aesthetic experience and aesthetic value

Aesthetic Experience and Aesthetic Value

Robert SteckerCentral Michigan University

Abstract

What possesses aesthetic value? According to a broad view, it can be found almostanywhere. According to a narrower view, it is found primarily in art and is appliedto other items by courtesy of sharing some of the properties that make artworksaesthetically valuable. In this paper I will defend the broad view in answering thequestion: how should we characterize aesthetic value and other aesthetic concepts?I will also criticize some alternative answers.

What possesses aesthetic value? According to a broad view, it can be foundalmost anywhere, in artworks and natural objects, but also in many everydaythings such as our clothes and other adornments, the decoration of our livingspaces, everyday artifacts from toasters to automobiles, packaging, theappearance of our own faces and bodies, the artificial environments wecreate, the food we eat, and so on indefinitely. According to a narrowerview, it is found primarily in art and is applied to other items by courtesyof sharing some of the properties that make artworks aesthetically valuable.

In this paper I will defend the broad view in answering the question: howshould we characterize aesthetic value and other aesthetic concepts? I willalso criticize some alternative answers.

Aesthetic Concepts

The expression “aesthetic concept” is closely associated with the importantand extremely influential writings of Frank Sibley (2001). Since I use theexpression differently than he does, I need to make the difference clear. Anaesthetic concept for Sibley is a concept of a type of property that he thoughtplayed a crucial role in aesthetic judgments or evaluations, concepts ofproperties like being graceful, elegant, vivid, and balanced. The mostimportant aesthetic concepts for me are the meanings of expressions thatresults when we couple the word ‘aesthetic’ with another word: aestheticvalue, aesthetic judgment, aesthetic experience, aesthetic property.

The reason we are interested in the aesthetic is that we believe there is adistinctive kind of value: aesthetic value. Of all the aesthetic concepts, thisis the one we ultimately need to make sense of. Those who care about suchthings as aesthetic experience or aesthetic properties do so because of the© Blackwell Publishing 2006

Philosophy Compass 1/1 (2006): 1–10, 10.1111/j.1747-9991.2006.00007.x

belief that they are providers of something of great value to human beings.Similarly, some of those who want to debunk the aesthetic as a whole claimthat it is socially constructed, important only to a particular class at a particularperiod in history, as a means of maintaining their special social status.(Eagleton 1983) In other words, they deny that aesthetic value is one of thegreat human goods.

Some aesthetic judgments assert the presence of aesthetic value, or moreprecisely, some form of aesthetic value, e.g., x is: beautiful, pretty, exquisite,perfect, sublime. Each of these predicates seem to carry a somewhat differentcontent, but it is clear that, in the right context, they are used to makeaesthetic value judgments about particular objects.

What are the grounds of such judgments? What is the source of aestheticvalue? Over the three hundred year history of aesthetics, many answers havebeen given. Currently, there are two broadly defined contenders: aestheticproperties, aesthetic experiences. There are also two ways of thinking aboutthese contenders. (1) They are not really rivals; they are interdefinable insuch a way that an answer about the source of aesthetic value in terms ofone concept can be translated into an answer in terms of the other. (2) Theyare really rivals. In the abstract, there is no way to chose between 1 and 2.Either could be right depending on the conceptions of aesthetic propertiesand experiences on offer. In this essay, I will be examining some views onwhich 2 is true and will argue for grounding aesthetic value in aestheticexperiences rather than aesthetic properties.

Aesthetic Experience

There are several recent attempts to characterize aesthetic experience, orsomething closely related to experience such as aesthetic pleasure oradmiration (Iseminger 2004, Levinson 1996, Scruton 1974,Walton 1993).

