Aesthetics and Cognitive Science
Phil/Psy/SPM 379
W 1:30 – 4:20: Stager 212
Margaret Livingstone, http://neuro.med.harvard.edu/site/faculty/livingstone.html
Professor William Seeley
Office:
323 Stager
Office Hours:
MW 12:00 – 1:00
Or email to make an appointment,
(I can generally also be found on the ice at
The Lancaster Ice Rink from 10:00 – 11:00 am
on
Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Bring your skates!)
http://server1.fandm.edu/departments/Philosophy/staticpages/Seeley/index.htm
Course Description:
An examination of philosophical issues surrounding
attempts to naturalize aesthetic experience by integrating research in aesthetics
and cognitive science. In this
context ŇnaturalizingÓ refers to attempts to explain aesthetic experiences by
reference to the natural psychological processes underlying perception and
cognition. The aim of the course
is to introduce students to the interdisciplinary field of cognitive science,
and to investigate the role psychology and cognitive neuroscience can play in
explanations of art and aesthetic experience. The first part of the course introduces issues in
aesthetics. The second part examines
the role an understanding of the perceptual relationship between viewers and
works of visual art can play in an explanation of the aesthetic experiences we
associate with art in general.
This section investigates the general methodology underlying the
interdisciplinary study of aesthetics and cognitive science, and the
application of current theories of perception to an understanding of aesthetic
experiences.
Course Resource Page: http://server1.fandm.edu/departments/Philosophy/staticpages/Seeley/AeCS.html]
Course Goals:
1. Provide a general understanding of
the objectives and interdisciplinary methods of cognitive science via their
application in explanations of art and aesthetic experience.
2. Evaluate how aesthetic experiences are differentiated
from ordinary perceptual experiences in traditional and contemporary
philosophical literature.
3. Naturalizing
aesthetics is an instance of a more general philosophical project. The goal of this project is to
investigate, and if possible explain or resolve, traditional philosophical
problems in terms natural psychological processes. This course will provide students with the philosophical
background to evaluate attempts to naturalize aesthetics.
Requirements:
Students will be required to write two papers: a short paper (6 – 8 pages) on an
assigned topic to be assigned at session 7; and a term paper (12 - 14 pages) on a topic of their own choice due
at the end of the reading period.
Students must see me to discuss the topic of their term papers no later
than Session 10. In addition
students will be responsible, on a rotating basis, for preparing a short
introduction to the reading for each seminar (as assigned).
Texts:
Carroll,
No‘l (1999). Philosophy of Art,
Routledge, New York.
Course
Packet
COURSE OUTLINE AND
READINGS:
Session 1.
Introductory Lecture:
The
goal of this session is to introduce students to the key concepts and basic
model for the interdisciplinary study of cognitive science and aesthetics:
a) the
philosophical definition of aesthetics: the study of sensory
cognition and the phenomenal character of the experiences associated with
artworks.
b) the
definition of an interpretation: the application of background art
historical and cultural knowledge in the identification of the content of a
work of art.
c) a
basic philosophical conflict between the role of interpretation and the
philosophical definition of aesthetics:
it has been argued that what differentiates aesthetic from ordinary perceptual experiences is not their
phenomenal content, but rather how viewers interpret them relative to
background art historical and cultural knowledge, e.g. conceptual art like the
"readymades" of Marcel Duchamp.
d) the
definition of a constructivist theory of vision and its implications for the field of aesthetics:
- expectations
and background knowledge concerning the structure and function of scenes and
objects play an integral role in the construction of visual appearances;
- therefore
the conceptual contributions of background art historical and cultural
knowledge cannot be so easily separated from the phenomenal content of
aesthetic experiences
e) a solution suggested by a constructivist theory of vision to the
conflict between the idea of an interpretation and the philosophical definition
of aesthetics: background art
historical and cultural knowledge plays a role in the construction of the
phenomenal content of aesthetic experiences.
Session 2.
