The aesthetics of food

Plakias, Alexandra

doi:10.1111/phc3.12781

Cited by 4 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 41 publications

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“…For example, stereotypically functional activities can become atelic when one is fully immersed in the activity, in a state of flow (Csikszentmihalyi (1975(Csikszentmihalyi ( /2000(Csikszentmihalyi ( , 1990. People can also infer aesthetic motivations for activities not traditionally considered to be art, like when an individual is deeply moved by a beautiful sunset or landscape (Jorgensen, 2011, Moore, 2007, excited about the gastronomic complexity of food (Plakias, 2021), or sees elegance in numbers and mathematical proofs (Cellucci, 2015).…”

Section: Figurementioning

confidence: 99%

Aesthetic Motivation Impacts Judgments of Others’ Prosociality and Mental Life

Agrawal¹,

Schachner²

2023

Preprint

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The ability to infer others’ prosocial vs. antisocial behavioral tendencies from minimal information is core to social reasoning. Aesthetic motivation (the value or appreciation of aesthetic beauty) is linked with prosocial tendencies, raising the question of whether this factor is used in interpersonal reasoning and trait attribution. We propose and test a model of this reasoning, predicting that evidence of others’ aesthetic motivations should impact judgments of others’ prosocial (and antisocial) tendencies by signaling a heightened capacity for emotional experience. In a series of four pre-registered experiments (total N=1440), participants saw pairs of characters (as photos/vignettes), and judged which in each pair showed more of a trait of interest. Distractor items prevented participants from guessing the hypothesis. For one critical pair of characters, both characters performed the same activity (music listening, painting, cooking, exercising, being in nature, doing math), but one was motivated by the activities’ aesthetic value, and the other by its functional value. Across all activities, participants robustly chose aesthetically-motivated characters as more likely to behave compassionately (Exp. 1; 3), less likely to behave selfishly/manipulatively (Exp. 1; 3), and as more emotionally sensitive, but not more intelligent (Exp. 2; 3; 4). Emotional sensitivity best predicted compassionate behavior judgements (Exp. 3). Aesthetically-motivated characters were not reliably chosen as more helpful; intelligence best predicted helpfulness judgements (Exp. 4). Evidence of aesthetic motivation conveys important social information about others, impacting fundamental interpersonal judgments about others’ mental life and social behavior.

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Section: Figurementioning

confidence: 99%

Aesthetic Motivation Impacts Judgments of Others’ Prosociality and Mental Life

Agrawal¹,

Schachner²

2023

Preprint

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“…Philosophical aesthetics has recently been expanding its purview, reclaiming territory that was lost during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, when the discipline was characterised by an exclusive focus on the philosophy of art, and restricted the aesthetic realm to the distally perceptible. Both the exclusive focus on art and the putatively strictly distally perceptual nature of the aesthetic have been challenged in research areas, including everyday aesthetics (e.g., Saito, 2007), somaesthetics (e.g., Shusterman, 1999), the aesthetics of food (e.g., Plakias, 2021) and beverages (e.g., Scruton, 2010), and the aesthetics of imperceptibilia like scientific theories (e.g., Ivanova, 2017) or human character traits (e.g., Doran, 2021). Yet there are also many who still seem committed to a view whereby perceptible form, construed in a particular way, constrains the aesthetic domain, and who are reluctant to accept that the above examples possess bona fide aesthetic character (e.g., Stecker, 2019; Zangwill, 2001, 2009, 2018).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Delineating beauty: On form and the boundaries of the aesthetic

Paris

2023

Ratio

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Philosophical aesthetics has recently been expanding its purview—with exciting work on everyday aesthetics, somaesthetics, gustatory aesthetics, and the aesthetics of imperceptibilia like mathematics and human character—reclaiming territory that was lost during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, when the discipline begun concentrating almost exclusively on the philosophy of art and restricted the aesthetic realm to the distally perceptible. Yet there remains considerable reluctance towards acknowledging the aesthetic character of many of these objects. This raises an important question—partly made salient again by the ongoing expansion of the aesthetic domain, and partly by the fact that many still seem resistant to this aesthetic diversification—which aestheticians seem to avoid: what, if anything, constrains the scope of beauty or the aesthetic? I argue that form, construed as comprising a degree, however minimal, of experienceable complexity, is necessary and sufficient for an object's candidature for the possession of aesthetic properties. Such a condition serves to discriminate between attempts to expand the scope of the aesthetic that are legitimate and those that are not. If correct, my view suggests that the aesthetic realm, though not limitless, is very broad indeed—but this, I think, is as it should be.

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“…For example, stereotypically functional activities can become atelic when one is fully immersed in the activity, in a state of flow (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990 , 2000 ). People can also infer aesthetic motivations for activities not traditionally considered to be art, like when an individual is deeply moved by a beautiful sunset or landscape (Jorgensen, 2011 ; Moore, 2007 ), excited about the gastronomic complexity of food (Plakias, 2021 ), or sees elegance in numbers and mathematical proofs (Cellucci, 2015 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Aesthetic Motivation Impacts Judgments of Others’ Prosociality and Mental Life

Agrawal,

Schachner

2023

Open Mind

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The ability to infer others’ prosocial vs. antisocial behavioral tendencies from minimal information is core to social reasoning. Aesthetic motivation (the value or appreciation of aesthetic beauty) is linked with prosocial tendencies, raising the question of whether this factor is used in interpersonal reasoning and in the attribution of mental capacities. We propose and test a model of this reasoning, predicting that evidence of others’ aesthetic motivations should impact judgments of others’ prosocial (and antisocial) tendencies by signaling a heightened capacity for emotional experience. In a series of four pre-registered experiments (total N = 1440), participants saw pairs of characters (as photos/vignettes), and judged which in each pair showed more of a mental capacity of interest. Distractor items prevented participants from guessing the hypothesis. For one critical pair of characters, both characters performed the same activity (music listening, painting, cooking, exercising, being in nature, doing math), but one was motivated by the activities’ aesthetic value, and the other by its functional value. Across all activities, participants robustly chose aesthetically-motivated characters as more likely to behave compassionately (Exp. 1; 3), less likely to behave selfishly/manipulatively (Exp. 1; 3), and as more emotionally sensitive, but not more intelligent (Exp. 2; 3; 4). Emotional sensitivity best predicted compassionate behavior judgements (Exp. 3). Aesthetically-motivated characters were not reliably chosen as more helpful; intelligence best predicted helpfulness judgements (Exp. 4). Evidence of aesthetic motivation conveys important social information about others, impacting fundamental interpersonal judgments about others’ mental life and social behavior.

show abstract

The aesthetics of food

Cited by 4 publications

References 41 publications

Aesthetic Motivation Impacts Judgments of Others’ Prosociality and Mental Life

Aesthetic Motivation Impacts Judgments of Others’ Prosociality and Mental Life

Delineating beauty: On form and the boundaries of the aesthetic

Aesthetic Motivation Impacts Judgments of Others’ Prosociality and Mental Life

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