To evidence the human condition must be to provide an account of the manifold modalities of experience: ‘Evidence’ must include different kinds of humanly experienced truths. However, the question is how does one extend the way in which the ‘evidential’ is broadly understood so that it encompasses the range of ways and kinds of knowing as practised in people’s everyday lives and as pertaining to those lives. Borrowing phrasing from Nietzsche, this article focuses in particular on species of human truth (...) that might be described as being ‘shyer’ or more ‘ticklish’ than others, and that are only humanly accessible when ‘taken by surprise’, or ‘glanced at, flashed at’. Part I of the article explores the sense that might be made of the notion of ‘ticklish truths’. Part II then considers the wider implications of giving due to a panoply of modes of human knowing. The aim of the article is to recognize a ‘gay science’ (Nietzsche) not as an eccentric construction of merely poetic insights and expressions, but as a necessary part of the fundamentals of knowledge. It is a truth of the human condition that its truths are grounded in a personal embodiment of individuality, ontogeny, momentariness and situationality. Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology , Volume 12, Special Edition July 2012. (shrink)

Artists, art critics, art historians, and cognitive psychologists have asserted that visual artists perceive the world differently than nonartists and that these perceptual abilities are the product of knowledge of techniques for working in an artistic medium. In support of these claims, Kozbelt (2001) found that artists outperform nonartists in visual analysis tasks and that these perceptual advantages are statistically correlated with drawing skill. We propose a model to explain these results that is derived from a diagnostic framework for object (...) recognition and recent research in cognitive neuroscience on selective visual attention. This research demonstrates that endogenous shifts of visual attention enhance the encoding of expected features in the visual field and inhibit the perception of potential distracters. Moreover, it demonstrates complementary roles for spatial schemata and motor plans in visual attention. We argue that artists develop novel spatial schemata, which enable them to recognize and reproduce stimulus features sufficient for adequate artistic production in a medium, and that these schemata become encoded as motor plans as artists develop technical proficiency in a medium. We hypothesize that artists' perceptual advantages can therefore, be explained by the role spatial schemata and motor plans play in selective attention. (shrink)

In a study of three indigenous and non-indigenous cultural groups in northwestern and northeastern Siberia, framed line tests and a landscape drawing task were used to examine the hypotheses that test-based assessments of context sensitivity and independence are correlated with the amount of contextual information contained in drawings, and with the order in which the focal and background objects are drawn. The results supported these hypotheses, and inspection of the regression relationships suggested that the intergroup variations in test performance were (...) likely to result from differences in the attention accorded to contextual information, as revealed by the drawings. Social and environmental explanations for the group differences in context sensitivity are also discussed. The conclusions support the argument that cultural differences in artistic styles and perceptual tests reflect the same underlying perceptual tendencies, and they are consistent with the argument that these tendencies reflect corresponding differences in patterns of social and environmental interaction. (shrink)

Color has been studied for centuries, but has never been completely understood. Digital technology has recently sparked a burgeoning interdisciplinary interest in color. The fact that color is a quality of perception rather than a physical quality brings up a host of interesting questions of interest to both artists and scholars. This volume--the ninth in the Vancouver Studies in Cognitive Science series--brings together chapters by psychologists, philosophers, computer scientists, and artists to explore the nature of human color perception (...) with the aim to further our understanding of color by encouraging interdisciplinary interaction. (shrink)

First Published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This paper discusses the significance for the philosophy of perception and aesthetics of certain productions of the ‘offline brain’. These are experienced in hypnagogic and other trance states, and in disease- or drug-induced hallucination. They bear a similarity to other visual patterns in nature, and reappear in human artistry, especially of the craft type. The reasons behind these resonances are explored, along with the question why we are disposed to find geometrical complexity and ‘supercolouration’ beautiful. The paper concludes with (...) a plea on behalf of neuroaesthetics, but with a caution or two. (shrink)

[opening paragraph]: An intriguing element of Paul Cezanne's legacy is that while he aligned his paintings with the classical Renaissance tradition of Western art, his innovative body of work ushered in a decisive break with the standards of that tradition in the twentieth century. The many ways in which Cezanne's representational system deviates from the pluralistic art of the twentieth century suggests that probing his allegiance to classicism offers a unique vantage point for studying visual art, perception, and consciousness. (...) It is for this reason that this paper examines Cezanne's contributions from both the painterly and the cognitive science perspectives, asking what artists in fact contribute to our studies in these areas. [A response to this article from Semir Zeki is published in Trends in Cognitive Science.]. (shrink)

Attempts to account for the phenomenal character of perceptual experiences have so far largely focused on their sensory aspects. The first aim of this article is to support the claim that phenomenal character has another, significant, aspect—the phenomenal realm is suffused with valence. What it’s like to undergo perceptual experiences—from pains to supposedly “neutral” visual experiences—standardly feels good or bad to some degree. The second aim is to argue, by appealing to theoretical and empirical considerations pertaining to the phenomenon of (...) valence-variance, that perceptual valence cannot be accounted for by extending the prevalent representationalist account of phenomenal character. Thus, a revision in the understanding of phenomenal character is called for. Finally, the phenomenon of valence-variance serves to make some headway toward defending a new Attitudinal-Representational Theory of perceptual valence, according to which perceptual valence is constituted by first-order conative attitudes directed toward the representational objects of experiences. (shrink)

