Emotional Aspects of Neuroesthetics: A Naturalistic Approach1

Vasco Correia Institute for the Philosophy of Language (IFL)

New University of Lisbon I. INTRODUCTION

The role of emotions in aesthetic experiences has often been emphasized by philosophers. Aristotle famously claimed that tragedy leads to the “purgation” (catharsis) of negative emotions, and a number of authors have suggested that art is essentially a way of expressing emotions2. Susanne Langer, for example, writes that “a work of art is an expressive form created for our perception through sense or imagination, and what is expressed is human feeling”3. The link between art and emotions seems in fact to be anchored at two different levels: first, in the artist’s mind, insofar as the artist may use art to express or convey his feelings; and second in the spectator’s mind, insofar as the work of art is susceptible – and perhaps meant – to affect or “touch” the person who contemplates it.

Interesting as these proposals may be, they remained mere theoretical hypotheses until the development of neuroimaging techniques allowed neuroscientists to reveal the existence of a certain correlation between aesthetical and emotional states in the brain4. In particular, a recent study carried out by Semir Zeki and Hideaki Kawabata showed that the areas of the brain that are particularly active when one contemplates (what one considers to be) a beautiful painting seem to coincide with the areas of the brain that are often associated with emotional states5. As the authors observe, such a correlation seems to be very relevant since “it implies a connection between the aesthetic sense and the emotions”6.

Having said this, it is essential to grasp that neuroimaging alone is unable to account for the complexity of entanglements which underlie the

1 In O. Pombo, D. di Marco, M. Pina (Eds.), Neuroaesthetics: Can Science Explain Art?, Fim de Século, Lisboa, pp. 119-137. 2 See for example Benedetto Croce, Aesthetic: As Science of Expression and General

Linguistic, Transl. D. Ainslie, New York, Noonday, 1909; and also R.J. Collingwood, The

Principles of Art, London, Oxford University Press, 1938. Concerning the expression of emotions through music, see Peter Kivy, The Fine Art of Repetition, Cambridge University Press, 1993. Kivy argues that music which expresses a certain emotion resembles the attitudes of a person expressing that emotion. 3 Susan K. Langer, “Expressiveness”, in W.E. Kennick (ed.), Art and Philosophy, St Martin’s Press, New York, 1964, p. 79. 4 Particularly positron emission tomography and functional magnetic resonance imaging. 5 Cf. Hideaki Kawabata and Semir Zeki, “Neuronal Correlates of Beauty”, Journal of

Neurophysiology 91, 2004, p. 1699-1705. 6 Id., p. 1703.

relation between emotional and aesthetical states. At best, brain mapping can provide confirmations or falsifications of specific hypotheses, but it is up to the theorists of aesthetics to come up with the right questions. As S. M. Kosslyn rightly puts it, one ought to ask: “If neuroimaging is the answer, what is the question?”1 Thus, philosophy has an important role to play in neuroesthetics, and its long tradition of reflection upon these issues provides a diverse range of hypotheses, questionings and conceptual frameworks which may prove to be useful to neuroscientists. To that extent, neuroscientists have much to gain from exploring the philosophical tradition, as António Damasio’s work illustrates remarkably2. Conversely, philosophers also need to make an effort to meet the demands of empirical research, whenever it is possible to elucidate philosophical questions on the basis of scientific evidence. In this article, the methodological assumption is that neurosciences may indeed help to decide a number of philosophical questions.

While the relation between aesthetical and emotional states is paramount among such questions, it is also important to highlight the problem of the relation between those states and the hedonic sensations of pleasure and pain that seem to accompany them. David Hume’s view on aesthetic theory provides us with very interesting clues as to the way these categories may be articulated, suggesting that there is an essential link between beauty, pleasure and emotions. As we shall see, this view seems to be supported by studies recently conducted by neuroscientists, which suggest that there is a certain correlation between the brain’s reward system and the appreciation of beauty, and conversely, a correlation between the brain’s aversive system and the perception of ugliness. If this hypothesis is correct, it becomes possible to build up a naturalistic approach of aesthetics in the broad sense, accounting both for artistic and for natural beauty. II. ANALOGIES BETWEEN EMOTIONAL AND AESTHETIC STATES

It is often pointed out that aesthetic experiences are accompanied by some sort of emotional state or feeling. Yet, few have noticed the existence of important analogies between the two states.

The first similarity between emotional and aesthetical experiences seems to be that they both require some sort of judgement. Concerning aesthetic experiences, an influential tradition in philosophy contends that they require a specific “judgement of taste” through which the spectator evaluates the beauty (or the ugliness) of the object in question. According to Kant, in particular, the satisfaction emanating from the contemplation of a beautiful object is based on a judgement of taste which aspires to universal validity, despite being essentially subjective:

1 Cf. S.M. Rosslyn, “If neuroimaging is the answer, what is the question?”, Phil Trans. R.

Soc. Lond., B (1999), 354, p. 1283-1294. 2 The very titles of two of his books refer to philosophers: Descartes’ Error and Looking

for Spinoza.

