Objectivity in Environmental Aesthetics

1
Objectivity in Environmental Aesthetics
Protection of the Environment

• Ned Hettinger
• College of Charleston
• July 2006

2
The WorryNatural beautys subjectivity
relativity make it unsuitable for justifying
environmental protection

• Contrast John Muirs description of a sunset
• The sunset was glorious. To the east the water
  was a rose lavender, the sky at the horizon blue,
  eight or ten degrees above a red purple. In the
  west gold and purple on horizontal bars of cloud,
  shading off into lilac. Islands dark
  purple. John Muir, Journal (1899)
• With his contemporary Oscar Wildes
• "Nobody of any real culture . . . ever talks
  nowadays about the beauty of a sunset. Sunsets
  are quite old-fashioned. They belong to the time
  when Turner was the last note in art. To admire
  them is a distinct sign of provincialism of
  temperament. Upon the other hand they go on.
  Yesterday evening Mrs. Arundel insisted on my
  going to the window, and looking at the glorious
  sky, as she called it. Of course I had to look at
  it. . . And what was it? It was simply a very
  second-rate Turner, a Turner of a bad period,
  with all the painter's worst faults exaggerated
  and over- emphasized."
• Oscar Wilde The Decay of Lying An Observation
  (1889)

3
The Response

• Along with a pluralism of acceptable judgments
  about natural beauty come constraints that
  specify better and worse aesthetic responses to
  nature
• Such constraints provide sufficient objectivity
  for the aesthetics of nature to play an important
  role in environmental protection (i.e.,
  aesthetic protectionism)

4
Beauty of the environment motivates
environmental protection
5
(No Transcript)
6
(No Transcript)
7
Env. beauty matters to people

• Magnificence of Live Oaks draped in Spanish Moss
  sprouting Resurrection Fern

• Sprawls vulgarity

8
How aesthetically valuable is the Arctic Refuge?

• Godforsaken mosquito-infested swamp shrouded in
  frozen darkness half the year Former
  Interior Secretary Gail Norton

9

• A place of solitude, unmatched beauty, and
  grandeur
• Jimmy Carter

10
Aesthetic Protectionism

• Environmental beauty not only motivates but also
  provide significant justification for
  environmental protection

11
Worries about Aesthetic Protectionism

• Natural beauty is weak and trivial compared to
  utilitarian values used to protect the
  environment (such as health, recreation) or to
  exploit it (jobs, growth)
• Natural beauty counts for little in assessing how
  we should treat humans why think it amounts to
  much in determining how we should treat the
  environment?
• Aesthetic value is anthropocentric and
  instrumental (its simply pleasurable experiences
  for humans) and the best defenses of nature
  should be intrinsic

12
Environmental aesthetics too subjective to help
with environmental protection?

• If aesthetic value judgments are merely personal
  and subjective, there will be no way to argue
  that everyone ought to learn to appreciate or
  regard natural beauty as worthy of preservation.
  
  Janna Thompson, "Aesthetics and the Value of
  Nature" Environmental Ethics (1995)

13
Environmental aesthetic

• Great aesthetic value lost when
• Tranquil, tree-lined roads punctuated by
  farmhouses, small fields, and ponds
• Symbolic of human harmony with nature
• Are replaced with
• Aggressive, strip-highway sprawl of auto dealers,
  gas stations, and parking lots
• Symbolic of our societys careless exploitation
  and disregard of the natural world

• Better slide for MT

14
Development aesthetic

• Great aesthetic value is gained when
• When monotonous and boring, weed-infested dirt
  roads
• Are replaced with
• Useful and well-built stores
• That express and reward hard work, determination,
  and entrepreneurial ingenuity

15
If beauty in the eye of the beholder

• How can aesthetics help us adjudicate between
  developers who like strip malls and
  environmentalists who dont?
• W/o some objectivity, aesthetic responses to
  environment would be a poor basis for
  environmental protection.

