Dr Harry Drummond on his PhD, viva, and beyond
Thesis Title: Understanding Others, Understanding Art: A 4E Approach to Intersubjectivity in Aesthetics
Supervisors: Dr. Vid Simoniti (University of Liverpool) and Dr. Cain Todd (Lancaster University)
Examiners: Professor Shaun Gallagher (University of Memphis) and Dr. Yiota Vassilopoulou (University of Liverpool).
Abstract (shortened): Philosophical aesthetics has traditionally focused on disinterested, isolated, and passive perceivers of paintings, arguably based on a classical cognitivist explanation of mind and cognition that emphasises internal – brain and mental – states of individual agents. Consequently, extant explanations of cognitive processes undertaken in the arts neglect embodied and intersubjective factors that contribute to the undertaking, indeed possibility, of those processes. Given recent developments in the philosophy and sciences of mind, increasing suspicion should be placed on disembodied and individualist explanations of cognition. Proponents of 4E – embodied, embedded, extended, and enactive – approaches to cognition thus expand the unit of analysis away from (solely) the brain, to the embodied agent, their brain, and their environment, where direct and indirect interactions with others are explanatorily indispensable. In this thesis, I show how 4E, in particular enactivist, approaches to the role intersubjectivity plays in cognition can provide a more comprehensive and accurate explanation of the variety of cognitive processes we undertake in, with, and through the arts.
News item:
Adorning my latest N-95 mask, with hands happy-birthday-washed, on 12th October 2020 I first set foot in Merseyside for focaccia and pasta with my two-feet-away supervisor, Dr. Vid Simoniti. We discussed many things: aesthetic properties, politically charged art, games, football... That is, concepts, themes, and ideas as tangled as the fettuccine that lay before us. However, two things that Vid said to me that day stood out. First, the thesis I submit may bear no resemblance to the proposal I had sent to him nearly a year prior. Second, I should aim to partake in many of the academic opportunities – publishing, conferences, research visits, teaching, and so on – that will present themselves to me over the next three years. These seemed unfathomable at the time. He spoke of the potential for my thesis to intervene into debates of metaphysics, mind, perception, i.e., topics I had previously found complex and daunting. Likewise, publications and teaching are surely only for experts, and presenting my research in front of said experts at conferences could only end badly.
However, as could be an appropriate descriptor for the next 36 monthly meetings with him, Vid was right. Before long, I was merging considerations aesthetic with recent work in ‘4E’ (embodied, embedded, extended, and enactive) approaches to cognitive science. Far from just the philosophy of art, mind, and perception, my research was requiring insights from neuroscience and empirical psychology – quite a distance indeed from my original proposal. I then found myself presenting across Europe, taking up an editorship with Debates in Aesthetics and editorial assistantship with the British Journal of Aesthetics, while publishing and teaching in between, before jetting off to Memphis for a research visit with Professor Shaun Gallagher who, it has been claimed, coined the term ‘4E Cognition’.
Needless to say, Vid, my secondary supervisor, Dr. Cain Todd (Lancaster University), the entire Liverpool Philosophy Department, the British Society of Aesthetics, and NWCDTP, navigated me through opportunities, experiences, and achievements that imposter-syndrome-filled me could never have imagined. But this is not to say that all on the PhD journey is, or will be (if you will soon be embarking on that journey), rosy. Four months prior to submitting, I frantically rewrote a chapter after realising the bulk of it rested on criticising a claim that, no, that philosopher did not make. On a particularly hot, sunny June Saturday in 2023, it took me twelve hours of staring at a whiteboard with two poorly drawn versions of Otto and his notebook to figure out why an enactive account of extended mind is preferable to a functionalist one. And, I now walk my dog and can only think of her actions in terms of the perception of opportunities for goal-directed behaviour afforded by pavements, sticks, and food, rather than being a normal human being and enjoying the walk.
Vid was right: much about the PhD changes, and much about you changes in virtue of the PhD. I am very fortunate to have been surrounded by a Department – friends and colleagues – that could make only fruitful contributions to those changes, and whose motivational words were the sole cause of any semblance of relaxation and calm in the hours and minutes leading to my Viva. And, I am even more fortunate that they continue to support me through my navigation of the infamous academic job market. In some sense, then, Liverpool Philosophy is emblematic of its nearby football club, and chants from The Kop are identical to those you will find Paul Taylor bellowing in the PGR office: YNWA.