The Myth of Aesthetic Pleasure

• Aesthetic philosophers have posited "aesthetic pleasure" -- presumed to be independent of the "base" emotions related to survival.
  
  
• There is no neurological evidence suggesting that such an independent "aesthetic pleasure" exists.
  
  
• Moreover, the idea of an aesthetic sense or emotion independent of survival is biologically implausible.
  
  
• There is no pleasure apart from brains, and since brains are the product of natural selection, there is no pleasure outside of the mechanisms provided by natural selection.