Prediction and Art Appreciation

Abstract

AbstractEvery art encounter requires making predictions given that art is rife with uncertainty. What is it to appreciate art while relying on predictions, and to what consequences? I argue that art appreciation involves engaging our predictive systems in such a way as to correct predictive failure at least at some levels in the processing hierarchy of information that we receive from art works. That art appreciation involves predictive processing best explains the mechanism for cognizing art works in categories, cases of appreciative failure, and why art appreciation is a form of valuing. To articulate the explanatory value of predictive processing for cognizing art works in categories, I introduce a sub-type of predictions that I call art-historical estimates – i.e., predictions that take as their object the temporal relationships between works and their place in art history – and identify their features within a broader typology of predictions and related mental structures such as schemas and scripts. I examine the way predictive processing explains the correction of predictive failure, and its consequences for the affective value that we attach to the appreciation of art.