“For although they do not by themselves contribute to the knowledge of things, yet [those judgements that we call aesthetical] belong to the cognitive faculty alone, and point to an immediate reference of this faculty to the feeling of pleasure or pain according to some principle a priori; without confusing this with what may be the determining ground of the faculty of desire, which has its principles a priori in concepts of Reason”1. This is the reason why we tend to assume that others ought to like

the things we like, and almost blame them if they don’t, “as if beauty were a characteristic of the object and the judgement logical (constituting a cognition of the Object by means of concepts of it); although it is only aesthetical and involves merely a reference of the representation of the object to the subject”2. It is disturbingly common, for example, to hear someone deploring someone else’s “lack of taste” simply because that person does not share his or her judgement upon the beauty (or the ugliness) of some object. But even assuming that aesthetic taste is by definition purely subjective; even assuming that its aspiration to universality is an ideal that does not correspond to any reality, it seems fair to suggest that liking (or disliking) an object from an aesthetic point of view requires a certain judgement about its qualities – for example, about the proportion between its parts, about the harmony of its features, about its colours and dimensions, and so forth. Thus, aesthetic experiences do seem to involve a judgement of taste, however subjective and ineffable it may be.

Remarkably, we find the very same aspect in emotional experiences. According to the cognitive account of emotions, at least, emotions require a certain judgement (or appraisal) to arise. For example, it’s because I judge that a dog is dangerous that I feel afraid of the dog. And that is precisely the reason why I fear some dogs, but not all dogs: only a judgement allows me to make the difference between dangerous and harmless dogs (even though that judgement may of course be wrong). Likewise, it’s because I judge my own action to be blameful that I feel guilty; and it’s because I believe that John stole my bicycle that I feel angry at him. Thus, judgements seem to be required to ensure that our emotions are appropriate to the object or the situation that provokes them. This view is widely dominant not only among philosophers (Aristotle, Cicero, Hobbes, Spinoza, Locke, Hume, Peter Goldie, Ronald de Sousa, etc.), but also among psychologists (P. Ekman, R.B. Zajonc, P.C. Ellsworth, C.E. Izard, N. Frijda), although there is some disagreement concerning the nature of the link between emotions and the specific judgement that they require: while “strong cognitive theories” argue that judgements are essential components of emotions, “weak cognitive theories”, in contrast, argue that judgements are only causal determinants of emotions3.

1 Kant, Critique of Judgement (1790), trans. by J. H. Bernard, 2nd edition revised, London: Macmillan, 1914, Preface. 2 Id., § 6. 3 See Niko Frijda, “Emotions Require Cognitions, Even if Simple Ones”, in P. Eckman et J. Davidson (eds.) The Nature of Emotion, 1994, Oxford University Press: Oxford, New

A second analogy between aesthetic and emotional states lies in the fact that they both seem to imply some form of hedonic sensation, either of pleasure or of pain. This aspect is perhaps clearer regarding emotions, since most emotions are either pleasant or painful, as many classic theorists of passions have noted1. Emotions such as joy, love and pride, for example, seem to be intrinsically pleasant - even though they may indirectly be the cause of suffering (I may be “lovesick”, hurt in my pride, etc.) – whereas emotions such as guilt, shame, jealousy and pity seem to be intrinsically painful states, affects that are accompanied by a vivid mental pain.

Likewise, it seems plausible to suggest that aesthetic experiences also involve a specific hedonic charge, though this claim is perhaps not as consensual. In short, the idea is simply that the contemplation of beauty tends to cause some sort of satisfaction (or pleasure), while ugliness tends to cause some sort of dissatisfaction. Typically, when a person says of an object, for example a painting: “It’s beautiful!” or “I like it!”, that person seems to imply that it is somehow pleasant to contemplate that object. In French the appropriate expression would be “Cela me plait”, which stems from the word “pleasure” (plaisir), and in Italian, similarly, the appropriate expression would be “Mi piace”, which also stems from the word “pleasure” (piacere). Even though many authors dispute this claim, under the pretext that aesthetic contemplation is purely disinterested, it seems difficult to understand, from a psychological standpoint, why people spend so much time appreciating beautiful objects, and why so much money is spent in the acquisition of works of art, supposing that beauty is not a source of satisfaction. Even Kant, who is at pains to show that judgements of taste are independent of the pleasure (or agreeableness) that beautiful objects may induce, seems obliged to admit that the experience of beauty generally involves some sort of satisfaction. His very definition of beauty refers to that notion: “The beautiful is that which is represented as the object of a universal satisfaction”2. Granted, this is not to say that beauty is just about pleasure, nor that ugliness is just about displeasure: as it emerges from the way postmodern art has evolved, there may be much more to it than simple satisfaction. Therefore, the claim is simply that it is generally pleasant to contemplate beautiful things (and not that beauty is reducible to pleasure), just as it is spontaneously unpleasant to be confronted with ugly and repulsive things. III. BEAUTY AND PLEASURE: AGAINST THE MYTH OF “DISINTERESTEDNESS”

