Abstract
In this chapter I propose to naturalize the aesthetic induction in order to solve its problems. We shall see that this course of action has been suggested by Theo Kuipers’ approach to the aesthetic induction. Kuipers interprets the aesthetic induction in terms of the mere exposure effect. The idea of using empirical findings to address beauty in science is quite appealing, thus, it is utilized, along with the evidence discussed in Chap. 4 and a rudimentary naturalistic aesthetic theory, to develop a more accurate model of the aesthetic induction; the constrained aesthetic induction.
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- 1.
In a sense, this approach is similar to Kuipers’. However, my approach intends to exploit more characteristics of affective phenomena. Much of the biologically determined characteristics of affective phenomena are absent from McAllister’s and Kuipers’ models. Although Kuipers includes an affective induction in his model, such induction is based on a hypothetical variant of the mere-exposure effect and, more importantly, it assumes that exposure of properties determines the evolution of preferences. The mechanism of affective induction is independent of the fact that some preferences are biologically conditioned. The term ‘induction’ in affective induction highlights the fact that experiences with instances of properties determine the outcome of the process. My aim is precisely to incorporate the non-inductive biologically determined characteristics of preferences, which are probably liable for the anomalies in McAllister’s and Kipers’ models.
- 2.
It must be noted that Kuipers [49] offers a formal analysis of the aesthetic induction as well. But since Kuipers’ model suffers from the same problems as McAllister’s, I pursue a different direction here.
- 3.
Strictly speaking, one should write AP(t), for an aesthetic canon changes over time and the degree of critical adequacy changes with it. However, an aesthetic canon changes at a much slower rate than the individual degrees of preference; for the sake of simplicity, the slow change in critical adequacy is neglected and the parameter treated as a constant.
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Montano, U. (2014). Naturalizing the Aesthetic Induction. In: Explaining Beauty in Mathematics: An Aesthetic Theory of Mathematics. Synthese Library, vol 370. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-03452-2_5
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