Art and Embodied Aesthetic Emotions
Joerg Fingerhut, Corinna Kühnapfel
May 30, 2026 preprint DOI: 10.31234/osf.io/z7gt2_v2 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper |
|---|---|
| Topics | Philosophy of mind |
| Keywords | Embodied cognition Transformative learning Aesthetic experience Class philosophy Synesthesia Everyday aesthetics Epistemology Cognitive science Work of art Relation database |
| Key points | Proposes that aesthetic emotions, such as being moved, interest, and wonder, address an underspecified gap in enactive accounts of art by structuring exploratory and evaluative processes through embodied cognitive styles. |
Abstract
In this chapter, we situate aesthetic emotions within the embodied-enactive framework of the mind. Building on central enactive accounts of art, Noë’s account of art as reorganizational practice and Gallagher’s account of the unaffordable in aesthetic experience, we examine the transformative potential of aesthetic engagement while highlighting a remaining challenge: these approaches leave comparatively underspecified the embodied and emotional processes through which artworks are explored, experienced, and evaluated. We propose aesthetic emotions to address this gap. Paradigmatic candidates for aesthetic emotions are being moved, interest, and wonder. We argue that such emotions structure the exploratory activities afforded by artworks through their distinctive embodied cognitive styles. Yet, aesthetic emotions also critically contribute to the evaluation of artworks as artworks, thereby providing a promising pathway to naturalize aesthetics in this respect. Exploration and evaluation are therefore closely intertwined in aesthetic engagement. By bringing recent empirical work on embodiment in aesthetics into dialogue with enactive theories of art, the chapter contributes to a critical (neuro-)aesthetics and to a better understanding of aesthetic emotions as an under-explored class of mental processes within philosophy of mind and 4E cognition.
Comparable studies
Other theoretical and historical papers on philosophy of mind, most cited first.
| Study | Year | Design | Participants |
|---|---|---|---|
| Psychosis as a state of aberrant salience: a framework linking biology, phenomenology, and pharmacology in schizophrenia. | 2003 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| From dopamine to salience to psychosis--linking biology, pharmacology and phenomenology of psychosis. | 2005 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| How do the brain's time and space mediate consciousness and its different dimensions? Temporo-spatial theory of consciousness (TTC). | 2017 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| The phenomenology of deep brain stimulation-induced changes in OCD: an enactive affordance-based model. | 2013 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Looking for the Self: Phenomenology, Neurophysiology and Philosophical Significance of Drug-induced Ego Dissolution | 2017 | Theoretical or philosophical paper |