Noel Carroll discusses art as socio-emotional contagion: how the emotional arousal brought about by the arts provides important forms of social and emotional education that justify the social costs of the arts over the course of human history. Mr. Carroll is a Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the CUNY Graduate Center. His research interests include aesthetic theory; philosophy of film, literature, and the visual arts; social and cultural theory; philosophy of history; ethics; philosophy of the emotions; and history of early modern philosophy. Mr. Carroll has published more than fifteen books, most recently, Art in Three Dimensions (2010) and On Criticism (2009). He has also written extensively as a journalist and is the author of five documentaries.