Neuroaesthetics and Philosophy

Some philosophers even recently have been skeptical about whether science can reveal anything significant about art. Although some scientists’ ventures into art theory have seemed to warrant such suspicions, including early speculative forays into neuroaesthetics, against such skepticism, the argument here is that neuroaesthetics is crucial for understanding aesthetic experience and ultimately art itself. Because certain core proposals of early versions of neuroaesthetics (e.g., the art-as-caricature thesis) seem to justify this skepticism and yet, at the same time, prove more defensible than they might initially seem, they are ideal illustrations of how neuroaesthetics at a more abstract level dovetails with the philosophy of art, and so provides a complementary, not competing perspective that can help complete, verify, and defend such philosophical theories. In particular, it is proposed that aesthetic experience involves a distinctive corticolimbic response, that such experience is therefore testable and may be found even with so-called anti-art, and that its value consists in resolution of conflict between the higher cortex and limbic system generated by the evolution of the former.