Cognitive Transformation as a Value of Art: A Study of the Cognitive Value of Art

Abstract

Art has been thought of as a source of cognitive value that might contribute to the survival and the enrichment of human life by providing us with knowledge about and insight into our world. The cognitive value of art, understood generally in terms of the provision of knowledge, has been discussed by many philosophers who have focused on issues concerning the means by which knowledge is acquired in the arts and the range of knowledge that art is able to provide. However, in focusing on knowledge as the end-product of art, philosophers have tended to neglect the subjective aspect of the cognitive value of art and the importance of the process of experiencing art, during which the subject who experiences an artwork goes through a particular kind of transformation. In recent years, Noël Carroll has overcome this problem by considering the moral cultivation of the subject who experiences works of art. However, the subjective aspect of art's cognitive value cannot be exhausted by moral cultivation. In this dissertation I argue that the principle cognitive value of art resides in the cognitive transformation of the subject that occurs throughout the process of experiencing works of art. My discussion of the transformation involves an analysis of the ways in which artworks articulate perspectives and promotes the processes of reconfiguration and particularization. I also, with the aid of John Dewey's philosophy of experience, explore the ways in which reconfiguration and particularization contribute to art's transformative potential and what characterizes the cognitive transformations which result from aesthetic experiences.