Embodied and Situated Aesthetics; An enactive approach to a cognitive notion of aesthetics

This text presents a first attempt to specify the cognitive function of aesthetics or, to put it in more radical terms, to define aesthetics as a variety of cognition . Due to the inaugural character of this essay—although it is rooted in my former work, it initiates a new research environment—it merely outlines key ideas in this regard. It maps out a territory which begins to emerge through the landmarks that delineate it. Accordingly, this text does not include detailed argumentations about the proposed ideas. It simply defines the infrastructure of a conceptual construction that will be enabled and precisely realized in the coming years. This endeavor is framed by the so-called theories of embodied and situated cognition and more specifically the enactive approach. According to the first, cognition takes place due to two necessary conditions: the activities of bodies—biological realized organisms—and their entanglement with their surroundings. Cognition thus cannot occur on the basis of an ideal entity—e.g. a “pure mind”—in a vacuum or “neutral container.” The enactive approach specifies these basic conditions, defining the body as an autonomous system and its involvement with the environment as structural coupling. Furthermore, this cognitive approach explains the relationships between living units and their surroundings in terms of co-emergence: a dynamic and complex system of mutual determination between enabling conditions and emerging qualities.