which to perceive parts of nature or naturalobjects . . . However, it does, I think, establish that there is ethical merit inregarding certain categories as correct. (67)



Saito’s defence of a related argument is even more explicit. She writes: ‘theappropriate attitude toward and appreciation of nature must be explainedby reference to ethical considerations and not to aesthetic considerations’(‘Is There a Correct Aesthetic Appreciation of Nature?’ 44). These authorsclearly embrace ethical reasons in support of Scientific cognitivism, and,quite appropriately, they hesitate to couch their arguments in terms of thetruth of that doctrine. The ethical argument, therefore, does seem to requirea willingness to embrace at least some degree of ‘moralizing’ in aesthetics(i.e. some willingness to let ethical considerations dictate aesthetic views).Is this a weakness of the argument? Whether one sees it as such or notdepends upon one’s view of the relationship between aesthetics andethics. Without trying to settle this large issue here, it is worth noting that,unappealing as this position may be to philosophers attuned to notionssuch as ‘artistic freedom’ and the autonomy of ‘literary virtues’, manyenvironmental philosophers find the idea of allowing ethical considerationsto inform aesthetics unproblematic (see, for example, the discussion ofHettinger, ‘Allen Carlson’s Environmental Aesthetics’, below). And it is, ofcourse, environmental philosophers who will be most strongly attracted tothe ethical argument.

The above concern, however, could also be applied to my gloss of theanalogy with art argument. For despite the fact that it rests on theoretical,rather than ethical considerations, it too is phrased in terms of ‘acceptability’,rather than truth. My reason for phrasing the argument this way pertains toa point that I emphasized earlier: our culture’s lack of a tradition of sustainedattention to natural beauty and, a fortiori, a body of solid intuitions aboutsuch beauty. For to phrase the issue in terms of Scientific cognitivism beingtrue, rather than acceptable, suggests that we are asking whether Scientificcognitivism describes our extant normative practice: i.e. whether theappropriate judgements that we actually do make about nature arescientifically informed ones. Philosophers typically answer this sort ofquestion, however, by consulting intuitions, which are based on, or shapedby, our past and current practices. Therefore, to put the issue in terms oftruth is to, as it were, ‘load the dice’ against Scientific cognitivism. For ifour intuitions about natural beauty have been derived in a context where,as we already know, aesthetic responses to nature have not been a focus ofattention or scrutiny, then it is very likely that these intuitions will contradictScientific cognitivism. Perhaps a better way to put it, if we were to talk oftruth, would be to ask whether Scientific cognitivism ‘ought to be true’, orwhether theoretical consistency, or other factors, demand that we reformour practices in a such way that it becomes true.

Scientific Cognitivism and Other Approaches to Nature Aesthetics

In the view of proponents of Scientific cognitivism, the ‘analogy with art’argument and the ‘ethical argument’ provide grounds not only for the



recognition of some normative standards in nature aesthetics, but also for therecognition of normative standards based on scientific knowledge. To see this,we can consider two alternative views that also claim to recognize normativestandards for nature appreciation: an imagination-based approach and whatCarlson calls the ‘landscape’ approach. On the latter, correct or appropriateappreciation of nature is that which treats a natural area as a two-dimensionalscene, or ‘view’, along the lines of a picture or landscape painting. Toappropriately appreciate a natural area, on this view, is to attend to the layoutof its visual qualities within an imaginary frame, attending to its formalqualities, such as its pleasing arrangements of lines, shapes and colours. Thisapproach has had wide currency in empirical research on nature aesthetics,and holds out a normative standard for the aesthetic appreciation of nature.In light of our two arguments, however, this approach seems deficientrelative to Scientific cognitivism. First, this approach effectively maintainsa bifurcated conception of aesthetic appreciation, since the appreciation ofart is widely held to extend beyond such purely formal considerations as thearrangement of line, shape and colour. Any attempt to justify the landscapeapproach using the analogy with art argument would therefore need todefend a robust formalism about art (for an attempt along these lines,see Zangwill, ‘Defence of Moderate Aesthetic Formalism’). Second, thenormative standards established by the landscape approach do not seem likelyto help fulfil any obligations to nature that environmentalists might want tocanvass. In the example of the river valley given above, for example,proponents of development may well fulfil the conditions for appropriateappreciation, attending to the formal qualities of some ‘view’ of the valley,which they find unimpressive. In sum, the brand of appropriate appreciationlicensed by the landscape view appears too ‘cognitively thin’ to draw supportfrom the analogy with art and ethical arguments.

