HARBOUR.SPACE
HARBOUR.SPACE UNIVERSITY
All rights reserved. 2018
USING THE WORLD TO THINK
If you take any familiar object and purposely interact with it in novel ways, new neural connections will be formed in your brain. You’re learning new plans of action for engaging with your environment. And so, you’re creating opportunities for thinking in new ways. Indeed, in order to think, we certainly need a brain, but we also need a body embedded in an environment. Because thinking, after all, is not the shuffling of abstract symbols detached from the world.
It is a physical engagement with our surroundings. Our actions in the world shape what’s in our head, which in turn, shape our behaviour. It is this dynamic loop that includes brain, body and environment, that we may call thinking. In other words, our cognitive system isn’t bound to our head.
Yet, we usually ignore how our body and environment intervene in our thoughts, and so, we fail to take full advantage of all our cognitive resources at hand. The world around us offers us countless possibilities of interactions. These are countless opportunities to reorganise and reshape our thoughts. In this course, we will learn to make better use of the world as an integral part of our cognitive system.
PANCHO TOLCHINSKY
DATE: 25 Nov – 29 Nov, 2019
DURATION: 1 Weeks
LECTURES: 3 Hours per day
LANGUAGE: English
LOCATION: Barcelona, Harbour.Space Campus
COURSE TYPE: Offline
USING THE WORLD TO THINK
If you take any familiar object and purposely interact with it in novel ways, new neural connections will be formed in your brain. You’re learning new plans of action for engaging with your environment. And so, you’re creating opportunities for thinking in new ways. Indeed, in order to think, we certainly need a brain, but we also need a body embedded in an environment. Because thinking, after all, is not the shuffling of abstract symbols detached from the world.
It is a physical engagement with our surroundings. Our actions in the world shape what’s in our head, which in turn, shape our behaviour. It is this dynamic loop that includes brain, body and environment, that we may call thinking. In other words, our cognitive system isn’t bound to our head.
Yet, we usually ignore how our body and environment intervene in our thoughts, and so, we fail to take full advantage of all our cognitive resources at hand. The world around us offers us countless possibilities of interactions. These are countless opportunities to reorganise and reshape our thoughts. In this course, we will learn to make better use of the world as an integral part of our cognitive system.
The main goal of this course is to reveal how our brain, body and environment participate in our ongoing thinking processes. Students will learn to deliberately include their physical and social environment to redirect their stream of thoughts in search for new insights.
In this course the goals are:
- Learn the principles of the extended mind thesis. Why we are not our brain
- Learn to use the page as the surface of our mind in which we draw our thoughts, to put them in motion
- Learn to use the physical world as an infinite pool of thinking schemes
- Learn to set artificial rules for
more productive brainstormings
DATE: 25 Nov - 29 Nov, 2019
DURATION: 1 Week
LECTURES: 3 Hours per day
LANGUAGE: English
LOCATION: Barcelona, Harbour.Space Campus
COURSE TYPE: Offline
WHAT YOU WILL LEARN
COURSE OUTLINE
Session 2
An introduction to Visual Knowledge. Here we learn that drawing is thinking and re-drawing is re-thinking. When we draw we place our thoughts on paper so that we can put them in motion, question them and experiment with them
Session 3
Our physical world contains countless relations. We’ll learn to search for these relations and use them as thinking schemes
Session 1
A practical introduction to the extended mind thesis. That is, we will learn how brain, body and environment are dynamic coupling in which features of the environment and our body are exploited as part of our cognitive processes
Session 4
Creating our own rules for thinking opens new routes for our imaginations. We’ll explore different rules for brainstorming alone and in groups
Pancho Tolchinsky delivers workshops and participates in projects to help people discover the beauty and power of the human mind.
Pancho graduated in Mathematics at the Autonomous University of Barcelona and earned a PhD in Artificial Intelligence at the Polytechnical University of Catalonia. At the university, he worked on a few projects involving Commonsense Reasoning and Human-Computer Interaction. Pancho later worked at the Yahoo! Research Lab, developing crazy prototypes for data exploration. Previously, he worked as a teacher/software-developer/researcher in a Master in Architecture at Metapolis (now IaaC) in Barcelona, and helped developing software for the architects of the Sagrada Familia.
More recently Pancho worked as a consultant in communication strategy for the Alzheimer Foundation in Catalonia and frequently collaborates with the Branding and Design Studio Mucho bringing together Cognitive Science and Design. In addition, he works as a photographer in commercial and personal projects.
In this diverse career, Pancho continuously stumbles upon the fact that we're educated based on an outdated intuition regarding how we think. An intuition that doesn't promote imagination and creativity. This is what has motivated Pancho to become a missionary of Cognitive Science.
SKILLS:
- Cognitive Science
- Artificial Intelligence
- Human-Computer Interaction
- Software Development
- Research
- Communications
ABOUT PANCHO
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Supersizing the Mind: Embodiment, Action, and Cognitive Extension by Andy Clark (Oxford University Press, 2011).
Out of Our Heads: Why You Are Not Your Brain, and Other Lessons from the Biology of Consciousness. by Alva Noë (Hill and Wang, 2009.).
Session 5
Students' final project presentation and discussion