Directionality and Duration in Distributed Consciousness: Modernist Perspectives on Photographic Objectivity

Author(s):  
Adam Lively

This essay begins by exploring how the “immersive objectivity” of the photographic image highlighted by the Surrealists tends to collapse distinctions between what is internal and external to consciousness. It goes on to show how, in the photography-incorporating fictions of Georges Rodenbach and W.G. Sebald, perceptual immersion in the photograph engenders a “dysfunctional” state of melancholic stasis in the viewer, problematizing assumptions about agency common in many contemporary accounts of distributed cognition. It concludes by arguing that the internalization of the photographic image by consciousness, as exemplified in these modernist responses to photography, with their topologically unstable dynamics as between that which is “inside” and “outside” consciousness, strikingly demonstrate the relevance to contemporary debates over the “extended mind” of Bergson’s argument that the mind should be conceived not in spatial but in durational terms, as a continuous evolution of heterogeneous states.

Author(s):  
Kerry Watson

This chapter discusses how the Surrealists engaged with techniques like automatic drawing, the exquisite corpse, collage, frottage and decalcomania, and how this might be interpreted in the context of theories of distributed cognition, enactivism, embodiment, and the extended mind. The Surrealists’ use of ‘objective chance’ was driven by a belief in the existence of an unconscious state of mind which could only be accessed obliquely, by using techniques which bypassed both artistic skill and conscious thought. ‘Where does the mind stop and the rest of the world begin?’. This question is posed by Clark and Chalmers (1998) as an introduction to the concept of the extended mind, but it could just as well be the very question the Surrealists were trying to address in their search for a universal truth, the key to which they believed to be the unconscious mind as defined by Freud.


Author(s):  
Ros Ballaster

Readers in the mid-eighteenth century were increasingly invited to translate their knowledge about the social extension of mind learned in the experience of theatre to ‘new’ prose forms of the periodical and the novel. Women writers in these forms found opportunity to present women as cognitive agents rather than affective vehicles. Four works by women serve to illustrate this case: Eliza Haywood’s The Dramatic Historiographer (1735), Sarah Fielding and Jane Collier’s The Cry: a new dramatic fable (1754), Charlotte Lennox’s Shakespeare Illustrated (1753-4), and Frances Brooke’s The Old Maid (1755-6). These printed prose works invoke memories of performance – the co-presence of the real bodies of audience and actors. But they often do so to claim the superior cognitive experience of the reader’s engagement through print with a fictional persona in the ‘mind’. The prose work is imagined as a repository of socially extended mind for its audience, an opportunity not only to recreate the experience of communal consumption of the artwork which theatre affords, but also to provide a more sophisticated form of narrative scaffolding. Distance and reflection are enabled by the absence of the performer’s body and the judicious authority of a framing narrator.


Philosophies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 7
Author(s):  
Fiorella Battaglia

Moral issues arise not only when neural technology directly influences and affects people’s lives, but also when the impact of its interventions indirectly conceptualizes the mind in new, and unexpected ways. It is the case that theories of consciousness, theories of subjectivity, and third person perspective on the brain provide rival perspectives addressing the mind. Through a review of these three main approaches to the mind, and particularly as applied to an “extended mind”, the paper identifies a major area of transformation in philosophy of action, which is understood in terms of additional epistemic devices—including a legal perspective of regulating the human–machine interaction and a personality theory of the symbiotic connection between human and machine. I argue this is a new area of concern within philosophy, which will be characterized in terms of self-objectification, which becomes “alienation” following Ernst Kapp’s philosophy of technology. The paper argues that intervening in the brain can affect how we conceptualize the mind and modify its predicaments.


Author(s):  
Kate Maxwell

This chapter considers the medieval book as an example of embedded creative cognition. Through a detailed case-study analysis of a single opening from the interpolated Livre de Fauvel, the chapter shows how the modern-day reader takes an active part in the cognitive ecology that produced the book. The argument draws on theories of distributed cognition, multimodality, book history, and the writings of Augustine of Hippo to demonstrate the close connections between the mind, the body, and the book that are both still in action and under transformation today.


2015 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 91-109
Author(s):  
Łukasz Afeltowicz ◽  
Witold Wachowski

Abstract The aim of this paper is to discuss the concept of distributed cognition (DCog) in the context of classic questions posed by mainstream cognitive science. We support our remarks by appealing to empirical evidence from the fields of cognitive science and ethnography. Particular attention is paid to the structure and functioning of a cognitive system, as well as its external representations. We analyze the problem of how far we can push the study of human cognition without taking into account what is underneath an individual’s skin. In light of our discussion, a distinction between DCog and the extended mind becomes important.


