Cognitive Science

[coberst]

“All Men by Nature Desire to Know”

When written history began five thousand years ago humans had already developed a great deal of knowledge. Much of that knowledge was of a very practical nature such as how to use animal skins for clothing, how to weave wool, how to hunt and fish etc. A large part of human knowledge was directed toward how to kill and torture fellow humans. I guess things never really change all that much.

In several parts of the world civilizations developed wherein people learned to create laws and to rule vast numbers of people. Some measure of peace and stability developed but there was yet no means for securing the people from their rulers. I guess things never really change all that much

Almost everywhere priests joined rulers in attempts to control the population. Despite these continual wars both of external and internal nature the human population managed to flourish. Egypt was probably one of the first long lasting and stable civilizations to grow up along the large rivers. Egypt survived almost unchanged for three thousand years. This success is attributed to its geographical location that gave it freedom from competition and fertile lands that were constantly replenished by the river overflowing its banks and thus depositing new fertile soil for farming.

Western philosophy emerged in the sixth century BC along the Ionian coast. A small group of scientist-philosophers began writing about their attempts to develop “rational” accounts regarding human experience. These early Pre-Socratic thinkers thought that they were dealing with fundamental elements of nature.

It is natural for humans to seek knowledge. In the “Metaphysics” Aristotle wrote “All men by nature desire to know”.

The attempt to seek knowledge presupposes that the world unfolds in a systematic pattern and that we can gain knowledge of that unfolding. Cognitive science identifies several ideas that seem to come naturally to us and labels such ideas as “Folk Theories”.

The Folk Theory of the Intelligibility of the World
The world makes systematic sense, and we can gain knowledge of it.

The Folk Theory of General Kinds
Every particular thing is a kind of thing.

The Folk Theory of Essences
Every entity has an “essence” or “nature,” that is, a collection of properties that makes it the kind of thing it is and that is the causal source of its natural behavior.

The consequences of the two theories of kinds and essences is:

The Foundational Assumption of Metaphysics
Kinds exist and are defined by essences.

We may not want our friends to know this fact but we are all metaphysicians. We, in fact, assume that things have a nature thereby we are led by the metaphysical impulse to seek knowledge at various levels of reality.

Cognitive science has uncovered these ideas they have labeled as Folk Theories. Such theories when compared to sophisticated philosophical theories are like comparing mountain music with classical music. Such theories seem to come naturally to human consciousness.

The information comes primarily from “Philosophy in the Flesh” and http://www.wku.edu/~jan.garrett/302/folkmeta.htm

[Nicolas]

Why should we not want our friends to know we try to grasp reality? That makes very little sense to me, as in most cases people pretend to know more of reality than they do. :confused: :naughty:

But anyway, I find the Reciprocal Theory more interesting:

"all Men by Nature Know to Desire" :D

(do I have my capitals correct? :o )

[Fram]

And the rule for gay men and heterosexual women: All Desire by Nature to Know Men.

Apart from that: I have no idea what message you are trying to give.

[Nicolas]

A website summary :confused:

[Moose]

Same stuff, different day.

[coberst]

We have in our Western philosophy a traditional theory of faculty psychology wherein our reasoning is a faculty completely separate from the body. “Reason is seen as independent of perception and bodily movement.” It is this capacity of autonomous reason that makes us different in kind from all other animals. I suspect that many fundamental aspects of philosophy and psychology are focused upon declaring, whenever possible, the separateness of our species from all other animals.

This tradition of an autonomous reason began long before evolutionary theory and has held strongly since then without consideration, it seems to me, of the theories of Darwin and of biological science. Cognitive science has in the last three decades developed considerable empirical evidence supporting Darwin and not supporting the traditional theories of philosophy and psychology regarding the autonomy of reason. Cognitive science has focused a great deal of empirical science toward discovering the nature of the embodied mind.

[Nicolas]

How does this relate to your first post?

What is your intention with creating this thread?

[Celestial Mechanic]

Not sure if this belongs here, but hey, we're not sure if coberst's second post really relates to the first so why not?

One of the things that made my recent solstice holiday season was reading of the origin of the "Boar's Head Carol", traditionally sung at Queens College, Oxford, first published 1521.

It seems that a college student was walking through the nearby woods when he was attacked by a wild boar. The student had the presence of mind to jam the first thing he could get his hands on, a copy of a book of Aristotle, down the boar's throat, thereby choking the boar. When I read this I thought, "At last! A good use for philosophy! (And of Aristotle too!)" :clap: :clap:

;)

[SolusLupus]

So philosophy is useless?

I'm not sure I entirely see the logic of that.

Edit: Not that I agree with Coberst, though. I don't get why he rambles on here...

[coberst]

Cognitive science has in the last three decades developed a great deal of evidence to support their theories that:
The mind in inherently embodied.
Thought is mostly unconscious.
Abstract concepts are largely metaphorical.

These consclusions are significantly different from Western traditional philosophical views. I am going to try to acquaint the reader with these theories for the possibility that the reader might be sufficiently curious about the matter to examine what cognitive science has accomplished.

These are revolutionary theories with a great deal of empirical evidence for support.

[Celestial Mechanic]

Cognitive science has in the last three decades developed a great deal of evidence to support their theories that:
The mind in inherently embodied.
Thought is mostly unconscious.
Abstract concepts are largely metaphorical.[Snip!]
I might buy the last two items, but the first strikes me as word-salad. My dictionary gives the following definitions for embody:

1. to give a body to (a spirit): INCARNATE
2a. to deprive of spirituality
2b. to make concrete and perceptible
3. to cause to become a body or part of a body : INCORPORATE
4. to represent in human or animal form : PERSONIFY

I'm not at all sure which of these would characterize the mind, much less characterize it inherently, apart from the obvious meanings of 1 and 3. Of course my mind has a body, it is incarnate and incorporated in my body. When the body dies, so does my mind. This is so patently obvious I wonder why it took cognitive science to figure it out. Of course maybe all they're doing is validating the obvious . . . :)

As for the third one, "abstract concepts are largely metaphorical", I have to ask "so what?" More validating the obvious.

