Philosophy and Aesthetic Psychology

This conference was the culmination of a research project, the general aim of which was to delineate the concerns and tasks of aesthetic psychology conceived as a branch of philosophical aesthetics.

More specifically, it set out to examine questions to do with aesthetic perception, representation, emotion, and cognition as explored in other disciplines (including psychology; cognitive science; anthropology) in order to establish whether, and if so how, philosophy can benefit from it.

The approach adopted was inter-disciplinary, and principally aimed to strengthen the accounts that have been and are being developed in philosophical aesthetics.

Related disciplines of interest include:

• (Social) Anthropology
• Biology/Darwinian theory
• Cognitive and developmental psychology
• Cognitive science
• Developmental psychology of perception and emotions
• Evolutionary psychology of perception and emotions
• Neuro-science
• Psychiatry

Examples of concerns include:

• Does (i) creating and (ii) appreciating art have an evolutionary function to do with our emotional responses?
• What emotional and/or intellectual deficits (e.g. autism) inhibit the use and/or understanding of aesthetic/artistic representation?
• In what way(s) is the use of our imagination significant for the development of aesthetic assessment?
• How do normal children learn to appreciate art?
• How, if at all, can pretend-play contribute to the way in which we learn to refine our aesthetic experiences?
• How can neurological models of visual perception be applied to the case of aesthetic perception?

Conference Programme

• Peter Lamarque (York): 'On Keeping Psychology Out of Literary Criticism'
• Noel Carroll & Margaret Moore (Temple): 'Music and Dance: Feeling Movement'
• Dorothy Singer (Yale): 'Contributions of Pretend Play to Later Adult Consciousness'
• Gregory Currie (Nottingham):  'The Body's Response to Pictures'
• William Seeley (Franklin & Marshall): 'Imagining Crawling Home: A Case Study in Cognitive Science and Aesthetics'.
• Thomas Cochrane (Geneva): 'A Simulation Theory of Musical Expression'
• Ellen Dissanayake (Washington): 'Genesis and Development of "Making Special": Is The Term Relevant to Aesthetic Psychology and Philosophy?'      
• Chris McManus (UCL): 'Beauty is Instinctive Feeling'.
• Stephen Davies (Auckland): 'Cross-Cultural Sensitivity to Music's Expressiveness'.
• Jesse Prinz (Chapel Hill, North Carolina): 'Emotion and Aesthetic Value'.  
• David Cooper (Durham): 'Beautiful People and Beautiful Things'.
• Norman Freeman (Bristol): 'Varieties of Pictorial Judgement: Issues of Representational Authority'.
• Dahlia Zaidel (UCLA): 'Neuroscience of Visual Art, Biology, and Brain Evolution'.
• Amy Coplan (Fullerton): 'The Low Road to Affect: Why Movies Are So Good at Arousing Emotion'.
• Johan Veldeman (Antwerp): 'Pictorial Twofoldness and Perceptual Psychology'.
• Nick Zangwill (Durham): 'Musical Experience and Realism'.

• aestheticpsychologyspeakers.pdf (last modified: 24 May 2011)
• aesthetic_psychology_abstracts.pdf (last modified: 24 May 2011)