Evaluating Positive
Aesthetics
Ned Hettinger, Philosophy
College of Charleston, Oct. 2011
Beautiful Nature
Elk
Mt. McKinley
Cypress knee in duck weed
Eklutna Lake
Naked mole-rat
Dead opossum
Ugly Nature?
Red Wolf
scat
“Just as there are rotten violinists, so there must be pathetic creeks; just as there is pulp fiction,
so there must be junk species, just as there are forgettable meals, so there must be
inconsequential forests” (Stan Godlovitch, 1989).
Injured moose
Lion with baboon
Lappet-faced vulture
Definitions of positive aesthetics
(PA)
• Positive aesthetics (=PA):
All (wild) nature is
beautiful
• A plausible version:
Nature is specially and
predominantly beautiful
“None of nature’s landscapes are
ugly so long as they are wild”
John Muir
“In everything in nature there is
something wonder-inspiring”
Aristotle
Four conditions for an adequate PA
• (1) Accommodate
existence of negative
aesthetics in nature
• (3) Depend on
the actual
contingent
characteristics
of nature
• (2) Not apply to the rest
of the world
• (4) Useful for conservation
Knowledge undermines idea nature’s
positive aesthetics limited to easy beauty
• Much more to nature’s beauty than the
easy beauty of “nature’s showpieces”
or of cute & cuddly animals
• Positive aesthetics also in:
– Subtle beauty of the allegedly boring nature
– Difficult beauty of the allegedly ugly nature
• Knowledge (supplemented with emotion
and imagination) can turn
– The monotonous prairie into a one time
home of thundering herds of buffalo
– The hideous vampire bat into a marvelous
sonar flying machine
Can knowledge do away with all
negative aesthetics in nature?
• Perhaps, with boring
nature
– Scientifically-interesting
stories for all nature
•
“I cannot think of any stories of nature
that are uninteresting or trivial. . . No
matter how seemingly insignificant,
uninteresting, or repulsive at first sight,
natural history and ecological sciences
reveal the marvelous works of every
part of nature. . . every part of nature
is aesthetically positive for its
storytelling power.”
Yuriko Saito, 1998
• Less clear with ugly
nature (e.g., a scab)
•
“The scab is ugly, evidence of a
wound, and although part of a healing
process with positive value, this
doesn’t convert the scab itself into
something beautiful.”
Emily Brady, 2010
–Will knowledge convert an ugly
scab into something beautiful,
lessen its ugliness, or merely add
positive aesthetics that may or may
not outweigh the negative?
Equal beauty thesis
• Equal beauty: All of nature is
equally aesthetically valuable
•
– Equal beauty is frequently tied
to PA
– But they are conceptually
distinct and most PA’s
defenders reject equal beauty
• Arguments for equal beauty
– Science insures equal beauty
• Replies
• “All of nature necessarily reveals the
natural order. . . In this sense, all
nature is equally appreciable . . . As
Arp observes, ‘in nature a broken twig is
equal in beauty and importance to the
clouds and the stars’.” (Carlson, 1993)
– Conservation requires equal
beauty
• Less beautiful nature will go
unprotected
“Like clouds, seashores, and mountains,
forests are never ugly, they are only more
or less beautiful; the scale runs from zero
upward with no negative domain” ( Holmes
Rolston, 1998)
– Scientific stories are more or
less aesthetically stimulating
• Earth’s story with its biology is
more interesting than Pluto’s
– Aesthetics role in conservation
requires unequal beauty
– So aesthetics can play a
role in prioritizing which
nature will be protected
Individualistic versus holistic PA
• Individualist versions: Each natural property or thing is
aesthetically positive
– No negative aesthetic qualities in nature (Gene Hargrove)
– On-balance individualism (Glen Parsons, Allen Carlson)
– Each natural thing on balance has substantial positive
