Bullot & Reber (B&R) outline “decisive” objections to scientific aesthetics in developing the idea that contextual knowledge is “essential” to art appreciation. Nothing about their argument implies that universal responses are inessential to art appreciation. The decisive objections simply posit that there is more to art appreciation than ahistorical considerations, but not that ahistorical considerations are unimportant. This asymmetry of emphasis has consequences for what follows. Their solution to the problem of divergent traditions is that scientists should include historical and cultural variables in designing their studies. A more complete solution would also consider the extent to which art historians and cultural theorists might incorporate scientific knowledge and methods in testing their hypotheses (e.g., Onians 2008).

In their critique of scientific aesthetics, B&R do not distinguish between disciplinary limits of practice from those limits that arise in principle. Here, I focus on neuroaesthetics as the “radical” offshoot of scientific aesthetics (Chatterjee Reference Chatterjee2011a). These are early days in the discipline as the proper target of inquiry and appropriate methods are being worked out (Chatterjee Reference Chatterjee, Shimamura and Palmer2012). For a neuroscientist, art appreciation comprises neural instantiations of a critical triad of mental faculties: sensations, emotions, and meaning (Chatterjee Reference Chatterjee2011b). Sensations are the processing of sensory attributes of artworks, such as line or color or shape. Emotions are feelings evoked by an artwork, often pleasure, but by no means restricted to this one positive emotion. Meaning refers to our understanding of and the memories evoked by an image.

Neuroaesthetics joins the tradition of empirical aesthetics started by Fechner in the nineteenth century (Fechner Reference Fechner1876). This tradition typically investigates the sensation-emotion axis (Chatterjee Reference Chatterjee2004) that is ahistorical and taps into common responses to art etched in our brains. Such studies fall within the level of analysis that B&R call “basic exposure” to art.

Meaning can also be ahistorical. Cognitive scientists distinguish this kind of meaning, semantic memory, from meaning tethered in time, episodic memory. People without training in the arts typically prefer representational over abstract art (Pihko et al. Reference Pihko, Virtanen, Saarinen, Pannasch, Hirvenkari, Tossavainen, Haapala and Hari2011). Here, recognizable objects in a painting engage the viewer. Neuroscience has something to say about how we recognize objects, places, and faces (Binder et al. Reference Binder, Desai, Graves and Conant2009). When art depicts objects, places, or faces, we know something about the brain's response to such artworks. These neural responses are part of the biology of art appreciation of representational paintings.

B&R correctly observe that historical meaning and its interactions with the sensation-emotion axis are less often subject to scientific scrutiny. The contributions of historical meaning are features of the “design stance” and “art understanding” in B&R's taxonomy. However, they underestimate scientists' awareness that cultural knowledge and expertise influence art appreciation (Hekkert & van Wieringen Reference Hekkert and van Wieringen1996; Leder et al. Reference Leder, Belke, Oeberst and Augustin2004). For example, differences in the approach to art by experts and nonexperts have been within the purview of scientific aesthetics (Nodine et al. Reference Nodine, Locher and Krupinski1993).

Duchamps' urinal and Warhol's Brillo Boxes vividly demonstrate that sensory features of an object are not enough to evaluate or even recognize an object as art. Background historical knowledge can transform mundane objects into artworks. Recent examples from neuroaesthetics show how background knowledge can be incorporated in experiments probing art appreciation. These studies also reveal inherent limits of scientific aesthetics.

In one study (Kirk et al. Reference Kirk, Skov, Christensen and Nygaard2009a), participants found identical abstract art-like stimuli more attractive when labeled as museum pieces than as computer generated. This preference was reflected in greater neural activity within reward circuits: the medial orbito-frontal cortex and the ventro-medial prefrontal cortex. Thinking the images were museum pieces also produced more activity in the entorhinal cortex presumably important when accessing memory. This study draws its motivation from a larger line of neuroscience research examining the influence of cognition on valuation (e.g., McClure et al. Reference McClure, Li, Tomlin, Cypert, Montague and Montague2004). In a different study, Weismann and Ishai (Reference Wiesmann and Ishai2010) scanned participants looking at Braque and Picasso cubist paintings. Half of the participants that were given 30 minutes of training in information about Cubism and practiced recognizing objects in such imagery. When looking at cubist paintings, these participants had more activity in the intraparietal sulcus and parahippocampal gyrus than did untrained participants. A short training session had an influence on their appreciation of paintings that could be neurally recorded. Kirk and colleagues (Kirk et al. Reference Kirk, Skov, Hulme, Christensen and Zeki2009b) compared the neural response of architecture students to other students as they looked at pictures of buildings and faces. The architecture students had more neural activity in the hippocampus in response to buildings than to faces. Pictures of buildings presumably activated their store of architectural knowledge. When looking at buildings, they also had more neural activity than the other students in the medial orbito-frontal cortex, as well as in the anterior cingulate. Their expertise modulated neural responses in reward circuits. By contrast, both sets of students had more neural activity in the nucleus accumbens for attractive faces and buildings. This core pleasure center recorded enjoyment of objects independent of background knowledge.

These studies demonstrate that neuroscientists can and have designed studies with varying degrees of historical information as independent variables in probing art appreciation. Certainly, much more needs to be done. These studies also reveal domains of art appreciation in which experimental aesthetics remains silent (Chatterjee Reference Chatterjee2011b). Scientific studies can investigate the influence of historical meaning on appreciation of artwork. They cannot analyze historical meaning itself embedded in the artwork. If one believes that a critical level of analysis in art appreciation is understanding the unique information contained in individual works, the way a piece of art responds to its place in time, and is embedded in its local culture, then experimental science will be found wanting. Experiments, by design, draw general inferences from many examples of artworks. Scrutinizing layered historical meanings of an individual work of art is too fine-grained a level of analysis to be resolved by the lens of scientific experimental methods.