From The Aesthetic Mind to the Symbolic Mind: The Aesthetic Mechanism as Emerging Synthesis

What I propose is to develop an idea of mental mechanism consistent with the definition of the core concept of the aesthetic, as an expressive and advantageous synthesis of the emotional resonances and the cognitive discriminations inherent in the dynamics of perception. Connected with an analysis and with the definition of the conceptual core of the aesthetic, there is thus the hypothesis of a sequence and of an idea linked to it. The sequence regards a consequential relationship among four components: 1. The conceptual core of the aesthetic; 2. The paradigm that can develop from it; 3. The models of the aesthetic consistent with this paradigm; 4. A mental mechanism of the “aesthetic”. This mechanism is expected to explain the significant and characteristic presence of an aesthetic attitude in several living species, its cross-cultural persistence within the human species (from its biological emergence to its cultural transmission, including its amazing power of metamorphosis and expansion). The “idea” is that of a “mechanism” as the engine or device that makes possible the paradigmatic sequence itself. The aesthetic mechanism appears thus as the sub-structure that allows a transmission line and a feedback relationship between the levels and components of the sequence.