Impossible Puzzle Films

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miklós Kiss ◽  
Steven Willemsen
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Dissonance ◽  
Mental State ◽  
Narrative Theory ◽  
Film Studies ◽  
Cognitive Sciences ◽  
Specific Category ◽  
Contemporary Cinema ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Mulholland Drive ◽  
Blind Spots

Narrative complexity is a trend in contemporary cinema. Since the late 1990s there has been a palpable increase in complex storytelling in movies. But how and why do complex movies create perplexity and confusion? How do we engage with these challenges? And what makes complex stories so attractive? By blending film studies, narrative theory and cognitive sciences, Kiss and Willemsen look into the relation between complex storytelling and the mind. Analysing the effects that different complex narratives have on viewers, the book addresses how films like Donnie Darko, Mulholland Drive or Primer strategically create complexity and confusion, and, by using the specific category of the ‘impossible puzzle film’, it examines movies that use baffling paradoxes, impossible loops, and unresolved ambiguities in their stories and storytelling. By looking at how these films play on our mind’s blind spots, this innovative book explains their viewing effects in terms of the mental state of cognitive dissonance that they evoke.

The Mind and its Tenement; Their Mutual Relations

1856 ◽  
Vol 2 (18) ◽  
pp. 479-494
Author(s):  
C. Lockhart Robertson
Keyword(s):  
Mental State ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
The State ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Law ◽  
Mutual Relations ◽  
The Mind

“The knowledge concerning the sympathies and concordances between the mind and the body” saith the founder† of modern science, in discoursing of human philosophy, or the knowledge of ourselves, as he terms it, is “fit to be emancipate and made a knowledge by itself. The consideration is double: either how and how far the humours and effects of the body do alter or work upon the mind; or again, how and how far the passions and apprehensions of the mind do alter or work upon the body. The former of these,” (the influence of the body on the mental state,) continues Bacon, “hath been enquired and considered as a part and appendix of medicine, but much more as a part of religion or superstition. For the physician prescribeth cures of the mind in phrensies and melancholy passions; and pretendeth also to exhibit medicines to exhilarate the mind, to confirm the courage, to clarify the wits, to corroborate the memory and the like: but the scruples and superstitions of diet and other regimen of the body in the sect of Pythagoreans, in the heresy of the Manicheans, and in the law of Mahomet do exceed. … The root and life of all which prescripts is besides the ceremony, the consideration of that dependency, which the affections of the mind are submitted unto, upon the state and disposition of the body.”

scholarly journals The Perception of Neighbour in CMLL Publicistics

2021 ◽  
pp. 125-147
Author(s):  
Loreta Vaičiulytė-Semėnienė
Keyword(s):  
Computational Linguistics ◽  
Mental State ◽  
Cognitive Approach ◽  
Favourable Response ◽  
Shared Space ◽  
Distant Neighbour ◽  
Mind Set ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Dictionary Definitions ◽  
What Matters

This article deals with the content of neighbour on the basis of the forms of the noun ‘neighbour’ (Lith. kaimynas). Efforts are made to strike a balance between the structural and the cognitive approach to its meaning. The sample base for the study consists of 700 published sentences sourced in the Corpus of the Modern Lithuanian Language (CMLL) compiled by the Centre for Computational Linguistics at the Vytautas Magnus University in Kaunas.The study has revealed a neighbour to be someone who experiences a certain mental state, someone who, in his or her (un)favourable response to the environment, affects another person in a relatively close space. Emotionally charged, this effect shows a neighbour who is a nice or a bad person to live next-doors with. The (dis)harmony of attitudes, values, and actions grounded on an (un)favourable mind-set defines a dynamic coexistenceof neighbours, or a failure to coexist.When it comes to the perception of neighbour that shifts in time, what matters is the shared space of the neighbours that has its relative boundaries and is measured as a distance – the closeness resulting in the distinction between a close > distant neighbour; yet even more important is the camaraderie – the proximity of attitudes, values, and the actions that they define – something that the dictionary definitions of the word neighbour tend to omit – and the related gradational differences between a homey > strange neighbour. When it comes to building and maintaining proximity, it is the neighbour’s temper, polite and supportive interaction, and behaviour that favours another person, such as sharing things with them and all kinds of assistance, especially in need, that matters. As the mind-sets, values, and behaviours assimilate, the neighbours become one – they become homey to each other. And the axis of oneness grounded on favour in neighbourhood is God.