According to Scruton, aesthetic experience consists in the appropriateenjoyment of an object for its own sake. However, it is somewhat hard topin down what the appropriate enjoyment consists in. For Scruton, it is notthe appreciation of certain properties – aesthetic properties – of the object.Whatis appreciated are ‘things’not literally possessed by the object but appropriatelyimagined to be so possessed. Scruton calls these aspects and he would countsadness in music, and a tension among depicted forms among these. Althoughthis view points in the right direction by focussing on the experience of anobject for its own sake, it raises a number of problems. First, it’s not clearthat Scruton sufficiently justifies his claim that things such as tension amongforms or musical sadness are not actual properties of artworks. Second, it isreally puzzling how there could be norms of any real strength concerningwhat Scruton calls aspects – imagined but not real features of objects. Finally,it is not clear that enjoyment is always required for positive aestheticexperience. We may value the experience offered by shocking or grotesqueworks of art without necessarily enjoying it.

2 . Aesthetic Experience and Aesthetic Value

© Blackwell Publishing 2006 Philosophy Compass 1/1 (2006): 1–10, 10.1111/j.1747-9991.2006.00007.x

Walton proposes that aesthetic pleasure is pleasure taken in findingsomething valuable or in admiring it. So aesthetic pleasure is a kind of doublepleasure: pleasure in an object, and pleasure in one’s admiration or discoveryof value in the object. This is an interesting kind of pleasurable state but Ihave trouble seeing why it is an apt characterization of specifically aestheticpleasure. For one thing, it seems to be available in kinds of situations wewould not normally call aesthetic. I am using a new sponge for cleaningdishes, and note its unusual efficiency. I take pleasure in this property of thesponge and further pleasure in the discovery of the sponge’s value. Neitherefficiency nor pleasure in the discovery of something’s efficiency seems likeaesthetic pleasure to me. But if the second order pleasure occurs at all (andI must admit I don’t find it occurring all that often), it could occur here too.Second, there seem to be lots of simpler aesthetic pleasures. Considerenjoying a sunset. I take pleasure in the color and luminescence arrayedacross the evening sky. For this to be aesthetic pleasure, is it necessary thatI take a further pleasure in finding value in this? I think not. The “howmarvelous” experience might be relevant to understanding a type of artappreciation, but, since there are lots of experiences we are inclined to call“aesthetic” that it doesn’t cover, and lots of non-aesthetic experiences itdoes cover, it does not seem like an apt characterization of the aesthetic perse.

Walton would reply that this critique presupposes that a good account ofaesthetic experience should capture as much of the extension as possible ofwhat we ordinarily think counts as such experience. But that is not hisproject, which might be more aptly described as giving a clear and interestingaccount of some of the things we call aesthetic experience. My rejoinder isthat there is nothing wrong with such a project, but it is misleading to callit an analysis of the concept of aesthetic experience. The latter does requirecapturing as much of our ordinary intuitions as possible for those are ouronly data in coming up with a plausible account. If there is an analysis thatcan capture the intuitive extension, and is equally clear, it is superior as ananalysis of the concept of aesthetic experience. So we should continuesearching for such an account.

A proposal that I find more plausible because it comes closer to meetingthis condition of adequacy is Levinson’s. “To appreciate somethingaesthetically is to attend to its forms, qualities, and meanings for their ownsakes, and to their interrelations, but also to attend to the way all such thingsemerge from [a] particular set of low level perceptual features” (Levinson1996, 6). For Levinson, we are appreciating real features of objects and thisenables him to avoid the normative slippage that plagues Scruton’s view. Thisappreciation covers a broad array of features – hence there is little in theway of purported aesthetic experience that it excludes as did Walton.

This is a complex account requiring attention to, or apprehension of,several distinct elements, their interrelations to each other, and lower levelperceptual features or a “structural base” as Levinson also puts it. However,


Aesthetic Experience and Aesthetic Value . 3

it is this very complexity that raises some doubt about the conception. Toconfine the discussion to just one of these doubts, does one always have toapprehend how the quality of one’s experience arises from a structuralbase? What does such a base consist in when one aesthetically experiencesa sunset? There just does not seem to be lower level perceptual features fromwhich the experience arises in this case, distinct from those directly enjoyed– qualities of color and luminescence. Levinson (1996, 8) suggests that thestructural base is “shades and brightness of yellow . . . appropriate to theheavenly body to which life depends.” But the shades and brightness ofcolors is the original object of the experience, while the “appropriateness”condition invoked here appears to be a matter of conceptualizing the objectof perception as a sunset rather than being itself a lower levelperception. Thus, either the conception contains an equivocation or it isopen to counter-example.

