Evaluating Positive Aesthetics

1. Evaluating Positive Aesthetics Ned Hettinger, Philosophy College of Charleston, Oct. 2011

2. Beautiful Nature Elk Mt. McKinley Cypress knee in duck weed Eklutna Lake

3. Ugly Nature? “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). Naked mole-rat Dead opossum Red Wolf scat Lappet-faced vulture Injured moose Lion with baboon

4. 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

5. Four conditions for an adequate PA • (1) Accommodate existence of negative aesthetics in nature • (2) Not apply to the rest of the world (3) Depend on the actual contingent characteristics of nature (4) Useful for conservation

6. 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 uglynature • 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

7. 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.” • 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? Yuriko Saito, 1998

8. 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 “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) • Arguments for equal beauty • Science insures equal beauty • “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 • Replies • 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

9. 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

10. Hargrove’s no negative qualities “According to positive aesthetics, nature, to the degree that it is natural (i.e., unaffected by human beings), is beautiful and has no negative aesthetic 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) • All of nature--perceived from any perspectives--is invariably aesthetically positive in every detail

11. Parsons’ on-balance individualism Allows for negative aesthetic qualities but claims any natural object will have greater positive aesthetic qualities insuring overall positive aesthetics Appropriateaesthetic 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). “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

12. Objections to Parsons’ beauty-making 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)?

13. 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) • Appropriate appreciation of nature must be informed by science (“scientific cognitivism”) Carlson’s science is aesthetic argument • Science uses aesthetic criteria • “A significant consideration in the creation and selection of scientific descriptions is whether or not they make the natural world appear aesthetically better . . . more unified, orderly, or harmonious” (Carlson, 2002) • Thus scientifically informed appreciation of nature will find it aesthetically positive • “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)

14. 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

15. 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

16. Rolston’s aesthetic holism and systemic beauty • Nature as a whole--and on the whole--has substantial beauty (it’s a “wonderland”) • Many types of natural items are invariably aesthetically positive • Allows for anomalous or isolated “individual ugliness in nature” and so avoids “programmatic nature romanticism” • “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) 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)

17. Support for Rolston’s aesthetic holism • Rolston’s contextualization • 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 • Earth’s tendency toward beauty • 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

18. 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

21. *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)