16
Carlsons Science-Based Objectivity

• The leading model for environmental aesthetic
  objectivity is Allen Carlsons
• He provides for objectivity by arguing that
• Aesthetic appreciation of nature must respond to
  what nature is (rather than what it is not)
• Because science tell us what nature is
• Aesthetic appreciation of nature must be informed
  by science (or more broadly natural history)
• Just as aesthetic response to art must be
  informed by art history
• Because science is objective, an env. aesthetics
  informed by science will also be objective

17
Carlsons monism

• Carlson frequently characterizes his view thus
• The appropriate or correct or true
  aesthetic appreciation of nature must be guided
  by science
• Aesthetic responses to nature uninformed by
  science or natural history are therefore
  inappropriate, incorrect, or even false

18
Resistance to Carlsons scientific monism

• Not plausible that acceptable nature appreciation
  must be guided by science
• Rather than by other sorts of cognitive,
  emotional or imaginative responses
• Nor is it helpful to limit our assessment of
  aesthetic judgments about nature to the language
  of
• Correct or incorrect
• True or false
• Appropriate or inappropriate

19
A scientifically uniformed aesthetic response
need not be unacceptable

• A child or a uneducated adult may not know that a
  glacier is a river of ice, but there is nothing
  incorrect, false, or even inappropriate about
  their being wowed by the sight of a calving
  glacier

20
Yet informed responses are often better
responses

• Knowledge about the nature of glaciers can deepen
  our response to them
• For example, we might begin to listen and hear
  the groaning of the ice as it scrapes down the
  valley

21
I propose aConstrained PluralismIn Env.
Aesthetics

• There are a plurality of better and worse
  aesthetic responses to environment
• Better and worse should be understood in a
  variety of ways
• Not just correct/incorrect, true/false,
  appropriate/inappropriate
• Most plausible type of objectivity
• Hopefully, it provides sufficient objectivity to
  make aesthetic protectionism viable

22
Constrained pluralism falls between extremes
about objectivity/subjectivity

• Naïve monism
• There are uniquely correct and appropriate
  aesthetic responses to environment

• Anything-goes subjectivism
• Any aesthetic response to environment is as good
  as any other

23
Virtually everybody in env. aesthetics
distinguishes between better and worse responses

• True of thinkers with drastically divergent
  approaches to aesthetics
• Science-based (cognitive) theories like Allen
  Carlsons
• Emotional-arousal theorists like Noel Carroll
• Imagination-based theorists like Emily Brady
• A good source Ronald Hepburns "Trivial and
  Serious in Aesthetic Appreciation of Nature
  (1993)

24
Varieties of better and worse aesthetic responses

• Deep
• Multisensuous
• Lively, active
• Discriminating
• Attentive
• Mature
• Unbiased
• Patient, careful
• Perceptive
• Thoughtful, reflective
• Knowledgeable
• Experienced

• Superficial, Shallow
• Ocular-centric
• Feeble, lazy, passive
• Including perceptually passive
• Undiscriminating
• Inattentive, inappropriately attentive
• Immature
• Biased
• Hasty
• Confused
• Unthinking
• Ignorant, distorted
• Inexperienced

25
Doubts about the objectivity of environmental
appreciation

• Nature appreciation lacks the objectivity of art
  appreciation
• Art appreciation is much more objective than
  nature appreciation
• An initially plausible and relatively popular
  idea in the philosophy of art
• Held byamong others
• Malcolm Budd
• John Fisher
• Kendall Walton
• I have my doubts about this claim

26
Fishers relativism about environmental aesthetics

• A great mountain, Mt. Fuji or the Grand Teton,
  would probably strike us as noble and strong . .
  . , but it is perfectly conceivable that it might
  strike an observer from an alien culture as
  comical or agonized. In the case of a natural
  object, such as a mountain, such relativity of
  perception is no real problem, because the
  mountain itself isnt really noble or comical.
  We can only say that there are different ways to
  regard the mountain. . . . There is no real fact
  of the matter about whether Mount Fuji is noble
  or comical. . . .

27
Fisher on arts objectivity

• It is harder to swallow such relativism when it
  comes to the expressive properties of art. . . .
  What I am suggesting is that the emotional
  qualities that artworks express are not
  dispensable facts about them, although the
  emotional qualities are dispensable facts about
  natural objects.
• Edvard Munchs The Scream is truly frightening .
  . . The fact that The Scream might strike a
  viewer from another culture as cheerful should
  not make us think that The Scream is a cheerful
  painting. . . .
• John Fisher, Reflecting on Art (1993)

28
The typical argument

• The constraints on art appreciation provided by
  artistic design and social convention are absent
  in nature appreciation
• Natural beauty lacks an artist whose design and
  intentions put limits on appropriate appreciation
• E.g., Cubist paintings are not intended to be
  judged in terms of their representational
  accuracy
• In contrast, nature does not intend you to
  appreciate it one way or another
• Additionally, there are no social conventions for
  the appreciation of nature as there are for art
  appreciation
• E.g., One should ignore the coughing during a
  concert, but one can choose whether or not to
  make the sound of a distant train part of
  environmental appreciation
• E.g., Words in literature have a meaning dictated
  by convention, but whatever meaning nature has
  (if any) is created by the individual
• Further, there are no nature critics in the mold
  of art critics

