and Beautiful [1757], in The Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke, ed. Paul Lang-ford (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981).
15 Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgment, [1790], trans. J.H. Bernard (New York: Hafber, 1951), Sections 23-30.
16 Francis Bacon. Tlie Advancement of Learning, First Book [1605], in Essays, Advance-' % ment of Learning, New Atlantis, and Other Pieces, ed. R.F. Jones (Garden City, \eu York: Doubleday, 1937), p. 202. j
17 See Tuan, "Desert and Ice: Ambivalent Aesthetics." §
18 I can only mention this here, not make a case for it. I have undertaken that in Art and Engagement, Chapters 3 and 4.
19 Kant, Critique of Judgment, Sections 26, 28, and 29. |
20 See Kant, Critique of Judgment, Section 22. |j
21 In Chapters 5 and 6 of Art and Engagement I show how aesthetic engagement can illuminate the appreciation of traditional sculpture. |J
22 This is not a developed case for extending the model of environmental appreciation to the arts. In Chapter 10 of The Aesthetics of Environment I undertook to do that.
23 See Diffey, "Natural Beauty without Metaphysics." "Natural'' beauty here, as else- f J where, is a misnomer. Like all forms of nature, human beauty is very much a human,' cultural construct, not just by techniques of physical enhancement, but in the selection of desirable body types, physiognomies, personalities, behavior patterns. anJ the like.
24 See my "The Sensuous and the Sensual in Aesthetics," 77ie Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 23 (1964): 185-192, reprinted in Philosophical Essays on Curriculum, ed. ■: R.S. Guttehen and B. Batidman, (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1969), pp. 306-317. if
On Being Moved by Nature: Between Religion and Natural History
Noel Carroll
I. Introduction
For the last two and a half decades—perhaps spurred onwards by R.W. Hepburn's seminal, wonderfully sensitive, and astute essay, "Contemporary Aesthetics and the Neglect of Natural Beauty"1—philosophical interest in the aesthetic appreciation of nature has been gaining momentum. One of the most coherent, powerfully argued, thorough, and philosophically compelling theories to emerge from this evolving arena of debate has been developed over a series of articles by Allen Carlson.2 The sophistication of Carlson's approach—especially in terms of his careful style of argumentation—has raised the level of philosophical discussion concerning the aesthetic appreciation of nature immensely and it has taught us all what is at stake, logically and epistemologically, in advancing a theory of nature appreciation. Carlson has not only presented a bold theory of the aesthetic appreciation of nature; he has also refined a methodological framework and a set of constraints that even' researcher in the field must address.
Stated summarily, Carlson's view of the appreciation of nature is that it is a matter of scientific understanding; that is, the correct or appropriate form that the appreciation of nature—properly so called—should take is a species of natural history; appreciating nature is a matter of understanding nature under the suitable scientific categories. In appreciating an expanse of modern farm land, for example, we appreciate it by coming to understand the way in which the shaping of such a landscape is a function of the purposes of large scale agriculture.3 Likewise, the appreciation of flora and fauna is said to require an understanding of evolutionary theory.4
Carlson calls his framework for nature appreciation the natural environmental model.5 He believes that the strength of this model is that it regards nature as (a) an environment (rather than, say, a view) and (b) as natural. Moreover, the significance of (b) is that it implies that the appreciation of nature should be in terms of the qualities nature has (and these, in turn, are the qualities natural science identifies). Carlson writes, "for significant appreciation of nature, something like the knowledge and experience of the naturalist is essential."6
My major worry about Carlson's stance is that it excludes certain very common appreciative responses to nature—responses of a less intellective, more visceral sort, which we might refer to as "being moved by nature." For example, we may find ourselves standing under a thundering waterfall and be excited by its grandeur; or, standing barefooted amidst a silent arbor, softly carpeted with layers . of decaying leaves, a sense of repose and homeyness may be aroused in us. Such responses to nature are quite frequent and even sought out by those of us who are ; not naturalists. They are a matter of being emotionally moved by nature. This, of ] course, does not imply that they are noncognitive, since emotional arousal has a cognitive dimension.7 However, it is far from clear that all the emotions appropri- ] ately aroused in us by nature are rooted in cognitions of the sort derived from nat- : ural history.
Appreciating nature for many of us, I submit, often involves being moved or i emotionally aroused by nature. We may appreciate nature by opening ourselves to i its stimulus, and to being put in a certain emotional state by attending to its : aspects. Experiencing nature, in this mode, just is a manner of appreciating it. That ■ is not to say that this is the only way in which we can appreciate nature. The : approach of the naturalist that Carlson advocates is another way. Nor do I wish to = deny that naturalists can be moved by nature or even to deny that something like I our nonscientific arousal by nature might be augmented, in some cases, by the ■;. kind of knowledge naturalists possess. It is only to claim that sometimes we can l be moved by nature—sans guidance by scientific categories—and that such expe- :j riences have a genuine claim to be counted among the ways in which nature may ;* be (legitimately) appreciated.
Carlson's approach to the appreciation of nature is reformist. His point is that a :: number of the best-known frameworks for appreciating nature—which one finds 2 in the literature—are wrongheaded and that the model of appreciation informed by ■ naturalism, which he endorses, is the least, problematic and most reasonable pic- : ture of what nature appreciation should involve. In contrast, I wish to argue that 2[ there is at least one frequently indulged way of appreciating nature that Carlson I has not examined adequately, and that it need not be abjured on the basis of the 2. kinds of arguments and considerations Carlson has adduced. It is hard to read Carl- | son's conclusions without surmising that he believes that he has identified the 2 appropriate model of nature appreciation. Instead, I believe that there is one form 2;. of nature appreciation—call it being emotionally moved by nature—that (a) is a 2: longstanding practice, (b) remains untouched by Carlson's arguments, and (c) f need not be abandoned in the face of Carlson's natural environmental model.
