The Aesthetic Code: Aesthetic Process Theory from the Perspective of Information

This paper examines the aesthetic process through the lens of information philosophy, seeking to innovate traditional aesthetic theory. Western aesthetics has been shaped by a subject-object dualism that overlooks the informational nature of beauty. Chinese aesthetics, with its "unity of heaven and humanity," similarly lacks a detailed analysis of the informational aspects of the aesthetic process, resulting in a lingering mystique. The philosophy of information offers a new framework, distinguishing between natural, self-oriented, and regenerated information, which forms the basis for understanding aesthetic processes. Aesthetics is redefined as an information reception and processing activity, where beauty's stimulus is transformed into aesthetic feeling through complex subsystems involving sensation, knowledge, emotion, memory, and association. This transformation is characterized by randomness and complexity, mathematically described by generalized information entropy. The theory shifts aesthetics from essentialism to processualism, integrates philosophy with information science, and enhances our understanding of the world.