# ‘Scientific Knowledge and the Aesthetic Appreciation of Nature’,  ## Metadata - Author: [[Samantha Vice]] - Full Title: ‘Scientific Knowledge and the Aesthetic Appreciation of Nature’, - Category: #articles - Summary: insert summary - My notes: - Summary: The author examines how knowledge, particularly functional knowledge, impacts our perception and appreciation of nature, especially animals. They argue that functionalism has not convincingly shown that this knowledge affects perception as needed for proper aesthetic appreciation. Ultimately, the discussion raises questions about the relationship between knowledge and our ability to appreciate beauty in the natural world. - URL: https://academic.oup.com/bjaesthetics/article/64/4/603/7724996 ## LLM Chats ## NotebookLM ## LLM Audio ## Highlights > My primary aim is not to establish whether cognitive penetration in the relevant sense actually occurs; as we shall see, the evidence for and against it is controversial. Instead, my interest is in how an approach in environmental aesthetics assumes and depends upon some substantial claims about the effect of cognition on perception. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jh50ksey3gqen9gnezqy0b32)) > Branko Mitrović explores, and rejects, a stronger claim: that the perceiver in an ‘act of perception must operate (consciously or unconsciously) with some classification of the object of perception’ (2018: 147). He distinguishes this thesis from the thesis that cognition can *sometimes* affect perception, which he, like Stokes, calls the thesis of cognitive penetration (Mitrović, 2018: 156). Mitrović argues that while some perception may be affected by cognition (and Stokes does not argue that all perception is affected), empirical evidence and philosophical analysis support the view that ‘(some) objects or properties can be perceived independently of the way they are classified by the perceiver’ (2018: 147; and Mitrović 2013). A formalist aesthetic appreciation is therefore possible.2 The evidence he draws on to argue against the stronger claim is also used in debates about cognitive penetration, and the consequences for aesthetics are similar. I shall concentrate on Stokes’s weaker claim of cognitive penetrability, and shall outline his understanding of the phenomenon below. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jh50tm6szrc7qchrwkfar86q)) > While Stokes and Mitrović take the debate about the relation between knowledge and perception to the aesthetics of art, it is also relevant to natural aesthetics. The conceptualist approach to natural aesthetics assumes that knowledge affects perception, an assumption that is the foundation of the normative claim that aesthetic attention to nature is better insofar as it is informed by knowledge. Philosophical and empirical research into cognition and perception is therefore relevant in assessing the grounds and plausibility of an influential approach to natural aesthetics and, in particular, the aesthetics of animals. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jh50vmrh21kk3mpk4nykgg5y)) > In his influential work, Zenon Pylyshyn offers a definition that concentrates on the relation between the contents of perceptual and cognitive processes. It requires that the perceptual system be sensitive ‘in a semantically coherent way, to the organism’s goals and beliefs, i.e., it can be altered in a way that bears some logical relation to what the person knows’ (Pylyshyn 1999: 343). ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jh510xm1q3pj0jbz86yt6t86)) > The version that is relevant to my purposes, however, concentrates on the influence of cognitive states on the quality or phenomenology of the subject’s perceptual experiences rather than on the semantic or inferential relations between them. I will focus on this version in what follows. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jh510ztm9dakenp28bptg0jp)) > Intuitively, there are grounds for belief in both the penetrability and impenetrability of perception. On the one hand, expertise is non-controversially thought to affect perception, not only in aesthetics. For example, radiologists read scans, sonar operators interpret the sounds of submarines, mechanics interpret the sound of engines and the ‘feel’ of the car, and breeders ‘see’ productive and economic potential in an animal’s conformation. ⁠ ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jh512cw1vx5kw27xez4p39g6)) > On the other hand, if all perception were penetrated by cognitive states, how would we survive in the world at all? As Mitrović says, ‘human beings could not have survived in their physical environment if they did not possess the ability to see the shapes of things in a way that is unaffected by their beliefs or expectations’ (2018: 160). ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jh5126bn0phrnm7qgcwgr99b)) > First, the relevant cognitive states do not include those a-rational and sub-intentional structures and rules that guide early vision, and that Gombrich (1962) and Arnheim (1974) drew on in their studies of art and perception. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jh5149hqk1cjs5fdnyj5mrbk)) > Second, the role of cognition in perception must not come down to non-controversial cognitive effects like conscious shifts of attention, the formation of judgements, or the utilization of memory. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jh513w2gvsr8sg4zy5fa7skd)) > It has been argued that many scenarios taken to be evidence of cognitive penetration in fact involve these alternatives, and the empirical evidence both for and against cognitive penetration remains controversial (Stokes 2013, 2015; Machery 2015; Firestone and Scholl 2016). In Edouard Machery’s term, the ‘locus’ of the alleged influence can be difficult to determine, even in experimental conditions (2015: Sec. 2). That is, it is difficult ‘to ascertain where exactly in the information processing flow’ cognitive states ‘exert their causal influence’ (2015: 59). ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jh5162ctg56esxw8q124cctz)) > My aim is to explore how these debates have bearing on debates within natural aesthetics, and how a functionalist natural aesthetics assumes the phenomenon of cognitive penetration. While I shall later argue that functionalism does not incontrovertibly offer the best explanation of the aesthetic experience of animals, I do not need to take a side on whether it *could* offer the best explanation. Regardless of whether or not genuine cases of the relevant kind of cognitive penetration occur, conceptualism assumes that they do. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jh517sh6nxef7ze2pba8s0ck)) - Note: slightly dissapointing. > Stokes suggests the following interpretation of cognitive *penetrability*:6 > > A perceptual experience E is cognitively penetrated if and only if (1) E is causally dependent upon some cognitive state C and (2) the causal link between E and C is internal and mental. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jh518wyscrjp64yvxgfn7vw8)) > The ‘phenomenal character of one’s visual or auditory or other perceptual experience depends non-trivially upon a background belief, desire or other cognitive state’ (2013: 650). Cases of attention shifts will not count as cognitive penetration on this view. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jh519qbzsrrk3wav0ey5x20z)) - Note: good, although it might be interesting to think about what is going on here. Does attention shifting also give rise to phenomenal change? Don't attention patterns depend on recognising types of objects? > whether perceptual learning counts as an instance of cognitive penetration is disputed. On some accounts, it does not. Only synchronous—immediate and simultaneous—effects of cognition on perception are cases of cognitive penetration. On others, diachronous effects, where the cognition is prior to the particular act of perception, count as cognitive penetration as well. In these cases, the perceptual system has already been affected by cognition before the particular act of perception at issue (Cecchi 2014: 64). Perceptual learning is clearly diachronous and is assumed by conceptualists to occur, whether or not it counts as cognitive penetration. We can then ask whether conceptualists include synchronous cognitive influences when they claim that knowledge affects aesthetic appreciation. I shall return to this issue. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jh51fkxt2rehegh10c1jrmc6)) > draws on empirical studies that support the view that both high- and low-level content is represented in perception, and, in particular, on Susanna Siegel’s work on the phenomenology of perception of high-level content. Siegel (2006) argues that once we have acquired the concept of ‘pine tree’, for instance, the high-level property of ‘being a pine tree’ will be represented in perception. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jh51jepza53kfstmdbjnenwt)) > Conceptualization in aesthetics assumes and requires perception of high-level properties, so I concentrate on these. Being a ‘found object’, or an ‘altarpiece from the medieval Siena school’, or a ‘futurist’ painting, for example, are high-level properties of an artwork, and the conceptualist view is that our perception of artworks will be different—and better—when they are perceived under these categories. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jh51mcpw4prx4n3vxxxdc9qm)) > One of the central commitments of natural aesthetics is that we ought to appreciate nature in ways true to nature, and Malcolm Budd makes attending to nature *as* nature a minimal conceptualist constraint for appropriate appreciation. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jh51rt52bbmys2kyjf5ckjeg)) > A more substantial conceptualism in natural aesthetics requires not only that we attend to natural objects as natural, but that we categorize them in the terms given by the natural sciences, particularly biology and ecology. Accounts differ as to how specialist this knowledge should be, with some accepting rough ‘folk scientific’ knowledge and others demanding more systematic and informed knowledge. But without some kind of scientific knowledge, Allen Carlson argues, ‘we do not know how to appreciate [a natural object] appropriately and are likely to miss its aesthetic qualities and value’ (Carlson 2008: 227). By informing us of the nature of the object, science can therefore ‘both promote and enhance aesthetic appreciation of the natural world’ (2008: 227), and can provide the criteria for assessing our aesthetic judgements as more or less appropriate. Patricia Matthews says that one must ‘perceive the object under the scientific category, not simply have the knowledge in question’ (Matthews 2008: 196), and such perception would certainly represent high-level properties—that this plant, for instance, is an alien; that this expanse of sand and mud is a tidal basin; that this animal is an apex predator. The point of requiring knowledge is that it changes and improves aesthetic attention, and if our categorizations are incorrect, our attention is less appropriate. This view certainly assumes that we perceive objects under categories, that our perception of an object is dependent on how we categorize it, and that high-level properties are represented in perception. