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From: smoliar@vaxa.isi.edu (Stephen Smoliar)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: "Emotion" vs. "Understanding" (was: Re: emergent properties)
Message-ID: <15268@venera.isi.edu>
Date: 12 Oct 90 01:15:28 GMT
References: <3549@media-lab.MEDIA.MIT.EDU> <45348@apple.Apple.COM> <3560@media-lab.MEDIA.MIT.EDU> <3129@idunno.Princeton.EDU>
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In article <3129@idunno.Princeton.EDU> eliot@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Eliot
Handelman) writes:
>
> What, principally, is objectionable from the perspective
>of the cognitive agenda -- that is, the extraction of cognitivity
>from the work in question -- is that it doesn't make it clear 
>what's being done with time. Music is temporal experience, however 
>you can (and I do) cogitate about its nature: it's experience 
>with a particular here and now built right into it.

I think this points out a general shortcoming in the development of cognitive
models rather than a problem with a cognitive agenda for aesthetics.  There
have, in fact, been attempts to factor time into such models.  One might wish
to view Husserl as a pioneer along this front, particularly when we see the
impact of Husserl (via Miller) on David Lewin's recent account of music
behavior.  (Note, also, that Lewin's deliberate emphasis on "behavior"
is very much concerned with the relevance of the "here-and-now" in an
approach to aesthetics;  but I would still say that Lewin is following
a cognitive agenda.)  On the biological front, we have Gerald Edelman's
analysis of the "organs of successions" in the brain, discussing how vital
they are to more "cognitive" forms of behavior.

As I recall, time is not a major issue in THE SOCIETY OF MIND.  (Minsky will
surely correct me if this is an oversight.)  On the other hand, time is very
much an issue in his essay "Music, Mind, and Meaning."  There, the dynamics
of interaction between mind and the music which passes by the ears seems to
be of critical importance.  How does the mind keep up with all those stimuli?
How to the stimuli help or hinder the mind in its efforts to keep up?  In
summary, then, it is not the cognitive agenda which is wanting but simply
some of the shallower approaches to this agenda.

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