Looking back over these various proposals, and our criticisms of them,we can get a sense of an approach to identifying aesthetic experience thatpreserves their best features and avoids their problems. Aesthetic experienceis object oriented. It can be directed toward a broad array of features ofobjects – forms, perceptual qualities, meanings. This sort of experience isvalued (valuable) for its own sake.

There is a more minimal account of aesthetic experience than found inthe conceptions mentioned so far that captures the items just mentioned:the experience of attending in a discriminating manner to forms, qualitiesor meaningful features of things, attending to these for their own sake orfor the sake of this very experience. Call this the minimalconception. Anything that includes this minimal characterization, such asLevinson’s more complex experience, is also aesthetic experience.

The minimal conception is usefully compared with a definition ofappreciation recently offered by Gary Iseminger (2004): appreciation isfinding the experiencing of a state of affairs to be valuable in itself.

There are some interesting similarities and difference in this definition ofappreciation, and the minimal conception of aesthetic experience. I justmention two here. First, Iseminger makes clear he is not intending to defineaesthetic appreciation, whereas the minimal conception is a definition ofaesthetic experience. However, as a definition of appreciation in general, Ican’t see how Iseminger’s could be right, since it seems obvious we canappreciate objects rather than states of affairs, and we could appreciate themeither for their instrumental value or for finding them valuable inthemselves. While defective as a definition of appreciation, I find thedefinition a promising one for aesthetic appreciation. Second, the definitionof appreciation explicitly refers to value, in particular to finding an experienceto be valuable in itself. Does the minimal conception implicitly refer to valuewhen it speaks of attending to something for its own sake or the sake of theexperience of it? It does in two ways. First, it refers to the expectation of findingvalue. That, in itself, does not entail appreciation. Second, the experience



would always be found valuable in itself, though not always positivelyvaluable in itself. It could be disappointing, and a disappointing experienceis one found disvaluable in itself. That seems to entail appreciation at leastif appreciation can be both positive and negative.

If we believe that our basic notion of the aesthetic should be groundedin an account of aesthetic experience, then the minimal conception ofaesthetic experience grounds other aesthetic concepts as follows: Aestheticvalue comes in two varieties. There is the intrinsic value of aestheticexperiences themselves by which I just mean that they are valuable inthemselves. There is the instrumental value of objects capable of deliveringaesthetic experience to those who understand them. Aesthetic judgmentsare typically judgments about this instrumental value. We can remain neutralon the controversial topic of whether objects actually possess aestheticproperties and whether aesthetic experience always involves recognition ofthem. The forms, qualities and meanings mentioned in the minimal accountmake no commitment to them.

The minimal conception is consistent with and supportive of the broadconception of aesthetic value. In defining aesthetic experience, it makes nomention of art or of properties typically possessed by artworks but not otherobjects. Any object that can be attended to in the way picked out by theminimal conception can be an object of aesthetic experience and a potentialsource of positive aesthetic value. The conception leaves open as a logicalpossibility that artworks are the only main source of positive aesthetic value,but as a matter of empirical fact that just is not so.

There are a variety of other questions about aesthetic value that are leftopen by the minimal conception as it has been developed so far. It mightbe asked how the experience of attending to objects for their own sake inthe manner described by the minimal conception should possess any intrinsicvalue at all? The answer to this question is relatively simple. Experiencesthat are pleasurable, enjoyable or satisfying in themselves are among thethings we (positively) value for their own sake, and. being valuable for itsown sake is all I mean by “intrinsic value.” On the other hand, it is muchharder to answer certain questions about the instrumental value of objectscapable of delivering aesthetic experience. How objective is such instrumentalvalue? Can we use it to make plausible comparisons of aesthetic value amongthese objects? Is it dependent on the sensibilities of those who have aestheticexperiences? These questions don’t have simple answers. Fortunately, theoccasion for tackling them is a different essay.