Now the second one, that might be interesting. How much of our thought is carried out, indeed has to be carried out subconsciously. (I don't think any real thinking goes on unconsciously, "unconscious thinking" is sort of oxymoron when you think about it--consciously or not!)

[Candy]

And the rule for gay men and heterosexual women: All Desire by Nature to Know Men.

Apart from that: I have no idea what message you are trying to give.
Can we just lump men and women together? I am man and darn proud of it. :shifty:

[coberst]

Cognitive science has radically attacked the traditional Western philosophical position that there is a dichotomy between perception and conception. This traditional view that perception is strictly a faculty of body and conception (the formation and use of concepts) is purely mental and wholly separate from and independent of our ability to perceive and move.

Cognitive science has introduced revolutionary theories that, if true, will change dramatically the views of Western philosophy. Advocates of the traditional view will, of course, “say that conceptual structure must have a neural realization in the brain, which just happens to reside in a body. But they deny that anything about the body is essential for characterizing what concepts are.”

The cognitive science claim is that “the very properties of concepts are created as a result of the way the brain and body are structured and the way they function in interpersonal relations and in the physical world.”

The embodied-mind hypothesis therefore radically undercuts the perception/conception distinction. In an embodied mind, it is conceivable that the same neural system engaged in perception (or in bodily movements) plays a central role in conception. Indeed, in recent neural modeling research, models of perceptual mechanisms and motor schemas can actually do conception work in language learning and in reasoning.

A standard technique for checking out new ideas is to create computer models of the idea and subject that model to simulated conditions to determine if the model behaves as does the reality. Such modeling techniques are used constantly in projecting behavior of meteorological parameters.

Neural computer models have shown that the types of operations required to perceive and move in space require the very same type of capability associated with reasoning. That is, neural models capable of doing all of the things that a body must be able to do when perceiving and moving can also perform the same kinds of actions associated with reasoning, i.e. inferring, categorizing, and conceiving.

[Nicolas]

I might miss the point here (not too hard to imagine that), but I feel that this "conginitive science" is something completely different than philosophy. CS seems to describe how our brain and body interact in all levels, while philosophy limits itself to thoughts.

CS works with an input/output sytem, philosophy knows no such thing. You explained that yourself: the validity of CS can be checked. We can check whetehr brain and body interact like CS predicts. Philosophy and validation hardly mix, as there is no standard to measure values and thoughts. In fact, all ethical rules of thumb fail validation. If not because there can always be found exceptions, it fails because no 2 persons have the same moral values.

In short: I don't think CS is an improved philosophy. Philosophy is a study of one element used in CS.

It's a bit like saying that logic is wrong because of computer sciences predicting how scanners and printers can interact. Only logic is a science and philosophy is not.

[coberst]

Descartes: Pied Piper

I was educated in engineering but also had some interest in philosophy. My first philosophy course was Descartes' "Meditations on First Philosophy". I suspect this is an introductory course for most students studying philosophy. Descartes has left Western tradition with a gigantic legacy that only now is this legacy being undermined by cognitive science.

Descartes goes through a sequence of analysis in an effort to find an absolute truth upon which to build his philosophy. He settled on "Cogito, ergo sum". "I think therefore I am". The conclusions of this series of analysis by Descartes have set the course, more or less, of Western philosophy. What are the fateful conclusions derived from the work of Descartes?

"I am, I exist, that is certain. But how often? Just when I think; for it might possibly be the case if I ceased entirely to think, that I should likewise cease altogether to exist...But what then am I? A thing that thinks."

The Folk Theory of Essences
Every kind of thing has an essence that makes it the kind of thing it is.
The way each thing naturally behaves is a consequence of its essence.

Descartes knows he exists because he thinks. Because he exists he has an essence. He assumes nothing else causes his thinking but his essence. Conclusion: thinking must be at least a part of the human essence.

"Just because I know certainly that I exist, and that meanwhile I do not remark that any other thing necessarily pertains to my nature or essence, excepting that I am a thinking thing, I rightly conclude that my essence consists solely in the fact that I am a thinking thing."

"It is certain that this I [that is to say, my soul by which I am what I am], is entirely, and absolutely distinct from my body and can exist without it."

To have reached that last conclusion Descartes must assume an additional:

The Folk Theory of Substance and Attributes
A substance is that which exists in itself and does not depend for its existence on any other thing.
Each substance has one and only one primary attribute that defines what its essence is.

The following is what his introspection has made him “see”:

There are two kinds of substance, one bodily and the other mental.
The attribute of bodily substance is extension in space.
The attribute of mental substance is thought.

[coberst]

Nicolas

You are correct, cognitive science is not philosophy. However, CS is saying that philosophy, which should be responsible for assumptions by all domains of knowledge, is wrong because philosophy has assumed that the mind is transcendent and CS has discovered that such is not the case. CS is making the case that there is no mind/body dichotomoy that philosophy assumes to be true. CS rejects all a priori assumptions. CS is taking over philosophy's job because philosophy is wrong.

[Nicolas]

You obviously are trying to say something but I don't see how or what, as my views on what philosophy is seem to be different.

Use CS and philosophy on the following cases (focused on ethics, not so much fundamentals):

*should one tell the truth, eventhough that truth will bring major harm to others, while telling a lie is likely to remove such harm?

*is another person equal in value to myself?

And explain me where the body/brain interaction comes into play in ways that philosophy does not consider.

