Aesthetics as an Emotional Activity That Facilitates Sense-Making: Towards an Enactive Approach to Aesthetic Experience

Abstract

Nowadays, aesthetics are generally considered as a crucial aspect that affects the way we confront things, events, and states of affairs. However, the functional role of aesthetics in the interaction between agent and environment has not been addressed effectively. Our objective here is to provide an explanation concerning the role of aesthetics, and especially, of the aesthetic experience as a fundamental bodily and emotional activity in the respective interactions. An explanation of the functional role of the aesthetic experience could offer new orientations to our understanding of embodied cognition and of aesthetics as a fundamental part of it. We argue that aesthetic experience, especially its emotional dimension, is an evaluative process that influences the anticipation for stable and successful interactions with the environment. In other words, aesthetics facilitates sense-making as they affect what might be anticipated by an action tendency with respect to an environment. On the nature of aesthetic experienceThe conception of the 'aesthetic' has always been attracting thinkers from philosophy, psychology and more recently from neurobiology. From the ancient ages of Plato and Aristotle to the present, the understanding of the 'aesthetic' remains an ambitious and complex task within a more general attempt to analyze human behavior. In philosophical writings, which are the most influential in the study of the 'aesthetic', aesthetic experience has too many and mostly contradictory meanings concerning the processes that are related to perception and to evaluation of objects. Although aestheticians accept that the 'aesthetic' is connected to emotional phenomena, the role and the content of such experiences seem confusing even in contemporary writings. As Levinson (1997) argues, the variety of those approaches suggests that there is indeed something puzzling about aesthetic emotions. For those following the Kantian tradition, aesthetic emotions have traditionally been characterized by disinterestedness and purposelessness. The 'aesthetic' is appre-

The Enactive Approach to Architectural Experience: A Neurophysiological Perspective on Embodiment, Motivation, and Affordances

“…While the fine dynamic interconnection among these cerebral networks still remains to be investigated in detail, it is worth proposing a broader hypothesis on the nature of architectural experience (including its aesthetic dimension) and how these experimental results could correspond with the recent enactive accounts of aesthetic experience (Xenakis and Arnellos, 2014 , 2015 ). Firstly, the evidence of the sensory-motor system in object perception suggests that aesthetic experience arises as a result of the interaction between the observer and the object.…”

“…Firstly, the evidence of the sensory-motor system in object perception suggests that aesthetic experience arises as a result of the interaction between the observer and the object. On the other hand, the role of emotion-evaluation systems indicates that aesthetic experience is an embodied phenomenon directly linked to adaptivity (Xenakis and Arnellos, 2015 ) and that aesthetic perception functions in the service of a better coping with the environment (Xenakis and Arnellos, 2014 ). Following such description of aesthetics, empathy as a bodily understanding of the work of art or architecture can be thus identified as pertaining to the process of sense-making and anticipatory preparation for subsequent actions.…”

Aesthetic Experiences Across Cultures: Neural Correlates When Viewing Traditional Eastern or Western Landscape Paintings

“…These processes seem to be culturally sensitive (Han and Northoff, 2008). According to recent enactive accounts of aesthetic experience (Xenakis and Arnellos, 2014, 2015), aesthetic experience arises as a result of the interaction between the viewer and the object. Aesthetic experience is also an embodied phenomenon directly linked to adaptation and aesthetic perception and helps cope with the environment.…”

Emotions, values, and aesthetic perception

“…Various versions of enactivism (since Varela et al, 1992) also emphasize organism environment interaction. The role of interaction has found its way also to aesthetic theory (Xenakis, Arnellos & Darzentas 2011;Xenakis & Arnellos 2015). The main difference between these views and the present pragmatist approach is the explicit notion of meaning as habit of action.…”