The Aesthetic Mind breaks new ground in bringing together empirical sciences and philosophy to enhance our understanding of aesthetics and the experience of art.

What is the relationship between thinking and seeing a form? In his morphological writings Goethe answers this question by saying that seeing is not pure passivity, but a thoughtful look because it invokes the mobility and plasticity of our thinking. For this reason this kind of aesthetic gaze is useful to understand the world of life, equally mobile and plastic. In this article, I will try to find out whether Goethe’s considerations about aesthetic idea and plasticity can find (...) a new-look in the reflections of Catherine Malabou, one of the most influential thinkers in contemporary French debate, in whose works the concept of plastic form is central. (shrink)

This book is about the philosophy or nature of aesthetic values and beauty.

An aesthetic object should be understood and analyzed by the subject in accordance with its object characteristics, except that it is the subject of the subject. In this sense, the aesthetic object, rather than just an object, has all the cognitive characteristics of its artist. The aesthetic subject faces these cognitive characteristics. The perception-perception structure of the subject and the reciprocity relation with the object are examined in this thesis study in order to perceive the aesthetic (...) object correctly and to judge about it. This study is also a study of what the subject can perceive in terms of their perception and interpretation abilities. Additionally, such an approach will enrich the perception-based aesthetic perspectives in the focus of discussions in the philosophy of art. (shrink)

This essay shows how two early modern literary critics, John Dennis and Nicolas Boileau, sought to map out how the mind came to know the transcendental aspects of a literary work, specifically poetry. Both theorize a non-rational faculty rooted in sensible experience which is able to gain knowledge outside of reason's grasp. The essay argues that each writer uses a religious model to describe the profoundest intellectual effects of poetry. This appropriation of a religious model, however, results in an (...) inability for both writers to account for the rationally knowable aspects of poetry along with its transcendental effects. (shrink)

Moving from a critical assessment of some recent attempts to define the arts in terms of adaptations, spandrels, by-products and, moreover, calling into question the continued development of the concept of the "aesthetic" in the frame of contemporary interdisciplinary research projects, the main aim of this paper is to highlight some of the ways in which archaeological objects can, at least in some respects, testify to the manifestation of the modern aesthetic mind.

What is the origin and meaning of our aesthetic sense? Is it genetically encoded or is it culturally inherited? The aim of the essay is to answer to such issues by defining the emergent and meta-functional character of the aesthetic attitude. First, I propose to include the faculty of desire in the free play of the cognitive faculties at the center of Kant’s Critique of Judgment. The following step is given by a brief analysis of Darwin’s controversial remarks (...) on the pre-human birth of aesthetics and its relationship with sexual selection (§§ 1-2). The point of discontinuity between a mere animal aesthetic sense and a proto-human one is then found to become indeterminate of desire in the correlative diversification of aesthetic attractors (§§ 3-4). Successively, I deal with the supervenience character of the aesthetic and its anticipatory value. After a short genealogy of the notion of supervenience, I then develop its affinity with that of epigenesis (§§ 5-6). Afterwhich follows a review of two contemporary evolutionary perspectives on aesthetics: T. Deacon’s essay on the “aesthetic faculty” and J. Tooby and L. Cosmides thesis on the evolutionary meaning of the aesthetic-fictional activities (§§ 7-8). Conclusively, the epigenesis of an aesthetic mind is considered as the unity between the breath of aísthesis and the breath of linguistic sign (§§ 9-10). (shrink)

In this article, I deal with the concept of aesthetics in its broader sense: the ability of feeling, thinking, and creating. My theory is that this aesthetics was born 40,000 years ago in the Paleolitical caves and that it has been characterizing human creativity from its remote origins up to now. Following this theory, we should not define human creativity as a greater cleverness than that of other living species; however, we should think of it as a refined aesthetic (...) ability of mind in connecting different worlds, enacting different levels of communication, and creating images and symbols. (shrink)

Argues that relations between mind and body are analogous to those between subject matter and style in art.

