Aesthetic Experience Explained by the Affect-Space Framework

The new framework is presented in an 'affect-space' and consists of three sets of dichotomous classifications: (1) internal locus (the felt experience) versus external locus (the description of the object), (2) 'affect-valence' - the attraction to (positive valence, e.g. preference, awe) or repulsion from (negative valence, e.g. hatred, disgust) the artwork/object - versus 'emotion-valence' - the character/contemplation of an emotion (happiness-an example of positive valence, sadness-an example of negative valence), and (3) deep versus shallow hedonic tone-e.g. 'awe' is deep, 'preference' is shallow. KEYWORDS: aesthetic experience, aesthetic emotions, affect, hedonic tone, locus THIS paper presents a semantic framework that organizes critical aspects of aesthetic experience for psychological and philosophical research. The act of creative production (such as a musician playing at a concert, an artist painting in a studio, or a composer at work) and its relationship to the perception and contemplation of art works are involved (Tinio, 2013). Other authors have argued that it can refer to pure pleasure, highly profound feelings, or the formation of meaning, interpretation and understanding (Armstrong & Detweiler-Bedell, 2008; Bullot & Reber, 2013; Leder, Belke, Oeberst, & Augustin, 2004; Leder & Nadal, 2014). The recent arrival of cognitive and neuroscientific perspectives into the debate about the definition of aesthetic experience has seen an important epistemological shift, now joining an area that has hitherto been largely the domain of philosophy. In this paper we take a linguistic perspective to addressing the question, since the key problem at hand is one of definition of terms and...