The position from which we judge the stimulating article of Bullot & Reber (B&R) is that psychological aesthetics encompasses investment of human intelligence in art objects, explaining in terms of tendencies why and how viewers engage with a picture tepidly or enthusiastically, or disengage with indifference or antipathy. The visual thinking that becomes culturally sanctioned develops from roots in our biological makeup.
A gap between (a) psychology backed by the authority of biological sciences, and (b) art appreciation informed by art history backed by the authority of philosophical aesthetics, is cleverly bridged by B&R's interpolated “design stance.” Exposure primes one for adopting the design stance, which in turn is a necessary condition for art appreciation, with information flowing top-down and bottom-up. We take it that viewers' assumptions are shaped to centre on a plurifunctional conception of pictures, encompassing representation, expressiveness, interest, and beauty. That permits reasoning about whether unattractive scenes inspire good pictures, whether an artist is authoritative about what is being depicted, and what constitutes a good artist: such matters cannot be explained by extension from viewing history (“exposure”). But what are core principles for interweaving psychology and history through the design stance? The ultimate test will be whether the interpolation tessellates culture with the traditional levels of analysis: functional, phylogenetic, causal, and ontogenetic. It is tricky to specify how the design stance works.
Whereas evolutionary psychology and neuropsychology necessarily explicitly constrain themselves to few and powerful core concepts, art history presents us with much more variable sets of concepts, resisting reduction to biological core conceptions. B&R (sect 4.2, para. 2 and 3) are clear that theorizing the design stance involves corrective tempering of extension of biological concepts. But biological concepts do have a trick of generating probabilistically correct predictions (sometimes, of course, merely by coincidence!). Take the core conception of aesthetics being automatically tuned by natural scenes. An Art-Educational study by Ruggi and Gilli (Reference Ruggi and Gilli2008), organized discussion towards a characterization of “something beautiful” (“bella” is wider than in British English, more like Australian English): Nature came top in learners' values, pictorial art bottom. It is not as though Italy were noticeably short of pictorial art exposure. Any formulation of the design stance as a necessary mediator needs to demonstrate its relevance to the question of when core psychological conceptions are or are not responsible for particular predicted outcomes. Sure, “contextual variables moderate the effects of mental processes” (sect. 3.4, para. 1): but that is an anodyne formulation. Presumably some extensions of biological constraints will be rather easily moderated, demoted into “booster rockets” to get pictorial engagement going (Freeman Reference Freeman, Schellekens and Goldie2011). But which ones?
The admirable move by B&R is to add to the design stance biologically impelled potentially moderating processes, such as inferentially searching for function and intent as emphasized by Paul Bloom. That surpassing of passive viewing enables B&R to suggest a diagnostic for the design stance, characterized as a form of reasoning addressed to reality, with “other typical activities” within the stance incorporating processes vital to persisting engagement with artwork. But here arises a problem with B&R as it stands (see B&R's Fig. 1).
