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9780190050955

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How can words on the page of a good novel create such exciting and immersive experiences? In Probability Designs Karin Kukkonen makes brilliant use of the latest developments in cognitive science to show how this is achieved. Through the management of our expectations, novels become extensions of our minds where we can watch ourselves think. With the help of Cinderella, she promises to turn us from detectives into princes. Who could resist? -Chris Frith, Emeritus Professor of Neuropsychology, Wellcome Centre for Human NeuroImaging, University College London Probability Designs is a brilliant examination of the multiple levels of embodied reading through the lens of predictive processing. Kukkonen not only deftly integrates her close analyses of specific literary texts into the predictive model, she brings a rich historical and philosophical perspective to her argument that is often missing in cognitive science. This is an important book for anyone who cares deeply about literature and how we read it. -Siri Hustvedt, Lecturer in Psychiatry, Weill Cornell Medical College What is a book? Using a ground-breaking mixture of literary theory, philosophy, and cognitive science, Karin Kukonnen argues that literary constructions and even intertextual references are best understood as probability designs - artificial structures that push, pull, and tweak our webs of probabilistic expectation. The result is a new and compelling way of looking at how minds like ours are affected by some of our most familiar, yet truly deeply strange, creations. -Andy Clark, author of Surfing Uncertainty: Prediction, Action, and the Embodied Mind

""How can words on the page of a good novel create such exciting and immersive experiences? In Probability Designs Karin Kukkonen makes brilliant use of the latest developments in cognitive science to show how this is achieved. Through the management of our expectations, novels become extensions of our minds where we can watch ourselves think. With the help of Cinderella, she promises to turn us from detectives into princes. Who could resist?""-Chris Frith, Emeritus Professor of Neuropsychology, Wellcome Centre for Human NeuroImaging, University College London ""Probability Designs is a brilliant examination of the multiple levels of embodied reading through the lens of predictive processing. Kukkonen not only deftly integrates her close analyses of specific literary texts into the predictive model, she brings a rich historical and philosophical perspective to her argument that is often missing in cognitive science. This is an important book for anyone who cares deeply about literature and how we read it.""-Siri Hustvedt, Lecturer in Psychiatry, Weill Cornell Medical College ""What is a book? Using a ground-breaking mixture of literary theory, philosophy, and cognitive science, Karin Kukonnen argues that literary constructions and even intertextual references are best understood as probability designs - artificial structures that push, pull, and tweak our webs of probabilistic expectation. The result is a new and compelling way of looking at how minds like ours are affected by some of our most familiar, yet truly deeply strange, creations.""-Andy Clark, author of Surfing Uncertainty: Prediction, Action, and the Embodied Mind

What is a book? Using a ground-breaking mixture of literary theory, philosophy, and cognitive science, Karin Kukonnen argues that literary constructions and even intertextual references are best understood as probability designs - artificial structures that push, pull, and tweak our webs of probabilistic expectation. The result is a new and compelling way of looking at how minds like ours are affected by some of our most familiar, yet truly deeply strange, creations. -Andy Clark, author of Surfing Uncertainty: Prediction, Action, and the Embodied Mind Probability Designs is a brilliant examination of the multiple levels of embodied reading through the lens of predictive processing. Kukkonen not only deftly integrates her close analyses of specific literary texts into the predictive model, she brings a rich historical and philosophical perspective to her argument that is often missing in cognitive science. This is an important book for anyone who cares deeply about literature and how we read it. -Siri Hustvedt, Lecturer in Psychiatry, Weill Cornell Medical College How can words on the page of a good novel create such exciting and immersive experiences? In Probability Designs Karin Kukkonen makes brilliant use of the latest developments in cognitive science to show how this is achieved. Through the management of our expectations, novels become extensions of our minds where we can watch ourselves think. With the help of Cinderella, she promises to turn us from detectives into princes. Who could resist? -Chris Frith, Emeritus Professor of Neuropsychology, Wellcome Centre for Human NeuroImaging, University College London

"""How can words on the page of a good novel create such exciting and immersive experiences? In Probability Designs Karin Kukkonen makes brilliant use of the latest developments in cognitive science to show how this is achieved. Through the management of our expectations, novels become extensions of our minds where we can watch ourselves think. With the help of Cinderella, she promises to turn us from detectives into princes. Who could resist?""-Chris Frith, Emeritus Professor of Neuropsychology, Wellcome Centre for Human NeuroImaging, University College London ""Probability Designs is a brilliant examination of the multiple levels of embodied reading through the lens of predictive processing. Kukkonen not only deftly integrates her close analyses of specific literary texts into the predictive model, she brings a rich historical and philosophical perspective to her argument that is often missing in cognitive science. This is an important book for anyone who cares deeply about literature and how we read it.""-Siri Hustvedt, Lecturer in Psychiatry, Weill Cornell Medical College ""What is a book? Using a ground-breaking mixture of literary theory, philosophy, and cognitive science, Karin Kukonnen argues that literary constructions and even intertextual references are best understood as probability designs - artificial structures that push, pull, and tweak our webs of probabilistic expectation. The result is a new and compelling way of looking at how minds like ours are affected by some of our most familiar, yet truly deeply strange, creations.""-Andy Clark, author of Surfing Uncertainty: Prediction, Action, and the Embodied Mind"

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Karin Kukkonen is Professor in Comparative Literature at the University of Oslo. Her work investigates how the novel emerged as a genre designed for particular cognitive and emotional engagements and how the poetics of earlier periods and cognitive poetics today can speak to each other. At the University of Oslo, Kukkonen heads the interdisciplinary research and teaching initiative ""Literature, Cognition and Emotions"" (2019-2023).

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