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Animal Beauty, Ethics, and Environmental Preservation

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Title: Animal Beauty, Ethics, and Environmental Preservation


1
Animal Beauty, Ethics, and Environmental
Preservation
  • Ned Hettinger
  • College of Charleston

2
Animal beauty is a paradigm of aesthetic value
3
  • What could be more graceful than a gazelle?

Consider the beauty of birds
The charm of the male feeding his female
companion
The bright flash of a cardinal against the deep
green leaves
The haunting call of the loon
4
Animal beauty is important for environmental
preservation
  • Aesthetic preservationism holds that natural
    beauty is a major justification for environmental
    protection
  • If natural beauty amounts to anything, it
    includes the beauty of animals, wild and free, on
    the move
  • If our world lacked its splendid animal beauty,
    the justification for protecting the environment
    would be significantly weaker
  • This talk is a defense of the significance of
    animal beauty for environmental preservation

5
Two objections to animal aesthetic preservation
  • Focus on animal beauty is superficial and
    morally objectionable
  • As it is with people, aesthetic merit is a
    trivial and inappropriate basis on which to value
    or protect animals
  • Predation is ugly
  • Widespread suffering, death, and predation of
    animals is aesthetically negative and compromises
    animal beautys role in aesthetic protectionism
  • Both are significant problems if one takes the
    moral status of animals seriously.

6
Is beauty an objectionable basis for
treatment/valuing of humans animals?
7
Physically attractive humans are treated better
  • More successful in virtually every area of human
    life
  • Jobs, friends, spouses, being elected . . .

8
Uncontroversial that some of this preferential
treatment is problematic
  • Moral education is needed to correct for such
    biases (Robert Fudge, JAAC, 2001)
  • A focus on human physical attractiveness is
    superficial
  • Things we do to maintain our own beauty are
    associated with disreputable traits like vanity
    (Rob Loftis 2003, PCW)
  • When we shower many rewards on peoplemodels,
    movie starswho are beautiful or who make
    themselves beautiful we should feel a little
    ashamed of it, thinking it a little silly and a
    waste of resources

9
Not easy to explain why aesthetic discrimination
is problematic
  • Given that beauty is paradigmatically valuable,
    why is human beauty not also uncontroversially
    valuable?
  • And if human beauty is valuable, should it not
    count for something in our thinking and behavior?
  • People often choose a spouse or friends based in
    part on their beauty and this does not seem
    morally objectionable or superficial

10
Does Aesthetic Discrimination Violate Moral
Equality?
  • One objection to using aesthetic merit to value
    and differentially treat people (and animals) is
    that it violates the ideal of moral equality
  • E.g., Beauty queens should not get better medial
    treatment or fairer trials

11
Does the moral equality of animals prevent
similar aesthetic discrimination?
  • Endangered species discrimination?
  • The policy of preserving attractive endangered
    species before less attractive ones seems to run
    afoul of the moral equality of animals

12
  • If a bird rescue operation chooses to
    rehabilitate hawks, eagles, and owls, but not
    vultures, and does so on aesthetic grounds, does
    it violate the requirement of equal consideration
    for all animals?
  • Does choosing a pet at the pound based on
    aesthetics violate equal consideration of
    animals?

13
Moral equality not well understood
  • The meaning and significance of moral equality in
    humans is problematic
  • Many argue for partiality as a moral ideal
  • If and when moral equality rules out meritocratic
    treatment (including aesthetic discrimination) is
    also up for grabs
  • The meaning and significance of moral equality
    for animals is even less well understood

14
Leave implications of moral equality for
aesthetic discrimination unresolved
  • Moral considerations do not always outweigh
    aesthetic ones
  • Boring life of Mr. Goody-two-shoes is not
    preferable to the life of a person whose
    life--though not perfectly moral--is highly
    aesthetically stimulating
  • In the conflict between salmon and sea lions,
    even though salmon are less sentient and thus
    less morally considerable, salmon may get
    preference because of their spectacular life
    cycle (superior aesthetic merit)

15
Aesthetic Merit and Autonomy
  • Another reason aesthetic discrimination is
    problematic is that much beauty is beyond the
    individuals control and thus
  • (1) It is unfair to base our treatment of others
    on such a feature, for we should base our
    treatment of others on characteristics for which
    they are responsible
  • (2) Evaluating others on basis of uncontrollable
    features reduces their control over their lives
    (reduces autonomy)