An Alternative Approach

An alternative to taking aesthetic experience as the basic aesthetic conceptis to take certain objects of experience such as aesthetic properties asproviding that basis. Proposals by Carroll (2000, 2002) and Gaut(forthcoming) take this line. Carroll wants to preserve a distinction between



aesthetic value and artistic value, and so, if aesthetic properties are the sourceof aesthetic value, he cannot simply identify them with any property capableof contributing to the value of an artwork. If he did, the distinction betweenaesthetic properties and artistically valuable properties would collapse, andalong with it, the distinction between aesthetic and artistic value. Carrollalso wants avoid defining aesthetic properties in terms of aesthetic experience,since he wants to define aesthetic experience in terms of a set of propertiesthat at least include aesthetic ones. Unfortunately, Carroll hasn’t offeredsuch a definition that meets these two demands. What Carroll has offeredso far is an open-ended disjunction of sufficient conditions for aestheticexperience (Carroll 2002, 164). It is experience which has any of thefollowing objects: form, aesthetic properties, expressive properties, theinteraction of any of these, the relation of any of preceding items with ourresponse to a work. This proposal raises more questions than it answers. Areformal and expressive properties aesthetic properties? Is any relation betweenany of these properties and our response to a work an object of aestheticexperience? (The answer presumably is no.) Do aesthetic experience ofnature, non-art artifacts, etc., have yet other objects? I think we can see thatCarroll’s conception of the aesthetic is at best a work in progress.

There are, in fact, stronger criticisms to be made of Carroll’s view thanthat it is a piece of unfinished business. Consider one of the questions askedabove: are formal properties aesthetic properties? Normally, these appearon standard lists of aesthetic properties. However, in Carroll writings, theissue is far from straightforward. On the one hand, Carroll has argued thatform is an aesthetic property that does not always require a perceptualexperience for its appreciation. On the other, not only does he consistentlylist it separately from aesthetic properties when surveying the objects ofaesthetic experience, but his conception of form is not obviouslyaesthetic. Artistic form is “the ensemble of choices intended to realize thepoint or purpose of a work” (Carroll 2004, 415). (Elsewhere, Carroll (2004,421) suggests it is the choices that do realize this point. Works are formlesswhen the artists fail to realize her point.) Form, in this sense, is somethingthat can be grasped without experiencing the work at all. For example, asCarroll points out, one can understand Cage’s point in 4′33″ without everattending a performance of that work. In general, grasping form in Carroll’ssense is a matter of discovering that certain propositions are true. What isthe artist’s point or purpose with respect to this work? What choices doesshe make in attempting to realize this purpose? No experience, perceptualor otherwise, is entailed by the grasping of propositions that answer thesequestions. Carroll thinks this shows that there are aesthetic properties thatcan be appreciated non-perceptually. It in fact shows is that form, in Carroll’ssense, need not be an aesthetic property. To see this, consider that form, inCarroll’s sense, is as much a feature of this essay as any artwork. This essayhas a point. There is an ensemble of choices I made (intended) to realizethis point. That should count as the form of this essay, given Carroll’s



definition, but there is no reason to think that the ensemble of choices madeto realized the point of this essay is an aesthetic property of it, beyondCarroll’s stipulation that it is. Hence, the list of properties that purport todefine aesthetic experience is defective, not merely incomplete or unclear.Further, if a property like form can be cognized without an aestheticexperience occurring, aesthetic experience cannot be defined as therecognition of such a property.

Gaut does collapse the aesthetic and the artistic. Aesthetic properties arejust those capable of contributing to artistic value. So he is happy to say thatproperties that contribute to the ethical or cognitive value of a novel areaesthetic properties, something Carroll and many others would deny.