Animating Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological idea of the body as a pre-reflective organizing principle in perception, consciousness and language has become a productive and popular endeavor within philosophy of mind during the last two decades. In this context Merleau-Ponty’s descriptions of an embodied mind has played a central role in the attempts to naturalize phenomenological insights in relation to cognitive science and neuropsychological research. In this dialogue the central role of art and aesthetics in phenomenology has been neglected or (...) at best treated as a peripheral phenomenon. In this article I argue that the failure to place art and aesthetics at the center of thought within phenomenology leads to a neglect of the expressive primacy of the body in movement. In the current naturalization of phenomenology the questions related to expressive movement are often consigned to the notions of motor intentionality or gesture. However, in his book How the Body Shapes the Mind the philosopher Shaun Gallagher interestingly concludes, based on experimental results, that bodily movements of gesture cannot be accounted for by the phenomenologically adapted notions of ‘body image’ and ‘body schema’. Symptomatically, Gallagher ends his chapter on bodily gesture with a section title asking the relevant question that remains unanswered within a phenomenology of mind: Expressive movement from the beginning? The search for an answer to this question points, in my view, to the possibility of a more radical understanding of the embodied mind based on the primacy of expressive experimentation rather than representational experience, which makes the question of art and aesthetics a core issue. Following the image of thought in the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze I argue that art, as the production of sensation through experimentation, presents us with a mode of thinking that accounts for expressive bodily movement as a constitutive force in subjective thought and experience. (shrink)

I first show how one might argue for a mind-independent conception of beauty and artistic merit. I then discuss whether this makes aesthetic judgements suitable to undermine skeptical worries about the existence of mind-independent moral value and categorical reasons.

The essay examines the idea of ―biological space and time‖ found in Evan Thompson‘s Mind in Life and Gilles Deleuze‘s Difference and Repetition. Tracking down this ―new Transcendental Aesthetic‖ intersects new work done on panpsychism. Both Deleuze and Thompson can be fairly said to be biological panpsychists. That‘s what ―Mind in Life‖ means: mind and life are coextensive; life is a sufficient condition for mind. Deleuze is not just a biological panpsychist, however, so we‘ll have (...) to confront full-fledged panpsychism. At the end of the essay we‘ll be able to pose the question whether or not we can supplement Thompson‘s ―Mind in Life‖ position with a ―Mind in Process‖ position and if so, what that supplement means both for his work and for panpsychism. (shrink)

How far should philosophical accounts of the value and interpretation of art be sensitive to the scientific approaches used by psychologists, sociologists, and evolutionary thinkers? A team of experts urge different answers to this question, and explore how empirical inquiry can shed light on problems traditionally regarded as philosophical.

This book offers an introduction to the way art is perceived, interpreted, and felt and approaches these mindful events from a multidisciplinary perspective.

This paper seeks to establish closer connections and spur dialogue between philosophers working on 4E cognition and aestheticians. In part, the aim is to offer a critical overview of the ways 4E research might inform our understandings of the arts. Yet it is also partly to flag some potential art-specific challenges to some of the theses found within the 4E literature. I start by examining the strongest extant claims regarding art and active externalism, and argue that it is hard to (...) see either how active externalism could square with our actual appreciative practices or that its explanatory value could be sufficient to pressure us to revise radically those practices. Furthermore, I argue, rejecting active externalism seems necessary to acknowledge adequately the important ways in which artistic creation often involves the application of embodied know-how or the execution of embodied skills. For this reason, I argue, embodied approaches to cognition are better positioned to complement and inform the humanistic methods traditionally employed in philosophical aesthetics and art theory. However, I conclude on a moderately sceptical note: the challenge still outstanding for these approaches is to yield new understandings of our artistic practices that have not been gleaned through traditional humanistic inquiry. (shrink)

Mou Zongsan incorrectly uses Kant's practical reason to interpret Confucianism. The saying that "what is it that we have in common in our minds? It is the il 理 (principles) and the yi 义 (righteousness)" reveals how Mencius explains the origin of il and yi through a theory of common sense. In "the li and the yi please our minds, just as the flesh of beef and mutton and pork please our mouths," "please" is used twice, proving aesthetic judgment (...) is necessary to understanding Mencius. An analysis of Zhu Xi and Wang Yangming's ideas will show that Confucianism should be interpreted by appealing to aesthetic judgment, and a discussion of Kant's theory of judgment and Gadamer's critique of Kant's theory will support the same point. The conclusion is that Chinese moral philosophy should be interpreted through aesthetic judgment. /// 牟宗三以康德实践理性解说儒学是一错误思路。"心之所同然者何也?谓理 也，义也", 表明孟子以共通感论述理义来源, "理义之悦我心，犹当拳之悦我口" 两用 "悦" 字，证明应当以直感判断力解说孟子。分析朱子、阳明的一些言论证 明以直感判断力解说儒学则若合符节; 并引述康德关于判断力的相关学说、伽达 默尔对康德的批评支持上述论点; 从而主张，中国道德哲学宜以直感判断力来解 释。. (shrink)

