ASEBL Journal – Volume 11 Issue 2, Spring 2015
blend, develop a full notion of another mind (Fauconnier & Turner 2002, Turner
2014), including viewpoint. This allows us to conceive of joint attention, in which we
imagine that we interact with others by attending jointly with them to something we
can perceive. As Michael Tomasello writes, “Human beings are the only organisms on
planet Earth who actively attempt to direct and share the attention of conspecifics to
outside entities” (Tomasello 2010, 1092).
In “classic joint attention” (Thomas & Turner 2011), we also communicate about our
joint attention and its object: “Look at that blackbird!” Classic joint attention is limited to what the immediate environment affords, but advanced blending can compress
a mental network to create perceptible elements for attending to what is otherwise not
in the environment. A “sketch” of a blackbird is understood as a prompt to blend what
we perceive (marks on paper) with our idea of the blackbird, despite the absence of an
actual blackbird. Now we can say, “Look at that blackbird!” in the absence of any
blackbird.
Human thought is remarkable for its ability to stretch across time, space, causation,
and agency. We are able to hold and work with large mental networks of conceptions
that go far beyond local matters of perception, action, and interaction, because we can
blend information from a vast conceptual integration network to make a compressed,
human scale idea, something mentally graspable, which we can use as a basis for
managing the vast and otherwise intractable network. For example, a sketch of 12
sailors on a 12-meter sailing ship in the America’s Cup race, with a New Zealand
skipper, includes a sketch of “the 13th sailor,” whom we take to be a legendary New
Zealand skipper, standing behind the actual skipper. We are not deluded by the blend,
but now, in the blend, the two skippers – one the old master and teacher, the other the
young master and former student – interact directly in their joint attention to the race,
and in their support of each other’s lives and careers and traditions. The artwork
prompts us to construct a compressed blended scene that helps us grasp the vast mental network, stretching over time, space, agency, and events. When one runner breaks
the record for running the mile, the New York Times publishes a little sketch with 6
“runners” on the “track.” Five of them are the fastest milers from previous decades.
They are placed on the track where they were in their own races at the end of the time
span in which the new record-holder completed the mile. None of this is in the immediate environment, but now we have a case of blended classic joint attention, where
the art provides something in the environment to which we can jointly attend, even
though the concepts stretch over decades, connecting people directly who do not actually have such connections. Art provides percepts in the environment to support advanced blending, compression, and joint attention. A painting of an annunciation is
something in our perceptual field that prompts us to construct a vast blending network
that stretches over all eternity, including the entire life of Christ. The Parthenon provides something in the immediate environment that prompts for a blending network
running over the entire history and future of Athens. Crucially, as Lock explains, we
can blend our idea of the artist and of other viewers into the compressed concept of
blended classic joint attention, where, conceptually, viewer and artist engage with
each other in jointly attending to the artwork.
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