The various disciplines engaged in studying the human mind necessarily differ, for obvious reasons, with respect to their methodologies. What is less commonly observed is that their aims also differ. For although psychology, philosophy, and cognitive and neuroscience all target the host of our thoughts and mental processes, and employ tools that draw on different traditions, what is considered an actual result can also vary greatly from case to case. Whereas psychology uses empirical techniques to divide kinds of experiences into distinct phases or elements and thereby explicate the phenomenon under scrutiny, philosophy tends to emphasize the analysis of conceptual relations or the ways in which distinctive aspects of an experience are connected in order to shed light on that phenomenon, and indeed establish whether it justifies such scrutiny in the first place. The outcome is not merely the exercise of different methods, but a difference at the level of the points of reference against which success is measured, resulting in an independent and discrete philosophical commitment to what actually constitutes progress.
One of the main virtues of Bullot & Reber's (B&R's) article is that it sets out to overcome some of these discrepancies. Perhaps most importantly, it takes seriously a charge levelled at scientific studies of art experience and tries to incorporate an aspect the absence of which has hitherto impoverished many empirical accounts, namely the “appreciators' sensitivity to particular art-historical contexts” (sect. 1.2, para. 1). The authors' main claim is that art-historical contexts leave causal information in every art, which can be examined empirically. The “processing of this information…includes at least three distinct modes” (para. 1): (1) basic exposure; (2) the artistic design stance; (3) artistic understanding. Crucially, by building an historical aspect into the very material subjected to scientific inquiry, the authors point to one way in which distinct methodologies may not necessarily exclude the possibility of a common aim.
Overall, this is a right-minded project. The task at hand is considerable yet important. If interdisciplinary work is to have a future, researchers need to forge new avenues for exchanging knowledge and ideas. For this reason, B&R's work should be widely welcomed. Nonetheless, I would like to raise two concerns for the current proposal. First, there is an issue of generalisation. Our authors make a bold step from a position where no credence whatsoever is given to historical context to one whereby such context is always highly relevant. But can we really assume that all artworks require us to take contextual information into account in exactly the same way? After all, in the sense targeted by B&R, appropriate appreciation of Klein's blue canvases seem to call for more background knowledge than, say, Canova's neo-classical marble sculptures, and so adherence to specific artistic traditions might influence the precise extent to which context plays a role in appreciation. Similar differences might apply across art forms. Many might argue that the appreciation of music requires less contextual knowledge than, say, literature. Certainly, it seems likely that the degree to which awareness of context influences appreciation is best understood in terms of a scale, according to which contextual information is understood to play a greater or lesser role in influencing our appreciation of works of art.
A more serious concern relates to the authors' construal of the relation between the three phases, particularly that between (1) and (3). On this line, basic exposure is “the set of mental processes triggered by perceptual exploration of an artwork without knowledge about its causal history and art-historical context” (sect. 3.1, para. 1) and artistic understanding is what we attain if we gain the “ability to explain the artistic status or functions of the work” (sect. 3.3, para. 1). This kind of understanding takes two main forms: the normative mode, which “aims to identify and evaluate the artistic merits [and value] of a work” (sect. 3.3, para. 2), and the scientific mode, which aims “to explain art appreciation with the [scientific] methods and approaches” (sect. 3.3, para. 2). Centrally, the occurrence of (1) is a necessary condition for the occurrence of (2), which, in turn, is a necessary condition for the occurrence of (3). The order of these phases is irreversible and serves as the very foundation for appropriate appreciation.
My main worry about this characterisation has to do with the causal nature of the relation between basic exposure and artistic understanding and the manner in which achieving the artistic design stance serves as a transitional requirement. Can we really separate (1) and (3) in this way, and is positing an intermediate phase absolutely necessary? An alternative approach might argue that the very point of training our artistic sensibilities is, generally, for the boundaries delimiting these three phases to become more fluid and, more specifically, for (1) to be influenced by previous experiences of (3) in such a way that the two become both practically and theoretically indistinguishable. On this view, a well-trained eye cannot be said to begin his/her artistic experience by a purely ahistorical perception constituted by the “attentional tracking” of “shape, colors, tones, duration,” the “basic syntactic and semantic processing of symbols,” and the “automatic elicitation of emotions” (sect. 3.1.2). Instead, (1) is fundamentally informed by (3) to such an extent that even attempting to recreate that kind of bare perceptual representation would be incredibly difficult, if not impossible. This is not the point that gaining experience speeds up the appreciative process to such a degree as to render the three phases phenomenologically indistinguishable (for, as B&R concede, “experts might have an ability to summon historical information very rapidly by means of fast recognition of task-relevant patterns,” sect. 3.4, para. 3). Rather, it is the claim that once we have gained a certain practice or skill in these matters, it is not even possible to retain a principled distinction between (1) and (3). If we adhere to this picture, the proposed schema might best conceived as a helpful tool in explaining how we learn to appreciate art embedded in an historical context rather than as an invariable model underlying all appropriate art appreciation.
I should stress that these the two concerns outlined here should be understood in the context of a warm if provisional welcome to B&R's proposals, and that I do not consider the problems raised necessarily to be insurmountable. Analytic philosophers no less than psychologists have found incorporating the contextual dimension of art problematic, and the model proposed could certainly constitute a step in the right direction for both disciplines.
