Artworks Are Attentional Engines: Normative Conventions and Evaluative Perception in the Arts

There is a standard skeptical concern within philosophy of art that causal explanations in psychology and neuroscience apply equally to our engagement with art that is done well and art that is done poorly and so do not contribute to our understanding of the normative dimension of artistic appreciation. This skeptical concern is often used to challenge the relevance of psychology and neuroscience to our understanding of art. I sketch a crossmodal model for perception which demonstrates that those affective processes responsible for encoding the biological and instrumental value of a stimulus play a critical productive role in perceptual processing. I argue that the ensuing model for affective perception dissolves these skeptical philosophical concerns.