# Chapter 2 Nanay Aesthetic Experience **Opening (not a real abstract):** I. Aesthetic properties Objects have properties. The coffee cup on my desk has lots of properties: shape, size, color, spatial location, and so on. It also has somewhat less obvious properties, such as the property of being made in England or being on a planet that has a lot of water on it. And it may have some even more unusual properties, like being graceful or being ugly. Being graceful or being ugly are aesthetic properties. So is being beautiful, probably the most paradigmatic of all aesthetic properties. I gave three examples for aesthetic properties, but I gave no definition for what makes a property aesthetic. Frank Sibley gave us a list of aesthetic properties that he assembled together because they are the properties expressed by adjectives in “critical and evaluative discourse about works of art” (Sibley 1959, p. 422). Many others added to the list (Goldman 1995,