Aesthetic Emotions and the Drive for Knowledge

In this paper, I address how the arts contribute to knowledge and understanding by defending an Affective Aesthetic Cognitivism (AAC). AAC is an empirically informed theory model, concerning the role of affect and emotions in sustaining the transformative, cognitive impact of the arts. The relation of our art engagement to our drive for knowledge might at times seem rather indirect. We do not mainly engage with art for educational purposes but rather for pleasure (e.g., when we rewatch a movie or TV show we love) or for emotion regulation (e.g., when we go to an art exhibition when we are bored). Aesthetic Cognitivism in philosophy and psychology, in contrast, focuses on the epistemic outcomes of our art engagement. It provides a theory about the value of the arts not “as sources of delight, amusement, pleasure, or emotional catharsis, but as sources of understanding.” (Brewer 2025, 1). The proposed AAC in this chapter goes one step further by integrating affect and cognition, arguing that the emotions are not a byproduct but a significant driver of the epistemic impact of the arts. The claim of AAC is therefore not just that the emotions accompany epistemic changes, or that they motivate cognitive engagement (they do that as well), but that specific aesthetic emotions play a constitutive role in how understanding through the arts is achieved. I first discuss the more general impact of art and cultural artifacts on our habits of perceiving and distinguish them from epistemically valuable cognitive gains; this gives me the opportunity to revisit some central claims of Aesthetic Cognitivism. I then examine how affect and cognition have been related in aesthetic psychology and, starting with Berlyne’s (1960, 1970) work on curiosity that recent psychology has been amended to cover more specific emotions. The main part of the chapter analyzes two recent empirical approaches to Aesthetic Cognitivism. An attempt at a taxonomy of aesthetic impacts (Christensen et al., 2023) and an assessment of viewers’ affective and cognitive experiences in a museum context (Miller et al., 2025). I propose some conditions that empirical studies must meet to speak to Aesthetic Cognitivism and AAC respectively. Overall, these studies suggest that when people actively engage with artworks their emotional involvement is not merely reactive or pleasure-based, but contains different expansive experiences that closely connect to shifts in perspective and the generation of understanding.