16
Beauty not always uncontrollable
  • Note that these arguments dont apply for the
    many dimensions of beauty that are controllable
  • When an appearance that repulses others is chosen
    (e.g., dirty, smelly, gluttonous, etc)
  • Differential treatment on this basis is neither
    unfair nor autonomy reducing

17
These considerations dont apply well to animals
  • Is aesthetic discrimination toward animals unfair
    to them because we are failing to treat them on
    the basis of features for which they are
    responsible?
  • No Because animals are not (fully) morally
    responsible beings, no possibility of treating
    them only on the basis of features for which they
    are responsible

18
Does aesthetic discrimination reduce animal
autonomy?
  • Animals choices and ability to control their
    lives are sufficiently limited so that aesthetic
    discrimination does not seriously impair autonomy
    in animals
  • Would we increase the autonomy of ugly pets in
    pounds if we choose them on the basis of their
    behavior rather than their looks?
  • I dont think so.

19
Does aesthetic discrimination focus on a trivial
value?
  • Beauty is only skin deep
  • It ignores more important behavioral and
    character traits
  • Thus differentially valuing and treating people
    based on aesthetic merit is a shallow and
    superficial approach to their value
  • So too with animals

20
Physical beauty is not a trivial value
  • An overly narrow focus on human physical beauty
    is clearly problematic
  • But so is ignoring the appearance of human bodies
  • Humans, like animals, have bodies and what those
    bodies are like matters
  • Must guard against the inappropriate downgrading
    of the importance of the physical in human life

21
Belief in the triviality of beauty based on an
overly narrow conception of aesthetic merit
  • Notion that beauty is only skin deep is like the
    formalist idea that beauty consists solely in
    forms, lines and colors and that the sensuous
    surface of things exhausts their aesthetic content

22
Beauty involves much more than physical
appearance
  • Not all beauty is the easy beauty of the beauty
    queen, a panda bear or a scenic overlook
  • There are wonderful people in whom we delight and
    whose behavior and compelling personalities move
    us greatly, though they many not be particularly
    pretty to look at
  • The beauty queen, in contrast, may be boring,
    humorless and no fun at all.
  • In country, as in people, a plain exterior often
    conceals hidden riches (Aldo Leopold, 1949)

23
Deeper beauty in humans and animals depends on
  • Behavior and personality
  • Cant properly appreciate a salmon without
    knowing its life cycle
  • History, context, and what they represent
  • A grizzly bear symbolizes wild nature beyond
    human control
  • A cow represents human domination of nature

24
Beauty counts more in animals than in people
  • Animal beauty in general (and their physical
    beauty in particular) should count more in terms
    of how we value and treat animals than human
    beauty should count with people
  • Animals lack the depth of psychological inner
    beauty present in the character of people
  • Aesthetic dimensions of human personalitiesbeing
    compelling, boring, humorless, or fascinatingare
    only present in radically diminished forms in
    animal personalities
  • Thus a sole focus on animals physical appearance
    misses less of their beauty than does such a
    focus in people
  • In human value, beauty has many more competitors
    than it does in animal value
  • For example, moral virtue is central to the
    assessment of human value, but is barely present
    in animals, if at all

25
A sole focus on animal bodies is not demeaning,
as it is with people
  • National park visitors who focus on the physical
    appearance of animals are not like college men
    who stare at womens bodies
  • Wildlife calendars are not like
    Playboy magazines
  • While a single-minded concern with the look of
    animals ignores aesthetic features of their
    ecology and behavior, it is not demeaning to the
    animals but is a praiseworthy celebration of
    their value

26
Conclusion about aesthetic discrimination for
humans and animals
  • Aesthetic merit is a substantial value, not a
    mere tie breaker, and this is especially true
    with animals
  • Aesthetic discrimination is permissible with
    animals, even though it is often not with humans
  • Beautiful animals should be more highly valued
    and get more protection than less beautiful ones
  • Aesthetic merit plays a legitimate role in
    assessing the value and treatment of animals that
    it doesnt with humans

