Author: cstiglianese

As we learned in this module, memory is constructed and is built by the mind, they are not recorded or stored in an archival mind. Our memory is influenced by context, emotion, and our environment.

In the movie “Marjorie Prime,” we are introduced to a woman in her 80s who is being told stories about her past with her deceased husband by a holographic replica of him called Walter Prime. I would consider this movie to be cognitive integration because you have an outside source assisting the main character with her memories and helping her to remember them. Marjorie and Walter Prime feed off of each other’s memories. Walter Prime will tell her a story about her life before her husband passed and brings things back to her memory that she had forgotten, and she will also update his program by telling the holograph something she remembers that he did not know about.

There is a scene in the movie where Walter Prime is telling Marjorie a story about the time Marjorie and Walter (when he was alive) went to the pet store and bought a Black French Poodle, who eventually dies. Shortly after the poodle Toni with an I dies, Tessa Marjorie and Walter’s daughter are born. When Tessa was about three years old, her parents took her to pick out a dog, and she picked out the same black poodle her parents had years before her birth. This dog is named Toni 2, but eventually, the family drops the two and calls her Toni. What strikes me about this story is when Walter Prime tells Marjorie that eventually, memories blurred, and they couldn’t tell the difference between Toni 1 and 2. That, to me is Affect Priming because the dogs are two different animals; however, because of the love that was had for the dog, the emotion blurs the fact that one was owned years earlier and Tessa was not yet born; all they remember is that they dogs are both loved and in their memories have somehow become one. Marjorie remembers one fact, Toni 2 loved the ocean no matter how much it irritated her to have sand in her fur.

Tessa was not very fond of the holograph that played on the memories of her parents and looked like her father. In one scene, she tells her husband that memories are not sedimentary layers in the brain that have to be dug out as he suggests but that they are, according to William James, remembered from the last time you remembered the memory and not the exact moment itself. This is like what we are taught in this module memories can change and still be accurate.

In Star Trek’s “Measure of a Man,” Data is requested to be disassembled so he can be studied for a research project about memory, and he refuses. Data remembers the man who wants to take him apart as Commander Bruce, who was against Data being on the enterprise because he was not part of what makes a sentient being he is an android. This episode is about cognitive offloading, where the Commander wants to test the theory that memory can be downloaded and contained in a separate brain. Data tells the commander that memories have an essence, and he does not believe they can survive his experiment or procedure.

Majorie Prime and Star Trek both show how each regards memory. Some believe that every time you access memory, it is not the memory itself but a recreation of the last time you remembered it, making it a copy of the memory itself. Others believe that memories can be downloaded or dug out when an individual means to access them on purpose or by accident. The question arises in my mind, though, when an individual suppresses a memory, is it not buried deep within their mind? I only ask this question because I watched an episode of NCIS today, and in one of the episodes, a suspect buried a tragic memory, and it took a lot to get her to remember the memory. What then causes the mind to suppress tragic things that occur?

This module discusses cognitive linguistics and the link/relationship language has to the mind, body, and communication. Language is not only verbal but can be communicated and understood through the body, such as sign language, communicating with the hands, or behavioral and emotional cues shown with the whole body like tenseness if uncomfortable, tears if sad, or doubled over if in pain. Communication and language can also be understood from text like words in a book or braille; for the visually impaired. We learn how language is spoken and understood through two science fiction works, the movie Arrival and the television show Star Trek: The Next Generation, “Darmok.”

In the movie Arrival, a linguist professor, Louise Banks, is in the process of teaching a class when the news about the 12 objects that arrived on earth is reported. These objects, it turns out, are spaceships that carry alien beings. The professor is drafted by the army to learn to communicate with the beings to prevent destruction and war. These 12 unidentified flying objects are placed sporadically throughout the world, yet, different cultures with different languages all cognitively understand the significance of these appearances, and everyone is fearful or worried. The aliens in this movie do not speak any verbal earthly or alien language and cannot or will not assimilate into any sort. However, Louise decides they might understand better if she wrote the language rather than spoke it, and she has success. Louise writes humans and aliens respond with a few circle symbols, giving us the understanding they understand. Unlike humans, these beings seem semiotic because they process information in isolation to make sense of the written word. This process is to find a relation between their language and the human language, so they (aliens) can respond. Context cognitive linguistics is how we understand or have shared meaning; however, for these creatures, that is not the case. These aliens imitate Ian and Louise’s bodily actions to connect with them through bodily communication rather than verbal communication. However, they have no meaningful connection or understanding of the action. According to Ian, the alien’s symbols and meaning do not correlate in the movie. Ian also says that, unlike written human language, the symbols convey meaning but do not convey sound. This statement would lead one to believe that the way they might communicate with one another may also lack context cognition and maybe even empathy and emotion.

