Holmes Rolston, “Valuing Aesthetic Nature”, Env. Ethics 1988

• Two issues

• Is Beauty in the world or in the eye of the beholder?

– Objectivity/subjectivity in nature beauty

• Positive Aesthetics

– Is all nature beautiful?

Objectivity/subjectivity of beauty

• Two senses of subjectivity/objectivity

• One: Beauty (aes value?) is in experiencer, not world

– Rolston yes

• Two: No better/worse, no appropriate or inappropriate aes responses to nature

– Rolston no

– Believes in objectivity in aes responses to nature

Miscellaneous

• Rolston’s is a Humean position?

• Suggests human exp of beauty is accidental, epiphenomenal

• “By chance nature echoes our aes taste”

• Ignores that natural selection might have helped shape our aesthetic tastes

– Carroll’s idea

Biophilia hypothesis

• Gordon H. Orians and Judith H. Heerwagen, "Evolved Responses to Landscapes," in Jerome H. Barkow, Leda cosmides and John Tooby, eds., The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), pages 555‑ 579.

• Judith H. Heerwagen and Gordon H. Orians, "Humans, Habitats, and Aesthetics," in Stephen R. Kellert and Edward O. Wilson, eds., The Biophilia Hypothesis (Washington, DC: Island Press, 1993), pages 138‑172.

• Roger S. Ulrich, "Biophilia, Biophobia, and Natural Landscapes," in Stephen R. Kellert and Edward O. Wilson, eds., The Biophilia Hypothesis (Washington, DC: Island Press, 1993), 73‑137.

What is in nature?

• Sci processes (and values they carry!)

• Predator/prey regulation, photosynthesis

• Nutritional value of the potato

Some value in nature, beauty not

• Beauty, like ethics, in human response to world and not in world

• Beauty a subjective value, not model for all value, as some value (biological value) is objective

Aes properties in nature “call for” certain responses (objectivity)

– We are not projecting these properties; they are there

– What is out there is aes worthy

– World is beautiful like it is mathematical

• Math experience comes from us, but mathematical properties are there and we map on to them with our mathematics

• So aes properties are in world and appro aes exp responds to them

Aes value does not depend on humans; nonhumans have aes exp

• Aes exp comes in diverse forms

• Higher aes exp (scenic beauty, sublime) only had by humans

• If aes exp accompanies physical satisfaction

– Eating a tasty meal

– Enjoying warmth of sun

• Surely some animals have these exp

Big-Horn Sheep Ram

• If we admire muscular strength and power of ram

• Ewe who is attracted to him and permits mating

• Experiences nothing of this?

• Consistent w/ Nat Sel that it registers in her experience

Peacock

• Peahen is attracted to peacock’s tail or it would be liability and nat selection would have never preserved it

• Unless deny an have exp at all, hard to deny have nascent, precursor to aes exp

All Nature Beautiful?

Elk bottom

Zebra

John Muir’s Positive Aes

• “None of nature’s landscapes are ugly so long as they are wild”

• “When you try to pick out one thing in the universe you will find it hitched to everything else in the universe”

Rolston’s Characterization of Positive Aes

• Landscapes always supply beauty, never ugliness

• Unfailingly generate favorable experience in the suitably perceptive

– Obviously, some don’t like swamps, deserts, prairies

• To say desert, tundra, volcanic eruption is ugly is to make a false statement and behave inappropriately

• Like clouds are never ugly, only more or less beautiful, so too, mountains rivers, forests, seashores, grasslands, cliffs, canyons cascades

– Never called for to say such places bland, dull, boring, chaotic

Rolston’s Pos Aes

• Not claiming

– All equally beautiful (equal beauty thesis)

– Nature perfectly beautiful-perfect beauty thesis

• Artificial reefs can increase beauty

• “Nature’s landscapes, almost w/o fail, have an essential beauty.”

