This meeting at the 2020 Cognitive Science Society 2020 conference will explore the ways in which cognitive science is reshaping of key assumptions about the human mind. Literary scholars working on mental phenomena at ‘Literature and Mind’ center at UCSB note that, currently, progress in fields such as data driven machine learning and computer vision is providing unprecedented opportunities for the prospect of human-level artificial intelligence. But, as has been argued in computer science, the ...

REGISTER HERE In this meeting, Professor Sangwon Suh (Bren School) will present research in progress about possible futures of human nature as it relates to selfishness and sustainability. This will be followed by discussion, moderated by Aili Pettersson Peeker. The meeting is open to all but we do ask you to register to attend so that we can spend our time in the meeting as productively as possible. After you've registered, you will receive a ...

THIS EVENT HAS BEEN POSTPONED At the last meeting of the Sustainability and the New Human RFG, Professor Suh discussed sustainability and behavior change. This talk will continue our conversation about the interdependence of humans and the environment by offering an ecological approach to how we understand the arts. At this meeting, PhD candidate Daniel Martini will share his dissertation research on how aesthetic appreciation (‘sense-making’) can emerge from both the rigidity of universal human ...

This talk explores how the cultural politics of elemental media influence crisis narratives produced in relation to urban change. Taking Calcutta as a case study, Doctoral Candidate Somak Mukherjee argues that the crisis of postcolonial cities has a distinct ecological imaginary, borne of tension between mediated pairings of elements and more typical civic imaginaries such as civility, citizenship, community, development, or progress. Four examples of elements—earth, air, water, and fire—are used as representative figures to ...

Uncertainty is a central psychological dimension of the ecological crisis. The science of climate change brings into view widely divergent scenarios; the discrepancy between these more or less catastrophic visions of the future undermines our ontological security (in Anthony Giddens’s terminology). Dr. Caracciolo argues that literary narrative has an important role to play in cultivating readers’ ability to live with uncertainty. He describes this process as a shift from a primarily negative understanding of uncertainty ...