This hypothesis is put forward by Hume in several of his works. In his view, there is an underlying link between the experience of the beauty (or the ugliness) of a certain object and the pleasure (or the pain) that it induces. In

York, Toronto, p. 197-202; and also Mick Power and Tim Dalgleish, Emotion and

Cognition, Psychology Press, Hove, East Sussex, 1998, p. 43. 1 See for example Cicero, Tusculan Disputations, IV, § 9 (136); Hobbes, Leviathan, I, 6; and Locke, Essai, II, ch. 20, § 2. 2 Kant, Critique of Judgement, op. cit., § 6.

fact, Hume’s hypothesis is far more radical, since it states that “Pleasure and pain are not necessary attendants of beauty and deformity, but constitute their very essence”1. Clearly, Hume doesn’t mean that beautiful objects are beautiful because they please, although (like Kant) he sees an analogy between the aesthetic taste and the taste for food and drink. It goes without saying that pleasure doesn’t necessarily imply a judgement of taste: I may, for example, enjoy eating a goulash even if I don’t take it to be a “beautiful” dish. What Hume suggests, more exactly, is that whatever we consider as beautiful must, in some way, produce a certain pleasure: “beauty of all kinds gives us a peculiar delight and satisfaction”2. That is to say that beauty always involves some sort of pleasure, although pleasure doesn’t necessarily involve beauty.

Despite all the criticism that Hume’s hypothesis has received, it is worth noting that many other authors have emphasised this aspect. As aforementioned, Kant himself acknowledges that there is a part of pleasure in the experience of beauty. In the very beginning of the Critique of

Judgment he writes: “In order to distinguish whether anything is beautiful (or not) we refer the representation […] to the subject and its feeling of pleasure (or pain)”3. To be sure, Kant eventually adds that the kind of satisfaction produced by beauty is “disinterested”, and even ideally universal (grounded in the Idea of a common sense) - which are, by the way, much more disputable claims -but the link between beauty and satisfaction is clear even in Kant’s analysis.

Nietzsche also highlights this aspect in The Will to Power, controversially declaring that ugliness is symptomatic of what is dangerous, vicious and toxic for man’s will; whereas beauty is a sign of what is “useful, beneficent, and life-promoting”:

“That which we feel instinctively opposed to us aesthetically is, according to the longest experience of mankind, felt to be harmful, dangerous, and worthy of suspicion: the sudden utterance of the aesthetic instinct, e.g. in the case of loathing, implies an act of judgement. To this extent beauty lies within the general category of the biological values, useful, beneficent, and life-promoting: thus, a host of stimuli which for ages have been associated with, and remind us of, useful things and conditions, give us the feeling of beauty, i.e. the increase of the feeling of power”4.

And more recently, Pierre Bourdieu argued against the idea that the contemplation of beautiful objects is a “disinterested” activity, claiming that the myth of “disinterestedness” (désintéressement) is nothing but a convenient illusion marking the superiority of the bourgeois way of life over

1 Hume, A treatise of Human Nature, II, I, sec. 8. See also A Dissertation on the Passions¸ section II, 7 [148]: “the very essence of beauty consists in its power of producing pleasure”. 2 Ibid. 3 Kant, Critique of Judgement, op. cit., § 1. 4 Nietzsche, The Will to Power, in O. Levy, The Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche, vol. XV, 1909, Book III, 804, p. 267.

those who need to struggle to make a living: only fine and cultivated creatures can access a contemplation of art which is allegedly disinterested1.

But more importantly, Bourdieu suggests in The Rules of Art that such an illusion is partly the reason why aesthetic contemplation is so pleasant. Referring to the case of literature, he observes near the end of the book that “the literary illusio, that initial endorsement of the literary game which justifies the belief in the importance and the interest of literary fictions is the condition, almost always undetected, of aesthetic pleasure”2. Thus, the illusion that art is such a disinterested and noble activity is partly the reason why we enjoy so much being part of artistic activities, either as creators or as mere spectators. In this sense, Bourdieu argues, we feel as though we belong to the very exclusive society of those who know how to appreciate beauty just for the sake of it (l’art pour l’art). Ironically, it would seem that part of the pleasure produced by art is derived from the illusion that art is not just about pleasure, for it is pleasant to be involved in a (supposedly) disinterested activity.

