Aesthetic emotions, what are their cognitive functions?

DIFFICULTIES OF DEFINING “AESTHETIC” A huge number of publications are devoted to aesthetic emotions; Google Scholar gives 319,000 references. Nevertheless, finding a definition of what is aesthetic is not easy. Most authors use no definitions. Wikipedia (2013) gives a circular definition: “aesthetic emotions. . . are felt during aesthetic activity.” This is similar to the “institutional theory of art” that defines art as what is considered so by an accepted art institution (Dickie, 1974). In 70 years of discussions in the Journal of Aesthetic and Art Criticism this theory, despite its obvious flaws, remains accepted among philosophers of art. Scientists studying emotions should aspire for a more meaningful definition, yet it is not easy to find. For example, Juslin (2013) devotes a special section in his work introducing aesthetic emotions as a fundamental innovation of his theory of musical emotions, yet no definition of aesthetic is given. Difficulties of contemporary theorists attempting to define “aesthetic” might be related to Kant (1790). He rejected an older idea that aesthetic is related to a special perception ability (Baumgarten, 1992/1750) and attempted to define aesthetic as related to knowledge. This article suggests that Kant came amazingly close to the contemporary scientific understanding, and it clarifies why he could not formulate this idea to his satisfaction. The best he could do is to say that aesthetic emotion is disinterested. On many pages he has repeated that this only concerns everyday mundane interests, that the beautiful is related to some of the most important human interests, that a better definition is needed, but “today” he could not give a satisfactory positive definition of what it is. From Schiller to this very day many discussions continue the false tradition of characterizing aesthetics and beautiful as disinterested (Wikipedia, 2013; Stanford Encyclopedia Stolnitz, 1960; Scruton, 1974, 2007; Guyer, 1997; de Sousa, 2013; Juslin, 2013; Zangwill, 2013; to name just a few among thousands). This article defines aesthetic and the beautiful in correspondence with Kantian ideas, our deepest intuitions about the beautiful, the Aristotelian “unity in manifold,” (Aristotle, 1995) and in agreement with contemporary understanding of the neural mechanisms of emotions and cognition.