Natural functions and the aesthetic appreciation of inorganic nature

British Journal of Aesthetics

Volumn 44, Issue 1, 2004, Pages 44-56

  Parsons, Glenn ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO   (Canada)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 60949600883     PISSN: 00070904     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/bjaesthetics/44.1.44     Document Type: Article

References (42)

1. See Marjorie Hope Nicolson, Mountain Gloom and Mountain Glory: The Development of the Aesthetics of the Infinite (Ithaca, NY: Cornell U.P., 1959).
2. Nick Zangwill, 'Formal Natural Beauty', Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, vol. 101 (2001), pp. 209-224.
3. reprinted in The Metaphysics of Beauty (Ithaca, NY: Cornell U.P., 2001), pp. 112-126 (hereafter MB; all page references to Zangwill's work are to this volume).:
4. See, for instance, Kendall Walton, 'Categories of Art', Philosophical Review, vol. 79 (1970), pp. 334-367;
5. Yuriko Saito, 'The Aesthetics of Unscenic Nature', Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, vol. 56 (1998), pp. 101-111;
6. and Malcolm Budd, 'The Aesthetic Appreciation of Nature', British Journal of Aesthetics, vol. 36 (1996), pp. 207-222.
7. Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Judgement [1790], trans. J. C. Meredith (Oxford: Oxford U.P., 1928), §16-
8. Ronald Hepburn, 'Contemporary Aesthetics and the Neglect of Natural Beauty', in B. Williams and A. Montcfiorc (cds), British Analytical Philosophy (London: Routlcdge & Kcgan Paul, 1966), P. 295.
9. See Walton, 'Categories of Art', p. 334.
10. Zangwill disputes another potential counter-instance, Hepburn's claim that a natural rock face may have different aesthetic properties if we bring to its appreciation knowledge of the 'geological processes and turmoils that produced its pattern' ("Contemporary Aesthetics and the Neglect of Natural Beauty', pp. 301-302). Zangwill asks 'What if the geological theories in question arcwrong? Would our experience then he worthless?' 'Surely not', he replies, apparently concluding that our appropriate appreciation of the rock face does not depend on our beliefs about its causal history (MB, p. 120, n. 16). Granting that future changes in geological theory will alter our aesthetic experience of the rock face pattern, however, it hardly follows that our present appreciation is worthless. An appreciation of a rock that is actually produced by erosion as the product of sedimentation instead is surely worth more, is more appropriate, than the mistaken appreciation of it as an artefact of alien civilization or the handiwork of leprechauns. Admittedly, if this is so then we are not achieving complete correctness in our present aesthetic appreciation of the rock face pattern. Who said, though, that correctly appreciating nature's beauties would be easy? Elsewhere Zangwill argues that similar cases of non-formal art appreciation, supposedly dependent upon knowledge other than that of function, are not truly instances of non-formal aesthetic appreciation (see his 'In Defense of Moderate Aesthetic Formalism', Philosophical Quarterly, vol. 50 [2000], pp. 476-493
11. reprinted in MB, pp. 82-101).
12. For a response, see my 'Moderate Formalism as a Theory of the Aesthetic', Journal of Aesthetic Education (forthcoming).
13. For discussion of this selected functions, see Peter Godfrey-Smith 'A Modern History Theory of Functions', Noûs, vol. 28 (1994), pp. 344-362.
14. and Karen Neander, 'The Teleological Notion of Function', Australasian Journal of Philosophy, vol. 69 (1991), pp. 454-468.
15. This is a controversial formulation because it is not clear whether the concept of 'design' can properly he applied to the action of a non-intentional process such as natural selection. For discussion of this issue, see Colin Allen and Marc Bekoff, 'Biological Function, Adaptation, and Natural Design', Philosophy of Science, vol. 62 (1995), pp. 609-622.
16. Zangwill is not the only aesthetician to conclude from such considerations that functional aesthetic appreciation is limited to organic natural items. After describing a form of aesthetic judgement involving each part of a thing 'performing satisfactorily or outstandingly well its natural function or "purpose"', Malcolm Budd notes that 'not every kind of natural thing is, as such, a thing with natural functions. Clouds, rivers, valleys, rainbows, stalactites, and many other natural items do not have natural functions and are not composed of parts that perform such functions' ('Delight in the Natural World: Kant on the Aesthetic Appreciation of Nature. Part I: Natural Beauty', British Journal of Aesthetics, vol. 38 [1998], pp. 1-18 at pp. 11-14). To account for the aesthetic appreciation of such items, Budd suggests that we admit 'the possibility that aesthetic pleasure might be derived from the formed matter of an object seen as falling under a non-purposive, non-functional, concept, so that its being something of that kind is integral to the pleasure' (pp. 13-14; my italics).