George Santayana brings forward another argument against the illusion of disinterestedness. In his view, those who take aesthetic contemplation to be disinterested are misled by the fact that “every real pleasure is in one sense disinterested”, insofar as pleasure may be sought for its own sake, and not as a means to satisfy ulterior interests3:

“The distinction between pleasure and the sense of beauty has sometimes been said to consist in the unselfishness of aesthetic satisfaction. In other pleasures, it is said, we gratify our senses and passions; in the contemplation of beauty we are raised above ourselves, the passions are silenced and we are happy in the recognition of a good that we do not seek to possess […] The truth which the theory is trying to state seems rather to be that when we seek aesthetic pleasures we have no further pleasure in mind; that we do not mix up the satisfactions of vanity and proprietorship with the delight of contemplation. This is true, but it is true at bottom of all pursuits and enjoyments. Every real pleasure is in one sense disinterested. It is not sought with ulterior motives, and what fills the mind is no calculation, but the image of an object or event, suffused with emotion” 4.

Furthermore, the hypothesis that beauty involves some sort of

pleasure, both for the spectator and for the artist, convincingly accounts for the fact that we make so many efforts to be able to enjoy aesthetic experiences. Would people bother to go to museums and spend their money in works of art if they didn’t expect to get any satisfaction in return? From a

1 Pierre Bourdieu, Les règles de l’art : genèse et structure du champ littéraire, Seuil, 1992, p. 415 : « Le culte de l’art tend de plus en plus à faire partie des composantes nécessaires de l’art de vivre bourgeois, le désintéressement de la contemplation pure étant indispensable, par le supplément d’âme qu’il apporte, pour marquer la distance par rapport aux nécessités primaires de la nature et de ceux qui y sont soumis ». 2 Bourdieu, Les règles de l’art, p. 537. 3 As Anthony Kenny points out “it is always silly to ask a man why he wants pleasure”. Kenny, Action, Emotion and Will, Routledge, London, New York, 1963, p. 93, note 2. 4 George Santayana, “The Nature of Beauty”, in W.E. Kennick (ed.), Art and Philosophy, St Martin’s Press, New York, 1964, p. 515.

psychological point of view, at least, such behaviour would be difficult to understand.

Hume’s hypothesis thus appears more plausible than it might have seemed at first glance. It leads to what Monroe Beardsley calls an “instrumental theory of beauty”. In the book Aesthetics he suggests that we may obtain a minimal criterion of beauty if we “combine the instrumental definition of aesthetic value with a psychological definition of value in general, and say that aesthetical experiences are intrinsically valuable in that they are liked, or enjoyed, or desired”1. One of the advantages of this approach, in contrast with Kantian surmises, is that it can be empirically tested. IV. TOWARDS A NATURALISTIC APPROACH TO AESTHETICS

Assuming that the instrumental account is correct, however, the question then arises: Why is beauty so intimately linked with pleasure, and what is the principle underlying such a connexion?

Hume provides two convincing answers to this question. Firstly, he suggests that the pleasure which accompanies the contemplation of beautiful objects stems from the fact that such objects tend to induce rather pleasant emotions. “On farther reflection, I find that [a cultivated taste for the polite arts] rather improves our sensibility for all the tender and agreeable passions; at the same time that it renders the mind incapable of the rougher and more boisterous emotions”. To which he adds that “nothing is so improving to the temper as the study of the beauties, either of poetry, eloquence, music, or painting. They give a certain elegance of sentiment to which the rest of mankind are strangers. The emotions which they excite are soft and tender”2. To be sure, aesthetic experiences do not evoke uniquely pleasant emotions: in any play or novel, for example, the reader is often led to feel pity, sorrow and concern for the main character, which are all painful emotions. But in good novels, Hume claims, these emotions must eventually be overbalanced by pleasant emotions, and, regarding art works, it is up to the artist’s genius to ensure that positive emotions prevail over negative emotions in the overall picture. “Even the common sentiments of compassion require to be softened by some agreeable affection, in order to give a thorough satisfaction to the audience”3. As we shall see, this principle is to be observed even in the case of tragedies.

Secondly, Hume suggests that the satisfaction characteristic of aesthetical experiences can also be derived from the psychological

association between pleasure and utility. In the second Book of the Treatise

he writes: “A great part of the beauty, which we admire either in animals or

1 Monroe BEARDSLEY, Aesthetics: Problems in the Philosophy of Criticism, Hackett, Indianapolis, Cambridge, p. 198. 2 Hume, “Of the Delicacy of Taste and Passion”, in The Philosophical Works of David

Hume, edited by T. H. Green and T. H. Grose. London: Longman, Green, 1874-75, vol. 3, I.I.5. 3 Hume, “Of Tragedy”, in Four Dissertations, London, A. Millar, 1757, III, p. 199.

other objects, is derived from the idea of convenience and utility”1. Hume illustrates this phenomenon with several examples. “The top of a pillar is more slender than its base […] because such a figure conveys to us the idea of security, which is pleasant”. And conversely, “when a building seems clumsy and tottering to the eye, it is ugly and disagreeable”. Although intrinsic characteristics of the object, such as the harmony of forms and proportions, can also be determinant, Hume argues that it is ultimately the feeling caused by the object which determines whether it appears as beautiful or as ugly. In his words, “Beauty is no quality in things themselves, it exists merely in the mind which contemplates them, and each mind perceives a different beauty”2.

