An adverbialist account of aesthetic experience is offered in terms of a specific mode of organization of non-aesthetic attitudes. What unifies the set of these attitudes is a characteristic motivational profile, which consists in aesthetic experience being self-sustaining or autotelic. On the basis of both conceptual analysis and empirical results from the psychology of aesthetics, it is argued that aesthetic experience is not intentionally about aesthetic properties or values, and is not a separate aesthetic attitude, but involves a unique combination of epistemic or metacognitive feelings having to with familiarity and novelty.