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Literature as a Cognitive Object; Cognitive infrastructure and human cultural transmission

Objective

Interdisciplinary research between literary and art study and empirical disciplines such as linguistics and cognitive science lacks genuine reciprocity: scholars of literature and art have drawn extensively on linguistics and cognitive science, but literary and art-philosophical discourse has had little impact in these empirical domains. This project argues for genuine, two-way interdisciplinary practices in literary and art study and aims to show how research in empirical domains can not only influence but also be influenced by the investigation of literary and other art forms.

The first objective of the project will focus on mental causation in order to refine my suggestion that what distinguishes works of literature and art from other objects is their cognitive aetiology: drawing on Relevance Theory, I will argue that artworks and literary texts are causally related to an art-specific type of relevance-yielding creative mental state, that I term an artistic thought state. The 2nd objective will focus on intended effects: it will take as starting point the relevance-theoretic notion of a worthwhile effect in order to introduce a new, neurologically real type of effects (positive perceptual effects) that make both artworks (e.g. literary texts) and artistic thought states relevant to individual minds. The discussion will have implications for hypotheses in various empirical domains.

The IF will, among other things, result in a monograph (‘Literature as a Cognitive Object’), which will make one of the first systematic and empirically tractable proposals in the 21st century on the essence of literature and art and provide a concrete example of how genuine interdisciplinary practices in the Arts and Humanities can directly influence theory formation in scientific domains. Innovative public engagement will be a central feature of this project through a non-academic secondment at the ONCA Arts Centre and collaboration with the UK Centre for Contemporary Poetry.

Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)

CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.

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Programme(s)

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Topic(s)

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Funding Scheme

Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.

MSCA-IF-EF-ST - Standard EF

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Call for proposal

Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.

(opens in new window) H2020-MSCA-IF-2017

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Coordinator

UNIVERSITY OF BRIGHTON
Net EU contribution

Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.

€ 183 454,80
Address
LEWES ROAD MITHRAS HOUSE
BN2 4AT Brighton
United Kingdom

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Region
South East (England) Surrey, East and West Sussex Brighton and Hove
Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
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Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

€ 183 454,80
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