Threefoldness

Being alive to the world: an artist's perspective on predictive processing

I consider predictive processing (PP) from the perspective of an artist who also conducts scientific research into art and perception. This paper presents artworks I have made and statements from other artists that exemplify some of PP's core principles. But it also raises questions about the extent to which current applications of PP theory provide a comprehensive account of art experience. Prediction error minimization, a key mechanism of PP, has been proposed as a cause of positive aesthetic affect because artworks offer opportunities for reward through disambiguation and learning. However, there are many cases where prediction errors proliferate in art experiences in a way that enhances aesthetic affect. Here I suggest the inability of our perceptual systems to minimize prediction errors when beholding certain artworks can evoke heightened states of fascination and exhilaration. Moreover, powerful artworks provide opportunities for maximizing prediction errors, within certain bounds, by evoking states of paradox, contradiction and illogicality. I conclude that beholding such artworks can intensify our sense of being by making us more alive to the world. This article is part of the theme issue 'Art, aesthetics and predictive processing: theoretical and empirical perspectives'.

What do we see in pictures? The sensory individuals of picture perception

When I am looking at an apple, I perceptually attribute certain properties to certain entities. Two questions arise: what are these entities (what is it that I perceptually represent as having properties) and what are these properties (what properties I perceive this entity as having)? This paper is about the former, less widely explored, question: what does our perceptual system attribute properties to? In other words, what are these 'sensory individuals'. There have been important debates in philosophy of perception about what sensory individuals would be the most plausible candidates for which sense modalities. The aim of this paper is to ask a related question about picture perception: what is the sensory individual of picture perception? When we look at a picture and see an apple depicted in it, what kind of entity do we see? What do we perceptually attribute properties to? I argue that the most straightforward candidates (ordinary objects, sui generis sensory individuals, no sensory individuals) are all problematic and that the most plausible candidate for the sensory individuals of picture perception are spatiotemporal regions.

Imagining one experience to be another

I can imagine a banana to be a phone receiver. I can also imagine the flapping of my arms to be flying. So it is possible to imagine one thing to be another-at least for some types of 'things'. I will argue that although it is possible to imagine an object to be another object and it is also possible to imagine an activity to be a different activity, one cannot imagine one's present sensory experience to be a different sensory experience with different qualitative character. This claim will have some important consequences beyond the philosophy of imagination, for example, for some accounts of depiction.