Les articles de ce recueil, réunis par des membres du Centre de Recherche en Poétique, Histoire Littéraire et Linguistique (EA 3003) de l'Université de Pau et des Pays de l'Adour, explorent les notions de perception, perspective et perspicacité dans plusieurs champs de recherche (linguistique, littérature, histoire des idées, philosophie et arts) et à diverses époques, du Moyen Age à la modernité. De l'univers sonore médiéval à l'esthétique de Debussy, de la linguistique populaire à l'étude linguistique des relations entre (...) class='Hi'>perception, cognition et syntaxe, de Prévost à Proust en passant par Mark Twain ou Virginia Woolf, de la peinture américaine de Thomas Cole aux oeuvres vidéographiques contemporaines, cet ouvrage, tel un kaléidoscope, offre une myriade de perspectives sur la façon dont de simples locuteurs, des écrivains, des artistes ou des philosophes s'efforcent d'appréhender le monde. Les auteurs mettent en évidence les multiples stratégies rhétoriques, narratives ou esthétiques, entre autres, destinées à combler les failles d'une vision trop empirique ou à briser ou brouiller de façon perverse les écrans qui font obstacle à notre perception. Celle-ci survient parfois au terme d'une longue initiation, ou elle ne survient pas, tant il paraît difficile de jeter un regard surplombant sur un monde labile et opaque. La perception n'en demeure pas moins un catalyseur de la création, et aussi de la réception, voire de la re-création par un lecteur / spectateur perspicace qui aime être surpris de voir plus loin que son horizon d'attente. (shrink)

Human activity is permeated by norms of all sorts: moral norms provide the 'code' for what we ought to do, norms of logic regulate how we ought to reason, scientific norms set the standards for what counts as knowledge, legal norms determine what is lawfully permitted and what isn't, aesthetic norms establish canons of beauty and shape artistic trends and practices, and socio-cultural norms provide criteria for what counts as tolerable, just, praiseworthy, or unacceptable in a community or milieu. Given (...) the diversity of norm-governed phenomena prevailing in our everyday experience, it is not surprising that the question of normativity has recently generated important debates in philosophy. However, the more specific question concerning the nature and function of 'norms in perceptual experience' has received comparatively little attention. This volume brings together scholars from philosophy of mind, philosophy of perception, and phenomenology to explore this question. (shrink)

There are good, even if inconclusive, reasons to think that cognitive penetration of perception occurs: that cognitive states like belief causally affect, in a relatively direct way, the contents of perceptual experience. The supposed importance of – indeed as it is suggested here, what is definitive of – this possible phenomenon is that it would result in important epistemic and scientific consequences. One interesting and intuitive consequence entirely unremarked in the extant literature concerns the perception of art. Intuition (...) has it that knowledge about art changes how one aesthetically evaluates artworks. A profound explanation of this intuitive fact is that perceptual experiences vary with artistic expertise. Cognitive penetration provides an explanatory mechanism for this latter effect. What one knows or otherwise thinks about art may affect, in one of two ways sketched below, how one perceives art. Differences in aesthetic evaluation may follow, either because high-level aesthetic properties can be perceptually represented or because they causally depend on low-level perceptible properties. All of this lends credence to the hypothesis that the expert better judges art because she better perceives art. And she better perceives art because she better knows art. (shrink)

Since its existence, art objects have always been different from other objects in terms of perception and interpretation and have preserved their mystery for both the artist and the audience. This mystery was tried to be supported by various theories by the artist and the audience, and defined and defined with concepts such as spiritual development, spirituality and intuition. There is an ambiguity especially regarding intuition. The concept of intuition seems to be trapped in a bridge between (...) the physical world and the superphysical world. The concept of intuition has been interpreted together with the teachings of Theosophy and Buddhism and turned into an educational theory in today's art-based studies. In our age, interpretations beyond reality are increasing and unfortunately faced with the danger of losing the ground of reality. Art is a type of knowledge and knowing. Due to this feature, the compatibility of surreal discourses with this type of knowledge is discussed in this article, and on the other hand, it is tried to show how concepts such as synesthesia and intuition become possible on the basis of reality, based on the artistic experiences of world-famous artists. (shrink)

The Artist and Religion in the Contemporary World Although we begin with the words of the poet Henry Vaughan, it is the visual artists above all who know and see the mystery of the Creation of all things in light, suffering for their art in its blinding, sacrificial illumination. In modern painting this is particularly true of van Gogh and J.M.W. Turner. But God speaks the Creation into being through an unheard word, and so, too, the greatest of musicians, (...) as most tragically in the case of Beethoven, hear their sublime music only in a profound silence. The Church then needs to see and listen in order, in the words of Heidegger, to learn to "dwell poetically on earth" before God. To dwell thus lies at the heart of its life, liturgically and in its pastoral ministry, as illustrated in the poetry of the English priest and poet, David Scott. This can also be seen as a "letting go" before God and an allowing of a space in which there might be a "letting the unsayable be unsaid" and order found even over the abyss. This is what Vladimir Nabokov has called "the marvel of consciousness" which is truly a seeing in the darkness. The poet, artist and musician can bring us close to the brink of the mystery, and thus the artist is always close to the heart of the church's worship and its ministry of care where words meet silence, and light meets darkness. Such, indeed, is the true marvel of consciousness in the ultimate risk which is the final vocation of the poet and artist, as it was of Christ himself, and all his saints. The church must be ever attentive to the deeply Christocentric ministry of art and the creative power of word and image in the letting the unsayable be unsaid. With the artist we may perhaps stand on Pisgah Height with Moses with a new imaginative perception of the divine Creation. The essay concludes on a personal note, drawing upon the author's own experience in retreat in the desert, with a reminder of the thought of Thomas Merton, a solitary in the community of the Church. (shrink)

How can it be true that one sees a lake when looking at a picture of a lake, since one's gaze is directed upon a flat dry surface covered in paint? An adequate contemporary explanation cannot avoid taking a theoretical stand on some fundamental cognitive science issues concerning the nature of perception, of pictorial content, and of perceptual reference to items that, strictly speaking, have no physical existence. A solution is proposed that invokes a broadly functionalist, naturalistic theory of (...) perception, plus a double content analysis of perceptual interpretation, which permits non-supervenient, culturally autonomous modes of reference to be generated and artistically exploited even in a purely physical world. In addition, a functionalist concept of broad or 'spread' reference replaces the traditional precise intentional concept of reference, which previously made reference to non-existent items theoretically intractable. (shrink)

