Advances in Cognitive Systems

What is it about art that can be so captivating? How is it that we find value in these often odd and abstract objects and events that we call artworks? My proposal is that artworks are attentional engines. They are artifacts that have been intentionally designed to direct attention to critical stylistic features that reveal their point, purpose, or meaning. My suggestion is that there is a lot that we can learn about art from interdisciplinary research focused on our perceptual engagement with artworks. These kinds of studies can reveal how we recognize artworks, how we differentiate them from other, more quotidian artifacts. In doing so they reveal how artworks function as a unique source of value. Our interactions with artworks draw on a broad base of shared artistic and cultural constitutive of different categories of art. Cognitive systems integrate this information into our experience of art, guiding attention, and shaping what we perceive. Our understanding and appreciation of artworks is therefore carried in our perceptual experience of them. Teasing out how this works can contribute valuable information to our philosophical understanding of art. Attentional Engines explores this interdisciplinary strategy for understanding art. It articulates a cognitivist theory of art grounded in perceptual psychology and the neuroscience attention and demonstrates its application to a range of puzzles in the philosophy of the arts, including questions about the nature of depiction, the role played by metakinesis in dance appreciation, the nature of musical expression, and the power of movies.

Download Full-text

Quantitative abilities of invertebrates: a methodological review

Animal Cognition ◽

10.1007/s10071-021-01529-w ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Elia Gatto ◽

Olli J. Loukola ◽

Christian Agrillo

Keyword(s):

Social Interaction ◽

Mate Choice ◽

Related Species ◽

Current Knowledge ◽

Quantitative Information ◽

Cognitive Skill ◽

Cognitive Systems ◽

Methodological Review ◽

Ecological Relevance

AbstractQuantitative abilities are widely recognized to play important roles in several ecological contexts, such as foraging, mate choice, and social interaction. Indeed, such abilities are widespread among vertebrates, in particular mammals, birds, and fish. Recently, there has been an increasing number of studies on the quantitative abilities of invertebrates. In this review, we present the current knowledge in this field, especially focusing on the ecological relevance of the capacity to process quantitative information, the similarities with vertebrates, and the different methods adopted to investigate this cognitive skill. The literature argues, beyond methodological differences, a substantial similarity between the quantitative abilities of invertebrates and those of vertebrates, supporting the idea that similar ecological pressures may determine the emergence of similar cognitive systems even in distantly related species.

Download Full-text

More evidence on competing cognitive systems

Interlanguage studies bulletin (Utrecht) ◽

10.1177/026765838500100104 ◽

1985 ◽

Vol 1 (1) ◽

pp. 47-72 ◽

Cited By ~ 24

Author(s):

Sascha W. Felix

Keyword(s):

Second Language ◽

Problem Solving ◽

General Problem ◽

Learning Process ◽

Native Speaker ◽

Universal Grammar ◽

Learning Task ◽

Competition Model ◽

Cognitive Systems ◽

Specific System

This paper deals with the question of why adults, as a rule, fail to achieve native-speaker competence in a second language, whereas children appear to be generally able to acquire full command of either a first or second language. The Competition Model proposed in this paper accounts for this difference in terms of different cognitive systems or modules operating in child and adult language acquisition. It is argued that the child's learning process is guided by a language-specific module, roughly equivalent to Universal Grammar (cf. Chomsky, 1980), while adults tend to approach the learning task by utilizing a general problem-solving module which enters into competition with the language-specific system. The crucial evidence in support of the Competition Model comes from a) the availability of formal operations in different modules and b) from differences in the types of utterances produced by children and adults.

Download Full-text