• Area level judgment: Not every small piece of nature beautiful; applies to landscapes

Contras with other + aes views

• Carlson’s stronger view

– “Each natural thing, either with appropriate appreciation or at many, if not almost all, levels and conditions of observation, has substantial positive aesthetic value and little, if any negative aesthetic value.”

– Not just natural kinds, not just “essential beauty,” not just a little beauty.

Rolston grants some nature ugly

• Allow that some items in nature ugly when viewed in isolation

• “There is itemized individual ugliness in nature”

• Not embracing “programmatic nature romanticism”

Consider possible counter-examples to + nature aes

• “Failures in nature are omnipresent, all organisms and ecosystems fare finally ruined”

• Tourists take no pictures of these

• They are not picturesque

Putrid rotting elk carcass, full of maggots is revolting

In nature, as much is ragged and marred as beautiful

Bear Scat Aesthetically negative?

Ugliness diminished/overcome when viewed in proper context

– Move beyond a utilitarian perspective and see nature in own terms

– Seen from a landscape and ecosystem perspective these are not ugly; ugliness transformed in ecosystem perspective

– From a informed, systemic perspective only get positive aes response

– Each item must be seen in env. Context

• Judgment of ugliness is like looking at piece of a jigsaw puzzle and saying pieces are misshapen

Humans selected to find some things repulsive (rotting carcasses, excrement)

• But not ugly in the system of nutrient recycling

• Systemic beauty of body decaying

• Rotting Elk returns to humus and is recycled; maggots become flies, food for birds; natural selection leads to better adapted elk

Cognitive dimension necessary

• Such beauty is not so much viewed as experienced after ecological understanding gained

• Many of life’s riches aes exp not able to put on canvas or take picture of

• Natural history/science allows to aes app what might otherwise be aes neg

• Allows us to move beyond scenery cult

Lamb killed by Bobcat

Coyote Bloodthirsty killer?

Predation

• “Fierce and cruel they appear to us, but beautiful in the eyes of God”

John Muir on Alligators

Tiger

• Local disvalue to prey is value to predator and is systemic value

• Ugliness here is only a projection; like big bad wolf

Forest fire

• Recovery
from forest fire

• Releases nutrients, resets succession, helps regenerate shade intolerant trees.

Worrisome counterexamples to positive aesthetics

Three-Headed Frog Disfigured monstrous animals

Mt. Saint Helens

Infrequent catastrophes

• Nature can’t adapt and evolve in response to

• Ugly events as anomalies challenging general paradigm of nature’s landscapes w/o fail having essential beauty

• Helens recovery

Rolston general strategy

• Reinterpret local intrinsic ugliness as systemic instrumental beauty

• Shifting reference frames on us?

• No, insisting on context

• Ecology makes these intelligible, but not beautiful?

• How get from instrumentally valuable/nec to aes positive?

Positive aesthetics thesis not plausible for art

• Implausible to say artworks never badly done

– Yet does say this for virgin landscapes; more or less + formed

• Can be no failures in nature (whereas there can be in art), as no artistic intention

– Nature, unlike artist, can never fail as never tried

+ Aes for art at category level?

• Just as Rolston limits his + aes to landscape level, systemic perspective

• What if we limit + aes claim for art to the category level

• Each type of art is aes positive: Jazz music, folk, impressionism, ballet, surrealism

– Some instances of these are ugly

• But unlike Rol account for itemized ugliness in nature, don’t want to say that bad artwork looses its ugliness when viewed in broader context

• That nature isn’t picturesque, doesn’t mean it is not beautiful

• Biological sense of aes value

• Inappropriate to drive through a park and harvest scenic resources only

• “As if nature that can’t serve us must please us”

Scenery cult as a bad reason for rejecting positive aes

Fall Color

Are Lawns Beautiful? Deserve A Positive Aes Response?

• Need ecological knowledge to know why not.

• Relies on env. unfriendly herbicides, pesticides

• Insensitive to indigenous plants

• Ignores local climate (water use)

• “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