This article relates the work of André Leroi-Gourhan and mostly his two-volume ok Le geste et la parole to art theory. More specifically, it is concerned with central debates on artistic creativity and examines how Leroi-Gourhan can contribute to them. After presenting some general premises of Leroi-Gourhan’s work (I), its second part (II) argues that his theory on ›rhythms‹ supplies valuable insights to the debate of Kunstwollen and materialism. The third part (III) discusses his work within the debate of industrialization (...) and audiovisual culture as opposed to manual and artisanal creativity. The fourth part (IV) links Leroi-Gourhan’s conclusions on perception and digitality with some aspects of contemporary art theory. On the whole, this article argues that Leroi-Gourhans’s work provides flexible analytical tools in order to think art history and human evolution in conjunction, as well as a specifi c framework for examining creativity within the general cultural and technological shifts after the modern age. The conclusions of this essay shed some light on Leroi-Gourhan’s theories on art and offer some methodological perspectives to contemporary artistic theory. (shrink)

This paper deals with the mystical experiences in Virginia Woolf’s artistic creation. Woolf denies any form of modernism that cannot transcend reality. There are moments, where reality is never what it is but a vision — a perspective — whose meaning is beyond the graspable. Reality, thus, becomes un-reality — a halo, and the artist becomes a contemplator — a devotee to such visionary manifestation. Virginia Woolf does not make an exception to this rule. She is par excellence a (...) mystic. The artistic design of her novels, mainly, To the Lighthouse, is of transcendental dimension. Both, Mrs Ramsay’s and Lily Briscoe’s perceptions of life are beyond the palpable: their selves merge within a process of sublimation comparable to that of mysticism. In other words, art (mainly fiction) becomes a process of change from the factual to the transmutable. (shrink)

An exploration of the relationship between imagination and intuition and the workings of visual perception, in light of Polanyi’s epistemology, helps us to understand aesthetic seeing. The artist and contemplative learn to see anew and accordingly grasp extraordinary coherences of meaning.