On the other hand, if one resorts to normative standards that are more‘cognitively substantial’, and that can draw support from these arguments,it becomes difficult to keep these standards from simply collapsing into thescience-based standards urged by Scientific cognitivism. The approach tonature aesthetics defended by Emily Brady, for example, stresses the use ofimagination to enrich our aesthetic responses by adding patterns, associatedideas and images, and meanings to what we perceive in nature. As suggestedby the discussion of Croce above, this view typically results in a rejectionof any normative standards for appreciating nature. Brady denies thisimplication, however, maintaining that not all uses of imagination areappropriate: rather, if we are to appreciate appropriately, she says, we must‘imagine well’, using ‘imagination skillfully and appropriately’ (158). Brady’sapproach, then, could draw support from the ethical argument, if thenormative standards established by ‘imagining well’ were to prove useful infulfilling our ethical obligations to nature. However, if aesthetic appreciationbased on imagining well is to be useful in fulfilling our ethical obligationsto nature, it is hard to see what ‘imagining well’ can mean other than



‘imagining that is based upon knowledge of what nature actually is’ (Eaton;Fudge). Since our understanding of what nature actually is comes fromnatural science, the imagination-based account, insofar as it can garnersupport from the ethical argument, must end by collapsing into Scientificcognitivism.

These considerations suggest that the analogy with art argument and theethical argument, to the extent that they establish normative standards innature aesthetics, favour Scientific cognitivism over other alternatives. Assuch, these arguments have been the focus of much recent discussion withinthe field. The arguments are also important and interesting in their ownright, however, since each touches on an issue that is fundamental for natureaesthetics: nature’s relation to art, as an aesthetic object, in the first case, andthe relationship between ethics and aesthetics, in the second. In the followingtwo sections, therefore, I review some recent critical discussion of these twoarguments.

Nature and Art as Aesthetic Objects

As glossed above, the analogy with art argument has three premises. Thefirst, as I have noted, is widely accepted. But what of the second? Thispremise implies that if some view allows us to avoid holding a ‘bifurcated’aesthetic theory, on which there are normative standards for the appreciationof art, but not for nature, then we have a reason to accept that view. Whywould this be? A potential reason for advancing the second premise, in thecontext of the analogy with art argument, is that it is always desirable, inany sort of aesthetic practice, to have normative standards. However, thisidea is certainly questionable. It is at least plausible to think that an absenceof normative standards in nature appreciation might be welcomed, at leastby some people, as a means of increasing our level of aesthetic enjoyment(this is pointed out by Saito,‘Aesthetics of Unscenic Nature’ 102). Normativeconstraints, after all, place upon us an obligation to critically scrutinize ouraesthetic judgements, to go through the bother of acquiring whateverknowledge or skill is required to improve them, and possibly even to abandonthem outright. In short, Scientific cognitivism challenges the commonconception of natural beauty as a relaxing, carefree enjoyment requiring no‘work’, and from a pragmatic point of view this challenge might be metwith resistance.

A better motivation for the claim that a ‘bifurcated’ aesthetics is undesirableis the objectionable arbitrariness that would characterize this position. Forthe position assumes that we are to have normative standards for one, butnot the other, of nature and art. But then why art, after all? Why is it thatour initial, untutored aesthetic responses are generally assumed not to passmuster for art, where we accept that ‘extra work’ is required for appropriateappreciation, but are taken as beyond dispute in the case of nature? Perhapsone factor here is that, as alluded to earlier, critical disputes in art arise



frequently and naturally, as when artists dispute criticism of their work.Nature, of course, cannot ‘speak up’ in this way, and so disputes aboutnatural beauty are apt to be less frequent. But however well this fact explainsthe lack of normative standards for the aesthetics of nature, it seemsinsufficient to justify it. One could hardly reject the existence of a normativestandard for, say, our treatment of non-human animals merely by notingthat, since animals cannot talk, disputes concerning their treatment havetended not to arise. In this case, the existence of normative standards oughtto be addressed, as it usually now is, by considering the analogy betweenthe treatment of animals and other behaviour that is subject to normativeconstraint (e.g. the treatment of humans). Something similar seems to berequired in the case of standards for the aesthetics of nature.

