# 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 involves the 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. We perceive works of art to be expressive of sadness, joy, longing and many other emotions. This may not be the only way we discern the expressive properties of a work. In the case of poetry, or literature more generally, we may infer that a work is expressive of an emotion from the content of the thoughts expressed. Straightforward experience of them is rarer. I set such cases aside although I will note a possible extension to my approach to cover them in section 6. Primarily I’m interested in those occasions where works of art seem to have expressive properties in that mention of these properties figures in the appropriate characterisation of the perceptual states we have of the works in question. Music is an obvious case but painting and sculpture also provide examples. For **Authors:** [[PAUL NOORDHOF]]