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Behaviorism, Consciousness, and the Literary Mind

Behaviorism, Consciousness, and the Literary Mind PDF Author: Joshua Gang
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 1421440865
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 223

Book Description
What might behaviorism, that debunked school of psychology, tell us about literature? If inanimate objects such as novels or poems have no mental properties of their own, then why do we talk about them as if they do? Why do we perceive the minds of characters, narrators, and speakers as if they were comparable to our own? In Behaviorism, Consciousness, and the Literary Mind, Joshua Gang offers a radical new approach to these questions, which are among the most challenging philosophical problems faced by literary study today. Recent cognitive criticism has tried to answer these questions by looking for similarities and analogies between literary form and the processes of the brain. In contrast, Gang turns to one of the twentieth century's most infamous psychological doctrines: behaviorism. Beginning in 1913, a range of psychologists and philosophers—including John B. Watson, B. F. Skinner, and Gilbert Ryle—argued that many of the things we talk about as mental phenomena aren't at all interior but rather misunderstood behaviors and physiological processes. Today, behaviorism has relatively little scientific value, but Gang argues for its enormous critical value for thinking about why language is so good at creating illusions of mental life. Turning to behaviorism's own literary history, Gang offers the first sustained examination of the outmoded science's place in twentieth-century literature and criticism. Through innovative readings of figures such as I. A. Richards, the American New Critics, Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter, and J. M. Coetzee, Behaviorism, Consciousness, and the Literary Mind reveals important convergences between modernist writers, experimental psychology, and analytic philosophy of mind—while also giving readers a new framework for thinking about some of literature's most fundamental and exciting questions.

Behaviorism, Consciousness, and the Literary Mind

Behaviorism, Consciousness, and the Literary Mind PDF Author: Joshua Gang
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 1421440865
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 223

Book Description
What might behaviorism, that debunked school of psychology, tell us about literature? If inanimate objects such as novels or poems have no mental properties of their own, then why do we talk about them as if they do? Why do we perceive the minds of characters, narrators, and speakers as if they were comparable to our own? In Behaviorism, Consciousness, and the Literary Mind, Joshua Gang offers a radical new approach to these questions, which are among the most challenging philosophical problems faced by literary study today. Recent cognitive criticism has tried to answer these questions by looking for similarities and analogies between literary form and the processes of the brain. In contrast, Gang turns to one of the twentieth century's most infamous psychological doctrines: behaviorism. Beginning in 1913, a range of psychologists and philosophers—including John B. Watson, B. F. Skinner, and Gilbert Ryle—argued that many of the things we talk about as mental phenomena aren't at all interior but rather misunderstood behaviors and physiological processes. Today, behaviorism has relatively little scientific value, but Gang argues for its enormous critical value for thinking about why language is so good at creating illusions of mental life. Turning to behaviorism's own literary history, Gang offers the first sustained examination of the outmoded science's place in twentieth-century literature and criticism. Through innovative readings of figures such as I. A. Richards, the American New Critics, Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter, and J. M. Coetzee, Behaviorism, Consciousness, and the Literary Mind reveals important convergences between modernist writers, experimental psychology, and analytic philosophy of mind—while also giving readers a new framework for thinking about some of literature's most fundamental and exciting questions.

Mind, Brain, Behavior

Mind, Brain, Behavior PDF Author: Martin Carrier
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110883384
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 328

Book Description
No detailed description available for "Mind, Brain, Behavior".

