• Appreciating Nature through Film: A Defense of Mediated Appreciation
    In Ted Nannicelli & Mette Hjorte (eds.), A Companion to Motion Pictures and Public Value, Wiley-blackwell. pp. 69-85. 2022.
  •  1
    A Face Only a Mother Could Love?
    In Fritz Allhoff & Sheila Lintott (eds.), Motherhood ‐ Philosophy for Everyone, Wiley‐blackwell. 2010.
    This chapter contains sections titled: Mothers on Baby Beauty Good Mom, Bad Critic? Beauty, Love, and Prejudice Notes.
  •  14
    Environmental Aesthetics (Annotated Bibliography) (review)
    with Allen Carlson
    Oxford Bibliographies in Philosophy. 2022.
  • Dating back to the early modern theories of Burke and Kant, philosophical accounts have made cognitive failure central to the experience of the sublime. This essay argues for a re-conception of the sublime in terms of the notion of epistemic expansion. Doing so not only provides a plausible account of traditional examples of the sublime, but also provides us with language that can capture an important but neglected aesthetic dimension of experimental science: the expansion of human perception. R…Read more
  •  7
    Beauty has often been associated with perfection, but many philosophical accounts of beauty allow that, in some cases, an imperfection can make something more beautiful. Here I consider this idea in the context of beauty of character. I argue that certain character flaws can enhance our appraisal of a person’s beauty of character by revealing other important qualities that they also possess. In doing so, I also consider how we come to know what sort of character a given person has. I also look t…Read more
  •  4
    Jeff Malpas (ed.), The Place of Landscape (review)
    Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews (NA). 2012.
  •  1
    Aesthetic Preservation
    In Environmental Ethics for Canadians: A Text with Readings, Oxford University Press. pp. 204-211. 2011.
  • Environmental Aesthetics
    In Anna Christina Ribeiro (ed.), The Bloomsbury Companion to Aesthetics, Bloomsbury Academic. pp. 228-241. 2015.
  • The Aesthetics of Chemical Biology
    Current Opinion in Chemical Biology 16 576-580. 2012.
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    The Merrickites
    In Sherri Irvin (ed.), Body Aesthetics, Oxford University Press. pp. 110-126. 2016.
    Our culture praises—indeed revels in—the beauty of the human form. And yet, in the midst of this exuberant celebration of corporeal beauty, not even the most unreflective can be unaware of the problems that have been laid at its feet. The philosopher Kathleen Higgins notes a “pervasive impression that is widespread in our culture: that beauty, or some near kin of it, is unsavory, a temptation that might get the soul off-track” (2000, 89). In response to this suspicion, some have argued that beau…Read more
  •  22
    Critical notice of Eddy M. Zemach, Real Beauty (review)
    with Glenn G. Parsans and Allen A. Carlsan
    Canadian Journal of Philosophy 29 (4): 635-653. 1999.
  •  90
    The Aesthetic Value of Animals
    Environmental Ethics 29 (2): 151-169. 2007.
    Although recent work in philosophical aesthetics has brought welcome attention to the beauty of nature, the aesthetic appreciation of animals remains rarely discussed. The existence of this gap in aesthetic theory can be traced to certain ethical difficulties with aesthetically appreciating animals. These difficulties can be avoided by focusing on the aesthetic quality of “looking fit for function.” This approach to animal beauty can be defended against the view that “looking fit” is a non-aesth…Read more
  • Design
    In Dominic McIver Lopes & Berys Gaut (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Aesthetics, Routledge. pp. 616-626. 2013.
  •  1
    Physical Beauty, Imagination and Romantic Love
    In Gary Foster (ed.), Desire, Love & Identity: Philosophy of Sex and Love, Oxford University Press. pp. 207-215. 2016.
    Romantic lovers notoriously overestimate the physical attractiveness of their own partners. This phenomenon is typically described as a kind of delusion or 'madness', and ascribed to the irrationality of love. I argue, on the contrary, that it does not involve distortion, error, or irrationality, but rather is an intelligible result of the particular kind of relationship that romantic love involves. In my explanation, I emphasize the critical role of the imagination in lovers' perception of beau…Read more
  • Aesthetics & Nature
    Continuum Press (Bloomsbury). 2008.
