Cardiff University IMAGED CONCEPTS: ART AND THE NATURE OF THE AESTHETIC by Bernard van Lierop A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy School of English, Communication and Philosophy. 2009 UMI Number: U584333 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Dissertation Publishing UMI U584333 Published by ProQuest LLC 2013. Copyright in the Dissertation held by the Author. Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 DECLARATION This work has not previously been accepted in substance for any degree and is not concurrently submitted in candidature for any degree. Signed ........... (candidate) Date .. STATEMENT 1 This thesis is being submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of (insert MCh, MD, MPhil, PhD etc, as appropriate) / / N Signed (candidate) Date .J .4 STATEMENT 2 This thesis is the result of my own independent work/investigation, except where otherwise stated. Other sources are acknowledged by explicit references. Signed (candidate) Date STATEMENT 3 I hereby give consent for my thesis, if accepted, to be available for photocopying and for inter-library loan, and for the title and summary to be made available to outside organisations. Signed . (candidate) Date STATEMENT 4: PREVIOUSLY APPROVED BAR ON ACCESS I hereby give consent for my thesis, if accepted, to be available for photocopying and for inter-library loans after expiry of a bar on access previously approved by the Graduate Development Committee. Signed .. (candidate) Date SUMMARY The two research questions of this thesis are: ‘What is the aesthetic?’ and ‘What is the relationship of the aesthetic to art?’ These questions launch an argument that seeks to challenge and reverse some recent ‘deflationary’ accounts of the aesthetic. The research uses the foundational aesthetics of Hume, Baumgarten and Kant to counter the arguments of deflationary aesthetics, then, drawing upon evolutionary theory and cognitive neuroscience, it highlights the power of the aesthetic in both nature and art. The ‘deflationist’ George Dickie called the aesthetic attitude a ‘myth’ and dismissed the concept o f‘disinterestedness’. Gombrich doubted whether shared aesthetic values are possible, while Danto initially argued that aesthetic properties are merely imputed to artworks through context. For Carroll, historical precedence determines the identity of art, with the aesthetic reduced to a contingency. However, Hume and Kant testified to the realism of both disinterestedness and the aesthetic attitude, while Baumgarten proposed a new science of aesthetics to underscore the centrality of the senses to epistemology, rhetoric and art, notably through his postulated ‘imaged concepts’, the apparent source for Kant’s ‘aesthetic ideas’. Danto’s final acknowledgment of the artistic role of enthymeme and metaphor signalled his acceptance of art’s essentially aesthetic character. Evidence from Darwin confirms that the aesthetic is a shaping force in evolution, rather than a construct of human culture, and much congruence is revealed between the aesthetics of Baumgarten and Kant, and recent cognitive neuroscience. It is argued that philosophical aesthetics needs to integrate the findings of science into its metaphysics. Accordingly, this thesis offers some new definitions of the aesthetic attitude, rhetoric and art, principally influenced by Baumgarten and biology. The arguments are further evaluated through three case studies: ‘bowerbird art’, the ‘nexus of art, power and crime’, and ‘sound sculpture’. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I should like to acknowledge all the encouragement and unstinting help and support I have received from my wife Margaret, and the indulgence of the rest of my family over the writing of this thesis. I should also like to acknowledge the helpful and stimulating contact I have enjoyed with my supervisor Dr. Andrew Edgar and also the supportive and pertinent advice of my personal tutor, Dr. Richard Gray. I have also enjoyed many valuable seminars with Professor Christopher Norris and Dr. Alessandra Tanesini, and my fellow post­ graduates, including Dr. Gideon Calder, Dr. David Oates and Dr. Workineh Kelbessa. I should like to thank my friend, the classicist Pat Lowrie for giving me invaluable advice, encouragement and support, particularly as I embarked on the task of translating a section of Baumgarten’s Metaphysica from the Latin. My friend Nigel Hallett has been a lively long-term interlocutor over many of the issues discussed in this thesis, and I am most grateful to him for