In defending this alternative mode of nature appreciation, I am not offering it in % place of Carlson's environmental model. Being moved by nature in certain ways | is one way of appreciating nature; Carlson's environmental model is another. I'm ■§ for coexistence. I am specifically not arguing that, given certain traditional con- | ceptions of the aesthetic, being moved by nature has better claims to the title of :2 aesthetic appreciation whereas the environmental model, insofar as it involves the ::■
subsumption of particulars under scientific categories and laws, is not an aesthetic mode of appreciation at all. Such an objection to Carlson's environmental model might be raised, but it will not be raised by me. I am willing to accept that the natural environmental model provides an aesthetic mode of appreciating nature for the reasons Carlson gives.
Though I wish to resist Carlson's environmental model of nature appreciation as an exclusive, comprehensive one, and, thereby, wish to defend a space for the traditional practice of being moved by nature, I also wish to block any reductionist account—of the kind suggested by T.J. Diffey8—that regards our being moved by nature as a residue of religious feeling. Diffey says, "In a secular society it is not surprising that there will be a hostility towards any religious veneration of natural beauty and at the same time nature will become a refuge for displaced religious emotions."9 But I want to stress that the emotions aroused by nature that concern , me can be fully secular and have no call to be demystified as displaced religious sentiment. That is, being moved by nature is a mode of nature appreciation that is available between science and religion.
In what follows I try to show that the kinds of consideration that Carlson raises do not preclude being moved by nature as a respectable form of nature appreciation. In order to do this, I review Carlson's major arguments—which I call, respectively: science by eUmination. the claims of objectivist epistemology, and the order argument. In the course of disputing these arguments, I also attempt to introduce a positive characterization of what being moved by nature involves in a way that deflects the suspicion that it should be reduced to displaced religious feeling.
II. Science by Elimination
Following Paul Ziff, Carlson points out that, in the appreciation of works of art, we know what to appreciate—in that we can distinguish an artwork from what it is not—and we know which of its aspects to appreciate—since in knowing the type of art it is, we know how it is to be appreciated.10 We have this knowledge, as Vico would have agreed, because artworks are our creations. That is, since we have made them to be objects of aesthetic attention, we understand what is involved in
r appreciating them.11
However we explain this feature of artistic appreciation, it seems clear that classifying the kind and style of an artwork is crucial to appreciating it. But with nature—something that in large measure it is often the case that we have not made—the question arises as to how we can appreciate it. By what principles will we isolate the appreciable from what is not, and how will we select the appropriate aspects of the nature so circumscribed to appreciate? In order to answer this question, Carlson explores alternative models for appreciating nature; the object
; paradigm, the landscape or scenery model, and the environmental paradigm.12 The object paradigm of nature appreciation treats an expanse in nature as analogous to an artwork such as a nonrepresentational sculpture; as in the case of such
a sculpture, we appreciate its sensuous properties, its salient patterns, and perhaps even its expressive qualities.13 That is, the object model guides our attention to cer-s tain aspects of nature—such as patterned configurations—that are deemed relevant for appreciation. This is clearly a possible way of attending to nature, but Carlson ; wants to know whether it is an aesthetically appropriate way.14
Carlson thinks not; for there are systematically daunting disanalogies between ; natural expanses and works of fine art. For example, nature is said to be an inde- ; terminate form. Where it stops is putatively ambiguous.15 But with artworks, there \ are frames or framelike devices (like the ropes and spaces around sculptures) that tell you where the focus of artistic attention ends. Moreover, the formal qualities ! of such artworks are generally contingent on such framings.16
Of course, we can impose frames on nature. We can take a rock from its natur- \ al abode and put it on a mantelpiece. Or, we can discipline our glance in such a.! way as to frame a natural expanse so that we appreciate the visual patterns that S emerge from our own exercise in perceptual composition. But in doing this, we work against the organic unity in the natural expanse, sacrificing many of those real aesthetic features that are not made salient by our exercises in visual framing, ,: especially the physical forces that make the environment what it is.17 And in this sense, the object paradigm is too exclusive; it offends through aesthetic omission.
Thus, Carlson confronts the object paradigm with a dilemma. Under its aegis either we frame—literally or figuratively—a part of nature, thereby removing it § from its organic environment (and distracting our attention from its interplay with I many real and fascinating ecological forces). OR we leave it where it is, unframed, indeterminate, and bereft of the fixed visual patterns and qualities (that emerge | from acts of framing). In the first case, the object model is insensitive; in the sec- % ond, it is, putatively, inoperable.
A second paradigm for nature appreciation is the landscape or scenery model; % This also looks to fine art as a precedent; it invites us to contemplate a landscape::% as if it were a landscape painting. Perhaps this approach gained appeal historical-ly in the guidebooks of the eighteenth century, which recommended this or that natural prospect as affording a view reminiscent of this or that painter (such as Sal-vator Rosa).18 In appreciating a landscape as a piece of scenery painting, we attend :• •; to features it might share with a landscape painting, such as its coloration and design.
But this, like the object model, also impedes comprehensive attention to the : actual landscape. It directs our attention to the visual; but the full appreciation of ;■; nature comprises smells, textures, and temperatures. And landscape painting typi-cally sets us at a distance from nature. Yet often we appreciate nature for our being .; amidst it.19 Paintings are two-dimensional, but nature has three dimensions; it offers a participatory space, not simply a space that we apprehend from outside.
Likewise, the picture frame excludes us whereas characteristically we are included as a self in a setting in the natural expanses we appreciate.20 Thus, as with the object model of nature appreciation, the problem with the scenery model is that
it is too restrictive to accommodate all the aspects of nature that might serve as genuine objects of aesthetic attention.
Lastly, Carlson offers us the natural environmental model of appreciation. The key to this model is that it regards nature as nature. It overcomes the limitations of the object model by taking as essential the organic relation of natural expanses and items to their larger environmental contexts. The interplay of natural forces like wmds are as significant as the sensuous shapes of the rock formations that are subject to them. On this view, appreciating nature involves attending to the organic interaction of natural forces. Pace the scenery model, the totality of natural forces, not just those that are salient to vision, are comprehended. Whereas the scenery paradigm proposes nature as a static array, the natural environmental approach acknowledges the dynamism of nature.
Undoubtedly the inclusiveness of the natural environmental model sounds promising..But the question still remains concerning which natural categories and relations are relevant to attending to nature as nature. It is Carlson's view that natural science provides us with the kind of knowledge that guides us to the appropriate foci of aesthetic significance and to the pertinent relations within their boundaries.
