[Fis] Art and the Cognitive (Is art a human phenomenon?)

Sun Jan 11 23:57:56 CET 2026

Dear Lásló,

No. Art is not a human phenomenon. As a staunch pro-Western and pro-American intellectual, I wish to defend the notion of art from the ideological assault by the all-powerful pro-revolutionary academic forces that focus on selecting large swaths of the human population as targets of “ ortho-oppression," which movement has its roots in the exuberant butchery of the elevated strivings of the human spirit by the Leninist-Marxist tradition as well as Critical Theory. I will not mention the sanctimonious butchery of hundreds of millions of human lives by Marxists, throughout history.

In my view, Art is the step-by-step result of the complex evolutionary struggle between freedom and constraint; individual and collective.  Every artist understands this intuitively. This incredibly hierarchical process of competition and cooperation has left us with the trace of creative evolution, which we call Reality, and Cognition by which we relate to Reality. This Reality includes the Art of Johann Sebastian Bach, Michelangelo and Shakespeare - some of the greatest heroes of the West. That is my connection between cognition and Art and my aesthetic and intellectual revulsion of collectivisms.

Dynamical systems, including autocatalytic sets, life and minds in general, explore their state spaces (freedom) and their dynamical trajectories are constrained by attractors (constraints). Their creative products are the marks, memories and traces that they leave on the face of reality. It is art of the divine, which is unconstrained by stilted academic affectations. The academic merely leaps onto the scene and begins to project his biases and personal preferences on such marks and traces, suppressing, repressing and oppressing according to his personal or collectively academically inspired, frequently grotesque tastes and Machiavellian ambitions.

The struggle between freedom and constraint that I am talking about even extends to how the core mechanics of AI work. A mechanism of crucial importance in AI is the so-called information bottleneck, which balances the constraint of possibiility and generation of possibility (degrees of freedom) to produce intelligences that far surpass the average academic, in my experience, and that have do not aim to demoralize and disable the productive appratuses of civilized society - Capitalism and ordinary people of unexceptional talent.

I hope that the veiled anti-Western and anti-American allusion you made in your write-up just reflected an academic reflex - compliance with the obligatory expression of the anti-Western and anti-American mood in academia, and that you were not really thinking for yourself at that moment. As you are ostensibly a Hungarian who went through the horrors of Communism, your fashionable collusion with academic anti-Western subversive languaging does not seem respectable to me. As a Finn, whose fore fathers perished in the hands of collectivists, both Communist and Fascist,  and whose people repelled communism and fascism, I am appalled at your insensitivity, and beg your constraint in subtly feeding the collectivist monster of Global Academia.

On the other hand, I applaud your interest in the subject - an interest, which is expressed about 100 years too late, I'm afraid. It is made obsolete by AI. In my view, Brentano and Husserl started the project in a good way, but the collectivist mood, stupidity and bloody-mindedness of academia thwarted his program for too long. It is too late, now. 

I apologize for the controversial mood of my response, but it genuinely reflects my deepest sentiments, which are shared by millions of others who remain silent because of the suppressive, repressive and oppressive authoritarian hegemony of academia, in the intellectual sphere of humanity.

