The Mozart effect refers to scientific data on short-term improvement on certain mental tasks after listening to Mozart, and also to its popularized version that listening to Mozart makes you smarter (Tomatis, 1991; Wikipedia, 2012). Does Mozart effe
ct point to a fundamental cognitive function of music? Would such an effect of music be due to the hedonicity, a fundamental dimension of mental experience? The present paper explores a recent hypothesis that music helps to tolerate cognitive dissonances and thus enabled accumulation of knowledge and human cultural evolution (Perlovsky, 2010, 2012). We studied whether the influence of music is related to its hedonicity and whether pleasant or unpleasant music would influence scholarly test performance and cognitive dissonance. Specific hypotheses evaluated here are that during a test students experience contradictory cognitions that cause cognitive dissonances. If some music helps to tolerate cognitive dissonances, then first, this music should increase the duration during which participants can tolerate stressful conditions while evaluating test choices. Second, this should result in improved performance. These hypotheses are tentatively confirmed in the reported experiments as the agreeable music was correlated with better performance above that under indifferent or unpleasant music. It follows that music likely performs a fundamental cognitive function explaining the origin and evolution of musical ability considered previously a mystery.
An emotional version of Sapir-Whorf hypothesis suggests that differences in language emotionalities influence differences among cultures no less than conceptual differences. Conceptual contents of languages and cultures to significant extent are dete
rmined by words and their semantic differences; these could be borrowed among languages and exchanged among cultures. Emotional differences, as suggested in the paper, are related to grammar and mostly cannot be borrowed. Conceptual and emotional mechanisms of languages are considered here along with their functions in the mind and cultural evolution. A fundamental contradiction in human mind is considered: language evolution requires reduced emotionality, but too low emotionality makes language irrelevant to life, disconnected from sensory-motor experience. Neural mechanisms of these processes are suggested as well as their mathematical models: the knowledge instinct, the language instinct, the dual model connecting language and cognition, dynamic logic, neural modeling fields. Mathematical results are related to cognitive science, linguistics, and psychology. Experimental evidence and theoretical arguments are discussed. Approximate equations for evolution of human minds and cultures are obtained. Their solutions identify three types of cultures: conceptual-pragmatic cultures, in which emotionality of language is reduced and differentiation overtakes synthesis resulting in fast evolution at the price of uncertainty of values, self doubts, and internal crises; traditional-emotional cultures where differentiation lags behind synthesis, resulting in cultural stability at the price of stagnation; and multi-cultural societies combining fast cultural evolution and stability. Unsolved problems and future theoretical and experimental directions are discussed.
We advance a hypothesis that creativity has evolved with evolution of internal representations, possibly from amniotes to primates, and further in human cultural evolution. Representations separated sensing from acting and gave internal room for crea
tivity. To see (or perform any sensing), creatures with internal representations had to modify these representations to fit sensor signals. Therefore the knowledge instinct, KI, the drive to fit representations to the world, had to evolve along with internal representations. Until primates, it remained simple, without language internal representations could not evolve from perceptions to abstract representations, and abstract thoughts were not possible. We consider creative vs. non-creative decision making, and compare KI with Kahneman-Tverskys heuristic thinking. We identify higher, conscious levels of KI with the drive for creativity (DC) and discuss the roles of language and music, brain mechanisms involved, and experimental directions for testing the advanced hypotheses.
Modeling of complex phenomena such as the mind presents tremendous computational complexity challenges. Modeling field theory (MFT) addresses these challenges in a non-traditional way. The main idea behind MFT is to match levels of uncertainty of the
model (also, problem or theory) with levels of uncertainty of the evaluation criterion used to identify that model. When a model becomes more certain, then the evaluation criterion is adjusted dynamically to match that change to the model. This process is called the Dynamic Logic of Phenomena (DLP) for model construction and it mimics processes of the mind and natural evolution. This paper provides a formal description of DLP by specifying its syntax, semantics, and reasoning system. We also outline links between DLP and other logical approaches. Computational complexity issues that motivate this work are presented using an example of polynomial models.
Free will is fundamental to morality, intuition of self, and normal functioning of the society. However, science does not provide a clear logical foundation for this idea. This paper considers the fundamental scientific argument against free will, ca
lled reductionism, and explains the reasons for choosing dualism against monism. Then, the paper summarizes unexpected conclusions from recent discoveries in cognitive science. Classical logic turns out not to be the fundamental mechanism of mind. It is replaced by dynamic logic. Mathematical and experimental evidence are considered conceptually. Dynamic logic counters logical arguments for reductionism. Contemporary science of mind is not reducible; free will can be scientifically accepted along with scientific monism.
Mathematical approaches to modeling the mind since the 1950s are reviewed. Difficulties faced by these approaches are related to the fundamental incompleteness of logic discovered by K. Godel. A recent mathematical advancement, dynamic logic (DL) ove
rcame these past difficulties. DL is described conceptually and related to neuroscience, psychology, cognitive science, and philosophy. DL models higher cognitive functions: concepts, emotions, instincts, understanding, imagination, intuition, consciousness. DL is related to the knowledge instinct that drives our understanding of the world and serves as a foundation for higher cognitive functions. Aesthetic emotions and perception of beauty are related to everyday functioning of the mind. The article reviews mechanisms of human symbolic ability, language and cognition, joint evolution of the mind, consciousness, and cultures. It touches on a manifold of aesthetic emotions in music, their cognitive function, origin, and evolution. The article concentrates on elucidating the first principles and reviews aspects of the theory proven in laboratory research.
The paper discusses relationships between aesthetics theory and mathematical models of mind. Mathematical theory describes abilities for concepts, emotions, instincts, imagination, adaptation, learning, cognition, language, approximate hierarchy of t
he mind and evolution of these abilities. The knowledge instinct is the foundation of higher mental abilities and aesthetic emotions. Aesthetic emotions are present in every act of perception and cognition, and at the top of the mind hierarchy they become emotions of the beautiful. The learning ability is essential to everyday perception and cognition as well as to the historical development of understanding of the meaning of life. I discuss a controversy surrounding this issue. Conclusions based on cognitive and mathematical models confirm that judgments of taste are at once subjective and objective, and I discuss what it means. The paper relates cognitive and mathematical concepts to those of philosophy and aesthetics, from Plato to our days, clarifies cognitive mechanisms and functions of the beautiful, and resolves many difficulties of contemporary aesthetics.
We describe a mathematical models of grounded symbols in the brain. It also serves as a computational foundations for Perceptual Symbol System (PSS). This development requires new mathematical methods of dynamic logic (DL), which have overcome limita
tions of classical artificial intelligence and connectionist approaches. The paper discusses these past limitations, relates them to combinatorial complexity (exponential explosion) of algorithms in the past, and further to the static nature of classical logic. The new mathematical theory, DL, is a process-logic. A salient property of this process is evolution of vague representations into crisp. The paper first applies it to one aspect of PSS: situation learning from object perceptions. Then we relate DL to the essential PSS mechanisms of concepts, simulators, grounding, productivity, binding, recursion, and to the mechanisms relating grounded and amodal symbols. We discuss DL as a general theory describing the process of cognition on multiple levels of abstraction. We also discuss the implications of this theory for interactions between cognition and language, mechanisms of language grounding, and possible role of language in grounding abstract cognition. The developed theory makes experimental predictions, and will impact future theoretical developments in cognitive science, including knowledge representation, and perception-cognition interaction. Experimental neuroimaging evidence for DL and PSS in brain imaging is discussed as well as future research directions.