In order to aesthetically appreciate art, we must have knowledge of the artistic iraditions that yield the relevant classificatory schemes for artists and audiences; in order to aesthetically appreciate nature, we need comparable knowledge of dif-
- ferent environments and of their relevant systems and elements.21 This knowledge comes from science and natural history, including that which is embodied in com-
;: mon sense. Where else could it come from? What else could understanding nature as nature amount to? The knowledge we derive from art criticism and art history for the purposes of art appreciation come from ecology and natural history with respect to nature appreciation. Carlson writes:
What I am suggesting is that the question of what to aesthetically appreciate in the natural environment is to be answered in a way analogous to the similar question about art. The difference is that in the case of the natural environment the relevant knowledge is the commonsense/scientific knowledge that we have
• 22
discovered about the environment in question
The structure of Carlson's argument is motivated by the pressure to discover some guidance with respect to nature appreciation that is analogous to the guidance that the fixing of artistic categories does with works of art. Three possibilities are explored: the object paradigm, the scenery paradigm, and the natural environmental paradigm. The first two are rejected because they fail to comprehensively track all the qualities and relations we would expect a suitable framework for the appreciation of nature to track. On the other hand, the natural environmental model is advanced not only because it does not occlude the kind of
attentiveness that the alternative models block, but also because it has the advantage of supplying us with classificatory frameworks, which play the role that things like genres do with respect to art, while at the same time these categories are natural (derived from natural history). Stated formally, Carlson's argument is basically a disjunctive syllogism:
(1) All aesthetic appreciation requires a way of fixing the appropriate loci of appreciative acts.
(2) Since nature appreciation is aesthetic appreciation, then nature appreciation must have a means of fixing the appropriate loci of appreciative acts.
(3) With nature appreciation, the ways of fixing the appropriate loci of appreciative acts are the object model, the scenic model, and the natural environmen-: tal model.
(4) Neither the object model nor the scenic model suit nature appreciation.
(5) Therefore, the natural environmental model (using science as its source of knowledge) is the means for fixing the loci of appreciative acts with respect to : nature appreciation.
Of course, the most obvious line of attack to take with arguments of this sort is to ask whether it has captured the relevant field of alternatives. I want to suggest that Carlson's argument has not. Specifically, I maintain that he has not countenanced our being moved by nature as a mode of appreciating nature and that he has not explored the possibility that the loci of such appreciation can be fixed in the process of our being emotionally aroused by nature. '
Earlier I conjured up a scene where standing near a towering cascade, our ears reverberating with the roar of falling water, we are overwhelmed and excited by its grandeur. People quite standardly seek out such experiences. They are, pretheoret-ically, a form of appreciating nature. Moreover, when caught up in such experiences our attention is fixed on certain aspects of the natural expanse rather than others—the palpable force of the cascade, its height, the volume of water, the way it alters the surrounding atmosphere, etc.
This does not require any special scientific knowledge. Perhaps it only requires being human, equipped with the senses we have, being small, and able to intuit the immense force, relative to creatures like us, of the roaring tons of water. Nor need the common sense of our culture come into play. Conceivably humans from other planets bereft of waterfalls could share our sense of grandeur. This is not to say that all emotional responses to nature are culture-free, but only that the pertinent dimensions of some such arousals may be.
That is, we may be aroused emotionally by nature, and our arousal may be a function of our human nature in response to a natural expanse. I may savor a winding footpath because it raises a tolerable sense of mystery in me. Unlike the scenery model of nature appreciation, what we might call the arousal model does not necessarily put us at a distance from the object of our appreciation; it may be
Vthe manner in which we are amidst nature that has moved us to the state in which fc we find ourselves. Nor does the arousal model of nature restrict our response to
W<: only the visual aspects of nature. The cascade moves us through its sound, and fe weight, and temperature, and force. The sense of mystery awakened by the wind-K"      ing path is linked to the process of moving through it.
f Perhaps the arousal model seems to raise the problem of framing, mentioned
m earlier, in a new way. Just as the object model and the scenery model appeared to I impose a frame on an otherwise indeterminate nature, similarly the arousal model p may appear to involve us in imposing emotional gestalts upon indeterminate nat-I ural expanses. Nevertheless, there are features of nature, especially in relation to [ human organisms, that, though they are admittedly "selected," are difficult to think
. of as "impositions."
h • Certain natural expanses have natural frames or what I prefer to call natural k closure: caves, copses, grottoes, clearings, arbors, valleys, etc. And other natural
f expanses, though lacking frames, have features that are naturally salient for
k human organisms—that is, they have features such as moving water, bright illu-
|, mination, etc. that draw our attention instinctually toward them. And where our r emotional arousal is predicated on either natural closure or natural salience, it
makes little sense to say that our emotional responses, focused on said features, ' are impositions.
An emotional response to nature will involve some sort of selective attention to the natural expanse. If I am overwhelmed by the grandeur of a waterfall, then certain things and not others are in the forefront of my attention. Presumably since I am struck emotionally by the grandness of the waterfall, the features that are relevant to my response have to do with those that satisfy interests in scale, notably large scale. But my arousal does not come from nowhere. The human perceptual system is already keyed to noticing salient scale differentials and the fact that I batten on striking examples of the large scale is hardly an imposition from the human f        point of view.
Suppose, then, that I am exhilarated by the grandeur of the waterfall. That I am exhilarated by grandeur is not an inappropriate response, since the object of my emotional arousal is grand—that is, meets the criteria of scale appropriate to grandeur, where grandeur, in turn, is one of the appropriate sources of exhilaration. In this case, our perceptual make-up initially focuses our attention on certain fea-tures of the natural expanse, which attention generates a state of emotional arousal, which state, in turn, issues in reinforcing feedback that consolidates the initial | selective gestalt of the emotional arousement experience. The arousal model of
t nature appreciation has an account of how we isolate certain aspects of nature and
| why these are appropriate aspects to focus upon; that is, they are emotionally
f' appropriate.
j Perhaps Carlson's response to this is that emotional responses to nature of the
I sort that I envision are not responses to nature as nature. This route seems inad-
Jp-       visable since Carlson, like Sparshott, wants us to think of the appreciator of nature
as a self in a setting, which I understand as, in part, a warning not to divorce human nature from nature.23 Admittedly, not all of our emotional arousals in the face of nature should be ascribed to our common human nature, rather than to what is sectarian in our cultures, but there is no reason to preclude the possibility that some of our emotional arousals to nature are bred in the bone.
