Witnessing memes go viral and become appreciated, this thesis attempts to reconsider the criteria for the social construction of the meaning of the arts under the assumption that there are aspects where such memes perform functions of the arts. To do so, it compares theories suggested by Kant, Foucault, affect theory, neuroesthetics, and operative constructionism by examining how these theories treat conscious activities (in other words, human cognition and perception). Analysis is also conducted on the assumption that theories for the social construction of the meaning of the arts should incorporate synchrony and diachrony in order to overcome epistemology’s limit of self-reflexivity. Kant's transcendental epistemology prioritizes reason without giving proper credit to perception. Though Foucault supplemented Kant using a diachronic approach, he failed to account for the significance of individual experience: synchrony. Recently, affect theory and neuroesthetics provided scientific proof that an individual's perception and subjective cognition play a major role in the social construction of the meaning of the arts, consequently supplementing the synchronic aspect. However, they only advocate the right for individual perception to take part in art/non-art judgment, not the actual incorporation. Niklas Luhmann's Art as a Social System, on the other hand, incorporates synchrony as he observed communication on the arts to formulate the social meaning of the arts in the form of a system. This reflects his systems theory take radical operative constuctionism's position based on evolution theory. Though it may be indirect, it allows a generic individual’s conscious activity to choose the meaning of art/non-art through communication events.