Irving Massey: The Neural Imagination: Aesthetic and Neuroscientific Approaches to the Arts (2009)

“Art and technology have been converging rapidly in the past few years; an important example of this convergence is the alliance of neuroscience with aesthetics, which has produced the new field of neuroaesthetics.

Irving Massey examines this alliance, in large part to allay the fears of artists and audiences alike that brain science may “explain away” the arts. The first part of the book shows how neuroscience can enhance our understanding of certain features of art. The second part of the book illustrates a humanistic approach to the arts; it is written entirely without recourse to neuroscience, in order to show the differences in methodology between the two approaches. The humanistic style is marked particularly by immersion in the individual work and by evaluation, rather than by detachment in the search for generalizations. In the final section Massey argues that, despite these differences, once the reality of imagination is accepted neuroscience can be seen as the collaborator, not the inquisitor, of the arts.”

Publisher University of Texas Press, 2009
Cognitive Approaches to Literature and Culture series
ISBN 0292752792, 9780292752795
224 pages

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Peter Gonda: Simulácia sociálnych noriem v multiagentovom prostredí (2009) [Slovak]

Sociálne kognitívne vedy sa zaoberajú ľudskou kogníciou ako procesom silne podmieneným spoločenským kontaktom. Pravidlá a zaužívané postupy sociálneho správania sú predpísané sociálnymi normami, nepísanou sadou pravidiel, ktorá sa vyjednáva v rozsiahlej sérii interakcií počas kontaktu medzi jednotlivcami v skupine. Práca stavia na doterajšom výskume sociálnych a kooperačných noriem, aby prezentovala vlastnú multiagentovú simuláciu vychádzajúcu z teórií geneticko-kultúrnej koevolúcie. Výsledky ukazujú, že v simulácii povstávajú stabilné vzorce hodnôt, ktoré predpisujú mieru altruizmu a sociálneho učenia u agentov.

Kľúčové slová
sociálne normy, evolúcia kooperácie, geneticko-kultúrna koevolúcia, sociálne učenie, simulácia

Diplomová práca
Univerzita Komenského v Bratislave, Fakulta matematiky, fyziky a informatiky, Katedra aplikovanej informatiky, Umelá inteligencia
Vedúci práce: prof. RNDr. Jiří Pospíchal, DrSc
Bratislava: FMFI UK, 2009

Social norms in gene-culture multi-agent environment
This thesis builds upon the research of social and cooperative norms, to present an original contribution in the form of a multi-agent simulation, which owes much to theories of gene-culture coevolution. The results presented show that stable patterns of values that describe the level of altruism and social learning amongst the agents emerge in the simulation.

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William E. Connolly: Neuropolitics: Thinking, Culture, Speed (2002)

Why would a political theorist venture into the nexus between neuroscience and film? According to William Connolly — whose new book is itself an eloquent answer — the combination exposes the ubiquitous role that technique plays in thinking, ethics, and politics. By taking up recent research in neuroscience to explore the way brain activity is influenced by cultural conditions and stimuli such as film technique, Connolly is able to fashion a new perspective on our attempts to negotiate — and thrive — within a deeply pluralized society whose culture and economy continue to quicken.

In Neuropolitics Connolly draws upon recent brain/body research to explore the creative potential of thinking, the layered character of culture, the cultivation of ethical sensibilities, and the critical role of technique in all three. He then shows how a series of films — including Vertigo, Five Easy Pieces, and Citizen Kane — enhances our appreciation of technique and contests the linear image of time now prevalent in cultural theory.

Connolly deftly brings these themes together to support an ethos of deep pluralism within the democratic state and a politics of citizen activism across states. His book is an original and rigorous study that attends to the creative possibilities of thinking in identity, culture, and ethics.

Publisher University of Minnesota Press, 2002
ISBN 081664022X, 9780816640225
218 pages

Keywords and phrases
virtual memory, apodictic, amygdala, nontheistic, Kantian, Lucretius, Gilles Deleuze, Spinoza, Citizen Kane, neo-Kantians, Epicurus, Antonio Damasio, cultural theory, Friedrich Nietzsche, Ilya Prigogine, Henri Bergson, Isabelle Stengers, existential, immanent, intersubjective

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