Beauty and Art Arise in the Brains of Beholders--论文代写范文精选

在最近的一次贡献中，解释了心理物理结果,美在艺术高峰的转变，被所谓的最突出的因素，在接下来应当认为的缺陷,建议的方法是认真对待任何时间维度。下面的essay代写范文进行详述。

Perceiving is an active process, it unfolds over time. Beginning at a starting fixation the eyes and the attention of a spectator scan over a visual display until enough data for a satisfactory interpretation of the percept are collected. Modulated by the current context, especially by the expectations of the observer, the process comes to a halt and the perception is concluded with an emotional tag for the total outcome of the action. This means not only the observed different features and the whole of the percept are important but sometimes even more so the way the operation went. Positive emotions usually result from a 'pleasant' content and a successful process, whereas better than expected progress gives rise to special good feelings. Beauty would be but one of the possible emotional signals of this primarily self-monitoring process, which is claimed to underpin all mental activity, conscious and unconscious.

In a recent contribution a brave attempt was made to explain the beauty in art with some psychophysical results, peak shift and grouping being the purported most prominent contributing factors (Ramachandran and Hirstein, 1999). "Eight laws of artistic experience" were formulated, which were found lacking by a number of prominent experts for several, partly diverse, reasons (Commentaries on Ramachandran and Hirstein, 1999).

In the following it shall be argued that the fundamental flaw of that proposed approach is the lack of taking any temporal dimension seriously into account. Most of its criticism shares the same deficit, i.e. neglecting the process character of perception.

This paper sketches briefly a simple model, which brings together long known and brand new experimental findings with views on beauty and art expressed from very different camps, recently as well as in ancient times. It is not intended as a tiny watertight brick in a well established paradigm but rather as an inevitably somewhat speculative thought-provoking outline of a novel comprehensive perspective.

Behavior in Packets
People, when shown a picture of the well known bust of Nefertiti, scan the display repeatedly, each time with more or less the same well defined succession of saccades focusing on distinct features, one after the other (Noton and Stark, 1971). The process takes several seconds on average, the stepping stones for the path of the eyes like nose and ear or a broken corner are the places in the display which carry most information. With a smaller picture, when there is no need for saccades, attention is still moved along a similar trail. Tactile exploration with closed eyes follows the same optimal pattern with the fingers tracing a path so that many points with different and big curvatures are touched (Roland, 1985).

It looks like a coarse total impression and a first analysis of features influence the direction of the next step (Noton and Stark, 1971). There is no doubt, some evaluation of the sensory data takes place already during the harvesting phase. Massive neural connections from "higher" to "lower" sensory brain areas and the well established fact of "top down" influence of higher centers on lower input stages, which work "bottom up", fit to this view; these circuits are also engaged during memory retrieval (Tomita, 1999).

This does not interfere but could interweave nicely with what is known about the principal organization of vision in primates. There are two major streams of data processing in the visual system, one being dedicated to what we are seeing, the other more to where we are seeing it (Wilson, 1993).

The process outlined below depicts "perception as an activity that takes places over time, - time during which the anticipatory schemata of the perceiver can come to terms with the information offered by the environment ", just as Ulric Neisser claimed (Neisser, 1976). An attempt is made to underpin such a proposal by providing some "technical design" rationale.

Whether it was just a glimpse or in depth going scrutinizing, an observation in total or a sub-step comes to an end when the spectator decides that she has seen enough. When looking at pictures and while reading a text, more time is spent on more 'difficult' parts (Noton and Stark, 1971). The perception process thus appears to be a kind of iterative data harvesting; if undisturbed it continues until some threshold for a satisfactory impression is reached.

Exploratory behavior can thus be divided into small foraging portions the end of which is well defined with the decision that an active search is concluded. Obviously, a new starting point can then be set as the next event thereafter, with which a new action is triggered. (Observing) behavior would then consist of the continuous stream of such interlocking packets.

The decision when to determine a search would be based on the total context, on all, not only the directly relevant, information available and concurrently active.

In normal life just a small minority of all observations would call for an active conscious effort with a decision taken explicitly at its end. Assuming a data structure with schemata the process of data collection and its determination can run autonomously: one feature highlights a whole schema and all still open slots. When a slot is filled the corresponding data collecting can be stopped; the evidence seeking for the hypothesis that the anticipated part or schema is the right one, is successfully brought to an end.

Given the vast hierarchy and flexibility of schemata that humans have at their disposal, several nested loops most probably run in parallel. We hold goals and sub goals, an activity is always performed with only the highest relevant identification being conscious (Vallacher and Wegner, 1987).

Essential is that a self-monitoring process would in any case check how well incoming data fit with the relevant expectations.

On one hand, a loop would be terminated when an expected feature fills a slot. On the other hand, if an expectation cannot be met a kind of 'reset' would be triggered, focusing (conscious) attention to the nonconformance. Any deviation from a well established expectation (norm, script, template) catches our attention (Kahnemann and Miller, 1986).

