The aesthetic value of landscapes contributes to human well-being. However, studies which have investigated the link between biodiversity and ecosystem services have not taken aesthetic value into account. In this study we evaluated how the aesthetics of coralligenous reefs, a key marine ecosystem in the Mediterranean, is perceived by the general public and how aesthetic preferences are related...

Aesthetic judgments, like most judgments, depend on context. Whether an object or image is seen in daily life or in an art gallery can significantly modulate the aesthetic value humans attach to it. We investigated the neural system supporting this modulation by presenting human subjects with artworks under different contexts whilst acquiring fMRI data. Using the same database of artworks, we r...

Those who would defend the possibility of objective normative properties owe us plausible examples of what such a property might be, how our normative discourse and practices might reflect or be shaped by it, and how we might be able to speak of it and know it. Discussions of normativity have tended to focus on deontic or directive (ought/ought not) judgments rather than evaluative (good/bad) j...

Animal beauty provides a significant aesthetic reason for protecting nature. Worries about aesthetic discrimination and the ugliness of predation might make one think otherwise. Although it has been argued that aesthetic merit is a trivial and morally objectionable basis for action, beauty is an important value and a legitimate basis for differential treatment, especially in the case of animals...

There is something peculiar about aesthetic testimony. It seems more di cult to gain knowledge of aesthetic properties based solely upon aesthetic testimony than it is in the case of other types of property. In this paper, I argue that we can provide an adequate explanation at the level of the semantics of aesthetic language without defending any substantive thesis in epistemology or about aest...

Abstract Our paradigms of aesthetic value condition the philosophical questions we pose and hope to answer about it. Theories are typically individualistic, in sense that they designed capture, which offered as answers, center individual’s engagement with value. Here I offer some considerations suggest such individualism is a mistake sketch communitarian way posing answering nature