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The underlying problem of the thesis is elucidating the relationship between the art object and philosophy. The thesis is organized into an introduction and four chapters. The introduction poses the need for a philosophical approach to the art object, and the phenomological method is briefly described. The first chapter defines and describes two basic structures found in the art object. The second chapter probes into the ontological structure of the art object in terms of form and media. The third chapter focuses on the relation of form and media evident in personal art works. The fourth chapter summarizes the content of preceding chapters and describes the relationship between the art object and the phenomological method, and discusses the significance of this relationship to philosophy and mankind.

This dissertation investigates the turn of the century fascination with synesthesia and efforts by Modernist artists and writers to produce cross-modal works that attempt to defy sensory boundaries. Works of impossible art are artistic and literary experiments with style and form that develop out of the realism and naturalism of the nineteenth century, to be sure; they are also conceived of by their creators as scientific experiments that test what is possible at the limits of perception. Accordingly, while my work is situated within the field of aesthetics, I take a neuroscientific approach to aid in understanding the modes of perception these works are attempting to explore. My project applies the findings of recent neuroscientific studies into clinical synesthesia as a guide for thinking about these Modernist works. The methodology of neuro-aesthetics allows me to develop a theory of sensory mimesis. Sensory mimesis is a holistic approach to explaining phenomenological experience that depends on a sensory semantics, more fundamental and more comprehensive than a linguistic semantics, that I propose filters our access to the world. What we ultimately learn from impossible art is that the range of neurodiversity in humans is broader than we tend acknowledge or appreciate. The notoriously indefinable and uncategorizable character of queer theory is an applicable framework to match the innumerable neurocognitive possibilities that are actually available. To this end, my dissertation suggests that a shift to a neuro-queer-aesthetic paradigm would not only expand human perceptive possibilities, but also enable compassionate engagement within and among our diverse communities. / English

Thesis: B.S., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Humanities, 1978 / Includes bibliographical references. / B.S. / B.S. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Humanities

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published_or_final_version / Literary Studies / Master / Master of Arts

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The present study hypothesized that (1) perception of the built environment is organized around a prototype, the notion extensively studied by Rosch and others, and, (2) judgement of attractiveness of the built environment is influenced by that structure. 37 subjects rated prototypicality of 51 slides of houses and an independent sample of 33 subjects rated attractiveness of the same slide set. Results showed that people perceived some residential houses as more prototypical than others. Also a significant correlation between prototype rating and attractiveness rating was found. People found the high level prototypicality most attractive, as opposed to the low prototypicality stimuli. It was also found that the residential prototype could be identified by physical features.

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