Po stopách kognitívnej estetiky vnímania

The article investigates the research on the formal realization of psychological representations of percepts in the literary environment. It attempts to reconstruct conceptualizations of perception and the possibility of their anchoring in related theories. With regard to this aspect, the author does not ponder upon the origin of the contents of perception as effects of biophysical processes. On the contrary, the focus lies within the functional aspect of perception and how it can be revealed on a linguistic level where complexity, variability and multi-layeredness represent the key impulses of art and literature. The origin or emergence of perceptual meanings is not analysed since it falls under the competence of cognitive psychology, which approaches the issue with the relevant logic and on the basis of existing experimental methodological instruments. This indeed is not a reason not to reflect its arguments and results in further deliberation, e.g. on aesthetic communication. Therefore, the author’s elaboration on literary representation/communication of perceptual meanings is grounded in the term perception as defined by the minimal consensus of the cognitive sciences, e.g. in works by Wolf Singer, Francisco Varela and Humberto R. Maturana or in other disciplines as in the case of Gerhard Roth, Siegfried J. Schmidt, Gebhard Rusch and others. Such consensus is at the same time explicitly present in constructivist and systems-theory-oriented literary studies. This epistemological-methodological paradigm of literary studies however is not the only one that provides the possibility to reflect perception. Phenomenology and hermeneutics introduce other basal literary theories which can provide another perspective on the phenomenon of sensual experience.