Correspondingly, critical commentary on the analogy with art argumenthas focused largely on its third premise: the claim that, through theapplication of knowledge from the natural sciences, we can have normativestandards for nature that are analogous to those we have for art. Here criticshave charged that the analogy between art and nature is simply too weak.In mounting the analogy with art argument, Carlson notes that philosopherswho accept normative standards for the aesthetic appreciation of artworkstypically view those standards as arising from the application of ourunderstanding of art history and art theory. On this approach, we are in aposition to determine the correct aesthetic judgements about an artworkonly when we view it in terms of the art historical or theoretical ‘categories’to which it belongs (Walton; Danto, Transfirguration of the Commonplace).For example, a painting may appear crude and ill-executed until we learnthat it is, in fact, an abstract work, and not, as we mistakenly had thought,an amateurish depiction of a horse. In this case, we are apt to revise ourassessment, and discard our initial aesthetic judgement as mistaken, or lesscorrect. In such cases, it is art history and art theory that, by defining properways of regarding the work, ground the existence of normative standardsfor aesthetic judgement. Carlson’s claim is that scientific knowledge can playthe same role in the case of nature.

But, as critics have pointed out, there are important differences betweenthe categories of art and the categories of science. First, a given natural thingwill fall under a myriad of different categories, some more general and somemore specific (Budd 96). In the case of art categories, it seems natural toemploy the more specific categories, as when we view cubist portraits as acertain kind of work (cubist, say), rather than simply as paintings in somemore generic sense. Presumably, we do this, in large part, because this ishow their creators intended them to be viewed. But in the case of nature,the matter is less clear: can we view a Venus Fly-Trap merely as a plant, orought we view it as a very specific kind of plant (carnivorous), with specificneeds, traits and environment? Second, any particular category of sciencefails to provide a specific mode of perceiving the object, in the way that aparticular category of art does. To view something as an abstract painting,



for example, involves standing a certain distance away from it, in decentlight, looking at its coloured surface rather than the back, and so on. Toview something as a whale, or as a glacial valley, does not seem to involvesuch constraints: we are free to look at any part of the object we please,from wherever we please, whenever we please (Budd 108 –9). Third, inappreciating nature, we seem free to group individual things in whateverway we wish. John Fisher makes this point with respect to the appreciationof sounds in nature, writing that:

Nature does not dictate an intrinsically correct way to frame its sounds in the waythat a composer does. We can listen to the total ensemble of sounds or focus onsome subset of the sounds, and I do not see how the nature of the sounds weare listening to dictates that one way of framing is more correct than another.(173)

In sum, these differences between artistic and scientific categories suggestthat scientific knowledge is incapable of defining a normative standardfor the aesthetic appreciation of natural things, since scientific knowledgecannot provide us with the ‘correct way’ of appreciating those things. If so,then the analogy with art argument for Scientific cognitivism fails, even ifit is theoretically desirable to have normative standards for both art andnature.

In response to this line of thought, however, it can be said that it remainsunclear to what extent the differences in question actually do underminethe ability of scientific understanding to provide a normative standard foraesthetic judgements about nature. For instance, the fact that none of thevarious scientific categories that apply to a natural thing are the ones‘intended’ for use in aesthetic appreciation does not entail that none of themcan be identified as the one relevant for appropriate aesthetic appreciation.Other criteria, such as maximizing aesthetic merit, may be involved indetermining which category is the correct one to employ (Parsons,‘NatureAppreciation’). Also, although the lack of highly specific modes of perceiving,such as those associated with paintings, is an important feature of scientificcategories, the upshot of this requires further consideration. For it is notclear that the choice among different ways of perceiving natural things is asarbitrary as Budd describes. As Ned Hettinger puts it,

Once we have settled on a particular natural object as the object of aestheticattention, many of these supposed choices [as to how to perceive the object] areno longer arbitrary. One doesn’t look for fish in the river with a telescope or amicroscope. Aesthetically appreciating a cliff is not best done from an airplanesix miles high or on a pitch black night. (‘Objectivity in Environmental Aesthetics’4–5)

Neither is it clear to just what extent the existence of different ways ofperceiving a natural thing affects its aesthetic qualities. While viewing amountain from different vantages and at different times may alter someaspects of its aesthetic appearance, such as the ‘visual balance’ of its profile,



the mountain may well look majestic however it is viewed (Parsons,‘Freedom and Objectivity’). Finally, the failure of scientific knowledge todetermine that ‘that one way of framing [natural things] is more correct thananother’ has also been challenged. Hettinger (‘Objectivity in EnvironmentalAesthetics’) offers the example of choosing which sounds to focus on inappreciating a wetland. Imagine that we know that one particular sound isa common alligator but another the call of an Ivory-Billed Woodpecker, abird thought to be extinct for the past forty years. In this case, it does seemthat the ‘nature of the sounds’ strongly suggests, if it does not dictate,‘framing’ the natural sounds in such a way that the latter, rather than theformer, is the focus of our attention.

Natural Beauty and Environmental Preservation

The ethical argument for Scientific cognitivism also aims to establish thatthere are normative standards for natural beauty, but approaches this projectfrom a quite different angle. To recap, this argument is:

(1) If accepting a particular view of aesthetic appreciation allows us to betterfulfil our ethical obligations, then we have a reason to accept that view.