                                                        “Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra”

“In my experience, communication is a matter of patience and imagination; I would like to believe we have these qualities in sufficient measure.” – Captain Picard.

In the Star Trek: The Next Generation, episode “Darmok,” Captain Picard and the Tamarian captain have been beamed down and stranded on a planet. Neither crew can rescue their respective captains, and like in previous encounters with the Tamarians and other federation ships, there is a communication barrier with no one understanding the other. Unfortunately, the language barrier creates some static between the captains. Still, as the night turns to the day, they begin to pick up physical clues from each other as both captains realize they have an enemy they must fight together. However, from the Tamarian captain’s initial response and the demand for a second knife, he knew of the danger on this planet, a danger he tried to warn Captain Picard about. As they stand against this enemy, Captain Picard realizes that the Tamarians speak in metaphor. In this module, we learn that metaphor is one of the primary ways we understand the world. These metaphors are anchored in our physical and cultural experiences, like the Tamarians and how they communicate. The Tamarians use visualization and situations from their culture and history to communicate what is occurring in the present. From the conversation between Picard and the Tamarian captain, it seems he is speaking in ego-moving metaphors rather than time-moving metaphors.

Both of these works were very entertaining and embodied (see what I did there) the point and lesson of this module. They proved that two people or two beings do not have to speak the same language to understand each other. Language can be conveyed through bodily context, metaphors, or symbols. Other ways of commuting do not include verbal linguistics or even the standard ways of verbally communicating.

Before I end, I want to say that Arrival, the movie reminds me of Independence Day because UFOs appeared in many locations worldwide without warning. In the scene where Captain Hiller (Will Smith) takes the alien that he knocked out to area 51, the scientist’s body is inhabited. The alien tells the president and those around cognitively through the scientist that they did not want peace, only destruction, and then this alien enters the president’s mind, and the president sees the destruction that takes place from planet to planet, with earth being next. This example is not really about this module it is more along the line with module 2 and the embedded cognition, but the aliens did not verbally communicate with one another they communicated telepathically and through signals; however, to communicate directly with the president, he used the cognitive linguistics of another human being.

In this week’s module, we watch one film, “Possessor,” and an episode of Futurama, “I Second That Emotion, and connect them to the lesson about empathy and how one processes empathy as it correlates not only to themselves but how they observe, interact and process the empathy of others.

In the movie Possessor, we are introduced to the main character Tasya Vos, who is not her physical self, but she has possessed the body of another woman. In this first scene, the young African American woman Vos has inhabited turns a dial linked to a device in her head. The device allows Vos to feel emotions daily to keep her consciousness grounded. The young woman then goes from laughing to crying and then almost instantly emotionless on her face. I do not know what causes the range of emotions or why Vos displays them in that order, but it caused me to feel cognitive empathy. The 13th anniversary of my grandfather’s passing last month, a few days after his birthday, is still fresh in my mind. I remember smiling and laughing at stories my dad told me mixed with my memories of fishing and bowling with my grandfather and then the pang of sadness that brought on tears because my children will never know the joys of being around their great-grandfather and then holding back the pain because I know my gramps would not want me to be sad.

This movie is not something I would watch myself because I am not a psychological thriller fan (well depends on the movie), and I do not like horror. Still, I found it exciting and realized a few types of empathies learned in this module in the movie. The movie “Possessor” displays a type of embodied cognition because specific individuals’ consciousness is uploaded into the body of an unwilling host. Therefore the possessor is linked or sensing the host body and living through it. Tasya Vos is very disconnected from her emotions which I would assume is why she was chosen to be an assassin. However, she could not do it when it was time to kill herself or, more accurately, the host body. Being directly linked to the host’s emotions, the reluctance to take the host’s life was a display of mirror neurons because before the police take out the assassin, the host cries out, and Vos second guesses her decision; one could assume that was the host’s consciousness unwilling to  “take her own life.”

The episode from Futurama, “I Second That Emotion,” had me singing Smokey Robinson and The Miracles’ song, I Second That Emotion, around my house! Lol.

This episode is centered around Bender, his disdain, and his jealousy of Nibbler because everyone treats Nibbler with the type of love and respect Bender wants. Bender lacks basic empathy, so he causes Nibbler to go to the hospital, and the crew discovers he is 5, so they give him a birthday party. Bender’s need for attention causes him to flush Nibbler down the toilet, Leela becomes extremely emotional, and those around her directly perceive how she is feeling, except Bender. The professor then links Bender to Leela’s emotions which causes Bender to be influx with sad emotions.

