Arguments are presented that paintings are unable to induce basic psychobiological emotions because they do not powerfully engage with spectators' intimate associative-memory systems. However, it is suggested that art installations containing properties subsumable under the classical concept of the sublime (physical grandeur, rarity, novelty, an association with beauty and with biologically significant outcomes), are capable of producing a memorable, though non-basic, emotional response, aesthetic awe-the peak aesthetic response as defined in Aesthetic Trinity Theory (Konečni, 2005, 2011). A skeptical view is presented of emotivism, defined as a proclivity for excessive insertion of "emotion" into scientific and lay accounts of behavior, especially regarding the arts: The loci in the domain of paintings are specified in which emotion has often been unjustifiably implicated. Psychobiological and contrasting viewpoints on emotion are outlined. Several possible routes from paintings' attributes to viewers' emotions are found to be analytically indefensible and psychologically improbable. Implications for empirical aesthetics are examined.

Several very recent examples are critically discussed of philosophical aestheticians using psychological data allegedly showing the cognitive penetration of visual perception in order to build arguments on major issues in aesthetics: How art expertise functions (Stokes, 2014); the (in)validity of an important aspect of Arthur Danto?s theory that is based on his ?gallery of indiscernibles? (Nanay, 2015); and the claim of ?automatic? emotional impact of paintings (Bullot & Reber, 2013). The present critique of these aestheticians? theoretical endeavors is based largely on the recent analysis by Firestone and Scholl (2016) - sweeping, but most likely justified - to the effect that visual perception is encapsulated and that cognition does not affect visual perception. Additional theoretical and empirical support for the critique is derived from a nonemotivist theory of the effect of paintings (Konecni, 2015a).

The article offers observations about some aspects of the current relationship between psychological aesthetics and neuroaesthetics. In addition to criticism of the occasionally less than rigorous process of inference in neuroaesthetics, reservations are expressed about the ability of neuroaesthetics to address successfully, at least in the next few decades, some seemingly key questions. Among them are those about the vertical theoretical integration of data from different art modalities, as well as about the relationship of various neural correlates, on one hand, and the differential quality of aesthetic episodes, on the other-especially episodes involving peak aesthetic experiences (such as aesthetic awe and being-moved). The article concludes with several concrete suggestions for a potentially interesting and fruitful collaboration of psychological aesthetics and neuroaesthetics.

This Opinion Article highlights three sets of important implications of the very recent work by C. Firestone and B. Scholl on the encapsulation of visual perception: (a) methodological implications, especially with regard to experimental areas of cognitive science, such as cognitive social psychology; (h) implications of interest to philosophers of mind, some of whose more extravagant recent claims have been based on the assumption of "top-down" cognitive effects on perception; and (c) implications that challenge some recent work in philosophical and psychological aesthetics regarding art expertise, as well as defend the logic of A. Danto's theorizing from attacks that are based on the assumption of "top-down- cognitive effects.