continent. 1.3 (2011): 208-212. … intervals of destructuring paradoxically carry the momentum for the ongoing process by which thought and perception are brought into relation toward transformative action. —Brian Massumi, Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation 1 Facing a blank canvas or blank page is a moment of pure potential, one that can be enervating or paralyzing. It causes a pause, a hesitation, in anticipation of the moment of inception—even of one that never comes. The implication is that (...) the blank is yours in that moment, and it calls on you to act on it, to think into it, to create on it. Each blank canvas gives you time, of an undefined length, to transform that canvas’ inherent potential into a work. This two-dimensional plane of potential can be projected into a space, which the body can then occupy. When you “destructure” a space in the same way, prepare it to be a blank, much as you build a canvas, you allow your entire body to enter the space of potential, and you rest in anticipation of work, like the hand poised above the page. Artists have found that the deliberate creation of that space of potential through sealing the space and painting it white, thereby erasing details and distractions, can be such a transformative experience as to help define their whole practice. The cessation of distraction, the absence of indicator that a “blanked” workspace provides allows for a new presence of mind, it gives them the room, literally, to move into their work, and from there to move their work into the world. The workspace for the artist, the studio, is often perceived as a lab-like condensation of the gallery or museum, the traditional and idealized white cube. Similarly, with the blank page, a concrete relation between space and time comes forward as the intentional simplification of the architecture changes behavior and perception within the space. The work of “blanking” the studio space is a meditative reduction, an erasure, and in a way, an attempt at drawing away from the world beyond the studio - the sealed space is meant to recede from reality, to become abstracted by its willed lack of details and distractions. Within that space the time for a new beginning is made more present, more attainable, and the focus it fosters becomes another tool to aid creation. At the formative moment of his artistic practice, Tom Friedman used the blank of his studio, saturated in white, sealed off from the world, to fight velocity. He describes how he projected his vision of the end goal, the museum - a place he believes to be defined by slow contemplation - onto his own studio experience. He then sat and reflected on common objects, one by one, framed by the blank box he had created. The domestic objects he brought into the space to study foreshadow his mature works, where often the quotidian object has a single additional element – his intense labor. Friedman makes discrete objects through absurdly intense and focused labor, epitomized, perhaps by his 1,000 hours of Staring , made from 1992-97: Tom Friedman. 1000 Hours of Staring (1992-1997) His labor, to use his own words, is his way to “bring all of who you are to the experience.” Friedman shares his labor, allows the slow, deliberate pace of his work born in the studio to penetrate the museum. Nothing seems effortless, or a gesture, the labor is apparent, displayed, and tangible. He gives us the labor, the personal investment in the physical that saved art for him, that divorced the work from the language he cites as a factor of alienation. When we see his work we do not see words, we see acts, we see objects. He has forced the studio as workspace into the exhibition space, as he stuffs hundreds of more hours of labor into his shows with each new piece, filling the space with material and labor, material and labor – his involvement, his investment, is his gift to us as the viewers, as he introduces the laborious and contemplative pace he feels belongs to the museum. He saves us also from the alienation of language, which first drove him into the sealed studio and away from the discourse of his school. He presents us with his real, the object which stands in stark contrast to the white slate of the studio, the sealed white box he started from, where his individual, self-contained objects begin and end, completed through the intensity of isolation, first of the individual artist, and then of the material he chooses to slowly, slowly, slowly work: Tom Friedman. Untitled (1992) In his in-depth analysis of galleries as a blank white cube, Brian O’Doherty emphasizes the religious connotations implied in the strict laws of the exhibition space and the valuation, aesthetics and elements of control he feels it imposes upon the work. Like Friedman, he recognizes the power of the restricted space – indicating the “perceptual fields of force” – that act on any object introduced into it. Going beyond Friedman’s assessment of the space as highly utilitarian for focusing his perception, O’Doherty emphasizes the rejection of the physical body of the artist or observer, saying that the cube allows for only observation - eyes and mind. He later parallels the picture frame as a psychological container for the artist with the room as the same for the observer. In both cases, this is an emphasis on the alienating nature of the relationship – just as the artist is kept out of the frame by the picture, in the gallery the art forces the body of the spectator out, calling for a self-referential purity. Patrick Ireland. White Cube (1998) O’Doherty makes a point of saying that the installation shot of the gallery without figures is “one of the icons of our visual culture.” In recent years, however, installation shots have begun to include figures, in some cases they are essential to understanding the scale and even the nature of the work, specifically with work that captures the experience of the space and the way that it varies from a white cube. The work of Olafur Eliasson is a case in point, as the Danish artist uses elements of scientific and natural phenomena to alter perception within the controlled gallery environment, tweaking and redirecting O’Doherty’s “perceptual fields of force” to make points about the act of seeing, or seeing yourself seeing, to quote the artist. This indicates a shift in the role of the artwork, not to exclude the body and stand discretely and self-sufficiently, but to include it, to manipulate it and to make the observer aware of the nature of that manipulation and the work’s ability to manipulate. Olafur Eliasson. 360º room for all colours (2002) So though in O’Doherty’s analysis, the intense blankness of the gallery pushed the observer out in favor of the artwork’s isolation, artists can replicate this inhumane sterility in their own workspace to focus their work on the influence of the gallery right from inception. This can be interpreted as an almost opposite understanding of the purpose of sealing and whitewashing the workspace as stated by Friedman. He sought a refuge from the critical language of the art school, and a space that, like the museum, gave him a protracted sense of time, and, he felt, welcomed him in, “to bring all of who you are,” as opposed to O’Doherty’s feeling that the museum was asking you, at least in body, to leave, and allow the work to take on its own life. Friedman does not seem to imply the tension with the cube and critical stance that O’Doherty prioritizes. Where Friedman finds a refuge, O’Doherty defines an opponent. In a third position, Robert Irwin describes his sealed studio space as “the world.” Though he made the same effort as Friedman to seal out all influences and distractions, he implies that he is in dialogue with the world through his own concentration and perception. This is reminiscent of the nature of the monad, as interpreted by Deleuze, a unity that envelops a multiplicity, a sealed container that contains the universe. He went through the same ritual described by Friedman, sealing up the space, painting it white, and then forcing himself to remain inside, staring at his own work, training his concentration relentlessly. But he found that the room became the distraction: …he became aware that a thin crack along the wall a few yards away from the canvas likewise exerted its presence; that when he plastered that crack over and repainted the wall, the canvas itself presented an entirely new aspect.2 The context was in a relentless dialogue with the work, and trying to neutralize that dialogue, to mute the conversation between space and object, became part of his ritual as he “fixed” his space each day in the hope of total concentration on the work. Ultimately, Irwin shaped the trajectory of his art by relinquishing the studio, establishing a post-studio practice, where the work is conceived and created out in the world, in dialogue with the world and reflective of the conditions it finds surrounding it. The white cube failed to ever achieve neutrality, his heightened concentration prevented him from ever neutralizing the space, so, instead of continuing to try to maintain the charade of a perfect blank, he acknowledged the unstoppable voice of place and turned all his efforts onto the object and the world, as a constant dialogue. Some artists push their studio space far from purity, domesticating it like a lair or a living room, and others destroy it, fill it with chaos or detritus, blacken or clutter it so as never to be starting from a blank, and thereby try to avoid the anxiety of facing that void. Similarly artists may never prepare a white canvas, a clean page, a marble block, or other form that is intentionally lacking, in order to try to escape the dialogue with emptiness. But Irwin, like O’Doherty, found an opponent in the white cube, and he learned not to fight it, rather he ended the conflict by making it an ally, an interlocutor, a collaborator. We can vainly strive to start from nothing, to find the lull, the clearing, and to always consider what we do in balance with the empty set. Somehow that intangible cloud of hazy nothingness, that softness of a lapse continually offers a place to bounce off of, to react to, to wrestle with, to rest with, in tension, or a place to begin. Robert Irwin. Excursus: Homage to the Square3 (1998) NOTES 1 Massumi. Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation. p271. 2 MOMA, NY. Eliasson, 360 ? Room for All Colours . Installation. 2002. (shrink)

: Complex aesthetic perception, according to Mendelssohn’s writings between 1755 and 1771, is most alluring if it showcases a breach in the order of perfection. With this, Mendelssohn introduces a shift in our understanding of the artistic act of imitation: Artistic semblance is always lacking, and a painting that does not point to this fact is, in fact, displeasing. This is also the main reason why we enjoy non-beautiful art: in the artistic rendering of an unpleasant ‘object’ we focus (...) on the artistic act itself, on its formal features, and its effects on us as the perceiver. Thus, a representation that evokes the mixed feelings of pleasure, appreciation, and rejection is superior to ‘pure’ beauty, in that it better refers us to higher forms of perfection: the perfection of the perceiving and creative subject. It is the nagging, near-painful impression of mixed sentiments that, according to Mendelssohn, guides our self-perfection, the highest aim of all human endeavors. (shrink)

Quince: Bless thee, Bottom, bless thee! Thou art translated.Yet it can happen suddenly, unexpectedly, and most frequently in the half-light-of-glimpses, that we catch sight of another visible order which intersects with ours and has nothing to do with it.This article is a reflection on the process of transformation: whether that be a change of the physical kind undergone by Bottom through the acquisition of a donkey’s head or the inner alteration wrought by a moment of heightened perception of the (...) type recorded by John Berger. I have structured it around four questions: What is transformation? What needs transformation? Who needs to be transformed? How does drama/theatre contribute to transformation? I also... (shrink)