The New Behaviorism

The New Behaviorism PDF Author: J. E. R. Staddon
Publisher: Psychology Press
ISBN: 9781841690148
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 234

Book Description
First published in 2001. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Writing the Mind

Writing the Mind PDF Author: Hannah Walser
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 1503632040
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 326

Book Description
Novels are often said to help us understand how others think—especially when those others are profoundly different from us. When interpreting a character's behavior, readers are believed to make use of "Theory of Mind," the general human capacity to attribute mental states to other people. In many well-known nineteenth-century American novels, however, characters behave in ways that are opaque to readers, other characters, and even themselves, undermining efforts to explain their actions in terms of mental states like beliefs and intentions. Writing the Mind dives into these unintelligible moments to map the weaknesses of Theory of Mind and explore alternative frameworks for interpreting behavior. Through readings of authors such as Charles Brockden Brown, Herman Melville, Martin Delany, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Charles Chesnutt, and Mark Twain, Hannah Walser explains how experimental models of cognition lead to some of the strangest formal features of canonical American texts. These authors' attempts to found social life on something other than mental states not only invite us to revise our assumptions about the centrality of mind reading and empathy to the novel as a form; they can also help us understand more contemporary concepts in social cognition, including gaslighting and learned helplessness, with more conceptual rigor and historical depth.

The Escape of the Mind

The Escape of the Mind PDF Author: Howard Rachlin PhD
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199322368
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 224

Book Description
The Escape of the Mind is part of a current movement in psychology and philosophy of mind that calls into question what is perhaps our most basic, most cherished, and universally accepted belief--that our minds are inside of our bodies. Howard Rachlin adopts the counterintuitive position that our minds, conscious and unconscious, lie not where our firmest (yet unsupported) introspections tell us they are, but in how we actually behave over the long run. Perhaps paradoxically, the book argues that our introspections, no matter how positive we are about them, tell us absolutely nothing about our minds. The name of the present version of this approach to the mind is "teleological behaviorism." The approaches of teleological behaviorism will be useful in the science of individual behavior for developing methods of self-control and in the science of social behavior for developing social cooperation. Without in any way denigrating the many contributions of neuroscience to human welfare, The Escape of the Mind argues that neuroscience, like introspection, is not a royal road to the understanding of the mind. Where then should we look to explain a present act that is clearly caused by the mind? Teleological behaviorism says to look not in the spatial recesses of the nervous system (not to the mechanism underlying the act) but in the temporal recesses of past and future overt behavior (to the pattern of which the act is a part). But scientific usefulness is not the only reason for adopting teleological behaviorism. The final two chapters on IBM's computer, Watson (how it deviates from humanity and how it would have to be altered to make it human), and on shaping a coherent self, provide a framework for a secular morality based on teleological behaviorism.

Victorian Automata

Victorian Automata PDF Author: Suzy Anger
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 100911848X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 361

Book Description
Speaking to today's fascinations and anxieties surrounding artificial intelligence, this multidisciplinary collection is the first to examine the widespread Victorian interest in human and mechanical automata. This title is part of the Flip it Open programme and may also be available Open Access. Check our website Cambridge Core for details.

The Poetics of the Mind's Eye

The Poetics of the Mind's Eye PDF Author: Christopher Collins
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 9780812213607
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 226

Book Description
The heart of this study consists of Collins's application of six "cognitive modes" of reading: perception, retrospection, assertion, introspection, expectation, and judgment. In addition, Collins considers the impact of the movement from oral to print-literate culture.

Culture and Consciousness

Culture and Consciousness PDF Author: William S. Haney
Publisher: Bucknell University Press
ISBN: 9780838755297
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 214

Book Description
Haney demonstrates that the debates in theory surrounding the questions of identity, truth, and language, which have so far eluded the mind or reason, cannot be resolved without recourse to the structure of consciousness and intersubjectivity - an interaction mediated by language and resulting in mutual agreement. Chapters four to eight apply the notion of intersubjectivity to the reading of specific works."--Jacket.

Behaviorism

Behaviorism PDF Author: J. E. R. Staddon
Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
ISBN:
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 136

Book Description


Thinking About Psychology

Thinking About Psychology PDF Author: Charles T. Blair-Broeker
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 0716785005
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 826

Book Description
Rigourous science presented in a non-threatening way with numerous and immediate examples that will help students bridge the abstract to the familiar. With their extensive teaching and writing experiences, Charles Blair-Broeker and Randy Ernst know how to speak directly to students who are new to psychology. Lecturer supplements are available.