(2) If we accept Scientific cognitivism, we will be better able to protectwild nature.

(3) We have an ethical obligation to protect wild nature.(4) Therefore, we have a reason to accept Scientific cognitivism.

In this section, I discuss three objections that are directed at premise two ofthis argument (I will not consider here more fundamental sceptical responsesto the argument, such as questioning our obligation to preserve wild nature).The first two objections take the form of an attack on the assumption,implicit in the second premise, that a useful argument for wildernesspreservation could be mounted based on aesthetic value. The upshot ofthese objections is that, even if Scientific cognitivism could establish thatwild nature is aesthetically valuable, this will not help us to fulfil our ethicalobligations toward nature, since preservationist arguments based on aestheticvalue are nugatory.

The first objection centres on a presupposition that is seemingly necessaryfor any such argument: that all, or almost all, of the natural environment isaesthetically good. This assumption, generally referred to as ‘positiveaesthetics for nature’, or simply ‘Positive aesthetics’, is required because theargument that wilderness should be preserved because of its aesthetic valueobviously is generally inapplicable unless any particular bit of wildernesspossesses at least a substantial degree of positive aesthetic value. Furthermore,the extension of positive aesthetic value to nature generally is critical for theutility of this argument because those areas most in need of preservationistarguments are precisely those areas most often thought to lack aestheticvalue, such as wetlands. However, many philosophers find Positive aesthetics



for nature implausible, and a number of counterexamples to it have beensuggested. Budd, for example, notes that

living objects decline, are subject to illness or lack of nutrients that affect theirappearance, lose their attractive colours and (if they possess the power oflocomotion) whatever ease and gracefulness of movement they formerly possessed,and in so doing diminish in aesthetic appeal. (100–1)

Defenders of Scientific cognitivism have argued that their view canjustify the assumption of Positive aesthetics for all, or almost all, of wildnature (Carlson; Saito, ‘Aesthetics of Unscenic Nature’; Parsons, ‘NatureAppreciation’; Rolston). However, some of these arguments have beenheavily criticized, and the thesis remains controversial. One interesting aspectof recent discussion is that the most prominent counterexamples to Positiveaesthetics, such as the lacklustre creatures cited by Budd, come from therealm of living things, rather than inanimate nature. This suggests that thecommon failure to distinguish, in the philosophical literature, betweendifferent sorts of natural things may be thwarting an appraisal of Positiveaesthetics. For the idea that everything, or almost everything, in nature isaesthetically good is much more plausible when applied to non-living naturalthings and environments, such as lakes, rocks and clouds, than it is whenapplied to the organic world. Though some aestheticians have begun toexplore the aesthetic implications of ontological differences between livingand non-living natural things (Zangwill, ‘Formal Natural Beauty’; Budd)these issues have been most extensively discussed in recent philosophy ofscience, where teleology has been a topic of major interest (Perlman).Whether Scientific cognitivism can ground a version of Positive aestheticsthat is strong enough to be useful for wilderness preservation remains to beseen, but these recent explorations of teleology are a rich, though so farlargely untapped, resource for exploring this question.

A second objection to the ethical argument highlights a further assumptionrequired by any argument that we should preserve some wilderness for itsaesthetic value: the assumption that, generally speaking, the aesthetic valueof human-developed land is less than that of wilderness. For even ifwilderness has aesthetic value, as Scientific cognitivism holds, and even ifthat value is more or less everywhere positive (i.e. if Positive aesthetics fornature is true), we lack grounds for preserving wilderness from developmentunless its aesthetic value outweighs the aesthetic value associated with humandevelopment. This assumption has proven difficult to justify, however, asthe grounds used to support Positive aesthetics for wilderness often turn outto support Positive aesthetics for human environments equally well. One ofthe main criticisms of Carlson’s aesthetics by environmental philosophers,for example, is that his view attributes positive aesthetic value to the veryhuman environments, such as suburban development and the industrial farm,that environmentalists oppose (Hettinger, ‘Allen Carlson’s EnvironmentalAesthetics’). This objection suggests that the aesthetics of nature, at least in



the context of the ethical argument, cannot be analyzed independently ofthe aesthetics of the built environment.

