My current project aims to elaborate a theoretical model of the aesthetic influence in general experience based on rhythm and entrainment from an enactivist point of view. Enactivism - a branch of embodied philosophy which defends a time-extended, non-dualistic and non-representational view of cognition - puts emphasis on sensorimotor entanglement, the constitutive role of the body, and a dynamic approach to cognitive processes. For these and other reasons, it is an interdisciplinary framework increasingly used both from philosophical and scientific sides. In this talk, after briefly introducing some of the main tenets of enactivism, I will present an enactivist concept of rhythm based on John Dewey’s ideas integrating some relevant recent cognitive science research. I will defend a naturalist conceptualization of rhythm as a formal feature of general experience which constrains and affords particular interactions between environmental, brain, and body oscillations. To conclude, I will share some preliminary aspects of my research of what I consider to be some rhythmic features of an aesthetic experience.

Bio

Carlos Vara Sanchez is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow at the Philosophy and Cultural Heritage Department at Ca’ Foscari University (Venice). His research combines aesthetics and cognitive science from an enactivist point of view.