This principle of association could explain in particular why there is such a variety of tastes, given that each mind makes specific associations in accordance with the person’s past experiences. But on the other hand this could also explain why tastes effectively converge to a certain extent, given that we all find certain things useful, agreeable or beneficent. Hence the temptation to isolate certain standards or rules of taste despite the fact that beauty remains essentially a subjective value. “It is natural for us to seek a Standard of Taste; a rule, by which the various sentiments of men may be reconciled; at least, a decision afforded, confirming one sentiment, and condemning another”3. Furthermore, a principle of association could also account for the fact that the elegance and the harmony of features of an object are often insufficient to induce a positive judgement of taste. Thus, Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa may well be a chef d’oeuvre of elegance and subtlety in its forms, arrangement and colours, but if, for example, the Gioconda bears a striking resemblance with someone the spectator deeply hates and despises, there is a chance he will nevertheless disagree with those who consider it to be a beautiful portrait. Despite all the intrinsic virtues of a work of art, what really matters, ultimately, is the effect it has on the spectator’s feelings, and that effect is often conditioned by the specific associations engraved in his memory.

Research in neurosciences seems to confirm Hume’s hypothesis. In particular, it appears to be consistent with empirical findings revealing the existence of “unconscious emotions” which insidiously alter our reaction to different objects. Robert Zajonc and his associates have used a procedure called “subliminal emotional priming” which suggests that sensory input can have emotional effects on the brain without our being aware of the stimuli4. This sort of experiment consists in presenting very briefly a picture of a priming stimulus with an emotional charge, either a scowling or a smiling face, quickly followed by a picture of a masking stimulus, such as an expressionless face, which inhibits the subject’s awareness of the priming

1 Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, Penguin Books, London, 1969, II, I, sec. 8. 2 Hume, “Of the Standard of Taste”, in Eighteenth-Century Critical Essays. Ed. Scott Elledge, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, vol.2, 1961, p. 813. 3 Ibid. 4 See S. Murphy and R. Zajonc, “Affect, Cognition and Awareness: Affective Priming With Suboptimal and Optimal Stimuli”, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 64, 1993, p. 723-39.

stimulus. In these conditions, the subject is not aware that he saw an angry face. Then a target stimulus is presented during a few seconds, which the subject consciously perceives (Chinese ideographs). The study revealed that the subjects tend to dislike the target stimuli that are primed by a scowling face, and conversely, that they tend to like the stimuli that are primed by a smiling face. It thus appears that the target stimulus acquires an emotional charge through the subliminal process of affective priming, that is through an unconscious conditioning of emotional reactions. Zajonc and Murphy argue that this unconscious phenomenon is globally responsible for the way our minds “colour” our impressions of different objects, either positively or negatively. “If, as the affective primacy hypothesis suggests, global affective reactions are more immediate and less under voluntary control, we would expect that emotion-laden stimuli presented outside of conscious awareness may color our impressions and judgments to a degree unparalleled by other types of information”1.

Joseph LeDoux’s work on fear-conditioning in rats also suggests that emotional processing can occur unconsciously2. “One of the most interesting things I’ve discovered”, he writes, “is that emotional learning can take place by way of subcortical sensory inputs to the lateral amygdala. Most researchers think cortical sensory processing is necessary for conscious awareness of the stimulus. The finding that subcortical sensory inputs are sufficient means that the amygdala can respond to emotional stimuli without the organism being aware of the stimulus”3. Although most of LeDoux’s studies focus on the neural processes underlying specifically the emotion of fear, they show that in principle the emotional significance of any sort of stimuli can be processed unconsciously. This seems to imply, as Hume anticipated, that emotional reactions to specific objects can effectively be conditioned by unconscious associations between the objects in question and specific emotions to which they were associated in past experiences.

Hume’s idea seems to be implicitly conveyed by the very concepts employed by neuroscientists. António Damasio’s theory of “emotionally competent stimulus”, for example, implies precisely that a simple association between a certain stimulus and a specific emotion, after a long process of conditioning, can be sufficient to trigger the emotion in question without the subject’s awareness. In The Feeling of What Happens, he gives an illustration of that common phenomenon:

“A new house of a shape similar to the house in which you lived a blissful childhood may make you feel well even if nothing especially good has happened to you in it. Likewise, the face of a wonderful, unknown person

1 Id., p. 723. 2 See J. LeDoux, “Emotional Processing, But Not Emotions, Can Occur Unconsciously”, in P. Ekman and R.J. Davidson (eds.), The Nature of Emotions, Oxford University Press, New York, Oxford, 1994, p.291-292. 3 J. LeDoux, “Brains through the Backdoor” in M. Bear, B. Connors and M. Paradiso (eds.), Neuroscience: Exploring the Brain, Lippincot Williams and Wilkins, New York, London, 2007, p. 576.

that so resembles that of someone associated to some horrible event may cause you discomfort or irritation”1.

