Should we, in order to think about aesthetic experience, take the natural sciences as a model? Experimental philosophy seeks, using protocols and tests, to fill a gap between conceptualization and empirical data. These methods are now making their entry into aesthetics.
The experimental philosophy analyzed in this work designates a current born at the end of the XXe century, in reaction against the supposed dogmatic nature of conceptual analysis; it aims to cast suspicion on a priori concepts with a view to deconstructing philosophy practiced “in an armchair” and to question the unexamined intuitions to which it claims. Its audience has remained confidential until now in France where, for a majority of the educated public, its simple name is equivalent to a sort of oxymoron. However, a growing number of studies dealing for example with reasoning or emotions readily refer to it, in particular in sectors such as economics which are at the crossroads of theoretical concerns and behavioral considerations. But since its motivation is epistemological as well as practical since it concerns the legitimization of basic empirical knowledge, it is understandable that its influence tends to spread to other fields, including those which, like ethics and aesthetics, traditionally include a strong normative component (moral principles or rules of taste).
The book edited by Florian Cova and Sébastien Réhault comes at just the right time to offer an initial signposting and a host of enlightening and useful insights, both thematically and methodologically. While it is not very surprising that the work appears in English by a British publisher, and in a dedicated collection that reviews the main fields of practice of philosophy, the list of contributors is broader, both open and balanced, associating already established researchers with promising talents. The Anglo-Saxons dominate in number (Angelika Seidel, Jonathan Weinberg, Jesse Prinz, Richard Kamber, AaronMeskin, among others), but the Nicod Institute provides a significant contingent (Jérôme Pelletier, Jérôme Dokic, Isidora Stojanovic, Alessandro Pignocci, etc.) completed by the Centre des sciences affectives de Genève (Florian Cova, Constant Bonard, Steve Humbert-Droz) and other researchers working in other institutions in Europe.
A new field of research
Like many other disciplines, aesthetics is today in a phase of profound questioning of its identity and its pretensions. Its traditional certainties concerning the unconditional value of Beauty and the contemplative character of the aesthetic experience that it thought intangible have been shaken, although they still serve as a large-scale anchor point. This situation does not only have internal roots, linked to the evolution of artistic forms and the opening of new aesthetic spaces, it is mainly due to the emergence of paradigms that have had a decisive effect on the whole of philosophy: naturalization places aesthetic phenomena in the long term of evolution and favors information from the sciences, the cognitive turn sees judgment as the result of complex psychic processes, and increasingly diversified neurophysiological research is linked to it. So-called experimental philosophy is part of this renewal of methods and study programs while being legally independent of them. It can indeed be seen as the late concretization of Hume’s project when he claimed to “introduce the experimental method into moral subjects” (subtitle of the Treaty), even though the content and form of his analyses remain very far from what is practiced today.
In its contemporary methodology, the use of experimental philosophy in aesthetics aims to place itself at the most empirical level, in contact with direct experience and communication. The systematic use of tests aims to neutralize introspection, to distance personal intuitions or speculative hypotheses and it allows the processing of the results obtained by means of classical statistical techniques. As the authors of the volume specify, it is not only a question of taking into account empirical facts already observed; the objective is to design experimental protocols allowing aesthetic research to be oriented towards paths that are both innovative and fruitful. If the description of phenomena as practiced by the social sciences is far from losing its interest, the approach is guided by a theoretical ambition of a strictly philosophical order and open to other sub-disciplines.
The term that probably most aptly characterizes the nature of the project is that of “impure aesthetics” (proposed by A. Seidel and J. Prinz), impure because it runs counter to the desire for disinterestedness specific to the Western tradition of aesthetics and instead emphasizes the multitude of factors that interact in any aesthetic situation, whether the subject is clearly aware of them or not. For example, objective data such as the size and mode of presentation of a work, its originality, information on the author, etc., play a role that is too often neglected and requires the introduction of broader explanatory schemes.
The interest of the book is to propose not an anthology of already published texts but unpublished articles presenting research in progress. Although technical in content and focused on delimited objects, it does not neglect analyses of a more general scope or some significant historical references. The questions of aesthetic judgment (which gives it its content and validity), the extension of the concept of art (from the point of view of the author and the receiver), the role of emotions and imagination, and the way of using aesthetic predicates are addressed in particular. In each of the chapters, it integrates a critical look at the procedures implemented (at a factual and conceptual level).
