Cognitive Science, Aesthetics, and the Development of Taste

Cognitive Science, Aesthetics, and the Development of Taste William W. York (wwyork@indiana.edu) Indiana University Center for Research on Concepts & Cognition 512 N. Fess Avenue Bloomington, IN 47408 USA Abstract Aesthetics and the arts have garnered more attention within cognitive science in recent years. Despite this increasing interest, “scientists of art” often focus on one of two areas: the formal properties of artworks themselves, or the mental processes involved in perceiving these works in an isolated, one-on-one encounter. In this paper, I review some representative examples of such work before suggesting some alternative ways that cognitive science might approach aesthetics and the arts—ways that would complement the isolationist approaches that have predominated to this point. In doing so, I draw on the observations and arguments of various philosophers of art, highlighting some of the socially and culturally situated factors that are important in shaping the development of our taste and sensibilities. Keywords: Aesthetics; Culture; Social Cognition; Art. Introduction What can cognitive science tell us about aesthetic experience? Given the putative aims of cognitive science— roughly, “to provide a cogent scientific account of how human beings achieve their most remarkable symbolic products” (Gardner, 1987, p. 391)—artistic and aesthetic phenomena fit within the scope of the field. While they have long been fringe topics within the field, they have been garnering increasing attention in recent years. This work ranges from so-called neuroaesthetics (Ramachandran & Hirstein, 1999), which seeks to uncover the evolved neural underpinnings of our aesthetic responses, to computational aesthetics (Hoenig 2005), which employs sophisticated mathematical tools to analyze the formal properties of various aesthetic objects. Meanwhile, others have focused more on the representational and/or computational processes involved in perceiving and appreciating works of art Despite this recent interest, there remains a deep-seated tension between the aims of science, which prizes generality, laws, and quantification; and the arts, which we experience qualitatively through encounters with particular works (songs, paintings, films, etc.). Furthermore, these experiences take place amid a complex background of social, cultural, and historical influences. Thus, one could argue that the goals of science are simply incompatible with the kind of understanding we seek when it comes to aesthetics and the arts. Such misgivings have been voiced by many philosophers (Dickie, 1962; Morgan, 1950; Wittgenstein, 1967) and even some psychologists (e.g., Arnheim, 1991). Others view these misgivings as stubbornly anti-science, insisting that the problems faced by “scientists of art” are merely very difficult, not fundamentally intractable or ill-conceived. If the results of their efforts have been meager, they argue, it is because of this difficulty, together with the fact that it’s still early—and after all, one must start somewhere (cf. Berlyne, 1971; Birkhoff, 1932; Meyer, 1957; Rigau, Feixas & Spert, 2008). Instead of trying to resolve this longstanding debate, I want to focus on the picture of aesthetic experience that has tended to emerge from cognitive science’s encounters with the arts. According to this picture, the artwork (or other aesthetic object) is treated as an isolated stimulus, while the viewer or listener is treated as a sort of idealized receiver of the information encoded in the work. With this picture in mind, researchers typically either focus on (a) the intrinsic properties of artworks (or other aesthetic objects), as with much of computational aesthetics; or (b) on the mental processing involved in perceiving and appreciating art (Kintsch, 2012; Leder, Belke, Oeberst & Augustin, 2004). In this paper, I want to look more closely at some of this research, with the dual aim of showing what we can learn from it as well as what its limitations are. In keeping with the theme of the conference (“Cooperative Minds: Social Interaction and Group Dynamics”), I also want to suggest some alternative ways of approaching aesthetics and the arts—ways that would complement the isolationist approaches that have predominated to this point. In doing so, I draw on the observations and arguments of various philosophers of art and aesthetics, highlighting some of the socially and culturally situated factors that are important in shaping the development of our taste and sensibilities. There are three main sections in this paper. The first looks at research (both recent and not-so-recent) on the perception, appreciation, and value of visual art; the second looks at some parallel work on music (in particular, on musical meaning); and the third focuses on outstanding questions and possible future directions for research. Order, Complexity, and Value in Visual Art The scientific study of aesthetics date back to at least the 1870s and Gustav Fechner (cf. Arnheim 1985). However, the work of mathematician George Birkhoff’s Aesthetic Measure (1933) remains an important landmark in this pursuit. Birkhoff’s quest to formalize beauty yielded a succinct mathematical equation, M = O/C, where M is the aesthetic measure (or value) of the stimulus in question, O is the order, and C is the complexity. This equation was thought to crystallize Fechner’s notion of “unity in variety” while providing a “logical tool in order to answer aesthetic