Finally, this principle of association could be somewhat aggravated

by our genetic predispositions to like or dislike specific objects and animals. According to Martin Seligman, a certain number of phobias are derived from natural selection and play a specific role in keeping us away from potentially harmful objects or animals2. The fear of heights, for example, seems to prevent us from approaching dangerous places. Likewise, this would explain why the fear of snakes, spiders and rats are by far the most common phobias among human beings. Given that each of these animals presents a significant threat to us, either directly or indirectly (diseases), feeling a spontaneous repulsion towards them seems to work as a natural mechanism to avoid danger. Hence the aesthetic aversion that many people experience when contemplating not only these animals, but also things or substances which could be potentially life-threatening (heights, rotten meat, blood, etc.). Conversely, genetic predispositions could also explain why certain things and animals appear beautiful to the majority. For example, most of us tend to find small children, puppies and more generally young animals endearingly pretty. Again, there could be a natural mechanism underlying the spontaneous judgement of taste: since we tend to find babies so cute and adorable, we are also more willing to care for them and to raise them properly. Another illustration of this phenomenon would be the deep association between beauty and youth. The ideal and the norm of physical beauty has always been a young person, not an old one, which could also be related to some sort of genetic predisposition, to the extent that young individuals also tend to be stronger and healthier, and therefore more apt to raise and protect their descendents. These are of course mere conjectures which require further examination, but they appear to provide a plausible answer to a question that non-naturalistic accounts leave unanswered: Why is it that certain things and animals appear distasteful to most people, while other things and animals are judged beautiful with the same degree of consensus?

V. THE “SAD BUT BEAUTIFUL” OBJECTION

However, there seems to be a significant flaw in Hume’s instrumental account of beauty. The problem seems to be that in a certain number of aesthetical experiences the object of contemplation does not appear to induce any pleasant emotion whatsoever. On such occasions the spectator seems to qualify the object as beautiful despite the fact that it makes him feel sad. Picasso’s Guernica, for example, depicts an unbearable reality and possibly causes the spectator to feel negative emotions; but at the same time

1 A. Damasio, The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of

Consciousness, Harcourt Brace and Company, New York, San Diego, London, 1999, p. 57. 2 See M. Seligman, “Phobias and Preparedness”, Behavior Therapy, 1971, 2, 307-320.

it is considered one of Picasso’s most beautiful paintings. Music provides an even more prolific illustration of this phenomenon, given that many music genres, such as the fado, the flamenco and the blues, along with “sentimental” music in general, seem to be profoundly sad while the same time extremely beautiful for those who appreciate it.

These instances seemingly challenge the assumption that the contemplation of beauty is always accompanied by some sort of pleasure. Clearly, the viability of the instrumental approach is at stake here. If the experience of beauty can sometimes engage purely negative emotions and produce an overall painful state, then we must admit that beauty and pleasure are conceptually independent notions and that the former does not always entail the latter.

This problem is tackled by Aristotle in both the Rhetoric and the Poetics, and by Hume in the essay Of Tragedy. Both authors focus on the specific case of tragedy and genuinely try to understand why is it that people go to see tragedies despite knowing in advance that they won’t enjoy the pleasure of a happy ending. Their common assumption is that people wouldn’t go to see a tragedy if they didn’t take any pleasure in doing so. As Beardsley rightly puts it, “People go to see tragedies because they want to, not because they have to, and evidently derive enjoyment from this experience”1. Hume also poses the question in the same terms: “What is it then, which in this case raises a pleasure from the bosom of uneasiness, so to speak; and a pleasure, which still retains all the features and outward symptoms of distress and sorrow?”2 The question to be asked, then, is what sort of enjoyment could be derived from such experiences.

Aristotle and Hume identify several sources of satisfaction in the experience of watching a tragedy. The first lies in the fact that tragedy is an imitation of life, and that imitation is in principle a pleasant activity: “Tragedy is an imitation”, Hume writes, “and imitation is always of itself agreeable”3. Aristotle makes the same point, even adding a crucial remark: a work of imitation is pleasant “even if the object of imitation is not pleasant”4. This could explain in particular why it can be pleasant to contemplate works of art even when they represent unpleasant realities: “Objects which in themselves we view with pain, we delight to contemplate when reproduced with minute fidelity: such as the forms of the most ignoble animals and of dead bodies”5. Aristotle explains that this is so because imitation is a form of learning, and learning is always pleasant. Coming back to Picassos’ Guernica, for example, one could argue that the representation of such horror, particularly in the geometric fashion characteristic of Picasso’s work, may be a way not only of expressing repressed feelings, but also of imposing a certain order upon the chaos of war and destruction.

1 Monroe Beardsley, Aesthetics: From Classical Greece to the Present, The University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa, 1966, p. 56. 2 Hume, “Of Tragedy”, in Four Dissertations, London, A. Millar, 1757, III, p. 190. 3 Id., p. 192. 4 Aristotle, Rhetoric, I, xi, 1371. 5 Aristotle, Poetics, transl. by S.H. Butcher, Part IV, 1448b11.

