Philosophy, Neuroscience, and Aesthetic Understanding

Evolutionary origins of art and aesthetics video:

I found Changeux to be extremely difficult to understand. I could barely pick up on his point during the entirety of the lecture. I tried to turn on the closed caption to help and that was even getting what he was saying wrong. It was especially difficult since he was using scientific words that I’m not entirely familiar with and couldn’t quite pick up on what he was attempting to say. What I believe he was speaking about was the psychological connection to art creation and the processing of visual art. He talks about the conscious and sub-conscious processing of aesthetics.

In regards to Ramachandran’s lecture he discusses the universal laws of visual aesthetics. It’s interesting because he says the place where art and science intertwine is in the human brain. What he means by this is the way human’s process a visual image is by processing the different aspects of it. He mentions that visual aesthetics are something that connects deep in the brain.

Aesthetics: Philosophy of Art:

This video is about what art is and who defines it, or if it can even be defined. This video discusses the meaning of aesthetics in art. As I mentioned in my discussion post I liked the philosophy of Immanuel Kant from the Age of Enlightenment. He seemed to have a good concept on  philosophy of aesthetics. How Kant explained that aesthetic is not governed by concepts and there’s no exact way to describe what is beautiful because its relative to the individual reminds me of Jacques Derrida’s philosophy which I happen to agree with. That every meaning is subjective to the receiver, what beauty is to you, I could never understand and vice versa.

What the Brain Draws from: Art and Neuroscience:

The article talks about how the brain recognizes certain things in art and it’s familiarity makes the art more pleasing. Such as line drawings, it’s not necessarily realistic but it’s something we can recognize if for example it’s a line drawing of a face.

The videos and article relate to the reading in the sense that they all commonly discuss the meaning of aesthetics and the process of what that means. But the depth that the videos and article added is that it really went into the deeper reasons as to why our brains are aesthetically pleased and how we as humans process works of art. They also really dug into the deep philosophical question of what is considered art and if there is rules and restrictions that determine what art and beauty are.