Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t8hqh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-24T16:33:50.731Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Art and fiction are signals with indeterminate truth values

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 November 2017

Nathaniel Rabb
Nathaniel Rabb*
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA 02467. [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Menninghaus et al. distinguish art from fiction, but no current arguments or data suggest that the concept of art can be meaningfully circumscribed. This is a problem for aesthetic psychology. I sketch a solution by rejecting the distinction: Unlike most animal communication, in which signals are either true or false, art and fiction consist of signals without determinate truth values.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 40 , 2017 , e373
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Blount, J. D., Metcalfe, N. B., Birkhead, T. R. & Surai, P. F. (2003) Carotenoid modulation of immune function and sexual attractiveness in zebra finches. Science 300(5616):125–27.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bullot, N. J. & Reber, R. (2013b) A psycho-historical research program for the integrative science of art. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 36(2):163–80. Available at: http://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X12002464.Google Scholar
Chatterjee, A. & Vartanian, O. (2014) Neuroaesthetics. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 18(7):370–75.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cosmides, L. & Tooby, J. (2000) Adaptations for decoupling and metarepresentation. In: Metarepresentations: A multidisciplinary perspective, ed. Sperber, D.. Oxford.Google Scholar
Davies, S. (2006) The philosophy of art. Blackwell.Google Scholar
Dutton, D. (2009) The art instinct. Bloomsbury.Google Scholar
Gabrielsson, A. & Wik, S. L. (2003) Strong experiences related to music: A descriptive system. Musicae Scientiae 7(2):157–217.Google Scholar
Gerger, G., Leder, H. & Kremer, A. (2014) Context effects on emotional and aesthetic evaluations of artworks and IAPS pictures. Acta Psychologica 151(1):174–83. Available at: http://doi.org/10.1016/j.actpsy.2014.06.008.Google Scholar
Gilbert, D. T. (1991) How mental systems believe. American Psychologist 46(2):107.Google Scholar
Green, M. C. & Brock, T. C. (2000) The role of transportation in the persuasiveness of public narratives. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 79(5):701.Google Scholar
Heinen, V. K. & Stephens, D. W. (2016) Blue jays, Cyanocitta cristata, devalue social information in uncertain environments. Animal Behaviour 112:53–62.Google Scholar
Iñiguez, G., Govezensky, T., Dunbar, R., Kaski, K. & Barrio, R. A. (2014) Effects of deception in social networks. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 281(1790):20141195.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kamber, R. (2011) Experimental philosophy of art. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 69(2):197–208.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leder, H. & Nadal, M. (2014) Ten years of a model of aesthetic appreciation and aesthetic judgments: The aesthetic episode – Developments and challenges in empirical aesthetics. British Journal of Psychology 105(4):443–64. Available at: http://doi.org/10.1111/bjop.12084.Google Scholar
Malt, B. C. (1990) Features and beliefs in the mental representation of categories. Journal of Memory and Language 29(3):289–315.Google Scholar
Mar, R. A. & Oatley, K. (2008) The function of fiction is the abstraction and simulation of social experience. Perspectives on Psychological Science 3(3):173–92.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Marsh, E. J. & Fazio, L. K. (2006) Learning errors from fiction: Difficulties in reducing reliance on fictional stories. Memory and Cognition 34(5):1140–49.Google Scholar
Maynard-Smith, J. & Harper, D. (2003) Animal signals. Oxford.Google Scholar
Mocaiber, I., Perakakis, P., Pereira, M. G., Pinheiro, W. M., Volchan, E., de Oliveira, L. & Vila, J. (2011a) Stimulus appraisal modulates cardiac reactivity to briefly presented mutilation pictures. International Journal of Psychophysiology 81(3):299–304.Google Scholar
Mocaiber, I., Pereira, M. G., Erthal, F. S., Machado-Pinheiro, W., David, I. A., Cagy, M., Volchan, E. & de Oliveira, L. (2010) Fact or fiction? An event-related potential study of implicit emotion regulation. Neuroscience Letters 476(2):84–88.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Mocaiber, I., Sanchez, T. A., Pereira, M. G., Erthal, F. S., Joffily, M., Araujo, D. B., Volchan, E. & de Oliveira, L. (2011b) Antecedent descriptions change brain reactivity to emotional stimuli: A functional magnetic resonance imaging study of an extrinsic and incidental reappraisal strategy. Neuroscience 193:241–48.Google Scholar
Munn, C. A. (1986) Birds that “cry wolf.” Nature 319:143–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pearce, M. T., Zaidel, D. W., Vartanian, O., Skov, M., Leder, H., Chatterjee, A. & Nadal, M. (2016) Neuroaesthetics: The cognitive neuroscience of aesthetic experience. Perspectives on Psychological Science 11(2):265–79.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Pelowski, M. J. (2015) Tears and transformation: Feeling like crying as an indicator of insightful or “aesthetic” experience with art. Frontiers in Psychology 6:1006.Google Scholar
Sloman, S. A. & Lagnado, D. (2015) Causality in thought. Annual Review of Psychology 66:223–47.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Stolnitz, J. (1961) On the origins of “aesthetic disinterestedness.” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 20(2):131–43.Google Scholar
Strange, J. J. & Leung, C. C. (1999) How anecdotal accounts in news and in fiction can influence judgments of a social problem's urgency, causes, and cures. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 25(4):436–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tooby, J. & Cosmides, L. (2001) Does beauty build adapted minds? Toward an evolutionary theory of aesthetics, fiction, and the arts. SubStance 30(1):6–27.Google Scholar
Van Dongen, N. N., Van Strien, J. W. & Dijkstra, K. (2016) Implicit emotion regulation in the context of viewing artworks: ERP evidence in response to pleasant and unpleasant pictures. Brain and Cognition 107:48–54. Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.bandc.2016.06.003.Google Scholar
Wagner, V., Menninghaus, W., Hanich, J. & Jacobsen, T. (2014) Art schema effects on affective experience: The case of disgusting images. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts 8(2):120–29. Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0036126.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weisberg, D. S. (2015) Pretend play. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Cognitive Science 6(3):249–61.Google ScholarPubMed
Weisberg, D. S. & Gopnik, A. (2013) Pretense, counterfactuals, and Bayesian causal models: Why what is not real really matters. Cognitive Science 37(7):1368–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar