Artists, Artworks, Aesthetics, Cognition

Skepticism about neuroaesthetics emerges from a contrast between aesthetic and cognitivist theories of art. Neuroaesthetics represents an aesthetic approach to understanding art. Aesthetic approaches identify the defining features of artworks by their aesthetic features and the affective profile of the experiences they engender. Cognitivist theories, in contrast, define artworks as communicative devices intentionally designed to convey some point, purpose, or meaning. In the article under discussion, the author argues that the conflict between these two views is overblown. He introduces a diagnostic recognition framework for understanding art grounded in a biased competition theory of selective attention. The framework defines artworks as attentional engines intentionally designed to orient perceivers to diagnostic features, including aesthetic features, that carry information about their point, purpose, or meaning. The artistic salience of aesthetic features of a work on this account, consistent with a cognitivist approach, lies in the semantic role they play in the expression of the work’s point, purpose, or meaning.

Understanding Attention as a Brain Process Using Biased Competition Model and Visual Psychophysics

No data was used for the manuscript. However, Structured Mind by Sebastian Watzl was notably used for the manuscript.

Understanding Attention as a Brain Process Using Biased Competition Model and Visual Psychophysics

No data was used for the manuscript. However, Structured Mind by Sebastian Watzl was notably used for the manuscript.

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 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.