A theoretical interdisciplinary analysis for a new cognitive and emotional neuroscience of appreciation and artistic creation

Abstract

This work is organised around two main objectives: a) the formulation of a new conceptual framework as the basis for a new scientific aesthetic; and (b) an attempt to explain the possibilities and current limitations of neuroscience in aesthetics. The first part of the work is devoted to the conceptual foundations of aesthetics. In the first chapter, I analyse the philosophical assumptions reflected in neuroaesthetics. In particular, I would like to show that the concept of art on which neuroaesthetics is based is both conceptually and empirically untenable. In the second chapter, I propose a new conceptual framework for a theory of aesthetics; in particular, I present new definitions of key concepts in aesthetics, such as 'art', 'artistic system', 'artistic movement', 'artwork', and so forth. Furthermore, in the second chapter, I advance the view that—even though the neurosciences are an essential part of aesthetics—not every aesthetic problem requires a neuroscientific solution. In other words, there are aesthetic problems that cannot be answered satisfactorily by neuroscience using only its special concepts and terminology. Some questions may require additional sociological, physical and/or semiotic concepts, and explanatory devices. The second part of this thesis deals with the experimental aspects of the neuroscience of artistic appreciation. First, I argue that the conceptual foundations underlying much of the current approaches to neuroaesthetics are still problematic and that the experimental approach cannot be applied in any straightforward manner to conduct neuroaesthetic research. I then review some of the most important results of experimental aesthetics and cognitive neurosciences with regard to the mechanisms of aesthetic appreciation before proposing a new neurocognitive model of artistic appreciation based on the notion of an artistic 'task-set' Finally, I end the second part with a theoretical postulate and a neurocognitive framework pertaining to the interactions between mental images and emotions and their possible role in the process of appreciating literary artworks. In the third and final part of the work, I briefly discuss the central ontological preconditions of the neurocognitive studies of art, namely, the neural hypothesis of identity, ‘mind = brain’, and compare it to other approaches of the mind-brain relationship. I also offer a hierarchical model of mental functions based on both the anatomical and the functional aspects of the brain.