Experience, Emotion, and Aesthetics: Thinking About David Olson’s The Mind on Paper: Reading, Consciousness and Rationality

Abstract

In this article I consider David Olson’s account of how literacy produces a new kind of consciousness, one in which a process of metacognition makes possible both knowledge and an understanding of language itself. This, he argues, enables readers and writers to reflect upon language, understand what constitutes reasoning, and recognize any logical flaws embedded in written texts. I then locate Olson within the cognitivist tradition of Jerome Bruner, critically analyzing Bruner’s concept of emotion as well as Olson’s account of experience. While he acknowledges the place of experience in John Dewey’s account of literacy, he tends to regard it as a form of consciousness rather than something more primordial. I go on to argue that experience, rather than consciousness, is a fundamental ingredient in the life of the mind and learning in general, where aesthetic emotions play a significant role. A theory of literacy that fails to take these elements into account is incomplete, however powerful it may appear. In order to make this argument, I utilize the work of John Dewey and Alfred North Whitehead, who afford experience and aesthetic emotions a primordial place in their process philosophies. I also contrast the organic concept of mind advocated by Whitehead and Dewey in their theory of learning with the mechanistic account Olson inherits from Bruner. Furthermore, I analyze the importance Whitehead ascribes to art education, and go on to show why he believes art to be the source of consciousness itself. Once again, this contrasts with Olson’s cognitivist account. I conclude that without experience and aesthetic emotion our capacity to reflect upon them through language would not be possible.