Although we begin with the words of the poet Henry Vaughan, it is the visual artists above all who know and see the mystery of the Creation of all things in light, suffering for their art in its blinding, sacrificial illumination. In modern painting this is particularly true of van Gogh and J.M.W. Turner. But God speaks the Creation into being through an unheard word, and so, too, the greatest of musicians, as most tragically in the case of Beethoven, hear (...) their sublime music only in a profound silence. The Church then needs to see and listen in order, in the words of Heidegger, to learn to "dwell poetically on earth" before God. To dwell thus lies at the heart of its life, liturgically and in its pastoral ministry, as illustrated in the poetry of the English priest and poet, David Scott. This can also be seen as a "letting go" before God and an allowing of a space in which there might be a "letting the unsayable be unsaid" and order found even over the abyss. This is what Vladimir Nabokov has called "the marvel of consciousness" which is truly a seeing in the darkness. The poet, artist and musician can bring us close to the brink of the mystery, and thus the artist is always close to the heart of the church's worship and its ministry of care where words meet silence, and light meets darkness. Such, indeed, is the true marvel of consciousness in the ultimate risk which is the final vocation of the poet and artist, as it was of Christ himself, and all his saints. The church must be ever attentive to the deeply Christocentric ministry of art and the creative power of word and image in the letting the unsayable be unsaid. With the artist we may perhaps stand on Pisgah Height with Moses with a new imaginative perception of the divine Creation. The essay concludes on a personal note, drawing upon the author's own experience in retreat in the desert, with a reminder of the thought of Thomas Merton, a solitary in the community of the Church. (shrink)

This volume addresses key questions related to how content in thought is derived from perceptual experience. It includes chapters that focus on single issues on perception and cognition, as well as others that relate these issues to an important social construct that involves both perceptual experience and cognitive activities: aesthetics. While the volume includes many diverse views, several prominent themes unite the individual essays: a challenge to the notion of the discreet, and non-temporal, unit of perception, a challenge (...) to the traditional divide between perception and cognition, and a challenge to the traditional divide between unconscious and conscious intentionality. Additionally, the chapters discuss the content of perceptual experience, the value of traditional notions of content, disjunctivism, adverbialism, and phenomenal experience. The final section of essays dealing with perception and cognition in aesthetics features work in experimental aesthetics and unique perspectives from artists and gallerists working outside of philosophy. Perception, Cognition and Aesthetics is a timely volume that offers a range of unique perspectives on debates in philosophy of mind surrounding perception and cognition. It will also appeal to scholars working in aesthetics and art theory who are interested in the ways these debates influence our understanding of art. ists and gallerists working outside of philosophy. Perception, Cognition and Aesthetics is a timely volume that offers a range of unique perspectives on debates in philosophy of mind surrounding perception and cognition. It will also appeal to scholars working in aesthetics and art theory who are interested in the ways these debates influence our understanding of art. (shrink)

Recipients always perceive texts in a successive and linear way. Often, the recipient’s perception of the text only lasts until the text has fulfilled the expectations the recipient has of it. Being well aware of this, authors build texts based on their goals, aims, or preferences that either meaningfully fulfill the expectations of the recipient - according to the authors’ own knowledge, estimation, or presumptions - or, on the contrary, more or less intentionally violate these expectations. While the fulfillment (...) of expectations results in a certain “comforting” impression on recipients, its violation causes an arousal in them. In this sense, violation of expectations does not only have a negative effect, but it can also have a communicative value. It can be argued that a) the author incorporates stimuli into the text that lead to the violation of the recipient’s expectations and does so with a communicatively functional - also artistic and aesthetic - kind of intent and b) an arousal is a consequence of violating the recipient’s expectations; then if an author’s artistic or aesthetic intention lies in a series of violations of the recipient’s expectations, this can provoke an aesthetic experience which will be caused - among other things - by the arousals themselves induced by the relevant violations. (shrink)

Recipients always perceive texts in a successive and linear way. Often, the recipient’s perception of the text only lasts until the text has fulfilled the expectations the recipient has of it. Being well aware of this, authors build texts based on their goals, aims, or preferences that either meaningfully fulfill the expectations of the recipient - according to the authors’ own knowledge, estimation, or presumptions - or, on the contrary, more or less intentionally violate these expectations. While the fulfillment (...) of expectations results in a certain “comforting” impression on recipients, its violation causes an arousal in them. In this sense, violation of expectations does not only have a negative effect, but it can also have a communicative value. It can be argued that a) the author incorporates stimuli into the text that lead to the violation of the recipient’s expectations and does so with a communicatively functional - also artistic and aesthetic - kind of intent and b) an arousal is a consequence of violating the recipient’s expectations; then if an author’s artistic or aesthetic intention lies in a series of violations of the recipient’s expectations, this can provoke an aesthetic experience which will be caused - among other things - by the arousals themselves induced by the relevant violations. (shrink)

Recipients always perceive texts in a successive and linear way. Often, the recipient’s perception of the text only lasts until the text has fulfilled the expectations the recipient has of it. Being well aware of this, authors build texts based on their goals, aims, or preferences that either meaningfully fulfill the expectations of the recipient - according to the authors’ own knowledge, estimation, or presumptions - or, on the contrary, more or less intentionally violate these expectations. While the fulfillment (...) of expectations results in a certain “comforting” impression on recipients, its violation causes an arousal in them. In this sense, violation of expectations does not only have a negative effect, but it can also have a communicative value. It can be argued that a) the author incorporates stimuli into the text that lead to the violation of the recipient’s expectations and does so with a communicatively functional - also artistic and aesthetic - kind of intent and b) an arousal is a consequence of violating the recipient’s expectations; then if an author’s artistic or aesthetic intention lies in a series of violations of the recipient’s expectations, this can provoke an aesthetic experience which will be caused - among other things - by the arousals themselves induced by the relevant violations. (shrink)

