This week’s content focused on the importance of modeling by looking at the way in which models of media and models of mind come together in communication. The main purpose of this was to consider the common model of the mind and its often contrasting alternatives, and the varying ways they lead us to produce certain media and understand our individual engagement with media, as well as others. This week’s content was very conceptually rich, and I found it quite exhausting to interact with in its entirety. However as highlighted by Andrew, we are not particularly required to memories the specifics of each model, but rather seek an understanding of their general principles, and the importance of modeling for media and communication.
What I found most intriguing was the concept of going beyond the common model – the most common assumption – that “inside each of us there is a thing that thinks and feels and wants and decides” – that has dominated the mind frame of cognitive research for the last 500 years. The more contemporary concept of an “extended mind” was introduced, suggesting “the reach of the mind need not end at the boundaries of skin and skull” as “Tools, instrument and other environmental props can under certain conditions also count as proper parts of our minds”. As featured in last weeks blog, we once again see the importance of external influences as a major factor in influencing the individuals experience .
This belief is effectively highlighted by Alva Noe, who argued that to insist feeling/thinking happens purely in the brain is just as incorrect as suggesting talking occurs in the brain. “We could not speak without the brain, to be sure. But speech also depends on many other physical processes — such as articulatory movements in the mouth and throat, and also respiratory activity. And of course it depends on social circumstances, and needs. People speak, and they do so thanks to their brains, and mouths, and throats, and much else besides”.
Building on this, the belief that there is no such thing as a “simple experience” was particularly interesting to me. In the lecture, Andrew introduced the term ‘umwelts’, which projects the idea that each person’s world is different, that we share the same world in general, but have our individual and very different “umwelts”. Here we can see the importance of modeling in generalizing experiences across individuals to understand, explain and control people and events. Building on these models of mind is this assumption about how the mind works e.g. “the mind is like a computer”. This assumed knowledge heavily influences the way in which we interact with, understand and shape media and communication.
References:
‘The Extended Mind’, Wikipedia, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_Mind>
Noë, Alva (2010) ‘Does thinking happen in the brain?’, 13:7 Cosmos and Culture <http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/2010/12/10/131945848/does-thinking-happen-in-the-brain>