Expressive Perception as Projective Imagining

Abstract: I argue that our experience of expressive properties (such as the joyfulness or sadness of a piece of music) essentially involvesthe sensuous imagination (through simulation) of an emotion‐guided process which would result in the production of the properties which constitute the realisation of the expressive properties experienced. I compare this proposal with arousal theories, Wollheim’s Freudian account, and other more closely related theories appealing to imagination such as Kendall Walton’s. I explain why the proposal is most naturally developed in terms of simulation and briefly comment upon the impact of work on cross‐cultural perception of facial expression, modularity and autism for the proposal.