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jh51svn70qcepwe58b8y0dv6)) > • 1. Perception must be penetrated by cognition in both a causal and internal sense. > • 2. The best explanation of the phenomenon must be that of cognitive penetration, rather than of attention shift, judgement, memory, or intra-perceptual effects. > • 3. The cognition must make a difference to the phenomenology of perception, such that if a perceiver does not have the knowledge, she would not have the experience she did. > Further, in aesthetics: > • 4. The relevant cognitive penetration must affect high-level properties of perceptual experience. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jh51wk9ay9wnvjz28xhtbnst)) > While it is not always made explicit, conceptualism generally is a thesis about both perception and appreciation of what is perceived. Functionalism then provides a particular account of the kind of knowledge and cognitive activity required for perception and aesthetic appreciation. According to functionalism in natural aesthetics, the beauty of natural organic objects inheres in their successful functioning as members of their biological, functional kinds, and appreciating them aesthetically requires that we appreciate them as instantiations of those kinds. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jh527resp7x0pr3p9x04923p)) > Functionalism is not usually presented as the view that all beauty is functional beauty. Many argue that organic nature is most appropriately appreciated in functional terms; some that knowledge of function must be used in the appreciation of all natural objects, organic and non-organic.13 More often, however, it is presented as one significant kind of beauty, so that fitness for function is sufficient for beauty, but not necessary—the view of Glenn Parsons and Allen Carlson in their monograph (Parsons and Carlson 2008; and Parsons 2007). Others think of it as a contributing element to overall beauty. For instance, Ned Hettinger writes of a scene of a predator bringing down a prey animal that ‘disvalue and ugliness, though present, are intermingled with and productive of value and beauty’ (Hettinger 2010: 132). ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jh531hb1dbz73515ay70qjrt)) > A philosophically interesting version demands an internal account of function, according to which beauty inheres in or arises from function rather than merely contributing to or not inhibiting it. On the latter ‘external’ view, beauty would not depend on the nature of the object, and so would not accommodate the commitment central to natural aesthetics (Parsons and Carlson 2008: 122). Parsons expresses an ‘internal’ conception when he notes that ‘it is not merely that the shape of the cheetah’s body is attractive, and also happens to be functional, by allowing it to reach great speeds. Rather, the shape of its body is attractive, in part, *because* it is functional’ (Parsons 2007: 163–64). ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jh5391er24e5gk0pj5gv1v32)) > The position allows that scenes or objects we might find distressing (e.g. violent or conducive to suffering) or immediately aesthetically ugly (e.g. broken, decayed) might nonetheless have aesthetic merit, if viewed functionally. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jh539zgbby9atpjvqmps0qwy)) > We often categorize and appreciate animals in terms of their functional kinds—as predator or prey, as a lion or black rhino, as a carnivore or herbivore. Many people go on safari to view specimens of the charismatic megafauna, and it matters for the success of the outing that they see representative instances of a variety of species. Let us grant the plausibility of this approach to wild animals. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jh53d6q63s0c5k0dw8dct6n9)) > Parsons and Carlson write that knowledge of function will ‘alter’ perception (2008: 92). More strongly, they require that we also understand *how* a correctly categorized object carries out its function (2008: 93–94). Knowledge of what the function is often makes it clear how the object fulfils that function, but the two can come apart. Looking at a complex machine with knowledge of what its function is, for instance, may not be sufficient for us to see its functionality. It might only become apparent when we understand what its parts do and how they contribute to the successful functioning of the whole. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jh53hbtt7ff5pybsr3jb2kgt)) > Siegel’s method of phenomenal contrast would ask us to contrast seeing a cheetah before I knew much about it, and then after I can categorize it as a member of the *Felidae* family, the world’s fastest land mammal, a predator, a danger to impala, and so on. I would learn that the distinctive black lines running down from the inner corners of a cheetah’s eyes to its mouth, the ‘malar stripes’, are not only elegant, but reflect sun from its eyes and help it focus on its prey. Perhaps my experiences are relevantly different before and after I acquired this knowledge, but whether that is because my perception is now directly altered by my knowing something about the functionality of its features is not easy to ascertain. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jh53w9ahqnmhaeq0dpqjhy9s)) > ‘nothing but bounce and stab / And a ravening second’ ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jh544sn146kg7jvtegczgmd9)) > As a final point about functionalism’s reliance on the thesis of cognitive penetrability, note that proponents also need to make the case that in the light of knowledge, we perceive the high-level property of fitness, and not another property (whether high- or low-level). ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jh545svr5srb47tvb13qe2fx)) > Further, even if I am appreciating fitness, it could be in the external sense, whereby I infer or already know that the beauty of the animal is a sign of fitness and does not hinder it, rather than experiencing it as inhering in the animal’s fitness. Perhaps we are really admiring formal qualities—the glossy texture of the healthy bear’s fur and the way it reflects the sunlight, the striking colours of parrots, the line of the giraffe’s improbable neck—while also knowing or inferring that these are signs of healthy functioning. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jh54db93xkn19px83640snk4)) > However, being streamlined and being fit for function often seem to collapse into each other. In many cases in which we perceive an animal as fit, it is in virtue of its being streamlined, elegant and economical in line. In such cases, what we perceive may be those properties, rather than fitness. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jh54dzcn8j64pg9tfj8tvgrp)) > Stokes presents empirical evidence that both high- and low-level properties are represented in perception and that both may be affected by cognition, and he concludes that ‘the acquisition of aesthetic concepts is a genuine bit of learning’ (2014: 16). One can learn ‘how gracefulness looks or sounds’, for example; this is ‘not a basic perceptual capacity, but one that comes only after one learns about aesthetic appreciation’ (2014: 14). If correct, the evidence would also support the possibility of functionalist appreciation. ‘Fitness’, then, could be represented in perception as a high-level property to those who have the relevant knowledge. I do not wish to deny this; rather, my concern has been to explore what functionalism needs to establish in order for it to be a robust theory of the aesthetic appreciation of animals. It may be the case that we cannot empirically settle this issue, here or in other cases of aesthetic experience (or, for that matter, any experience). Functionalism is not alone in this; all conceptualist accounts face the possibility that the assumptions on which they rely are defeasible. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jh54frapev50cp7eea5xntgq)) > The debate about the scope of cognitive penetration does not seem close to resolution. Regardless of how one defines cognitive penetration, diachronous perceptual learning is a central component of conceptualism in aesthetics. However, conceptualists also have the synchronous effects of knowledge in mind. In the company of an art or nature expert, or after acquiring new knowledge ourselves and applying it for the first time, we can be brought to see something in a new light. Conceptualism therefore depends on the thesis of cognitive penetrability in a narrower, synchronous interpretation, and on perceptual learning, whether or not the latter counts as an instance of cognitive penetration as well. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jh54hz8c1fny5x915qzf8eg4)) > Knowledge that is other than scientific and functional will affect perception in ways that are complex, mediated, and indirect. It will be difficult to ascertain whether any particular knowledge has the direct effect on perception required by the thesis of cognitive penetration. It is open to functionalists to argue that their view provides the best explanation of the rich and subtle perception we find in the writings of Leopold, Hughes and Rolston. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jh54rt9epvbft9vrbg6r7zyf)) > However, non-functionalist appreciation of animals, such as we find in the poems of Douglas Livingstone, D. H. Lawrence or Gerard Manley Hopkins, seems equally, although differently, subtle and deep. Yuriko Saito makes a complementary point, arguing that science ‘in the strict, Western sense does not have a monopoly on the effort to “make sense of” nature’s various phenomena and objects’ (Saito 1998: 147). And Noël Carroll (2008) has argued that non-scientific, emotionally engaged responses—being ‘moved by nature’—are common and appropriate. If we understand knowledge and expertise broadly and not as confined to the scientific, we are led to a pluralism about aesthetic properties and experience. