Distributed Cognition in Medieval and Renaissance Studies

2019 ◽  
pp. 18-43
Author(s):  
Miranda Anderson
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Distributed Cognition ◽  
Art Music ◽  
The Body ◽  
Cognitive Sciences ◽  
Research Context ◽  
Renaissance Studies

The purpose of this chapter is to provide a background to current research in medieval and Renaissance studies on topics related to distributed cognition and to consider how the various chapters in this volume represent, reflect and advance work in this area. The volume brings together 14 chapters by international specialists working in the period between the ninth and the seventeenth century in the fields of law, history, drama, literature, art, music, philosophy, science and medicine. The chapters revitalise our reading of medieval and Renaissance works by bringing to bear recent insights in cognitive science and philosophy of mind on the distributed nature of cognition. Together the chapters make evident the ways in which particular notions and practices of distributed cognition emerged from the particular range of sociocultural and technological contexts that existed during this period. This chapter attempts to put these contributions in their wider research context by examining how such topics have been approached by mainstream scholarship, earlier work in the cognitive sciences and by existing applications of distributed cognition theory. It draws out both more general features of distributed cognition and what was distinctive about medieval and Renaissance insights into (and superstitions about) the cognitive roles of the body and environment. Throughout this chapter, I reference the chapters in this volume that provide further information on topics covered or take forward the issues in question. In the concluding section, I turn to a fuller overview of the chapters themselves

Distributed Cognition in Medieval and Renaissance Culture

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Distributed Cognition ◽  
Historical Development ◽  
Art Music ◽  
Western European

This collection brings together 14 essays by international specialists in medieval and Renaissance culture and provides a general and a period-specific introduction to distributed cognition and the cognitive humanities. The essays revitalise our reading of medieval and Renaissance works in the fields of literature, philosophy, art, music, law, science, medicine and material culture, by bringing to bear recent insights in cognitive science and philosophy of mind on the ways in which cognition is distributed across brain, body and world. This volume explores how medieval and Renaissance practices and ideas make evident earlier expressions of distributed cognition. As many of the texts and practices have influenced later Western European societies and cultures, this book reveals vital stages in the historical development of our attempts to comprehend and optimise the distributed nature of cognition.

Distributed Cognition and the Humanities

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
Miranda Anderson ◽  
Michael Wheeler ◽  
Mark Sprevak
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Distributed Cognition ◽  
Methodological Approach ◽  
Cognitive Approach ◽  
Cognitive Sciences ◽  
Enactive Cognition ◽  
Arts And Humanities ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Actual Nature ◽  
4E Cognition

The general introduction, which is replicated across all four volumes, aims to orientate readers unfamiliar with this area of research. It provides an overview of the different approaches within the distributed cognition framework and discussion of the value of a distributed cognitive approach to the humanities. A distributed cognitive approach recognises that cognition is brain, body and world based. Distributed cognition is a methodological approach and a way of understanding the actual nature of cognition. The first section provides an overview of the various competing and sometimes conflicting theories that make up the distributed cognition framework and which are also collectively known as 4E cognition: embodied, embedded, extended and enactive cognition. The second section examines the ways in which humanities topics and methodologies are compatible with, placed in question or revitalised by new insights from philosophy of mind and the cognitive sciences on the distributed nature of cognition, and considers what the arts and humanities, in turn, offer to philosophy and cognitive science.

Distributed Cognition in Enlightenment and Romantic Culture

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Distributed Cognition ◽  
Art Philosophy ◽  
Long Eighteenth Century

This collection brings together eleven essays by international specialists in Romantic and Enlightenment culture and provides a general and a period-specific introduction to distributed cognition and the cognitive humanities. The essays revitalise our reading of Romantic and Enlightenment works in the fields of archaeology, history, drama, literature, art, philosophy, science and medicine, by bringing to bear recent insights in cognitive science and philosophy of mind on the ways in which cognition is distributed across brain, body and world. The volume makes evident the ways in which the particular range of sociocultural and technological contexts that existed during the long eighteenth century periods fostered and reflected particular notions of distributed cognition.