[Enzp]

Arrgh, I vowed never to open another one of his threads, but I didn't look close enough before opening.

[coberst]

Nicolas

Cognitive science offers a means for better understanding the human condition but does not provide any clear cut answers to the particular questions you raise here.

[Fram]

So in what way does it anything better than philosophy? Where is philosophy wrong and cognitive science right (or less wrong)?
Just saying that philosophy is wrong because X or Y sin't enough if you can't show something that was wrong because of X or Y, and saying that CS is better needs the same kind of examples to make your case. For now, it is just word salad.

[Nicolas]

Nicolas

Cognitive science offers a means for better understanding the human condition but does not provide any clear cut answers to the particular questions you raise here.

What do you exactly mean with "the human condition"?

[coberst]

Nicolas

We live in a bipartite world and do not know how to balance our rational abilities.

A person can walk the corridors of any big city hospital and observe the effectiveness of human rationality in action. One can also visit the UN building in NYC or read the morning papers and observe just how ineffective, frustrating and disappointing human rationality can be. Why does human reason perform so well in some matters and so poorly in others?

We live in two very different worlds; a world of technical and technological order and clarity, and a world of personal and social disorder and confusion. We are increasingly able to solve problems in one domain and increasingly endangered by our inability to solve problems in the other.

Normal science is successful primarily because it is a domain of knowledge controlled by paradigms. The paradigm defines the standards, principles and methods of the discipline. It is not apparent to the laity but science moves forward in small incremental steps. Science seldom seeks and almost never produces major novelties.

Science solves puzzles. The logic of the paradigm insulates the professional group from problems that are unsolvable by that paradigm. One reason that science progresses so rapidly and with such assurance is because the logic of that paradigm allows the practitioners to work on problems that only their lack of ingenuity will keep them from solving.

Science uses instrumental rationality to solve puzzles. Instrumental rationality is a systematic process for reflecting upon the best action to take to reach an established end. The obvious question becomes ‘what mode of rationality is available for determining ends?’ Instrumental rationality appears to be of little use in determining such matters as “good” and “right”.

There is a striking difference between the logic of technical problems and that of dialectical problems. The principles, methods and standards for dealing with technical problems and problems of “real life” are as different as night and day. Real life problems cannot be solved using deductive and inductive reasoning.

Dialectical reasoning requires the ability to slip quickly between contradictory lines of reasoning. One needs skill to develop a synthesis of one point of view with another. Where technical matters are generally confined to only one well understood frame of reference real life problems become multi-dimensional totalities.

When we think dialectically we are guided by principles not by procedures. Real life problems span multiple categories and academic disciplines. We need point-counter-point argumentation, we need emancipatory reasoning to resolve dialectical problems. We need critical thinking skills and attitudes to resolve real life problems.

How to build the atomic bomb is a technical problem. Whether to build the bomb or what to do with it after it is built is a real life problem.

The critically self-conscious learner is a person who has developed a passion for rational solutions to problematic ends. Instrumental rationality is designed to solve problems of means when the end is clear. Normal science, the science of means, is guided and controlled by paradigms. Paradigms are single dimensional structures that insure that means solutions do not stray from the straight and narrow.

Such systems are designed for puzzle solutions that are perfectly acceptable for single dimensional problems. The problematic situation that presents itself is just how to approach the determination of ends when such matters are mostly multi-dimensional without paradigms and generally demanding the agreement of two or more reflective agents. There are no paradigms for multi-dimensional problems.

Instrumental rationality is not a method suitable for developing ends. Dialectical rationality is the only mode of reasoning suitable for arriving at satisfactory ends.

[coberst]

Fram

The mind/body dichotomy that Western philosophical tradition has left us with has created many problems that can perhaps be alleviated if we untie that knot. Religion is a powerful tool that can be controlled by individuals who seek power and find ways to control the tendency of people to accept transcendent concepts because of this belief in a transcendent mind.

Cognitive science has a great deal of evidence to support the conclusion that we have an embodied mind and that mind and body are not different in kind. Perhaps by refuting this mind body dichotomy we can better limit the power that religion is exercising in the world.

The discoveries of CS are revolutionary and understanding them is not a simple task. I am trying to develop a series of posts that will give the reader a sufficient idea of what CS has discovered to convince the reader to read the book and better understand the matter.

[coberst]

We have in our Western philosophy a traditional theory of faculty psychology wherein our reasoning is a faculty completely separate from the body. “Reason is seen as independent of perception and bodily movement.” It is this capacity of autonomous reason that makes us different in kind from all other animals. I suspect that many fundamental aspects of philosophy and psychology are focused upon declaring, whenever possible, the separateness of our species from all other animals.

This tradition of an autonomous reason began long before evolutionary theory and has held strongly since then without consideration, it seems to me, of the theories of Darwin and of biological science. Cognitive science has in the last three decades developed considerable empirical evidence supporting Darwin and not supporting the traditional theories of philosophy and psychology regarding the autonomy of reason. Cognitive science has focused a great deal of empirical science toward discovering the nature of the embodied mind.

The three major findings of cognitive science are:
The mind is inherently embodied.
Thought is mostly unconscious.
Abstract concepts are largely metaphorical.

“These findings of cognitive science are profoundly disquieting [for traditional thinking] in two respects. First, they tell us that human reason is a form of animal reason, a reason inextricably tied to our bodies and the peculiarities of our brains. Second, these results tell us that our bodies, brains, and interactions with our environment provide the mostly unconscious basis for our everyday metaphysics, that is, our sense of what is real.”

