VOLUME 12 (1999), ISSUE 4
- Symposium: Aesthetics and Cognitive Science
- MARK ROLLINS
Symposium introduction
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Abstract:
Historically, psychology and aesthetics have often been linked. New Look constructivism and Gibson's
ecological optics have made very distinct contributions to theories of visual art; as has Gestalt
psychology, which has played an important role in the philosophy of music as well. More recent
work in cognitive science (beginning roughly with the development of computer models of perception
and cognition) has also given rise to accounts of art; notably, in applications of Marr's theory of
vision to picture perception and in psychological models of musical structure and comprehension.
However, cognitive science has changed considerably over the past twenty years, with the advent of
connectionism and new inroads in neuroscience. The implications of these developments for aesthetics
are not yet fully understood. Nonetheless, they signify a more mature stage in the growth of cognitive
science, in which claims about the pertinence of landmark figures like Marr to art can be scrutinized.
In this special issue, we do not pretend to survey or treat systematically the relation of recent work
in cognitive science to aesthetics and vice versa. For one thing, the articles are limited to visual
art, theatrical performance, and music. Nonetheless, some of them summarize a wide range of relevant
research. And all of them illustrate one or more important themes that are characteristic of
contemporary work. These concern (1) the nature of mental representation in the perception and
understanding of art, and the need to include it in explanations of aesthetic experience; (2) the
distinctiveness of artistic stimuli; and (3) the comparison between the arts and verbal language. In
the articles contained in this issue, then, a number of specific questions are addressed that are of
current interest in both cognitive science and aesthetics: How are objects recognized in pictures?
How is color represented? What is the relation between pictures and mental images? What is creativity?
In what does musical intuition consist? At the same time, the ways in which these matters are treated
comprise a sampling of recent approaches to some common concerns. It is our hope that these articles
will promote discussion of the particular issues and arguments they contain, and at the same time,
spark a more general interest in the empirical and conceptual aspects of what has come to be called
esthetics naturalized.
MARK ROLLINS
When cognitive science meets aesthetics
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Abstract:
Pictorial representation is a subject of interest to both cognitive science and aesthetics. Standard
theories of depiction often draw on vision science, and vision science must give an account of picture
perception. I offer a critical overview of standard theories of depiction and argue that none of them
is adequate. I then describe ways in which new theories of perception blend elements of
representationalism with an emphasis on attention and motor control. Such theories, in effect, limit
the reliance on mental representation in perceptual tasks. This work provides the basis for a theory
of depiction in which pictorial representation is explained in terms of both mental representations and
perceptual strategies. I argue that, in the case, the mental representations are most plausibly
individuated by the functional and conceptual roles, rather than by causal links to the external world.
DOMINIC M. McIVER LOPES
Pictoral color: Aesthetics and cognitive science
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Abstract:
The representation of color by pictures raises worthwhile questions for philosophers and psychologists.
Moreover, philosophers and psychologists interested in answering these questions will benefit by paying
attention to each other's work. Failure to recognize the potential for interdisciplinary cooperation can
be attributed to tacit acceptance of the resemblance theory of pictorial color. I argue that this theory
is inadequate, so philosophers of art have work to do devising an alternative. At the same time, if the
resemblance theory is false, then color depiction has interesting implications for color science. Empirical
researchers must rethink the widespread assumption that color recognition requires color constancy. I
suggest that a neuropsychological account of color recognition will be instrumental to completing the
philosophical task, but by the same token scientists might do well not to proceed without casting an eye
to the work of philosophers of art.
GREGORY CURRIE & CATHERINE ABELL
Internal and external pictures
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Abstract:
What do pictures and mental images have in common? The contemporary tendency to reject "mental picture"
theories of imagery suggests that the answer is, not much. We show that pictures and visual imagery have
something important in common. They both contribute to mental simulations: pictures as inputs and mental
images as outputs. But we reject the idea that mental images involve mental pictures, and we use simulation
theory to strengthen the anti-pictorialist's case. Along the way we try to account for caricature and for
some basic features of pictorial representations.
KEITH SAWYER
The emergence of creativity
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Abstract:
This paper is an extended exploration of Mead's phrase "the emergence of the novel." I describe and
characterize emergent systems-complex dynamical systems that display behavior that cannot be predicted
from a full and complete description of the component units of the system. Emergence has become an
influential concept in contemporary cognitive science (Clark, 1997), complexity theory (Bechtel & Richardson
1993), artificial life (Brooks & Maes 1994; Langton 1994; Langton et al. 1991), and robotics (Forrest,
1991). I propose that novelty is a necessary property of emergent systems, and I'll explore a specific
kind of emergent system: an improvisational theater ensemble. This is an example of emergence in a small
social group, which I call collaborative emergence to emphasize several important contrasts with other
complex systems that manifest emergence, such as connectionist networks and Alife simulations.
