Animals

Are animals capable of perceiving beauty (or, for that matter, ugliness)? Not just in other animals but in their surroundings as well. Bill Ray

Comments

Non-human animals certainly react to features of their environment, features that we might judge to be beautiful or not. So if that counts as "perceiving beauty" then I would answer your question affirmatively. But if you're asking whether non-human animals are themselves capable of judging that some feature of their environment is beautiful, then I would say no. Not because I think that judgments about beauty are especially difficult or beyond the capacities of non-human animals, but because I think that the general practice of judging claims to be true is not one that I am comfortable viewing non-human animals as engaging in. (Of course, there are many people who disagree with this kind of view of non-human animals.)

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