All living creatures categorize. All creatures, as a minimum, separate eat from no eat and friend from foe. As neural creatures tadpole and wo/man categorize. There are trillions of synaptic connections taking place in the least sophisticated of creatures and this multiple synapses must be organized in some way to facilitate passage through a small number of interconnections and thus categorization takes place. Great numbers of different synapses take place in an experience and these are subsumed in some fashion to provide the category eat or foe perhaps.

Our categories are what we consider to be real in the world: tree, rock, animal…Our concepts are what we use to structure our reasoning about these categories. Concepts are neural structures that are the fundamental means by which we reason about categories.

Quotes from “Philosophy in the Flesh”.

P.S If we take a big bite out of reality we will, I think, find that it is multilayered like the onion. There are many domains of knowledge available to us for penetrating those layers of reality. Cognitive science is one that I find to be very interesting.

[Maksutov]

http://www.cosgan.de/images/smilie/muede/a035.gif

[Celestial Mechanic]

The mind/body dichotomy that Western philosophical tradition has left us with has created many problems that can perhaps be alleviated if we untie that knot.
Once again, the late Frank Zappa said it best:
Unbind your mind,
There is no time,
To lick your stamps,
And paste them in.
Discorporate,
And we'll begin.
(I've been wanting to quote that one for a long time! :) )

[coberst]

Throughout our life we constantly make judgments about such abstract matters as difference, importance, difficulty, and morality, and we have subjective experiences such as affection, desire, love, intimacy and achievement. Cognitive science claims that the manner in which we conceptualize and reason about these matters are determined, to one extinct or another, by sensorimotor domains of experience. CS claims that, in many cases, early experiences of normal mundane manipulations of objects become the prototypes from which these later concrete and abstract judgments are made.

[Roy Batty]

I live in ignomy
to think i'd never heard of the mind/body dichotomy
But I'd rather have a full bottle in front of me
than a full frontal lobotomy ;)

[coberst]

Roy

Out of curiosity do you think that body is material and mind is not a material substance? Most people throughout the world apparently do think that to be the case.

[coberst]

Neural Modeling


Cognitive science has radically attacked the traditional Western philosophical position that there is a dichotomy between perception and conception. This traditional view that perception is strictly a faculty of body and conception (the formation and use of concepts) is purely mental and wholly separate from and independent of our ability to perceive and move.

Cognitive science has introduced revolutionary theories that, if true, will change dramatically the views of Western philosophy. Advocates of the traditional view will, of course, “say that conceptual structure must have a neural realization in the brain, which just happens to reside in a body. But they deny that anything about the body is essential for characterizing what concepts are.”

The cognitive science claim is that “the very properties of concepts are created as a result of the way the brain and body are structured and the way they function in interpersonal relations and in the physical world.”

The embodied-mind hypothesis therefore radically undercuts the perception/conception distinction. In an embodied mind, it is conceivable that the same neural system engaged in perception (or in bodily movements) plays a central role in conception. Indeed, in recent neural modeling research, models of perceptual mechanisms and motor schemas can actually do conception work in language learning and in reasoning.

A standard technique for checking out new ideas is to create computer models of the idea and subject that model to simulated conditions to determine if the model behaves as does the reality. Such modeling techniques are used constantly in projecting behavior of meteorological parameters.

Neural computer models have shown that the types of operations required to perceive and move in space require the very same type of capability associated with reasoning. That is, neural models capable of doing all of the things that a body must be able to do when perceiving and moving can also perform the same kinds of actions associated with reasoning, i.e. inferring, categorizing, and conceiving.

Our understanding of biology indicates that the body has a marvelous ability to do as any handyman does, i.e. make do with what is at hand. The body would, it seems logical to assume, take these abilities that exist in all creatures that move and survive in space and with such fundamental capabilities reshape it through evolution to become what we now know as our ability to reason. The first budding of the reasoning ability exists in all creatures that function as perceiving, moving, surviving, creatures.

Cognitive science has, it seems to me, connected our ability to reason with our bodies in such away as to make sense out of connecting reason with our biological evolution in ways that Western philosophy has not done, as far as I know.

It seems to me that Western philosophical tradition as always tried to separate mind from body and in so doing has never been able to show how mind, as was conceived by this tradition, could be part of Darwin’s theory of natural selection. Cognitive science now provides us with a comprehensible model for grounding all that we are both bodily and mentally into a unified whole that makes sense without all of the attempts to make mind as some kind of transcendent, mystical, reality unassociated with biology.

Quotes from “Philosophy in the Flesh”

[coberst]

Categorization, the first level of abstraction from Reality is our first level of conceptualization and thus of knowing. Seeing is a process that includes categorization, we see something as an interaction between the seer and what is seen. “Seeing typically involves categorization.”

Quote from "Philosopohy in the Flesh"

[coberst]

Conceptulizing

Categorization, the first level of abstraction from Reality is our first level of conceptualization and thus of knowing. Seeing is a process that includes categorization, we see something as an interaction between the seer and what is seen. “Seeing typically involves categorization.”

Our categories are what we consider to be real in the world: tree, rock, animal…Our concepts are what we use to structure our reasoning about these categories. Concepts are neural structures that are the fundamental means by which we reason about categories.

Human categories, the stuff of experience, are reasoned about in many different ways. These differing ways of reasoning, these different conceptualizations, are called prototypes and represent the second level of conceptualization

Typical-case prototype conceptualization modes are “used in drawing inferences about category members in the absence of any special contextual information. Ideal-case prototypes allow us to evaluate category members relative to some conceptual standard…Social stereotypes are used to make snap judgments…Salient exemplars (well-known examples) are used for making probability judgments…Reasoning with prototypes is, indeed, so common that it is inconceivable that we could function for long without them.”

When we conceptualize categories in this fashion we often envision them using spatial metaphors. Spatial relation metaphors form the heart of our ability to perceive, conceive, and to move about in space. We unconsciously form spatial relation contexts for entities: ‘in’, ‘on’, ‘about’, ‘across from’ some other entity are common relationships that make it possible for us to function in our normal manner.

