Aesthetics and Psychology

Abstract

While most traditional aesthetic theories are psychologically based, the consensus among contemporary analytic philosophers is that psychological findings are irrelevant to aesthetics. Wittgenstein, for example, claims that aesthetic explanations have no causal implications, and are to be sharply distinguished from explanations based upon low-level psychological generalizations ([19]). Dickie argues that the generalizations obtainable from meaning and preference experiments are pointless because they mistakenly construe logical problems as being empirical ([6]). He goes on to provide an Institutional account of the concept of the aesthetic that is grounded in the conventional practices of the artworld. Dickie's research program is especially important because his own theory, along with his arguments against psychological aesthetics, constitute the most comprehensive and clearly reasoned attempt to, in his words, free the concept of the aesthetic from the psychologistic and epistemological analyses which philosophers have been giving since the nineteenth century ([7]: 178). In the first section of this paper I argue that although there is room for a division of labor, with psychologists focusing on facts and philosophers on conceptual analysis, there are no persuasive reasons for denying psychology a role in the development of an adequate aesthetic theory. In the second section I argue that a purely conventionalistic analysis of the concept of the aesthetic has unacceptable consequences unless it is grounded in an account of human needs and interests. But if it is so grounded, a sharp separation of the concept of the aesthetic from psychological factors cannot be maintained. Because of its importance in contemporary aesthetics, Dickie's theory is the primary focus of this paper, but other philosophers' arguments are also considered.