Output details

Art and Extensionism

The significance of this output is demonstrated by its inclusion in an anthology featuring contributions from leading international figures working in the intersection between art, science and philosophy. The anthology promotes the 'externalist' view of the mind, which regards mental properties as extending beyond the brain into the body and the world. The book is published by a prominent house in the field of consciousness studies, whose list includes many key texts such as the Journal of Consciousness Studies. The nature and location of mind is a highly topical and controversial area within contemporary consciousness science and philosophy of mind. This anthology makes a direct and emphatic intervention in those debates. The essay sets out an 'extensionist' view of the aesthetic relationship between viewer and artwork. The main substance of the argument is to reject the 'brain-centred' view of aesthetic response prevalent among advocates of neuroaesthetic and neurobiological research. Instead, Pepperell focuses on an understanding of art that sees the process of aesthetic appreciation being driven by a much wider set of parameters, extending far beyond the brain, to include the audience, the environment and the artwork itself. This is a development of a more general view of 'extensionism', which is an ontological approach that, in brief, seeks to stress the extended properties of objects and events, and the underlying continuities between things rather than the distinctions. Extensionism is an original contribution to current debates in philosophy of mind. The rigour of the research is evidenced by the fact that it has been presented at several high profile, peer reviewed conferences and other events, including the Towards a Science of Consciousness (Tuscon 2010), Consciousness Reframed (Vienna 2009), and the British Psychological Society Conference (Oxford 2010).