When we perceive a black cat and do not wish to cross its path our imagination conceives container shapes such that we do not penetrate the container space occupied by the cat at some time in its journey. We function in space and the container schema is a normal means we have for reasoning about action in space. Such imaginings are not conscious but most of our perception and conception is an automatic unconscious force for functioning in the world.

Our manner of using language to explain experience provides us with an insight into our cognitive structuring process. Perceptual cues are mapped onto cognitive spaces wherein a representation of the experience is structured onto our spatial-relation contour. There is no direct connection between perception and language.

The claim of cognitive science is “that the very properties of concepts are created as a result of the way the brain and the body are structured and the way they function in interpersonal relations and in the physical world.”

[coberst]

“Cognitive linguists have argued that one concept (e.g. love) can be understood through several different metaphors (e.g., LOVE IS A JOURNEY, LOVE IS INSANITY, LOVE IS AN OPPONENT, LOVE IS A VALUABLE COMMODITY). Murphy warns that such multiple metaphors would result in inconsistency in the mental representation since some of them are inconsistent with one another. Gibbs replies that concepts are not fixed, static structures but rather temporary, dynamic representations that are created on the spot in working memory on the basis of generic and episodic information in long-term memory (which he calls "knowledge" as opposed to "concept"). He argues that this dynamic view of concepts allows us to conceptualize one experience in different ways at different times and to access different aspects of one piece of knowledge. For example, The LOVE IS A JOURNEY metaphor might be appropriate to create a particular conceptualization of love in certain situations, whereas LOVE IS AN OPPONENT might be suited for creating another concept of love in other situations. Gibbs argues that concepts are independent of each other as a temporary representation in working memory apart from source domain information in long-term memory, thereby accommodating multiple metaphors while avoiding the problem raised by Murphy.”


http://cogsci.ucsd.edu/~faucon/ray.html

[coberst]

From a biological perspective it is certainly a logical extrapolation to expect that reasoning is an ability to evolve from sensorimotor capacity. “It explains why our system for structuring and reasoning about events of all kinds should have a structure of a motor-control system.”

It seems to me that only a conservative ideology explains the human desire to maintain the old faculty psychology—in the idea that the human mind does not share with our animal ancestors a common bond for reasoning via our bodily structure.

“Philosophically, the embodiment of reason via the sensorimotor system is of great importance. It is a crucial part of the explanation of why it is possible for our concepts to fit so well with the way we function in the world.”

[Nicolas]

Nicolas

We live in a bipartite world and do not know how to balance our rational abilities.

A person can walk the corridors of any big city hospital and observe the effectiveness of human rationality in action. One can also visit the UN building in NYC or read the morning papers and observe just how ineffective, frustrating and disappointing human rationality can be. Why does human reason perform so well in some matters and so poorly in others?

We live in two very different worlds; a world of technical and technological order and clarity, and a world of personal and social disorder and confusion. We are increasingly able to solve problems in one domain and increasingly endangered by our inability to solve problems in the other.

Normal science is successful primarily because it is a domain of knowledge controlled by paradigms. The paradigm defines the standards, principles and methods of the discipline. It is not apparent to the laity but science moves forward in small incremental steps. Science seldom seeks and almost never produces major novelties.

Science solves puzzles. The logic of the paradigm insulates the professional group from problems that are unsolvable by that paradigm. One reason that science progresses so rapidly and with such assurance is because the logic of that paradigm allows the practitioners to work on problems that only their lack of ingenuity will keep them from solving.

Science uses instrumental rationality to solve puzzles. Instrumental rationality is a systematic process for reflecting upon the best action to take to reach an established end. The obvious question becomes ‘what mode of rationality is available for determining ends?’ Instrumental rationality appears to be of little use in determining such matters as “good” and “right”.

There is a striking difference between the logic of technical problems and that of dialectical problems. The principles, methods and standards for dealing with technical problems and problems of “real life” are as different as night and day. Real life problems cannot be solved using deductive and inductive reasoning.

Dialectical reasoning requires the ability to slip quickly between contradictory lines of reasoning. One needs skill to develop a synthesis of one point of view with another. Where technical matters are generally confined to only one well understood frame of reference real life problems become multi-dimensional totalities.

When we think dialectically we are guided by principles not by procedures. Real life problems span multiple categories and academic disciplines. We need point-counter-point argumentation, we need emancipatory reasoning to resolve dialectical problems. We need critical thinking skills and attitudes to resolve real life problems.

How to build the atomic bomb is a technical problem. Whether to build the bomb or what to do with it after it is built is a real life problem.

The critically self-conscious learner is a person who has developed a passion for rational solutions to problematic ends. Instrumental rationality is designed to solve problems of means when the end is clear. Normal science, the science of means, is guided and controlled by paradigms. Paradigms are single dimensional structures that insure that means solutions do not stray from the straight and narrow.

Such systems are designed for puzzle solutions that are perfectly acceptable for single dimensional problems. The problematic situation that presents itself is just how to approach the determination of ends when such matters are mostly multi-dimensional without paradigms and generally demanding the agreement of two or more reflective agents. There are no paradigms for multi-dimensional problems.

Instrumental rationality is not a method suitable for developing ends. Dialectical rationality is the only mode of reasoning suitable for arriving at satisfactory ends.

I hope this was your explanation of what is "the human condition", else I don't know what the use your post was, which would be a pity.

Anyway I still don't see how one can state "CS is right and philosophy wrong" becasue I still feel they're not in the same branch. The word "science" is a good pointer to this.

As to your quoted post, I could go though it piece by piece, but I'll keep it short. Things are presented there as facts that are in my opion/from my experience no facts at all, or are even contrary.

