This volume contains notable essays on the role of empirical enquiry in philosophical aesthetics.

Introduction; 1. Aesthetic autonomy and self-aggrandisement Jon Robson; 2. The verse-line as a whole unit in working memory, ease of processing, and the aesthetic effects of form Nigel Fabb; 3. Aesthetic disgust? Jenefer Robinson; 4. The development of imaginative cognition Deena Skolnick Weisberg; 5. The epistemology of fiction and the question of invariant norms Jonathan Gilmore; 6. Explanations: aesthetic and scientific Shen-Yi Liao; 7. Against nature? or, confessions of a Darwinian modernist Murray Smith; 8. Mixed motivations: creativity as a virtue Berys Gaut; 9. Creativity, virtue and the challenges from natural talent, ill-being and immorality Matthew Kieran; 10. Music and cognitive science Roger Scruton; 11. Aesthetics as a normative science Gordon Graham.