Overview
- The first book to cover aesthetics also from the artist’s point of view
- The only book dealing with aesthetics in a way that incorporates contemporary science as well as contemporary art
- Captures how aesthetic experience is a form of cognition
Part of the book series: Synthese Library (SYLI, volume 521)
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About this book
This book offers a different take on the aesthetic experience. Firstly, aesthetics has traditionally been analyzed only from the point of view of the viewer. This book does not do that, as aesthetics involves both a viewer and a maker; thus, a satisfactory account of the aesthetic experience would be one that was derived from both kinds of perceptual experiences. Secondly, this book focuses on the role of low-level features, such as texture, illumination, color, shape, movement, etc., in the aesthetic experience. Perception itself significantly involves these low-level features, and the sensory experience of aesthetics does so particularly. To explicate this, the book provides background information into recent findings in visual science that support this emphasis on low-level features, particularly within the framework of very early perception known as gist perception, which is experienced in the first approximately 300 ms. This gist experience is also viewed through the philosophical lens of sensing, which gives a framework with which to understand low-level percepts. Thirdly, the book concludes with a description of how the perceptual and cognitive processes of viewer and maker interact with curatorial/critical testimony in order to construct the artwork’s meaning. Thus, art is seen as a kind of conversation.
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Table of contents (5 chapters)
Authors and Affiliations
About the author
Dena Shottenkirk writes in the field of epistemology and aesthetics, emphasizing the intersection of the two. The author of the monograph titled Nominalism and Its Aftermath: The Philosophy of Nelson Goodman (Springer) which tracks the relationship between his metaphysics, epistemology, and aesthetics, she is also the author of a book on censorship in art titled Cover Up the Dirty Parts (Cambridge Scholars Press). She has also co-edited two volumes, the most recent one titled Perception, Cognition, and Aesthetics (Routledge). An Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy at City University of New York’s Brooklyn College, she is also a practicing artist and formerly an art critic for such publications as Artforum; in addition, she is the founder of the public philosophy non-profit talkPOPc (Philosophers’ Ontological Party club), which currently sponsors public conversations between participants and philosophers.
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Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Art as Cognition: How Gist Reframes the Aesthetic Experience as Conversation
Authors: Dena Shottenkirk
Series Title: Synthese Library
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-032-00143-6
Publisher: Springer Cham
eBook Packages: Religion and Philosophy, Philosophy and Religion (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2025
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-032-00142-9Published: 02 October 2025
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-032-00145-0Due: 16 October 2026
eBook ISBN: 978-3-032-00143-6Published: 30 September 2025
Series ISSN: 0166-6991
Series E-ISSN: 2542-8292
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XIII, 193
Number of Illustrations: 9 b/w illustrations
Topics: Epistemology, Philosophy of Mind, Philosophy of Science