Cognition and the Arts: From Naturalized Aesthetics to the Cognitive Humanities

How does the mind lend itself to artistic creation and appreciation? How should we study minds and arts in ways that transform our understanding of both? This book examines the concepts of art and cognition from the complementary perspectives of philosophy, the empirical sciences, and the humanities. Central chapters combine examples of visual art, music, literature, and film with the properties of cognition that they illuminate, including 4E cognition, predictive processing, and theories of affect and emotion. These aspects of cognition are undergoing theoretical shifts that complicate established understandings of the mind and its encounter with the arts. As the book takes stock of recent developments in aesthetics that have incorporated empirical findings (Naturalized Aesthetics), it also envisions a new generation of cognitive science with robust ties to history and literature (the Cognitive Humanities). In this way, Cognition and the Arts can be seen as a model of interdisciplinary scholarship.

About the Author

Timothy Justus is Professor of Cognitive Science at Pitzer College (The Claremont Colleges), with scholarly interests including cognitive neuroscience, the cognitive humanities, and the history and philosophy of cognitive science. In 2020–21, Justus was a Fellow of the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study.