Abstract
One challenge faced by aesthetics is the development of an account able to trace out the continuities and discontinuities between general experience and aesthetic experiences. Regarding this issue, in this paper, I present an enactive model of some raw cognitive dynamics that might drive the progressive emergence of aesthetic experiences from the stream of general experience. The framework is based on specific aspects of John Dewey’s pragmatist philosophy and embodied aesthetic theories, while also taking into account research in ecological psychology, cognitive sciences, and dynamic systems theory. The model focuses on dynamically relevant nodes at the pre-reflective and the reflective side of experience that would work as nested rhythmic constraints at different cognitive timescales with the potential to shunt experiences toward the aesthetic in everyday situations. My proposal constitutes a way to explore aesthetic experiences from an enactive perspective that regards them as transformative events in which cognitive processes entrain and are entrained by changes taking place in the environment, the brain, and the body.
Highlights
This paper attempts to reconcile two aims
I will offer a theoretical model and discuss some cognitive processes that work as constraints1 on a progressively enacted aesthetic rhythm able to drive the unfolding of the experiences from which it emerges
The model focuses on three dynamically relevant nodes on the prereflective and the reflective side of experience that might contribute to shunt general experience toward different kinds of aesthetic experiences that we face in everyday situations
Summary
This paper attempts to reconcile two aims. The first is the aim that John Dewey makes explicit at the beginning of his book Art as Experience, initially published in 1934: “the task is to restore continuity between the refined and intensified forms of experience that are works of art and the everyday events, doings, and sufferings that are universally recognized to constitute experience” (p. 2). To overcome this tension, I will offer a theoretical model and discuss some cognitive processes that work as constraints on a progressively enacted aesthetic rhythm able to drive the unfolding of the experiences from which it emerges.. In the specific case of aesthetics, there have been some extremely significant contributions (Brincker, 2015; Carvalho, 2019; Gallagher, 2021; Noë, 2016; Stamatopoulou, 2018) Regardless of their different interests and slightly different theoretical frameworks, most of these works pay special attention to change and dynamic unfolding at different levels. Following the lead of these and other relevant works, and paying special attention to some aspects of Dewey’s aesthetic theory – considered among the most significant precursor of temporally extended, embodied, and situated aesthetics5 – I will offer an enactive model focused on some cognitive dynamics leading to the progressive enactment of an aesthetic rhythm that constrains experience.
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