Conceding that we are only talking about some of our appreciative responses to nature here may seem to open another line of criticism. Implicit in Carlson's manner of argument seems to be the presupposition that what he is about is identifying the one and only form of nature appreciation. His candidate, of course, is the ■ environmental model, which relies heavily on natural science.
I have already argued that this model is not the only respectable alternative. But another point also bears emphasis here, namely, why presume that there is only one model for appreciating nature and one source of knowledge—such as natural ' history—relevant to fixing our appreciative categories? Why are we supposing that \ there is just one model, applying to all cases, for the appropriate appreciation of nature?
That the appreciation of nature sometimes may involve emotional arousal, divorced from scientific or commonsense ecological knowledge, does not disallow that at other times appreciation is generated by the natural environmental model. ; Certainly a similar situation obtains in artistic appreciation. Sometimes we may be ; emotionally aroused—indeed, appropriately emotionally moved—without know- ; ing the genre or style of the artwork that induces this state. Think of children amused by capers of Commedia dell'arte but who know nothing of its tradition or v its place among other artistic genres, styles, and categories. Yet the existence of ; this sort of appreciative response in no way compromises the fact that there is a another kind of appreciation—that of the informed connoisseur—which involves :;• situating the features of the artwork with respect to its relevant artistic categories.
I want to say that the same is true of nature appreciation. Appreciation may ^ sometimes follow the arousal model or the natural environmental model. Some^ v times the two models may overlap—for our emotions may be aroused on the basis of our ecological knowledge. But, equally, there will be clear cases where they do not. Moreover, I see no reason to assume that these are the only models for the appropriate response to nature. In some cases—given the natural closure and salience of arrays in nature—the object model may not be out of place for, given •■; our limited perceptual capacities, structured as they are, nature may not strike us as formally indeterminate.
My basic objection to Carlson is that emotional arousal in response to nature can be an appropriate form of nature appreciation and that the cognitive compo- ; nent of our emotional response does the job of fixing the aspects of nature that are relevant to appreciation. Here, I have been assuming that emotional arousal, though cognitive, need not rely on categories derived from science. But Carlson sometimes describes his preferred source of knowledge as issuing from common :: sense/science. So perhaps the way out of my objection is to say that with my cases .
i
of being moved by nature, the operative cognitions are rooted in commonsense knowledge of nature.
A lot depends here on what is included in commonsense knowledge of nature. I .take it that for Carlson this is a matter of knowing in some degree how nature works; it involves, for example, some prescientific, perhaps folk, understanding of things like ecological systems. That I know, in my waterfall example, that the stuff that is falling down is water is not commonsense knowledge of nature in the way that Carlson seems to intend with phrases like common sense/science. For the knowledge in my case need not involve any systemic knowledge of nature's working of either a folk or scientific origin. And if this is so, then we can say that we are emotionally moved by nature where the operative cognitions that play a constitutive role in our response do not rely on the kind of commonsense systemic knowledge of natural processes that Carlson believes is requisite for the aesthetic appreciation of nature. And, perhaps even more clearly, we can be moved by nature where our cognitions do not mobilize the far more formal and recondite systemic knowledge found in natural history and science.
Hi. The Claims of Objectivitist Episteraology
One reason, as we have just seen, that prompts Carlson to endorse natural history as the appropriate guide to nature appreciation is that it appears to provide us with our only satisfactory alternative. I have disputed this. But Carlson has other compelling motives for the type of nature appreciation he advocates. One of these is epistemological. It has already been suggested; now is the time to bring it center-stage.
Echoing Hume's "Of the Standard of Taste," Carlson's impressive "Nature, Aesthetic Judgment, and Objectivity" begins with the conviction that certain of the aesthetic judgments that we issue with respect to nature—such as "the Grand Tetons are majestic"—are or can be appropriate, correct, or true. That is, certain aesthetic judgments of nature are objective. Were someone to assert that "the Grand Tetons are paltry," without further explanation, our response would converge on the consensus that the latter assertion is false.
However, though the conviction that aesthetic judgments of nature can be objective is firm, it is nevertheless difficult to square with the best available models we possess for elucidating the way in which aesthetic judgments of art are objective. Indeed, given our best models of the way that aesthetic judgments of art are objective, we may feel forced to conclude that aesthetic judgments of nature are rela-tivistic or subjective, despite our initial conviction that aesthetic judgments of nature can be objective.
So the question becomes a matter of explaining how our aesthetic judgments of nature can be objective. This is a problem because, as just mentioned, reigning accounts of how aesthetic judgments of art are objective have been taken to imply that aesthetic judgments of nature cannot be objective.
In order to get a handle on this problem, we need, of course, to understand the relevant theory of art appreciation that ostensibly renders nature appreciation subjective or relative. The particular theory that Carlson has in mind is Kendall Walton's notion of categories of art. This theory is an example of a broader class of theories—that would include institutional theories of art—which can be usefully \ thought of as cultural theories. Roughly speaking, cultural theories of art supply : the wherewithal to ground aesthetic judgments of art objectively by basing such ; judgments on the cultural practice and forms—such as artistic genres, styles, and movements—in which and through which artworks are created and disseminated.
On Walton's account, for example, an aesthetic judgment concerning an artwork .; can be assessed as true or false. The truth value of such judgments is a function of : two factors, specifically: the non-aesthetic perceptual properties of the artwork, f (for example, dots of paint), and the status of said properties when the artwork is i situated in its correct artistic category (for example, pointillism). Psychologically I speaking, all aesthetic judgments of art, whether they are subjective or objective, require that we locate the perceived, nonaesthetic properties of the artwork in -f some category. For example, if an uninformed viewer finds the image in a cubist :•: painting woefully confused, it is likely that that viewer regards the work in terms of the (albeit wrong) category of a realistic, perspective representation.
