# 1. Functional Beauty and Typography In this section, I will argue that %%typography is not well explained by functional beauty accounts.%% functional beauty does not apply to typography. Parsons and Carlson’s account explains how knowing what something is for can affect the way it looks to us; typefaces are designed to be read and admit of aesthetic evaluation, so functional beauty should apply straightforwardly. It does not. The difficulty is structural: typography lacks the kind of feature–function separation that functional beauty requires. %%not how I would freame things. %% Parsons and Carlson’s account begins from a simple %%no fucking vauladed fucking words%% observation: when we learn what an object is for, this knowledge changes the way we see it.%%this paragraph should begin by setting things up in appropriate way, it does not. look at how I would do a similar move in my [home](https://www.nickyoung.eu/website/nick+young) · [publications](https://www.nickyoung.eu/website/publications) · [about](https://www.nickyoung.eu/website/about) · [contact](mailto:[email protected]) My research focuses on philosophy of perception, time experience, and the aesthetics of Artificial Intelligence. [**GROWING THE IMAGE: GENERATIVE AI AND THE MEDIUM OF GARDENING**](https://philpapers.org/go.pl?id=YOUGTI-2&u=https%3A%2F%2Fphilpapers.org%2Farchive%2FYOUGTI-2.pdf) with Enrico Terrone Philosophical Quarterly (2025) [**AUDITION AND COMPOSITE SENSORY INDIVIDUALS**](https://philarchive.org/archive/YOUAAC) with Bence Nanay Sensory Individuals: Unimodal and Multimodal Perspectives Oxford University Press (2023) [**AGENTS OF CHANGE: TEMPORAL FLOW AND FEELING ONESELF ACT**](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/358872458_Agents_of_change_temporal_flow_and_feeling_oneself_act) Philosophical Studies 179(8):2619–2637 (2022) [**SOUNDS AS PROPERTIES**](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/tht3.485?casa_token=7y3Gwg3o_egAAAAA:QlF5w7cUtL7R2tE50M1zdmCiDtSt5_0YauTE045YFoMS8XvnvQRJRBcha3fsTsy0viNjQgNdOQ6n09o) Thought: A Journal of Philosophy 10(2):109–117 (2021) [**HEARING OBJECTS AND EVENTS**](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11098-017-0988-0) Philosophical Studies 175(11):2931–2950 (2018) [**CAN MOVEMENT BE DEPICTED?**](https://oaj.fupress.net/index.php/pam/article/view/7315) with Clotilde Calabi Phenomenology and Mind (14): 170-179 (2018) [**HEARING SPACES**](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/00048402.2016.1164202?casa_token=Z4OgJ5u19LwAAAAA:90TwldlUTDJsX_crOxZ6mtpnv_jeWpolm0DXYtRNaqGn7QZOtpHKkujPCaEmvcWAHATi2ZsjIkvuUg) Australasian Journal of Philosophy 95(2):242–255 (2017) [**POINTING AND REPRESENTING: THREE OPTIONS**](https://air.unimi.it/bitstream/2434/1101412/2/document-1.pdf) with Angelica Kaufmann and Bence Nanay Humana Mente 6(24) (2013) **in progress** (drafts available on request) **THE PSYCHEDELIC IMAGE** with Enrico Terrone for _Art, Aesthetics and Psychedelics_ edited by Hans Maes **THE ENVIRONMENTAL AESTHETICS OF AI** with Enrico Terrone (an elaboration of the ideas in Growing the Image paper) **GENERATING PHILOSOPHY WITH ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE** with Enrico Terrone (Will LLMs replace philosophers? I say 'yes', very soon) [home](https://www.nickyoung.eu/website/nick+young) · [publications](https://www.nickyoung.eu/website/publications) · [about](https://www.nickyoung.eu/website/about) · [contact](mailto:[email protected]) %% A machine whose function we do not understand looks like an undifferentiated assembly of parts. But once we learn how it works – which parts do what, how they connect – we begin to see some features as necessary, others as optional, others as surprising or out of place. %%not how i write in my publkications%%The machine looks different to us now, and Parsons and Carlson want to treat this change as aesthetic rather than merely cognitive: it affects not just what we notice but what we find beautiful. The mechanism works as follows. %%what is the point of this sentence, what doe is add?%% When we understand how an object performs its function, we come to classify its visible features according to their relationship to that function. Some features are standard – necessary for the object to perform its function at all. A car must have wheels; a chair must have a surface to sit on. Other features are variable – not necessary, but correlating with how well the object performs its function. A car’s spoiler is not required for the car to move, but it correlates with speed. Still other features are contra-standard – features that seem to work against the function, that make us wonder how the object can do what it does, or why it is made the way that it is. A chair made of glass appears too fragile to support weight. Parsons and Carlson, drawing on Kendall Walton’s work on categories of art, take this classification of features as standard, variable, or contra-standard to structure perception in a way that also structures aesthetic appearance. %%going too far into this stuff slows things doen, we need to think about how to proceed here. HEY CLAUDE CODE!, DON'T DO YOUR OWN THING, ASK TO BRAINSTORM THIS WITH THE USERRATHER THAN SOLVE IT. %% This perceptual restructuring gives rise to different aesthetic qualities. A racing bicycle’s thin tyres make it look fit for speed; an iPod’s minimal design