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Aesthetics and Reinforcement: A Behavioural Approach to Aesthetics

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Current Perspectives on Sexual Selection

Part of the book series: History, Philosophy and Theory of the Life Sciences ((HPTL,volume 9))

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Abstract

Aesthetics has three aspects, the cognitive aspect, the hedonic aspect, and creation. In this chapter I focus on the second and third aspects. In some cases, human art, in either the visual or the auditory dimension, has a reinforcing property for non-human animals, suggesting that human art has hedonic value for them. The process of art creation has its own reinforcing property, and artists create art for its own sake; in other words, art has functional autonomy. Observation of primates in the laboratory and bowerbirds and songbirds in nature suggests that their art-like behaviour has functional autonomy, although this requires further experimental study. Their art-like products have, however, no reinforcing property for their conspecifics. Finally, I review evolutionary theories of aesthetics. Honest signals of the quality of the message sender and the physical constraints of materials must have played a role in the evolution of our aesthetics, but almost anything can be art if a considerable population of our species agree to accept it as an art. In other words, beauty is the verbal expression of our preferences.

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Acknowledgements

This research was supported by Global COE program at Keio University.

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  1. Department of Psychology, Keio University, Tokyo, Japan

    Shigeru Watanabe

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  1. Shigeru Watanabe
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Correspondence to Shigeru Watanabe .

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  1. Faculty of Philosophy, Université Jean Moulin Lyon 3, Lyon, France

    Thierry Hoquet

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Watanabe, S. (2015). Aesthetics and Reinforcement: A Behavioural Approach to Aesthetics. In: Hoquet, T. (eds) Current Perspectives on Sexual Selection. History, Philosophy and Theory of the Life Sciences, vol 9. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9585-2_13

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