The central claim of aesthetic cognitivism is that our aesthetic experiences, and most notably our experiences of art, are cognitively productive. That is, they yield knowledge and understanding about the world, ourselves, and the relation between the two. A weak view of aesthetic cognitivism involves the claim that some experiences of art can lead to knowledge. A stronger view holds that this cognitive yield is key, perhaps even essential, to what it is to have an aesthetic experience. On this line, one of our main reasons for valuing art in general is precisely the particular kind of understanding that it – and the aesthetic experiences it invites us to have – affords.

The central aim of our project is to provide a robust theorization and empirical demonstration of this stronger account of the cognitive value of art and aesthetic experience. We will use the latest machine-learning assisted methods of natural language processing to add historical depth to the account by tracking and analyzing the evolution of key critical concepts through which artistic experience has been understood and communicated, and employ a range of methods from experimental psychology to submit the account to empirical testing.

A particular focus for the project is the practice of art criticism, an area largely neglected in most empirical research. In our view, however, arts criticism is a crucial resource for developing a well-grounded account of the ways in which the cognitive, moral and spiritual value of the arts have been articulated, rationalised and communicated. Moreover, we hold that the cognitive and perceptual pathways which determine the nature and content of our artistic experience have in large part been informed - and transformed - by art criticism. In this way, we seek to establish that artworks in tandem with the critical practices that arise around them yield epistemically significant forms of understanding.