A second possibility, famously brought to light by Aristotle, is that tragedies lead to a sort of “purgation” (catharsis) of the spectator’s negative emotions: “through pity and fear effecting the proper purgation of these emotions”1. According to the dominant interpretation, Aristotle’s view is that tragedy has a therapeutic effect upon the audience insofar as it evacuates noxious emotions, appeasing negative tensions and producing a pleasant relief. Curiously, it’s in the Politics that Aristotle provides us with a better insight into the concept of catharsis:

“Some persons fall into a religious frenzy, whom we see as a result of the sacred melodies - when they have used the melodies that excite the soul to mystic frenzy- restored as though they had found healing and purgation. Those who are influenced by pity or fear, and every emotional nature, must have a like experience, and others in so far as each is susceptible to such emotions, and all are in a manner purged and their souls lightened and delighted. The purgative melodies likewise give an innocent pleasure to mankind”2. Finally, a third hypothesis would be that not all emotions are

unpleasant in the course of a tragedy, given that negative feelings are often outweighed by positive ones. We may evoke for example Sophocles’ Antigone: on the one hand, to be sure, the spectator is saddened by the hero’s death; but on the other hand, undeniably, it is somewhat pleasant to witness the noble way in which Antigone meets her cruel destiny, sacrificing her own life to pay tribute to her brother’s dead body. According to Hume, negative emotions can actually work as a sort of “spice”, enhancing the spectator’s positive emotions by an effect of contrast. “Difficulties increase passions of every kind; and by rousing our attention, and exciting our active powers, they produce an emotion, which nourishes the prevailing affection. Parents commonly love that child most, whose sickly infirm frame of body has occasioned them the greatest pains, trouble, and anxiety in rearing him. The agreeable sentiment of affection here acquires force from sentiments of uneasiness”3. Another striking illustration of this aspect would be Alexander Dumas’s novel The Count of Monte

Cristo. Throughout the first part of the book, the reader feels a growing anger and resentment against Edmond Dantès’s enemies, who set him up and destroyed his life for the most despicable motives. However, it is clear that the more we are tormented by all the injustices inflicted to the hero; and the more we come to hate Danglars, Villefort, Caderousse and Mondego, the more exhilarated we are when Dantès finally returns to put his revenge plan into action.

We now see why Hume contends that tragedy is all about articulating opposite emotions in such a way that the spectator is delightfully overwhelmed by the very conversion of painful emotions into pleasant ones. “The affection, rousing the mind, excites a large stock of

1 Id., Part VI, 1149b. 2 Aristotle, Politics, transl. by B. Jowett, Part VIII, 7, 1342a. 3 Hume, “Of Tragedy”, op. cit., p. 194.

spirit and vehemence; which is all transformed into pleasure by the force of the prevailing movement. It is thus the fiction of tragedy softens the passion, by an infusion of a new feeling; not merely by weakening or diminishing the sorrow”1. Even when this principle seems to be transgressed, as in the gloomiest tragedies of Shakespeare, the positive emotion in question may simply be the curiosity to find out how the intrigue will unravel. Thus, as Hume observes, in Shakespeare’s Othello the spectator is led to feel sympathy for the hero’s jealousy (negative emotion), particularly since Iago’s scheme is known to the audience, but this feeling is progressively subordinated to an eagerness to find out how Othello discovers the truth (positive emotion). Again, the assumption here is that there must be something pleasant in the play for the spectator to enjoy it. And this means of course that some tragedies fail to do so, at the risk of becoming a flop (why would people desire to see something that is purely unpleasant?), while good tragedies ensure that the dominant feeling induced in the spectator is a positive one: “In order to dismiss the audience with entire satisfaction and contentment, the virtue must either convert itself into a noble courageous despair, or the vice receive its proper punishment”2.

VI. THE ROLE OF NEUROESTHETICS Despite its coherence and its ability to overcome the aforementioned objections, the instrumental account of beauty remains a philosophical hypothesis coexisting with many alternative hypotheses in the tradition of aesthetics, some of which equally coherent and sophisticated. This is precisely why neuroesthetics has such an important role to play, opening the door to the empirical testing of classical philosophical views and thereby helping to decide between them. One of the pioneers of this emerging discipline, Semir Zeki, suggested in a 2001 issue of Science that “there can be no satisfactory theory of aesthetics that is not neurobiologically based”3

. But even if we are not as radical as Zeki, it seems fair to say that there are indeed a certain number of philosophical questions which can be empirically decided, in particular (1) the relation between aesthetic experiences and hedonic sensations (pleasure and pain); and (2) the relation between the judgement of taste and the specific emotions underlying it.