MARK DeBELLIS
What is musical intuition: Tonal theory as cognitive science
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Abstract:
Lerdahl and Jackendoff's Generative Theory of Tonal Music (GTTM) is an important contribution to
cognitive science. Jackendoff claims it is a computationalist theory and that the mental representations
it postulates are unconscious. Thus GTTM looks to be a kind of cognitive science remote from the
folk-psychological. I argue that this picture of GTTM is mistaken: GTTM is at least as much music
analysis as cognitive science. Jackendoff's metatheory fails to explain how a listener can tell that
a structural description corresponds to the way she hears, how analytically-minded listeners can
communicate about their hearing, and how a reader of their book can comprehend it. I suggest an
alternative construal, on which GTTM's analytical vocabulary functions as a public language and its
mental representations are perceptual beliefs. Interesting philosophical problems ensue about knowledge
of musical structure and knowledge about what structures one hears. There is a paradox: one wants an
analysis to be true to a hearing, yet to be illuminating. Though analysis and hearing coincide in
content at an abstract level, they do not coincide in conceptual content. What sort of knowledge then
underlies the inference from perceptual to music-analytical representation? I argue that such knowledge
is a priori.
Review Essays:
JOHN D. GREENWOOD
From volkerpsychogie to cultural psychology: The once and future discipline?
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Abstract:
Despite the current enthusiasm for cultural psychology, its disciplinary identity remains problematic.
In this essay, the question of the identity of cultural psychology is pressed with respect to the vision
promoted in Michael Cole's Cultural psychology: The once and future discipline. Cole advocates a form
of psychology that is sensitive to cultural and historical context, and which purports to reinstate the
program of Wundt's Völkerpsychologie and the historical-cultural psychology of Vygotsky and Luria.
Unfortunately, Cole's account manifests the same tensions and ambiguities as these original projects,
and fails to live up to its revolutionary and integrative promise. Like its historical precursors,
Cole's vision of cultural psychology fails to take seriously the theoretical possibility of historically
and culturally local forms of cognitive processing.
ROBERT M. FRENCH
Constrained connectionism and the limits of human semantics: A review essay of TERRY REGIER's The
human semantic potential
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Abstract:
Taking to heart Massaro's [(1988) Some criticisms of connectionist models of human performance, Journal
of Memory and Language, 27, 213-234] criticism that multi-layer perceptrons are not
appropriate for modeling human cognition because they are too powerful (i.e., they can simulate just
about anything, which gives them little explanatory power), Regier develops the notion of constrained
connectionism. The model that he discusses is a distributed network but with numerous constraints
added that are (more or less) motivated by real psychophysical and neurophysical constraints. His
model learns "static" prepositions of spatial location such as in, above, to the left of, to the
right of, under, etc., as well as "dynamic" prepositions such as through and the Russian iz-pod,
meaning "out from under." The network learns these prepositions by viewing a number of examples of
them. Very importantly, this book tackles—and goes a long way towards resolving - the problem of
the lack of negative exemplars (i.e., we are only very rarely told when something is not above
something else), which should lead to overgeneralization, but does not. This book is a significant
contribution to connectionist literature.
STUART SILVERS
Cortical conversations: A review essay on M. ITO, Y. MIYASHITA, & E.T. ROLLS's Cognition, computation, and consciousness
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Abstract:
The question is, "How does the brain make its mind?" In Cognition, Computation and Consciousness,
a variety of noted theoreticians from the fields of cognitive psychology, computer science, and philosophy
postulate answer-blueprints rather than full-blown explanatory solutions to this most nettlesome question.
Coming to the problem from quite different starting points and perspectives, they nevertheless succeed in
reaching consensus on the idea that the contingencies of the brain's evolution have resulted in an organ
that generates its mind by a complex process of information exchange among its constituents. Put in the
vernacular, the brain produces its mind by having its parts, especially those most recently evolved, talk
to each other. In this essay I take a critical look at proposals of several celebrated (neuro)scientists
and philosophers in their specific areas of expertise. The underlying theme of brain component communication
suggests the image of conversations in the cortex. From such cortical conversations arise selves
(the mind/brain's I) and their stories and projects. This in turn suggests the idea that the brain is a stage
where a Pirandello-like play is continually rehearsed.
Book Reviews:
CAMERON SHELLY
Review of V.S. RAMACHANDRAN & SANDRA BLAKESLEE's Phantoms in the brain: Probing the mysteries of
the human mind
JONATHAN A. WASKAN
Review of WALTER KINTSCH's Comprehension: A paradigm for cognition
ERIC SAIDEL
Review of JOHN HAUGELAND's Having thought
BRIAN KEELEY
Review of COLIN ALLEN & MARC BEKOFF's Species of mind: The philosophy and biology of cognitive
ethology
CHARLES NUSSBAUM
Review of PAUL E. GRIFFITHS' What emotions really are: The problem of psychological categories
HUGH CLAPIN
Review of BERNARD BAARS' In the theater of consciousness: The workspace of the mind