One of the foundational mechanisms of the artwork can be meaningfully conceptualized as a cognitively rich interaction which, by design, informs & exploits the mind’s predictive system

Suspended Reason and Tom Rutten. 2020. “Predictive Hermeneutics.” PsyArXiv. August 11. doi:10.31234/osf.io/tg8ym

Abstract: Recently, cognitive scientists like Clark (2016) and Hohwy (2013), alongside computational neuroscientist Karl Friston (2006, 2013) have conceptualized the mind as a hierarchical prediction system, at levels varying from the “merely” sensory to the highly conceptual. Here, we extend this thesis in order to understand the hermeneutic process as it relates to textual and artistic encounters. We argue that one of the foundational mechanisms of the artwork, as it is contemporarily conceived, can be meaningfully conceptualized as a cognitively rich interaction which, by design, informs and exploits the mind’s predictive system. We further show how this mechanism, and a predictive framework more generally, help explain a host of traditional literary, aesthetic, and art historical values, including ambiguity, defamiliarization, and reversal.


§4 Characteristics of schema-subversive art
In §3, we theorized the schema-subversive (both forced
and opportunistic) and schema-baring functions of art
objects within the predictive framework introduced in §1
and 2. Here, in §4 and 5, we speculate on other possible
dynamics between art and an audience’s schemas.

4.1 Art as superstimulus
Following Hurley et al. (2011) on humor , we propose that
art is, among other functions, a kind of higher-level
cognitive superstimulus culturally evolved to target
humans’ innate predictive structure. Agent arousal
correlates with the properties of high perceived relevance
or precision as a Bayesian input, derived, respectively,
from the work’s (perceived) topicality and the author’s
(perceived) credibility. Like a joke, which is tailored to
guide listeners to a specific interpretation of events only to
pull the rug out (Hurley, Dennett, and Adams 2011), art is
tailored to target existing compressions in a subject’s
schemas. Where classical art often reifies or activates
familiar patterns, e.g. patterns used for object recognition
(Evans 2019), contemporary works often exploit and
subvert regularity observable in the real word. In either
case, the artwork provides an intense encounter between a
subject and schema, on one side, and the art object with its
highly compression-prone or compression-breaking
information on the other.

4.2 Truthiness and adherence to model
In an art encounter, our mind updates its inferential models
about the world with respect to the work’s perceived
accuracy, an assessment made by the model itself. The
observer’s schema acts as a “check” or arbitrator on its
own incorporation of the artworks’ worldview (dynamics
and concepts); when the cartography of the work is too
implausible in the eyes of an apprehending schema, it may
be dismissed entirely. This is to say that concepts learned
directly from personal experience, and indirectly from
outside sources, are used to assess the likelihood of a
work’s worldview as conveyed through its components.

The artwork’s “truthiness” as estimated by the viewer can
be understood as its precision, or reliability (Clark 2016).
In this way the schema can be understood as a gatekeeper
to its own revision: only stimulus surpassing some level of
intelligibility and precision for a viewer will be able to
interact with the viewer’s schema and incite revision. One
consequence is that information which fits closely with an
existing schema but poorly with a ground-truth reality is
perceived by that schema as more, rather than less, likely
to be the case.
Art that presents worldviews or models of reality that are
congenial with the observer’s can be termed resonant; art
that is presented by a source who we deem authoritative is
termed credible.