Gestalt TheoryPub Date : 2019-11-01DOI: 10.2478/gth-2019-0029
Mariusz Mela
{"title":"Bericht von der 21. Internationalen Arbeitstagung der GTA in Warschau (2019)","authors":"Mariusz Mela","doi":"10.2478/gth-2019-0029","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2478/gth-2019-0029","url":null,"abstract":"Von 13. bis 15. Juni 2019 fand in Warschau die 21. wissenschaftliche Arbeitstagung der International Society for Gestalt Theory and its Applications (GTA) statt, die dem Rahmenthema „Motion. Spaces of Human Experience“ gewidmet war. Veranstalter waren die Universität Warschau, vertreten durch Silvia Bonacchi, die Polnische Akademie der Wissenschaften, vertreten durch Jagna Brudzińska in Zusammenarbeit mit der Universität Palermo, vertreten durch Alice Pugliese, die Universität Triest und die von Stanisław Czerniak vertretene Fundacja Filozofia na Rzecz Dialogu. Tagungsort dieser Jubiläumstagung, auf der auch das 40jährige Bestehen der GTA gefeiert wurde, war der Staszic-Palast im Herzen Warschaus und Sitz der Polnischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. Die Tagung hatte einen ausgeprägt interdisziplinären Charakter: Nicht nur Psychologen, sondern Wissenschaftler aus den unterschiedlichsten Disziplinen waren eingeladen, sich mit dem Konzept „Motion“/„Bewegung“ und der Gestalttheorie auseinanderzusetzen.","PeriodicalId":33799,"journal":{"name":"Gestalt Theory","volume":"41 1","pages":"323 - 335"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47722257","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Gestalt TheoryPub Date : 2019-11-01DOI: 10.2478/gth-2019-0024
R. Luccio
{"title":"Perceptual Simplicity: The True Role of Prägnanz and Occam","authors":"R. Luccio","doi":"10.2478/gth-2019-0024","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2478/gth-2019-0024","url":null,"abstract":"Summary In recent years, the concept of simplicity in perception has acquired a leading role, above all thanks to scholars linked to Bayesian modeling and to theories like structural information theory derived from information theory. Unfortunately, two misleading ideas made their way into the discussion: that in perception, simplicity is equivalent to Prägnanz and that Occam’s razor plays a role in the simplicity of percepts. Here it is shown that in Gestalt theory, simplicity is only one of the factors of Prägnanz and that the use of Occam’s razor is improper, because it applies only to the theories that generate, in this case, a percept, and not to the product of the theory.","PeriodicalId":33799,"journal":{"name":"Gestalt Theory","volume":"41 1","pages":"263 - 276"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49212005","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Gestalt TheoryPub Date : 2019-07-01DOI: 10.2478/GTH-2019-0016
Elisabetta Vinci
{"title":"Empathy in Modern Drama: Bertolt Brecht’s Threepenny Opera","authors":"Elisabetta Vinci","doi":"10.2478/GTH-2019-0016","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2478/GTH-2019-0016","url":null,"abstract":"Summary The aim of this paper is to compare Brechtian theory concerning empathy in theatre and recent studies showing the biological basis of empathy. First of all, a brief summary about the concept of empathy is provided, with particular attention to empathy in Brechtian theatre. Then, a paragraph is dedicated to explain how empathy and emotional involvement are linked to neurobiological mechanisms and body state. In the end, an analysis of the Verfremdungseffekte in the Threepenny Opera is traced to understand how recent studies contradict Brechtian theory as far as empathy is concerned.","PeriodicalId":33799,"journal":{"name":"Gestalt Theory","volume":"41 1","pages":"159 - 171"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49349410","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Gestalt TheoryPub Date : 2019-07-01DOI: 10.2478/GTH-2019-0020
Benito García-Valero
{"title":"Bridging Heterodox Views on Language and Symbols: Gilbert Durand’s Imaginaire and Mark Johnson’s Image Schemata","authors":"Benito García-Valero","doi":"10.2478/GTH-2019-0020","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2478/GTH-2019-0020","url":null,"abstract":"Summary This paper aims to bridge anthropological and cognitivist research undertaken by Gilbert Durand and Mark Johnson, who studied the phenomenon of meaning making in a similar way, although they had to use different terminology as their disciplines demanded. Durand established systematization for analyzing symbolism by taking into account the position of the body and the perceptions determining the underlying schemata of symbols. Two decades later, Mark Johnson described image schemata as gestalts having an internal structure derived from bodily perceptions. Owing to these similarities, a comparison between Durand and Johnson’s theories is offered first. In the second place, I reviewed the cognitive value of the anthropological regimes of imaginaire described by Durand. During the analysis, the terminology used by these theorists (like ‘image schemata’ or ‘axiomatic schemata’) was comparatively analyzed to find common ground between their positions. In conclusion, the need for recovering theories of imagination proposed by heterodox scholars like Durand is highlighted, since they anticipate the role of images and imagination not only in language, as Johnson demonstrated, but also in the formation of anthropologically relevant symbols, which are of interest for the analysis of literature and other arts.","PeriodicalId":33799,"journal":{"name":"Gestalt Theory","volume":"41 1","pages":"217 - 230"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45581777","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Gestalt TheoryPub Date : 2019-07-01DOI: 10.2478/GTH-2019-0011
Renata Gambino, G. Pulvirenti, Elisabetta Vinci
