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Title: Toward a pragmatics of intent: cognitive approaches in creative and critical writing.
Creator: Wolfe, Lois., Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters, Department of Languages, Linguistics and Comparative Literature
Abstract/Description: Locus of an author poses questions of intentionality, how intention is discovered, expressed, hidden, revealed and interpreted. The purpose of the study is to find and apply productive interdisciplinary concepts in intentionality detection, decoding and evaluation in fictional texts. The investigation integrates traditions in literature, linguistics, cognitive science and creative writing, posing a pragmatics of intent that complements and complicates precepts in reader reception-based...
Show moreLocus of an author poses questions of intentionality, how intention is discovered, expressed, hidden, revealed and interpreted. The purpose of the study is to find and apply productive interdisciplinary concepts in intentionality detection, decoding and evaluation in fictional texts. The investigation integrates traditions in literature, linguistics, cognitive science and creative writing, posing a pragmatics of intent that complements and complicates precepts in reader reception-based constructivism. Basic to a vision of pragmatic strategies: 1) situating effect and affect in an embodied mind; 2) acknowledging mutual and/or oppositional intentionalities which an embodied author and embodied reader bring to the process of fictional communication; 3) accepting language as communication that requires cognitive translation of consensually-agreed upon symbols into private representations in an embodied mind; 4) assuming that an author's fictionalizing consciousness is more discernible w hen it is navigating tensions of selection, proportion, intervention and perspective. Perceptual and close reading of J.M. Coetzee's Foe yields descriptive problematics. Analytical readings in a neglected byway of I.A. Richards' New Criticism provide pragmatic cues for detecting and evaluating intentionalities in prose. Three cross-disciplinary strategies emerge to enhance perceptual and close readings of fictional texts: 1) awareness of priming effects in form and content; 2) identification of markedness patterns; and 3) perception of tensible connections in prosaic language and artistic devices., The study concludes that: reading in tensible awareness of author intentionality adds productively to critical analysis and argument; acknowledging positioned voices in texts supports ethical criticism and multicultural aesthetics; reading to apprehend perceptual units (image structures sensed through story) supports and contextualizes close reading of propositional units(discourse/language) . The formal element of perspective emerges as the most intensive locus of the reader's sense of integrated consciousness and management of effect in fiction. Perspective can create the most ergative construction of authorial perspective, i.e., one in which transitive energy appears equalized and the subject and patient / writer and reader positions in syntax can pivot.
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Date Issued: 2008
PURL: http://purl.flvc.org/FAU/165946
Subject Headings: Intentionality (Philosophy), Philosophy of mind, Attribution (Social psychology), Reportage literature (Authorship), Creative writing, Methodology
Format: Document (PDF)

Title: Interpretation of forced and unforced choice behavior.
Creator: Vail, Brian., Charles E. Schmidt College of Science, Department of Psychology
Abstract/Description: The current study investigated the interpretation of an agent's actions under the influence of external forces. Participants viewed a series of videos of an agent making a varying series of decisions and forced behaviors and were asked to predict future behavior. Firstly, we found evidence that suggests that perceivers make inferences about an agent that once they have shown a preference toward an object, they will persist with those initial desires, despite, external forces leading them to a...
Show moreThe current study investigated the interpretation of an agent's actions under the influence of external forces. Participants viewed a series of videos of an agent making a varying series of decisions and forced behaviors and were asked to predict future behavior. Firstly, we found evidence that suggests that perceivers make inferences about an agent that once they have shown a preference toward an object, they will persist with those initial desires, despite, external forces leading them to a different object. Secondly, we found evidence that suggests that submitting to a coerced choice will be perceived as reflecting a conflicting combination of pragmatic behavioral choice (due to concession to external forces) and maintenance of original desires, or, simply put, perceivers infer multiple underlying intentions in others.
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Date Issued: 2012
PURL: http://purl.flvc.org/fau/3352877
Subject Headings: Free will and determination, Identity (Psychology), Self (Philosophy), Intentionality (Philosophy), Decision making, Psychological aspects, Philosophy of mind
Format: Document (PDF)