29
Fisher on sounds of nature"What The Hills Are
Alive With--In Defense of the Sounds of Nature
(1998)

• The person who listens to nature is simply free
  of the criteria that govern appreciation of music
  and that function to rule out many possible ways
  of listening
• Suppose you are sitting in a hot tub in a city
  in the Arizona desert listening to the sounds
  around you. Do you just listen to the Western
  Warblers and the wind in the fruit and palm trees
  or do you (should you) also notice the sounds of
  hot tub jets and popping bubbles making a
  pleasant hissing on the water? Do you add or
  ignore the sounds of ventilator fans spinning hot
  air from the attics and occasional jet planes
  overhead? . . . In the Tuscan countryside do I
  ignore the high pitched whining of mosquitoes?
  Shall I just focus on the loons from across the
  lake in Minnesota or shall I strain to hear
  others from more distant parts, and do they go
  together with the chattering of squirrels and the
  buzzing of flies?
• Nature does not dictate an intrinsically correct
  way to frame its sounds in the way that a
  composer does . . . There are a large
  multiplicity of structures and relations that we
  might hear and all seem equally legitimate.

30
Budd generalizes this point

• The aesthetic appreciation of nature is . . .
  endowed with a freedom denied to artistic
  appreciation
• Malcolm Budd, The Aesthetics of Nature
  (2000)

31
Freedom and relativity in framing nature
appreciation

• Fisher and Budd suggest that nature
  appreciationunlike art appreciation--involves
  full framing freedom
• Unlike art, where the artist (or art category)
  frames the aesthetic object, how to frame the
  aesthetic experience of nature is up to us
• E.g., One doesnt look at the backside of a
  painting or knock it to see how it sounds
• But these are perfectly permissible approaches to
  appreciating a tree

32
Budd argues that

• No proper level of observation for nature
• One can look at nature though a telescope or a
  microscope, or with ones unaided eye
• No proper or optimum conditions for observation
• One can observe nature when it is foggy or clear,
  bright or dark, from near or far
• Permissible to use any sense modality or mode of
  perception
• Can choose to look, hear, touch, taste, or smell
  nature
• In general, we are free to frame and appreciate
  natural objects as we please

33
Full framing freedom?

• Budd overstates the freedom involved
• There are constraints on framing nature
  appreciation
• Once one has settled on a particular natural
  object as the object of aesthetic attention
• Many other framing choices are ruled out

34
Constraints on framing of nature

• One should not appreciate trout in a mountain
  stream with a telescope or microscope
• So there are better and worse levels of
  observation in particular cases
• Aesthetically appreciating a cliff is not best
  done from an airplane six miles high or in ones
  Winnebago on a pitch black night
• Thus there are better and worse conditions of
  observation
• Are we really free to use any sense modality in
  appreciating a mountain?
• Taste? Touch?

35
Framing pluralism exists

• Environmental appreciation does have greater
  framing freedom than art
• Artists and art forms direct our attention to
  properties of the aesthetic object in a way
  nature does not
• But some pluralism need not be a problem for
  aesthetic protectionism
• The aesthetic freedom to
• Focuses on one loon or forty, or to listen to
  wind in the trees alone or along with warblers
• Seems irrelevant to the possibility of using
  environmental beauty for environmental protection
  
• Whether I look at mountain
• Through the fog in the early morning light
• During the middle of the afternoon on a perfectly
  clear day
• Or instead focus on the smell of the mountains
  spruce trees after the rain or savor the taste of
  its wild huckleberries
• Does not seem a threat to aesthetic protectionism

36
Some pluralism might even support aesthetic
protectionism

• When the multiplicity of acceptable ways to
  appreciation nature are virtually all
  aesthetically positive
• And when such responses are of greater aesthetic
  value than the aesthetic responses to degraded
  environments

37
But other framing pluralism creates trouble for
aesthetic protectionism

• Consider whether or not human intrusions should
  be included in environmental appreciative
  judgments

38
Snowmobiles in Yellowstone?
39
An appropriate and compatible winter use?
40
Race track next to Cypress Swamp Nature Preserve?

