What is art? What is beauty? How do they relate? Where does consciousness
come in? What about truth? And can science help us with issues of this
kind? Because such questions go to the very heart of current conflicts
about Western value systems, they are unlikely to receive definitive answers.
But they are still very much worth exploring - which is precisely the purpose
of this collection of papers (Journal of Consciousness Studies, 7, No.8/9),
with particular attention to the relationships between art and science.
Table of Contents
Editorial Introduction
Joseph A. Goguen Full
Text
I: Commentaries on The
Science of Art
by V.S. Ramachandran and William Hirstein
Concerning ‘The Science of Art’
E.H. Gombrich
Response to Gombrich
V.S. Ramachandran
Connecting the Cerebral Cortex with the Artist’s Eyes, Mind and Culture
Amy Ione abstract
Perceptual Principles as the Basis For Genuine Judgments of Beauty
Jennifer Anne McMahon abstract
Against the Reduction of Art to Galvanic Skin Response
Donnya Wheelwell abstract
II: Papers delivered at the Cognitive Science Conference on Perception,
Consciousness, and Art, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, 17–19 May, 1999
Two Sciences of Perception and Visual Art: Editorial Introduction to
the Brussels Papers
Erik Myin Full
Text
An Enquiry Into Paul Cézanne: The Role of the Artist in Studies
of Perception and Consciousness
Amy Ione abstract
The Cognitive Neuroscience of Art: A Preliminary fMRI Observation
Robert Solso abstract
Aesthetic Ineffability
Rafael De Clercq abstract
‘Seeing As’ and the Double Bind of Consciousness
Jennifer Church abstract
Red and Yellow, Green and Blue, Warm and Cool: Explaining Colour
Appearance
C.L. Hardin abstract
III: Further Refereed Papers and Reviews
Experience and Experiment in Art
Alva Noë abstract
Using Science to Investigate Jackson Pollock’s Drip Paintings
Richard P. Taylor, Adam P. Micolich and David Jonas abstract
‘Reframing Consciousness’ (Review Article)
Glenn English
‘Visual Space Perception’ (Review)
Joseph A. Goguen
ABSTRACTS
Jennifer Church
‘Seeing As’ and the Double Bind of Consciousness
Central to aesthetic experience, but also to experience in general, is
the phenomenon of ‘seeing as’. We see a painting as a landscape, we hear
sequence of sounds as a melody, we see a wooden contraption as a boat,
and we hear a comment as an insult. There are interesting and important
differences between these cases of ‘seeing as’: the painting cannot literally
be a landscape while the wooden contraption can literally be a boat; a
failure to hear sounds as a melody may count as a shortcoming whereas the
failure to hear a comment as an insult may be admirable. Here I want to
focus mainly on their similarities, however — similarities that will lead
us back to Kant, and to the nature of consciousness itself.
The phenomenon of ‘seeing as’ presents certain familiar puzzles: how
is seeing a painting as a landscape different from seeing a landscape,
on the one hand, and from thinking of the painting as a landscape, on the
other? ‘Seeing as’ is not the same as misperceiving, nor is it the same
as offering an interpretation, yet it seems related to both. These puzzles
are articulated in Section I, and some candidate solutions are rejected.
Section II develops a Kantian account of experience showing how the convergence
of conflicting representations, achieved through imaginative syntheses,
is essential to the experience of objects and to consciousness itself.
Kant’s insights are used to evaluate some recent responses to the so-called
‘binding problem’ — the problem of explaining how the contents of consciousness
are bound together, and the role of the imagination is further detailed.
Section III then returns to the difference between ordinary seeing and
‘seeing as’, offering an explanation of the latter in terms of the framework
developed in Section II.
Jennifer Church, Department of Philosophy, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie,
NY 12601, USA.
Rafael De Clercq
Aesthetic Ineffability
In this paper I argue that recent attempts at explaining aesthetic ineffability
have been unsuccessful. Either they misrepresent what aesthetic ineffability
consists in, or they leave important aspects of it unexplained. I then
show how a more satisfying account might be developed, once a distinction
is made between two kinds of awareness.
Rafael De Clercq, Centre for Logic, Institute of Philosophy, Kard. Mercierplein
2, 3000 Leuven, Belgium.
C.L. Hardin
Red and Yellow, Green and Blue, Warm and Cool. Explaining Colour Appearance
Painters are the experts in colour phenomenology. Their business is to
use colour to affect our feelings. Psychophysicists are expert in making
experimental inferences from behavioural responses to the functional mechanisms
of perception. The varying aims of these tw groups of people mean that
much that is of interest to the one is of little concern to the other.
However, in recent times several prominent psychophysicists, such as Floyd
Ratliff (1992), Jack Werner (1998; Werner and Ratliff, 1999) and Dorothea
Jameson (1989), have thrown much light on painterly practice. Following
their lead, I would like to sketch some of the mechanisms that are responsible
for many of the features of colour appearance important to the work of
visual artists. I will begin with some phenomena that can be accounted
for by mechanisms that are reasonably well understood, and then move to
phenomena whose underlying basis is less well established. I will conclude
with a suggestive experiment and, true to my calling as a philosopher,
a piece of downright speculation.
C.L. Hardin, Department of Philosophy, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY
13244, USA.
Amy Ione
An Inquiry into Paul Cézanne: The Role of the Artist in Studies
of Perception and Consciousness
An intriguing element of Paul Cézanne’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 Cézanne’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 Cézanne’s contributions
from both the painterly and the cognitive science perspectives, asking
what artists in fact contribute to our studies in these areas.