After such a startling point the sequence of (foraging) loops would continue, probably with another schema anticipation (Selz, 1922).

All ongoing activity always also forms part of the background for further sensory input (Ellis, 1999). Emotions would at one and the same time be the output of the (self-) monitoring and also set the stage for subsequent activities (Carver and Scheier, 1990; Dörner and Stäudel, 1990). With such fundamental processes running in full circles the stipulation of start and endpoints or causal dependencies is somewhat arbitrary.

When we focus our attention on an explicit object, like the glasses that we are looking for, it is obvious, enough information has been gathered when the glasses are found; not much more of background has to contribute to that decision. Depending on the situation we just might need the glasses more or less urgently.

If we find us in some unknown landscape or in front of an artefact it will largely depend on our background what the situation means to us, whether we find the view pretty or enjoy it as a piece of art; - the display might in the extreme only be recognizable as such by somebody initiated. It is claimed that these two cases are very alike in principle.

A real mountain view as well as a painting of a waterfall certainly causes different associations and emotions in passionate hikers, habitants of flat and arid areas or in knowledgeable art spectators trained on exhibitions of classic or modern art.

Beauty and art have their origin in the mind of humans, in our reaction to a stimulus (Gombrich, 1978).

How much we are pleased now with what we are seeing, with the total perception, thus depends to a good deal on background, based on our principal sensory, biological and physical possibilities at disposal and on cognitive and learned components accumulated over the whole life of the individual so far. Indeed, the association of well-being with certain percepts could be traced back over millennia as heritage in a certain culture. For more directly pleasant percepts like food the trace in our body and along our physiology even goes back the evolutionary tree.

The same holds true for the whole proposed organization principle of (exploratory) behavior in cycles of data collection, data analysis and subsequent further expectation-guided harvesting including some success-monitoring. A first point of occurrence on the evolution tree could be where emotion is claimed to come into play, somewhere with the emergence of reptiles (Cabanac,1999). Even lower animals start to feed or search for food when they are hungry.

To guide the perception process the (self-)monitoring of how we are making progress in the data acquisition is most important. It is rather independent of the content; something deemed pretty when seen in the right staging might be hard and bad to see in other cases whereas we can have a perfect clear view of a horrible or not understandable scene.

The total feeling would in every case be different, depending on the combination of all impressions, inclinations, premonitions.... at the time in question. The claim is that we can experience only one feeling at one instant and that process feed back makes a most important contribution to our emotions.

In any case, whatever the details, if the whole layout has to be of evolutionary benefit, bringing an activity to an end successfully, definitely should give some rewarding pleasure. In fact, a tight link of success and a strong associated positive feeling seems natural to expect. To be most efficient and effective any evaluation mechanism should try to (re)act already when first signs of a probable outcome become available. Furthermore, the results of success monitoring would be the obvious signal to modulate transfer of any data into memory.

In a bootstrapping process 'pleasant' things and concepts thus are grounded and have acquired their meaning over a wide range of time spans where the pleasantness of one special situation got eventually transferred to a whole set with many associated objects, activities, occasions and circumstances.

Thus the observed relativity of beauty (and art) could be attributed to differences in the predispositions and histories of individuals and societies. Biological evolution provides the basis and a frame within which such a development can take place.

Most artists and philosophers may not be very aware of this because it was all too easy to throw away the ladder (e.g. leave out time-perspectives) after having climbed to the top (Wittgenstein, 1984).

Not only at the end with the successful filling of the last slot in a schema self-monitoring would help to direct the (foraging) activity, in this case to stop or redirect it, but also during the search itself it would certainly be advantageous to keep track of the progress. This can be understood as the working of a meta-loop, realized via associated (sub-)slots for the expected progress. The accumulation of (expected) supporting correlations would add to the success.

When nothing is found after a long period of searching, current activity has at least to be reevaluated.

In this process also surprises are possible; there can be "jumps" in the flow of the progress. The expectation excited for one frame is finally "discharged" in a different one. This is claimed to be the natural vantage point for a theory on the working of jokes and creativity explaining a good deal of famous observations (Koestler, 1981; Freud, 1985). A second look reveals a new picture (Thomsen, 200?).

Expectation can (be made to) accumulate; this means the difference between a nicely wrapped gift and an informally handed present. If success occurs after some struggle, it is even more rewarding as every mountain climber would confirm. Relieve is great when we were looking for the glasses desperately. The intensity of the affective reaction to an event correlates with our perception of its abnormality (Kahnemann and Miller, 1986).

51Due网站原创范文除特殊说明外一切图文著作权归51Due所有；未经51Due官方授权谢绝任何用途转载或刊发于媒体。如发生侵犯著作权现象，51Due保留一切法律追诉权。
更多essay代写范文欢迎访问我们主页 www.51due.com 当然有essay代写需求可以和我们24小时在线客服 QQ:800020041 联系交流。-X