41
Helicopter/airplane flights over National Parks
42
Houses on ridge tops
43
Environmental vs. anti-env. framing

• Environmentalists Engine noise degrades natural
  tranquility
• But if framing choice is arbitrary
• Anti-environmentalists can argue that such sounds
  can be framed out of the experience
• The Yellowstone skier can be asked to frame out
  the stench and whine of snowmobiles
• The developer can ask those on the Beidler Forest
  owl walk to ignore the sounds of the nearby
  Friday night races
• Hikers in the National Parks can tune out the
  aircraft noise
• The developer can ask those hiking in the forest
  to ignore the trophy homes on the ridge tops
• And if there are no better or worse ways to frame
  these aesthetic experiences, why shouldnt they?

44
An overall aesthetic assessment must include
these sounds, smells, and sights

• Fitting and natural to include--and even to focus
  on--these sensual properties
• To ignore them would be like standing in the
  Snake River Valley of Wyoming and refusing to
  look up to the West
• Not a serious attempt to aesthetically appreciate
  Grand Teton National Park
• Aesthetic judgments about environments that frame
  out human intrusions similarly distort
• A developer who insists that putting a sky
  scraper in the Snake River Valley will not
  detract from the aesthetic beauty of the valley
  and neighboring Teton Park because it can be
  easily framed out
• Relies on a mistaken conception of how free
  framing choices in environmental appreciation can
  legitimately be
• Like a symphony companion saying Dont worry
  about that foul smell or machine-gun fire
  outside, just listen to the music

45
Some framing decision are more natural, fitting
and appropriate (given circumstances)

• Certain natural expanses have natural frames or
  what I prefer to call nature closure caves,
  copses, grottoes, clearings, arbors, valleys,
  etc. And other natural expanses, though lacking
  frames have features that are naturally salient
  for human organisms -- i.e., they have features
  such as moving water, bright illumination, etc.,
  that draw our attention instinctually toward
  them
• Noel Carroll, On Being Moved by Nature (1993)

46
Consider scale-dependence of aesthetic response

• The mountain that we appreciate for its majesty
  and stability is, on a different time-scale, as
  fluid as the ripples on the lake at its foot
• Ronald Hepburn, Trivial and the Serious in
  Aesthetic Appreciation of Nature (1993)
• But this should not make us think that the
  aesthetic qualities we enjoy in the mountain are
  not appropriately appreciable.
• Clear-cuts are a paradigm of environmental-aesthet
  ic disvalue, but if one scales up, they are
  temporary blips in an ongoing and
  aesthetically-exciting process of forest recovery
• But this should not lead us to agree with the
  forest-industry executive that they are not ugly
  because we should adopt the 200 year scale

47

• Aesthetic qualities can be made to vanish and
  aesthetic judgments can be undermined by taking a
  different perspective
• But this does not show thatfrom a particular
  perspectiveany aesthetic responses is as good as
  any other
• Nor should we accept the idea that any
  perspective is as appropriate as any other

48
Some framing of env. appreciation is awkward,
forced, and myopic

• Given the kind of beings we are
• Scales on which we operate
• Legitimate purposes of aesthetic appreciation
• Some ways of framing environmental appreciation
  are not acceptable
• Including the anti-environmentalists demand
• To frame out human intrusions
• To appreciate nature form irrelevant or distorted
  scales

49
Not denying some relativity in aesthetic value
judgments

• One person finds the coo coo sounds of a
  flock of doves to be extremely harmonious and to
  express a soothing calm a friend may find the
  same sound to be insistently obtrusive (Fisher)
• Perhaps the Grand Tetons will appear puny rather
  than majestic to someone who grew up in the
  Himalayas or comical to one contemplating the
  meaning of the French word teton
• The sound of an approaching snow mobile may well
  be soothing--rather than obnoxious--if one is
  lying hypothermic in the snow waiting for help,
  or if one is the owner of a snowmobile rental
  business threatened by a proposed ban on
  snowmobiles in national parks

50

Clear cuts may not appear to be eyesores
to those who hunt the deer feeding off the new
growth or to the logger who cut the trees
51
Resources to constrain aesthetic appreciation of
environment

• I now turn from doubts about objectivity in env.
  appreciation to factors that help with such
  objectivity and with aesthetic protectionism
• (1) Cognitive factors
• (2) Objectivity in emotional responses to nature
• (3) Disinterestedness of aesthetic responses

52
(1) Cognitive factors as constraints on
environmental aesthetic response

• For example
• Sometimes there are correct and incorrect
  categories with which to appreciate natural
  objects and they help distinguish appropriate
  from inappropriate aesthetic responses

53
Cute woodchuck or massive, awe
inspiring rat?

• Which aesthetic qualities are appropriate is it
  massive and awe-inspiring or is it cute?--depends
  on correctly categorizing the object

54

• Spectacular full moon or obnoxious satellite dish?