However, logically speaking, if an aesthetic judgment is true (or appropriate), ;: then that is a function of the perceived, nonaesthetic properties of the artwork :|i being comprehended within the context of the correct category of art. In terms of : the preceding example, it is a matter of viewing the painting in question under the 4 category of cubism. Consequently, the objectivity of aesthetic judgments of ait ::. depends upon identifying the correct category for the artwork in question.
A number of circumstances can count in determining the category of art that is relevant to the aesthetic judgment of an artwork. But some of the most conclusive :; depend on features relating to the origin of the work: such as which category f (genre, style, movement) the artist intended for the artwork, as well as cultural factors, such as whether the category in question is a recognized or well-entrenched one. These are not the only considerations that we use in fixing the relevant cate- . gory of an artwork; but they are, nevertheless, fairly decisive ones.
However, if these sorts of considerations are crucial in fixing the relevant cate- : gories of artworks, it should be clear that they are of little moment when it comes to nature. For nature is not produced by creators whose intentions can be used to isolate the correct categories for appreciating a given natural expanse nor is nature produced with regard for recognized cultural categories. But if we cannot ascer-.'; I tain the correct category upon which to ground our aesthetic judgments of nature. then those judgments cannot be either true or false. Moreover, since the way in ."| which we fix the category of a natural object or expanse appears to be fairly open, our aesthetic judgments of nature appear to gravitate towards subjectivity. That is, : they do not seem as though they can be objective judgments, despite our starting ; -; intuition that some of them are.
The structure of Carlson's argument revolves around a paradox. We start with the conviction that some aesthetic judgments of nature can be objective, but then the attempt to explain this by the lights of our best model of aesthetic objectivity with respect to the arts, indicates that no aesthetic judgment of nature can be objective (because there are no correct categories for nature). Carlson wants to dissolve this paradox by removing the worry that there are no objective, aesthetic judgments of nature. He does this by arguing that we do have the means for identifying the relevant, correct categories that are operative in genuine aesthetic judgments of nature. These are the ones discovered by natural history and science.
For example, we know that the relevant category for aesthetically appreciating whales is that of the mammal rather than that of fish as a result of scientific research. Moreover, these scientific categories function formally or logically in the same way in nature appreciation that art historical categories function in art appreciation. Thus, the logical form, though not the content, of nature appreciation corresponds to that of art appreciation. And insofar as the latter can be objective in virtue of its form, the former can be as well.
Another way to characterize Carlson's argument is to regard it as a transcendental argument. It begins by assuming as given that nature appreciation can be objective and then goes on to ask how this is possible—especially since there does not seem to be anything like correct categories of art to ground objectivity when it comes to nature appreciation. But, then, the possibility of the objectivity of nature appreciation is explained by maintaining that the categories discovered by natural history and science are available to play the role in securing the objectivity of aesthetic judgments of nature in a way that is analogous to the service performed by art historical categories for art.
Thus, for epistemological reasons, we are driven to the view of nature appreciation as a species of natural history. Effectively, it is advanced as the only way to support our initial intuitions that some aesthetic judgments of nature can be objective. Moreover, any competing picture of nature appreciation, if it is to be taken ...'Seriously, must have comparable means to those of the natural environmental model for solving the problem of the objectivity of nature appreciation.
Of course, I do not wish to advance the "being moved by nature" view as competing with the natural environmental approach. Rather, I prefer to think of it as a coexisting model. But even as a coexisting model, it must be able to solve the problem of objectivity. However, the solution to the problem is quite straightforward when it comes to being emotionally moved by nature.
For being emotionally moved by nature is just a subclass of being emotionally moved. And on the view of the emotions that I, among many others, hold, an emotion can be assessed as either appropriate or inappropriate. In order to be afraid, I must be afraid of something, say an oncoming tank. My emotion—fear in this case—is directed; it takes a particular object. Moreover, if my fear in a given case is appropriate, then the particular object of my emotional state must meet certain criteria, or what are called "formal objects" in various philosophical idioms.
For example, the formal object of fear is the dangerous. Or, to put the point in less stilted language: if my fear of the tank (the particular object of my emotion) is appropriate, then it must satisfy the criterion that I believe the tank to be dangerous to me. If, for instance, I say that I am afraid of chicken soup, but also that I do not believe that chicken soup is dangerous, then my fear of chicken soup is inappropriate. CD. Broad writes: "It is appropriate to cognize what one takes to be a threatening object with some degree of fear. It is inappropriate to cognize what one takes to be a fellow man in undeserved pain or distress with satisfaction or with amusement."24
Of course, if emotions can be assessed with respect to appropriateness and inap-propriateness, then they are open to cognitive appraisal. Ronald deSousa says, for ■■; example, that "appropriateness is the truth of the emotions."25 We can assess the; appropriateness of the emotion of fear for an emoter in terms of whether or not she believes that the particular object of her emotion is dangerous. We can, further- i more, assess whether the appropriateness of her fear ought to be shared by others by asking whether the beliefs, thoughts, or patterns of attention that underpin her emotions are the sorts of beliefs, thoughts, or patterns of attention that it is reasonable for others to share. Thus we can determine whether her fear of the tank is objective in virtue of whether her beliefs about the dangerousness of the tank, in : the case at hand, is a reasonable belief for the rest of us to hold.
Turning from tanks to nature, we may be emotionally moved by a natural : expanse—excited, for instance, by the grandeur of a towering waterfall. All things : being equal, being excited by the grandeur of something that one believes to be of a large scale is an appropriate emotional response. Moreover, if the belief in the > large scale of the cascade is one that is true for others as well, then the emotional response of being excited by the grandeur of the waterfall is an objective one. It is not subjective, distorted, or wayward. If someone denies being moved by the waterfall, but agrees that the waterfall is large scale and says nothing else, we are apt to suspect that his response, as well as any judgments issued on the basis of that response, is inappropriate. If he does not agree that the waterfall is of a large scale, and does not say why, we will suspect him either of not understanding how ■ ■ to use the notion of large scale, or of irrationality. If he disagrees that the waterfall is of a large scale because the galaxy is much much larger, then we will try to con- ;. vince him that he has the wrong comparison class—urging, perhaps, that he should :! gauge the scale of the waterfall in relation to human scale.
