Derived Relations and Meaning in Responding to Art.

Abstract

The Argentine poet Jorge Luis Borges may have come closer than anyone else to envisioning a radical behavioristic aesthetics. What he said about poetry can be generalized to other art forms: that poetry happens when someone reads a poem. Art, therefore, is the behavioral episode in which someone responds to the stimuli arranged by the artist. Because each person that comes into contact with a work of art has a different history with the work and its elements, responding will vary widely for persons and for the same person at different times. An essential feature of this history is the network of derived relations involving the elements of the artwork, and the transfer and transformation of behavioral functions across this network.