55

• Amazing lime green creek
  
  or revolting mine
  runoff?

56
Information about environment can improve our
aesthetic responses

• For example, knowing that one has encountered an
  ivory billed woodpecker thought to be extinct
  until recently, enhances and deepens ones
  aesthetic response
• Lacking information about the env. can impoverish
  our aesthetic response to it

57

Are Swamps Yucky?

• A negative aesthetic response to swamps based on
  a stereotyped and ignorant belief that they are
  bug-infested wastelands
• Unacceptable because the aesthetic attitude rests
  on false beliefs about swamps

58
False beliefs dont necessarily disqualify an
aesthetic response

• I may be excited by the grandeur of a blue
  whale. I may be moved by its size, its force,
  and the amount of water it displaces, etc., but I
  may think that it is a fish. Nevertheless my
  being moved by the grandeur of the blue whale is
  not inappropriate.
• Noel Carroll, On Being Moved By Nature (1993)
• But this aesthetic response remains appropriate
  only because the false beliefs have no bearing on
  the aesthetic response
• When false beliefs affect an aesthetic response,
  as in some of the above cases, they do undermine
  that response

59

• 
  Judgment
  about whether the trans-Alaska pipeline enhances
  or detracts from Alaskas beauty needs to be
  informed by knowledge of the environmental and
  social impacts of our societys oil addiction

60
More generally, knowledge of environmental
problems should inform environmental aesthetic
appreciation

• In a world where human dominance over nature was
  not so extensive, perhaps the sight of an 800
  mile-long pipeline through wild lands need not be
  appalling
• But in todays world--at least for those informed
  and properly appreciative of the massive human
  impact on the planet--the appropriate response to
  these types of human intrusions in nature should
  not be positive

61
No apartheid for aesthetics

• These points depend on rejecting formalistic and
  other narrow conceptions of aesthetic experience
• Aesthetics is not separate from the rest of life,
  and this means that there is no strict separation
  of aesthetics, ethics, and cognition

62
Are cognitive approaches best for aesthetic
protectionism?

• Marcia Eaton thinks they are
• She identifies numerous flawed environmental
  policies that are based on ecologically-ignorant
  appreciative responses
• For example
• The sentimental Bambi-image of deer as sweet and
  innocent ignores the ecological devastation they
  can cause and this makes it hard for forest
  managers to convince the public of the need to
  reduce deer populations

63
Forest fires have been prevented in part because
blackened forests strike people as ugly, with the
result that fire-adapted species are dying out
and many forests are tinder boxes
64

• As long as people want large, green, closely
  mowed yards no matter what the climate or soil or
  water conditions, they will continue to use
  polluting gasoline mowers and a toxic cocktail of
  fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides.
• Marcia Eaton, Professional Aesthetics and
  Environmental Reform
• Presumably they would not find these lawns so
  appealing once they consider their ecological
  consequences.
  
  

65
Cognitive approach to environmental aesthetics is
a double-edged sword

• Insisting that aesthetic responses to nature be
  informed by correct environmental knowledge can
  also lead to environmentally harmful behavior

66

• Some popular--but fallacious--ecological ideas
  are often environmentally beneficial
• Claims about
• Deep interconnections in nature
• Natures delicate balance
• Are significantly overstated but quite useful for
  environmental protection
• Thus insuring that ones aesthetic responses to
  nature are informed by scientific facts will not
  necessarily contribute to aesthetic
  protectionism.

67
(2) Objectivity in emotional responses to nature

• Noel Carroll argues that objectivity is possible
  not only in a knowledge-based environmental
  aesthetic, but also for one based on emotional
  arousal
• Just as it is inappropriate
• To be amused when a dog is hit by a car
• To dance gaily to somber music
• So it is inappropriate
• To be bored by a thundering waterfall crashing
  down on ones head
• To be soothed by the hum of snowmobiles

68
Better and worse emotional responses to
environment

• Emotions are underpinned by beliefs and have more
  or less appropriate objects
• For those properly sensitive to the massive,
  harmful human impacts on the planet
• Sounds of chainsaws will alarm
• Belching smokestacks will disgust
• Pollution sunsets will not strike them as
  appealing

69
Positive emotional responses to environmental
degradation

• Glee at the sight of a polluted river and the
  smell of its dead fish
• Satisfaction from seeing trophy homes on top of
  mountain ridges

• Manifests ignorance about the human impact on the
  planet, a skewed emotional constitution, or
  blinding self-interest