17. Allen Carlson, 'On Aesthetically Appreciating Human Environments', Philosophy and Geography, vol. 4 (2001), pp. 9-24 at p. 13.
18. He writes: 'Things such as roadsides, cornfields, gardens, graffiti, churches and office buildings. All such things have a function, a purpose; and they are what they are in virtue of what they are meant or intended to accomplish. In appropriate aesthetic appreciation of these things, the first and most important request for "outside information" is not, as it is for both pristine nature and pure art, "What is it and how did it come to be as it is?" Rather the primary question is "What does it do and why does it do it?"' See Aesthetics and the Environment: The Appreciation of Nature, Art and Architecture (London: Routledge, 2000), pp. 134-135.
19. See also 'On Aesthetically Appreciating Human Environments' and 'Appreciating Agricultural Landscapes', Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, vol. 43 (1985), pp. 301-312.
20. reprinted as ch. 12 of Aesthetics and the Environment.
21. See Robert Cummins, 'Functional Analysis', Journal of Philosophy, vol. 72 (1975), pp. 741-765 at P. 753.
22. Sec Cummins, 'Functional Analysis', p. 762.
23. The qualification 'in the right sort of way' is usually meant to express the constraint that the functional effect must play some significant explanatory role with respect to the capacity analysed. For instance, Cummins requires that the functional effect be simpler and different in type than the systemic capacity in question. For further development of the systemic capacity theory and discussion of its role in the natural sciences, see Paul Sheldon Davies, Norms of Nature: Naturalism and the Nature of Functions (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001).
24. and Ron Amundson and George V. Lauder, 'Function Without Purpose: The Uses of Causal Role Function in Evolutionary Biology', Biology and Philosophy, vol. 9 (1994), pp. 443-469.
25. Cf. The examples of the 'promiscuity' of Cummins's functions discussed by Karen Neander, 'Functions as Selected Effects: The Conceptual Analyst's Defense', Philosophy of Science, vol. 58 (1991), pp. 168-184 at P. 181.
26. and Ruth Garrett Millikan, 'In Defense of Proper Functions', Philosophy of Science, vol. 56 (1989), pp. 288-302 at p. 294.
27. Paul Guyer, 'Free and Adherent Beauty: A Modest Proposal', British Journal of Aesthetics, vol. 42 (2002), pp. 357-366 at p. 365. Although I do not consider them here, Guyer also describes two other ways in which functions can affect aesthetic judgement.
28. Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker (New York: W. W. Norton, 1986), p. 24.
29. This is not to suggest that the aesthetic appreciation of selected 'design' proceeds in entirely the same way as that of conscious design. For instance, natural selection often faces constraints in starting materials that make its productions more like 'odd arrangements and funny solutions', to use Stephen J. Gould's phrase, than optimally engineered designs (See Gould's essay, 'The Panda's Thumb' in The Panda's Thumb: More Reflections in Natural History [New York: W. W. Norton, 1980J, pp. 19-26 at p. 20).
30. Carlson refers to this sort of aesthetic appreciation as 'order-oriented', in contrast with 'designoriented': for discussion, see his 'Appreciating Art and Appreciating Nature', ch. 7 of Aesthetics and the Environment.
31. For discussion of different formulations of positive aesthetics, see Allen Carlson, 'Nature and Positive Aesthetics', Environmental Ethics, vol. 6 (1984), pp. 5-34;
32. Stan Godlovitch, 'Valuing Nature and the Autonomy of Natural Aesthetics', British Journal of Aesthetics, vol. 38 {1998), pp. 180-197;
33. Malcolm Budd, 'The Aesthetics of Nature' Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, vol. 100 (2000), pp. 137-157;
34. Glenn Parsons, 'Nature Appreciation, Science and Positive Aesthetics', British Journal of Aesthetics, vol. 42 (2002), pp. 279-295;
35. and Allen Carlson, 'Hargrove, Positive Aesthetics, and Indifferent Creativity', Philosophy and Geography, vol. 5 (2002), pp. 224-234.
36. Budd, 'The Aesthetics of Nature', pp. 147 and 149.
37. Carlson, 'Hargrove, Positive Aesthetics, and Indifferent Creativity', p. 234, n. 36.
38. See Matt Ridley, Nature via Nature: Genes, Experience and What Makes Us Human (Toronto: Harper Collins Canada, 2003), p. 132.
39. On selected malfunctions, see Millikan, 'In Defense of Proper Functions'.
40. and Neander, 'Functions as Selected Effects', pp. 180-181.
41. Describing his notion of natural function, Cummins writes 'if the function of something in a system s is to pump, then it must he capable of pumping in s' ('Functional Analysis', p. 757).
42. For concurring views, see Millikan, 'In Defense of Proper Functions', p. 294.