Reflective Imagination via the Artistic Experience: Evolutionary Trajectory, Developmental Path, and Possible Functions

Elsewhere I have argued that particular degrees of imagination and consciousness, a cognitive process that I call reflective imagination, distinguish humans from other species and make possible, and underlie, the artistic experience. I take the artistic experience to be the universal and characteris...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Evolutionary studies in imaginative culture 2019-09, Vol.3 (2), p.53
Main Author: Wah, Alejandra
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adolescence
Childhood
Corballis, Michael C
Developmental biology
Donald, Merlin
Fossil hominids
Identity
Imagination
Music
Vendor relations
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Summary:Elsewhere I have argued that particular degrees of imagination and consciousness, a cognitive process that I call reflective imagination, distinguish humans from other species and make possible, and underlie, the artistic experience. I take the artistic experience to be the universal and characteristically human capacity to experience oneself or others in a story by means of music, dance, song, pantomime, drawing, pretend play, or spoken or written language. In this paper I reconstruct the developmental path of the reflective imagination via the artistic experience in five stages: infancy, childhood, adolescence, adulthood, and senescence, and its plausible evolutionary trajectory from Australopithecines to Homo sapiens. Drawing upon both evolutionary and developmental theory, I conclude that the reflective imagination via the artistic experience has fulfilled, and still fulfills, important functions by activating memory systems, regulating emotional expression, promoting mutuality, training attentional focus, developing motor control, enabling prediction, freeing from actuality, sourcing identity, complexifying consciousness, and affording behavioral adaptation. Keywords: artistic experience, reflective imagination, imagination, consciousness, evolution, development, functions
ISSN:2472-9884
DOI:10.26613/esic/3.2.143