Title: Development of inhibition as a function of the presence of an intentional agent.
Creator: King, Ashley., Charles E. Schmidt College of Science, Department of Psychology
Abstract/Description: This thesis examined the developmental differences in inhibition and theory-of-mind of 4-8 year olds as a function of the suggested presence of a supernatural agent. All children played four games designed to assess their current level of inhibition and theory-of-mind performance; Children in the experimental condition, only, were also introduced to an invisible Princess Alice and were told that she was watching during the games. Following these measures, all children engaged in a resistance...
Show moreThis thesis examined the developmental differences in inhibition and theory-of-mind of 4-8 year olds as a function of the suggested presence of a supernatural agent. All children played four games designed to assess their current level of inhibition and theory-of-mind performance; Children in the experimental condition, only, were also introduced to an invisible Princess Alice and were told that she was watching during the games. Following these measures, all children engaged in a resistance-to-temptation task to determine any differences in inhibition resulting from Princess Alice's suggested presence. I found that children exhibiting a well-developed theory-of-mind were more likely to express belief in Princess Alice than were children lacking this cognitive ability. This research provided support that cognitive maturity, rather than immaturity, may be necessary for children to express belief in novel supernatural agents, and highlighted the importance of context as a mediating factor in children's behavioral inhibition.
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Date Issued: 2009
PURL: http://purl.flvc.org/FAU/227977
Subject Headings: Child psychopathology, Physiological aspects, Cognition in children, Philosophy of mind in children, Inhibition
Format: Document (PDF)

Title: The effects of predatory status on developing understanding of mental state functioning subsequent to death.
Creator: Cormier, Christopher A., Bjorklund, David F., Florida Atlantic University, Charles E. Schmidt College of Science, Department of Psychology
Abstract/Description: Bering and colleagues (2004, 2005) reported that the expectation that conscious mental states cease with the onset of death (discontinuity reasoning) emerges developmentally, and discontinuity reasoning for some states (emotions, desire, epistemic) remains lower than for others (psychobiological, perceptual). Cormier (2005) reported very similar findings for the context of sleep and proposed a modular explanation of these effects (“intentional persistence”) and suggested that intentional...
Show moreBering and colleagues (2004, 2005) reported that the expectation that conscious mental states cease with the onset of death (discontinuity reasoning) emerges developmentally, and discontinuity reasoning for some states (emotions, desire, epistemic) remains lower than for others (psychobiological, perceptual). Cormier (2005) reported very similar findings for the context of sleep and proposed a modular explanation of these effects (“intentional persistence”) and suggested that intentional persistence represents an evolved adaptation designed to maintain vigilance and behavioral preparedness while in the presence of animals of ambiguous agency status (e.g., death, sleep, hibernation, feigned death). The current study extended this line of research to realistic animal characters. Although results revealed patterns of discontinuity reasoning and intentional persistence that were consistent with those of previous studies, the prediction that intentional persistence would be more pronounced for predators was not fulfilled. A newly proposed evolutionary product, “Cooptation,” was introduced to further explain the results.
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Date Issued: 2014
PURL: http://purl.flvc.org/fau/fd/FA00004094
Subject Headings: Cognitive neuroscience, Developmental psychology, Mental representation, Philosophy of mind, Thought and thinking
Format: Document (PDF)

Title: Children's understanding of sleep and death: Implications of intentional persistence for theory of mind and the theory theory/simulation debate.
Creator: Cormier, Christopher A., Florida Atlantic University, Bjorklund, David F.
Abstract/Description: Bering and Bjorklund (2004) reported that (1) the knowledge that conscious mental states cease with the onset of death (discontinuity reasoning, "DR") emerges developmentally; and (2) DR for some states (emotions, desire, epistemic) is more difficult than others (psychobiological, perceptual). In the current study, preschool/kindergarteners, 2nd/3 rd graders, 5th/6th graders and adults viewed a puppet story in which an anthropomorphized juvenile mouse character was explicitly enriched with a...
Show moreBering and Bjorklund (2004) reported that (1) the knowledge that conscious mental states cease with the onset of death (discontinuity reasoning, "DR") emerges developmentally; and (2) DR for some states (emotions, desire, epistemic) is more difficult than others (psychobiological, perceptual). In the current study, preschool/kindergarteners, 2nd/3 rd graders, 5th/6th graders and adults viewed a puppet story in which an anthropomorphized juvenile mouse character was explicitly enriched with a variety of mental states prior to falling asleep; the results were highly similar to those of Bering and Bjorklund. Statistical comparison of these data with those of Bering and Bjorklund demonstrates that DR for emotions, desires and epistemic contents is equally difficult for both death and sleep, and suggests the influence of both simulation and implicit theoretical factors. An evolved adaptation designed to maintain vigilance in the presence of immobile agents, but that also likely underlies intuitive dualism (intentional persistence) is proposed.
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Date Issued: 2005
PURL: http://purl.flvc.org/fcla/dt/13279
Subject Headings: Developmental psychology, Philosophy of mind in children, Cognition in children, Thought and thinking
Format: Document (PDF)