Some of these issues have already been tackled by neuroscientists. As mentioned in the introduction, one of those studies, conducted by Semir Zeki and Hideaki Kawabata, used the technique of functional-MRI scans to examine whether there are specific areas in the brain that are engaged in aesthetical experiences4. In an attempt to avoid the problem of subjectivism, the study used as reference what the subjects themselves considered to be

1 Id., pp. 192-3. 2 Id., p. 199. 3 Semir Zeki, “Artistic Creativity and the Brain”, Science, july 2001, vol. 293, nº 5527, p. 51. 4 See Hideaki Kawabata and Semir Zeki, “Neuronal Correlates of Beauty”, Journal of

Neurophysiology 91, 2004, p. 1699-1705.

beautiful or ugly. Thus, each subject was invited to classify a total of 300 paintings from each painting category (portrait, landscape, still life or abstract composition) on a scale from 1 to 10. In essence, the results revealed two important aspects. First, it confirmed the hypothesis that the areas of the brain that are specifically engaged in aesthetic contemplation roughly coincide with the areas that are most active during emotional experiences, namely the orbitofrontal cortex and the limbic system. As the authors underline, “the general site of activation is not uninteresting in that it implies a connection between the esthetic sense and emotions”1. This result is perfectly in line with other studies also suggesting the existence of such a correlation2, and does seem to corroborate the instrumental account of beauty, which claims exactly that there is an essential link between aesthetical and emotional experiences. Second, and perhaps less predictably, the study also showed that the areas in the brain that are active when we consider an object as beautiful are different from those that are active when we consider an object as ugly. More specifically, it appeared that the orbitofrontal cortex becomes very active when we perceive something as beautiful (but not when we perceive something as ugly); whereas the motor cortex becomes more active when we perceive something as ugly (but not when we perceive something as beautiful). It is worth noting that Damasio identified a very similar asymmetry regarding the feelings of joy and sadness: during joy, the prefrontal cortex is very active, whereas in sadness it is clearly inactive3.

A plausible interpretation of these findings is that the opposition between perceiving something as beautiful and perceiving something as ugly is anchored in the opposition between the reward system and the aversive system, which neuroscientists consider to be two separate motivational systems in the brain (one orchestrating approach behaviours and the other avoidance behaviours). The amygdala, in particular, is known to be involved in fear and other aversive emotions, as LeDoux’s work reveals, while the Prefrontal Cortex is more involved in processes associated with reward and motivation. This later aspect has been confirmed by another study in neuroesthetics, which focused rather on the effect of music in the brain. The study was carried out by Anne Blood and Robert Zatorre in 20014. The authors used PET scans (positron emission tomography) to examine brain mechanisms underlying pleasant emotional responses to music, and particularly the experience of “chills” or “shivers-down-the-

1 Id., p. 1703. 2 See A. Aron, H. Fisher, D.J. Mashek, G. Strong, H. Li and L. Brown, “Reward, Motivation, and Emotion Systems Associated with Early-Stage Intense Romantic Love, Journal of Neurophysiology 94, 2005, pp. 327-337; D. Small, R. Zatorre, A. Dagher, A.C Evans and M. Jones-Gotman, “Changes in Brain Activity Related to Eating Chocolate: From Pleasure to Aversion”, Brain, 2001, 124, p. 1720-1733; S. Peciña, K.S. Smith and K.C. Berridge, “Hedonic Spots in the Brain”, The Neuroscientist, vol. 12, nº 6, 2006, pp. 500-510. 3 See Damasio, Looking for Spinoza, ch. 3, “Feelings in the Brain”. 4 Cf. Anne Blood and Robert Zatorre, “Intensely Pleasurable Responses to Music Correlate With Activity in Brain Regions Implicated in Reward and Emotion”, Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci., 2001, p. 11818-11823.

spine” which may occur when we listen to music. Their investigation showed that, as the intensity of the chills provoked by music increased, the blood flow also increased in brain regions thought to be involved in reward/motivation, emotion and arousal (orbitofrontal cortex, the amygdale, prefrontal cortex), that is, brain structures that are known to be active in response to other euphoria-inducing stimuli, such as food, sex and drugs. To that extent, the expression “sex, drugs and rock-and-roll”, however prosaic it may sound, establishes a remarkably pertinent association, since rock-and-roll (and pleasant music in general) seemingly activates the very same brain hormones and neurotransmitters that are induced by sexual stimulation and the use of drugs.

To sum up, the general conclusion we could draw of this analysis is that the neural correlates of beauty seem indeed to reveal the suspected link between aesthetical experiences, emotional states and hedonic sensations of pleasure and pain. Granted, much more needs to be done in neuroesthetics before the instrumental account of beauty becomes popular among philosophers, but the ongoing research seems already to lend weight to Hume’s approach. Finally, we could end with a meta-philosophical remark meant to appease those who might find it distasteful to describe beauty in general and art in particular in purely naturalistic terms. The remark is simply that the neurological study of aesthetics does not affect our capacity to appreciate art; any more than the analysis of the molecular structure of chocolate, for example, would affect the pleasure of eating it.

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