In introducing the notion of the "wrong comparison class," it may seem that I -| have opened the door to Carlson's arguments. But I do not think that I have. For it ^ is not clear that in order to establish the relevant comparison class for an emotional 5 response to nature one must resort to scientific categories. For example, we may :| be excited by the grandeur of a blue whale. I may be moved by its size, its force, , the amount of water it displaces, etc., but I may think that it is a fish. Nevertheless, my being moved by the grandeur of the blue whale is not inappropriate. Indeed, s we may be moved by the skeleton of a Tyrannosaurus Rex without knowing ■
1-
whether it is the skeleton of. a reptile, a bird, or a mammal. We can be moved by : such encounters, without knowing the natural history of the thing encountered, on the basis of its scale, along with other things, relative to ourselves.
Such arousals may or may not be appropriate for us and for others. Moreover, judgments based on such emotional responses—like "that whale excites grandeur" or ''the Grand Tetons are majestic"—can be objective. Insofar as being moved by nature is a customary form of appreciating nature, then it can account for the objectivity of some of our aesthetic judgments of nature. Thus, it satisfies the epis-itemological challenge whose solution Carlson appears to believe favors only his natural environmental model for the aesthetic appreciation of nature. Or, to put it another way, being moved by nature remains a way of appreciating nature that may coexist with the natural environmental model.
At one point, Carlson concedes that we can simply enjoy nature—"we can, of course, approach nature as we sometimes approach art, that is, we can simply enjoy its forms and colors or enjoy perceiving it however we may happen to."26 But this is not a very deep level of appreciation for Carlson, for, on his view, depth would appear to require objectivity. Perhaps what Carlson would say about my defense of being moved by nature is that being emotionally aroused by nature falls into the category of merely enjoying nature and, as an instance of that category, it isn't really very deep.
Undoubtedly, being moved by nature may be a way of enjoying nature. However, insofar as being moved by nature is a matter of being moved by appropriate objects, it is not dismissable as enjoying nature in whatever way we please. Furthermore, if the test of whether our appreciation of nature is deep is whether the corresponding judgments are susceptible to objective, cognitive appraisal, I think I have shown that some cases can pass this test. Is there any reason to think that being moved by nature must be any less deep a response than attending to nature with the eyes of the naturalist?
I would be very suspicious of an affirmative answer to this question. Of course, part of the problem is that what makes an appreciative response to nature shallow or deep is obscure. Obviously, a naturalist's appreciation of nature could be deep in the sense that it might go on and on as the naturalist learns more and more about ; nature, whereas a case of emotional arousal with respect to nature might be more consummatory. Is the former case deeper than the latter? Are the two cases even commensurable? Clearly, time alone cannot be a measure of depth. But how exactly are we to compare appreciative stances with respect to depth?
Maybe there is no way. But if the depth of a response is figured in terms of our intensity of involvement and its "thorough-goingness,"27 then there is no reason to suppose that being moved by nature constitutes a shallower form of appreciation than does appreciating nature scientifically. The Kantian apprehension of sublimity28—and its corresponding aesthetic judgment—though it may last for a delimited duration, need not be any less deep than a protracted teleological judgment.
Again, it is not my intention to dispute the kind of appreciation that Carlson
defends under the title of the natural environmental model. It is only to defend the legitimacy of an already well-entrenched mode of nature appreciation that I call being moved by nature. This mode of nature appreciation can pay the epis-temological bill that Carlson presupposes any adequate model of nature appreciation should accommodate. It need not be reducible to scientific appreciation, nor must it be regarded as any less deep than appreciation informed by natural history.
Of course, it may seem odd that we can appreciate nature objectively this way when it seems that a comparable form of appreciation is not available to art. But the oddity here vanishes when we realize that to a certain extent we are able to appreciate art and render objective aesthetic judgments of artworks without reference to precise art historical categories. One may find a fanfare in a piece of music stirring and objectively assert that it is stirring without any knowledge of music history and its categories. Being emotionally aroused by nature in at least certain; cases need be no different.
Carlson may be disposed to question whether being emotionally moved by nature is really a matter of responding to nature as nature. Perhaps he takes it to be something like a conceptual truth that, given the culture we inhabit, attending to . nature as nature can only involve attending to it scientifically. However, if I am taken with the grace of a group of deer vaulting a stream, I see no reason to suppose that I am not responding to nature as nature. Moreover, any attempt to regi- . ment the notion of responding to nature as nature so that it only strictly applies to scientific understanding appears to me to beg the question.
IV. Order Appreciation
The most recent argument that Carlson has advanced in favor of the natural environmental model of nature appreciation is what might be called the order argument.29 In certain respects, it is reminiscent of his earlier arguments, but it does add certain new considerations that are worth our attention. Like his previous arguments, Carlson's order argument proceeds by carefully comparing the form of : nature appreciation with that of art appreciation.
One paradigmatic form of art appreciation is design appreciation. Design appreciation presupposes that the artwork has a creator who embodies the design in an object or a performance, and that the design embodied in the artwork indicates how we are to take it. However, this model of appreciation is clearly inappropriate for nature appreciation since nature lacks a designer.
Nevertheless, there is another sort of art appreciation that has been devised in order to negotiate much of the avant-garde art of the twentieth century. Carlson calls this type of appreciation order appreciation. When, for example, we are confronted by something like Duchamp's Fountain, the design of the object does not tell us how to take it or appreciate it. Instead, we rely on certain stories about how the object came to be selected by Duchamp in order to make a point. These stories
inform us of the ideas and beliefs that lead an avant-garde artist to produce or to select (in the case of a found object) the artwork.
These stories direct us in the appropriate manner of appreciating the object; they guide us in our selection of the relevant features of the work for the purposes of appreciation. They do the work with unconventional, experimental art that design does with more traditional art. For example, our knowledge, given a certain art historical narrative, of Surrealism's commitment to revealing the unconscious, alerts us to the importance of incongruous, dreamlike juxtapositions in paintings by Dali.
