The Sage Forge: Art, Awareness, and Self-Awareness

Human beings are self-aware. We not only ponder subjects such as our own existence and the nature of our finitude, we ponder our consideration of those subjects. To come to grips with the nature of these explorations we establish concepts to help us bridge the gaps between what is ponderable and what is knowable.

Such mental work starts with our earliest experiences, even with experience prior to birth. We have experiences. We seek to orient our minds to those experiences. To do so we develop cognitive structures that allow us to order our responses to sensory experience. Because we are social creatures some of these response/cognition structures are adapted to communication. We can share our adaptations to novelty and help others to develop cognitive structures analogous to those we have created for ourselves. Two major communication processes function to do this, the highly fragmented, symbolic, linguistic method, and the more fluid, but less tangible, inductive-artistic method.

For any Theory of Art to make sense it must be a part of a larger theory of human cognition. To do that one must address both internal and external cognitive motivations. For that reason I have put quite a bit of effort into illustrating the importance of the cognitive structures of human awareness, what I have called in earlier entries "mental models". In as much as my own conception of the whole picture of this overarching idea is still developing, this is not yet a formal paper presenting a complete theory of both Art and human cognition. It does, however, represent more than a rough sketch of the shape of the concept.

This will take a while. It won't all be done today.

If one wants to teach a child how to hammer a nail into a block of wood it is possible to do so with language alone. Alternatively one may simply demonstrate and, by careful steps, assist the child in those first efforts. Experience tells us demonstration and personal assistance convey the necessary information more efficiently than language alone.

Invariably, in a text intended to convey similar knowledge the author will utilize graphic representations to augment the text. In the absense of being present with the student this is the next best thing to the sort of fluid, interactive presentation permitted by actual personal contact. Language, while effective at conveying precise packets of information in a manner which can be easily repeated, is so fragmented that it fails to easily communicate all the necessary nuances of a complex experience. As the Chinese proverb says " A picture is worth a thousand words."

In the process of self-conscious consideration of an idea humans, as visually oriented creatures, will often do the same sort of graphic representation to capture the "essence" of an idea. Alternatively we may simply use imagery to give ourselves a better grounding in the consequences of moving from one step in the evolution of an idea to another and another. All of these actions designate the use of a representative process more fluid than is possible with the broken quanta of language to assist in the development of cognitive structures by which we may comprehend our environment. This use of graphic imagery is not generally considered to be "art", but the nature of its functioning leads directly to use as art.

The same fluidity of expression made possible by graphic presentation of tangible information becomes all the more important in dealing with information of such intangibles as emotional states and internal self-consideration. In the social context of human communities the use of graphic representation establishes within individuals cognitive structures (programming) capable of interpreting such representations. These can be extended as individuals explore and expand the expressive capacity of the programs with more adventurous graphic efforts. (In this context I am lumping three-dimensional objects and two-dimensional graphics together for the purposes of the discussion.) This logical extention is recognized within a connected community, which extends the program for all the members.

The process of extending cognitive programming is a vital part of human adaptation. This is particularly so for children, who will expend tremendous effort in processes that recognize the establishment of skills (program extentions) with some reward. We can see this in games, interpersonal play, and in self-directed exploration. The human brain is designed to reward itself for the creation of cognitive structures the brain itself finds useful. These structures may be of vital importance in dealing with the environment, but they may also have more nebulous internal significance. Such would seem to be the case for a capacity for self-examination, for example.

To close today's consideration, then we have arrived at the point where the brain, in the course of its natural rewarding of development of cognitive structures, rewards the development of structures that examine the internal emotive state of the brain itself, and, by extention, may consciously examine the emotive states of others within the community. In the process it engages the mechanisms of graphic representation as a part of both internal self-representation and interpersonal communication. Apprehension of the information conveyed in this representation assists others in extending their cognitive model (program), for which they, too, receive a reward from their brain.

This I will call an Aesthetic response or reward.