Some Background in Aesthetics:
Aesthetic Experience and Interpretation:
The goal of this session is to examine in detail: a) the central notion of a theory of
aesthetics, i.e. that what individuates artworks from ordinary objects is the
unique phenomenal character of aesthetic experiences, and b) a standard
objection to theories of aesthetics, i.e. that they cannot adequately account
for the role of interpretation in aesthetic experiences.
READINGS:
- Arthur
Danto (2000) "The Work of Art
and the Historical Future," The Madonna of the Future, University
of California Press, 2001, Berkeley, pp. 416 – 431. (philosophy)
- Noel
Carroll, "Art and Interaction," Journal of Aesthetics and Art
Criticism, XLV, No. 1.1986, pp. 57 – 68.
Session 3.
The Fry-Ruskin Thesis:
The Fry-Ruskin Thesis consists of three claims: a)
visual artists derive the content of their works from a careful examination of
the underlying structure of natural appearances, b) viewers reconstruct the
representational content of these works from visual cues derived from this
examination, and c) as a result an intuitive understanding of the structure of
appearances plays a key role in the production of aesthetic experiences. The goal of this session is to evaluate
a) the Fry-Ruskin Thesis as a theory of aesthetics, and b) Gombrich's criticism
that it rests on a na•ve view of vision built upon the impossible notion of an
"innocent," or unbiased, eye.
READINGS:
- John
Ruskin (1857) "from The Elements of Drawing," Dover Publishers
Inc, Mineola, New York, 1971 2001, Malden, MA, pp. 27 - 28.
(art
criticism)
- Roger
Fry, "The Artist's Vision," Vision and Design, Dover
Publishers Inc, Mineola, New York, 1981, pp. 33 – 38. (art criticism)
- E. M.
Gombrich's (2000) "The Analysis of Vision in Art," Art and
Illusion, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, pp. 291 –
314. (psychology and art
criticism)
Session 4.
The Constructivist Hypothesis:
The goal of this session is to: a) introduce the idea that the
structure of appearances is actively constructed by the visual system, b) introduce a general constructivist
model for the study of cognitive
science and aesthetics which suggests that artists' close examination of the
structure of appearances is in fact a close examination of the way the visual
system constructs visual representations, and c) discuss a solution this
strategy suggests for the problem of interpretation.
READINGS:
- Diana
Raffman (1993) Language Music, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, pp. 1 –
15; 31 – 35. (philosophy and
cognitive science)
- Ellen Winner
(1982) "What's in a picture," Invented Worlds, Harvard
University Press, Cambridge, MA, pp. 81 – 111 (psychology of art
textbook)
- Stephen
E. Palmer (1999) "Classical Theories of Vision," Vision
Science: Photons to Phenomenology,
MIT Press, Cambridge, MA,
pp.
47 – 59. (psychology text
book)
Session 6.
Kinetic Art and Calder's Mobiles:
The goal of this session is to evaluate a case study
which exemplify the bottom-up approach:
Semi Ski's claim that Alexander Calder's sculpture consciously
exploits the receptive field properties of motion sensitive neurons.
READINGS:
- Anjan
Chatterjee (2003). "Prospects
for a Cognitive Neuroscience of Visual Aesthetics," Bulletin of
Psychology and the Arts, Volume 4. Number 2, pp 55 – 60 (neuroscience)
- Semir
Zeki and M. Lamb (1994). "The
neurology of kinetic art," Brain, 117, pp. 607 – 636. (cognitive science and aesthetics)
- V.
S. Ramachandran and R. L. Gregory (1978)
"Does Color Provide an Input to Human Motion Perception?" Nature,
Volume 275, September 7, pp. 55 – 56. (scientific report)
- Margaret
Livingstone (2000). "Is It
Warm? Is It Real? Or Just Low Spatial Frequency?" Science,
290, November 17, p. 1299 (neuroscience).
Session 7.
