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The Role of Theory and the Relevance of Epistemic Models...
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The Role of Theory and the Relevance of Epistemic Models in Contemporary Aesthetics

A special issue of Philosophies (ISSN 2409-9287).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 December 2021) | Viewed by 17155

Special Issue Editor

Prof. Dr. Fabrizio Desideri

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Lettere e Filosofia, Università degli Studi di Firenze, 50121 Firenze, Italy
Interests: philosophy; aesthetics; philosophy of the mind; philosophy of art; history of aesthetics
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The thinner the threshold between virtuality and reality in contemporary aesthetics, the more crucial and influential the theoretic paradigms regulating the modes of accessing and understanding its experience become. As this is manifest in the scene of contemporary arts, the implications of what aesthetic means and is, far exceeds the arts’ spectrum, including the very distinction between artefacts and nature. This consolidates the need to put aesthetics back at the centre of the philosophical debate, focusing on the relevance of its theoretical implications. What are the challenges that aesthetic attitude asks contemporary epistemology to face?

This has been particularly evident in recent years, when the contributions from the neurosciences to the aesthetic field have given birth to the discipline of neuroaesthetics, which has become hard to account for without an appropriate epistemic model explaining its functioning and guiding its empirical research.

Naïve approaches often turn into misconceptions and this is precisely where theory comes into play, dispelling confusion and setting rigorous basis. As the matter of aesthetics is, perhaps, the most transversal in contemporary philosophy, its claim for theory is urgent but, as is the case with any properly efficient system, the resolutive means do not lay outside the very same field. It is to this extent that the aesthetic field needs a theoretical grounding.

In the intimate confrontation between aesthetics and the meta-aesthetic premises building its background, we are bound to find the space for the emergence and description of epistemic models such as Emotivism, Cognitivism, and the likes. In other words, putting aesthetics in confrontation with other theories might challenge its definition or points of view that could complement might allow us to access its core, question its basis and references, and explore its history and implications.

Encouraging such multi-faceted analyses is the goal of this Special Issue, aimed at detaching aesthetics from the naïvete of an indistinct ground for justification by consolidating its theoretical models as orientations bound to epistemic verification. Within the same context, additional paths of investigation should concern the relationship between new epistemic model of aesthetics and new paradigms of philosophy of mind and the relationship between the current models of aesthetic attitude (as a cognitively and emotionally informed perceptual exchange between subject and object) and ecological thinking.

Prof. Fabrizio Desideri
Guest Editor

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Keywords

  • meta-aesthetics
  • aesthetic models
  • aesthetic theory
  • epistemology
  • emotivism
  • expressivism
  • aesthetic mind
  • symbolic mind
  • aesthetic attitude
  • neuroaesthetics
  • aesthetic perception
  • ecological aesthetics

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Published Papers (5 papers)

