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3 Cognition and markets Brian J. Loasby Introduction Whether as an explanation of decision making or as a guide to making decisions, rational choice theory is not very interesting. What is called ‘a decision’ is merely the logical precipitate of the premisses: everything that might be regarded as a determinant of choice is already in place, and assumed to be known (if only as a probability distribution) to the chooser. Within choice theory agents make no decisions. Now this should not be a source of complaint, for, paradoxical as it may seem, choice theory is
One key aspect of characterization is the construction of character psychology, the attribution to fictional representations of beliefs and desires, personality traits, and moods and emotions. Characters are products of social cognition, the human propensity for making sense of others. However, they are also products of artists who fashion them to appeal to our nature as social beings. Through an analysis of Todd Solondz‘s Welcome to the Dollhouse (1995), this paper describes three processes of social cognition which are crucial for audiovisual characterization: folk psychology, causal attribution, and emotion expressions.
4 The quiet novel of cognition In 2002, the literary journal Poetics Today published a special issue to mark what the editors called a ‘new phase’ in literary theory.1 In their introduction to the volume, the editors argued that cognitive science had emerged as a major influence on contemporary criticism, ‘demystifying traditional humanist and religious concepts of supposedly timeless categories, such as self, identity, and morality.’2 Indeed, at the turn of the twenty-first century science experienced what was phrased as a ‘turn’ to subjectivity with many
It has been widely asserted that nationhood is inseparable from narration. This vague claim may be clarified by understanding that nationalism is bound up with the universal prototypical narrative structures of heroic, romantic, and sacrificial tragi-comedy. This essay considers an historically important case of the emplotment of nationalism - the sacrificial organization of German nationalism between the two world wars. It examines one exemplary instance of this emplotment, F. W. Murnau‘s Nosferatu, a Symphony of Horror (1922). However unintentionally, Nosferatu represents the vampire in a way that is cognitively continuous with Nazi representations of Jews. The films sacrificial emplotment of vampirism is, in turn, continuous with Nazi policies. That continuity places the film in a larger discourse that helped to make Nazi policies possible.
The article analyzes the relationship between social laws and the self in Gothic fiction, and argues that contemporary English Gothic fiction enacts the way subjects adhere to social practices and structures. In this scenario, characters are monsters of social conformity and docility. On this basis, Susan Hill‘s The Mist in the Mirror and The Woman in Black can be interpreted as critiques of the masculine quest for identity by means of adherence to the family as institution and habitus. The novels represent this process of ideological adherence by creating a dehistoricized plot and setting haunted by a ghost exerting what Bourdieu calls symbolic violence on the protagonists, and from which women have been absented.
et al. , 1991 : 11). Images, they wrote, had the power to communicate directly to young audiences, through their senses. They offered unique possibilities to bring to the attention of children the specific nature of people of faraway countries. Accordingly, the teachers’ guide offered an introduction to the ‘cognition and emotions’ of children at each stage of their growth, and matched them with types of activities most likely to teach them about the Global South. The booklet was organized around the relation of the psychology of specific age groups with ethics and
Bialystok , E. ( 2014 ), ‘ Independent Effects of Bilingualism and Socioeconomic Status on Language Ability and Executive Functioning ’, Cognition , 130 : 3 , 278 – 88 . CDAC Network ( 2018 ), ‘ Digital Inclusion and Community Voices: Stepping over the Humanitarian–Development Divide ’, www
There has been increasing interest and debate in recent years on the instituted nature of economic processes in general and the related ideas of the market and the competitive process in particular. This debate lies at the interface between two largely independent disciplines, economics and sociology, and reflects an attempt to bring the two fields of discourse more closely together. This book explores this interface in a number of ways, looking at the competitive process and market relations from a number of different perspectives. It considers the social role of economic institutions in society and examines the various meanings embedded in the word 'markets', as well as developing arguments on the nature of competition as an instituted economic process. The close of the twentieth century saw a virtual canonisation of markets as the best, indeed the only really effective, way to govern an economic system. The market organisation being canonised was simple and pure, along the lines of the standard textbook model in economics. The book discusses the concepts of polysemy , idealism, cognition, materiality and cultural economy. Michael Best provides an account of regional economic adaptation to changed market circumstances. This is the story of the dynamics of capitalism focused on the resurgence of the Route 128 region around Boston following its decline in the mid-1980s in the face of competition from Silicon Valley. The book also addresses the question of how this resurgence was achieved.
While there is widespread agreement across disciplines that the identities of individuals, groups and places are significantly interrelated, there are equally divergent views as to the nature and origins of those relationships. The first part of the book highlights that the prime importance of the human body in spatial cognition and human perception generally. In stressing the fundamental role of the body as the medium of all personal experience, the concept of the self that emerges thus far retains a strong unitary core. An alternative theory of extended minds which retains the integrity of individual human agents while embracing the extension of personal powers by external devices is also discussed. The second part looks at the scope of inquiry to take in the wider impact of technology on human evolution and the extended self. Selected writings from some of Stiegler's prominent followers and critics were also examined for what they contribute to our understanding of Stiegler's ideas and their possible further applications. He and his followers continue to fall back upon neo-Darwinian concepts and terminologies in elaborating their ideas. Theories of emergence and self-production, or autopoiesis, are investigated as promising alternatives to orthodox evolutionary theory. The subject of design, function of memes, impacts of the coevolution of humankind and technology on the human mind and the self are some other concepts discussed. The third part of the book focuses talk about cognitive roots of classification and combinativity, the relations between form and content, and vernacular architecture.
14 Textual face: cognition as recognition James Simpson When university presidents defend the humanities, they do so in the same way they defend the sciences: as discovery of knowledge. That may be true of the sciences, but in this short chapter I want to persuade you that there is a distinctive form of thinking in the humanities. Thinking in the humanities is more a matter of recovery than discovery. Moments of revelation in the humanities are more inventions in the older sense (finding the already known) than scientific inventions in the newer sense