70
(3) Disinterestedness and positive aesthetic
responses to environmental degradation

• Many argue that aesthetic appreciation requires
  disinterestedness
• A freeing of the mind from self-interested and
  instrumental attention toward the aesthetic
  object
• E.g. If we react favorably to a play because we
  stand to make a lot of money from it, this is not
  an aesthetic response to the play
• Because it is not properly disinterested

71
Positive responses to env. degradation are often
self-interest and thus not properly aesthetic

• Clear-cuts may appear attractive to loggers or
  forestry executives
• Snowmobiles in the wilderness may sound
  harmonious to someone for whom it means more
  business or perhaps soothing to a person lying
  hurt and in need of evacuation
• But such responses are so infused with
  self-interest as to be disqualified from
  disinterested aesthetic response
• The developers aesthetic mentioned at the
  beginning may not be an aesthetic at all

72
Conclusions

• Environmental aesthetics should play an important
  role in environmental protection
• Aesthetic relativity and subjectivity do not
  cripple such a project
• Legitimate pluralism and relativity in responses
  to environmental beauty do not prevent
  distinguishing between better and worse aesthetic
  responses
• Env. aesthetics contains numerous resources for
  objectivity that allow it to play a useful role
  in environmental protection

73
(No Transcript)
74
Follow are hyperlink slides
75
Natural Beauty only a tie-breaker?

• An attempt to justify a ban on logging in the
  Pacific Northwests remaining old-growth forests
  solely in terms of these forests special beauty
  would be on very shaky ground if the ban would
  cause economic dislocation of thousands of
  loggers and mill workers.Only in this context
  (i.e., other things being equal) do aesthetic
  considerations seem compelling.
• Gary Varner, In Natures Interests (1998)

76

• If a doctor had to choose between giving one of
  two patients a heart, she could not justify her
  decision by saying that one of the patients was
  more beautiful than the other . . . But if a
  doctor cannot make a decision regarding who gets
  a heart based on aesthetics, how can
  environmentalists ask thousands of loggers to
  give up their jobs and way of life on the basis
  of aesthetics?
• Rob Loftis, Three Problems for the Aesthetic
  Foundations of Environmental Ethics (2003)

77

• A guide in Lewis and Clark Caverns kept
  introducing the stalagmites as Disney characters
  
• Look theres Pinocchios nose
• Such responses are superficial, irrelevant and
  distracting

78
Scenery Cult as Shallow Nature Appreciation

• Well-developed literature criticizing the
  inability of many to appreciate unscenic nature
• An aesthetic vice
• Scenery cult Appreciating only natures
  dramatic landscapes
• A trip to the national park involves driving
  though the park, stopping at scenic viewpoints
  for snap shots and the gift shop for postcards of
  the scenery
• A lazy appreciation interested only in easy
  beauty, the picturesque, and in visual
  appreciation rather than deeper, multi-sensuous
  engagement

79
Stereotyped responses are worse

• Ah, look,
  its Bambi!
• Isnt she
  cute?

80
Multisensuous and active

• Contrast appreciating a mountain lake by
• Gazing from the shore
• or
• Going for a swim
• Consider watching a storm through a window or
  appreciating the storm while outside

81
Self-indulgent responses are worse

• Look at the rainbow placed here for me!

82
Responses that distort, ignore or suppress
important truths about the objects of appreciation
Consider the romanticized view of wolves that
ignores their predatory lifestyle
83
John Donne on mountains

• God originally made the world a smooth sphere but
  then warped it in punishment for human sins
• His aesthetic judgment
• Warts, and pock-holes in the face of the earth

84

• Following are slides that are extra and cut from
  earlier versions of the presentation

85
Carlsons view that aesthetic appreciation of
humanized environments should focus on their
functionality

• If environmentalists are right that many human
  env. are unsustainable hence dysfunctional
• Then on Carlsons account of aesthetic
  appreciation of human envs, such environments are
  aesthetically negative

86
Carlson 2

• Thus sustainable developed human environments or
  undeveloped nature (assuming one holds some
  version of positive aesthetics)
• Are to be preferred aesthetically to typical
  human environments that are not sustainable
• Note that the issue of the functionality of human
  environments has significant dimensions of
  objectivity

87
Slides to insert

• Westvaco pollution slide
• Beach rip rap slides
• I of p house in marsh

88
Cuts

• If items in nature (trees, countryside,
  wilderness) were of low or negative aesthetic
  value, both practice of and justification for of
  environmental protection would be far weaker
• Show pict of trash
• Clear cuts, strip mines, toxic waste dumps,
  spewing sewage pipes, fish belly-up in the
  creeks, belching smokestacks, urban blight,
  junkyards, billboards, tacky neon
  strip-developments, and suburban sprawl.