Title: The Significance for, and Impact Upon, Public Administration of the Correspondence Theory of Truth or Veridicality.
Creator: Slagle, Derek Ray, Miller, Hugh T., Florida Atlantic University, College for Design and Social Inquiry, School of Public Administration
Abstract/Description: The dissertation is about the significance for, and impact upon public administration of the correspondence theory of truth or veridicality, and its underlying epistemological assumptions. The underlying thesis is that, unduly influenced by the success of the natural sciences, and naive in accepting their claims to objectivity, many disciplines have sought to emulate them. There are two principle objections. Firstly, all other considerations aside, the supposedly objectivistic methodologies...
Show moreThe dissertation is about the significance for, and impact upon public administration of the correspondence theory of truth or veridicality, and its underlying epistemological assumptions. The underlying thesis is that, unduly influenced by the success of the natural sciences, and naive in accepting their claims to objectivity, many disciplines have sought to emulate them. There are two principle objections. Firstly, all other considerations aside, the supposedly objectivistic methodologies apparently applied to the explanation and prediction of the behavior of interactions of physical objects, may simply be inappropriate to certain other areas of inquiry; and more specifically objectivist methodologies are indeed inappropriate to understanding of human subjects, and their behavior, relations and interactions, and thus to public administration. The second objection is that it is of course logically impossible for any supposedly empirical discipline, as the natural sciences claim to be, to justify the belief in a supposedly objective realm of things-in-themselves existing outside, beyond, or independently of the changing, interrupted and different 'appearances' or experiences, to which an empirical science is qua empirical, necessarily restricted. Correspondence of any empirical observations or appearances (and the consequent or presupposed theoretical explanations) to an objective realm, upon which the claim to objectivity is based, is unverifiable. In light of the above it becomes evident that far from being objective, the natural sciences themselves, and the empirical observations upon which they are supposedly grounded, are subject to conceptual mediation and subjective interpretation; subjective and inter-subjective coherence replacing objective correspondence as the criterion of veridicality. Consequently it becomes clear that the presuppositions and prejudices of the observers enter, in the forms of concepts and preconceptions, into the very observations, and even more so into the theoretical constructions, or theories, of the natural, and indeed human and social sciences, and their claims to be authoritative and true. Subsequent discussion is then focused on both the coherence of individuals' experiences and understanding, and their inter-subjective coherence - which both rises from and constitutes, a "community". The role of language facilitates such coherence.
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Date Issued: 2015
PURL: http://purl.flvc.org/fau/fd/FA00004548, http://purl.flvc.org/fau/fd/FA00004548
Subject Headings: Discourse analysis, Information theory -- Philosophy, Philosophy of mind, Polarity (Linguistics), Public administration -- Language, Public administration -- Research -- Philosophy, Social constructivism, Visual perception
Format: Document (PDF)

Title: Perceptions of the environment: an ethnographic study of sensory awareness and environmental activism among south Florida yoga practitioners.
Creator: Weisner, Meagan L., Cameron, Mary, Florida Atlantic University, Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters, Department of Anthropology
Abstract/Description: The practice of yoga is an increasingly popularized movement within the West that incorporates the desire for physical fitness, spiritual consciousness, and environmentalism. Emanating from the New Age movement, the popularity of yoga has proliferated as a subculture that seeks to encourage mind–body wellbeing while representing an ethos that assumes environmental responsibility. This thesis examines the techniques of modern yoga and the influence that asana (posture) and meditational...
Show moreThe practice of yoga is an increasingly popularized movement within the West that incorporates the desire for physical fitness, spiritual consciousness, and environmentalism. Emanating from the New Age movement, the popularity of yoga has proliferated as a subculture that seeks to encourage mind–body wellbeing while representing an ethos that assumes environmental responsibility. This thesis examines the techniques of modern yoga and the influence that asana (posture) and meditational relaxation have on the senses and subsequently on environmental awareness and activism.
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Date Issued: 2015
PURL: http://purl.flvc.org/fau/fd/FA00004418, http://purl.flvc.org/fau/fd/FA00004418
Subject Headings: Cognition and culture, Environmental psychology, Mind and body, Movement therapy, Philosophy of mind, Self consciousness (Awareness), Senses and sensation, Sensorimotor integration, Yoga
Format: Document (PDF)