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jh54sfek5hfb4cf96f4qw9dc)) > However, in natural aesthetics, scientific knowledge is often presented as, in Carlson’s words, ‘essential for appropriate aesthetic appreciation of nature’ (Carlson 2008: 227) and *better* than alternative modes of appreciation. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jh54t3mstprqnxhntvjarrzg)) - Note: this is contradicted elsewhere though. "If we recognize our scientific knowledge of the natural world as only a finer-grained and theoretically richer version of our common, everyday knowledge of it, and not as something essentially different in kind, then the difference between the arousal model and the natural environmental model is mainly one of emphasis. Both models track the appreciation of nature, although the arousal model focuses on the more common, less cognitively rich, and perhaps less serious end of the continuum.7" p.8 of the book. > At this point, a conceptualist might wonder about the relevance of this debate. Does it matter whether knowledge directly or indirectly affects our perception of nature? Does it make a difference to our experience of animals’ beauty if their fitness is inferred rather than perceived, seen as an aspect of beauty, or noticed through an act of attention? In any case, she could say, experts will continue to see more and better than the rest of us, and so we have aesthetic reasons to become more knowledgeable. In some respects, this response is fair. The issue of cognitive penetration is technical and dependent for testing on artificial and constrained conditions. Even then, it is difficult to establish if the relevant cognitive effect is present at a particular moment. Regardless of whether knowledge guides our attention or penetrates our perception, it will enrich our aesthetic experiences. However, even if we accept this, I shall now argue that the debate is relevant for, and puts pressure on, functionalism’s normative claims. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jh5507q7vaf4zgbg7r9cp16j)) > Certainly, experts can help us to see better, but expertise comes in different varieties, scientific and non-scientific, formalist and non-formalist. Many factors may allow us to see salient properties and patterns. Functional expertise and functional vision are not necessarily aesthetically better, nor required for sensitive appreciation. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jh55f5xrt2hqvp50bcv715dj)) > Furthermore, if functional knowledge affects aesthetic appreciation in the way the thesis of cognitive penetrability claims, then the following counter-factual would hold (condition 3): ‘if an appreciator does not have and utilize functional knowledge of the object, then her perception would have a different phenomenological character’. The functionalist’s normative claims, then, are that we must perceive fitness in order to be appropriately appreciative of a natural object, and that this is better than perception with another phenomenological character and content. Without the internal link between knowledge and perception, it is not clear why this should be the case. It would not be necessary that functional knowledge change the phenomenology of our aesthetic perception in order for our appreciation to be appropriate or better; that could depend on other factors. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jh55hzfn8xtsyb4g72k870p9)) > A geologist, for instance, may describe an expanse of mud and sand as ‘exhilarating’ rather than ‘bleak’ because she judges the view to be of a tidal basin rather than a wasteland.5 Or someone may be accessing a memory of seeing a similar scene as exhilarating, rather than experiencing it as exhilarating in the moment. Neither of these two cases would count as instances of cognitive penetration. Third, differences in perception must not be explicable as an effect of different conditions—for example, of the perceptual apparatus working differently in different people, or in the conditions of perception. And finally, the difference must not be a result of changes internal to perception itself—for instance, in the influence on vision of data from other perceptual systems, or from increased sensitivity to certain features as a result of repeated exposure (Firestone and Scholl 2016: 4). ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jh5md4p1b23feqj130ja3vn9)) > Stokes then offers an account, according to which perception is cognitively *impenetrable:* > > if it is not possible for any two perceivers (or for the same perceiver at different times) to have experiences with distinct content or character when one holds fixed the object or event of perception, the perceptual conditions (e.g. lighting), the spatial attention of the subject and the conditions of the sensory organ(s). ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jh51e1gcccvgbqycqms44xx2)) > the claim that something is functionally beautiful must mean that the function of the object is somehow present in, or ‘translates into’, the look or sound of the object. For, when things are functionally beautiful, it is not that we see beauty, and then assess how well that beauty fits with function. [Rather] … knowing the function is what allows observers to see the beauty in the first place. So, somehow, knowing the function of the object must change the way the object looks to us. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jh5kmygk8f0evxa3g93096ha))