Another way of putting this is that aesthetic experience is phenomenologically mild and subtle, and strong emotions and motives are not involved. The emphasis on disinterestedness is meant to distinguish aesthetics from the more general study of hedonics, where motives and emotions may come into play. If aesthetic experience is disinterested, then cognitive science as opposed to other branches of psychology should be important in its study. In fact, one might argue that aesthetics is--or, at least, should be--a subdiscipline of cognitive psychology. As Miner (1979) has pointed out, the proper study of aesthetics is the work of art as it is perceived and understood by an observer rather than the work of art as a physical entity. Given this, cognitive science, which deals with how stimuli in general are perceived and understood, forms the logical foundation for aesthetics. While hedonic tone has been neglected by cognitive psychologists, a plausible theory of aesthetics can, it will be argued, be derived from what we already know about cognition and the determinants of hedonic tone.

Modern developments in the biological sciences represent some of the grandest accomplishments of twentiethcentury science. Where neuroscience is concerned, it is probably true that more has been learned about the brain in the past twenty years than in all of recorded history. This explosion of knowledge and method has not left aesthetics and the arts untouched. Subfields such as neuropsychology, psychobiology, and psychophysiology have been sources of research and theory in aesthetics.

Another major development in modern science has been the rise of cognitive science, or the "mind's new science" (Gardner, 1985). Cognitive science and cognitive psychology have come to represent increasingly dominant perspectives in a wide range of human affairs, including language, learning and education, intelligence and problem solving, the human use of information and telecommunication technologies, robotics, psychotherapies, and recently the arts, among many other domains. . .