In this episode, Bender’s lack of basic empathy creates a hostile environment between him and Leela. The empathy chip created by the professor is an example of an ecological perspective on perception in Bender, who is now connected to Leela’s consciousness; he can sense the environment indirectly through her and how she relates to situations that may not affect him similarly. This link is also embedded cognition because he is connected to a host consciousness and can cognitively think as another being. However, he is not exactly in her body but sharing her consciousness.

These episodes also remind me of the link between Jake Sully and his brothers Avatar in the James Cameron movie Avatar. Jake and the other humans linked to their Na Vi avatar experience the cultural and religious love and respect the Na Vi have not only for each other and their land but also empathize with them when their existence and the home tree are threatened by earth’s capitalism and military bullies. The link between the host and the possessor creates a different kind of embodied cognition because the perception of another person and how they live through things are more closely related than individual sensing from the outside. After all, the cognitions are linked.

The three episodes for this module, Altered Carbon, “Out of the Past,” Futurama, “The Day the Earth Stood Stupid,” and Star Trek, “Return to Tomorrow,” are all centered around the brain and cognitive function both in and outside of the body.

In Altered Carbon, the body is considered a sleeve into which different individuals’ consciousness can be uploaded. The consciousness is not a physical brain but more like embedded cognition that comes in the form of a cortical stack (disc) inserted into the spinal column of an interchangeable sleeve (body). A person can stay alive for eternity moving from sleeve to sleeve, as long as the cortical stack remains intact; if it is destroyed, death is permanent. A short scene in this episode stuck out to me the most. A young girl was killed by a hit-and-run driver, and the government told the family they would receive a new sleeve for their deceased child. When this young girl received her sleeve, she was embedded into an old woman even though she was no older than 8. When the parents complained, they were told that she was lucky to have received any sleeve at all, and if they wanted an upgrade, they were welcome to pay for one; if not, just to shut up and go away. When the little girl heard this, she cried and said no, she did not want to go back into the dark. This scene made me realize that the show’s foundation was not about the physical body and the connection to its consciousness but the power of the consciousness as it correlates to any physical form.

I am a Futurama fan, though I haven’t watched it for quite some time this episode, “The Day the Earth Stood Stupid,” was one of my favorite ones. This episode starts at a talent competition for the people in New New York after the talent show concludes, Leela is attacked and escapes floating brains bent on making people on Earth stupid. The brains achieve this, and everyone but Frye is turned stupid, and that is because Frye is already stupid, so it doesn’t work on him, which makes this episode hysterical. In this episode, there is no connection between a body and the brains that have attacked earth. According to the Niblonians, the brains hate all consciousness and want to make everything in the universe stupid. I feel like this episode would be considered extended cognition because the brains can create stupidity in any living being and do not possess bodies or need them to create destruction.

I am not a Trekkie. However, I have some family members that grew up loving Star Trek, and I do remember watching a few episodes at family get-togethers. In this episode, “Return to Tomorrow,” the USS Enterprise happens upon a new planet whose inhabitants are so powerful they direct the Enterprise to its location. According to the ship’s system, the planet has been dead for half a million years, but a voice that can read thoughts and communicate with or without words tells Captain Kirk and his crew that this is not true; life is on his planet. Captain Kirk is inhabited by an alien after being coerced to beam to the planet he and his crew were led too. This episode would define embodied cognition because once the alien inhabits Captain Kirk, he is so enamored with Captain Kirk’s body with the heartbeat and the air filling his lungs. These beings need bodies to survive; unlike the brains in the Futurama episode, their survival depends on physical form.

Good Day everyone! My name is Christina Stiglianese (her/she). I am an SR at Stony Brook University, and I will be graduating this December with my Bachelor’s in English and going on to complete my LSATs and attend Law School. This is my second course with Professor Hautsch, I took Fan Fiction a few semesters ago, and I absolutely loved it! We all are familiar with fiction from our favorite authors and movie writers, but to experience the world of fan fiction the way Professor Hautsch laid it out before the class was an experience all its own. I am very excited to take this course with Professor Hautsch; and I selected this course because she is a fantastic professor, and she made learning during the summer fun and helped me learn more about the world of science fiction. I am eager to see what she teaches this semester! In addition to being a student, I am a wife and a mother to two handsome boys, who graduated this year, my oldest from middle school and my youngest from kindergarten. Because of the health climate these last two years, vacation plans have been more or less null and void; however, this year, my husband and I are taking our two graduates and my niece to Florida for an entire week in July. My family and I haven’t been back to Florida in about five years (we vacation to different places every year), so going back to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter and Islands of Adventure at Universal Studios is one of the highlights of this year!

I look forward to getting to know all of you! Have a great semester!