For Carlson, design appreciation is obviously ill-suited to nature appreciation. On the other hand, something like order appreciation appears to fit the case of nature appreciation. We can appreciate nature in terms of the forces that bring natural configurations about, and we can be guided to the relevant features of nature by stories. But where do these stories come from? At an earlier stage in our culture, they may have come from mythology. But at this late date, they come from the sciences, including astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology, genetics, meteorology, geology, and so on. These sciences, and the natural histories they afford, guide our attention to the relevant forces that account for the features of nature worthy of attention.
Basically, Carlson's most recent argument is that art appreciation affords two possible models for nature appreciation: design appreciation and order appreciation. Design appreciation, however, is clearly inadmissible. That leaves us with order appreciation. However, die source of the guiding stories pertinent to the order appreciation of nature differ from those that shape order appreciation with : respect to art. The source of the latter is art history while the source of the former is natural history.
But once again Carlson's argument is open to the charge that he has not canvassed all of the actual alternatives. One's appreciation of art need not fall into either the category of design appreciation or that of order appreciation. We can sometimes appreciate art appropriately by being moved by it. Moreover, this is .true of the avant-garde art that Carlson suggests requires order appreciation as well as of more traditional art.
For example, Man Ray's The Gift is an ordinary iron with pointed nails affixed lo its smooth bottom. Even if one does not know that it is a specimen of Dada, and even if one lacks the art historical story that tells one the ideology of Dada, reflecting on The Gift one may readily surmise that the object is at odds with itself—you cannot press trousers with it—in a way that is brutally sardonic and that arouses dark amusement. Similarly, one can detect the insult in Duchamp's Fountain without knowing the intricate dialectics of art history, just as one may find certain Surrealist paintings haunting without knowing the metaphysical, psychological, and political aims of the Surrealist movement.
As it is sometimes with art, so is it with nature. In both cases, we may be emotionally moved by what we encounter without any really detailed background in art history or natural history. With respect to both art and nature, emotional arousal
can be a mode of appreciation, and it is possible, in a large number of cases, to determine whether the emotional arousal is appropriate or inappropriate without reference to any particularly specific stories of either the art-history or the natural-history varieties.
A parade or a sunset may move us, and this level of response, though traditionally well-known, need not be reduced to either design appreciation or order appreciation, nor must it be guided by art history or by natural history. Insofar as Carlson's approach to both art and nature appears wedded to certain types of "professional" knowledge as requisite for appreciation, he seems to be unduly^ hasty in closing off certain common forms of aesthetic appreciation. This is not said in order to reject the sort of informed appreciation Carlson advocates, but only to suggest that certain more naive forms of emotive, appreciative responses may be legitimate as well.30
I have argued that one form of nature appreciation is a matter of being aroused emotionally by the appropriate natural objects. This talk of the emotions, however, may seem suspicious to some. Does it really seem reasonable to be emotionally moved by nature? If we feel a sense of security when we scan a natural expanse, doesn't that sound just too mystical? Perhaps, our feeling, as Diffey has suggested, is some form of displaced religious sentiment. Maybe being moved by nature is some sort of delusional state worthy of psychoanalysis or demystification.
Of course, many emotional responses to nature—such as being frightened by a tiger—are anything but mystical. But it may seem that others—particularly those that are traditionally exemplary of aesthetic appreciation, like finding a landscape to be serene—are more unfathomable and perhaps shaped by repressed religious associations. However, I think that there is reliable evidence that many of our emotional responses to nature have a straightforwardly secular basis.
For example, in his classic The Experience of Landscape?1 and in subsequent articles,32 Jay Appleton has defended the view that our responses to landscape are connected to certain broadly evolutionary interests that we take in landscapes. Appleton singles out two significant variables in our attention to landscape—what he calls prospect (a landscape opportunity for keeping open the channels of perception) and refuge (a landscape opportunity for achieving concealment).
That is, given that we are the kind of animal we are, we take a survival interest in certain features of landscapes: open vistas give us a sense of security insofar as we can see there is no threat approaching, while enclosed spaces reassure us that there are places in which to hide. We need not be as theoretically restrictive as Appleton is and maintain that these are the major foci of our attention to landscape. But we can agree that features of landscape like prospect and refuge may cause our humanly emotional responses to natural expanses in terms of the way they address our deep-seated, perhaps tacit, interests in the environment as a potential theater of survival.
Thus, when we find a natural environment serene, part of the cause of that sense of serenity might be its openness—the fact that nothing can approach us unex-
-_____-_„, .
pectedly across its terrain. And such a response need not be thought to be mystical nor a matter of displaced religion, if it is connected to information processing molded by our long-term evolution as animals. Other researchers have tried to isolate further features of landscape—such as ;        mystery and legibility33—that shape our responses to natural expanses in terms of a sense, however intuitive and unconscious, of the sorts of experiences we would have—such as ease of locomotion, of orientation, of exploration, and so on—in the environment viewed. That is, our perhaps instinctive sense of how it would be to function in a given natural environment may be part of the cause of our emotion-t-. al arousal with respect to it. A landscape that is very legible—articulated throughout with neat subdivisions—may strike us as hospitable and attractive in part because it imparts such a strong sense of how we might move around and orient ourselves inside of it.
i Earlier I sketched a scene in which we found ourselves in an arbor, carpeted by
' layers of decaying foliage and moss. I imagined that in such a situation we might feel a sense of solace, repose, and homeyness. And such an emotional state might be caused by our tacit recognition of its refuge potential. On this view, I am not saying that we consciously realize that the arbor is a suitable refuge and appreciate it as such. Rather the fact that it is a suitable refuge acts to causally trigger our emotional response, which takes the arbor as its particular object and responds to it with a feeling of repose and homeyness, focusing on such features as its enclosure and softness, which features are appropriate to the feeling of solace and homeyness.
Our feeling is not a matter of residual mysticism or religious sentiment, but is perhaps instinctually grounded. Moreover, if such a scenario is plausible for at least some of our emotional responses to nature, then it is not the case that being aroused by nature is always a repressed religious response. Some responses of some observers may be responses rooted in associations of nature with the handiwork of the gods. But other emotional responses, appropriate ones, may have perfectly secular, naturalistic explanations, which derive from the kinds of insights that Appleton and others have begun to enumerate.
