The "cognitive revolution" is greeted with enormous and unreserved enthusiasm by some as an antidote to what they see as "postmodern nihilism" and "armchair theorizing" in studies of the arts. For example, Joseph Anderson in The Reality of Illusion: An Ecological Approach to Cognitive Film Theory, claims
"Actually, a life-affirming, reality-embracing revolution is already under way that offers a refreshing alternative to the effete cynicism of the postmodern era. Scholars from such diverse fields as perceptual and cognitive pscyhology, linguistics, artifical intelligence, neurophysiology, and anthropology, who have confidence in the scientific method and an interest in understanding the workings of the human mind, are sharing information in pursuit of their common goal. They have spawned the cognitive revolution." (pp. 7-8)

Other scholars may employ a calmer rhetoric, but are equally convinced of the centrality and significance of the cognitive revolution. Here are more samples of how scholars describe this new avenue of exploration:

Gregory Currie, writing in Image and Mind: Film, Philosophy, and Cognitive Science:
"Contemporary empirical psychologists and philosophers of language and mind have found a way to pool their resources in the project called cognitive science. The aim is to build plausible models of the mind and its functions more detailed and specific than philosophers on their own could devise, and more flexible and abstract than neuropsychology alone could deliver." (pp. xiv-xv)

In a similar vein, Diana Raffman writes of her methodological approach in Language, Music, and Mind :
"Cognitive science is rich in implications for the philosophy of art. The border between psychology and the philosophy of mind is already richly planted; hence insofar as aesthetics makes its home in the latter discipline it is high time for scientific theory to be applied there as well." (p. 10)

One implication that many people find is that cognitive science may help to "legitimate" studies of the arts by treating them as central to any adequate account of the human mind. Currie for example thinks that this new approach will help justify and solidify the study of film, which "is generally assumed to be a marginal phenomenon within that almost terminally marginalized subdiscipline, aesthetics." (p. xiii)

Is such enthusiasm and optimism merited? Perhaps, but there are many questions remaining to be answered, and we also believe that ongoing discussions among arts and humanities scholars may pose new challenges for the programs of cognitive scientists. One sort of contribution that theorizing about the arts may make to cognitive science is to challenge unexamined assumptions about our ability to perceive, conceptualize, and assess these very important constituents of our culture. Below, we provide sketches of some key areas of inquiry, and of key issues now under debate. Our hope is to provide focus pages linking to these key topics with guided readings, outlines of major positions, and suggestions of the challenges that remain.

Perception
Key issues: How do we account for selective attention to aspects of artworks? How do the perceptions of experienced viewers or listeners differ from those of less experienced ones? How does aesthetic perception build upon, or how is it related to, natural human perceptual abilities?
More specific topics:

• Attention, "seeing-in" (Wollheim)
• Selective perception (Neisser, Gazzaniga)
• "Affordances" (Gibson)
• Realism vs. illusions

Kinds of research: Perception studies in music, visual arts, etc.

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Imagination
Key issues: What is the best explanation for imaginative experiences of the worlds created by artworks, especially those of complex narratives in films or novels? Studies of autistic children suggest that they lack certain powers to imagine the viewpoint of others. Sometimes this is put by saying that they lack a theory of the mind; but what does this mean? Some say that they lack a certain knowledge that ("theory theory"), while others argue rather that imagination involves some kind of basic, probably hard-wired, knowledge how-- an ability to simulate the experiences of others ("simulation theory"). What is the best explanation of various kinds of images, such as mental images, visual images, etc.? How are perceptual and symbolic imagination distinct; how are they related?

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Emotions
Key issues: Do we experience authentic emotions or "pretend" (simulated) emotions in response to artworks? What is an "authentic emotion," anyway? Can we experience genuine emotions (fear, horror, arousal, etc.) in response to illusions of, say, films? How are the emotions we feel in response to artworks "ecologically" based, i.e., how are they related to our environmental adaptation and species survival? What can neuroscience tell us about complex aesthetic emotions? What does cognitive science offer as an account of emotional expression IN works of art, such as impressionist music, German expressionist cinema, abstract expressionist painting, etc.?

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Representation
Key issues: Does representation occur through conventions or is it somehow more natural, a matter of the operation of certain psychological laws (perhaps even quite complex ones)? What is meant by "representation" in the context of discussions of mental processors, such as musical or visual processors? Here, representation seems to involve a specification or "cognitive mapping," not symbolization, of a world, leading some to deny that so-called "internal representations" have any role in cognitive science.
More specific topics:

• Can Goodman's ultra-conventionalist theory of representation be defended?
• How does the notion of visual representation occurring in normal sight compare to the kind of visual representations carried out intentionally by artists, filmmakers, etc.?
• Is there a language of cinema? of music? etc.? What would this mean? How is it learned and used (interpreted)?

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Interpretation
Key issues: What cognitive, perceptual, and other skills are used in interpreting works of art? How do basic perceptual skills enter in? Can cognitive science offer persuasive accounts of the way we learn to interpret difficult works such as avant-garde cinema, twelve-tone music, etc? What is the role of schemata that aid us in our perceptions, and how would we account for the development of such schemata (like, say, the master chess-player's schemata employed in looking at a chess board)?

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Language
Key issues: Is all thought inherently linguistic or propositional in nature? Or does a modularity thesis of mind hold -- are there forms of cognition unique to, say, music and visual art? Is language closely related or not to nonlingustic communication (stop and go lights, gestures, etc.)? Is it helpful and productive to treat music, painting, film, etc. as having languages of their own? How would such languages differ from ordinary languages? What is the relation of natural language to literary language (metaphor, lyrical poetic language, etc.)? One account of linguistics that has been extremely influential for art theorizing is that of Saussure; what would be the implications of replacing his theory with, say, that of Chomsky?

See also:
Focus Page: Gregory Currie on Film and Language
Focus Page: Diana Raffman on Music and Language

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Narration
Key issues: What is the best way to understand narration as it operates in different art forms such as the novel and cinema? How might narrative be involved in another temporal art form such as music? Are narratives part of human conscious experience generally? What would account for such narratives without an internal homunculus to serve as their narrator? And what is the relation then between "narrative truth" and "historical truth"? Can certain pathological states be understood as disrupted or abnormal narratives; how might such narratives play a role in the creation of innovative or avant-garde art? What is the relation between narration and explanation? What makes a narrative "true"?

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Knowledge and the Ineffable
Key issues: Do we have forms of experience in the arts that are ineffable? That is, do we have ineffable knowledge of, say, certain kinds of nuances in music that we cannot express in words? What would make such awareness count as real "knowledge"? What implications are there for current theories of consciousness like Dennett's?

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