Narrative Theory and Neuroscience: Why Human Nature Matters
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Joseph Carroll
Abstract
These two books on fictional narratives and neuroscience adopt cultural constructivist perspectives that reject the idea of evolved human motives and emotions. Both books contain information that could be integrated with other research in a comprehensive and empirically grounded theory of narrative, but they both fail to construct any such theory. In order to avoid subordinating the humanities to the sciences, Comer and Taggart avoid integrating their separate disciplines: neuroscience (Comer) and narrative theory (Taggart). They draw no significant conclusions from the research they summarize. Armstrong subordinates neuroscience to the paradoxes of phenomenology and 4E cognition. His prose develops not by consecutive reasoning but by the repetitive intonation of paradoxical formulas. The failures in theoretical construction displayed by these two books run parallel with weaknesses in the interpretive criticism with which they illustrate their ideas. The different ways in which the books fail are sometimes comical but nonetheless instructive. The failures inadvertently point toward the radical changes in humanist thinking that would be necessary for success in integrating neuroscience and narrative theory.
© 2022 by Academic Studies Press
Articles in the same Issue
- Titelei
- Table of Contents
- ARTICLES
- Horror Manga: An Evolutionary Literary Perspective
- Two Servants, One Master: The Common Acoustic Origins of the Divergent Communicative Media of Music and Speech
- Courtliness as Morality of Modernity in Norse Romance
- Evolution, “Pseudo-science,” and Satire: Edith Wharton’s “The Descent of Man”
- REVIEW ESSAYS
- Ancient Voices, Contemporary Practice, and Human Musicality
- Narrative Theory and Neuroscience: Why Human Nature Matters
- What Nature Gave Us: Steven Pinker on the Rules of Reason
- BOOK REVIEWS
- Steven Brown. The Unification of the Arts: A Framework for Understanding What the Arts Share and Why
- Mathias Clasen. A Very Nervous Person’s Guide to Horror Movies
- James E. Cutting. Movies on our Minds: The Evolution of Cinematic Engagement
- Jonathan Gottschall. The Story Paradox: How our Love of Storytelling Builds Societies and Tears Them Down
- Emelie Jonsson. The Early Evolutionary Imagination: Literature and Human Nature
- J. L. Modern. Neuromatic; or, a Particular History of Religion and the Brain
- ARTICLE REVIEWS
- Audiovisual Media
- Imagination
- Law
- Literature
- Music
- Neuroaesthetics
- Paleoaesthetics
- Politics and Ideology
- Popular Culture
- Contributors
Articles in the same Issue
- Titelei
- Table of Contents
- ARTICLES
- Horror Manga: An Evolutionary Literary Perspective
- Two Servants, One Master: The Common Acoustic Origins of the Divergent Communicative Media of Music and Speech
- Courtliness as Morality of Modernity in Norse Romance
- Evolution, “Pseudo-science,” and Satire: Edith Wharton’s “The Descent of Man”
- REVIEW ESSAYS
- Ancient Voices, Contemporary Practice, and Human Musicality
- Narrative Theory and Neuroscience: Why Human Nature Matters
- What Nature Gave Us: Steven Pinker on the Rules of Reason
- BOOK REVIEWS
- Steven Brown. The Unification of the Arts: A Framework for Understanding What the Arts Share and Why
- Mathias Clasen. A Very Nervous Person’s Guide to Horror Movies
- James E. Cutting. Movies on our Minds: The Evolution of Cinematic Engagement
- Jonathan Gottschall. The Story Paradox: How our Love of Storytelling Builds Societies and Tears Them Down
- Emelie Jonsson. The Early Evolutionary Imagination: Literature and Human Nature
- J. L. Modern. Neuromatic; or, a Particular History of Religion and the Brain
- ARTICLE REVIEWS
- Audiovisual Media
- Imagination
- Law
- Literature
- Music
- Neuroaesthetics
- Paleoaesthetics
- Politics and Ideology
- Popular Culture
- Contributors
