Aesthesis, noesis, or both? Enactivism meets representationalism in aesthetics

Two prominent models of the mind—enactivism and representationalism—are often seen as contradictory, but this article argues they can coexist in explaining how people form aesthetic judgments. The main disagreement between the models does not apply to aesthetic judging, because perceiving aesthetic value is not a form of basic cognition that must be either enactive or representational. Instead, aesthetic judgment requires subjective, embodied metacognitive evidence, which allows incorporating aspects of both models. The proposed view, representational enactivism, treats the aesthetic subject as an emergent functional system while characterizing its sub-systems in representationalist terms, doing justice to the phenomenon of aesthetic judging.

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Abstract

Two types of systemic models of the mind – the enactivist and the representationalist model – are often depicted as contradictory and mutually exclusive. In this article, I investigate whether they can meaningfully coexist in a viable account of forming aesthetic judgments. I argue that the two models can simultaneously contribute to the understanding of aesthetic judging as an affective cognitive process. First, I clarify why the main disagreement between the models does not apply to the case of aesthetic judging. Second, I trace a possible path for how the two models could be merged in the field of aesthetics. My main argument draws on the idea that perceiving aesthetic value does not belong to basic cognition that can be seen as either enactive or representational, and that hence we can choose to pick the best of both worlds. In other words, we can and indeed should incorporate aspects of both models to do justice to the phenomenon of aesthetic judging. Perceiving aesthetic value requires subjective, or embodied, metacognitive evidence. This representational enactivism entails that the aesthetic subject can be seen as an emergent functional system while the functional sub-systems that constitute the subject can be characterized in representationalist terms.