Aesthetic preferences: an evolutionary approach

Moving from the assumption that aesthetics and philosophy of art are not coincident, the specific aim of this paper is to focus on a particular aspect of the aesthetic experience, namely the origin and evolutionary role of the aesthetic preferences. Are the aesthetic preferences in humans universal, innate, therefore genetically encoded or they emerge as consequence of the mere exposure to cultural models? Following Darwin's consideration in the Notebooks, we suggest that we need first of all to elaborate an accurate model for the chiasmatic interactions between nature and culture, in order to be able to answer this question.