The Psychology of Aesthetics

In my History of Psychology class we are currently reading a work by Steven Pinker titled "How the Mind Works." In chapter eight, Pinker examins the psychological basis for why humans pursue an activity which has absolutely no impact on the necessaries of survival; namely, art.

I thought it was very interesting that Pinker suggested that the reason we enjoy art is because it is a concentrated dose of the forms and images we encounter in everyday life. Basically, the idea is that when we are able to make sense of our surroundings, our pleasure centers activate. Thus, art, since it is purified and concentrated form, gives us a more concentrated dose of pleasure. This holds for visual art as well as music. Harmonious music is just like visual arts in that it concentrates the sensible sounds we hear every day and proceeds in a fashion that we can make sense of. The opposite of these things would be similar to looking through fog to try and make sense of one's environment or being in a room full of loud, indiscernable noise.

So the pursuit of art gives us pleasure because it confirms our beliefs about the world. We like it when we are able to see and understand the lines and shapes of our environment, because then we know how to use that environment to survive, and that pleasure/secure feeling transfers to art. So then, what is the appeal of so-called "dissonant art"?

It probably isn't that dissonant art confirms our conceptions of the world; indeed the point of dissonant art seems to be to destroy those conceptions. But why would people want to do that? Is it because there's nothing left to do?

I think it may be that we have reached a point in human evolution where there is less and less need for us to fully understand our environment in terms of optimal patterns and shapes so that we can use it to survive. We have reached a point where we can bend the environment to us; we no longer have to rely on exploiting our surroundings to survive, (e.g. understanding terrain to hide from and ambush a larger predator), we shape/dominate it to suit our needs. This means that natural forms give less and less pleasure, so it seems we turn to more unnatural, conceptual forms of art to stimulate those pleasure centers once reserved for bounded, pure-form art.

The book is called "How the Mind Works" by Steven Pinker,and the chapter is Ch. 8, "The Meaning of Life."

If anyone does in fact read these blogs, what are your thoughts. If I haven't illustrated Pinker's point clearly, tell me and I will try to clarify.