Aesthetic Psychology

24 September 2007 to 26 September 2007

This conference will represent the culmination of a research project, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), entitled �Towards an Aesthetic Psychology: Aesthetic Perception and Cognition�.

General Aim:

Establish whether, and if so in precisely which respects, the investigations conducted and results produced by neighbouring academic disciplines (principally Cognitive and Developmental Psychology, Neuro- and Cognitive Science, Social Anthropology, Evolutionary Biology, Psychiatry) may contribute to the resolution of certain concerns central to Philosophical Aesthetics.

Main Themes:

Imagination and Make-Believe

The Role of Emotion in Aesthetic Experience

Beauty: Autonomy versus Rule-Following

Pictorial Representation and Visual Arts

Some Questions:

How, if at all, can pretend-play contribute to the way in which we learn to refine our aesthetic perception and/or our artistic representational skills?

What, if anything, can early cave art tell us about the evolution of the human mind/brain and the role and/or importance of representational abilities?

Can psychologists make sense of the notion of a �quasi-emotion�? Is there any empirical evidence for the existence of �innate� rules of patterns for beauty?

Speakers:

Noel Carroll (Temple);Tom Cochrane;David Cooper (Durham);Amy Coplan;Roddy Cowie(Queen�s, Belfast);Greg Currie (Nottingham);Stephen Davies (Auckland);Ellen Dissanayake (Oregon);Norman Freeman (Bristol);Roman Frigg (LSE) ;Peter Goldie (Manchester);John Hyman (Oxford);Peter Lamarque (York);Robert Layton (Durham);
Jonathan Lowe (Durham);Derek Matravers (Open);Chris McManus (UCL);Aaron Meskin (Leeds);Margaret Moore (Temple);Jesse Prinz (North Carolina);Jenefer Robinson (Cincinnati);
Mark Rollins (Washington University);Elisabeth Schellekens (Durham);William Seeley;Dorothy Singer (Yale);Jerome Singer (Yale);Kathleen Stock (Sussex);Johan Veldeman;Dahlia Zaidel (UCLA);Nick Zangwill (Durham)