While Carroll’s conception of the objects of aesthetic experience isinternally problematic – since it may count items as such objects which arenot really such and is unclear about what these objects are – there is nothinginternally problematic about Gaut’s view. It is problematic in a differentway. In essence, in reducing the aesthetic to the artistic, it eliminates theaesthetic as a concept that can shed light on art. Whereas it was once thoughtto be an important fact that art is specially suited to deliver aesthetic value,this becomes a tautology on Gaut’s view. If we have a conception of theaesthetic that avoids this result, it seems preferable.

So those who take the view that the concept of aesthetic property is thebasic aesthetic notion either have a highly promissory and problematic orhighly tendentious view of these properties – something that places themat a disadvantage.

They have, however, an argumentative strategy to make up for this. Thestrategy is to challenge the idea, crucial to our independent account ofaesthetic experience, that it definitively involves valuing said experience forits own sake. If this argument is successful, there may not be a viablealternative to making aesthetic properties defined one way or another thebasic aesthetic notion. So lets conclude by examining this argumentativestrategy.

One argument against the view that aesthetic experience is valuable foritself is that it must then be something of positive value, something that isgood. But there is both positive and negative aesthetic experience: positivelyvalued experiences of aesthetically good things, negatively valued experiencesof aesthetically bad things. Hence, aesthetic experience needn’t be valuedfor itself.

This argument can be quickly refuted. Is aesthetic experience alwayssomething positively valued? The answer is that this is a semantic matter,but we can certainly recognize negatively valued aesthetic experiences,consistent with the idea that such experiences are valued for themselves. Allthat is needed is that the negative evaluation is of the experience itself ratherthan further things it brings to us.

A quite different argument, with a seemingly stronger conclusion, is thatthere is something scientifically anomalous about the idea that aesthetic



experiences are valuable for themselves rather than their consequences. Theattitude behind this argument is expressed by the thought: “how can theobjective intrinsic value of aesthetic experience be made comprehensible ina world where evolution reigns?” (Carroll 2002, 157).

But what exactly is the argument behind the attitude? One premise isthat humans from all cultures going back in time indefinitely have madesurprisingly large efforts to secure aesthetic experience. The second premiseis that such efforts that persist in a species are usually accompanied byevolutionary advantages – advantages the efforts are a means to. Theconclusion is that aesthetic experience is valuable for its consequences. Thepremises of the argument could be questioned. However, even if they areaccepted, this argument just doesn’t do its job. All that it implies is thataesthetic experience is valuable for the sake of further things it brings to us(or, more accurately, to the survival of the species). That is perfectlycompatible with the idea that aesthetic experience is, by definition, valued(valuable) for its own sake. Indeed, as a general rule, activities and experiencesthat have value from the evolutionary point of view, are valued byindividuals, and are valuable to those individuals, not for that reason, butfor some other. Consider the value we find in sexual intercourse. From theevolutionary point of view, it is valuable for the usual reason; it is necessaryfor the survival of the species. But few, if any, people value it for this reason,nor is this the only reason it is valuable in the human world. Those whovalue sexual intercourse as procreation, value it as a means, perhaps, but notas the means to our species’ survival. Rather, they value it because a humanbeing is (or rather may be) brought into this world, whether or not this isgood for the species as a whole. On the other hand, in valuing sexualintercourse for being an intensely pleasurable activity, or as a form ofintimacy, we value it for its own sake. There is nothing unscientific ormysterious in this. It simply reflects the fact that, from different viewpoints,things can be of value in different ways.

Similarly, being aesthetically engaged with an object is being in a state ofmind valued (valuable) for itself. Typically it is a pleasurable state of mindand this provides a transparent explanation of why it is valuable for itself.However, in the case of some artworks, the state of mind is not aptlycharacterized as pleasurable. Some artworks shock, unsettle, disturb, ordisgust us, but if we are inclined to say that they still offer a positive aestheticexperience, this is because we value this experience of engaging with them.On the other hand, suppose, after attending an exhibit of a bisected cow,we say this:“it was just like visiting the dentist; I hated being there, but I’mbetter off for it. I can deal better with things that disgust me.” Here we findpositive instrumental (even perhaps survival) value in the experience, butwe would not count it as positive aesthetically, if we count it an aestheticexperience at all.

