by Miguel Cavazos

Created on: April 19, 2008   Last Updated: December 24, 2009

Some art critics, scholars, and philosophers, such as Roy Sorenson, hold that an artwork's extrinsic properties do not bear on the aesthetic merit of a work of art. The view is that only intrinsic (not extrinsic) properties determine a work's aesthetic value. Intrinsic features are possessed independently, and extrinsic features are possessed at least partly by virtue of other objects. [Sorensen, Roy A. "The Aesthetics of Mirror Reversal." Philosophical Studies: An International Journal for Philosophy in the Analytic Tradition. 100.2 (2000): 175-191.].

A person can claim that something is beautiful, only if that person has an experience of that thing. It is necessary to experience an object to determine its aesthetic value. Further, aesthetic value is determined only by the experience of an object (and nothing else).

Experience is manifest via the senses. Experiences exist when something is seen, heard, smelled, touched, and emotionally felt. The experience of art necessarily involves one or all of these sensory responses, and it is that experience which determines aesthetic value.

An object's visual appearance, smell, and texture can be considered intrinsic features. Something can look the way it does, smell the way it does, and physically feel the way it does by virtue of just being whatever it is. However, an object does not necessarily feel the way it does emotionally by virtue of just being that object. Sadness, happiness, intrigue, appreciation, and fascination are some possible emotional responses to a work of art. Emotions such as these consist of myriad potential triggers. One possible trigger is background knowledge. Knowledge of a thing's background (ex. its previous location, historical significance, creator, etc..) can trigger an emotional response to that thing.

Imagine entering an old house. If there is no background knowledge of the house, then the emotional experience of that house will be different than if there is some background knowledge. This is easy to understand when considering the aesthetic experience of entering, for example, Anne Frank's old house in Amsterdam. The assumption is that this kind of emotional response contributes to the overall aesthetic experience, which is used to determine aesthetic value.

Background information such as a creator, location, or historical significance can be extrinsic features of an object, because said features have to do with the way the object relates to the world, and do not necessarily exist by virtue of an object just being what it is. Therefore, extrinsic features can trigger an emotional response to a piece of art, because background knowledge can consist of said features, and that knowledge can trigger an emotional response.

If an object's extrinsic features can trigger an emotional response, and the experience of the object consists of that emotional response, then aesthetic value can be determined by a thing's extrinsic features in addition to its intrinsic ones, because an emotional response is potentially triggered by an object's extrinsic properties. Therefore, the claim outlined at the beginning of this article that only intrinsic properties determine the aesthetic merit of a work of art is false.

Aesthetic experiences, and therefore aesthetic value carries an emotional response with, and there is no reason to assume that extrinsic features of objects do not contribute to those emotions. The important implication here is that the aesthetic merit of a work of art is never fixed, and always fluid, simply because the experience of it is had by individuals that each brings new and different light to a piece of art in the same way that each person brings new light to the world around us.

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