Cheers,
Paul Suni

> On Jan 11, 2026, at 3:21 AM, Mark Johnson <johnsonmwj1 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Dear Laszlo
> 
> Perhaps another way of asking your question is to ask why humans need art and dogs don't.
> 
> Here is my favourite composer talking about his creative process as a process. He ends "why do we want it? Nobody knows. But human beings need this for some process that we must use the word 'soul'. And with this our souls are nourished. And then we are dead" - https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://youtu.be/_ce6lgJCXiI?si=Wq3wAEy_CZ5cn7mO__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!QILVvAby_JLVixTdltNqxhKIa7lmY4T4x8mXeWvp4EPamCEJUE4Yfs_xT8v8uosBBTsir2oyyU1ZZoNDpjOR-Ko$  <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://youtu.be/_ce6lgJCXiI?si=Wq3wAEy_CZ5cn7mO__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!VIDEDTyJZC4rfmaC7O18rXWi2oGsLnBunAxzsO-h3OIj7L9y00mE84K0A03l5HRXdp1iyraoIsWku6ClI0WwXYU$>
> 
> Tippett was inspired by various psychodynamic theories and his view resonates with that of people like Jung and his followers - Herbert Read ("Education through art") or Anton Ehrenzweig ("The hidden order of art"). 
> 
> Given this, to ask "what is the function that art performs that becomes necessary because of our being human?" is closely related to the question "what is the function that psychoanalysis performs?"
> 
> That must surely be connected to the use of language,.conversation and some of the physiological issues that John Torday points to. There is a pathology in language and technology, and perhaps art helps us to keep it in check. Poetry speaks to this. And dogs don't have language. 
> 
> But perhaps a deeper question then is "what is being kept in check?" - our viable existence as individuals (going to the opera), or our viability as a species. If it is the latter (which I think it is) how does that work? How do we (and the artist) know?
> 
> Best wishes
> 
> Mark
> 
> 
> Dr. Mark William Johnson
> Faculty of Biology, Medicine and Health
> University of Manchester
> 
> Department of Science Education
> University of Copenhagen
> 
> Department of Eye and Vision Science (honorary)
> University of Liverpool
> Phone: 07786 064505
> Email: johnsonmwj1 at gmail.com <mailto:johnsonmwj1 at gmail.com>
> Blog: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://dailyimprovisation.blogspot.com__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!QILVvAby_JLVixTdltNqxhKIa7lmY4T4x8mXeWvp4EPamCEJUE4Yfs_xT8v8uosBBTsir2oyyU1ZZoNDIH5vCqM$  <https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://dailyimprovisation.blogspot.com__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!VIDEDTyJZC4rfmaC7O18rXWi2oGsLnBunAxzsO-h3OIj7L9y00mE84K0A03l5HRXdp1iyraoIsWku6Cl9F5Lt0s$>
> On Sat, 10 Jan 2026, 20:38 JOHN TORDAY, <jtorday at ucla.edu <mailto:jtorday at ucla.edu>> wrote:
>> Dear Laszlo and FIS, when you ask whether art is unique to humans, I think you have to ask that question in the context of physiology as the origin of consciousness (Torday JS, Miller WB Jr. A systems approach to physiologic evolution: From micelles to consciousness. J Cell Physiol. 2018 Jan;233(1):162-167.). And in that vein, only humans possess an Area of Broca that integrates language and locomotion, great apes also having an Area of Broca, but without language facility. It is the merging of locomotor and language skills under the aegis of the FoxP2 gene  that is the origin of Man's facility for art in my opinion, stemming from bipedalism as positive selection pressure for our overdeveloped central nervous system (Torday JS. A central theory of biology. Med Hypotheses. 2015 Jul;85(1):49-57). Perhaps you could comment?
>> 
>> Best, John
>> 
>> John S. Torday
>> Professor of Pediatrics
>> Obstetrics and Gynecology
>> Evolutionary Medicine
>> UCLA
>> 
>> Fellow, The European Academy of Science and Arts
>> 
>> 
>> On Sat, Jan 10, 2026 at 11:04 AM Marcus Abundis <55mrcs at gmail.com <mailto:55mrcs at gmail.com>> wrote:
>>> Hi László,
>>> 
>>> From your introductory post, and the longer paper's abstract it is not clear what we are being asked to consider in your talk. I thought the 'whole matter' of art, etc. was a wholly settled matter, often framed as the 'Upper Paleolithic Revolution' (but at times called various names). The advent of cave paintings, etc. was seen as clear evidence for a human capacity for abstraction and abstract thought, first arising somewhere between 300KYA (first modern humans) and 50KYA (early evident artifacts).
>>> 
>>> What exactly are we considering in your talk?