Any candidate mental posture earns the term “stance” when there is some (imperfect) stability and coherence. B&R need a formulation of both. Maybe cross-talk (“binding”) between “typical processes” (B&R Fig. 2) promotes internal cohesion? Further, commonalities across “typical processes” are inescapable: we hypothesize that reasoners come to notice commonalities. “Picture” is of course common to each type of design stance mental activity, plus Artist, Viewer, and Scene, a small ontology contracting only six interconnections forming the heart of aesthetic reasoning (Freeman Reference Freeman, Eisner and Day2004) up to the ill-defined interface between the design stance and art appreciation, where reasoners face art-historical functions and phenomena. B&R propound an example of how contextual information overcomes mistaking an artist's own willed knife-slash for an extraneous act of vandalism. But art appreciation also involves giving due weighting to information on why and how the act is more than an autovandalistic futile gesture (which, to cannibalize literary-aesthetic terms, confuses showing with telling). Rather than invoking what may be a marginal case of willed transgression, we advocate analyzing centrally important transgressivity, for example, Turner (Reference Turner1983) reporting how learners criticized Derain for slapdash colouring, resisting engagement with Fauvism: presumably the perceived transgressivity affronted the learners' hard-won coherence of values within their design stance. Art Education examples are an underused resource in B&R. So is the computational approach to pictorial challenges, as in Willats (Reference Willats1997; Reference Willats2005) who presented analyses (which survive subsequent visual-computational advances by Koenderink & van Doorn Reference Koenderink, van Doorn and Albertazzi2006; Pizlo Reference Pizlo2008). Willats (Reference Willats and Albertazzi2006) traced appreciation of Klee from design features of our visual system through picture-plane visual thinking to Klee's willed transgressions that only a mature innovative artist could accomplish. Incorporating in a principled way such examples surely would strengthen B&R's agenda. Further strengthening would come from taking cases of guaranteed historical importance. We next cite one that to a culturally alien viewer would certainly be transgressive at the basic-exposure/design-stance interface yet glorious at the design-stance/art-appreciation interface.
From before mediaeval times through the Enlightenment, a drawing device was stylistically adopted, whereby some human figures were depicted with a patch of gold oddly peeping out behind their heads. The golden glow subtly deflects viewing (Leonards et al. Reference Leonards, Baddeley, Gilchrist, Troscianko, Ledda and Williamson2007). The patch itself often looks like a gold plate. But that construal gives a case of false attachment every time. Gold is culturally glorious, and a gold patch fits a Goodman-type account of sampling (fortunately Goodman is easily partitioned to quarantine his conventionalism). Viewers would be right to think that a sample of glory was presented. The case of the halo is an exercise in identifying how information runs from a picture-perception solution of a visual puzzle (does the patch denote a plate, hole, haze, dimple, hollow?) through the design stance into art appreciation. Would a suitable terrain to test B&R's rapprochement between psychology and art history be classical iconography? That would involve taking a long run up to the current art scene – going for history with a capital H.
The position from which we judge the stimulating article of Bullot & Reber (B&R) is that psychological aesthetics encompasses investment of human intelligence in art objects, explaining in terms of tendencies why and how viewers engage with a picture tepidly or enthusiastically, or disengage with indifference or antipathy. The visual thinking that becomes culturally sanctioned develops from roots in our biological makeup.
A gap between (a) psychology backed by the authority of biological sciences, and (b) art appreciation informed by art history backed by the authority of philosophical aesthetics, is cleverly bridged by B&R's interpolated “design stance.” Exposure primes one for adopting the design stance, which in turn is a necessary condition for art appreciation, with information flowing top-down and bottom-up. We take it that viewers' assumptions are shaped to centre on a plurifunctional conception of pictures, encompassing representation, expressiveness, interest, and beauty. That permits reasoning about whether unattractive scenes inspire good pictures, whether an artist is authoritative about what is being depicted, and what constitutes a good artist: such matters cannot be explained by extension from viewing history (“exposure”). But what are core principles for interweaving psychology and history through the design stance? The ultimate test will be whether the interpolation tessellates culture with the traditional levels of analysis: functional, phylogenetic, causal, and ontogenetic. It is tricky to specify how the design stance works.
Whereas evolutionary psychology and neuropsychology necessarily explicitly constrain themselves to few and powerful core concepts, art history presents us with much more variable sets of concepts, resisting reduction to biological core conceptions. B&R (sect 4.2, para. 2 and 3) are clear that theorizing the design stance involves corrective tempering of extension of biological concepts. But biological concepts do have a trick of generating probabilistically correct predictions (sometimes, of course, merely by coincidence!). Take the core conception of aesthetics being automatically tuned by natural scenes. An Art-Educational study by Ruggi and Gilli (Reference Ruggi and Gilli2008), organized discussion towards a characterization of “something beautiful” (“bella” is wider than in British English, more like Australian English): Nature came top in learners' values, pictorial art bottom. It is not as though Italy were noticeably short of pictorial art exposure. Any formulation of the design stance as a necessary mediator needs to demonstrate its relevance to the question of when core psychological conceptions are or are not responsible for particular predicted outcomes. Sure, “contextual variables moderate the effects of mental processes” (sect. 3.4, para. 1): but that is an anodyne formulation. Presumably some extensions of biological constraints will be rather easily moderated, demoted into “booster rockets” to get pictorial engagement going (Freeman Reference Freeman, Schellekens and Goldie2011). But which ones?
