Staying Optimistic

Chapter 9 recapitulates the arguments and evidence from the previous chapters, summarizes the diagnostic recognition framework for engaging art, and sets forth a concluding argument for moderate optimism in cognitive science and aesthetics.

Fixing Testadura’s Error

Chapter 8 returns to the puzzle of locating art. It explores a range of case studies which demonstrate how categorizing an artwork guides attention and shapes perception. The discussion thereby demonstrates that knowledge of normative conventions governing artistic appreciation shapes the perception of artworks. The psychology and neuroscience of perception can be used to model and explain these processes. The diagnostic recognition framework for engaging art therefore obviates the common perceptual mechanisms, dissolves the normative dimension of appreciation arguments, and points toward a resolution of the puzzle of locating art.

Concepts and Categories of Art: A Very Brief Primer

Chapter 3 expands on the discussion of categories of art. The chapter evaluates four models for a theory of concepts for categories of art: a classical account derived from traditional, definitional theories of art; a prototype theory derived from Kendall Walton’s canonical discussion of categories of art; an exemplar theory derived from Morris Weitz’s anti-essentialism; and a knowledge-based account derived from Arthur Danto and Noël Carrol’s cognitivist theories of art. The chapter continues with a discussion of artworks and artifact concepts and concludes by arguing that a knowledge-based account of concepts provides the best model for understanding the structure of categories of art. and their role in our engagement with artworks.

Musical Expression

Chapter 6 explores philosophical discussions about the nature of music expression. Musical works are inanimate artifacts. It has, as a result, been thought to be puzzling that listeners attribute expressive qualities to them. The chapter evaluates two alternative philosophical solutions to this puzzle: contour theory and embodied appraisal theory. Current research in psychology of music suggests that the conjunction of these two alternative theories provides a comprehensive model for how music carries and conveys information about the affective contours of ordinary behaviors. An appeal to facts about sensorimotor processing can in this case, as in the previous chapter, be used to dissolve a longstanding philosophical puzzle about art.

Introduction

This chapter introduces a model aimed at dissolving general philosophical skepticism about research in cognitive science and aesthetics. The discussion is focused around what can be called the puzzle of locating art. The puzzle of locating art emerges from two skeptical arguments: the common perceptual mechanisms argument and the normative dimension of appreciation argument. The central argument of the chapter is that skepticism about the value of cognitive science to explanations of art is an artifact of a confusion among cognitive scientists about the role of aesthetics in the arts and a confusion among philosophers about the role information from neuroscience plays in psychological explanations.

Cognitivism at the Movies

Chapter 7 explores cognitivism as an alternative to realist and semiotic theories of the nature of film. The chapter develops a diagnostic recognition framework for film derived from a biased competition theory of attention and research on the role played by situation models in narrative comprehension.

Seeking Salience

Chapter 1 evaluates the role played by aesthetics in the arts, argues that the shortcomings of neuroaesthetics emerge from conflating aesthetics with art, and introduces an alternative cognitivist model for understanding art. Artworks are communicative devices. They are artifacts designed to direct attention to formal-compositional features diagnostic for their point, purpose, or meaning. The communicative exchange between artists and consumers is, in turn, governed by a familiar set of Gricean conditions operative in communication and interpretation more generally. Artworks can therefore be understood as communicative events structured by a shared understanding of genre and stylistic categories.

Metakinesis and the Average Dance Audience

Chapter 5 evaluates skeptical arguments against metakinesis in dance appreciation. The chapter surveys evidence that sensorimotor processing and observational learning support an embodied projective perceptual capacity to recognize and understand the movements, intentions, and affective states of others. Finally, the chapter evaluates recent research in neuroscience of dance exploring whether and to what extent this sensorimotor perceptual capacity supports the proposed role for metakinesis in the kinaesthetic understanding and appreciation of dance.

Diagnosticity and the Problem of Depiction

Chapter 4 evaluates the application of the diagnostic recognition framework to philosophical discussions of the nature of depiction. The chapter surveys several traditional theories of depiction and makes an argument that current research in the psychology and neuroscience of perception supports a version of recognition theory.

Seeking Salience

Chapter 2 explores the role played by categorization processing in perceptual recognition and introduces a diagnostic recognition framework for engaging art derived from a biased competition model for selective attention. The environment is replete with information. Perceptual systems are limited capacity cognitive systems. Perceptual systems are by their very nature, therefore, selective. In ordinary contexts, task demands and general world knowledge are used to direct attention to task-salient features of the environment. In artistic contexts these task demands are constrained by shared knowledge of different categories of art which serve as recipes to direct attention to minimal sets of diagnostic compositional features that carry the content of a work. Neurophysiological evidence demonstrates that these psychological processes not only guide attention, but also shape perception. This in turn entails that psychology and neuroscience can contribute to an understanding of how an artwork carries and conveys its artistically salient content.