Representing the sublime in the VIMAP and empirical aesthetics: Reviving Edmund Burke’s A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origins of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful Comment on “Move me, astonish me... delight my eyes and brain: The Vienna Integrated Model of top–down and bottom–up processes in Art Perception (VIMAP) and corresponding affective, evaluative, and neurophysiological correlates” by Matthew Pelowski et al.

This commentary considers the role of the sublime in the Vienna Integrated Model of Art Perception (VIMAP; Pelowski, Markey, Forster, Gerger, & Leder [17]), and suggest that it is not precisely conceptualised in the model. In part that reflects different views and usages of the sublime in the literature, and here it is recommended that Burke’s [2] view of the sublime is used as a primary framework for empirical research on the sublime. One of the risks involved in conducting research on a phenomenon as complex and as variously defined as the sublime lies with the difficulty of finding a satisfactory and generally accepted characterisation of the phenomenon. Under-specification of the concept results in confusion, especially when implications of the concept are considered. Aconcern is that the characterisation of the sublime in VIMAP is overly general, making it difficult to be precise in the way it fits into the model.