Distributed Cognition in Victorian Culture and Modernism

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Cognitive Science ◽  
History Of Science ◽  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Distributed Cognition ◽  
Science And Technology ◽  
General Introduction ◽  
Victorian Culture ◽  
History Of ◽  
Art Philosophy

This book brings together 11 essays by international specialists in Victorian culture and modernism. The volume opens with a general introduction to distributed cognition that also sets out its relevance to the humanities, followed by a period-specific introduction. The essays revitalise our reading of Victorian and modernist works in the fields of literature, art, philosophy, material culture and the history of science and technology by bringing to bear recent insights in cognitive science and philosophy of mind on the ways in which cognition is distributed across brain, body and world.

Distributed Cognition and the Humanities

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
Miranda Anderson ◽  
Michael Wheeler ◽  
Mark Sprevak
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Distributed Cognition ◽  
Methodological Approach ◽  
Cognitive Approach ◽  
Cognitive Sciences ◽  
Enactive Cognition ◽  
Arts And Humanities ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Actual Nature ◽  
4E Cognition

The general introduction, which is replicated across all four volumes, aims to orientate readers unfamiliar with this area of research. It provides an overview of the different approaches within the distributed cognition framework and discussion of the value of a distributed cognitive approach to the humanities. A distributed cognitive approach recognises that cognition is brain, body and world based. Distributed cognition is a methodological approach and a way of understanding the actual nature of cognition. The first section provides an overview of the various competing and sometimes conflicting theories that make up the distributed cognition framework and which are also collectively known as 4E cognition: embodied, embedded, extended and enactive cognition. The second section examines the ways in which humanities topics and methodologies are compatible with, placed in question or revitalised by new insights from philosophy of mind and the cognitive sciences on the distributed nature of cognition, and considers what the arts and humanities, in turn, offer to philosophy and cognitive science.

Distributed Cognition and the Humanities

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
Miranda Anderson ◽  
Michael Wheeler ◽  
Mark Sprevak
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Distributed Cognition ◽  
Methodological Approach ◽  
Cognitive Approach ◽  
Cognitive Sciences ◽  
Enactive Cognition ◽  
Arts And Humanities ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Actual Nature ◽  
4E Cognition

The general introduction, which is replicated across all four volumes, aims to orientate readers unfamiliar with this area of research. It provides an overview of the different approaches within the distributed cognition framework and discussion of the value of a distributed cognitive approach to the humanities. A distributed cognitive approach recognises that cognition is brain, body and world based. Distributed cognition is a methodological approach and a way of understanding the actual nature of cognition. The first section provides an overview of the various competing and sometimes conflicting theories that make up the distributed cognition framework and which are also collectively known as 4E cognition: embodied, embedded, extended and enactive cognition. The second section examines the ways in which humanities topics and methodologies are compatible with, placed in question or revitalised by new insights from philosophy of mind and the cognitive sciences on the distributed nature of cognition, and considers what the arts and humanities, in turn, offer to philosophy and cognitive science.

The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare and Dance

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
William Shakespeare ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Reference Point ◽  
The Body ◽  
Single Source ◽  
Dance Studies ◽  
Disciplinary Field ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Integral Feature

The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare and Dance is the first collection of essays to examine the relationship between William Shakespeare and dance. Despite recent academic interest in movement, materiality, and the body—and the growth of dance studies as a disciplinary field—Shakespeare’s employment of dance as both a theatrical device and thematic reference point remains under-studied. The reimagining of his writing as dance works is also neglected as a subject for research. Alan Brissenden’s 1981 Shakespeare and the Dance remains the seminal text for those interested in early modern dancing and its appearances within Shakespearean drama, but this new volume provides a single source of reference for dance as both an integral feature of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century culture and as a means of translating Shakespearean text into movement.

scholarly journals Legal Concepts as Mental Representations

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marek Jakubiec
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Mental Representations ◽  
Legal Philosophy ◽  
Current Debate ◽  
Cognitive Tools ◽  
Cognitive Sciences ◽  
Cognitive Aspect ◽  
Fundamental Level ◽  
Legal Concepts ◽  
Mental Constructs