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Research

9 pages, 242 KiB  
Article
Against Music? Heuristics and Sense-Making in Listening to Contemporary Popular Music
by Vincenzo Zingaro
Philosophies 2022, 7(2), 38; https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies7020038 - 1 Apr 2022
Viewed by 2405
Abstract
Is the ubiquity of contemporary popular music akin to a deliberate aggression to the hearing, making the listening experience devoid of any sense? If so, is there any strategy to morph this supposed confusion into meaningful stimuli? Relying on epistemology, we attempt at [...] Read more.
Is the ubiquity of contemporary popular music akin to a deliberate aggression to the hearing, making the listening experience devoid of any sense? If so, is there any strategy to morph this supposed confusion into meaningful stimuli? Relying on epistemology, we attempt at promoting the act of listening as a proper way of world-making and refer to Mark Reybrouck, Bruno Nettl, Steven Brown and Joseph Jordania—among others—to gather appropriate heuristic tools. In the last part of the essay, we advance the concept of timbral quotation as an additional means to grasp meaningful cues in the timbrical richness of contemporary popular compositions. We shall sustain the particular fitness of this tool especially with regard to nowadays’ Western popular music, more and more timbre-centered rather than harmony-centered. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Role of Theory and the Relevance of Epistemic Models in Contemporary Aesthetics)
8 pages, 203 KiB  
Article
Virtual Reality and Aesthetic Experience
by Roberto Diodato
Philosophies 2022, 7(2), 29; https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies7020029 - 8 Mar 2022
Cited by 10 | Viewed by 3572
Abstract
The problem of aesthetic experience in a virtual environment could be reformulated as: what can we learn about aesthetics from the perspective of ‘aesthetic experience in virtual environments’, given the specific nature of such an environment? The discourse goes in circles, because it [...] Read more.
The problem of aesthetic experience in a virtual environment could be reformulated as: what can we learn about aesthetics from the perspective of ‘aesthetic experience in virtual environments’, given the specific nature of such an environment? The discourse goes in circles, because it is always from theories elaborated in the field of the so-called ‘real’ that we develop the difference, but it is a process typically philosophical, that, on the other hand, can make sense only if it can be shown that the virtual is an existent being that has an ontological structure of its own. The ontology of this strange object–event, and of its relationship to space–time, must therefore be addressed: what are the conditions of identity for a virtual body? What are its limits? In what sense does it have borders? Also, its specific temporality and its connection to human and computer memories are arguable dimensions that deserve analysis, as they directly affect an ontology of the virtual body, the difference between the virtual and the possible, and the relationship between the human body and the virtual body. However, the specific character of the virtual is to be an intermediate entity between object and event, between thing and image, so that virtual bodies represent a hybrid, interactive world which can be visualized as synthetic image, an immersive hybrid engaging the corporeality of the user and merging with the virtual body’s image; this hybridization, between the body of the spectator–actor and the virtual space in which it is immersed, is difficult to define with singularity. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Role of Theory and the Relevance of Epistemic Models in Contemporary Aesthetics)
8 pages, 214 KiB  
Article
Aesthetics as a Habit: Between Constraints and Freedom, Nudges and Creativity
by Mariagrazia Portera
Philosophies 2022, 7(2), 24; https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies7020024 - 2 Mar 2022
Cited by 4 | Viewed by 2872
Abstract
This paper is a preliminary attempt to bring to the fore some questions and issues regarding the role of habits in aesthetics. Indeed, much attention has recently been given to habits across a wide range of fields of inquiry: philosophers turn to the [...] Read more.
This paper is a preliminary attempt to bring to the fore some questions and issues regarding the role of habits in aesthetics. Indeed, much attention has recently been given to habits across a wide range of fields of inquiry: philosophers turn to the concept to investigate its significance to the historical development of Western thought; neuroscientists look into the role that habits play in the functioning of the human mind and identify the neural and psychological underpinnings of habitual behavior; anthropologists, political scientists and sociologists tap into habits as a key notion to explain social dynamics and collective behavior. For all of these waves that the notion has made in other parts of the humanities and social sciences, there have been so far, however, only a few sustained discussions of habits in conjunction with aesthetics. What is the role of habits in aesthetic experience? How do habits influence and regulate artistic creative processes? Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Role of Theory and the Relevance of Epistemic Models in Contemporary Aesthetics)
19 pages, 287 KiB  
Article
Aesthetics without Objects: Towards a Process-Oriented Aesthetic Perception
by Nicola Perullo
Philosophies 2022, 7(1), 21; https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies7010021 - 21 Feb 2022
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 4203
Abstract
In this paper, I suggest an aesthetic model that is consistent with anti-foundational scientific knowledge. How has an aesthetics without foundation to be configured? In contrast to the conventional subject/object model, with idealistic and subjective aesthetics, but also with object-oriented assumptions, I suggest [...] Read more.
In this paper, I suggest an aesthetic model that is consistent with anti-foundational scientific knowledge. How has an aesthetics without foundation to be configured? In contrast to the conventional subject/object model, with idealistic and subjective aesthetics, but also with object-oriented assumptions, I suggest that aesthetics has to be characterized as relational aesthetics in terms of process-oriented perception and that this leads to an Aesthetics Without Objects (AWO) approach. The relational nature of processes means that they do not happen inter-, that is, between ontologically delimited and stable entities, but rather they correspond between relations. I will try to show that AWO matches well with the onto-phenomenological-epistemic and relational models proposed by recent theories in different fields of science, especially in the relational interpretation of quantum physics. The field of aesthetics, then, does not indicate perceptual fixed contents—either subjective or objectual properties—rather it emerges from a correspondence occurring in an engaged and situated perceptual movement, an agencing that is prior to any sharp distinction between a perceiver and a perceived. I propose to call haptic this perceptual agencing. In the first section, I describe the reasons according to which the adoption of AWO seems more correct and advisable, both with respect to contemporary scientific models and to the current ecological changes on the planet. In the second section, I portray some characteristics of AWO. In the third section, I argue that AWO calls for haptic perception. In the fourth section, I briefly draw some meta-aesthetics consequences concerning, on the one side, socio-political issues of AWO and, on the other side, the possibility for a theory in an anti-foundational model. I conclude with a proposal: a process-oriented aesthetics approach has to be understood mainly as an art of thinking. This means rethinking and re-evaluating the idea of aesthetics as an artisan thought. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Role of Theory and the Relevance of Epistemic Models in Contemporary Aesthetics)
14 pages, 245 KiB  
Article
On Some Epistemological Advantages of the Notion of “Intervenient Aesthetic Field”
by Giovanni Matteucci
Philosophies 2022, 7(1), 17; https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies7010017 - 5 Feb 2022
Viewed by 2513
Abstract
The reality of the aesthetic seems to manifest itself more and more in relational and immersive ways that defy analyses that follow the trail of the modern tradition of philosophy, based on the dual gnoseological relationship between subject and object. Even some areas [...] Read more.
The reality of the aesthetic seems to manifest itself more and more in relational and immersive ways that defy analyses that follow the trail of the modern tradition of philosophy, based on the dual gnoseological relationship between subject and object. Even some areas of the new cognitive sciences seem to converge towards a conception of experience as a complex horizon in which variously related vectors operate. From this point of view, it is worth exploring the notion of “field” as a conceptual tool to describe the aesthetic. In this paper we will consider two possible uses of this notion in reference to the aesthetic: to describe experiential modes (following Arnold Berleant), and to describe social dynamics (following Pierre Bourdieu). Yet, the starting point will be some considerations provided by Peter Abbs. We will thus try to show how the notion of “aesthetic field” can be consonant with scientific settings that advocate models of mind that stress its being extended and situated. A particular test bed will be the psychology of art as a discipline spanning philosophical knowledge and empirical investigation. In this key will also be considered the so-called “experiential revolution” in psychology, which indicates an extra-cognitive horizon variously coinciding with the perspective of an aesthetic research focused on the conception of aisthesis as a system of practices of perception, emotion, and expression. According to this conception, the dynamics within the aesthetic field, such as those related to the nexus between perceptual contents and aesthetic properties, or between emotional content and the practices of sensing could prove to be dynamics of “intervenience,” rather than of supervenience. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Role of Theory and the Relevance of Epistemic Models in Contemporary Aesthetics)
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