makes it look elegantly functional; a cantilevered lawn chair exhibits visual tension by appearing unstable while remaining perfectly capable. In each case, knowledge of function lets us see the object’s features in relation to what it does, and it is this relation that we find aesthetically pleasing. %%this should be supported with evidence from the text and it is really vague and all around here things should me streamlined, somewhat%% Consider the bicycle. Its thin tyres, dropped handlebars, and lightweight frame are not strictly necessary for a bicycle to function; plenty of bicycles have fat tyres and upright handlebars and work perfectly well. But these features correlate with speed. We see them and we infer that this bicycle is built to go fast. Parsons and Carlson describe such features as “indicative of” the function “though not strictly required for” it (p. 113). %%this is a very vague and I don't think very accurate description of what is going on with parsons and carmslson. %%The thin tyres indicate speed: they point beyond themselves to something else, the motion of the bicycle when ridden. The bicycle is leaning against a wall, going nowhere, yet we see it as fast; %%not true to the text. fix this and actually follow the parts of parsona nd carlson, you should see actually apply the theory, not simply blaah towards it. %% we appreciate how its features relate to a function that is not currently being performed. Functional beauty consists in perceiving features as related to a function from which they are distinct. Notice what this excludes. %%stop directing the reader%% The relevant phenomenon is not watching a bicycle actually go fast, where speed is perceptually present and the object’s success is displayed in the event itself. Parsons and Carlson are not analysing the aesthetics of use, performance, or interaction – the cyclist’s control, the relation between rider and machine, the way the bicycle handles a surface. Those may be aesthetically interesting, but they shift the target from an artefact’s appearance to a temporally extended episode in which an agent uses the artefact. Functional beauty, as they describe it, concerns the artefact as such: what it looks like once its function is understood, including in the ordinary case where the function is absent. This distinction between features and function is not incidental to functional beauty; it is what makes functional beauty possible. %%twatty llm text in this sentence and maybe in the rest of the paragraph let's cvheck. %% For features to “point beyond themselves” to a function, the features and the function must be two different things. The tyres can indicate speed only because the tyres are not the speed. If they were the same thing, there would be nothing for the features to point to. The aesthetic quality of looking fit – of appearing apt for a function – requires that appearance and function come apart, so that one can stand in relation to the other. %%just not a very accurate telling of either what carlson and parson think, or that it is naturually a precedent for what you are saying here. massive case of showing not telling. slow down, take time to explain difficult things. and extra paragraph is good as long as it its not boiler plate.%% For typography, this structure cannot hold. The function of a typeface is to be read – to have its visual form processed by readers. What are the features that make text readable? Appropriate stroke weight, good counter proportions, adequate x-height, even spacing, consistent colour on the page. But these features do not indicate readability in the way the bicycle’s thin tyres indicate speed. In the relevant sense, readability consists in the possession of these features (in the right combination and relative to a readership and context); it is not something further that the features merely %% no value in latent words.%% suggest while remaining absent. When you perceive that the spacing is good, you are not seeing something that indicates readability while readability itself remains elsewhere; you are already in the experience that counts as successful uptake. If we try to force the analogy by appealing to “seeing the typeface performing its function” – say, by looking at someone reading – we have moved into the domain Parsons and Carlson are not talking about: an episode of use that includes the reader, their fluency, their attention, and their aims. That is not typography’s functional beauty; it is the aesthetics of a reading. %%maybe%% The point can be put simply. %%horrendous%% The tyres can be present while speed is absent; the bicycle can look fast while stationary. But the spacing cannot be good while readability is absent. Good spacing, in typography, just is readable text. Functional beauty depends on a gap between features and function – a gap that lets features indicate, suggest, or stand in tension with a function that is distinct from them. For artefacts whose function consists in their perceptual uptake, this gap does not open. %%maybe there is good content here but it is not nearly elaborate or intersting or argued ebough. breainstorm time%% %%Need to think about what other artefacts might fall into this class. Interface design? Signage? Anything whose function is communicative or perceptual rather than mechanical? This could be the theoretical payoff of the section.%%