This paper argues that the cognitive sciences need to incorporate aesthetic study of the arts into their methodologies in order to fully understand the nature of human cognitive processes, because the arts reflect insights into human experience that are unobtainable by the methodologies of the natural sciences. These insights differ from those acquired by scientific exploration because they arise not from the conceptual logic of reason but from the precategorial intuition of imagination. Aesthetics provides a methodology whereby we are (...) able to understand how art enables us to experience emotions caused by sense impressions. This methodology lies at the heart of Giambattista Vico’s Principi di scienza nuova (1725-44), which attempts to account for the way we live and participate in cultural, social, and civic communities. Vico’s theory challenges certain Western philosophical presuppositions that still inform much of cognitive science, such as the relation of language to our experience of the natural world, the nature of subjective and objective representations, and the role of the arts in the evolutionary development of the human mind. In basing my approach to literature on Vico’s, Susanne K. Langer’s (1953, 1967) and Merleau-Ponty’s (1962[1945], 1968) theories, I argue that the language of literature is distinguished from conventional language use by its imaginative use of aesthetic patterns that make manifest the inherent character of the external world as we experience it. By introducing the concepts of minding, metaphor, and icon as structures of the imagination, I show how the language of poetic expression in Matthew Arnold’s poem, “Dover Beach,” enables us to apprehend the ways in which we intuitively participate in the reality that underlies our conscious experience. Such participation occurs because sensory impressions of the world we experience cause modifications in the human mind that result in affective responses. Current research in the cognitive sciences increasingly indicates that such modification occurs; aesthetic study of the arts provides a means whereby we can know what it is like to experience such modifications. (shrink)

It has always been a matter of curiosity what kind of information art, which is far from ordinary and untouchable, provides people. Confronting a person with an art object means looking at the window of a world different from the world of daily routines, with his head stuck out. We can describe this world as magical in a romantic way. This magic arises from the difference in the functioning of perception, interpretation and judgment processes, which the person confronted with an (...) art object has difficulty in explaining to himself from time to time. Because the acquisition of perception in the world of routines and the acquisition of perception from the art object are different in terms of the functioning of mental processes... (shrink)

The paper presents an at tempt to shed light on causes and circum stances which brought about foundation of aesthetics in 18th century as discipline which analyzes mind experience. Author recognizes key importance of 17th century epistemology for constitution of modern aesthetics, principally idea of subjectivity, subject-object relation problem and new method - philosophical introspection. Special place in modern aesthetics, according to author, deserves aesthetic theory of Francis Hutcheson who defines beauty as phenomenal quality of subjective experience of (...) human mind. nema. (shrink)

What is it to experience the sardonic quality of Mingus' music, the nostalgia of a street-scene, the evanescence of a light installation, or the flowingness of Virginia Woolf's prose? Aesthetic experiences make artworks what they are for us--expressive, enlightening, enjoyable. They ground aesthetic value. How can we best account for them? ;The traditional view of aesthetic perception describes a mode of disinterested contemplation, free from the cognitive and utilitarian strictures conditioning ordinary awareness. Philosophers have challenged this view (...) on analytical, marxist, feminist, pragmatist, and postmodernist grounds. Through interrelation and contextualization requirements, aestheticians have attempted to salvage the notion of an aesthetically appropriate mode of appreciation . But the nature of this kind of appreciation depends on the nature of the small-scale experiential states that form its substance, namely, the experiences of aesthetic properties. ;These experiences are peculiar. Conceptually complexer than pure sensations, and phenomenally richer than sheer imaginings and cognitions, aesthetic experiences exhibit significant parallels and differences with other states of mind. They display a rocky distribution over various sense modalities, a selective sensitivity to contextual factors, and a striking interconnectedness among themselves. Current analyses in terms of cognition, imagination, metaphorical understanding, nonaesthetic sensation, and counterfactual perception have trouble accommodating their coherence and stability. With the assistence of theoretical work on categorization, perception, and qualia , I propose to locate a more fine-grained attitude at the basis of aesthetic experience, involving perceptually driven conceptualizations, arising through processes of progressive phenomenal differentiation. I substantiate this proposal by considering a number of pertinent phenomena in aesthetics, namely the role of imaginings in pictorial and musical perception; the function of artistic categories, and the experience of seeing objects in depictions. ;This view, call it the conceptualizations view, allows us to identify the distinctive artistic functioning of aesthetic experience--its role as an intermediary between different domains of artistic meaning--while respecting its variety and its relations with other forms of mentation. Thus we can clarify its formative role within the aesthetic sphere at large, and, most importantly, its connection with value. (shrink)