If either of the first two objections succeeds, then the ethical argumentfor Scientific cognitivism fails because an aesthetic argument for preservationis ultimately unworkable. A more radical objection, which has emergedrecently, challenges the argument’s second premise more directly. Proponentsof Scientific cognitivism have generally assumed that possessing knowledgeabout the natural environment will make it appear aesthetically better, byrevealing qualities such as balance, harmony, fittingness and so forth amongthe various elements of the environment (see the examples from Carlsondiscussed above). This general approach appears to be based on a familiarconception of ecology as characterizing nature in terms of discrete, stableand self-correcting ecosystems. This conception, however, is no longer anorthodoxy in the scientific community, with the recent emergence of aso-called ‘new paradigm’ on which natural systems are held to be open-endedsystems that are constantly in flux and do not possess a stable equilibrium(Botkin; Simus). If the knowledge about nature that is disclosed by ecologyis of this kind, it becomes highly questionable whether adopting Scientificcognitivism will cause us to perceive nature as more aesthetically appealing.Instead of qualities such as balance, harmony and the like, it seems thatscientifically informed appreciation of nature may reveal negative aestheticqualities such as imbalance, disorder and disharmony. If this is true,environmentalists may want to abandon the ethical argument, at least as anargument for Scientific cognitivism. Along these lines, Ned Hettinger hassuggested that ‘aesthetic responses based on ecological ignorance and mythmay sometimes be the best for aesthetic protectionism’ (Hettinger,‘Objectivity in Environmental Aesthetics’).

But such a move may be too hasty. Another option is to admit thatecology causes us to see imbalance, disorder and disharmony in nature, butto deny that these are negative aesthetic qualities. Jason Simus suggests welook to modern art and music to see how these qualities may be positivesources of aesthetic value, rather than forms of ugliness. More fundamentally,however, it remains unclear whether the shift in ecological understandingcharacteristic of the ‘new paradigm’ actually does result in these particularqualities being manifested in our perception of nature. For instance, one ofthe implications of the new paradigm cited by Simus is that events such aserosion and wildfire are no longer construed as ‘disturbances’, or ‘departuresfrom the norm’, but as essential parts of the inherent flux of nature. But ifthis is the case, then it would seem that appreciating nature in light of thenew paradigm of ecology should cause it to appear less disorderly anddisharmonious, given that these events have now become part of the ‘normal’processes of nature. To use an analogous case from the arts, cubist paintingslooked chaotic and disorderly (hence, aesthetically poor) when those workswere viewed by early critics using the traditional categories of representationalpainting. They ceased to look this way, however, when they were viewed



through the ‘new paradigm’ of Cubist art theory, on which the exclusiveuse of geometric form was no longer a ‘departure from the norm’ but ratherstandard practice. This point, like many of the others discussed above,reinforces the need to carefully assess how, and to what extent, differingscientific conceptualizations affect aesthetic perception when attempting toevaluate the viability of Scientific cognitivism.

Conclusion

In this article, I have focused upon recent debate concerning Scientificcognitivism. This focus has required omitting much that is of interest in thecontemporary aesthetics of nature, including illuminating discussions ofparticular types of environment as well as investigations into importanttheoretical concepts, such as imagination and disinterestedness. This focusis justified, in part, by the cognitivist view’s close connection with the issuesthat seem most fundamental to the field. It is also justified in light of theview’s radical implications for aesthetics as a whole. Some philosophers haveexpressed the view that Art, after a 2500-year history, has, in some importantsense, essentially run its course (Danto, Philosophical Disenfranchisement ofArt). The natural world, in contrast, seems to be only now emerging in ourcultural consciousness, as the short history of environmentalism suggests. IfScientific cognitivism is correct, then nature represents a vast aesthetic realmthat we have barely begun to explore, and whose guiding principles wehave only started to comprehend.

Short Biography

Glenn Parsons received his Ph.D. in philosophy at the University of Albertain Edmonton,Alberta, Canada. He has taught at the University of Toronto,Wilfrid Laurier University and the University of Guelph, and currently is amember of the Philosophy department at Ryerson University in Toronto.His main research interest is the role of scientific knowledge in the aestheticappreciation of nature. His essays have appeared in the British Journal ofAesthetics, the Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism and the Canadian Journalof Philosophy. He is currently writing a book on the aesthetics of nature.

Acknowledgements

Warm thanks to Allen Carlson, Ned Hettinger, Aaron Meskin and JasonSimus for helpful comments.

Notes

* Correspondence address: Department of Philosophy, Ryerson University, 350 Victoria Street,Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M5B 2K3. Email: [email protected].



[email protected]

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http://www.environmentalphilosophy.org/Hettinger.pdf

http://www.environmentalphilosophy.org/Simus.pdf

http://www.environmentalphilosophy.org/Hettinger.pdf

http://www.environmentalphilosophy.org/Simus.pdf

Documents

The Aesthetics of Nature