Back to the OP...
So let's assume that everything asserted about poetry and fMRI studies so far is true. We can watch areas of the brain activate to see how it responds to poems. And since we all read poems while in a claustrophobic narrow tube that's clunking loudly while we can't move our heads, this is a realistic representation of normal life.
If it's a happy poem, the happy part of the brain activates. If it's a poem about warm and fuzzy things, the warm and fuzzy part activates.
If someone asks us later if we enjoyed the poem, and we lie, the fMRI results can show that we're lying. Because lying about poetry is something that science needs to work on.
In my opinion, nothing at all that's important about poetry is addressed by anything that neuroscience can do.
But maybe this requires us to define what it is that's good about poetry. Maybe we want to take a normative approach, and declare that only that which can be detected in a machine can be declared good about a poem, because we are committed to purely materialistic studies. Some people might actually hold that whatever is detectable and quantifiable is real and good, and that which isn't should be denounced.
So what should poems do? Is this something which neuroscience can address?
So let's assume that everything asserted about poetry and fMRI studies so far is true. We can watch areas of the brain activate to see how it responds to poems. And since we all read poems while in a claustrophobic narrow tube that's clunking loudly while we can't move our heads, this is a realistic representation of normal life.
If it's a happy poem, the happy part of the brain activates. If it's a poem about warm and fuzzy things, the warm and fuzzy part activates.
If someone asks us later if we enjoyed the poem, and we lie, the fMRI results can show that we're lying. Because lying about poetry is something that science needs to work on.
In my opinion, nothing at all that's important about poetry is addressed by anything that neuroscience can do.
But maybe this requires us to define what it is that's good about poetry. Maybe we want to take a normative approach, and declare that only that which can be detected in a machine can be declared good about a poem, because we are committed to purely materialistic studies. Some people might actually hold that whatever is detectable and quantifiable is real and good, and that which isn't should be denounced.
So what should poems do? Is this something which neuroscience can address?