Admitting that our emotional responses to nature have naturalistic explanations, of course, does not entail a reversion to the natural environmental model of nature appreciation. For such explanations pertain to how our emotional responses may be caused. And when I appreciate a natural expanse by being emotionally aroused by it, the object of my emotional state need not be the recognition of my instinctual response to, for example, prospects. Perhaps one could appreciate nature a la Carlson from an evolutionary point-of-view in which the focus of our attention is the interaction of our emotions with the environment as that interaction is understood to be shaped by the forces of evolution. But this is not typically what one has in mind with the notion of being moved by nature.
In conclusion: to be moved by nature is to respond to the features of natural expanses—such as scale and texture—with the appropriate emotions. This is one
traditional way of appreciating nature. It need not rely upon natural history nor is: it a residual form of mysticism. It is one of our characteristic forms of nature appreciation—not reducible without remainder to either science or religion.
Notes
1 R.W. Hepburn, "Contemporary Aesthetics and the Neglect of Natural Beauty," in British Analytical Philosophy, eds. Bernard Williams and Alan Montefiore (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1966); reprinted in R.W. Hepburn, Wonder and Other Essays (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1984) [reprinted in this volume, Chapter 1].
2 See especially: Allen Carlson, "Appreciation and the Natural Environment," The Journal of Aesthetics and An Criticism. 37 (1979): 267-276 [reprinted in this volume, Chapter 2]; "Formal Qualities in the Natural Environment," The Journal of Aesthetic Education 13 (1979): 99-114; "Nature, Aesthetic Judgment, and Objectivity," The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 40 (1981): 15-27; "Saito on the Correct Aesthetic Appreciation of Nature," The Journal of Aesthetic Education 20 (1986): 85-93; "On Appreciating Agricultural Landscapes," The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 43 (1985): 301-312; "Appreciating Art and Appreciating Nature," in Landscape, Natural Beauty and the Arts, eds. Salim Kemal and Ivan Gaskell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993); Barry Sadler and Allen Carlson, "Environmental Aesthetics in Interdisciplinary Perspective," in Environmental Aesthetics: Essays in Interpretation, eds. Barry Sadler and Allen Carlson (Victoria, British Columbia: University of Victoria Press, 1982); and Allen Carlson and Barry Sadler, "Towards Models of Environmental Appreciation," in Environmental Aesthetics: Essays in Interpretation.
3 See Carlson, "Appreciating Agricultural Landscapes."
4 See Carlson, "Appreciating Art and Appreciating Nature."
5 Carlson, "Appreciation and1 the Natural Environment," p. 274 [this volume, p. 72].
6 Carlson, "Nature, Aesthetic Judgment," p. 25.
7 See, for example, William Lyons, Emotion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), especially Chapter 4.
8 T.I DifTey, "Natural Beauty without Metaphysics," in Landscape, Natural Beauty and the Arts.
9 Ibid., p 55.
10 Carlson, "Appreciation and the Natural Environment," p. 267 [this volume, p. 63].
11 Ibid.
12 This is the way that the argument is set up in "Appreciation and the Natural Environment." In "Formal Qualities in the Natural Environment," the object paradigm and the scenery model, it seems to me, both get assimilated under what might be called the formal qualities model.
13 Carlson, "Appreciation and the Natural Environment," p. 268 [this volume, p. 64].
14 Ibid.
15 Ibid.
16 Carlson, "Formal Qualities," pp. 108-109.
17 Carlson, "Appreciation and the Natural Environment," p. 269 [this volume, p. 68].
18 See for example, Peter Bicknell, Beauty, Horror and Immensity: Picturesque Land-scape in Britain 1750-1850 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981).
19 Carlson, "Appreciation and the Natural Environment," p. 271 [this volume, p. 69].
20 Carlson, "Formal Qualities," p. 110.
21 Carlson, "Appreciation and the Natural Environment," p. 273 [this volume, pp. 71-72].
22 Ibid.
■23 Francis Sparshott, "Figuring the Ground: Notes on Some Theoretical Problems of the
Aesthetic Environment," The Journal of Aesthetic Education 6 (1972). 24 CD. Broad, "Emotion and Sentiment," Critical Essays in Moral Philosophy (London: ^  Allen and Unwin, 1971), p. 293.
......25 Ronald deSousa, "Self-Deceptive Emotions," in Explaining Emotions, ed. Amelie
• i Okesenberg Rorty (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), p. 285.
; 26 Carlson, "Nature, Aesthetic Judgment," p. 25.
27 A test suggested by Robert Solomon in "On Kitsch and Sentimentality," The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 49 (1981): 9. I í 28 See Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Judgement [1790], trans. James Creed Meredith
; (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1952), especially the "Analytic of the Sublime."
29 See Carlson, "Appreciating Art and Appreciating Nature." \ 30 Toward the end of "Appreciating Art and Appreciating Nature," Carlson does refer to
certain responses to nature, such as awe and wonder, that sound like the type of emotional responses I have been discussing. He thinks that even armed with the natural environmental model, we may become aware that nature is still mysterious to us and other. And, in consequence, we feel awe and wonder. I do not want to deny that we jly may come to feel awe and wonder at nature through the process Carlson describes.
; However, I do not think that this is the only way that we can be overwhelmed with
j I awe in the face of nature. We may, for example, be struck by the scale of nature, with-
out any reference to scientific categories, and be overwhelmed by awe. Thus, though there may be a route to awe through the natural environmental model, it is not the í only route. There are still other ways in which we may be moved to awe by nature
I sans natural history. Consequently, the account of awe that Carlson offers does not
; eliminate the more naive model of emotional arousal that I have been defending.
31 Jay Appleton, The Experience of Landscape (New York: Wiley, 1975).
32 Jay Appleton, "Prospects and refuges revisited," in Environmental Aesthetics: Theory, Research, and Applications, ed. Jack L. Nasar (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988); and Jay Appleton, "Pleasure and the Perception of Habitat: A Conceptual Framework," in Environmental Aesthetics: Essays in Interpretation.
; 33 Stephen Kaplan, "Perception and Landscape: Conceptions and Misconceptions," in
Environmental Aesthetics: Theory, Research, and Applications, pp. 49-51. See also Kaplan's "Where Cognition and Affect Meet: A Theoretical Analysis of Preference," in the same volume.