Rambo (2008) marked the return of Sylvester Stallone's iconic action hero. What is most striking about the fourth film (as the response from reviewers testifies), is its graphic violence. My intention here is to critically engage with Rambo (2008) as rewriting the series' established aesthetic of violence. My overarching aim is to highlight how the popular press has sought to read the 2008 version of Rambo according to the discursive narratives surrounding Stallone's 1980s action films. The negative response to (...) Rambo, I argue, stems from relying on critical patterns that do not fit the film itself. (shrink)

Mark Johnson is widely regarded as a major figure in philosophical embodied cognition theory in the U.S., and as co-founder with George Lakoff of conceptual metaphor theory. These two theories, along with Johnson's deep rootedness in classical American Pragmatism, provide the themes for the analyses developed in both Embodied Mind, Meaning, and Reason: How our Bodies Give Rise to Understanding and The Aesthetics of Meaning and Thought: The Bodily Roots of Philosophy, Science, Morality and Art. The two texts together (...) review and expand Johnson's earlier work, in the case of the newest book by further elaborating and providing expanded empirical support for work that by necessity began as rather more speculative than... (shrink)

Like yoga before it, the Buddhist mindfulness practice is sweeping across North America. As only one example, Time magazine, discussing the Center for Disease Control's recent report on mindfulness in the workplace, led its story with the claim that "the American workforce is becoming more mindful."1 A growing number of Americans are now just as likely, it seems, to meditate as they are to pray, and the Four Noble Truths have, for some, surpassed the Ten Commandments as the foundation for (...) a life of meaning and purpose.The above picture is, no doubt, a caricatured portrait. But it captures, we believe, an evolving trend that needs further attention. In this paper, we seek to explore some of these changes in North... (shrink)

Mou Zongsan incorrectly uses Kant’s practical reason to interpret Confucianism. The saying that “what is it that we have in common in our minds? It is the li 理 (principles) and the yi 义 (righteousness)” reveals how Mencius explains the origin of li and yi through a theory of common sense. In “the li and the yi please our minds, just as the flesh of beef and mutton and pork please our mouths,” “please” is used twice, proving aesthetic judgment (...) is necessary to understanding Mencius. An analysis of Zhu Xi and Wang Yangming’s ideas will show that Confucianism should be interpreted by appealing to aesthetic judgment, and a discussion of Kant’s theory of judgment and Gadamer’s critique of Kant’s theory will support the same point. The conclusion is that Chinese moral philosophy should be interpreted through aesthetic judgment. (shrink)

The volume presents the results of the 1st International Conference on Aesthetics and the Embodied Mind. It discusses from different points of view the role of embodiment in the reevaluation of aesthetics as a process of bodily mediated meaning-making.

Though underexplored in contemporary scholarship, the Victorian attempts to turn aesthetics into a science remain one of the most fascinating aspects of that era. In The Outward Mind, Benjamin Morgan approaches this period of innovation as an important origin point for current attempts to understand art or beauty using the tools of the sciences. Moving chronologically from natural theology in the early nineteenth century to laboratory psychology in the early twentieth, Morgan draws on little-known archives of Victorian intellectuals such (...) as William Morris, Walter Pater, John Ruskin, and others to argue that scientific studies of mind and emotion transformed the way writers and artists understood the experience of beauty and effectively redescribed aesthetic judgment as a biological adaptation. Looking beyond the Victorian period to humanistic critical theory today, he also shows how the historical relationship between science and aesthetics could be a vital resource for rethinking key concepts in contemporary literary and cultural criticism, such as materialism, empathy, practice, and form. At a moment when the tumultuous relationship between the sciences and the humanities is the subject of ongoing debate, Morgan argues for the importance of understanding the arts and sciences as incontrovertibly intertwined. (shrink)