One of the most interesting arguments for purely instrumentally valuableaesthetic experience is set up by positing two experiences. The content of



these experiences is purportedly the same. However, in one case theexperience is valued for its own sake, in the other it is not. The argumentclaims that this difference is insufficient to show that one experience isaesthetic and the other is not. Hence aesthetic experience need not be valuedfor its own sake.

So consider two situations. In one, someone is reading Shakespeare’ssonnets just for the sake of the pleasures they afford. In the other, someoneis preparing for an exam (Carroll 1999). The argument claims first in bothsituations, one may encounter the same aesthetic properties. The secondclaim is that if one takes in the same aesthetic properties, one is having anaesthetic experience. The conclusion is that one can have such an experiencewithout valuing it for its own sake. One can reply to this argument in anumber of ways. The simplest is to point out that the second premise begsthe question: it assumes the correctness of the content-oriented conception.One can also question whether such preparation, if it is really devoid ofintrinsically valued experience, constitutes a genuine encounter with aestheticproperties rather than non-aesthetic ones such as the possession of imagesor metaphors.

To make this point more vivid, consider the following example. Supposeone is preparing for an exam on Elizabethan poetry, and one is looking overShakespeare’s famous sonnet 73, which begins:

That time of year thou mayest in me beholdWhen yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hangUpon the boughs which shake against the cold . . .

Such preparation may only require noticing that a season is being used asmetaphor for old age. One may even note the specific features of themetaphor that make it appropriate: the tree’s branches could be comparedto a balding head and the aging human frame is more likely to shake thanwould a strong youthful body. Forming these beliefs is good preparationfor the exam, but does not imply any particular experience on the part ofthe reader. Hence so far, no aesthetic experience has been mentioned. Onthe other hand, if the reader is amused by the wittiness of this image of oldage, and if, as she reads on, feels the poignancy of the metaphors that follow,or if the reader begins to imagine old age in the light of these metaphoricaldescriptions, then we can speak of an experience. However, one does nothave such experiences, without one valuing them in one way or another.Hence, I don’t see how the exam situation provides a counter-example tothe idea that aesthetic experience is always valued for itself, though thevaluing needn’t be positive.

Conclusion

Even if there is a way to pick out aesthetic properties without appealing toaesthetic experience, the mere cognition of such properties does not implythat that any particular experience has occurred. Hence, it is not a satisfactory



route to identifying aesthetic experience. The routes to understandingaesthetic experience explored in the second section of this paper, inparticular, the minimal conception, are more promising. Furthermore, theminimal conception provides a very straightforward way to understandaesthetic value and explains why it is broadly available in the world weencounter.

Bibliography

Carroll, N. 1999. The Philosophy of Art: A Contemporary Introduction. London: Routledge.Carroll, N. 2000. “Art and the Domain of the Aesthetic,” British Journal of Aesthetics, 40, 191–208.Carroll, N. 2002. “Aesthetic Experience Revisited,” British Journal Of Aesthetics, 42, 145–68.Carroll, N. 2004. “Non-Perceptual Aesthetic Properties: Comments for James Shelley,” British

Journal of Aesthetics, 44, 413–23.Eagleton,T. 1983. Literary Theory: An Introduction. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Gaut, B. forthcoming. Art, Emotion, and Ethics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Iseminger, G. 2004. The Aesthetic Function of Art. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Levinson, J. 1996. The Pleasures of Aesthetics. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Scruton, R. 1974. Art and Imagination. London: Methuen.Sibley, F. 2001. Approach to Aesthetics: Collected papers on Philosophical Aesthetics. Oxford: Clarendon

Press.Walton, K. 1993. “How Marvelous! Toward a Theory of Aesthetic Value,” Journal of Aesthetics

and Art Criticism, 51, 499–510.



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