So far I agree on "the mind is contained inside a body and the two interact", something which is adressed in phylosophy where appropriate as far as I'm aware of it.

About the rest, it is mainly spread between "I disagree" and "I don't see the link".

I would like a clear example of a casus that philosophy handles wrong (comes to the wrong conclusion) and CS on the contrary handles right.


About body and mind being "of the same kind" (what exactly do you mean with kind and could you explain that shortly please?):

The mind "apparatus" is of the same kind as the body, in that sense that it is contained in the brain and the spinal cord. It is so massively complex that we do not know exactly how it works, how to steer it etcetc. But anyway the mind "apparatus" is of the same kind as the body, as it is part of the body. With "the mind" I tend to think of the results of that apparatus, which are not material. Certainly we can (could) point a thought to neural connections, electrical pulses and the like, but their material meaning is not of importance for the thought, they are just what is making the thought possible. They are the paint that makes the painting, the instruments making the music. Music is not a collection of instruments, nor are it waves in the air. It is the message contained in them. Just as with thoughts. In my opinion.

Maybe "feelings" that come from music are just natural reactions to certain air waves. I like to think that they're provoking thoughts through the mind, and not just by triggering pulses and connections. I have no proof for that. I don't think proof can ever be given, as feelings can't be generally defined for everybody, just as moral values. If it could, it would never occur that one person thinks the bass flute is the happiness of an old man, while another thinks it's the purest sound of misery.

Those things are beyond the territory of science. Philosophy does not claim to be a science. Good philosophy does not claim to have THE answer. Philosophers often do, philosophy doesn't. Nice one for bedtime :). If CS claims to have THE answer for things like this, it is not a science (these things can't be proven or tested, as they're about feelings and feelings can't be generalised, not even on coarse scale in many cases). If it does not claim to have an answer for that, again I fail to see the corrective working of CS on philosophy.

I think that the reason why CS can link reasoning to things as evolution and phylosophy can not, is that phylosophy does not deal with that part. Phylosophy is a zoom into a part of what CS adresses. A very self-referencing zoom even, as many phylosophical cases are about the reasoning on them itselve.

It appears ot me that CS places the "reasoning" black box into the world, while phylosophy takes it out of it. That makes both studies very different, and does not allow to talk about right or wrong within their own field in my opinion.

Unless you can give me a (more or less) everyday life example of reasoning where the scope of phylosophy gives a wrong result and that of CS a right result.

[Doodler]

I live in ignomy
to think i'd never heard of the mind/body dichotomy
But I'd rather have a full bottle in front of me
than a full frontal lobotomy ;)

This is probably the only post here I can make heads or tails of (with respect to the topic). Either someone forgot to forward me the encryption key or the noise to signal ratio is way off here...

[sarongsong]

...someone forgot to forward me the encryption key or the noise to signal ratio is way off here...Amen! Getting the feeling that using plain conversational English might just render whatever point(s) trying to be made here moot. This is like trying to comprehend the fine print on an insurance policy.

[Fram]

I think Nicolas's posts are quite comprehensible, but that he doesn't get a good reply to them. As to what Coberst is trying to say here and in his other threads about the same: still no idea...

[coberst]

Nicolas

I understand your frustration and confusion. I felt much the same six months ago when I check out “Philosophy in the Flesh” from the WCU library. I am not enrolled in that college but have a “Friends of the Library” card that for a fee of $25 a year I can borrow any book in the library.

Cognitive science as defined in this book is a revolutionary theory. It proposes ideas that are startling new and heretical to the established tradition. On every page I encountered concepts totally new to me. This book is 80% new stuff and as a result one must approach the matter differently from ones normal reading.

Our schooling prepares us to be good workers and avid consumers. Our schooling has not prepared us to seek new and revolutionary ideas. We must find our own means to move beyond our schooling if we are to make such a drastic task.

I had studied the history of modern physics and so had an idea of what facing a world totally alien is like. The physicist facing a world inside the atom had to take a different point of view than they had ever faced before. The world inside the atom is alien to our world and the physicist had to deal with that major problem.

I think that one faces a similar problem when dealing with CS as defined in this book. The first requirement is to decide whether the whole newly proposed paradigm is worth the effort of understanding. The best way, I think, to do this is check out the individuals who are working to introduce these revolutionary ideas. If they seem to be individuals worthy of trust then one can start the learning enterprise.

Of course, the domain of knowledge must be appealing to the reader or their curiosity will not support the hard work required.

The individuals working on this new theory are linguists, neural scientists, philosophers and others of high reputation. The effort began three decades ago and a great deal of empirical data has been collected to support their claims.

When I started the effort to learn this theory I decided that I could go no where unless I suspended disbelief until I got a handle on what is being proposed. I suspended disbelief and after six months of study I have a general idea of what is being proposed.

Asking questions and seeking answers to those questions is the foundation to understanding something so radically new. There are, it seems to me, two types of questions. Some questions are designed to facilitate learning and some questions are designed to inhibit learning. I suspect the questions designed to inhibit learning are often constructed by our unconscious because we do not want to undertake the vast effort required to understand the new ideas.

[Nicolas]

I was asking questions but you do not answer them, at least not in a way that gets me any closer.

And again I notice a lot of claims posted as facts that I disagree with.

For the record, I am educated in neural networks and the working of the brain, I have learned to seek new and revolutionary ideas (it is a major part of the job).

I know that fully understanding a complex theory would take a lot of time. But that does not mean you can't give an example, right? In the worst case I just won't get the example.

So, can you now adress my question for a concrete philosophy vs CS example? (and sidequestions like what do you mean with the "kind" of body and mind)?

