Abstract
Near 2,000,000 sites on the web refer to “aesthetics.” But definitions of aesthetics, even if given, are circular at best (related to beauty, which is related to aesthetics). Chapter 2, Mechanisms of the Mind: From Instincts to Beauty, gives a scientific definition of aesthetics and the beautiful, which corresponds to a wide understanding, and completes Kantian idea that aesthetics is related to knowledge. Aesthetic emotions measure satisfactions of the knowledge instinct. Near the top of the mental hierarchy they are related to understanding of the highest meaning and purpose, and experienced as the beautiful. This chapter discusses several types of aesthetic emotions, in addition to musical emotions they include emotions of cognitive dissonances, emotions of prosody and their relations to language grammatical inflections and cultures. This book does not touch on aesthetics of poetry, literature, and visual perception.
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