The admirable move by B&R is to add to the design stance biologically impelled potentially moderating processes, such as inferentially searching for function and intent as emphasized by Paul Bloom. That surpassing of passive viewing enables B&R to suggest a diagnostic for the design stance, characterized as a form of reasoning addressed to reality, with “other typical activities” within the stance incorporating processes vital to persisting engagement with artwork. But here arises a problem with B&R as it stands (see B&R's Fig. 1).
Any candidate mental posture earns the term “stance” when there is some (imperfect) stability and coherence. B&R need a formulation of both. Maybe cross-talk (“binding”) between “typical processes” (B&R Fig. 2) promotes internal cohesion? Further, commonalities across “typical processes” are inescapable: we hypothesize that reasoners come to notice commonalities. “Picture” is of course common to each type of design stance mental activity, plus Artist, Viewer, and Scene, a small ontology contracting only six interconnections forming the heart of aesthetic reasoning (Freeman Reference Freeman, Eisner and Day2004) up to the ill-defined interface between the design stance and art appreciation, where reasoners face art-historical functions and phenomena. B&R propound an example of how contextual information overcomes mistaking an artist's own willed knife-slash for an extraneous act of vandalism. But art appreciation also involves giving due weighting to information on why and how the act is more than an autovandalistic futile gesture (which, to cannibalize literary-aesthetic terms, confuses showing with telling). Rather than invoking what may be a marginal case of willed transgression, we advocate analyzing centrally important transgressivity, for example, Turner (Reference Turner1983) reporting how learners criticized Derain for slapdash colouring, resisting engagement with Fauvism: presumably the perceived transgressivity affronted the learners' hard-won coherence of values within their design stance. Art Education examples are an underused resource in B&R. So is the computational approach to pictorial challenges, as in Willats (Reference Willats1997; Reference Willats2005) who presented analyses (which survive subsequent visual-computational advances by Koenderink & van Doorn Reference Koenderink, van Doorn and Albertazzi2006; Pizlo Reference Pizlo2008). Willats (Reference Willats and Albertazzi2006) traced appreciation of Klee from design features of our visual system through picture-plane visual thinking to Klee's willed transgressions that only a mature innovative artist could accomplish. Incorporating in a principled way such examples surely would strengthen B&R's agenda. Further strengthening would come from taking cases of guaranteed historical importance. We next cite one that to a culturally alien viewer would certainly be transgressive at the basic-exposure/design-stance interface yet glorious at the design-stance/art-appreciation interface.
From before mediaeval times through the Enlightenment, a drawing device was stylistically adopted, whereby some human figures were depicted with a patch of gold oddly peeping out behind their heads. The golden glow subtly deflects viewing (Leonards et al. Reference Leonards, Baddeley, Gilchrist, Troscianko, Ledda and Williamson2007). The patch itself often looks like a gold plate. But that construal gives a case of false attachment every time. Gold is culturally glorious, and a gold patch fits a Goodman-type account of sampling (fortunately Goodman is easily partitioned to quarantine his conventionalism). Viewers would be right to think that a sample of glory was presented. The case of the halo is an exercise in identifying how information runs from a picture-perception solution of a visual puzzle (does the patch denote a plate, hole, haze, dimple, hollow?) through the design stance into art appreciation. Would a suitable terrain to test B&R's rapprochement between psychology and art history be classical iconography? That would involve taking a long run up to the current art scene – going for history with a capital H.