aesthetic value
• Holist versions: Nature as a whole--and on the whole-is substantially aesthetically positive; some anomalous
or isolated individuals may not be (Holmes Rolston)
– Many types of natural items are invariably aesthetically positive
(e.g., flowers, species, ecosystems, or landscapes)
– Nature has tendency to produce beauty and turn individual
ugliness into beauty
Hargrove’s no negative qualities
to positive aesthetics,
• All of nature--perceived “According
nature, to the degree that it is
from any perspectives--is natural (i.e., unaffected by
human beings), is beautiful and
invariably aesthetically
has no negative aesthetic
positive in every detail
qualities” (Gene Hargrove,1989)
• Hargrove’s quality
individualism too strong
• Ugly nature too numerous &
diverse
– Oozing sore on the lion’s nose
– A wildebeest with a hyena latched
onto its throat
– Disgusting stench of rotting flesh
– Hot, humid, buggy weather
•
Unclear such negative aesthetics
can always be entirely eliminated
by knowledge or contextualization
Seeing only beauty in nature is Pollyannaish
“Once as a college youth I killed an opossum that seemed
sluggish and then did an autopsy. He was infested with
a hundred worms! Grisly and pitiful, he seemed a sign of
the whole wilderness, too alien to value” (Rolston, 1986)
“The critic will complain against admirers of wildlife that they
overlook as much as they see. The bison are shaggy,
shedding, and dirty. That hawk has lost several flight
feathers; that marmot is diseased and scarred. The elk
look like the tag end of a rough winter. A half dozen
juvenile eagles starve for every one that reaches
maturity. Every wild life is marred by the rips and tears of
time and eventually destroyed by them” (Rolston, 1987)
Parsons’ on-balance individualism
• Allows for negative aesthetic
qualities but claims any natural
object will have greater positive
aesthetic qualities insuring
overall positive aesthetics
•
“I take positive aesthetics to be,
roughly, the claim that any
natural object, appropriately
aesthetically appreciated, is on
balance aesthetically good”
(Glenn Parsons, 2002)
Parsons’ beauty-making argument
• Appropriate aesthetic appreciation of
natural objects maximizes their beauty
• Addresses the problem of multiple,
potentially conflicting aesthetic qualities
of natural objects
• Because the jaw-like features of a
Venus fly trap look grotesque
when conceived of as a plant, we
should instead conceive it as a
carnivorous plant
“View the object under the scientific
categories in which it truly belongs and
which maximize the aesthetic appeal of
the object” (Parsons, 2002).
Parsons builds PA into the theory of
appropriate appreciation of nature
PA is no longer an “implausible
empirical hypothesis” but “part of the
intuitive data that we use in constructing
our theories of appropriate aesthetic
appreciation of nature” (Parsons, 2002).
Objections to Parsons’ beautymaking criterion
• Goal of nature appreciation is not to maximize our “aesthetic kicks”
but to appreciate it in a rationally justified way
– Should not ignore accurate categorizations because they lower
aesthetic value (e.g., should not ignore that wolves are “coyote killers”
when we aesthetically appreciate wolves)
• By stipulating the truth of PA, Parsons undermines
its role in conservation
– County commissioners wondering about the aesthetic value of a natural
area will balk at the idea that we must think of it in a way that maximizes
its aesthetic appeal, when other correct ways of appreciating it give it
lower or negative aesthetic value
– Developers and anti-environmentalists will justifiably claim bias:
• Why not require that appropriate appreciation of natural areas conceive of
them in ways that minimizes their aesthetic value (so they can be more
easily exploited)?