If you notice frustration in me, it's not because of me trying to understand CS but because I asked questions and I don't feel they're being answered. I can't even try to understnad an answer if none is given.

[coberst]

Nicolas


The simplest “correspondence theory of truth” is: “A statement is true when it fits the way things are in the world.”

The correspondence theory of truth was what I thought truth meant and is what I suspect most people, who have had some contact with philosophical theory, believe it to be.

“What we [CS] take to be true in a situation depends on our embodied understanding of the situation, which is in turn shaped by” “our sensory organs, our ability to move and to manipulate objects, our culture, and our interactions in our environment.”

The classical theory of correspondence theory of truth is disembodied. The sensorimotor system plays no role in it.

[Nicolas]

OK now please give a clear cut example illustrating this difference.

[coberst]

Why Learn Something New?

I understand your frustration and confusion in trying to understand things about cognitive science. I felt much the same six months ago when I checked out “Philosophy in the Flesh” from the WCU library. I am not enrolled in that college but have a “Friends of the Library” card that for a fee of $25 a year I can borrow any book in the library.

Cognitive science as defined in this book is a revolutionary theory. It proposes ideas that are startling new and heretical to the established tradition. On every page I encountered concepts totally new to me. This book is 80% new stuff and as a result one must approach the matter differently from ones normal reading.

Our schooling prepares us to be good workers and avid consumers. Our schooling has not prepared us to seek new and revolutionary ideas. We must find our own means to move beyond our schooling if we are to take on such a drastic task.

I had studied the history of modern physics and so had an idea of what facing a world totally alien is like. The physicist facing a world inside the atom had to take a different point of view than they had ever faced before. The world inside the atom is alien to our world and the physicist had to deal with that major problem.

I think that one faces a similar, though not as drastic, a problem when dealing with CS as defined in this book. The first requirement is to decide whether the whole newly proposed paradigm is worth the effort of understanding. The best way, I think, to do this is check out the individuals who are working to introduce these revolutionary ideas. If they seem to be individuals worthy of trust then one can start the learning enterprise.

Of course, the domain of knowledge must be appealing to the reader or their curiosity will not support the hard work required.

The individuals working on this new theory are linguists, neural scientists, philosophers and others of high reputation. The effort began three decades ago and a great deal of empirical data has been collected to support their claims.

When I started the effort to learn this theory I decided that I could go no where unless I suspended disbelief until I got a handle on what is being proposed. I suspended disbelief and after six months of study I have a general idea of what is being proposed.

Asking questions and seeking answers to those questions is the foundation to understanding something so radically new. There are, it seems to me, two types of questions. Some questions are designed to facilitate learning and some questions are designed to inhibit learning. I suspect the questions designed to inhibit learning are often constructed by our unconscious because we do not want to undertake the vast effort required to understand the new ideas.

To study this book is to learn a new way to examine the world and the self. Our traditional philosophical views are not aligned with the views expressed by CS. To study this science will provide the knower with a new concept of reality. To understand any theory well we need something with which to compare it. Since we have never been taught a view contrary to the traditional view we have a very difficult time understanding the view we presently have. The very least a study of this theory will do is provide each of us something with which we can compare the present tradition. The best we will do is gain an early understanding of a newly accepted paradigm.

To study this CS theory is a no lose situation. At the very worst we will gain a better understanding of our present traditional views. This book will open a new world for the individual who has the curiosity to take on the adventure.

[Celestial Mechanic]

Why half-a-dozen threads on so-called "Cognitive Science" when surely one will do? You do post more than once to the threads you create, so you are not engaging in "post and run", your style is more like "post and shuffle". :eh:

[teri tait]

20/20 hindsight, why learn something old?

[Jakenorrish]

Agreed, this is surely an alternative theory subject anyway and has no place in the more lighthearted, less serious end of the board..... Mod please!

[Fram]

If I get it right, then CS says quite literally that "truth is in the eye of the beholder". While this may be a necessary first step, I do believe that truth lies in the communiaction about this, the agreement reached, the common understanding we have about things. It may still not be the truth (assuming such a thing exists); but it will be the closest we can get to the truth for now, and it is at least a necessary step towards further cooperation and progress. If CS stresses the first step (the subjective truth), then it seems to me to be a step back from most modern philosophies instead of a revolutionary breakthrough. But even if it does elaborate on this: this in itself is not a new idea or a step away from established philosophies.
And it isn't a really clear example of where CS is better than philosophy either...

[Fram]

I second the call for moderating. Yet another thread, with an almost exact repost (some slight differences) of his last post in the "All men by nature..." thread, is unnecessary, to put it mildly.

[mid]

As the great Phil Dick once wrote, "Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away"

[mid]

The premise is wrong yet again, anyway

To study this CS theory is a no lose situation.

That's only true if you've absolutely nothing (including learning something more useful) either more useful or more interesting to be doing. But then, for all of us this seems to include posting random stuff on the internet, so go figure.

[Wolverine]

Why half-a-dozen threads on so-called "Cognitive Science" when surely one will do?

Fair point indeed.

coberst, I've merged your musings on cognitive science into a single thread. In the future, please use this thread for similar entries on the same topic.

[Nicolas]

I'll repeat my last question here, referring to post #42:

OK now please give a clear cut example illustrating this difference.

[coberst]

Nicolas

Descartes’ conclusion from “Meditations”:

"It is certain that this I [that is to say, my soul by which I am what I am], is entirely, and absolutely distinct from my body and can exist without it."

I have copied the post “Descartes: Pied Piper” at the end of this post and it provides the explanation of how Descartes got to this conclusion.

The most important aspect of CS, in my opinion, is that CS removes mind from its transcendent pedestal upon which Descartes has placed it and returns it to the material body where the theories of Darwin has established it to be.