Amy Ione, PO Box 12748, Berkeley, CA 94712-3748 USA. Email: ione@lmi.net
Amy Ione
Connecting the Cerebral Cortex with the Artist’s Eyes, Mind and Culture
V.S. Ramachandran and William Hirstein’s thought-provoking article ‘The
science of art: a neurological theory of aesthetic experience’ (1999) and
the accompanying commentaries raise serious questions about what a science
of art is. Unfortunately this short piece will only be able to address
them broadly. Overall the problems arise from (1) the exclusion of neurological
studies of artists, (2) the exclusion of the artist’s experience, and (3)
the premises of the theory, which are based on problematic valuations related
to aesthetics and spirituality. With these valuations, for which there
is no scientific proof, the model is unable to sufficiently address the
scope of what artists do and what art forms are. While it is my view that
the Ramachandran and Hirstein theory is fundamentally flawed, it is likely
the flaws are due to implicit assumptions rather than explicit intentions.
Amy Ione, PO Box 12748, Berkeley, CA 94712-3748 USA. Email: ione@lmi.net
Jennifer Anne McMahon
Perceptual Principles as the Basis for Genuine Judgments of Beauty
Ramachandran and Hirstein implicitly recognize that it is not the identification
of aesthetic properties in the object that can help us understand beauty.
Instead, it is the identification of the kinds of perceptual processes
that the perception of the beautiful object activates in the viewer that
is the key to understanding the nature of beauty. Unfortunately, the flaw
which undermines Ramachandran and Hirsteins’ attempts is a confusion regarding
what constitutes an experience of beauty. They conflate pleasurable responses
of a sexually titillating nature and other agreeably sensuous pleasures
with the pleasurable response evoked by beauty.
Jennifer Anne McMahon, Building 5, Division of Communication and Education,
University of Canberra, ACT 2601, Australia. Email: jennym@comedu.canberra.edu.au
Alva Noë
Experience and Experiment in Art
A significant impediment to the study of perceptual consciousness is our
dependence on simplistic ideas about what experience is like. This is a
point that has been made by Wittgenstein, and by philosophers working in
the Phenomenological Tradition, such as Husserl and Merleau-Ponty. Importantly,
it is an observation that has been brought to the fore in recent discussions
of consciousness among philosophers and cognitive scientists who have come
to feel the need for a more rigorous phenomenology of experience. The central
thought of this paper is that art can make a needed contribution to the
study of perceptual consciousness. The work of some artists can teach us
about perceptual consciousness by furnishing us with the opportunity to
have a special kind of reflective experience. In this way, art can be a
tool for phenomenological investigation.
The paper has three parts. First, I present what I call the problem
of the transparency of experience. This is a problem for philosophy, for
art, and for cognitive science. Second, I present an alternative conception
of experience as a mode of interactive engagement with the environment.
Finally, against the background of this conception, I discuss, briefly,
the work of the sculptors Richard Serra and Tony Smith.
Alva Noë, Department of Philosophy, UCSC, Santa Cruz, CA 95064, USA
Robert L. Solso
The Cognitive Neuroscience of Art: A Preliminary fMRI Observation
The perception and cognition of art, a venture done effortlessly by all
members of our species, is a complicated affair in which visual perception,
brain structures, sensory reasoning, and aesthetic evaluation are made
in less time that it takes to read this sentence. Only recently, through
perceptual/brain studies, have we begun to understand the many neurological
sub-routines involved in visual perception. The discoveries made in cognitive
neuroscience laboratories have helped us better understand the perception
of everyday visual phenomena, including the perception of art. In addition,
cognitive neuroscientists have provided techniques and instruments which
are valuable in the study of the psychology of art. In this paper I give
an overview of the past research which has advanced our understanding of
how people process visual art. In addition the results of a preliminary
study of an accomplished artist as he drew a portrait while in an MRI machine
are presented.
Robert Solso, Department of Psychology, University of Nevada, Reno, NV
89557, USA. Email: Solso@scs.unr.edu
Richard P. Taylor, Adam P. Micolich and David Jonas
Using Science to Investigate Jackson Pollock’s Drip Paintings
We present a scientific analysis of Jackson Pollock’s drip paintings and
show that his patterns are fractal. The analysis also shows that he refined
the fractal content of his paintings over the period 1943–52. We present
a novel interpretation of Pollock’s work described as Fractal Expressionism
— a direct expression of the generic imagery of nature’s scenery.
Richard P. Taylor, Physics Department, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR
97403- 1274, USA
Donnya Wheelwell
Against the Reduction of Art to Galvanic Skin Response
This essay exposes several problems with reductionist approaches to art,
placing some specific focus on ‘The Science of Art’ by Vilayanur S. Ramachandran
and William Hirstein (1999). Their article seems to be representative of
this genre in general, though particularly egregious in certain dimensions.
My approach will differ greatly from that of a neuroscientist, philosopher,
or psychologist, since I primarily take a critical feminist, social-literary
perspective. I will argue that reductionist approaches to art are an intoxicating
composite of arrogance, insight, confusion and precision, an amalgam that
challenges the commentator to distinguish what is worth praising, what
is worth attacking, and what is best left alone. In particular, I will
demonstrate that Ramachandran and Hirstein (hereafter, R&H) confuse
arousal (in a certain technical sense) with beauty, with the disastrous
result of excluding most of what is usually taken to distinguish ‘high’
art from its ‘lower’ forms, such as advertising, industrial design, and
pornography.
Donnya Wheelwell is the nom de guerre of a science professional who
wishes to remain anonymous to avoid the scorn of her colleagues.
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