Fall

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adriano D’Aloia
Keyword(s):  
Human Body ◽  
Homeostatic Process ◽  
Found Footage ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Contemporary Cinema ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Film Experience

A common outcome of acrobatics, and a motif often combined with it, is the fall. The chapter ‘Fall. Descent to equilibrium’ discusses the recurrence of the motif of the falling human body in contemporary cinema, taking as a starting point Oliver Pietsch’s found footage film Maybe Not. Relying on Torben Grodal’s application of the notions of telic and paratelic to the film experience, referring to the use of cinema as metaphor for the mind proposed by Antonio Damasio, and interpreting several experiments on the perception of movement in film sequences whose temporality is manipulated, this chapter describes the modality through which cinema ‘regulates’ the fall by adopting a homeostatic process that reduces its traumatic character and, at the same time, enhances its expressive effectiveness.

Luminosity and the KK Thesis

2019 ◽  
pp. 31-48
Author(s):  
Robert C. Stalnaker
Keyword(s):  
Information Theory ◽  
Mental State ◽  
Mental States ◽  
The State ◽  
Simplified Model ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Margin Of Error ◽  
The Mind

A mental state is luminous if and only if being in a state of that kind always puts one in a position to know that one is in the state. This chapter is a critique of Timothy Williamson’s margin-of-error argument that no nontrivial states are luminous in this sense. While I agree with Williamson’s rejection of a Cartesian internalist conception of the mind, I argue that an externalist conception (one based on information theory) can be reconciled with the luminosity of intentional mental states such as knowledge. My argument, which uses an artificial and simplified model of knowledge, is not a direct rebuttal to his argument, as applied to a more realistic notion of the knowledge of human beings, but I argue that it shows that a luminosity assumption is compatible with externalism about knowledge, and it suggest an intuitively plausible strategy for resisting his argument.

The Metaphysics of Memory

Memory ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 32-56
Author(s):  
Jordi Fernández
Keyword(s):  
Mental State ◽  
Perceptual Experience ◽  
Functional Role ◽  
Narrative Theory ◽  
Causal Theory ◽  
Cognitive Economy ◽  
Proposal A ◽  
The Subject ◽  
In Virtue Of

Chapter 2 offers a proposal about the facts in virtue of which a mental state qualifies as a memory. According to this proposal, a mental state qualifies as a memory in virtue of the functional role that it plays within the cognitive economy of the subject. The chapter outlines two alternative proposals about the nature of memory. According to the causal theory of memory, a mental state is a memory in virtue of the fact that it has been caused by a perceptual experience of some fact. According to the narrative theory of memory, a mental state is a memory in virtue of the fact that the subject is using the mental state to construct a story of their life. It is argued that the functionalist proposal enjoys the virtues of each of the two theories, and it avoids the difficulties which threaten the two theories as well.

Narrative Theory and the Cognitive Sciences

2001 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-34 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Herman
Keyword(s):  
Narrative Theory ◽  
Cognitive Sciences

scholarly journals Music Composition from the Brain Signal: Representing the Mental State by Music

2010 ◽  
Vol 2010 ◽  
pp. 1-6 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dan Wu ◽  
Chaoyi Li ◽  
Yu Yin ◽  
Changzheng Zhou ◽  
Dezhong Yao
Keyword(s):  
Mental State ◽  
Music Composition ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Arousal Level ◽  
Sleep Stages ◽  
Biofeedback Therapy ◽  
Significant Difference ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Brain ◽  
Potential Tool

This paper proposes a method to translate human EEG into music, so as to represent mental state by music. The arousal levels of the brain mental state and music emotion are implicitly used as the bridge between the mind world and the music. The arousal level of the brain is based on the EEG features extracted mainly by wavelet analysis, and the music arousal level is related to the musical parameters such as pitch, tempo, rhythm, and tonality. While composing, some music principles (harmonics and structure) were taken into consideration. With EEGs during various sleep stages as an example, the music generated from them had different patterns of pitch, rhythm, and tonality. 35 volunteers listened to the music pieces, and significant difference in music arousal levels was found. It implied that different mental states may be identified by the corresponding music, and so the music from EEG may be a potential tool for EEG monitoring, biofeedback therapy, and so forth.

scholarly journals The relation between language and mental state reasoning

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ercenur Ünal ◽  
Anna Papafragou
Keyword(s):  
Mental State ◽  
Cognitive Abilities ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Linguistic Differences ◽  
Conceptual Representations ◽  
The Mind

This chapter discusses how children’s conceptual representations of the mind make contact with language. It focuses on two domains: the understanding of the conditions that lead to knowledge, and the ability to attribute knowledge to oneself and others. Specifically, it asks whether language provides the representational resources necessary for representing mental states and whether cross-linguistic differences in encoding of mental states influence sensitivity to the features that distinguish the conditions that allow people to gain knowledge. Empirical findings in these domains strongly suggest that language scaffolds the development of these cognitive abilities without altering the underlying conceptual representations of mental states.

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