Pretty Ugly's Approach to Aesthetics

From Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society

 

The ability to efficiently detect changes in sensory input is both essential for species survival and the mechanism that explains aesthetic pleasure and displeasure. They [Maurer and Maurer] argue that 'aesthetic preferences are neither sublime nor even uniquely human' and instead are an incidental consequence of a common biological and neurophysiological mechanism that allows organisms to detect subtle deviations from what is 'normal' or average. Reviewing evidence from a range of sensory realms (taste, smell and vision), across different species, and considering aesthetic categories such as music and dance, the authors describe how neural systems adapt to detect deviations from normality from birth and how these form the basis of aesthetic responses. Central to Maurer and Maurer's argument is the idea that features of sensory stimuli are vital for understanding subsequent emotional responses, with deviations from statistical regularities of a stimulus attracting attention and resulting in positive or negative emotional responses (depending on an individual's context or previous experiences).

From "Sensing and feeling: an overview" by Giulia L. Poerio, Hirohito M. Kondo and Brian C. J. Moore. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 2024.