Attentional Engines

Abstract

What is it about art that can be so captivating? How is it that we find value in these often odd and abstract objects and events that we call artworks? My proposal is that artworks are attentional engines. They are artifacts that have been intentionally designed to direct attention to critical stylistic features that reveal their point, purpose, or meaning. My suggestion is that there is a lot that we can learn about art from interdisciplinary research focused on our perceptual engagement with artworks. These kinds of studies can reveal how we recognize artworks, how we differentiate them from other, more quotidian artifacts. In doing so they reveal how artworks function as a unique source of value. Our interactions with artworks draw on a broad base of shared artistic and cultural constitutive of different categories of art. Cognitive systems integrate this information into our experience of art, guiding attention, and shaping what we perceive. Our understanding and appreciation of artworks is therefore carried in our perceptual experience of them. Teasing out how this works can contribute valuable information to our philosophical understanding of art. Attentional Engines explores this interdisciplinary strategy for understanding art. It articulates a cognitivist theory of art grounded in perceptual psychology and the neuroscience attention and demonstrates its application to a range of puzzles in the philosophy of the arts, including questions about the nature of depiction, the role played by metakinesis in dance appreciation, the nature of musical expression, and the power of movies.

The psychological basis of music appreciation: Structure, self, source.

“…Live performance necessarily involves bodily movements that are causally related to the sounded music. Such movements include skilled actions needed to produce sounds on musical instruments, as well as ancillary bodily gestures and facial expressions that convey emotional meaning or direct attention to important structural features (Kozbelt & Seeley, 2007; Seeley, 2020). B.…”

“…Helmholtz’s approach to music aesthetics was to explore “the boundaries of physical and physiological acoustics on the one side, and of musical science and aesthetics on the other” (p. 1). This focus on musical acoustics and psychophysics—the psychological impact of sounded music—has remained largely unchallenged, despite advances in understanding human sensitivity to the acoustic properties of music (e.g., Harrison & Pearce, 2020; McDermott et al, 2016; Plomp & Levelt, 1965; Seeley, 2020).…”

“…Fifth, an individual may gain access to source information before hearing the music, and their understanding of this source can bias personal and structural forms of appreciation (Seeley, 2020). For example, knowing that the upbeat song “Home is Where You’re Happy” was composed and performed by cult leader Charles Manson may influence a person’s attitude toward the music prior to hearing it, diminishing any personal associations they may have made with the song, and even how they perceive the song’s structural features.…”