Discussion of Zeki's Thesis:
Zeki's theory does not address the issue of
interpretation. The goal of this
discussion is to evaluate two potential difficulties for Zeki's theory: a) Jennifer McMahon's claim that Zeki's
theory is limited by the fact that it can only explain the perceptual content
of highly abstract works which exploit formal visual elements in relative
isolation, e.g. Calder's use of motion, and b) the claim discussed in Sessions
2 and 3 that the value of the formal structure of an artwork is derived from an
interpretation.
READINGS:
- Clement
Greenberg (1960). "Modernist
Painting," ed. John O'Brian, The Collected Essays and Criticism,
Volume 4, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1995, pp. 85 – 93. (art theory).
- Noel
Carroll (1999). "Form and
Function," The Philosophy of Art (excerpts on edisk), New
York: Routledge.
- Arthur
Danto (2000) "Art and
Meaning," Theories of Art Today, University of Wisconsin Press,
2000, Madison, WI, pp. 130 – 140.
(philosophy)
MIDTERM PAPER TOPIC ASSIGNED
Session 8.
A Top-Down Approach: A
Theory of Perceptual Beauty:
The goal of this session is to examine McMahon's claim
that the phenomenal character of the experience of beautiful artworks, objects,
and natural scenes involves an intuitive awareness of the role of perceptual
schema in the top-down processes subserving form perception.
READINGS:
- Jennifer
Anne McMahon (1999) "Towards a Unified Theory of Beauty," Literature
and Aesthetics, 9, pp. 7 – 27.
(philosophy and cognitive science)
- Gottfried
Wilhelm Leibniz (1684)
"Meditation of Knowledge, Truth, and Ideas," Philosophical
Papers and Letters translated and edited by Leroy E. Loemker, Kluwer Academic
Publishers, Boston, 1989, pp. 291 – 295. (philosophy)
- Moses
Mendelssohn, "Of the Main Principles of the Fine Arts and Sciences," Philosophical
Writings, ed Daniel Dahlstrom (New York: Cambridge University Press).
- No‘l
Carroll (1991) "Beauty and
the Genealogy of Art Theory," The Philosophical Forum, XXII, No. 4,
pp. 307 – 334.
Session 9.
A Top Down Approach: Form
Perception:
The goal of this session is to examine evidence
supporting McMahon's central claim that viewers can be intuitively aware of key
aspects of the perceptual form of a scene or object without being able to
appropriately identify them.
READINGS:
- Stephen
Palmer, "Four Stages of Visual Perception," Vision Science,"
Cambridge: MIT Press, pp. 85 - 93
- Jenni
A. Ogden (1996) "Vision
Without Knowledge: Visual Object
Agnosia and Prosopagnosia," Fractured Minds, Oxford University
Press, New York, pp. 125 – 141. (cognitive
science)
- Alan
J. Parkin (1996) "Visual
Agnosia," Explorations in Cognitive Neuropsychology, Psychology
Press, New York, pp. 38 – 57.
(cognitive science)
* (supplemental)
Marr, David and H. K. Nishihara (1978)
"Visual Processing:
Artificial intelligence and the sensorium of sight," TechnologyReview,
81, pp. 2 – 23.
* (supplemental)
Jennifer Anne McMahon (2001) "Beauty," in eds. Berys Gaut and Dominic
McIver Lopes, The Routledge Companion to Aesthetics, Routledge, New
York, pp. 227 – 238.
(philosophy)
Session 10. Art and the Imagination:
The goal of this session is to a) introduce Gregory
Currie's general model for the role of the imagination in the production of aesthetic
experiences, b) introduce Currie's claim that viewing a work of visual art
involves a "simulated" act of seeing, and c) discuss the relationship
between this model and the constructivist hypothesis.
READINGS:
- Kendall
Walton (1992) "Mimesis as Make-believe," Art Issues 21, pp. 22
– 27. (philosophy)
- Gregory
Currie and Ian Ravenscroft (2002).
