L. Anne Thompson

In this paper, I present a cognitive account of aesthetic character of landscape. I develop this in response to Emily Brady, who coined the term to refer to the aesthetic individuality of a landscape, which she argues we ought to conserve. She presents a non-cognitive understanding of aesthetic character, which I argue is flawed on the grounds that it does in fact rely on the perceiver calling on particular knowledge to grasp aesthetic character, fails to explain cases in which aesthetic character is determined by nonperceptual properties and finally does not make a principled distinction between properties that are relevant to aesthetic character and that are not. I argue that a cognitive understanding of aesthetic character does not fail on these accounts. First, it allows us to rely on knowledge to make salient properties relevant to aesthetic character, both for ourselves and reach agreement with others on what a particular landscape’s aesthetic character is like. Second, it accounts for those cases in which aesthetic character is determined by nonperceptual properties, as we access them by knowing about them. Finally, I demonstrate how this cognitive account of aesthetic character works much better in the practical context of landscape conservation.