Aesthetic Discovery and Seeking to Understand

The overriding aim of this paper is to defend the view that the hallmark of aesthetic experience is best conceived of as a seeking to understand. Understanding, in this sense, is not merely an additional reward which a limited set of aesthetic engagements can lead to under specific circumstances. Rather, it lies at the heart of what it is to experience our world aesthetically. This claim is also a cornerstone of the noetic conception of aesthetic experience according to which such experience is fundamentally a kind of explorative thought-process. This paper puts forward the suggestion that the notion of discovery is uniquely well-suited to explain key aspects of the epistemic dimension of aesthetic experience. It does so by fleshing out the idea that such experience inherently involves a drive to seek significance, to strive to find an order, configuration or pattern, to aim to make sense. Aesthetic discovery captures the claim that aesthetic experience involves the exploration of new avenues of thought or epistemic possibilities. Aesthetic experience is described as i) inquisitive, ii) epistemically generative, iii) processual and iv) deeply integrated in our broader cognitive networks. Its main epistemic value lies in its inherently explorative nature.