Bullot & Reber's (B&R's) paper is important for setting forth a historical approach to art appreciation. Their central argument – that context, history, and design stance are critical elements to consider when evaluating art – is supported by psychological research indicating that these elements are foundational. Even young children insist on knowing the origin of a drawing before deciding what it depicts (Bloom & Markson Reference Bloom and Markson1998) and will apply the label “drawing,” “painting,” or “statue” to a decorative object only if the item was intentionally created (Gelman & Bloom Reference Gelman and Bloom2000). Crucially, then, the visual properties of a work of art are insufficient to determine how it is received, and outwardly identical artworks are judged differently, if their histories differ.

We suggest, however, that B&R understate the relevance of history for human cognition. Much of higher-level thought incorporates historical information: art appreciation, to be sure, but also perception, categorization, economic decision making, emotional responses, and interpersonal judgments. People perceive histories in objects by virtue of domain-specific knowledge (e.g., a dented car implies a prior collision; Leyton Reference Leyton1992). People categorize anomalous animals based on their parentage, not on appearances alone (Gelman & Markman Reference Gelman and Markman1986). People determine object value based on ownership (what economists call the “endowment effect,” Kahneman et al. Reference Kahneman, Knetsch and Thaler1990) and determine ownership based on object history (who had it first? what exchanges took place? Friedman & Neary Reference Friedman and Neary2008; Gelman et al. Reference Gelman, Manczak and Noles2012). People judge that an object is authentic based on its provenance, so that a brush with a beloved individual increases its value (JFK's golf clubs; Frazier et al. Reference Frazier, Gelman, Wilson and Hood2009; Newman et al. Reference Newman, Diesendruck and Bloom2011). An item evokes an emotional response based on where it has been. Hence, Hitler's sweater invites disgust, much like a piece of cheese nibbled on by a rat (Nemeroff & Rozin Reference Nemeroff and Rozin1994). Judgments of others reflect our assessment of their past, including their reliability (Koenig Reference Koenig, Szabó Gendler and Hawthorne2010) and parentage (Gelman & Wellman Reference Gelman and Wellman1991). The history behind a creator's intention also determines how we classify and use objects (Diesendruck et al. Reference Diesendruck, Markson and Bloom2003; Kelemen & Carey Reference Kelemen, Carey, Margolis and Laurence2007; Rips Reference Rips, Vosniadu and Ortony1989). Interestingly, children share all of the intuitions sketched out above, treating ownership, authenticity, disgust, social relationships, object identity, and object function as rooted in history, not only in immediately accessible perceptual cues.

Hence, many of the points B&R make are not limited to cognition about art, art-historical contexts, or the design stance of an artist, but rather are relevant to more general cognition about objects, their historical paths, and the intentions of their creators. Many artworks are representations of things, but those things (Brillo pad boxes, store fronts, landscaping, etc.) are also designed artifacts with their own messages, context, and history. Our point here is that art appreciation is not a special case informed by domain-specific reasoning mechanisms, but rather draws from general mechanisms subserving cognition about a wide variety of objects. Whether we are gazing at a painting, reaching for a pen, purchasing a sweater, or sipping from a coffee mug, historical considerations are central.

We contend that this perspective has rich implications for philosophical debates concerning the origins of knowledge. Whereas an empiricist approach suggests that knowledge derives strictly from outward perceptual qualities that are present in the immediate context, the importance of object history suggests that human representations are not strictly based on outward perceptual features, at any point in development. Instead, nonobvious features are central to how we reason about the world. Further, these nonobvious features are central to the human experience of pleasure (Bloom Reference Bloom2010) and to beliefs about the nonobvious: supernatural (Hood Reference Hood2009) as well as scientific (Harris & Koenig Reference Harris and Koenig2006; Rosengren et al. Reference Rosengren, Johnson and Harris2000).

B&R further suggest that judgments of art are informed by psychological essentialism, which is the implicit assumption that nonobvious, inner qualities can have vast causal implications. We wish to underscore this important point but also push for a more precise understanding of how essentialism links to a notion that is clearly similar but also clearly distinct. A classic example of psychological essentialism involves intuitions about natural kinds, such as tigers, women, or water. The essence of a tiger is thought to be some inner quality that causes tigers to have stripes and grow to be large and ferocious. Essentialism is implicit in people's belief that categories are real, that membership in a category is fixed, that there are sharp boundaries between different categories, that category members have innate potential, that category members share indefinitely many features (perceptual, behavioral, social, biological, biochemical, etc.), and so forth (Gelman Reference Gelman2003). At the same time, the notion of “essence” seems to differ in important ways for biological kinds versus artifacts, including artworks. For biological kinds, the essence is inherent to the individual and causes outward properties. In contrast, for artifacts, the essence is not inherent in the object but rather imposed from an outward source (e.g., it is not in the nature of a block of marble to become a certain statue), and the essence per se does not cause indefinitely many properties.

What then is the relationship between essentialism and art appreciation? B&R suggest that essentialism is a conceptual approach that is responsible for a certain way of viewing art. We propose instead that essentialism emerges from multiple conceptual strands, one of which is a keen attention to object history. Further, an attention to object history underlies both essentialism and art appreciation. Other strands that contribute to essentialism likely have little to do with art appreciation, such as causal determinism.

As with any interesting position, B&R's piece raises questions. Who are the “appreciators” here, and how does their stance emerge? Do art experts have a special perspective, or does this approach apply to the average person? And what of those who are not Western-educated adults? We believe there is good reason to believe that the perspective presented by B&R is quite broad and would apply to children, as well as adults, including those in societies without a tradition of expert art critics, but this remains an exciting question for the future.