Contemporary cognition: Computers, consciousness, and self-definition in cognitive science and late 20th century fiction (Richard Powers, Poul Anderson, Don DeLillo, Susan Daitch, Neal Stephenson)

Cognitive science, a convergence of linguistics, computer science, psychology, neuroscience, philosophy of mind, and anthropology, offers a set of concepts about mental function that create a useful framework for examining the presentation of mind in contemporary literature. This dissertation undertakes a survey of the descriptions of mind that arise from cognitive science and compares these descriptions to those found in five works of recent fiction: Richard Powers's Galatea 2.2, Poul Anderson's Harvest of Stars, Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash, Susan Daitch's The Colorist, and Don DeLillo's White Noise.; A small number of literary scholars have begun working in the area of cognitive science, analyzing its theoretical discussions of language, subjectivity, and consciousness. This work discusses the main points raised by these scholars, demonstrating that they are working most predominately with general theories of language processing and linguistic frameworks. Cognitive science, however, also proposes structural models of mind arising from research in neurology and cognitive psychology. Much of its view of mind is historically based in a computational framework that shapes current definitions of mind to a great extent. The novels by Powers, Anderson, and Stephenson present views of the human mind that are informed by the computational metaphor. Each author uses computation as a comparative model to illuminate his own view of human nature.; Cognitive science further presents occasionally conflicting views of consciousness and self-definition that to a great extent reflect the instability, self-reflexivity, and self-doubt present in much of contemporary literature. The novels by Daitch and DeLillo reiterate this fact in their structure, theme, and characterization, demonstrating how self-definition suffers under the constant change in the characters' surroundings and the contamination of the original that makes up the landscape of contemporary culture.