>>> 
>>> Thank you,
>>> 
>>> Marcus Abundis
>>> 55mrcs at gmail.com <mailto:55mrcs at gmail.com> (best)
>>> +41 62 844 2193 home (2nd best)
>>> +41 77 465 8977 (cell)
>>> 
>>> 
>>> On Fri, Jan 9, 2026 at 9:35 PM Csáji László Koppány <csaji.koppany at gmail.com <mailto:csaji.koppany at gmail.com>> wrote:
>>>> Dear FIS Colleagues,
>>>> 
>>>> This is rather a starting point of a conversation than a report of research results; a call to think together and share our thoughts and knowledge. The question in this kick-off text is very simple: Is art a human ability? As a social and cultural anthropologist, I conducted fieldworks in Asia, Africa, and Europe over the last few decades. Art penetrates our everyday life and rituals; just think of the built environment, music, design, literature, fine arts, vernacular arts, etc. I have recently published a paper that addresses art(s), aiming to develop a new definition from the perspective of cognitive sciences (see: Toward a Multidimensional Definition of Art from the Perspective of Cognitive Sciences | MDPI <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.mdpi.com/3042-8084/2/1/1__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!Xrv66q4RXEKv2pWONoI8np-mus_kNGSc3EjXMgbnMskwKkNrkjmE_CkucMR_l-mR9kB5LSEAvPHhwXtKfFcx6TrO8g$>). My attached kick-off text largely relies on this long paper.
>>>> 
>>>> Numerous attempts to define art have been made from antiquity to the present, yet historical overviews often adopt a Eurocentric (and American-centric) perspective focused mainly on culturally dependent aesthetic approaches. As a universal social and cultural phenomenon, art resists center-periphery models. Art is not merely a unique representation of reality, but also an ability to create new realities and thereby shape society. Art has attracted and accompanied people from the dawn of history. Some argue that acquiring the ability to create and appreciate art was one of the few important steps in the process of becoming Homo Sapiens. Thus, it is a universal phenomenon that spans ages and cultures—arising from something fundamentally human.  However, is it really fundamentally human? What gives its "merely" human factor? Do our experiences (image) on AI development and its social functions support this idea? Ethologists, cognitive scientists, and psychologists often over-emphasize one element (e.g., visual symmetry-asymmetry, harmony, beauty, etc.) of art(s) that seems suitable for their research methods. This seems a pragmatic and reasonable solution, but it easily obscures the “big picture” and the core of the problem. Thus, it remains a question how art can be considered as a human activity. Consequently, artists and scholars have been preoccupied since ancient times with the question of what art is, or how certain prominent forms of art (visual arts, drama, music, literature, etc.) work. Nevertheless, the abstract concept of art is not expressed by a notion (word) in every culture. There are significant differences in the use of the words linked to art. Moreover, the meaning of art has changed continuously and significantly over time, albeit at different rates.
>>>> 
>>>> The cognitive turn reshaped art theory by reconsidering art as a cognitive dimension of humanity. Art has no limits on who can create or enjoy it. The ability to use and understand metaphor, for instance, demonstrates everyday human artistic cognition. I introduced a simple vectorial model that aligns closely with the idea of family resemblance in the sense that cognitive semantics conceives it as a kind of categorization (meaning construction). This a 3D model rather than a simple definition. Since art lacks a single, definitive prototype, no strict, universal definition can capture all its forms in a yes or no spectrum. My filed studies showed me the variability of artistic practices (in craft, value, range of affect, etc.) that can be placed in different ways within a space (and not a category) of art. In this model, three coordinates form a space. These vectors (coordinates) are equally relevant cognitive aspects: 1. Creativity, 2. Communication, 3. Experience. For further, detailed argumentation see the attached file. 
>>>> Dear FIS members, dear colleagues in different scientific disciplines! Do you agree or disagree that art is a human ability? If yes or no: what kind of evidence can we set up for the argumentation? 
>>>> 
>>>> Best regards,
>>>>                             László Koppány Csáji
>>>> 
>>>> P.s. See the attached file for further details and argumentation 
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