_Interdisciplines is an organisation that aims to link the humanities with the cognitive sciences and their latest online conference focuses on art and cognition.
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http://www.mindhacks.com/blog/2006/01/art_and_cognition.html
_Hyman’s paper is notable as it criticises the current trend of suggesting that adequate theories of aesthetics must, in essence, be neurologically based.
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Indeed. The sad spectacle of nerobiologists and “cognitive scientists” discovering how a single set of cells functions in the brain and declaring that an entire area of art must be regulated by this really needs to stop. Chemists don’t insist that all sculptures must be shaped like hydrogen atoms, or that those sculptures shaped like hydrogen atoms have no experiential, social, or even higher-level cognitive -uh- physical component.
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