89
Objections to Carlson

• One might object to a number of features of this
  view
• Carlsons cognitivism (the idea that aesthetic
  appreciation involves thought, knowledge, and
  understanding) is controversial
• Carroll argues that uniformed emotional arousal
  is an appropriate type of aesthetic app
• Carlsons idea that only science can provide the
  understanding of nature needed for aesthetic
  appreciation of it is also open to challenge
• ?To use an example from the literature
• ?If I do not know that a whale is a mammal rather
  than a giant fish, my awe at its size need not be
  an incorrect or false aesthetic response

90
Scenery cult

• There is a well developed literature criticizing
  the idea that the aesthetic appreciation of
  nature is appropriately limited to the, as if
  seeing nature from ready-made viewpoints (i.e.,
  getting out of ones car only at highway
  pullovers) was a serious way of appreciating the
  Natural Parks or nature in general.
• Ignoring (or worse) being unable to appreciate
  unscenic nature is an aesthetic vice
• A lazy response interested only in easy beauty
• Pict of scenic versus unscenic nature?

91
Paul Bunyon example? Here or later?
92
Fisher

• Suppose you are sitting in a hot tub in a city
  in the Arizona desert listening to the sounds
  around you. Do you just listen to the Western
  Warblers and the wind in the fruit and palm trees
  or do you (should you) also notice the sounds of
  hot tub jets and popping bubbles making a
  pleasant hissing on the water? Do you add or
  ignore the sounds of ventilator fans spinning hot
  air from the attics and occasional jet planes
  overhead? At Niagara Falls do I strain to hear
  birds in the forest over the constant roar of the
  water. . . . In the Tuscan countryside do I
  ignore the high pitched whining of mosquitoes?
  Shall I just focus on the loons from across the
  lake in Minnesota or shall I strain to hear
  others from more distant parts, and do they go
  together with the chattering of squirrels and the
  buzzing of flies?

93
Drop slide Permissible to frame out human
intrusions?

• For above Brady's multi-sensuous engagement
• Add
• Sound of snowmobile (sound too?)
• Teton valley with building superimposed on it?
• Scale up to see clear-cuts from a 200 year time
  scale
• Carrolls Teton large scale example not large
  scale when compared with the universe

94
Godlovitch

• The idea that certain framing decision in
  environmental aesthetic appreciation are more
  natural and fitting given the human constitution
  and our legitimate purposes also allows for a
  response to Stan Godlovitchs idea that
  traditional human aesthetic response to nature is
  sensually parochial and that the temporal and
  spacial scale dependence of our aesthetic
  response to nature are arbitrary

95
Godlovitchs relativity

• Smashing ice blocks heaved up by a river should
  be seen as no less aesthetically offensive than
  bulldozing the Navaho Sandstone Castles of
  Monument Valley, Arizona
• If we were giants, crushing a rock monument . .
  . would be no more aesthetically offensive than
  is flattening the odd sand castle is to us now.
  If our lives were measured in seconds, then
  shattering ice blocks would count as momentously
  coarse as using Bryce Canyon as a landfill (p.
  18)

96
Hh

• Delete next two bullets?
• Much as it is inappropriate to find it humorous
  when a dog is hit by a car, so to it is
  inappropriate to positively respond to human
  intrusions into wild nature.
• Such a response is likely to manifest ignorance
  about the human impact on the planet, a skewed
  emotional constitution, or such strong
  self-interest as to blind ones aesthetic
  responses (or to disqualify them)

97
(No Transcript)
98
Resistance to Carlsons scientific monism

• Not plausible that there is only one appropriate,
  correct, or true way to appreciate nature or
  natural objects
• Nor is it plausible that if knowledge of natural
  history fails to inform an env. aesthetic
  response, it becomes inappropriate, incorrect or
  false

99
Avoid the false dilemma

• One true or correct or appropriate way to
  appreciate nature

• Any appreciation of nature is as good as any other

• There are a plurality of better and worse ways to
  appreciate nature
• Is such a pluralistic objectivity sufficient for
  aesthetic protectionism?
• Seems repetitive?
• Yes so I removed to end.

