Current Research (2009)
William P. Seeley
Department of Philosophy
Cognitive
Science & Experimental Aesthetics
Current
research in the cognitive neuroscience of visual art lies at the confluence of
two broad research strategies: experimental aesthetics and aesthetic
experimentalism. Experimental aesthetics is a field of research in
psychology that traces its roots to the founder of psychophysics, Gustav
Fechner (1876). The central claim of this field of research is that we can
learn about the nature of art and associated aesthetic experiences by using the
methods of psychology and related fields to examine behavioral responses to
artworks. The central claim of aesthetic experimentalism is that we can learn
about the operations of perceptual systems by examining the productive
strategies of artists (e.g. the way visual artists develop and use formal
techniques to convey information in their works). A general model for the
cognitive neuroscience of visual art emerges from the rapprochement between
these two research strategies. Cognitive
science, in its broadest sense, is the study of the way organisms acquire,
recognize, manipulate, and use information for the production of behavior.
Cognition can, in this context, be understood in terms of representational
structures that encode information about the environment and computational
processes that interpret and transform those structures. Artworks are abstract
stimuli intentionally designed to trigger ordinary perceptual, affective, and
cognitive responses in spectators (e.g. realistic paintings are 2-D
representations of 3-D scenes and objects). Questions about the production, understanding,
and appreciation of art are, therefore, in part questions about the way
spectators, listeners, and readers acquire, represent, and transform
information encoded in artworks in order to recognize, categorize, and evaluate
their content (e.g., how does a painting convey its content; what components of
its formal structure are critical to its performing this function; how does an
artist determine what these components are; what do the answers to these
questions teach researchers about the structure of the visual system, the
nature of object recognition, the relative roles played by memory and attention
in perception, or the processes underlying our affective responses to natural
stimuli). Therefore, artworks can be used in the study of a broad range of
cognitive phenomena and the results of this research can contribute to debates
within cognitive science and the philosophy of mind about the structure of
cognition and the nature of mental states. Results from these studies can, in
turn, contribute data to help clarify difficult concepts and adjudicate between
competing theories in philosophy of art. Therefore, the relationship between
cognitive science and aesthetics is a two way street. Finally, this research
model is not reductive in the sense the term is ordinarily used in the
philosophy. Rather it is explanatory. It is an attempt to use research from one
scientific domain to clarify assumptions in another.