Recipients always perceive texts in a successive and linear way. Often, the recipient’s perception of the text only lasts until the text has fulfilled the expectations the recipient has of it. Being well aware of this, authors build texts based on their goals, aims, or preferences that either meaningfully fulfill the expectations of the recipient - according to the authors’ own knowledge, estimation, or presumptions - or, on the contrary, more or less intentionally violate these expectations. While the fulfillment (...) of expectations results in a certain “comforting” impression on recipients, its violation causes an arousal in them. In this sense, violation of expectations does not only have a negative effect, but it can also have a communicative value. It can be argued that a) the author incorporates stimuli into the text that lead to the violation of the recipient’s expectations and does so with a communicatively functional - also artistic and aesthetic - kind of intent and b) an arousal is a consequence of violating the recipient’s expectations; then if an author’s artistic or aesthetic intention lies in a series of violations of the recipient’s expectations, this can provoke an aesthetic experience which will be caused - among other things - by the arousals themselves induced by the relevant violations. (shrink)

This volume addresses key questions related to how content in thought is derived from perceptual experience. It includes chapters that focus on single issues on perception and cognition, as well as others that relate these issues to an important social construct that involves both perceptual experience and cognitive activities: aesthetics. While the volume includes many diverse views, several prominent themes unite the individual essays: a challenge to the notion of the discreet, and non-temporal, unit of perception, a challenge (...) to the traditional divide between perception and cognition, and a challenge to the traditional divide between unconscious and conscious intentionality. Additionally, the chapters discuss the content of perceptual experience, the value of traditional notions of content, disjunctivism, adverbialism, and phenomenal experience. The final section of essays dealing with perception and cognition in aesthetics features work in experimental aesthetics and unique perspectives from artists and gallerists working outside of philosophy. Perception, Cognition and Aesthetics is a timely volume that offers a range of unique perspectives on debates in philosophy of mind surrounding perception and cognition. It will also appeal to scholars working in aesthetics and art theory who are interested in the ways these debates influence our understanding of art. ists and gallerists working outside of philosophy. Perception, Cognition and Aesthetics is a timely volume that offers a range of unique perspectives on debates in philosophy of mind surrounding perception and cognition. It will also appeal to scholars working in aesthetics and art theory who are interested in the ways these debates influence our understanding of art. (shrink)

Philosophers and artists consider the relevance of Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy for understanding art and aesthetic experience. This collection of essays brings together diverse but interrelated perspectives on art and perception based on the philosophy of Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Although Merleau-Ponty focused almost exclusively on painting in his writings on aesthetics, this collection also considers poetry, literary works, theater, and relationships between art and science. In addition to philosophers, the contributors include a painter, a photographer, a musicologist, and an architect. This (...) widened scope offers important philosophical benefits, testing and providing evidence for the empirical applicability of Merleau-Ponty’s aesthetic writings. The central argument is that for Merleau-Ponty the account of perception is also an account of art and vice versa. In the philosopher’s writings, art and perception thus intertwine necessarily rather than contingently such that they can only be distinguished by abstraction. As a result, his account of perception and his account of art are organic, interdependent, and dynamic. The contributors examine various aspects of this intertwining across different artistic media, each ingeniously revealing an original perspective on this intertwining. (shrink)

Objections arise to the concept of artistic intention based upon the psychology of a period. Here too we experience trends or volitions which can only be explained by precisely those artistic creations which in their own turn demand an explanation on the basis of these trends and volitions. Thus "Gothic" man or the "primitive" from whose alleged existence we wish to explain a particular artistic product is in truth the hypostatized impression which has been culled from the works of art (...) themselves. Or it is a question of intentions and evaluations which have become conscious as they find their formulation in the contemporary theory of art or in contemporary art criticism. Thus these formulations, just like the individual theoretical statements of the artists themselves, can once more only be phenomena parallel to the artistic products of the epoch; they cannot already contain their interpretation. Here again this parallel phenomenon would, in its entirety, represent an extraordinarily interesting object of humanistic investigation, but it would be incapable of defining in detail a methodologically comprehensible volition. So, too, the view of art which accompanies a period's artistic output can express the artistic volition of the period in itself but cannot put a name to it for us. This view can be of eminent significance when we are seeking a logical explanation for the perception of tendencies dominating at a given time and thus also for the judgment of artistic volition at that time, which must also be interpreted.Erwin Panofsky, the renowned art historian, was professor at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton University, until his death in 1968. Among his many books and articles are Meaning in the Visual Arts, Early Netherlandish Painting, and Renaissance and Renascenes in Western Art. Kenneth Northcott is professor of German and comparative literature at the University of Chicago and the translator of Arnold Hauser's Sociology of Art . Joel Snyder is chairman of the committee on general studies in the humanities at the University of Chicago. (shrink)

This study explores women’s and men’s perceptions of the specific barriers that prevent women from participating fully in the cultural labour market. To this end, an online questionnaire was administered to 375 cultural professionals in Catalonia regarding their perceptions of the barriers faced by women in a range of areas. The results show similar views between genders regarding the difficulties associated with the work–life balance as the most important obstacle preventing women from entering specific cultural fields and from rising to (...) decision-making positions. However, perceptions of the barriers impacting the recognition of women’s career achievements differed greatly between men and women. While men place more emphasis on issues of work–life balance, women more frequently mention the existence of a glass ceiling and their exclusion from networks of influence. Regarding the visibility of women’s artistic creations, although intersectionality is mentioned by both genders as the main limiting factor, there are marked differences between women’s and men’s perception of the other barriers. Men thus more frequently refer to the barriers of work–life balance and the association of creativity with maleness as the main factors limiting the visibility of women’s artistic creations. In short, this study provides evidence to stakeholders of the different perceptions that men and women have in relation to the main barriers that prevent women from climbing the career ladder; gaining recognition and visibility for their work; and, in some creative sectors, even from entering the labour market. (shrink)

