Admiring nature is a side-effect of preferences that evolved to help us find good places to live or stay.
That’s a fine just-so story, but if this (13 minute video of nature’s beauty, in the form of uninhabited and mostly uninhabitable places) isn’t a counterexample, it’s not clear what could be.
They’re all just-so stories. Any of them might turn out to be wrong.
(But I don’t think there’s any contradiction between “some very beautiful places are utterly uninhabitable” and “the tastes that make us find some places more beautiful than others evolved to help us find good places to live”. There can be natural as well as artificial superstimuli.)
That’s a fine just-so story, but if this (13 minute video of nature’s beauty, in the form of uninhabited and mostly uninhabitable places) isn’t a counterexample, it’s not clear what could be.
They’re all just-so stories. Any of them might turn out to be wrong.
(But I don’t think there’s any contradiction between “some very beautiful places are utterly uninhabitable” and “the tastes that make us find some places more beautiful than others evolved to help us find good places to live”. There can be natural as well as artificial superstimuli.)