Statistics 131A, 001 - Spring 2015
Introduction to Probability and Statistics for Life Scientists - Fletcher H Ibser
Creative Commons 3.0: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs
Environmental Economics and Policy C115, 001 - Fall 2014
Modeling and Management of Biological Resources - Wayne Marcus Getz
Creative Commons 3.0: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs
William Seely,Visiting Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Bates College
http://www.minervaberkeley.org/conferences/seeing-knowing-vision-knowledge-cognition-and-aesthetics/2014-speakers1/william-seely/
What is it about art that can be so captivating? How is it that we find value in these often odd and abstract objects and events that we call artworks? I suggest that we start with an observation about ordinary perception. Selectivity is a critical issue in ordinary perception. The environment is replete with sensory information. However, only a small subset of this information is salient to our current behavior at a given time and perceptual systems are limited capacity information processing resources. How do we solve this problem? One suggestion is that minimal sets of diagnostic features are sufficient for basic-level categorization in a fast, feedforward cortical sweep of perceptual processing. Feedback from this quick and dirty basic level categorization judgment can then be used to direct attention and bias further sensory processing to task-salient features of the local environment
So, why do we find art so engaging? One thought is that artworks are attentional engines. Artists and consumers are engaged in a collaborative back and forth exchange that has produced a variety of different categories art defined by different media and a wide array of artistic styles. We can think of the stylistic devices that define these different categories of art as formal-compositional strategies for directing a consumer's attention to artistically salient features of a work and holding it there. Categories of art, in turn, encode our knowledge of these stylistic devices as recipes for understanding how to skillfully engage with different kinds of artworks and function as attentional filters that constrain how we perceive and evaluate a work.
Drawing on Phillipe Schyns' diagnostic framework for object recognition, a biased competition theory of attention, and recent research in affective perception by Moshe Bar, Lisa Barrett, and Luiz Pessoa, I propose a framework for how we might model our engagement with artworks in a range of media work as attentional engines.
2014 Conference on Neuroesthetics - Seeing Knowing: Vision, Knowledge, Cognition, and Aesthetics
http://www.minervaberkeley.org
Co-sponsored by the School of Optometry and Vision Science Program, University of California Berkeley
Watch how these UC Berkeley staff members are living by the words, ""We are accountable to each other"" -- one of Berkeley's five Operating Principles.
Find out what you can do at http://operatingprinciples.berkeley.edu
PACS 164A: Introduction to Nonviolence - Fall 2006. An introduction to the science of nonviolence, mainly as seen through the life and work of Mahatma Gandhi. Historical overview of nonviolence East and the West up to the American Civil Rights movement and Martin Luther King, Jr., with emphasis on the ideal of principled nonviolence and the reality of mixed or strategic nonviolence in practice, especially as applied to problems of social justice and defense.