 One concern about an approach to the aesthetic by way of fluency is that fluency apparently encourages a less careful examination of the stimulus (Song &amp; Schwarz 2008), a suggestion at odds with the aesthetic ideal of a finely discriminating attitude to art. Another is that fluency-based likings for stimuli seem to have very limited application in aesthetics beyond the domain of simple shape preferences. Pictures which are visually complex are often widely admired and not merely by the art-world elite (see for example Frith’s busy genre paintings). It is said that the pleasure derived from fluency is relative to expectation: pleasure taken in a Bach fugue depends on it being more fluent than one expects (Reber 2012: 228, citing Hansen, Dechêne, &amp; Wänke 2008). But why must lovers of Bach have unrealistic expectations about the fluency of his music? Finally (a theme we will return to) citing fluency would not be a reason for admiring the picture or fugue in question; this approach seems to focus on pleasure and leave notions of reason and judgement out of account. (For criticism of the fluency program in aesthetics see Cochrane 2021a, Section 2.3.)