Abstract

Beauty, and other aesthetic qualities, are often analysed in terms of emotional responses to artworks. But when we see a work as beautiful, it does not feel like we have two separate and sequenced psychological states: the perception and the emotional response. Rather, beauty seems to be part of what we see—part of what is given in perception. How then can beauty be an emotional response to seeing? Drawing on work in cognitive science, the chapter describes how emotions can interact bidirectionally with perception. This, it is argued, gives rise to a kind of emotional infusion of perception, wherein the two seem phenomenally inseparable. The perception of aesthetic qualities such as beauty may be a case of emotionally infused perception.