100
Intentional design adds complexity that may
increase pluralism

• Removed slide
• Design can constrain appreciative responses but
  also
• Open avenues for interpretation
• And enable additional types of appreciative
  responses
• Consider a sand sculpture produced by an artist
  and the same pattern produced by nature
• May be a greater diversity in appropriate
  responses to the former than to the latter
• The sand sculpture has multiple meanings that the
  natural pattern of sand would not have
• Debates about what the artist was communicating
  and the relations of this sand sculpture to other
  sculptures are examples of complicating factors
• Art appreciation can be more complex and thus
  allow for a greater plurality and flexibility in
  the appropriate types of aesthetic response

101
Glenn Parsons thinks not

• Freedom and Objectivity in the Aesthetic
  Appreciation of Nature (2006) f
• Smell, touch and taste require close proximity
  and mountains are generally not the sort of
  things we ca feel or taste

102
So far I have argued

• It is not clear that aesthetic of nature is less
  objective than aesthetic of art
• There are a plurality of better and worse
  aesthetic response to nature, even though there
  is not one best or appropriate type of response
• Some relativity in aesthetic value judgments must
  be acknowledged
• That framing freedom in nature appreciation has
  limits and that there are more or less
  appropriate ways to frame environmental
  appreciation

103
Types of objectivity

• What objectivity is and is not
• Brady Not true, but reasonable, justifiable,
  communicable
• Parson Correct, true
• Add Parson paper quotes?
• Carlson true also?
• Objectivity Letting object be the guide rather
  than the subject
• Berleant Subject's emotions, beliefs, and
  memories determine aes response/judgment as much
  as does the env. appreciated.
• Subject could be guide if we all agreed and this
  allow for aes protectionism
• Saitos appreciating nature on its own terms
• Letting nature speak for itself tell its own
  story
• Carlson guided by the object
• Kind of objectivity I want is kind where we get
  judgments that these aes responses are more
  rational and appropriate than others.
• Epistemic determinism or at least constraint

104

• is constrained by While there are a plurality of
  acceptable aesthetic responses
• Develop a position in between monistic
  objectivism and anything-goes subjectivism that
  allows for a plurality of better and worse
  aesthetic responses
• Arguments for subjectivity (and responses)
• Lack of artistic design constraints
• Or audience conventions?
• Framing freedom
• Constraints on the plurality of aesthetic
  appreciations of nature
• Cognitive
• Limitations for env. protectionism
• Objectivity of affective response
• Disinterestedness

105

• Given the centrality of the duties of
  beneficence and nonmaleficence to our shared
  conceptions of morality, it is difficult to see
  how these prima facie duties to protect natural
  beauty could override duties generated by the
  existence of interests.
• For example, an attempt to justify a ban on
  logging in the Pacific Northwests remaining
  old-growth forests solely in terms of these
  forests special beauty would be on very shaky
  ground if the ban would cause economic
  dislocation of thousands of loggers and mill
  workers.Only in this context (i.e., other things
  being equal) that aesthetic considerations seem
  compelling.
• Gary Varner, In Natures Interests

106
Lots of agreement

• Like in ethics, in aes disagreement is often
  overemphasized
• Would we take seriously the assertion that grand
  canyon or Sistine chapel was ugly
• Eukletna lake slide
• But for the disa that exists, see below (why
  argue if like taste?)
• Also, Bradys reasons to explain this
  disagreement and how it could be resolved

107
Brady Why argue about aes judgments if mere
taste, personal preference

• Contrast with mere personal pref examples, like
  taste of coffee or favorite color

108
Donne mountain pock marks correct-incorrect

• Use with cubists works in 1913 judged to be crude
  and aes worthless grounded on standards for
  representational paintings.
• Incoherent, incomplete, crude, messy

109
Relativism undermine worth/value of nature
appreciation (compared to art)

• Superficiality problem
• And this matters for aes protectionism, because
  if this is not serious nor worthy, it cant
  provide much value for protecting the env.
• Dif from point that it cant guide env. Decisions
  because all is relative and no better/worse
  answer
• But Im now wondering what lack of
  worth/seriousness has to do with relativism?
  Need to make this case
• Is nature app possess a seriousness and worth
  approaching art app? Parsons 28
• Donne Second rate Turner quote Natures aes
  value is weak/trivial
• Going to a art gallery or the concert is a more
  serious, deeper, more valuable aes experience
  than is going for a walk in the woods.
• Nature app is just not as worthwhile as art
  appreciation
• What to make critical discourse possible
• Need to have responsible criticism and
  discourse fisher
• But Fisher and Budd turn lack of objectivity in
  nature app into a virtue gives us more freedom
  and responsibility, creativity, richer