    Aesthetics and Nature offers a clear and accessible introduction to the field of nature aesthetics. Glenn Parsons explores the current debates in the field, providing the reader with a thorough overview of the subject. The book situates nature aesthetics in relation to two principal influences: aesthetics' traditional project of understanding the value of art and current thought on the ethics of our relationship with nature. The book outlines five major approaches to understanding the aesthetic …Read more
  •  3
    James O. Young, Art and Knowledge Reviewed by
    Philosophy in Review 23 (4): 305-307. 2003.
  •  45
    Platonism, Metaphor, and Mathematics
    Dialogue 43 (1): 47-. 2004.
    RésuméDans leur livre récent, George Lakoff et Rafael Núñez se livrent à une critique naturaliste soutenue du platonisme traditionnel concernant les entités mathématiques. Ils affirment que des résultats récents en sciences cognitives démontrent qu'il est faux. En particulier, ils estiment que la découverte que la cognition mathématique s'appuie pour une large part sur les métaphores conceptuelles est incompatible avec le platonisme. Nous montrons ici que tel n'est pas le cas. Nous examinons et …Read more
  •  1
    Metaphorically Speaking (review)
    Review of Metaphysics 57 (1): 169-169. 2003.
    There is a long philosophical tradition of regarding metaphor as an unimportant rhetorical device. Though this view once dominated analytic philosophy, richer conceptions of how metaphor works have increased our appreciation for its importance as a cognitive process. In Metaphorically Speaking, Patti.
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    Phantom Functions and the Evolutionary Theory of Artefact Proper Function
    Grazer Philosophische Studien 96 (1): 154-170. 2019.
    The evolutionary theory of artefact proper function holds that an artefact’s proper function is that effect which explains the reproduction of past instances of the artefact type. This theory has many sources but received its clearest presentation in Beth Preston’s essay “Why Is a Wing Like a Spoon?”. More recently, Preston has raised an objection to the theory, based on the phenomenon of ‘phantom functions’: these are functions that an artefact type is unable to perform, but which nonetheless a…Read more
  •  252
    Why Should We Save Nature's Hidden Gems?
    Journal of Applied Philosophy 32 (1): 98-110. 2014.
    Aesthetic preservation is the idea of sparing natural areas from development because of their aesthetic value. In this article I discuss a problem for aesthetic preservation that I call the ‘hidden gems problem’: in certain cases, the natural area under consideration is so remote and/or fragile that few people can actually experience it. In these cases, it becomes unclear how nature's aesthetic value can justify its preservation when development promises practical human benefits. After rejecting…Read more
  •  21
    The Philosophy of Design
    Polity. 2015.
    First published in 2005 by MBI Publishing Company LLC.
  •  33
    Much recent discussion in the aesthetics of nature has focused on Scientific cognitivism, the view that in order to engage in a deep and appropriate aesthetic appreciation of nature, one must possess certain kinds of scientific knowledge. The most pressing difficulty faced by this view is an apparent tension between the very notion of aesthetic appreciation and the nature of scientific knowledge. In this essay, I describe this difficulty, trace some of its roots and argue that attempts to dismis…Read more
  •  67
    Much recent discussion in the aesthetics of nature has focused on Scientific cognitivism, the view that in order to engage in a deep and appropriate aesthetic appreciation of nature, one must possess certain kinds of scientific knowledge. The most pressing difficulty faced by this view is an apparent tension between the very notion of aesthetic appreciation and the nature of scientific knowledge. In this essay, I describe this difficulty, trace some of its roots and argue that attempts to dismis…Read more
  •  114
    New formalism and the aesthetic appreciation of nature
    Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 62 (4). 2004.
    Recently, several authors have defended a new version of formalism in the aesthetics of nature and attempted to refute earlier arguments against the doctrine. In this essay, we assess this new formalism by reconsidering the force of antiformalist arguments against both traditional formalism and new formalism. While we find that these arguments remain effective against traditional formalism, new formalism falls largely beyond their scope. We therefore provide a novel line of argument for the insi…Read more
  •  95
    Paul Sheldon Davies, Norms of Nature: Naturalism and the Nature of Functions (review)
    Philosophy in Review 22 (1): 24-26. 2002.
  •  110
    Teaching & learning guide for: The aesthetics of nature
    Philosophy Compass 3 (5): 1106-1112. 2008.
    Traditionally, analytic philosophers writing on aesthetics have given short shrift to nature. The last thirty years, however, have seen a steady growth of interest in this area. The essays and books now available cover central philosophical issues concerning the nature of the aesthetic and the existence of norms for aesthetic judgement. They also intersect with important issues in environmental philosophy. More recent contributions have opened up new topics, such as the relationship between natu…Read more
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