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Fact and Fiction in the Aesthetic Appreciation of Nature

Marcia Eaton

Mission/Issues

If positive aesthetic responses lead to care we must establish a way to generate aesthetic response that lead to sustainable care

if people see how beautiful such ecosystems (coral reefs) are, they will tend to act in ways that will better protect these and other environments

Some actions are viewed as ways of caring for landscape but are actually harmful to it

Mowing lawns with small gasoline engines Fertilizing with chemicals that pollute the ground water

What is it to have an aesthetic experience of nature? When is this experience of the right sort?

Marcia Eaton on Ethics and Aesthetics

Believes that meaningful lives are as much aesthetic as moral and involve these two dimensions in interwoven dependence
Ethics and Aesthetics are inseparable but different

Aesthetic appreciation should be ethical

Cognitive Approach to nature appreciation is important

Can help us locate its aesthetic properties and sustain our attention to them If you appreciate something under the wrong category, you can make appreciative mistakes Aesthetic response to not nature that are not guided by knowledge frequently lead to bad environmental policies

Carlsons Cognitive Model

Eaton supports this approach of aesthetic experience of nature

Aesthetic appreciation of nature must be directed by knowledge about it Aesthetic experience consists of scrutiny of an object and a response based upon it

Scrutiny based upon and enriched by scientific understanding of the workings of nature Response must be to nature and not something else

Emily Brady: Imagination

Claims that Carlson fails to account for the significance of imagination in our experiences of nature
Eaton believes fiction (manifested of imagination) plays large role in shaping way culture perceives & conceives environment

Eaton: Must have understanding of role that artistic culture plays in shaping human attitudes toward environment

Understanding can then be used to establish sustainable practices

Emily Brady: Imagination

Eaton: Brady makes common mistake of leaving humans out of nature

Few places that are not to some degree a product of human creation Humans are natural

Eaton: fiction construed broadly to refer to objects created by and appealing to the imagination Brady: imagining interpreted as visualizing or otherwise coming up with ranges of possibilities

Brady & Kant

Brady agrees with Immanuel Kants position that a free play of imagination is central to human aesthetic pleasure

Respond to objects as we please Free to think of a tree as a person, animal, tower etc.

Brady/Carlson agree in basic distinctions between artistic and natural appreciation

Natural objects lack intentional acts of an artist which could give us cues that direct our attention and thus imagination

No need to be concerned with what nature is intended to express or how it functions as an object freedom is expanded

Importance of Knowledge

Eaton does not think that this distinction between art & nature, entails that information about context is either nonexistent or irrelevant
Eaton/Carlson insist that knowledge concerning how natural objects function within a particular context plays a major role in appreciating nature

Ex: failure to understand proper function of certain trees or forest soils has led to mismanagement of forests, even when motivated by providing aesthetic value

Forests protected from fires, (b/c burned out areas may be seen as ugly) detrimental to plants whose growth is stimulated in burned and blackened soil (warms more quickly in the sun)

Brady on Cognitive Model

Fears cognitive model precludes access to richness of imaginative insight

Insight: aesthetic experience, interpreted in terms of imagination Ex: contemplating the fresh whiteness of a lamb and its small fragile stature evokes images of purity and naivet (152)

Too much reliance on knowledge may fail to provide framework that is clearly aesthetic

Mixed up with environmental values (ecological, historical, cultural)

How we should imagine

Brady: Imagining well

Spotting aesthetic potential Having a sense of what to look for Knowing when to clip the wings of imagination

Preventing irrelevant, shallow, nave, sentimental, responses that could impoverish appreciation

Eaton: Can responding to a white lamb with thoughts of innocence be regarded as shallow or nave?

We rely on Cognitive Model to determine this

Eaton: Importance of Cognitive Model

Knowledge should do more than deepen the experiences that imagination provides
If we want to preserve and design sustainable landscapes, knowledge should direct these experiences

Issue: imaginative fancies-often directed by fictional creationscan and do lead to harmful actions
Fiction has had significant influence on attitudes, images and metaphors with which we approach nature

Tendencies to sentimentalize or demonize misconceptions

Influence of Fiction

Bambi

Has made it more difficult to respond to deer in terms appropriate to the role they increasingly play in the ecological systems they have come to dominate Increase in deer population/decrease in several songbirds and tree species Tend to respond as fictional account directs us to

Noble deer, who never kill Teaches children not to be violent, but also gives false impressions about actual effect of overpopulation of deer forests

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Influence of Fiction

Wetlands

Often conceptualized as swamps inhabited by slime monsters!

Fear of death by quicksand is common

Would be hard to convince lovers of The Lion King, if lion populations started to threaten environment

Influence of Fiction

Richard Formans book, Land Mosaics, discusses importance of protecting keystone species that play central role in ecosystem

Cassowary bird Territorial bird, as tall as and able to rip the guts out of a man Normally inhibits large forests Logging/fragmentation have eliminated it from several areas Eaton guesses this bird is depicted as a terrible monster in fiction, making it harder to save--but is fiction to blame for its downfall?

Eaton: Importance of Imagination

Fiction and imagination in general, can play a positive role in developing a sound nature aesthetic, if and only if, it is based upon, tempered by, directed and enriched by solid ecological knowledge
3 Stages in the examination of unfamiliar landscapes

*One decides whether to explore or move on If one decides to stay/explore, one the begins to gather info. Finally, one decides whether to stay longer or move on *flights of imagination may be important factor during step 1 Being deceptively intrigued by a man-eating bird may be what leads one to learn more about Cassowary Bird.

Eaton: Importance of Imagination

Imagination is probably essential in producing people who are able to envision new and more successful ways of designing and maintaining environments
Evidence shows that humans are genetically inclined to respond positively (be more calm) to nonthreatening nature

Genetic reasons that we prefer savannas to wetlands Education is required to show people that wetlands etc. are also valuable

Eaton: Importance of Imagination

Our attitudes toward nature are largely determined by metaphors (from literature and other arts) with which we conceptualize it

hit rock bottom or get at root of problem in order for ideas to blossom

Imaginatively creating new metaphors may allow us to think outside the box

Fiction must still remain at the service of facts

Eaton: Revisits Cognitive Model

There are sustainable environments that have had no help from scientific knowledge
Admits that the priority of the cognitive model is not universally required for an adequate nature aesthetic

Aesthetic and ecological planning are always site specific

Colin Turnbull meets man dancing with forest in Congo

Shows use of imagination and independence from scientific knowledge

How much time would you spend appreciating this flower?

Eaton: Revisits Cognitive Model

Some object that insisting upon scientific basis for appreciation of nature takes all the fun out of it Eaton does not believe that knowledge kills aesthetic pleasure, but that it increases it Aesthetic interest is not separate from our other interests as human beings In learning what to look for, we achieve the very possibility of seeing

Minnesota trout lily grows only in two (Minnesota) counties on earth!

ONLY with knowledge will sustainable practices develop

Conclusions

While recognizing benefits of fiction/imagination, one must constantly be aware of its possible harm
When we read thing like Bambi, we must remind ourselves to balance the story with an understanding of relation between an increasing deer population and a decreasing songbird population A proper combination of the delight that human beings take in flights of imagination with solid cognitive understanding of what makes for sustainable environments, will produce the kind of attitudes/preferences that will generate the kind of ethical care we strive for