{"title":"What is What? Focus on Transdisciplinary Concepts and Terminology in Neuroaesthetics, Cognition and Poetics","authors":"Renata Gambino, G. Pulvirenti, Elisabetta Vinci","doi":"10.2478/GTH-2019-0011","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2478/GTH-2019-0011","url":null,"abstract":"The birth of the new discipline “neuroaesthetics” (Zeki, 1993, 2008, 2014) and more in general the “biocultural turn” (Wojciehowski & Gallese, 2011, 2018; Cometa, 2018; Gambino & Pulvirenti, 2018; Uboldi, 2018; Gallese 2018) have put at the core of the recent transformation of the epistemological paradigms the linkage among literary studies, neuroaesthetics, anthropology, philosophy, linguistics, poetics, art history, psychology, and the most recent cognitive and neuroscientific studies. This new transdisciplinary venture overcoming the dichotomy between culture and nature has highlighted how we can better understand the artistic creation by relating it to the cognitive brain processes underpinning any human activity. In this perspective, culture is to be intended as an extension of the human mind and bodily nature and as a process of cognitive technological development (Gallese, 2017). This transdisciplinary approach, although criticized as expression of reductionism and interference between science and human studies, has shed new light on many relevant issues with regard to both artistic questions and brain–body processes such as empathy, emotions, consciousness, imagination, vision, perception and narration, in the frame of a new concept of cognition: in opposition to the computational model of the first generation, the nature of mind is now considered by cognitive sciences as embodied, embedded, enactive and extended, giving rise to the concept of “4E cognition”, with regard to the coupling of brain, body, action and environment (Newen, de Bruin & Gallagher, 2018). Consequently, this issue aims at providing a series of terms used in the last generation of cognitive studies and of examples of how the new approach to cognition is opening new routes to interpret the most surprising product of human mind: art.","PeriodicalId":33799,"journal":{"name":"Gestalt Theory","volume":"41 1","pages":"99 - 105"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45500892","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Gestalt TheoryPub Date : 2019-07-01DOI: 10.2478/GTH-2019-0017
Alexander T. Bergs
{"title":"What, If Anything, Is Linguistic Creativity?","authors":"Alexander T. Bergs","doi":"10.2478/GTH-2019-0017","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2478/GTH-2019-0017","url":null,"abstract":"Summary This paper investigates the nature of creativity in language and linguistics. Following Sampson (2016), it distinguishes between F-creativity (which roughly equals linguistic productivity) and E-creativity (which leads to new and unexpected innovations). These two notions of creativity are discussed on the basis of examples from three different domains: snow cloning, mismatch/coercion, and aberration. It is shown that pure E-creativity may only be found in the case of aberration. Both snow cloning and mismatch/coercion are examples for F-creativity, but to varying degrees. As a consequence, it is suggested that in practice, F- and E-creativity actually form a cline, rather than a dichotomy.","PeriodicalId":33799,"journal":{"name":"Gestalt Theory","volume":"41 1","pages":"173 - 183"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46980577","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Gestalt TheoryPub Date : 2019-07-01DOI: 10.2478/GTH-2019-0019
Pierre-Louis Patoine
{"title":"Representation and Immersion. The Embodied Meaning of Literature","authors":"Pierre-Louis Patoine","doi":"10.2478/GTH-2019-0019","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2478/GTH-2019-0019","url":null,"abstract":"Summary This article explores the relations among three forms of representations (artistic, mental, and neural) and immersion, considered as an altered state of consciousness, in the context of literary reading. We first define immersive reading as an intensification of our embodied experience of literary representation, in accordance to neuropsychological studies about embodied cognition. We further consider the style of interpretation demanded by such immersive reading and its ethical and ecological underpinnings.","PeriodicalId":33799,"journal":{"name":"Gestalt Theory","volume":"41 1","pages":"201 - 215"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43879242","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Gestalt TheoryPub Date : 2019-07-01DOI: 10.2478/GTH-2019-0013
V. Gallese
{"title":"Embodied Simulation. Its Bearing on Aesthetic Experience and the Dialogue Between Neuroscience and the Humanities","authors":"V. Gallese","doi":"10.2478/GTH-2019-0013","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2478/GTH-2019-0013","url":null,"abstract":"Summary Embodied simulation, a basic functional mechanism of our brain, and its neural underpinnings are discussed and connected to intersubjectivity and the reception of human cultural artefacts, like visual arts and film. Embodied simulation provides a unified account of both non-verbal and verbal aspects of interpersonal relations that likely play an important role in shaping not only the self and his/her relation to others, but also shared cultural practices. Embodied simulation sheds new light on aesthetic experience and is proposed as a key element for the dialogue between neuroscience and the humanities within the biocultural paradigm.","PeriodicalId":33799,"journal":{"name":"Gestalt Theory","volume":"41 1","pages":"113 - 127"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43396639","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}