his interest, encouragement, support and criticism. I have also been helped and inspired by my friend David Edward’s knowledge of the biological sciences and their relevance to philosophy. I should like to thank my friend Dr. Michael Lafferty for his encouragement and assistance in letting me read his 2006 Ph. D. thesis on the philosophy of Arthur C. Danto and for lending me a copy of the rare 1954 study of the bowerbird by A. J. Marshall. Finally, I should like to thank all those friends who have released me from my usual commitments over the past two years as I finally settled to writing up. TABLE OF CONTENTS Summary i Acknowledgments ii Table of Contents iii Table of Figures v List of Plates vi Chapter 1 Introduction 1 1.1 Background to this Project 2 1.2 The Construction of this Chapter 2 1.3 The Central Issues of this Thesis 3 1.4 The Structure of this Thesis 10 1.5 Chapter-by-chapter Outline of the Argument 10 1.6 Summary and Conclusion 13 Chapter 2 The ‘Myth’ of the Aesthetic Attitude? 15 2.1 Introduction 16 2.2 Dickie’s Arguments Against the ‘Aesthetic Attitude’ 19 2.3 Hume: An Eighteenth Century View of Issues Raised by Dickie 33 2.4 Some Empirical Evidence for the 4 Aesthetic Attitude’ 36 2.5 Definition of the Aesthetic Attitude 53 2.6 Summary and Conclusion 55 Chapter 3 Refining the Research Questions 59 3.1 Introduction 60 3.2 The ‘Non-Realism’ of the Aesthetic 62 3.3 Intentional/Historical Definitions of Art; ‘Ur-Art’ 72 3.4 Questioning Davies’ Functional/Procedural Distinction 89 3.5 Beyond Deflationism: Gombrich, Popper, Danto, Margolis 94 3.6 Ontology of Art: Adapting Currie and Searle 105 3.7 Summary and Conclusion 111 Chapter 4 Imaged Concepts: Baumgarten 118 4.1 Introduction 119 4.2 Rationalism, Sensual Pietism and Poetry 121 4.3 Baumgarten Scholarship 125 4.4 The ‘Aesthetic’ in Baumgarten 127 4.5 The Relationship of the Aesthetic to Art in Baumgarten 134 4.6 Discussion and Conclusion 144 Chapter 5 Aesthetic Ideas: Kant 146 5.1 Introduction 147 5.2 The Place of the Aesthetic in Kant’s Philosophy 147 5.3 Beauty, the Sublime and Brain Laterality 152 5.4 Kant’s Account of Disinterestedness 157 5.5 Adherent Beauty, Imaged Concept and Aesthetic Idea 165 5.6 Discussion and Conclusion 171 Chapter 6: Evolutionary Science and the Aesthetic 174 6.1 Introduction 175 6.2 A Biological, not a Transcendental, sensus communis 177 6.3 The Evolution of the Aesthetic 178 6.4 Darwin: Continuity Between the Natural and the Human 187 6.5 Sexual Selection: the Beautiful and the Good 192 6.6 Criticisms of Neo-Darwinism, Neuroscience and the Nature/ Nurture Divide 198 6.7 Summary and Conclusion 203 Chapter 7 Cognitive Neuroscience and the Aesthetic 206 7.1 Introduction 207 7.2 The ‘Unproven’ Value of Neuroscience to Aesthetics 209 7.3 Neuroscience, Perception, Knowledge and Belief 213 7.4 Are there Really Judgments of Both Taste and Sense? 218 7.5 Beauty: Formal Primitives and Top-Down Effects. 221 7.6 A Speculation on the Ur-Aesthetic: Grooming 226 7.7 Conclusion 228 Chapter 8 Review and Conclusions ' 229 8.1 Introduction 230 8.2 Sceptical and Deflationary Accounts of the Aesthetic 231 8.3 Baumgarten and Kant 237 8.4 The Biology of the Aesthetic 241 8.5 Three Case Studies 243 8.6 Back to the Research Questions 259 Bibliography 262 Appendices A Definitions of the Aesthetic 279 B Part Transcript of radio programme about Thomas Tallis’ motet Spem in Alium 283 C Stills and Transcript from part of BBC wildlife film, “Bower Birds - the Art of Seduction” 288 D Translation, from Latin into English, of §§501-623 of Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten’s Metaphysica. 292 E Plates 316 iv TABLE OF FIGURES Page Fig. 1 The aesthetic in art: a) contingent, b) necessary 3 Fig. 2 Asymmetrical location of specialised brain functions 42 Fig. 3 Leibnitz’s continuum of perception 123 Fig. 4 Baumgarten’s adaptation of Leibnitz’s continuum of perception. 124 Fig. 5 Table from Second ‘Introduction’ to the Critique o f Judgment 150 Fig. 6 Kant’s ‘non-Legistative’ Faculty of Sensibility 151 Fig. 7 The Baldwin Effect: from ‘Sky-hook’ to ‘Crane’ 181 Fig. 8: Emergence and diversification of life on earth 182 v LIST OF PLATES: Appendix «E’ 1 Artworks that tease the viewer 2 A 200-year dialogue of objects 3 Baby aged 3 weeks enraptured by the visual array of her ‘baby gym’ 4 The ‘feeling’ o f‘Right Brain’ activity 5 Chardin, The Draughtsman (ca. 1734) 6 Leonardo da Vinci, Drawing of drapery 7 Copying Picasso’s drawing of Stravinsky 8 Seeing ‘negative spaces’ 9 Eye fixations of artist and novice 10 Jasper Johns