Based on the field of aesthetics, for centuries philosophers and more recently scientists have been concerned with understanding the artistic experience focusing on emotional responses to the perception of artworks. By contrast, in the last decades, evolutionary biology has been concerned with explaining the artistic experience by focusing on the cognitive processes underlying this experience. Up until now, the cognitive mechanisms that allow humans to experience objects and events as art remain largely unexplored and there is still no conventional use (...) of terms for referring to the processes which may explain why the artistic experience is characteristically human and universal to human beings (Dissanayake, 1992, p. 24; Donald, 2006, p. 4). In this paper, I will first question whether it is productive to understand the artistic experience in terms of perception and emotion, and I will subsequently propose a possible alternative explanation to understand this experience. Drawing upon the work of Ellen Dissanayake (1992, 2000, 2015), Merlin Donald (2001, 2006, 2013), Antonio Damasio (1994, 2000, 2003, 2010), Barend van Heusden (2004, 2009, 2010), and Alejandra Wah (2014), I will argue that this experience is characterized by particular degrees of imagination and consciousness. (shrink)

The following paper draws upon a formerly published paper of mine (Krátky, 2021) where text perception was analysed from the perspective of the recipient. As its logical continuation and completion, this paper deals with the author’s viewpoint in the process. Various related aspects are identified, observed and studied, such as the ‘author’s strategy’, the evaluation of the recipient, the intended goals, as well as other important factors that influence the final text. Special attention is paid to all such aspects of (...) communication pragmatism that are reflected by the author’s (more or less controlled) deviations from the norm, aptly made to achieve communication goals. Within this framework, the study strives to show the different roles that the factor termed ‘expectation violation’ takes on when strategically applied by the author in the process of text creation. To support this description, numerous observations by authors such as Grice, Burgoon, Gombrich, Iser etc. are employed. By tackling the author’s viewpoint on text creation, a claim is advanced concerning the plausibility of certain conclusions, theories and, possibly, laws, by virtue of the identification and observation of selected multi-domain principles, phenomena and tendencies. (shrink)

While the “symbolic” meaning of early body ornamentation has received the lion’s share of attention in the debate on human origins, this paper sets out to explore their aesthetic and agentive dimensions, for the purpose of explaining how various ornamental forms would have led interacting groups to form a cultural identity of their own. To this end, semiotics is integrated with a new paradigm in the archaeology of mind, known as the theory of material engagement. Bridging specifically Peirce’s pragmatic theory (...) and Malafouris’ enactive take on aesthetics allows us to appreciate the formation of aesthetic ideals through the agentive effects of material signs. It is thus proposed that, by attending to the interrelation between form, effect, and affect, members of social groups would have come to appreciate the ways in which their ornamental culture resembles and differs from that of neighbouring groups. Following the Lund conception of cultural semiotics, I argue that models of Ego-culture would have come to evolve along Alter-cultures that also employ ornaments, and against Alius-cultures that have yet to develop or adopt personal decoration. The aesthetic ideals associated with early body ornaments must have therefore played a catalytic role in the formation and communication of group membership. I thus close by proposing that the origins of new cultural identities can be explained by tracing the co-development of ideas and ideals. (shrink)