This paper examines the relationship between the environmental aesthetics approach backed by knowledge (ecological aesthetics) and the possibility of doing an action in favor of environmental conservation. It seems that even having such an approach towards the environment fails to sufficiently motivate people to protect the environment and nature, since there is a tension between the course of daily life and scientifically supported environmental aesthetics. In order to explain such tension, we tend to examine and critique ecological aesthetics (which is (...) in some respects overlapped with environmental ethics) from the viewpoint of the philosophy of Wittgenstein, particularly with reference to his later work including the concept of formal life. Based on this concept, ecological aesthetics can be criticized and examined on three grounds: First, aesthetics is not able to create understanding or appreciation that leads to action. Second, the ecological concept added to reinforce the aesthetics, cannot support aesthetics in this regard and can even make things worse; ecological aesthetics, in fact, diverts aesthetics from its purpose (the purpose with regards to the environment, which is to motivate people to preserve nature) by trying to give it a strong objectivity. Third, the role of ethics in its current form in environmental conservation cannot be an active role. (shrink)

This article examines the philosophical issues that arise when preserving urban geological sites or urban geosites. These are preserved not only because of their geological value but also because of aesthetic, cultural, and economic reasons. To do so, it examines the geosite constituted by Olot and its surroundings, a city in Spain that extends amid four dormant volcanoes. It explores the metaphysical paradox that these geosites have become what they are due to the preservation of destruction: human-caused interventions, mostly extraction (...) of materials and exploitation of the land, are precisely what made these geosites visible as sites worth preserving and determining their metaphysical status. It further explores the preservation criteria and shows how they have determined the status of the geosite. Second, it shows how in such urban geosites the collapse of two diametrically opposed conceptions of time – the geological eon and the lived human time – occurs. Lastly, it discusses aesthetic aspects of such geosites by considering aesthetic experience as a primarily cognitive endeavor and shows how metaphysical, epistemological, and aesthetic issues of preservation of geosites are inextricably linked. (shrink)

This work was presented at the Research Center for Philosophy of Science of the Ferdowsi University of Mashhad (Iran) – in Aug 2020. --- -/- Briefly, in the first section of this Persian book, first of all, I (Hereafter: the writer) have presented generalities of Aesthetics and an interpretation of aesthetic universality (Hereafter: φ) and it is argued that each definition of art has to admit φ and this is a Kantian, minimalist, and subjective perspective view (some others would incline (...) objective interpretation of φ, but it is beyond the purpose of this work). What’s more, this view could be applied to all definitions of art e.g. Functionalism, Conventionalism, or Hybrid Theories. Additionally, the writer has replied to some objections, those would promote definitions of art without φ, it seems that they could not be successful to refuse φ, since it appears that φ is a premise in every aesthetic judgment. Next, in another section, the writer has written some primary notes on creativity, those have come from contemporary literature of it, and it is argued that there is a relation between creativity and φ. It is also claimed that the relation is the same φ by the creative processes, creative products, and creative persons, both scientifically and philosophically; and so, the relation represents that φ is true. Besides that, the writer has presented some potential objections to the writer’s aspect of the relation and the writer has also replied to those objections. --- -/- In the next section of the book, the writer has applied the φ by creativity to the philosophy of animal-made art, the writer revolutionarily illustrates that first of all, the normativity of the philosophy of animal-made art is prior to the descriptive one. Second of all, φ is principally the criterion to know that animal-made art is impossible. The writer’s position recognizes those other works of animal aesthetics, which means aesthetics of all of the non-human creatures in the earth or cosmos as a new part of environmental aesthetics, is the marginally second order of animal aesthetics. It is owing to the fact that first of all, the question, of whether animal-made art is possible or not, is normative. Second of all, if one does not concern normativity of the question, then one could not get the answer to the nature of it. Next, one could not distinguish between on the one side, the pleasure of drinking water when one’s thirst may cause death, on the other side, the one’s pleasure of listening to music when there is no urgent necessity of it. The fourth argument is that one needs to identify the normativity of animal-made art because one could generalize aesthetic judgments if one sets φ as the basis of it, and then, one identifies that φ is one of the most fundamental bases in Aesthetics. --- -/- The main section of this book is that the writer’s argument -Animal-Made Art Impossibility Argument- is in favor of the impossibility of animal-made art i.e. Functionalist, Conventionalist, or Hybrid Theories of the definitions of animal-made art, also the writer has replied to some possible ideas and objections to the argument. --- -/- Pouya Lotfi Yazdi --- Iran | June 2022. (shrink)

Although cities have been philosophically important since ancient times, the development of phenomenology and, to a lesser degree environmental and everyday aesthetics, made possible the aesthetic consideration of urban life. Unlike much of Western philosophy, phenomenology takes seriously that human beings inhabit a lifeworld, in which they live as embodied beings together with others. These three emphases—world, embodiment and intersubjectivity—together make possible the aesthetic investigation of urban life. I provide a brief survey of current work in urban aesthetics before introducing (...) the five papers that comprise this issue. (shrink)