Embora a extensão da dependência entre teorias da estética e modelos da mente seja urna questão de aceso debate, é justo afirmar que as abordagens actuáis da consciência sugerem novas perspectivas sobre a natureza da experiência estética. As recentes descobertas da neurociência têm afetado a nossa forma de ver a estética e a arte. Todavia, enquanto é frequentemente sugerido que a neurociência vai, em breve, obter urna descrição completa da natureza da mente e, portanto, da experiência estética, aqui consideram-se as (...) consequências da recente bifurcação teórica a respeito da localizacão da mente (ou seja, as posições externalistas versus internalistas). A partir deste ponto de vista, as questões da unidade e do significado são usadas para investigar a natureza da experiência estética e da arte. A discussão baseia-se na distinção de William James entre núcleo e periferia, levando a uma perspectiva de convergência entre a psicologia, a fenomenologia e a neurociência. Por fim, a arte é explorada como urna janela para olhar para dentro de aspectos fundamentais da vida mental, quer por meio dos recentes resultados de imagens do cérebro, quer através dos modelos mais abrangentes da mente. While the extent of the dependence between theories of aesthetics and models of the mind is a matter of lively debate, it is fair to claim that current approaches to consciousness suggest new perspectives about the nature of aesthetic experience. Recent findings of neuroscience have affected how we see aesthetics and art. Nevertheless, while it is often suggested that neuroscience will soon offer a comprehensive account of the nature of mind and thus of aesthetic experience, here we consider the consequences on the recent theoretical bifurcation as to where mind is located (namely the externalist vs. the internalist stance). From such a view, the issues of unity and meaning are used to probe into the nature of aesthetic experience and art. The discussion draws upon William James' distinction between nucleus and fringe and puts forward a converging perspective between psychology, phenomenology and neuroscience. Eventually, art is exploited as a window to peer inside fundamental aspects of mental life by means both of recent brain imaging results and more extended models of the mind. (shrink)

This paper examines the dialogical relationship between painting and mindfulness. This premise is explored with reference to the aesthetics of Mikel Dufrenne. Dufrenne’s arguments make use of a number of features that characterise mindful practice and reflect mindfulness philosophy. Dufrenne’s phenomenology of aesthetic experience centres on being present, focused, non-judgemental and attentive to the aesthetic object in order to realise its signification. These concepts are also given primary importance in Buddhist philosophy of mindfulness. Dufrenne’s theory lends itself ideally (...) to understanding aesthetic experience in relation to mindfulness as well as how these experiences complement one another. Although Dufrenne does not prioritise painting, the present paper will explore painting in particular due to its embodied, gestural nature, which utilises the notion of style, reflecting the artist’s mode of being-in- the-world. Dufrenne’s ideas allow both mindfulness and painting to be understood in more comprehensive terms than that of their meanings considered individually. (shrink)

Starting from the late Renaissance, efforts to make vocal music more expressive heightened the power of words, which, in turn, gave birth to the modern semantics of musical expression. As the skepticism of seventeenth-century science divorced the acoustic properties from the metaphysical qualities of music, the door was opened to dicern the rich links between musical perception and varied mental faculties. In Tuning the Mind, Ruth Katz and Ruth HaCohen trace how eighteenth century theoreticians of music examined anew the (...) role of the arts within a general theory of knowledge. As the authors note, the differences between the physical and emotional dimensions of music stimulated novel conceptions and empirical inquiries into the old aesthetic queries. Tracing this development, their opening chapter deals with seventeenth-century epistemological issues concerning the artistic qualities of music. Katz and HaCohen show that painting and literature displayed a comparable tendency toward "musicalization," whereby the dynamic of forms-the modalities specific to each artistic medium-rather than subject matter was believed to determine expression. Katz and HaCohen explore the ambiguities inherent in idealization of an art form whose mimetic function has always been problematic. They discuss the major outlines of this development, from Descartes to Vico through Condillac. Particular emphasis is placed on eighteenth-century British thinkers, from Shaftesbury to Adam Smith, who perceived these problems in their full complexity. They also explore how the French and the Germans dealt differently with questions that preoccupied the British, each nation in accordance with their own past tradition and tendencies. The concluding chapter summarizes the parallel development of abstract art and basic hypotheses concerning the mind and explores basic theoretical questions pertaining to the relationship between perception and cognition. In addressing some of the most complex problems in musical aesthetics, Katz and HaCohen provide a unique historical perspective on the ways their art creates and develops coherent worlds, and, in so doing, contribute to our understanding of the workings of the mind. Ruth Katz is Emanuel Alexandre Professor of Musicology at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. She is co-editor with Carl Dahlhaus of Contemplating Music, a four-volume study of the philosophy of music. Ruth HaCohen is Clarica and Fred Davidson Senior Lecturer of Musicology at the Hebrew University. (shrink)

