The Aesthetic Mind Philosophy and Psychology

The Aesthetic Mind breaks new ground in bringing together empirical sciences and philosophy to enhance our understanding of aesthetics and the experience of art. An eminent international team of experts presents new research in philosophy, psychology, neuroscience, and social anthropology: they explore the roles of emotion, imagination, empathy, and beauty in this realm of human experience, ranging over visual and literary art, music, and dance. Among the questions discussed are: Why do we engage with things aesthetically and why do we create art? Does art or aesthetic experience have a function or functions? Which characteristics distinguish aesthetic mental states? Which skills or abilities do we put to use when we engage aesthetically with an object and how does that compare with non-aesthetic experiences? What does our ability to create art and engage aesthetically with things tell us about what it is to be a human being? This ambitious and far-reaching volume is essential reading for anyone investigating the aesthetic and the artistic.

1 - The Master of the Masek Beds: Handaxes, Art and the Minds of Early Humans
2 - The Fragility of Aesthetic Knowledge: Aesthetic Psychology and Appreciative Virtues
3 - Neuroscience, Biology, and Brain Evolution in Visual Art
4 - Fact and Fiction in the Neuropsychology of Art
5 - Emotion and Aesthetic Value
6 - Beauty is Felt, not Calculated; and it Does Not fit in Boxes
7 - The Ethics of Aesthetic Bootstrapping
8 - The Origins of Aesthetics: A Neurobiological Basis for Affective Feelings and Aesthetics
9 - Beauty is Instinctive Feeling: Experimenting on Aesthetics and Art
10 - Beauty Is Not One: The Irreducible Variety of Visual Beauty
11 - Aesthetics: The Approach from Social Anthropology
12 - Experiencing the Aesthetic: Kantian Autonomy or Evolutionary Biology?
13 - Imagination Unblocked
14 - An Attitude Towards the Possible: The Contributions of Pretend Play to Later Adult Consciousness
15 - Unpacking the Boxes: The Cognitive Theory of Imagination and Aesthetics
16 - Enacting the Other: Towards an Aesthetics of Feeling in Literary Reading
17 - On Keeping Psychology Out of Literary Criticism
18 - Mirroring Fictional Others
19 - Moving in Concert: Dance and Music
20 - 'I'll Be Your Mirror'?: Embodied Agency, Dance, and Neuroscience
21 - Music and Emotion: Psychological Considerations
22 - Cross-cultural Musical Expressiveness: Theory and the Empirical Programme
23 - Neurology and the New Riddle of Pictorial Style
24 - Varieties of Pictorial Judgement: A Functional Account
25 - Pictorial Representation and Psychology

Elisabeth Schellekens is Senior Lecturer at the University of Durham, and Associate Editor of the British Journal of Aesthetics. She is the author of Aesthetics & Morality (Continuum, 2007), co-author of Who's Afraid of Conceptual Art (Routledge, 2009), and is currently working on a book on Aesthetic Objectivism. She was post-doctoral research fellow on the AHRC-funded project 'Towards an aesthetic psychology: the philosophy of aesthetic perception and cognition' between 2004 and 2006. Her main research interests include questions at the intersection of the philosophy of mind and aesthetics, meta-ethics, and Kant. Peter Goldie is Samuel Hall Professor in Philosophy at the University of Manchester. He is the author of Philosophy and Conceptual Art (OUP, 2007), On Personality (Routledge, 2004), and The Emotions: A Philosophical Exploration (Clarendon Press, 2000).