Expected benefits of experimental philosophy of aesthetics
Although these are very recent approaches, it is already possible to get an idea of what can be expected from this type of study. Here are some of the contributions that are immediately apparent in the analyses presented:
– Refining the characterization of exemplary aesthetic situations. An experience such as that of the sublime can now be modeled from the immersive conditions that blur the boundary between self and world, particularly in music and virtual reality. In the case of the imaginative resistance that individuals feel when faced with phenomena that offend their sensitivity or convictions, it becomes possible to test the relevance of the possible factors that make the content of a judgment bizarre. What emerges from such analyses is not necessarily a questioning of theoretical conclusions but rather a new way of understanding them. Thus, regarding the intense quasi-emotions that we feel towards fictional entities that we know do not exist, Jérôme Pelletier shows how the research conducted by Mario Sperduti on the forms of emotional regulation internal to fictional situations provides relevant arguments for relativizing the type of psychological interaction that Kendall Walton had postulated in a purely speculative manner.
– Critically assess the scope of assertions that are too often taken at face value by dominant aesthetic theories, while their empirical foundation has never been the subject of in-depth investigation. A good example is that of judgments of taste: according to the vulgate from Kant, they cannot be assimilated to the simple satisfaction felt in front of something pleasant since the latter is devoid of intersubjective scope. However, Florian Cova verifies that a majority of individuals subjected to a test on the causal relationship between their experience and its source do not seem to grant beauty a clearly differentiated status. This should not lead to assuming a leveling of opinions but rather to knowing how to take into account the context of communication in which one is placed. Another important sector relates to ontological questions: in what concerns the delimitation of art (at the border between creation, nature and technique) and the type of psychological investment that it is supposed to require (the work as an extension of its author).
– Better measure the share of extra-perceptive factors that intervene in aesthetic evaluation and that are at the heart of the difficulty of certain audiences in appreciating a number of contemporary works (such as readymades and facsimiles that are visually indistinguishable from ordinary objects). Institutional approaches have already highlighted the gap between the characterization of objects and the representation of subjects, but the experimental approach is more capable than others of taking seriously the reality of the conditions of apprehension.
– Reestablishing the dialogue between ordinary aesthetics and philosophical conceptualization. For several decades, aestheticians have become aware of the interest presented by the ordinary and the everyday; it is now appropriate to go a step further and to consider what modalities allow to better associate the general public with a genuine research of an aesthetic type. This is what Aaron Meskin and Shen-yi Liao examine in a program of “public philosophy” devoted to taste impressions (identifying various samples of coffee by tasting them and knowing how to communicate the relevant information to others). The key point is that the public does not passively receive results, it contributes to generating them and above all it becomes aware of the type of difficulties that transmission involves.
Resistances and questions
It cannot be concealed, however, that there remains a strong tension between the experimental approach and aesthetic research conducted according to the classical principles of aesthetics. We see it emerging in the reservations present in most of the articles, often correlated with the need for additional investigations, and a final section, soberly entitled “metaphilosophy”, opportunely takes stock of some criticisms that are more recurrent.
J. Weinberg examines whether the appeal to intuitions and the examination of single cases, so prized by philosophers or art historians, stands up well to the “restrictive challenge” launched by the partisans of experimentation against their adversaries who are supposedly blind to their own biases. Despite appearances, aestheticians are far from being helpless in the face of the risk of giving rise to epistemologically deleterious effects and the specificity of their field (manipulating stimuli rich and fuzzy theories) even gives them an appreciable advantage over other philosophical sectors.
A more radical critique concerns the threat of relativism that can arise from the confusion between pleasant and beautiful. By remaining faithful to classical (Kantian) inspiration, Nick Zangwill comes to contest the legitimacy of these blind examinations. In his eyes, the source of the problem lies in the reduction of aesthetic analysis to a form of standardized questionnaire, often reduced to a simple vignette that removes any sense of nuances and especially any capacity for reflection with regard to one’s own choices. From then on, the conclusions that are drawn from it end up producing a sort of artifact. Reducing the idea of normativity to a statistical conformity, does this not also abolish the very meaning of correctness and freedom to judge?
It would be unfair, however, to retain from this well-structured and well-argued book only the indications of a methodology that sometimes still lacks maturity. The experimental paradigm is a reality and it will certainly have notable effects on all aesthetic questions. It is certainly premature to decide whether these developments will add a marginal and picturesque canton or will exert a lasting renovating action on fundamental theses. In both cases, it is already clear that we will be able to ignore this type of work less and less.