Conjunctive Theory: Mental Imagery in the Arts and Sciences
delves deeply into the enduring philosophical questions surrounding the nature of beauty and its relation to art. It introduces students to the concepts of ontic beauty (the beauty of being) and modal beauty (the beauty of doing) to help them better understand the unique aspects of beauty encountered in sunsets, mathematical proofs, or artworks. The book posits that the experience of beauty is a unique, never-repeating synthesis of these two forms.
In Part I, the Conjunctive Theory combines two types of brain states to unify mental images involved in perception, imagination, memory, and dreams, and introduces the Conjunctive Principle. It helps readers understand the foundational perceptual responses essential for discussing beauty and contends that beauty is not just perceived but understood through a dynamic interplay of mental processes.
Part II applies these concepts to art, exploring how ontic and modal beauty emerge and how they are enjoyed. The book culminates in a novel theory of art as a shared experience of modal beauty and proposes a method for a measure of art using the role of modal beauty.
Offering students a rigorous and comprehensive exploration of beauty and art,
Conjunctive Theory
is ideal for upper-division and graduate courses in the philosophy of art and the psychology of mental imagery.