Title: Colombian Happiness: A Look at Life Satisfaction and Explanatory Style.
Creator: Sinisterra, Diana, Brown, Susan Love, Florida Atlantic University
Abstract/Description: This project examines the explanatory style of Colombians, the habitual way in which they explain the good and bad events that occur in their lives, and its relationship to life satisfaction. Two hundred and twenty Colombians completed a life satisfaction question, the Attributional Style Questionnaire (ASQ), and demographic questions. Simple means, correlations, and a multiple regression analysis were used to assess the results. The results of the ASQ were also compared to two previously...
Show moreThis project examines the explanatory style of Colombians, the habitual way in which they explain the good and bad events that occur in their lives, and its relationship to life satisfaction. Two hundred and twenty Colombians completed a life satisfaction question, the Attributional Style Questionnaire (ASQ), and demographic questions. Simple means, correlations, and a multiple regression analysis were used to assess the results. The results of the ASQ were also compared to two previously conducted studies: a comparison of American and Chinese national levels of explanatory style and a study conducted on a non-clinical sample of American adults. The results of this study showed that the mean of Colombian overall explanatory style is more optimistic than the mean overall explanatory style for participants in both the United States and mainland China. There are no correlations between individual responses of life satisfaction and explanatory style for the full sample; however, national means for explanatory style seem to correlate with national means of life satisfaction. The multiple regression analysis showed that when taking explanatory style, gender, age, stratum, income, education, occupation, and city into account, the only factors that are statistically significant are occupation and city. More specifically, the results show that those Colombians who Jive in Barranquilla, Bucaramanga, and Medillfn will tend to have higher levels of life satisfaction than those who live in Bogota, and those who are unemployed will tend to have a lower level of life satisfaction than those who work.
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Date Issued: 2007
PURL: http://purl.flvc.org/fau/fd/FA00000993
Subject Headings: Centering (Psychology), Mind and body, Happiness, Culture--Philosophy, Colombia--Social life and customs, Quality of life
Format: Document (PDF)

Title: Machina ex deo: embodiments of evil in Dan Simmon's Hyperion Cantos.
Creator: Stewart, Zachary., Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters, Department of English
Abstract/Description: Dan Simmons's far-future science fiction epic Hyperion Cantos, in which seven disparate individuals become enmeshed in a convoluted plot to enslave humanity, provides extensive support for British theologian John Hick's theory of transcendental pluralism. Using the central figures of the Shrike, a mysterious killing machine, and the Technocore, a collective of autonomous artificial intelligences, Simmons demonstrates Hick's postulation that all major Western religions actually focus on the...
Show moreDan Simmons's far-future science fiction epic Hyperion Cantos, in which seven disparate individuals become enmeshed in a convoluted plot to enslave humanity, provides extensive support for British theologian John Hick's theory of transcendental pluralism. Using the central figures of the Shrike, a mysterious killing machine, and the Technocore, a collective of autonomous artificial intelligences, Simmons demonstrates Hick's postulation that all major Western religions actually focus on the same divine being (God) by creating a negative divine being, akin to Satan, to which characters of various religions react in similar ways. Simmons's pilgrims each represent a particular spiritual outlook, from specific organized religions to less-defined positions such as secularism and agnosticism, but each pilgrim's tale contributes to the evidence of transcendental pluralism. This thesis explores each characters' experiences as they relate to the Shrike, the Technocore, and, ultimately the theory of transcendental pluralism.
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Date Issued: 2013
PURL: http://purl.flvc.org/fcla/dt/3361261
Subject Headings: Criticism and interpretation, Hyperion (Imaginary place), Inquiry (Theory of knowledge), Pluralism, Metaphysics, Philosophy of mind, Good and evil, History of doctrines
Format: Document (PDF)