27
Conclusions about the use of animals aesthetic
merit for preservationism
  • The notion that beauty is only skin deep relies
    on an overly narrow formalist idea that the
    sensuous surface of things exhausts their
    aesthetic content
  • It ignores aesthetic merit found in behavior,
    personality, history, context, and representation
  • Aesthetic merit is a substantial value, not a
    mere tie breaker
  • Moral considerations do not rule out differential
    treatment based on aesthetics and this is
    especially true with animals
  • Because animals are not morally responsible
    beings and have relatively limited autonomy, the
    arguments against aesthetic discrimination with
    humans do not apply well to animals
  • Further, a sole focus on the physical appearance
    of animals is not demeaning as is a sole focus on
    the physical appearance of humans
  • Because animals lack the depth of inner
    psychological beauty present in humans and lack
    some important competitors to beauty in the
    assessment of individual value (viz., moral
    virtue)
  • Aesthetic merit plays a larger legitimate role in
    assessing the value and treatment of animals that
    it does with humans
  • Thus using animals beauty to defend
    environmental preservation is not morally
    objectionable, nor does it rely on a trivial
    value

28
2nd Challenge to Aesthetic Preservationism
  • Animal ugliness, particularly the suffering and
    death in predation, undermines the use of animal
    beauty for aesthetic protectionism

29
Are there ugly animals?
  • One account of animal beauty locates it in their
    displaying fitness for function (Glenn Parsons,
    2007) and possessing parts with natural
    functions they are well suited to perform
    (Malcolm Budd, 2002)
  • This explains the ugliness of
  • Human growth hormone enhanced Beltsville pigs who
    had deformed skulls, swollen legs, and crossed
    eyes
  • Naturally deformed animals

30
Many ugly animals?
  • Consider the list suggested--though not
    endorsed--by Yuriko Saito
  • Some things in nature are so repulsive,
    annoying, or unattractive that we cannot bring
    ourselves to appreciate the positive aesthetic
    value of their story telling. Fleas, flies
    cockroaches and mosquitoes, no matter how
    interesting their anatomical structures and
    ecological roles may be, are simply pesky. . .
    Bats, snakes, slugs, worms, centipedes and
    spiders simply give us the creeps and cause us to
    shudder. . . Our negative reaction to these
    things outweighs their positive aesthetic value
    of embodying their interesting life story (1998).

31
Do all animals have significant dimensions of
ugliness?
  • The critic will complain against admirers of
    wildlife that they overlook as much as they see.
    The bison are shaggy, shedding, and dirty. That
    hawk has lost several flight feathers that
    marmot is diseased and scarred. The elk look
    like the tag end of a rough winter. A half dozen
    juvenile eagles starve for every one that reaches
    maturity. Every wild life is marred by the rips
    and tears of time and eventually destroyed by
    them (Holmes Rolston, III 1987).

32
Animal ugliness as rampant in nature
  • Once as a college youth I killed an opossum that
    seemed sluggish and then did an autopsy. He was
    infested with a hundred worms! Grisly and
    pitiful, he seemed a sign of the whole
    wilderness, . . . too alien to value (Rolston,
    1986)
  • Wildness is a gigantic food pyramid, and this
    sets value in a grim death bound jungle. All is
    a slaughter-house, with life a miasma rising over
    the stench. (Rolston, 1986)
  • These dimensions of animals lives present a real
    worry for the view that the aesthetics of animals
    is positive on balance and thus they threaten the
    contribution animal beauty can make to aesthetic
    preservationism

33
I focus on the possibly negative aesthetics of
predation
  • It is arguable that the suffering, killing, and
    death involved in predation are something we
    should not appreciate and further that the
    phenomenon is aesthetically negative
  • If so, we have a rationale for condemning the
    wide-spread practice of aesthetically
    appreciating predation and an argument against
    the environmental goal of predator restoration
    (viz., we should not add ugliness to the world)
  • Further, given the centrality of predation in
    animal lives, if predation is aesthetically
    negative, this seriously hinders using animal
    beauty for aesthetic preservationism

34
Environmental aestheticians on nature-caused
suffering
  • Yuriko Saito denies that everything in nature is
    positively appreciable (i.e., positive
    aesthetics)
  • Because it conflicts with a moral obligation not
    to appreciate events that cause great human
    suffering
  • The same moral considerations that question the
    appropriateness of our aesthetic appreciation of
    the atomic bomb mushroom cloud, I believe, are
    also applicable to the possible aesthetic
    experience of natural disasters which cause
    people to suffer . . . our human-oriented moral
    sentiments do dictate that we not derive pleasure
    (including aesthetic pleasure) from other humans
    misery, even if it is caused by nature taking its
    course. . . (1998)

