Naturalized Aesthetics

<p>This book bridges the gap between the many insights into art provided by research in evolutionary theory psychology and neuroscience and those enduring normative issues best addressed by philosophy. The sciences have helped us understand how art functions our art preferences and the neurological systems underlying our engagement with art. But we continue to rely on philosophy to tell us what is truly good in art how we should engage with art and the conceptual basis for this engagement. <i>Naturalized Aesthetics: A Scientific Framework for the Philosophy of Art</i> integrates a systematic and comprehensive naturalism grounded in the sciences with an ecology of art. It shows how the environments in which we make and experience art – our engineered art niches – affect the practice and experience of art and generate normativity – the <i>goods</i> and the <i>shoulds</i> – in our engagement with art. There are in effect two streams of normativity according to this book: a niche-dependent social impersonal and objective stream and a niche-independent individual personal and subjective stream. Recognition of these two streams allows us to make progress in long-standing and unresolved philosophical disputes about how to interpret evaluate and conceive art.<br><br><strong>Key Features:</strong></p><ul> <li>Provides a structured and critical introduction to the scientific accounts of art based on evolutionary thinking psychology and neuroscience.</li> <li>Develops an ecology of art based on the insight that we engage with art in engineered niches.</li> <li>Presents a naturalistic account of normativity based on the recognition of two streams: a niche-dependent social impersonal and objective stream; and a niche-independent individual personal and subjective stream.</li> <li>Serves as an introduction and critical analysis of the debates about the interpretation evaluation and definitions of art.</li> </ul>