AbstractAlthough much ink has been spilled on different aspects of legal concepts, the approach based on the developments of cognitive science is a still neglected area of study. The “mental” and cognitive aspect of these concepts, i.e., their features as mental constructs and cognitive tools, especially in the light of the developments of the cognitive sciences, is discussed quite rarely. The argument made by this paper is that legal concepts are best understood as mental representations. The piece explains what mental representations are and why this view matters. The explanation of legal concepts, understood as mental representations is one of (at least) three levels of explanation within legal philosophy, but—as will be argued—it is the most fundamental level. This paper analyzes the consequences of such understanding of concepts used in the field of legal philosophy. Special emphasis is put on the current debate on the analogical or amodal nature of concepts.

The Vindiciae Contra Tyrannos: A Chapter in the Struggle for Religious Freedom in France

1940 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 285-298
Author(s):  
Kathleen W. MacArthur
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Religious Freedom ◽  
Religious Life ◽  
The Body ◽  
Human Freedom ◽  
Historical Importance ◽  
Religious Problems

One of the most significant documents in the literature of the Continental Reformation is that bearing the title The Defense of Liberty Against Tyrants. Its significance rests upon a basis of historical importance far exceeding that of its inclusion in the body of Huguenot writings which illumines the religious life of sixteenth and seventeenth century France. It is important because, as Mr. Harold Laski indicates, it is “a brilliant summary of ideas already adumbrated by the Huguenot party,” and it “surpassed all other essays of the time in the vigor and lucidity with which it restates these ideas.” It is a work which is regarded as embodying the best Huguenot thinking, and it records a memorable protest against tyranny that has renewed poignancy at every crisis in the age-long struggle for human freedom. It asked, and in its own fashion answered, questions having wide political significance because of the inextricable union of political with religious problems of the time.

The Fiery Pacific: Volcanic Eruptions and Settler-State Theatricality in Oceania, 1780–1900

2014 ◽  
Vol 55 (3) ◽  
pp. 362-392
Author(s):  
Diana Looser
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Performance Studies ◽  
Art History ◽  
Volcanic Eruptions ◽  
The Body ◽  
Red Color ◽  
Form Part ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Grand Opera ◽  
The City

In the closing scene of René-Charles Guilbert de Pixérécourt's melodramaLa Tête de mort; ou, Les Ruines de Pompeïa(1827), audiences at Paris's Théâtre de la Gaîté were presented with the spectacular cataclysm of an erupting Mount Vesuvius that invaded the city and engulfed the hapless characters in its fiery embrace. “The theatre,” Pixérécourt writes, “is completely inundated by this sea of bitumen and lava. A shower of blazing and transparent stones and red ash falls on all sides…. The red color with which everything is struck, the terrible noise of the volcano, the screaming, the agitation and despair of the characters … all combine to form this terrible convulsion of nature, a horrible picture, and altogether worthy of being compared to Hell.” A few years later, in 1830, Daniel Auber's grand operaLa Muette de Portici(1828), which yoked a seventeenth-century eruption of Vesuvius with a popular revolt against Spanish rule in Naples, opened at the Théâtre de Monnaie in Brussels. The Belgian spectators, inspired by the opera's revolutionary sentiments, poured out into the streets and seized their country's independence from the Dutch. These two famous examples, which form part of a long genealogy of representing volcanic eruptions through various artistic means, highlight not only the compelling, immersive spectacle of nature in extremis but also the ability of stage scenery to intervene materially in the narrative action and assimilate affective and political meanings. As these two examples also indicate, however, the body of scholarship in literary studies, art history, and theatre and performance studies that attends to the mechanical strategies and symbolic purchase of volcanic representations has tended to focus mainly on Europe; more research remains to be undertaken into how volcanic spectacles have engaged with non-European topographies and sociopolitical dynamics and how this wider view might illuminate our understanding of theatre's social roles.

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