The Arts are More than Aesthetics: Neuroaesthetics as Narrow Aesthetics

This chapter suggests that present-day neuroaesthetics is limited in three important respects by a narrow, culture-bound sense of aesthetics/art. Neuroaesthetics is a young enough field that there seems to be no established view of its proper subject matter. Morphologically, the term implies the scientific study of neural aspects of the perception of artworks such as paintings, or elements of artworks such as musical intervals. Neuroaesthetics, like evolutionary aesthetics and other scientific notions of aesthetics, is predicated on a class of emotions whose biological function is to generate an appraisal of the properties of objects. A foray into the arts of non-Western cultures not only compels us to confront art practices that are removed from the "disinterested" aesthetic practices of Western fine art, but also forces us to consider the arts as behaviors that may have no necessary connection with beauty.