Aesthetic Emotion In The Horizon Of Cognitive Neuroaesthetics

Aesthetic emotion is one of the most important questions of aesthetics.The born of cognitive neuroaesthetics provides a good opportunity to find the underpinnings of it scientifically.Taking the neural substrate as the breakingthrough point,there is a path of aesthetic research through the cognitive neural elements,the general psychological process,the individual aesthetic existence and the social psychological culture,in front of us.This path integrates up-to-down metaphysical aesthetics and bottom-to-top psychological aesthetics into an integral method of integration.From the perspective of cognitive neuroaesthetics,aesthetic emotion is based on the neuralbiological principles of cognition and emotion,and is closely related to individual psychology,social cultural psychology.It is a unity of emotion and cognition,sentimental-through-rational state of mind,which gives people a powerful practical driving force.Aesthetic emotion is an affective synaesthesia system,which is the result of the ‘mixed operation’ of cognition and emotion in the brain,and is the optimal algorithm for human survival practice.In the blend of subjective world and objective world,aesthetic emotion is the most harmonious principle in the interaction between the individual and the external world,which determines the evolutionary selection of the human existence and development.The conceptual method of single linear judgment is difficult to sum up the whole underpinnings of aesthetic emotion.The question ‘What is aesthetic emotion?’is like ‘what is beauty?’,which is difficult to answer;stereoscopic,systematic and comprehensive description better reveals the true state of aesthetic emotion.Now,the aesthetic emotion is a whole,which is a psychological system that takes the neurobiological elements as the core,and penetrates the individual psychological consciousness,social cultural psychological consciousness and natural ecological consciousness.When aesthetic emotion takes place,the inner senses,the external senses and the extended senses are interconnected,and the brain-heart-body-things are integrated into one.There will be harmonious interaction among cognition,emotion,will and behaviour.We try to use the integrated approach to reconstruct the knowledge system of aesthetic emotion,which is as follows:1.Combing up-to-down philosophical aesthetics and bottom-to-top psychology aesthetics,we explore the psychological and physiological aspects of aesthetic emotion from traditional philosophical aesthetics and morden psychology aesthetics.The traditional metaphysical philosophical aesthetics is the main way of aesthetic research.With the birth and development of modern psychological science,the new psychological path has provided a scientific explanation for aesthetic research.Philosophical aesthetics often infers the aesthetic psychological elments.The inference of metaphysical philosophy has an important enlightenmental role for psychological basis of aesthetic emotion,and also for the general psychological science;in the second half of nineteenth Century,since the birth of scientific psychology,aesthetic research obtained new momentum with every progress of psychology.In history,the study of aesthetic emotion in philosophical and psychological methods contains many sprouts of contemporary cognitive neuroaesthetics.2.This paper introduces the development and main points of neuroaesthetics and cognitive aesthetics,proposes the theoretical framework and future tasks of cognitive neuroaesthetics,and makes clear the exploration process of neurobiological substrate of aesthetic emotion in contemporary psychology.In 1970 s,cognitive neuroscience was born on the basis of cognitive psychology and the development of brain science.Western Experimental Aesthetics,with the help of the latest achievements in cognitive neuroscience,has obtained new research results.In 1990 s,neuroaesthetics was born in the West,and the cognitive aesthetics was born in China.The former uses scientific experiments as the main method to explore the neurobiological underpinnings of aesthetic emotion.The latter uses the results of cognitive psychology to integrate the methods of philosophical aesthetics and explore the cognitive neural mechanism of aesthetic emotion.In 2010 s,the domestic academics tended to combine cognitive aesthetics with neuroaesthetics as cognitive neuroaesthetics.3.In combination with the main achievements of cognitive neuroscience,the cognitive and neural unerpinnings of aesthetic emotion is discussed.Cognitive neuroaesthetics take the exporation and confirmation of aesthetic neurobiological fact as its main starting point and target.Under the guidance of cognitive neuroscience,neuron cells,neurotransmitters,the functional brain regions and neural mechanism models have been proved to be important neurophysiological underpinnings for aesthetic generation.With the classification of various neurons’ abstract function more clearly,the impact of neural information transfer on emotion more clearly,the aesthetic emotion,which is originally ambiguous,has obtained scientific explanation in the neural cell level;the expolraion of functional brain areas such as the orbitofrontal cortex which has the role of cognitive emotion,provides empirical materials to establish various aesthetic cognitive emotional neural mechanism model scientifically.4.On the cognitive neural basis of aesthetic emotion,we reunderstand the general psychological elements and the aesthetic individual level of aesthetic emotion.At present,the research of aesthetic emotion in China is mainly based on the general psychological process of sense,perception,memory,learning,language,motivation and demand.Cognitive neuroscience has updated the knowledge system of general psychology,i.e.the frame of our reference has changed.Therefore our understanding of aesthetic psychological process is bound to advance to the neurobiological level with the progress of cognitive neuroscience.Body,personality,temperament and practical behavior of the individual are of great significance to the formation of aesthetic emotion.Body,personality,temperament and practice of individual aesthetic existence are closely related to cognitive neurological elements.5.Individuals get together to form a group through social,political,economic,cultural and other kind of activities,that is,the human society.Social psychology and social culture on the basis of social existence have a decisive influence on aesthetic emotion.Social psychological culture plays a complex role in aesthetic emotion through individual psychological process.Social psychological culture has a system of special rules.From the perspective of symbols,language,mythology,political activities and economic activities,we investigate the influence of basic categories of social cognition,social influence and social relationship on aesthetic emotion,and the relationship between social psychology and its general neuropsychology basis.6.Cognitive neuroaesthetics will help us to reunderstand the classic aesthetic problems,answer the current predicament of aesthetics,and guide the application of aesthetics in the field of practice.The concept of substrate in Kantian Aesthetics,the Defamiliarization in formalism,and the aesthetic problems in the interpretation history of Book of Songs,such as emotion,interpersonal relationship and church politics relationship,will be more scientifically interpreted from the perspective of cognitive neuroaesthetics.With better understanding of human cognition and emotion,cognitive neuroaesthetics will also try to provide aesthetic support for artificial intelligence and emotional computing.On the whole psychological basis of aesthetic research,we draw lessons from Cognitive Neuroscience,Common Psychology,Personality Psychology,Social Psychology and other knowledge system of psychological research;in the field of philosophical aesthetics,the points of Body Aesthetics,Life(Existence)Aesthetics,Practical Aesthetics,Ecological Aesthetics and other opinion of multiple aesthetics have become an effective reference frame for us.In the course of the discussion,we also learned from the main achievements of Chinese Classical Aesthetics,Analytical Aesthetics,Empirical Aesthetics,Anthropology Aesthetics,Daily Life Aesthetics and Art Philosophy.Through cognitive neuroaesthetics,we try to open a new window,expecting that this window will provide us with panoramic scenery,and the whole seesighting of aesthetic emotion research can be seen.