The work begins by asking the questions of how contemporary phenomenology is concerned with music, and how phenomenological descriptions of music and musical experiences are helpful in grasping the concreteness of these experiences. I then proceed with minor findings from phenomenological authorities, who seem to somehow need music to explain their phenomenology. From Maurice Merleau-Ponty to Jean-Luc Nancy and back to Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger, there are musical findings to be asserted. I propose to look at phenomenological studies of (...) the musical aspects of existence as they appear in various philosophical works bringing together different accounts of music and aesthetics and pointing towards phenomenological study as a methodology for everyday aesthetics. While there are many different areas of music phenomenology such as studies of sound and listening, studies in perception of musical works, in experience of artistic creation, in singing and playing musical instruments, and phenomenology of transcendent or religious horizons of the experience of music, it is most promising—I suggest—to look at phenomenological studies of music from the perspective of everyday happenings and discoveries of musical aspects of life. Thus, I attempt to display the uses of phenomenology in finding musical aspects of everyday existence as well as in describing and illuminating the art of music. A look at Roman Ingarden’s and Mikel Dufrenne’s most intuitive and promising ideas will be broadened with a perspective from Don Ihde and Arnold Berleant. (shrink)

Many artists, art critics, and poets suggest that an aesthetic appreciation of artworks may modify our perception of the world, including quotidian things and scenes. I call this Art-to-World, AtW. Focusing on visual artworks, in this paper I articulate an empirically-informed account of AtW that is based on content related views of aesthetic experience, and on Goodman’s and Elgin’s concept of exemplification. An aesthetic encounter with artworks demands paying attention to its aesthetic, expressive, or design properties that realize its (...) purpose. Attention to these properties make percipients better able to spot them in other entities and scenes as well. The upshot is that an aesthetic commerce with artworks enlarges the scope of what we are able to see and has therefore momentous epistemic consequences. (shrink)

Pictures are valuable partly because they engage perception in distinctive ways. This chapter surveys recent accounts of depiction, of the distinctive content and phenomenology of our experiences of images, and of the artistic or aesthetic value that these experiences afford. Particular attention is paid to recent research on the relationship between seeing a flat image surface and having an experience as of the scene it represents.

The ethical criticism of art has recently begun to address the subject of immoral artists, with two questions seeming to dominate discussion. How does moral misconduct on the part of artists affect their work’s aesthetic value? How should the art world respond to cases of artists who have been accused of morally outrageous behaviour? Such value and policy debates are important, but they leave aside a pressing question towards which this article proposes a reorientation: What is the possible impact of (...) an artist’s moral ill repute on how we understand the meaning of their work? I argue in this paper that an artist’s bad moral reputation can lead (i) to participatory resistance to an art work, as viewers abstain from a response to the work’s illocutionary force, (ii) to the isolation of the work from the ‘quality context’ that normally allows propositions expressed by the work to be taken as sincere, (iii) to the reinterpretation of the work’s propositional content against the background of new knowledge about the author, and (iv) to the perception of the work as a lie. To illustrate, I look at works by Chuck Close and Jan Fabre, contemporary artists whose reputation has been affected by a scandal. (shrink)

(1) The induced colours led to perceptual grouping and pop-out, (2) a grapheme rendered invisible through ‘crowding’ or lateral masking induced synaesthetic colours — a form of blindsight — and (3) peripherally presented graphemes did not induce colours even when they were clearly visible. Taken collectively, these and other experiments prove conclusively that synaesthesia is a genuine percep- tual phenomenon, not an effect based on memory associations from childhood or on vague metaphorical speech. We identify different subtypes of number–colour synaesthesia (...) and propose that they are caused by hyperconnectivity between col- our and number areas at different stages in processing; lower synaesthetes may have cross-wiring (or cross-activation) within the fusiform gyrus, whereas higher synaesthetes may have cross-activation in the angular gyrus. This hyperconnec- tivity might be caused by a genetic mutation that causes defective pruning of con- nections between brain maps. The mutation may further be expressed selectively (due to transcription factors) in the fusiform or angular gyri, and this may explain the existence of different forms of synaesthesia. If expressed very diffusely, there may be extensive cross-wiring between brain regions that represent abstract concepts, which would explain the link between creativity, metaphor and synaesthesia (and the higher incidence of synaesthesia among artists and poets). Also, hyperconnectivity between the sensory cortex and amygdala would explain the heightened aversion synaesthetes experience when seeing numbers printed in the ‘wrong’ colour. Lastly, kindling (induced hyperconnectivity in the temporal lobes of temporal lobe epilepsy [TLE] patients) may explain the purported higher incidence of synaesthesia in these patients. We conclude with a synaesthesia-based theory. (shrink)

The aim of the study was to assess the effects of visual aesthetic perception on event-related potentials . Eight subjects assigned an aesthetic judgment and a 10-step beauty estimation to the target stimuli, consisting of famous artistic pictures and geometric shapes. In a further task, the subjects performed a motor response to the previously judged pictures and geometric shapes. ERPs were recorded through 54 scalp electrodes during both tasks. The P3b amplitude was increased during the categorization of the geometric (...) shapes compared to the artistic figures and during the vision of the beautiful targets preceding the motor response. The categorization of the aesthetic qualities of geometrical shapes seems to induce a higher level of attention, while a higher arousal variation was elicited by the recognition of beauty, in any form that was presented. (shrink)

Many artists, art critics, and poets suggest that an aesthetic appreciation of artworks may modify our perception of the world, including quotidian things and scenes. I call this Art-to-World, AtW. Focusing on visual artworks, in this paper I articulate an empirically-informed account of AtW that is based on content-related views of aesthetic experience, and on Goodman’s and Elgin’s concept of exemplification. An aesthetic encounter with artworks demands paying attention to its aesthetic, expressive, or design properties that realize its purpose. (...) Attention to these properties make percipients better able to spot them in other entities and scenes as well. The upshot is that an aesthetic commerce with artworks enlarges the scope of what we are able to see and has therefore momentous epistemic consequences. (shrink)

The original Gallimard edition of Merleau-Ponty’s last-published essay, "Eye and Mind," which was printed as a slim, separate volume containing only this essay, includes a visual preface of seven artworks, chosen by Merleau-Ponty. This essay takes the key assertion of "Eye and Mind"—that rather than seeing depth as the “third dimension,” as seen traditionally, “if [depth] were a dimension, it would be the first one” (180)—and applies it to the reading of these artworks preceding the text. There is an analysis (...) of how and why depth is the first rank in not only rethinking art, but also in rethinking Being itself. The development of the idea of depth as the going together of incompossibles in time and in space is explored by turning to Merleau-Ponty’s texts, beginning with the Phenomenology of Perception through to his last works. The last section of the essay carefully analyses six of the seven visual works of art (omitting Cézanne about whom so much has been written) to see the ways in which they instantiate this new notion of depth as the motive force of art and the heart of the flesh of the world. (shrink)

If we say that on the level of form, works of art correspond to the humanization of sense perception in the human psychology, then on the level of the image, they correspond on the whole to the humanization of desire. As a result, their aesthetic effect is manifested as artistic sedimentation.

