Abstract：With aesthetic imagery as the core and focusing on the theoretical relationship between sensibility and rationality, cognition and emotion in the aesthetic process, the dialogue between Cai Yi’s “typical imagery theory” and neuroaesthetics was launched. We elaborate on Cai Yi’s “typical imagery” in the process of understanding beauty: aesthetic cognitive processing is an upward process from perception to typical imagery, which is divided into two stages: aesthetic perceptual cognition and aesthetic intellectual cognition. Aesthetic perceptual understanding starts from feelings and develops to appearances. From perceptual to intellectual, the most critical link is from appearance to concept. The figurative concept is the starting point of aesthetic intellectual understanding, and then through aesthetic image thinking such as figurative judgment and reasoning, the result of aesthetic intellectual cognition is formed: “typical imagery”. “Typical imagery” triggers aesthetic subject’s sensory pleasure to rise to intellectual pleasure. Aesthetic emotional processing is the intellectual pleasure of typical images, from sensory pleasure to spiritual pleasure, intellectual pleasure has become an important feature that distinguishes aesthetic pleasure from sensory pleasure. In view of some basic aesthetic problems caused by Cai Yi’s “typical image theory”, combined with the latest empirical research results of brain aesthetic experiments, exploratory analysis and theoretical improvement are carried out, and innovative thinking of neuroaesthetic theory is extended: First, aesthetic pleasure is generated by a two-way regulatory mechanism combining sensibility and intelligence. Cai Yi proposed that intellectual pleasure in the aesthetic process is sublimated from pleasure, so can unhappiness trigger aesthetic pleasure? Whether sad emotions can trigger aesthetic experience and aesthetic judgment for aesthetic objects, and produce aesthetic pleasure emotions in the human brain, and whether the pleasure produced at the beginning of the aesthetic process can continue to develop into beauty, that is, whether the initial sensory pleasure experience can develop to produce aesthetic pleasure emotions, the key point is whether there is a deep cognitive and emotional experience of meaning, and whether there is a judgment of beauty after deep experience. Intellectual cognition can regulate aesthetic judgment and aesthetic emotions, so we can empathize with negative emotions when appreciating tragedy, and if intellectual cognition gives the thing a certain cultural or personal meaning, then it can also stimulate our aesthetically pleasurable emotional experience. Second, cognitive and emotional activities in aesthetics are interactive. Cai Yi believed that aesthetic pleasure is an emotional activity based on the cognition of beauty. In recent years, a large number of brain science experiments have found that emotional and cognitive mechanisms in the brain affect each other. In the process of aesthetic experience, the flow of emotional evaluation and cognitive processing is a simultaneous two-way convection. Cognition and emotion play an equally important role in aesthetics. Third, aesthetic imagery is the three-body integration of image, meaning and emotion. Cai Yi believed that typical imagery contains the enrichment and development of image and meaning. From the perspective of brain aesthetic mechanism, we believe that the object of aesthetic experience comes from the aesthetic imagery, and that aesthetic image is the fusion of image-meaning-emotion, in addition to including the objective object image, as well as the subjective understanding of the meaning of the thing brought about by personal memory and social and cultural meaning. Aesthetic imagery includes the subject’s basic emotion for the thing (pleasant or unpleasant, such as happiness or sadness) and aesthetic pleasure sublimated from basic emotions.
胡俊. 论蔡仪的“典型意象说”及相关神经美学思考[J]. 浙江大学学报(人文社会科学版), 2023, 53(6): 46-57.
Hu Jun. Cai Yi’s “Typical Imagery Theory” and Related Neuroaesthetic Thinking. JOURNAL OF ZHEJIANG UNIVERSITY, 2023, 53(6): 46-57.
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2023, Vol. 53 
