“Neuroaesthetics”, a field which
has just recently been explored by some more adventurous neuroscientists, is an
attempt to explain the human experience of art, and particularly the
appreciation of some art pieces over others, in terms of cognitive mechanisms. John
Hyman, Professor of philosophy at Oxford, recently argued in his piece “Art and Neuroscience” that the “neuro-aesthetics” proposed by the two main theorists in
the field, V.S. Ramachandran and Semir Zeki, fail on numerous levels, such as
improper translation from animal experiments to human experience, failure to
distinguish the art object from other kinds of pleasurable objects (a difficult
task but one long thought essential to aesthetic theory), and, most
importantly, a narrow or otherwise unworkable definition of art itself. Hyman
thinks these difficulties stem from a failure to build upon existing aesthetic
theories.[1]
When looking at the two scientists’ definitions of art, it is easy to see where
he is coming from, Ramachandran’s view is essentially that all art is
caricature, and Zeki believes that all “great art” is defined by its capacity
for multiple interpretations. As Hyman puts it at the end of his article, “In
neuroscience, and in psychology in general, philosophy is unavoidable; and if
we ignore the philosophy of the past, we shall simply reinvent the wheel. In
other words, our ideas will be based on mediocre and amateurish philosophy of
our own.” And, what may well be worse, these theories create a model of a
universal viewer, utterly ignoring gender, sex, and other forms of social
positionality.
One of the principle problems with
these neuroscientific approaches to aesthetic theory is that even if they could
effectively explain the mechanisms by which human beings enjoy art, they would
still be providing a “how” answer, when at least part of the question in
aesthetics is always a “why”. For instance, Patrick Cavanaugh, in his article
“The artist as neuroscientist” for Nature
Neuroscience[2]
claims that a recent study by Vuilleumier et al.[3] which
demonstrated that blurry faces activated the amygdala more than sharpened or
unfiltered versions perhaps demonstrates why impressionist paintings can be so
emotionally evocative, when a photograph of the same scene seems unlikely to do
the same. While it may be unscientific for Cavanaugh to make this leap, his
story is somewhat plausible, but even if we take it to be true, the question
remains, why do we like this? What about deriving an emotional experience from
an art object is pleasurable?
An even bigger and more basic problem—which
seems to have gone largely undiscussed—with these recent neuro-aesthetic
theories is that they assume that a single piece of art’s quality can be
expressed with a single explanation. In other words, they seem to be utterly
unaware of the role of positionality in the perception and enjoyment of art.
This is particularly obvious in Ramachandran’s chosen example of his proposed
peak-shift (see figure and comment for explanation) effect, which is the exaggerated
sex characteristics of classical sculptures of Indian goddesses. But one also
has to ask, what exactly would Ramachandran’s explanation be for a straight
woman or gay man who likes these sculptures? Zeki fails on similar grounds,
seemingly failing to consider at all how the multiplicity of interpretations is
dependent largely upon the viewer’s social position.
The peak-shift effect as
demonstrated by pigeons pecking in response to different light wavelengths in
H.M. Hanson’s experiment. The birds are first conditioned by being rewarded for
one stimulus (sD) and not for another (sΔ), but then when
shown a range of stimuli, they tend to overestimate the difference between the
stimuli for which they are rewarded and that which they are not, causing the
response peak to be “shifted” away from the reward stimulus.[4]
Hyman argues that neuroscience,
with its origins in 19th century modes of thought and a philosophy
of perception inherited from Locke and Kant is unlikely to succeed in the field
of aesthetics without acknowledging its heritage. A number of 20th
century philosophers went further, arguing that art is precisely the thing
which the scientific worldview cannot encapsulate. I am not willing to go that
far. I think there is ample commonality between art and science, they are both
ways of making sense of experience via observing and manipulating the world, so
both are fundamentally exploratory. Interestingly, Cavanaugh makes a point
about how the un-naturalistic but still readily visually acceptable uses of
space and light in renaissance and baroque painting indicate how the visual
system functions; while this same piece of evidence is used by cultural critics
construct psychoanalytic meanings. I
think that explanations of neural mechanisms definitely have a promising place
in aesthetics, but first we must understand more about the brain in general,
and particularly the interrelated neural and social differences between
viewers, and that these explanations will be much more useful if they are
incorporated into the existing discipline rather than used to build a new
one.
-Nathaniel
Tingley
[1] Hyman,
John. (2010) R. Frigg, M.C. Hunter (eds.), Beyond Mimesis and Convention,
Boston Studies 245
in the Philosophy of Science 262.
[2] Cavanagh,
P. (2005). The artist as neuroscientist. Nature, 434(7031), 301-307.
doi:10.1038/434301a
[3] Vuilleumier,
P., Armony J. L., Driver, J. & Dolan R. J. (2003). Nature Neurosci 6, 624-631.
[4]
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