Why do people respond emotionally to works of fiction they know are make-believe? Boruah tackles this question, which is fundamental aesthetics and literary studies, from a totally new perspective. Bringing together the various answers that have been offered by philosophers from Aristotle to Roger Scruton, he shows that while some philosophers have denied any rational basis to our emotional responses to fiction, others have argued that the emotions evoked by fiction are not real emotions at all. In response to this, (...) Boruah contends that fictional emotions are rational because they are based on the same sorts of beliefs that we form about real situations and real people. He illustrates this argument with literary examples ranging from Shakespeare to Tolstoy. (shrink)

Aesthetics, like other philosophical subjects, has historically made use of «top down» methods. Recent discoveries in genetics, evolutionary psychology, paleoarchaeology, and neuroscience call for a new «naturalistic» or «bottom up» perspective. Combining these fields with behavioral biology and ethnoarts studies, I offer seven premises that underlie a new understanding of evolved predispositions of the brain/mind that all artists use to attract attention, sustain interest, and create, mold, and shape emotion. I describe aesthetic «primitives» in somatic and behavioral modalities, (...) suggesting that these were present in early sapiens and continue to influence human art making and aesthetic response today. Keywords: Aesthetic Mind; Neuroaesthetics, evolutionary aesthetics, cognitive aesthetics, evolution of art. (shrink)

Mind Ecologies: Body, Brain, and World: Book Abstract from Columbian University Press -/- Matthew Crippen and Jay Schulkin -/- Pragmatism, a pluralistic philosophy with kinships to phenomenology, Gestalt psychology and embodied cognitive science, is resurging across disciplines. It has growing relevance to literary studies, the arts, and religious scholarship, along with branches of political theory, not to mention our understanding of science. But philosophies and sciences of mind have lagged behind this pragmatic turn, for the most part retaining (...) a central-nervous-system orientation, which pragmatists rejected as far too narrow. -/- Matthew Crippen, a biologically orientated philosopher of mind, and Jay Schulkin, a pioneer in neuroscience, offer an innovative interdisciplinary theory of mind. They argue that pragmatism in combination with phenomenology is not only able to give an unusually persuasive rendering of how we think, feel, experience, and act in the world but also the account most consistent with evidence from cognitive science and neurobiology. Crippen and Schulkin contend that cognition, emotion, and perception are incomplete without action, and in action they fuse together. Not only are we embodied subjects whose thoughts, emotions, and capacities comprise one integrated system; we are living ecologies inseparable from our surroundings, our cultures, and our world. Ranging from social coordination to the role of gut bacteria and visceral organs in mental activity, and touching upon fields such as robotics, artificial intelligence, and plant cognition, Crippen and Schulkin stress the role of aesthetics, emotions, interests, and moods in the ongoing enactment of experience. Synthesizing philosophy, neurobiology, psychology, and the history of science, Mind Ecologies offers a broad and deep exploration of evidence for the embodied, embedded, enacted, and extended nature of mind. (shrink)

Aesthetic non-cognitivists deny that aesthetic statements express genuinely aesthetic beliefs and instead hold that they work primarily to express something non-cognitive, such as attitudes of approval or disapproval, or desire. Non-cognitivists deny that aesthetic statements express aesthetic beliefs because they deny that there are aesthetic features in the world for aesthetic beliefs to represent. Their assumption, shared by scientists and theorists of mind alike, was that language-users possess cognitive mechanisms with which to (...) objectively grasp abstract rules fixed independently of human responses, and that cognizers are thereby capable of grasping rules for the correct application of aesthetic concepts without relying on evaluation or enculturation. However, in this article I use Wittgenstein’s rule-following considerations to argue that psychological theories grounded upon this so-called objective model of rule-following fail to adequately account for concept acquisition and mastery. I argue that this is because linguistic enculturation, and the perceptual learning that’s often involved, influences and enables the mastery of aesthetic concepts. I argue that part of what’s involved in speaking aesthetically is to belong to a cultural practice of making sense of things aesthetically, and that it’s within a socio-linguistic community, and that community’s practices, that such aesthetic sense can be made intelligible. (shrink)