Perspectives ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 24-35
Author(s):  
Ane Engelstad

Abstract In this paper I present a problem for the Marxist idea of false consciousness, namely how it is vulnerable to accusations of dogmatism. I will argue that the concept must be further developed if it is to provide a plausible tool for systematic social analysis. In the second half of the paper I will show how this could be done if the account of false consciousness incorporates Shaun Gallagher’s theory of the socially extended mind. This is a theory that explores how the mind expands towards external objects and systems. I will conclude that it helps to reinstate false consciousness as a reliable tool for the analysis of cognitive dynamics within power structures.


Author(s):  
José Antonio Aristizábal

Palabras clave:Fotografía, estética, Humberto Rivas, Rafael Argullol, Eugenio Trías.Keywords: Photography, esthetic, Humberto Rivas, Rafael Argullol, Eugenio Trías.Resumen:El siguiente artículo busca dar una lectura a la obra del fotógrafo Humberto Rivas, Premio Nacional de Fotografía y unos de los mayores exponentes de la fotografía española de finales del siglo XX. Se parte de la convicción de que hace falta ubicar a Humberto Rivas en una tradición de pensamiento estético, ya que las distintas lecturas que existen sobre su trabajo, aunque importantes, no han  dejado de ser lecturas impresionistas que no han reflexionado en profundidad sobre su obra. Este artículo trata de ver a Rivas a partir de unas categorías estéticas. Para ello se remite a las reflexiones de Rafael Argullol para distinguir aquello propio del artista romántico, y a las aportaciones filosóficas de Eugenio Trías acerca de lo siniestro en la obra de arte, y las vincula a la obra de Humberto Rivas. La hipótesis inicial es de que Rivas no se sentía como un fotógrafo que atrapa momentos o documenta acontecimientos, sino como un creador, y su obra es resultado de un artista que se repliega sobre sí mismo con la intención de producir una imagen reflejo de su mundo interior, la cual se puede explicar desde la mente del artista romántico, aunque el contexto no sea el romanticismo. Por último, aunque el artículo hable sobre Humberto Rivas, también es una manera de construir un relato entre la imagen fotográfica y distintos valores estéticos que hacen parte la historia del arte. Abstract:The following article seeks to give a reading to the work of photographer Humberto Rivas, National Photography Prize and one of the greatest exponents of Spanish photography at the end of the 20th century. It is based on the conviction that it is necessary to locate Humberto Rivas in a translation of aesthetic thought, since the different readings that exist on his work, although important, have not ceased to be Impressionist readings that have not reflected in depth on his work . This article tries to see Rivas from some aesthetic categories. For this he refers to the reflections of Rafael Argullol to distinguish that of the romantic artist and the philosophical contributions of Eugenio Trías about the sinister in the work of art, and links them to the work of Humberto Rivas. The initial hypothesis is that Rivas did not feel like a photographer who catches moments or documents events, but as a creator, and his work is the result of an artist who recoils on himself with the intention of producing a reflex image of Its inner world, which can be explained, from the mind of the romantic artist although the context is not romanticism. Finally, although the article talks about Humberto Rivas, it is also a way to build a narrative between the photographic image and the values ​​that have served to interpret painting or sculpture in the history of art.


Author(s):  
Francis Heylighen ◽  
Shima Beigi

We approach the problem of the extended mind from a radically non-dualist perspective. The separation between mind and matter is an artifact of the mechanistic worldview, which leaves no room for mental phenomena such as agency, intentionality, or experience. We propose to replace it by an action ontology, which conceives mind and matter as aspects of the same network of processes. By adopting the intentional stance, we interpret the catalysts of elementary reactions as agents exhibiting desires, intentions, and sensations. Autopoietic networks of reactions constitute more complex super-agents, which exhibit memory, deliberation and sense-making. In the case of social networks, individual agents coordinate their actions via the propagation of challenges. The distributed cognition that emerges cannot be situated in any individual brain. This non-dualist, holistic view extends and operationalizes process metaphysics and Eastern philosophies. It is supported by both mindfulness experiences and mathematical models of action, self-organization, and cognition.


Author(s):  
Hannah Burrows

This chapter examines the Old Norse myth of the mead of poetry in light of the distributed cognition hypothesis. It explains how Norse skaldic poetry scaffolds various cognitive processes, and then argues that the myth of the poetic mead, which sees poetry as an alcoholic substance, is exploited by Old Norse poets to understand and describe poetry’s effect on the mind. Examples are given that suggest poets saw poetry as ‘mind altering’ in ways that resonate with certain aspects of the distributed cognition hypothesis: in particular, that poetry is cognition-enabling through feedback-loop processes; that the mind can be extended into the world and over time in poetry; that cognition can be shared and/or furthered by engaging with other minds; that the body plays a non-trivial role; and that poetry performs mental and affective work in the world.


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