Abstract
This paper is concerned with the question to what extent could philosophical aesthetics benefit from cooperation with natural sciences. The last two decades have witnessed a growth of naturalistic theories in aesthetics.
Analytic aesthetics in particular embraces this opportunity. The cause of this situation is to be found in the persisting heritage of the original purgatorial program of the first generation of analytic aestheticians.
There are however good reason to endorse rather skeptical attitude towards this alliance. The main reason being that natural sciences do not take into account any of self-reflection of an experiencing subject in their theories.
Alva Noë, an author of a widely debated book Strange Tools, published in 2015, bases his general theory of art on a critical evaluation of current naturalistic theories of art. He does find neither evolutionary approach to art nor neuroaesthetics to be convincing.
However, he does not want to abandon the naturalistic program in aesthetics completely. On the contrary, he presents his own theory of art as a version of a moderate naturalistic explanation of art.
The present paper also asks what conditions have to be met to obtain a viable version of such a moderate naturalistic theory of art and from this vantage point it tries to evaluate Noë's own contribution.