David Walsh

For Nishida Kitarō and Alva Noë, art and life are deeply entangled, exemplifying how our actions and intuitions shape a world which, in turn, shapes our actions and intuitions. However, both explain how art shapes the individual, but do not describe the underlying mechanisms by which the individual shapes art. Conversely, both explain how the individual shapes art, but do not describe the underlying mechanisms by which art shapes the individual. To address this, the phenomenon of entrainment is offered a concrete mechanism for this interaction. Entrainment is thus described as an open, resonating, dissipating, emergent, and rhythmic system, being a period of emergent synchronization initiated and sustained by the transfer of energy. This dissertation contrasts Nishida and Noë’s understanding of art, and grounds them both in the phenomenon of entrainment. Using comparative analysis and explanatory modelling, it demonstrates how art, life, and entrainment are entangled, and how this entanglement makes us what we are: an aesthetic phenomenon.

This dissertation argues that art, life, and entrainment are entangled, and that this entanglement shapes what we are: an aesthetic phenomenon. This argument is developed through a novel dialogue between Alva Noë and Nishida Kitarō, whose theories, despite not being traditionally discussed together, recognise art as something that actively organises and is organised within the world. This dissertation presents three main theses: first, Nishida and Noë share a comparable understanding of art, and when placed in dialogue, their perspectives create a more robust theory. Second, Nishida and Noë’s perspectives can be grounded in the phenomenon of entrainment, which provides a concrete mechanism for their theories of art. Finally, Nishida and Noë expand on the idea of entrainment in science, showing how entrainment in the material, biological, and, crucially, sociohistorical world shapes what we are. This dissertation reveals how the entanglement of art, life, and entrainment organises and gets organised within the world, offering novel insights about the reciprocity between artist and art, creator and created, and, more fundamentally, between mind and world.

This chapter demonstrates how wu wei is a spontaneous ability that can be cultivated through practice, and how this applies to effective leadership. The effective leader spontaneously responds and adapts to the situation in which they find themselves, having the capacity to “flow” when circumstances require adaptation and to act when circumstances require intervention. The ideal Daoist leader does not do this through deliberation or the imposition of their will. Instead, through cultivation, they develop the capacity to spontaneously respond to changing circumstances. They do not lead by withdrawing from action, nor do they lead by forcing their intentions upon others. Embodying wu wei, their effective leadership arises precisely because their agency has become so refined that it no longer needs to impose itself.

In classical Chinese philosophy, wu wei entails a tension between trying and not trying, described by Edward Slingerland as “the paradox of wu wei.” This paper examines this paradox through the lens of contemporary research on sensorimotor synchronization, arguing that trying and not trying are successive and overlapping stages within a single developmental process. By offering an empirical account of the behavioural and cognitive contexts of wu wei, this paper invites future research into its broader ethical, political, spiritual, and existential dimensions.

Carl Gillett proposes a bidirectional structure in which wholes and parts mutually determine one another, coining the term “machresis” to elucidate the determination from composed wholes to their constituent parts. While theoretically valuable, Gillett’s account has been criticised for being presented primarily as a metaphysical construct, given that it is characterized as necessarily synchronous, non-causal, and mass-energy neutral. This paper endorses Gillett’s bidirectional structure, using the example of a murmuration to argue that the same structure can also be instantiated through diachronic, causal, and mass-energy dependent processes. This provides a complementary yet distinct realization of Gillett’s bidirectional structure, and the term “machaitia” is used to capture this distinct variant of “downward” relations.

Entrainment is a period of emergent synchronization, initiated and sustained by the transfer of energy between coupled systems. Fundamental and pervasive, this phenomenon has been observed across physics, biology, neuroscience, and social interaction. However, entrainment is often conflated with synchronization. This conflation obscures its distinct mechanistic basis, contributing both to interpretive errors in mainstream research and to pseudoscientific appropriations. Developed through the idealised case of two coupled pendula, and applied to empirical examples in neuroscience and biology, this paper argues that genuine entrainment is characterized by five defining features: openness, resonance, dissipation, emergence, and rhythmicity. These features distinguish entrainment from coincidental synchronization.

What characterizes art? Is it an object, a practice, an activity, an expression, an experience—or something entirely different? One way to answer is by looking at what art does rather than what it is—at the work the art itself achieves. This article places Nishida Kitarō in dialogue with Alva Noë, showing how both view art as something that actively works in and with the world. For Nishida, art exemplifies kōiteki chokkan, enacted by the interplay of action, intuition, and world. For Noë, art is an activity that offers new ways to organize life. Building on John C. Maraldo’s enactivist reading of kōiteki chokkan, this article argues that Nishida and Noë share an implicitly enactivist view of art, where artistic actions and intuitions both shape and get shaped by the world. While they differ on the artist’s role, their perspectives together offer a more robust enactivist theory of art.

In Strange Tools: Art and Human Nature, Alva Noë argues that art is defined, in part, by its ability to disturb the organized activities that shape our lives. This article endorses Noë’s perspective, while integrating Nishida Kitarō’s novel concept of “kōiteki chokkan” (acting intuition) and examples from traditional Japanese arts to demonstrate how art is an unfolding interaction between the artist, their creation, and the environment. Nishida’s view complements and adds depth to Noë’s, clearly articulating the implicitly enactivist understanding of art in Noë’s work. It is argued that, as a result, art is both a “strange” and “ordinary” tool.

What characterises art? Is it an object, a practice, an activity, an expression, an experience—or something entirely different? One way to answer is by looking at what art does rather than what it is—at the work art itself achieves. This paper places Nishida Kitarō in dialogue with Alva Noë, showing how both view art as something that actively works in and with the world. For Nishida, art exemplifies kōiteki chokkan, enacted by the interplay of action, intuition, and world. For Noë, art is an activity that offers new ways to organise life. Building on John C. Maraldo’s enactivist reading of kōiteki chokkan, this paper argues that Nishida and Noë share an implicitly enactivist view of art, where artistic actions and intuitions both shape and get shaped by the world. While they differ on the artist’s role, their perspectives together offer a more robust enactivist theory of art.