"Chapter 1, Projections and Recreations," Recreative Minds
(New York: Oxford University
Press). (philosophy) (on edisk)
- Gregory
Currie (1995) "Visual Imagery as the Simulation of Vision," Mind
and Language, Volume 10, Number 1/2, March/June,
pp.
25 – 44. (philosophy and cognitive science)
Session 11. What is Mental Imagery?:
Currie appeals to Stephen Kosslyn's model of visual
mental imagery to explain the idea of a "simulated act of
seeing." The goal of this
session is to discuss a) the top down role of memory and background knowledge
in Stephen Kosslyn's model for mental imagery, b) behavioral,
neuropsychological, and neurophysiological evidence that supports the claim
that mental imagery is in fact a type of visual experience, and c) the
resolution that this model suggests to the problem of interpretation.
READINGS:
- Currie
and Ravenscroft, "Chapter 4, Imagery: Capacities and Mechanisms," Recreative Minds (philosophy)
- Stephen Kosslyn (1996) "Resolving
the Imagery Debates," Image and Brain, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA,
pp. 2 – 21. (cognitive
science)
- Kosslyn et al (1999) "The Role of Area 17 in Visual Imagery: Convergent Evidence from PET and
rTMS," pp. 167-170.
(cognitive neuroscience)
Session 12. Imagery Feedback, Attention & Diagnosticity
The goal of this session is to a) introduce evidence
for what Kosslyn calls "imagery feedback" in ordinary vision, b) introduce
the concept of 'diagnosticity' in object (a feature or set of features are
'diagnostic' if they are sufficient to enable a someone to perceptually
recognize an object or scene), c) introduce the idea that the formal structure
of an artwork contains a set of diagnostic cues that function to
direct/constrain viewers' perceptual and interpretive experiences.
- William
Thompson and Stephen Kosslyn, "Neural systems activated during visual
mental imagery," Brain Imaging:
The Systems, eds. Toga and Maziotta, (New York: Academic Press). (cognitive neuroscience) (packet)
- Marvin
Chun and Rene Marois (2002).
"The dark side of visual attention," Current Opinion in
Neurobiology 12 (cognitive neuroscience) (edisk)
- Nancy
Kanwisher and Ewa Wojciuk (2000). "Visual Attention: Insights from Brain Imaging," Nature
Reviews: Neuroscience 1, pp. 91 – 100. (cognitive neuroscience)
- Phillipe
Schyns (1998). Diagnostic
recognition: Task constraints, object information, and their
interactions," Cognition 67, pp. 147 - 162 (excerpt)
Session 13. Discussion:
Art, Imagination, Mental Imagery, and the Problem of Interpretation:
The goal of this session is to evaluate imagery
feedback and diagnostic recognition theory as possible mechanisms for a
solution to the problem of interpretation: they suggest complimentary roles for the phenomenal content
of aesthetic experience and background art historical and cultural knowledge.
- Arthur
Danto (2001). "Seeing and
Showing," Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 59:1, pp. 1-
9. (philosophy) (edisk)
- Noel
Carroll: "Modernity and the
plasticity of perception, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 59:1,
pp. 11 – 17.
(philosophy) (edisk)
- Mark
Rollins (2004). "What Monet
Meant: Intention and Attention in
Understanding Art," Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 62:2,
pp.
175 – 188. (philosophy) (edisk)
- Noel
Carroll (1988). "Art,
Practice, Narrative," The Monist 71:2, pp. 140 – 156.
(philosophy) (packet)
- Stephen
Davies (2005). "Beardsley and
the Autonomy of the Work of Art," Journal of Aesthetics and Art
Criticism, 63:2, p. 179 – 183.
Session
14. Art, Aesthetics and the
Constructivist Hypothesis
- Noel Carroll
(2002). "Aesthetic Experience
Revisited," British Journal of Philosophy, 42:2, pp. 145 –
171.
FINAL PAPER DUE