Epistemological implications of neuroarchitecture

Abstract

This article will attempt to explain how the spatial characteristics of built environments affect both the cognitive processes of producing knowledge and the epistemic quality of other doxastic states. Recent discussions in philosophy and the social sciences have been vocal about the changing dynamics of contemporary life. As clouded boundaries between labor and leisure make individuals spend most of their time in built environments, personal experiences of space, buildings, and interiors are becoming a decisive factor in self-perception and cognition. These circumstances have encouraged the advent of a new scientific field: neuro-architecture, a branch of functional design supported by neurological brain scanning technologies and the concept of neuroplasticity, the brain's capacity to change its structure along our behavior and surroundings. After articulating neuro-architecture's ambition to define spaces most suitable for promoting positive emotions, good health, and intellectual agility, the article will critically assess its epistemological implications and its potentially unfavorable impact on architectural aesthetic autonomy. This intrusion of natural sciences into the ostensibly artistic domain of architecture bears certain similarities to the tension between traditional analytic philosophy - which was preoccupied with idealized models of intellectual practices and mental processes - and scientific insights into human cognition, perhaps best illustrated by the mind-brain identity theory.