In _Aesthetics and Material Beauty_, Jennifer A. McMahon develops a new aesthetic theory she terms Critical Aesthetic Realism - taking Kantian aesthetics as a starting point and drawing upon contemporary theories of mind from philosophy, psychology, and cognitive science. The creative process does not proceed by a set of rules. Yet the fact that its objects can be understood or appreciated by others suggests that the creative process is constrained by principles to which others have access. According (...) to her update of Kantian aesthetics, beauty is grounded in indeterminate yet systematic principles of perception and cognition. However, Kant’s aesthetic theory rested on a notion of indeterminacy whose consequences for understanding the nature of art were implausible. McMahon conceptualizes "indeterminacy" in terms of contemporary philosophical, psychological, and computational theories of mind. In doing so, she develops an aesthetic theory that reconciles the apparent dichotomies which stem from the tension between the determinacy of communication and the indeterminacy of creativity. Dichotomies such as universality and subjectivity, objectivity and autonomy, cognitivism and non-cognitivism, and truth and beauty are revealed as complementary features of an aesthetic judgment. (shrink)

ABSTRACTEvaluative aesthetic discourse communicates that the speaker has had first-hand experience of what is talked about. If you call a book bewitching, it will be assumed that you have read the book. If you say that a building is beautiful, it will be assumed that you have had some visual experience with it. According to an influential view, this is because knowledge is a norm for assertion, and aesthetic knowledge requires first-hand experience. This paper criticizes this view and (...) argues for an alternative view, according to which aesthetic discourse expresses affective states of mind, analogously to how assertions express beliefs. It is because these affective states require first-hand experience that aesthetic discourse communicates that such acquaintance is at hand. The paper furthermore argues that the lack of an experience requirement for aesthetic belief ascriptions constitutes a problem for the kind of expressivist who claims that evaluative belief states are covert non-cognitive states. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the emergent neo-Jamesian perspective concerning the phenomenology of art and aesthetic experience. Starting from the distinction between nucleus and fringe in the stream of thought described by William James, it can be argued that our appreciation of a work of art is guided by a vague and blurred perception of a much more powerful content, of which we are not fully aware. Accordingly, a work of art is seen as a kind of metaphor of our (...) mental life, objectified to be able to reach out to a much larger audience. However, it is a “realistic” theory rooted in evolutionary psychology, which claims that our mind developed within a framework shaped by environmental pressures. The aesthetics illustrated by several novelists develops a paradigm for this theory. The search for the neuronal correlates of stream of consciousness allows to make a comparison with the recent findings of neuroaesthetics and to reject its claim that it is unnecessary to take phenomenology and psychology into account. (shrink)

On the basis of archaeological data and cognitive research, this article proposes an evolutionary story about aesthetic experience, arguing three intertwined theses. Aesthetic experience is adaptive; that is, it represents a specific implementation of the epistemic goal of knowing. It refunctionalizes antecedents and precursors: play and dreaming, technology and the ability to manipulate, and proto-aesthetic elements and aesthetic preferences. Mind and aesthetic experience co-evolve; that is, aesthetic experience requires mind reading and metacognition, (...) and it helps them to reach their advanced metarepresentational architecture. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Some Varieties of Aesthetic Properties The Aesthetics of Fiction What Properties are Aesthetic? Mind Aesthetics? Number Aesthetics?

Research indicates that nature offers many physical and mental health benefits, including restoration - or recovery from mental fatigue. However, questions remain about what exactly in one's environment is experienced as restorative and why. Bridging environmental aesthetics, environmental psychology and cultural studies, this study establishes a connection between landscape and mindscape as seen, for instance, in the ways in which an orderly environment is interpreted as an orderly state of mind and vice versa. Using data drawn from a qualitative (...) survey targeting expatriate Finns, the article mobilises content analysis to interpret the results and concludes that a 'favourite place' is aesthetically appealing, enables actions that are experienced as restorative and is as much an interpretation of a space as a physical place. (shrink)