Heureka! Creativity and the curious mind [Heureka]

Dozent/in:

Claudia Muth

Angaben:

Seminar, 2 SWS, Seminar auf Englisch

Termine:

Di, 12:00 - 14:00, MG2/01.11

Voraussetzungen / Organisatorisches:

This seminar is held in English language.

Inhalt:

The first insight that the earth turns around the sun and not vice versa, the discovery of hidden figures in an image, the experience of a marvelous line in a poem that opens up a whole new world or that thrilling moment within a piece of music that induces shivers down the spine: How is it that we gain pleasure by such surprising events considering that humans seek the opposite – namely stability and familiarity? Don't we prefer objects and situations that we can handle and understand easily because they affirm what we already know? In this seminar, we will explore the theoretical basis for human curiosity and creativity by drawing on literature from various fields like psychology, philosophy, cognitive science and neuroscience. We will link this literature to experiences and exercises and discuss topics like:
1) From creative robots and rigid humans: What makes a creative agent and is there something like creativity at all?
2) Creativity and cognition: psychological and neurological findings on divergent thinking and insight
3) Aesthetics in art and design: Why we seek familiar designs but can be thrilled by innovation
4) Enjoying Goosebumps when listening to music: a pleasurable interplay between anticipation and surprise
5) In the mood for novelty and innovation: Promotion vs. Prevention-modes
6) The curious mind and the “Dark-Room-Problem”: Do humans really seek stability and what would it be like to be isolated from any novel stimulation?

Empfohlene Literatur:

Armstrong, T. & Detweiler-Bedell, B. (2008). Beauty as an emotion: The exhilarating prospect of mastering a challenging world. Review of General Psychology, 12, pp. 305-329.
Boden, M. (1998). Creativity and artificial intelligence. Artificial Intelligence 103. 347-356
Carbon, C. C., & Leder, H. (2005). The Repeated Evaluation Technique (RET). A method to capture dynamic effects of innovativeness and attractiveness. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 19(5), 587-601.
Clark, A. (2013). Whatever next? Predictive brains, situated agents, and the future of cognitive science. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 36(3), 181- 204. doi: 10.1017/S0140525X12000477
Da Silva, O., Crilly, N., & Hekkert, P. (2017). Beauty in Efficiency: An Experimental Enquiry into the Principle of Maximum Effect for Minimum Means. Empirical Studies of the Arts, 35(1).
Dietrich, A. & Kanso, R. (2010). A review of EEG, ERP, and neuroimaging studies of creativity and insight. Psychological Bulletin, 136(5), 822–848. doi: 10.1037/a0019749
Friston, K., Thornton, C., & Clark, A. (2012). Free-energy minimization and the dark-room problem. Frontiers in Psychology, 3.
Guilford, J.P. (1950) Creativity. American Psychologist, 5(9), 444–454
Hekkert, P., Snelders, D., & van Wieringen, P. C. W. (2003). ‘Most advanced, yet acceptable’: Typicality and novelty as joint predictors of aesthetic preference in industrial design. British Journal of Psychology, 94, 111–124
Kounios, J. & Beeman, M. (2014). The Cognitive Neuroscience of Insight. Annual Review of Psychology, 65, 71-93. doi: 10.1146/annurev-psych-010213-115154
Muth, C. & Carbon, C. C. (2013). The Aesthetic Aha: On the pleasure of having insights into Gestalt. Acta Psychologica, 144(1), 25-30.
Pape, H. (1994). Kreativität und Logik: Charles S. Peirce und das philosophische Problem des Neuen. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag.
Post, R., Nguyen, T., & Hekkert, P. (2017). Unity in Variety in website aesthetics: A systematic inquiry. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 103, 48-62.
Radel, R., Davranche, K., Fournier, M., & Dietrich, A. (2015). The role of (dis)inhibition in creativity: Decreased inhibition improves idea generation. Cognition, 134, 110-120. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2014.09.001.
Van de Cruys, S., & Wagemans, J. (2011). Putting reward in art: A tentative prediction error account of visual art. i-Perception, 2(9), 1035–1062.

Neuroscience of Consciousness

Dozent/in:

Alexander Pastukhov

Angaben:

Seminar

Termine:

Mo, 10:00 - 12:00, MG2/01.11

Inhalt:

An English-language seminar course that presents our current understanding of consciousness. What is consciousness and how can we define it? We will try to answer this by looking question that philosophers raised (What is like to be a bat? Are you a philosophical zombie? Who is inside the Chinese room? What is a thought about a thought called?) We will look for missing consciousness in clinical cases (Can you see without primary visual cortex? When your arm is not your arm anymore? How many personalities can you squeeze into two hemispheres?), unconscious processing (Why cannot you see the flicker, if your V1 can? Can you pay attention to an invisible target?), free will (How do you know you did it? Why do you feel responsible, if you favorite team wins or loses?), false memory (Are you sure this happened to you at all?), and consciousness in animals (Again, what is it like to be a bat? Can animals read others’ minds?) The course is taught in English, which will allow you build vocabulary on the topic.