Title: Foundations of a Scientific Cognitive Theory for Literary Criticism.
Creator: Bronsted, John C., Augustyn, Prisca, Florida Atlantic University, Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters, Department of Languages, Lingustics and Comparative Literature
Abstract/Description: Based on Noam Chomsky’s argument that the faculty of language is primarily a tool of thought whose purpose is to interpret the world, this dissertation argues that reading literature provides a cognitive experience like John Gardner’s “Fictive Dream” that mimics our interpretive experience of the world. Literary experience exploits language as an epistemological faculty that makes aspects of the external world intelligible. Yet the faculty of language is also capable of evoking entirely...
Show moreBased on Noam Chomsky’s argument that the faculty of language is primarily a tool of thought whose purpose is to interpret the world, this dissertation argues that reading literature provides a cognitive experience like John Gardner’s “Fictive Dream” that mimics our interpretive experience of the world. Literary experience exploits language as an epistemological faculty that makes aspects of the external world intelligible. Yet the faculty of language is also capable of evoking entirely mental worlds that do not reflect the mindexternal world. Because the literary experience is entirely mindinternal, even the cultural knowledge we bring into play for its understanding still relies on innate features of language. Thus, during the act of reading, we hold this cultural knowledge in abeyance, allowing the text to structure how we bring it to bear on the experience as a whole. A scientific approach to literature can help uncover principles to further elucidate the literaryepistemological experience. Whereas much literary criticism assumes that a critic’s purpose is to mine a text for its deeper meaning, this dissertation argues for a Cognitive Formalist approach in which criticism serves not simply to explain the experience evoked by any particular text according to linguisticepistemological principles, but also to evaluate the moral implications of that specific textual experience. As a means of demonstrating potential implications of a scientific cognitive approach to literary criticism based on linguisticepistemological understanding, the current study offers sample passages from J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. These passages allow us to offer first approximations of some explanatory principles of the literaryepistemological experience, such as the importance of fictive time and fictional event sequences, which in turn gives us greater insight into how, for example, verb tense and aspect contribute to the evocation of the action of fiction in the reader’s mind. Ultimately, the fictive vantage point constructed by the text allows the reader access to a complex moral framework in which fictive characters are understood to make choices that will in turn set the stage for the reader’s own ethical reception of the text and the experience it offers.
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Date Issued: 2017
PURL: http://purl.flvc.org/fau/fd/FA00004845, http://purl.flvc.org/fau/fd/FA00004845
Subject Headings: Tolkien, J. R. R.--(John Ronald Reuel)--1892-1973.--Lord of the rings--Criticism and interpretation., Gardner, John--1933-1982.--On moral fiction--Criticism and interpretation., Criticism., Discourse analysis, Literary., Philosophy of mind in literature., Language and languages--Style--Psychological aspects., Literature--History and criticism--Theory, etc.
Format: Document (PDF)

Philosophy of mind (5)	+ -
Cognition in children (2)	+ -
Developmental psychology (2)	+ -
Intentionality (Philosophy) (2)	+ -
Mind and body (2)	+ -

Philosophy of mind in children (2)	+ -
Thought and thinking (2)	+ -
Attribution (Social psychology) (1)	+ -
Centering (Psychology) (1)	+ -
Child psychopathology (1)	+ -
Cognition and culture (1)	+ -
Cognitive neuroscience (1)	+ -
Colombia--Social life and customs (1)	+ -
Creative writing (1)	+ -
Criticism and interpretation (1)	+ -
Criticism. (1)	+ -
Culture--Philosophy (1)	+ -
Decision making (1)	+ -
Discourse analysis (1)	+ -
Discourse analysis, Literary. (1)	+ -
Environmental psychology (1)	+ -
Free will and determination (1)	+ -
Gardner, John--1933-1982.--On moral fiction--Criticism and interpretation. (1)	+ -
Good and evil (1)	+ -
Happiness (1)	+ -
History of doctrines (1)	+ -
Hyperion (Imaginary place) (1)	+ -
Identity (Psychology) (1)	+ -
Information theory -- Philosophy (1)	+ -
Inhibition (1)	+ -

Florida Atlantic University (6)	+ -
Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters (4)	+ -
Charles E. Schmidt College of Science (3)	+ -
Department of Psychology (3)	+ -
Bjorklund, David F. (2)	+ -

Cormier, Christopher A. (2)	+ -
Augustyn, Prisca (1)	+ -
Bronsted, John C. (1)	+ -
Brown, Susan Love (1)	+ -
Cameron, Mary (1)	+ -
College for Design and Social Inquiry (1)	+ -
Department of Anthropology (1)	+ -
Department of English (1)	+ -
Department of Languages, Linguistics and Comparative Literature (1)	+ -
Department of Languages, Lingustics and Comparative Literature (1)	+ -
King, Ashley. (1)	+ -
Miller, Hugh T. (1)	+ -
School of Public Administration (1)	+ -
Sinisterra, Diana (1)	+ -
Slagle, Derek Ray (1)	+ -
Stewart, Zachary. (1)	+ -
Vail, Brian. (1)	+ -
Weisner, Meagan L. (1)	+ -
Wolfe, Lois. (1)	+ -

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