How does an audience receive a work of art? Does the experience only affect the viewer or does it have an effect and thus influence his or her actions? It is the cultural philosopher Ernst Cassirer and his successors in philosophy and developmental psychology as well as in neuroscience to this day who postulate that perception in general and perception of art in particular are not neutral in their origins but alive and thus meaningful. They assume that both (...) are based on analogous principles: in the perception of moving forms and spatial forms in the world and rhythms of forms, colors, light and shadow in art. In practice, this means that perception and its felt effects have an effect on the feelings of the viewer and thus help him to inform himself directly and intensively about the world through art. In contrast to this general epistemological aesthetic theory, which philosophers in particular accept, it is to be shown that this assumption must be redefined not with reference to the world, but with reference to art and design. For the latter, the approach will be extended to a semiotic theory. The background is that in contrast to the world, the designed forms and thus the designed intentions of the artist and designer or his client in relation to the chosen theme have an impact on the viewer and thus on culture and its communicative dynamics. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Structure Aesthetics Form and Content The Quick and the Dead Good, Bad, Beautiful Goodness and Beauty A Short History Aesthetic Morality Naturalized? Beauty of Soul: A Contemporary Version Ethics, Art, and the Aesthetic Suppose I am Wrong.

Child abuse is an underreported phenomenon despite its high global prevalence. This study investigated how child abuse is perceived by children and adolescents as manifested in their drawings and narratives, based on the well-established notion that drawings serve as a window into children’s mental states. A sample of 97 Israeli children and adolescents aged 6–17 were asked to draw and narrate what child abuse meant to them. The drawings and narratives were coded quantitatively. The results indicated that participants did not (...) perceive a distinction between abuse and violence and referred to them interchangeably. Almost half of the participants focused on emotional abuse. The most frequent type of abuse within the family was between parents and children, and the most frequent abuse outside the family was peer victimization. Most of the drawings were figurative and realistic and half of the drawings included words suggestive of the participants’ attempts to be heard and fully understood. The vast majority of drawings did not include the figure of the artist, about a third of the drawings employed dissociative techniques, and almost half of the narratives were dissociative or characterized by negative resolution, describing feelings such as sadness, humiliation, and loneliness. These findings suggest the emotional pain associated with the abuse or violence and the use of dissociative mechanisms to bypass the pain. The findings are discussed in light of the literature on children’s disclosure. (shrink)

In both politics and art in recent decades, there has been a dramatic shift in emphasis on representation of identity. Liberal ideals of universality and individuality have given way to a concern with the visibility and recognition of underrepresented groups. Modernist and postmodernist celebrations of disruption and subversion have been challenged by the view that representation is integral to social change. Despite this convergence, neither political nor aesthetic theory has given much attention to the increasingly central role of art in (...) debates and struggles over cultural identity in the public sphere. -/- Connecting Hegelian aesthetics with contemporary cultural politics, Jason Miller argues that both the aesthetic and political value of art are found in the reflexive self-awareness that artistic representation enables. The significance of art in modern life is that it shows us both the particular element in humanity as well as the human element in particularity. Just as Hegel asks us to acknowledge how different historical and cultural contexts produce radically different experiences of art, identity-based art calls on its audiences to situate themselves in relation to perspectives and experiences potentially quite remote—or even inaccessible—from their own. Miller offers a timely response to questions such as: How does contemporary art’s politics of perception contest liberal notions of deliberative politics? How does the cultural identity of the artist relate to the representations of cultural identity in their work? How do we understand and evaluate identity-based art aesthetically? -/- Discussing a wide range of works of art and popular culture—from Antigone to Do the Right Thing and The Wire—this book develops a new conceptual framework for understanding the representation of cultural identity that affirms art’s capacity to effect social change. (shrink)

The form of an action has a strong influence on the interaction between humans. According to their mood, people may perform the same gesture in different ways, such as gently or rudely. These aspects of social communication are named vitality forms by Daniel Stern, represent a mean to establish a direct and immediate connection with others. Indeed, the expression of different vitality forms enables us to communicate our affective states and at the same time the perception of these vitality (...) forms enables people around us to understand how we feel in that moment. In the last years of research, different fMRI studies have been carried out to investigate the neural correlates of vitality forms recognition and execution. Moreover, recent psychophysics studies conducted from our research group have demonstrated the presence of an affective contagion effect, during which vitality forms expressed by an agent affect the action perception and the motor response of the receiver. This means that vitality forms expressed by others can influence our mood positively or negatively, modulating as consequence our behavior. Note that vitality forms pervade our lives in a continuous manner and thus they are not expressed and perceived only during social interactions. For example, when we observe an artistic representation at the theatre, the dynamic postures of dancers, together with an alternation of acceleration and deceleration in their movements, communicate to us different affective states. Also when we are in a museum in front of a painting, lines, colors and shapes used by the artist can elicit in us different sensations and modify our attitude. In this view, with the aim to extend the concept of vitality forms from neuroscience and psychology to other disciplines of study, we dedicate part of this review to discuss how art, in all its forms, can be considered a pure expression of vitality forms. (shrink)