35
Saito side steps animal suffering
  • While Saito wonders if there is
  • Any difference between the suffering and death
    of an elk and the suffering and death of people
    who are victims of some natural disaster (1998)
  • She leaves animals out of her conclusion about
    the moral inappropriateness of aesthetically
    appreciating natural disasters that cause
    suffering
  • Because animals are not insulated from forces of
    nature as are humans, the problem of animal
    suffering and death in nature is a more
    formidable challenge to positive aesthetics than
    is nature-caused human suffering

36
Allen Carlson on nature-caused animal suffering
  • Carlson (2007) dismisses Saitos critique of
    positive aesthetics due to nature-caused human
    suffering by noting that positive aesthetics
    applies only to pristine nature (in which humans
    are not involved)
  • He also dismisses concerns about the aesthetic
    implications of animal suffering in nature
  • (1) By arguing that nature is not morally
    assessable
  • This ignores that it is non-morally assessable
  • Predation might be evil or ugly, even though it
    cant be wrong
  • Also ignores moral questions about possible
    obligations to alleviate such suffering
  • (2) And by suggesting that even if it were true
    that one ought not to aesthetically appreciate
    animal suffering in nature, this is a moral ought
    and that leaves the aesthetic value of these
    events untouched
  • This ignores possible interaction between
    non-aesthetic and aesthetic values

37
Three relationships between aesthetic and other
values
  • Aesthetic apartheid
  • Autonomism
  • Integrationism/interactionism

38
(1) Aesthetic Apartheid
  • Non-aesthetic (e.g., moral) evaluation is not
    appropriately applied to aesthetic objects or
    responses
  • There is no such thing as a moral or immoral
    book. Books are well or badly written. That is
    all. (Oscar Wilde, 1891)
  • Apartheid in the aesthetics of predation
  • The negative evaluation of the preys pain is not
    relevant to predation as an aesthetic object, nor
    does it legitimize moral assessment of the
    aesthetic appreciation of predation
  • Aesthetic apartheid is mistaken
  • Aesthetic objects and activities are not immune
    from non-aesthetic evaluation
  • Any human act can be morally evaluated, including
    acts of aesthetic appreciation
  • E.g., display admiration of photography of the
    bombing of Nagasaki might grievously offendmoral
    questioning not out of place

39
(2) Autonomism
  • Non-aesthetic (e.g., moral) evaluation of
    aesthetic objects and responses are appropriate,
    but irrelevant to the aesthetic merits of the
    object
  • A moral defect is not an aesthetic defect
  • Immoral but great art
  • Although Leni Riefenstahls powerful
    cinematography glorifying Hitler is morally
    depraved and we (morally) ought not appreciate
    it, this does not affect its superior aesthetic
    merit

40
Autonomism applied to nature Evil but
aesthetically valuable nature
  • A positive aesthetic response to Hurricane
    Katrina and to predation are morally wrong
    because they fail to take the disvalue of the
    suffering and death of humans and animals
    seriously
  • But these moral mistakes, need not be aesthetic
    ones
  • Katrina and predation might still have great
    aesthetic value

41
(3) Interactionism/integrationism
  • Refuses to compartmentalize values
  • Aesthetic and non-aesthetic values (including
    moral values) can influence each other
  • A moral defect can be an aesthetic defect
  • Examples
  • An author must get the reader to feel sympathy
    for a character if the story is to succeed But,
    contrary to the authors view, the character is
    terribly evil, and this prevents a sympathetic
    response
  • Here a moral flaw in the work cause it to fail
    aesthetically
  • Racist jokes are not funny (and this is because
    they are morally wrong)
  • We may declare pointedly that it is not
    funnyprecisely because its message is offensive.
    To laugh at it, we may feel, would amount to
    endorsing its message, so we refuse to laugh.
    Even judging it to be funny may feel like
    expressing agreement (Kendall Walton, 2002).


42
Pollution sunsets not beautiful
  • Integrationist approach Proper sensitivity to
    harms of pollution diminish or negate the
    sunsets aesthetic value
  • Aesthetic appreciation should go beyond sensuous
    surface and involve
  • Conception What is being experience are harmful
    particles that damage lungs, send people to the
    hospital and acidify lakes
  • Imagination Picture dead fish, hear the
    wheezing of vulnerable people trying to breathe
  • Emotion Feel angry at industry executives who
    profit by externalizing their costs onto others
  • The aesthetic delight and peaceful feelings
    sunsets normally deliver are absent

43
Integrationism and Predation
  • Because I believe that non-aesthetic and
    aesthetic values can interact (integrationism)
  • I worry not only about it being morally wrong to
    aesthetically appreciate predation
  • But also that it might be aesthetically
    inappropriate (an aesthetic mistake)
  • The suffering and death involved in predation may
    give it a negative aesthetic value
  • This would be trouble for a positive assessment
    of the beauty of the lives of the animals
    involved