Carlson’s On-balance Individualism
“What seems to me undeniably true . . . each natural
thing, at many, if not almost all, levels and conditions of
observation, has substantial positive aesthetic value and
little, if any, negative aesthetic value” (Carlson, 2007)
Carlson’s science is aesthetic argument
• Appropriate appreciation of nature must be
informed by science (“scientific cognitivism”)
• Science uses aesthetic criteria • Thus scientifically informed
– “A significant consideration in the creation
appreciation of nature will
and selection of scientific descriptions is
find it aesthetically positive
whether or not they make the natural world
appear aesthetically better . . . more
unified, orderly, or harmonious” (Carlson,
2002)
– “Science reads its values into nature;
in describing the facts, it does so in
such a way that positive aesthetic
values are necessarily present”
(Carlson, 2007)
Problem with Carlson’s Science is
Aesthetic Argument: Not Empirical
•
•
PA’s truth becomes independent of nature’s actual
characteristics
– Existence and character of sunsets, mountains,
forests, flora, and fauna are not relevant
Dull world objection: Carlson’s argument would work
as well in proving PA for a lifeless, colorless, and
geologically inert nature
• Arguments for PA should be empirical
– The contingent characteristics of our world should matter to the truth of PA
• Nature’s substantial positive aesthetic value is special in part because
it need not have been so
– Nature could have been relatively boring, significantly chaotic, and
generally unappealing
• Arguments for PA that ignore the impressive beauty our world in fact
has fail to do justice to the intuitions behind PA
• PA is an empirical thesis to be supported inductively by descriptions
and evaluations of the natural world
Parsons/Carlson’s Limitation of PA
to Inorganic Nature
• In Functional Beauty (2008), they argue that
natural beauty comes from appreciating the
fitness for function of natural things
– E.g., a cheetah built for speed
• Because organic things can malfunction, they can
be aesthetically negative
– “Ugliness in nature seems to arise when damage or some
kind of insult causes an object to appear dysfunctional”
– “The counter-examples of damaged, diseased, and
malformed living things show that Positive Aesthetics
does not hold as a general thesis about the natural world”
• Although inorganic things have functions they can
lose, they can’t malfunction and hence can’t be
aesthetically negative
– “Positive Aesthetics does capture something true about
the natural beauty of inorganic things” (2008)
• Objection: Inorganic nature losing a function
might also be grounds for a negative aesthetic
judgment
– A once rapidly flowing creek becomes silt clogged
Rolston’s aesthetic holism
and systemic beauty
• Nature as a whole--and on the
whole--has substantial beauty (it’s
a “wonderland”)
•
“Landscapes always supply beauty,
never ugliness. . . To say of a desert,
the tundra, a volcanic eruption that it is
ugly is to make a false statement and
to respond inappropriately”
(Holmes Rolston, 1987)
– Many types of natural items are
invariably aesthetically positive
• Allows for anomalous or isolated
“individual ugliness in nature” and
so avoids “programmatic nature
romanticism”
• Systemic beauty: Nature has a
tendency to produce beauty and
to turns ugliness into beauty
• Note: These are empirical
claims supported by a rich
description of the actual
character of the natural world
•
Nature’s individual “ugly events” should be
seen “as anomalies challenging the
general paradigm that nature’s landscapes
almost without fail have an essential
beauty” (Rolston, 1987)
•
“But ugliness, though present at times in
particulars, is not the last word. . . nature
will bring beauty out of this ugliness . . .
there are transformative forces that sweep
toward beauty . . . nature is a scene of
beauty ever reasserting itself in the face of
destruction” (Rolston, 1987)
Support for
Rolston’s aesthetic holism
• Earth’s tendency toward
beauty
• Rolston’s contextualization
•
– The ugliness of damaged and
diseased living things
– Is fought by nature
• Organism resist and repair
damage, fight disease
• Predation culls the sick and
crippled
• Natural selection edits out the
malformed
– Geologically earth has a
beauty heading
• Mountain building, water cycle
Critics claim Rolston’s insistence that
ugly events need to be viewed as
part of a larger ecosystem context
implies that:
– “The only legitimate object for our
aesthetic experience of nature is the
global ecosphere” (Saito,1998)
•
•
•
Reply:
But appropriate appreciation of part
of an artwork (or nature) requires
appreciating its role in the entire work
Insisting on contextualization is not
the same as changing the subject of
appreciation to the system that
provides the context
Conclusions
• A knowledge-infused PA is useful in combating the idea that
nature’s aesthetic value is limited to easy beauty
• Problematic versions of PA include: Equal beauty, no negative
qualities, on-balance individualism, no negative aesthetics in
inorganic nature
• Carlson’s science is aesthetic and Parsons’ beauty making
arguments for PA fail because they ignore the actual contingent
beauty of our world and are problematic for conservation
• Rolston’s holistic, empirically-based PA has a good deal of
plausibility and best meets my conditions for an adequate PA
*Could delete as not in ASA paper*
No negative judgment thesis
•
“The appropriate or correct aesthetic appreciation of the natural
world is basically positive and negative aesthetic judgments
have little or no place”
(Allen Carlson, 1984)
• Rationale: Negative aesthetic judgments
about nature not possible because nature
is not designed and aesthetic evaluation
assesses intentional design
• For example, nature can’t be trite, sentimental,
crude, derivative, or shoddy–as can artworks
– Reply: But not all aesthetic evaluation is evaluation
of intentional design (e.g., aesthetic evaluation of
clashing colors need not assess design)