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The various disciplines engaged in studying the human mind necessarily differ, for obvious reasons, with respect to their methodologies. What is less commonly observed is that their aims also differ. For although psychology, philosophy, and cognitive and neuroscience all target the host of our thoughts and mental processes, and employ tools that draw on different traditions, what is considered an actual result can also vary greatly from case to case. Whereas psychology uses empirical techniques to divide kinds of experiences into distinct phases or elements and thereby explicate the phenomenon under scrutiny, philosophy tends to emphasize the analysis of conceptual relations or the ways in which distinctive aspects of an experience are connected in order to shed light on that phenomenon, and indeed establish whether it justifies such scrutiny in the first place. The outcome is not merely the exercise of different methods, but a difference at the level of the points of reference against which success is measured, resulting in an independent and discrete philosophical commitment to what actually constitutes progress.
One of the main virtues of Bullot & Reber's (B&R's) article is that it sets out to overcome some of these discrepancies. Perhaps most importantly, it takes seriously a charge levelled at scientific studies of art experience and tries to incorporate an aspect the absence of which has hitherto impoverished many empirical accounts, namely the “appreciators' sensitivity to particular art-historical contexts” (sect. 1.2, para. 1). The authors' main claim is that art-historical contexts leave causal information in every art, which can be examined empirically. The “processing of this information…includes at least three distinct modes” (para. 1): (1) basic exposure; (2) the artistic design stance; (3) artistic understanding. Crucially, by building an historical aspect into the very material subjected to scientific inquiry, the authors point to one way in which distinct methodologies may not necessarily exclude the possibility of a common aim.
Overall, this is a right-minded project. The task at hand is considerable yet important. If interdisciplinary work is to have a future, researchers need to forge new avenues for exchanging knowledge and ideas. For this reason, B&R's work should be widely welcomed. Nonetheless, I would like to raise two concerns for the current proposal. First, there is an issue of generalisation. Our authors make a bold step from a position where no credence whatsoever is given to historical context to one whereby such context is always highly relevant. But can we really assume that all artworks require us to take contextual information into account in exactly the same way? After all, in the sense targeted by B&R, appropriate appreciation of Klein's blue canvases seem to call for more background knowledge than, say, Canova's neo-classical marble sculptures, and so adherence to specific artistic traditions might influence the precise extent to which context plays a role in appreciation. Similar differences might apply across art forms. Many might argue that the appreciation of music requires less contextual knowledge than, say, literature. Certainly, it seems likely that the degree to which awareness of context influences appreciation is best understood in terms of a scale, according to which contextual information is understood to play a greater or lesser role in influencing our appreciation of works of art.
A more serious concern relates to the authors' construal of the relation between the three phases, particularly that between (1) and (3). On this line, basic exposure is “the set of mental processes triggered by perceptual exploration of an artwork without knowledge about its causal history and art-historical context” (sect. 3.1, para. 1) and artistic understanding is what we attain if we gain the “ability to explain the artistic status or functions of the work” (sect. 3.3, para. 1). This kind of understanding takes two main forms: the normative mode, which “aims to identify and evaluate the artistic merits [and value] of a work” (sect. 3.3, para. 2), and the scientific mode, which aims “to explain art appreciation with the [scientific] methods and approaches” (sect. 3.3, para. 2). Centrally, the occurrence of (1) is a necessary condition for the occurrence of (2), which, in turn, is a necessary condition for the occurrence of (3). The order of these phases is irreversible and serves as the very foundation for appropriate appreciation.
My main worry about this characterisation has to do with the causal nature of the relation between basic exposure and artistic understanding and the manner in which achieving the artistic design stance serves as a transitional requirement. Can we really separate (1) and (3) in this way, and is positing an intermediate phase absolutely necessary? An alternative approach might argue that the very point of training our artistic sensibilities is, generally, for the boundaries delimiting these three phases to become more fluid and, more specifically, for (1) to be influenced by previous experiences of (3) in such a way that the two become both practically and theoretically indistinguishable. On this view, a well-trained eye cannot be said to begin his/her artistic experience by a purely ahistorical perception constituted by the “attentional tracking” of “shape, colors, tones, duration,” the “basic syntactic and semantic processing of symbols,” and the “automatic elicitation of emotions” (sect. 3.1.2). Instead, (1) is fundamentally informed by (3) to such an extent that even attempting to recreate that kind of bare perceptual representation would be incredibly difficult, if not impossible. This is not the point that gaining experience speeds up the appreciative process to such a degree as to render the three phases phenomenologically indistinguishable (for, as B&R concede, “experts might have an ability to summon historical information very rapidly by means of fast recognition of task-relevant patterns,” sect. 3.4, para. 3). Rather, it is the claim that once we have gained a certain practice or skill in these matters, it is not even possible to retain a principled distinction between (1) and (3). If we adhere to this picture, the proposed schema might best conceived as a helpful tool in explaining how we learn to appreciate art embedded in an historical context rather than as an invariable model underlying all appropriate art appreciation.
I should stress that these the two concerns outlined here should be understood in the context of a warm if provisional welcome to B&R's proposals, and that I do not consider the problems raised necessarily to be insurmountable. Analytic philosophers no less than psychologists have found incorporating the contextual dimension of art problematic, and the model proposed could certainly constitute a step in the right direction for both disciplines.