44
Is predation in nature aesthetically negative?
  • It was a spotted hyena, the kind people think of
    when they hear the word hyenaa dirty, matted
    creature, dripping with blood. It must have made
    a good kill. The prey must have been large
    enough for the hyena to thrust its whole head in,
    up to the block like shoulders. This must be why
    the hyena has such a snake of a neckso it can
    delve deep into a dying animal and eat the best
    parts...I saw other hyenas...They were all dipped
    in blood...One could see which animal had gnawed
    at a leg, cheek pressed to bloody flank, or which
    had held a piece to its chest and embraced it
    there as it chewed. (Joanna Greenfield, New
    Yorker 1996)

45
Coyote An ugly killer?
46
  • Unless we dismiss the moral status of animals and
    claim their lives and pain dont count for much
  • We must acknowledge there is disvalue here and
    ugliness that goes along with it.

47
Is aesthetic appreciation of predation depraved?
  • Like aesthetically appreciating a cougar
    attacking a human child?
  • Because predation expresses violence and involves
    suffering and death
  • It is arguable that those with proper emotional
    sympathies for animals will not find it
    aesthetically alluring
  • If there is any aesthetic value in predation,
    perhaps we have a moral obligation not to
    appreciate it

48
The case for the aesthetic value of predation
  • Acknowledge the disvalues of predation
  • Animal death
  • Not a trivial disvalue
  • But not comparable to human death
  • Animal suffering
  • A disvalue more serious than death
  • Requires a sympathetic response

49
Positive values of predation
  • Animal life
  • Death for the prey is life for the predator
  • There is not value lost, so much as value
    capture (Rolston, 1992)
  • Production and display of admirable animal traits
  • Predation selects for muscle, power, intelligence
    and (sometimes) cooperative behavior of predators
  • Also selects for alertness and fleet-footedness
    of prey
  • Without predation, our world may well have lacked
    these valuable traits
  • Promotes functioning of healthy ecosystems
  • Predation regulates prey population and protects
    ecosystems

50
Predation contextualized and understood
  • Disvalue and ugliness are intermingled with and
    productive of value and beauty
  • The aesthetic response to predation must come to
    terms not only with the suffering and death
    involved, but with the significant positive
    values that emerge as well

51
Does a duty to prevent predation undermine a
positive aesthetic response to it?
  • Given integration, it is problematic to
    aesthetically appreciate an event we have a duty
    to prevent
  • Although we could lessen suffering and death in
    nature using contraception, such major human
    involvement would so compromise natures wild
    integrity, that we should not do it
  • Explains why a positive aesthetic response to a
    wolf attacking an elk is radically different from
    a positive aesthetic response to a cougar
    attacking a human child
  • Only in the human case is there a duty to
    intervene
  • Because we have no duty to rescue the prey, there
    can be no conflict between such a duty and a
    positive response to predation

52
A positive aesthetic response to predation is
appropriate, but must include sympathy
  • A sympathetic emotional response to the preys
    suffering and loss of life must color our
    appreciation of predation
  • But it should not wash out the positive aesthetic
    response
  • And it may even deepen it

53
Predation A sad, terrible beauty
  • There is beauty in predation, but it is not an
    easy or pleasurable beauty, such as the delight
    in pretty scenery or from seeing a cardinal at
    the feeder
  • Rather it is a sad, terrible beauty, involving
    taxing emotions like sympathy and pity

With terrible beauty attention is arrested by
elements that strain the heart and yet they
induce us to linger over them and savor them in
all their heartache and woe (Carolyn Korsmeyer,
2005)
  • In predation, the disvalues to the prey
    heighten our affective absorption as we
    experience this fundamental way that much life
    functions on our planet
  • These disvalues, rather than diminishing it,
    may increase the aesthetic value of predation

54
Conclusions
  • Animal beauty contributes importantly to the
    aesthetic justification for environmental
    preservation
  • It is neither morally objectionable nor
    superficial to use animals beauty in our valuing
    and acting towards them
  • There are sufficient differences between humans
    and animals to disarm the worry that the problems
    with aesthetic discrimination toward humans
    applies straightforwardly to animals
  • Although it involves suffering and death,
    predation does not constitute ugliness in
    animals lives that undermines using animal
    beauty for environmental preservation
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