This comment proposes that Bullot & Reber's (B&R's) emphasis on historical and intentional knowledge expands the range of emotions that can be properly viewed as aesthetic states. Many feelings, such as anger, contempt, shame, confusion, and pride, come about through complex aesthetic meanings, which integrate conceptual knowledge, beliefs about the work and the artist's intentions, and the perceiver's goals and values.

I propose that in at least some cases, objects of artistic appreciation are best thought of not simply as causes of artistic appreciation, but as parts of the cognitive machinery that drives aesthetic appreciation. In effect, this is to say that aesthetic appreciation operates via extended cognitive systems.

Although the art-historical context of a work of art is important to our appreciation of it, it is our knowledge of that history that plays causal roles in producing the experience itself. This knowledge is in the form of memories, both semantic memories about the historical circumstances, but also episodic memories concerning our personal connections with an artwork. We also create representations of minds in order to understand the emotions that artworks express.

Attention is drawn to the distinction between the actual (or factual) and the apparent (or ostensible) causal history of a work of art, and how the authors' recommendation “to assume the design stance” in the name of understanding works of art blurs that distinction, thus inadvertently reinforcing the hoary idea, against which the authors otherwise rightly battle, that what one needs to properly appreciate an artwork can be found in even suitably framed observation of the work alone.

Art appreciation often involves contemplation beyond immediate perceptual experience. However, there are challenges to incorporating such processes into a comprehensive theory of art appreciation. Can appreciation be captured in the responses to individual artworks? Can all forms of contemplation be defined? What properties of artworks trigger contemplation? We argue that such questions are fundamental to a psycho-historical framework for the science of art appreciation, and we suggest research that may assist in refining this framework.

The psycho-historical account implies two ways of construing the relation of basic exposure to the artistic design stance and artistic understanding. One is empirically dubious and the other does not fit well with the account. The assumption that combining psychology with history requires identifying actual intentions is undermined by the artistic design stance.

A psycho-historical framework for the science of art appreciation will be an experimental discipline that may shed new light on the highest capacities of the human brain, yielding new scientific ways to talk about the art appreciation. The recent findings of the contextual information processing in the human brain make the concept of the art-historical context clear for empirical experimentation.

Art can be experienced in numerous ways, ranging from sensory pleasure to elaborated ways of finding meaning (Leder et al. 2004). However, rather ignored by Bullot & Reber (B&R), in empirical aesthetics several lines of research have studied how knowledge of artistic style, descriptive and elaborate information, expertise, and context all affect aesthetic experiences from art. Limiting aesthetics to rather rare experiences unnecessarily narrows the scope of a science of art.

We applaud Bullot & Reber's (B&R's) attempt to encompass the function of artworks within their psycho-historical model of art appreciation. However, we suggest that in order to fully realize this aim, they require a clearer distinction between an artist's intentions toward an artwork and its proper functions. We also show how such a distinction improves the internal coherence of their model.

Bullot & Reber (B&R) provide compelling evidence that sensitivity to context, history, and design stance are crucial to theories of art appreciation. We ask how these ideas relate to broader aspects of human cognition. Further open questions concern how psychological essentialism contributes to art appreciation and how essentialism regarding created artifacts (such as art) differs from essentialism in other domains.

Baumard et al. argue that partner choice leads to fairness and mutualism, which then form the basis for morality. I comment that mutualism takes us only so far, and I apply the theory of competitive altruism in arguing how strategic investment in behaviours which make one a desirable partner may drive moral conduct.

Baumard et al. make a good case that a sense of fairness evolved and that showing this requires reciprocity games with choice of partner. However, they oversimplify both morality and the evolution of morality. Where fairness is involved in morality, other things are, too, and fairness is often not involved. In the evolution of morality, other things played a role. Plus, the motive for being fair originally was self-interest, not anything moral.

Any evolved disposition for fairness and cooperation would not replace but merely compete with selfish and other antisocial impulses. Therefore, we propose that human cooperation and fairness depend on self-regulation. Evidence shows reductions in fairness and other prosocial tendencies when self-regulation fails.

The target article convincingly argues that mutualistic cooperation is supported by partner choice. However, we will suggest that mutualistic cooperation is not the basis of fairness; instead, fairness is based on impartiality. In support of this view, we show that adults are willing to destroy others' resources to avoid inequality, a result predicted by impartiality but not by mutualistic cooperation.

This commentary argues that the observed heterogeneity in fairness views, documented in many economic experiments, poses a challenge to the partner choice theory developed by Baumard et al. It also discusses the extent to which their theory can explain how people consider inequalities due to pure luck.

Mutualism provides a compelling account of the fairness intuitions on display in economic games. However, it is not yet clear how well the approach holds up as an explanation of all human morality. The theory needs to be tested outside the methodological neighborhood it was born in; such testing has the potential to greatly improve our understanding of morality in general.

When do humans become moral beings? This commentary draws on developmental psychology theory to expand the understanding of early moral behaviours. We argue that by looking at a broader range of other-oriented acts than what has been considered by Baumard et al., we can find support for the mutualistic approach to morality even in early instances of other-oriented behaviours.

Baumard et al. attribute to humans a sense of fairness. However, the properties of this sense are so underspecified that the evolutionary account offered is not well-motivated. We contrast this with the framework of Universal Moral Grammar, which has sought a descriptively adequate account of the structure of the moral domain as a precondition for understanding the evolution of morality.

The evolutionary hypothesis advanced by Baumard et al. makes precise predictions on which emotions should play the main role in our moral lives: morality should be more closely linked to “avoidance” emotions (like contempt and disgust) than to “punitive” emotions (like anger). Here, we argue that these predictions run contrary to most psychological evidence.

We applaud Baumard et al.'s mutualistic account of morality but detect circularity in their articulation of how morality emerged. Contra the authors, we propose that mutualism might account for a sensitivity to convention (the ways things are done within a group) rather than for a sense of fairness. An ontogenetic perspective better captures the complexity of what it means to be moral.