Cognitive science argues for an embodied realism as opposed to philosophy’s metaphysical realism. Embodied realism provides us with a link between our ideas and the worlds we experience. “Our bodies contribute to our sense of what is real”.

Spatial-relations concepts are not part of the world but are embodied and provide us with our ability to make sense of the world. “They characterize what spatial form is and define spatial inference.”

We do not see neither nearness nor farness but see objects in the world as they are and attribute the characteristic of nearness or farness to them. “We use spatial-relation concepts unconsciously, and we impose them unconsciously via our perceptual and conceptual systems. We just automatically and unconsciously ‘perceive’ one entity as in, on, or across from another entity. However, such perception depends on an enormous amount of automatic unconscious mental activity on our part.”

We might see a butterfly ‘in’ the garden. We conceptualize a three-dimensional container that is bounded by the garden and that which contains the butterfly. We locate the butterfly as a figure relative to that container. “We perform such complex, though mundane, acts of imaginative perception during every moment of our waking lives.”

Spatial relations have built in “logics” by virtue of their image-schematic structure:
Given two containers, A and B, and an object, X, if A is ‘in’ B and X is ‘in’ A, then X is ‘in’ B. Such is self-evident and requires no deduction. A container is a gestalt structure, its parts make no sense without the whole, it has an inside, outside, and a boundary.

“Container schemas, like other image schemas, are cross-modal. We can impose a conceptual container schema on a visual scene.” We can impose it on something we hear, on music perhaps to separate components, on our motor movements such as breaking down our movements in a tennis stroke and deal with these parts as within the whole.

Another important schema commonly used in perception and conception is the source-path-goal schema, which has an internal spatial “logic” with built in inferences”:
*If you have traversed a route to a current location, you have been at all previous locations on the route.
*If you travel from A to B and from B to C, them you have traveled from A to C.
*And so forth.

“Our most fundamental knowledge of motion is characterized by the source-path-goal schema…One of the important discoveries of cognitive science is that the conceptual systems used in the world’s languages make use of a relatively small number of basic image scemas…The spatial logics of these body-based image schemas are among the sources of the forms of logic used in abstract reason.”

The embodied mind hypothesis “radically undercuts the perception/conception distinction. In an embodied mind, it is conceivable that the neural system engaged in perception (or in bodily movement) plays a central in conception. That is, the very mechanisms responsible for perception, movements, and object manipulation could be responsible for conceptualization and reasoning.”[b]



Descartes: Pied Piper

I was educated in engineering but also had some interest in philosophy. My first philosophy course was Descartes' "Meditations on First Philosophy". I suspect this is an introductory course for most students studying philosophy. Descartes has left Western tradition with a gigantic legacy that only now is this legacy being undermined by cognitive science.

Descartes goes through a sequence of analysis in an effort to find an absolute truth upon which to build his philosophy. He settled on "Cogito, ergo sum". "I think therefore I am". The conclusions of this series of analysis by Descartes have set the course, more or less, of Western philosophy. What are the fateful conclusions derived from the work of Descartes?

[b]"I am, I exist, that is certain. But how often? Just when I think; for it might possibly be the case if I ceased entirely to think, that I should likewise cease altogether to exist...But what then am I? A thing that thinks."

The Folk Theory of Essences
Every kind of thing has an essence that makes it the kind of thing it is.
The way each thing naturally behaves is a consequence of its essence.

Descartes knows he exists because he thinks. Because he exists he has an essence. He assumes nothing else causes his thinking but his essence. Conclusion: thinking must be at least a part of the human essence.

"Just because I know certainly that I exist, and that meanwhile I do not remark that any other thing necessarily pertains to my nature or essence, excepting that I am a thinking thing, I rightly conclude that my essence consists solely in the fact that I am a thinking thing."

"It is certain that this I [that is to say, my soul by which I am what I am], is entirely, and absolutely distinct from my body and can exist without it."

To have reached that last conclusion Descartes must assume an additional:

The Folk Theory of Substance and Attributes
A substance is that which exists in itself and does not depend for its existence on any other thing.
Each substance has one and only one primary attribute that defines what its essence is.

The following is what his introspection has made him “see”:

There are two kinds of substance, one bodily and the other mental.
The attribute of bodily substance is extension in space.
The attribute of mental substance is thought.

[Nicolas]

I spotted no examples that show how philosophy gives a wrong answer to a casus and CS gives a correct one. Spotting a butterfly in the garden and hitting a tennis ball aren't really philosophical cases.

Also, Decartes is a philosopher. He can say what he wants, though that does not mean that philosophy accepts this as truth. As far as I'm concerned, in order to give the ratio freedom to think no philosophical statements can be held as truth, and indeed when thinking about statements made by philosophers it is possible to give counterexamples. That does not make philosophy wrong, it is just the continuation of the thinking process of a philosopher. And that's what it's about: reasoning about issues, trying to formulate conclusions, reasoning about those conclusions etc.. The pursuit of a truth that in many cases does not exist :).

While CS "proves" that statement by Descartes wrong, it does not prove philosophy wrong. As long as you refute claims by reasoning, you are part of philosophy.

That claim could have been proven wrong without CS as well. Many feelings are triggered by the body. Feelings like hunger only exist due to the body. ONe could discard that by saying that the feeling of hunger is not part of the mind, but then again one is disputing the word "entirely".

CS might be a fine study of the body-mind relationships, but using it to claim "philosophy is wrong" does not do it any good. "right and wrong" is a very important part of philosophy, but alongside searching for right and wrong is the notion that all things can be right and wrong, depending on how you look at it.

No amount of explanation on CS can prove something wrong that does not claim to be right. Philosophy is a tool, an exercise, not a science. If you'd take only the scientific part of philosophy, you'd end up with logic.

[Fram]

Not all philosophers agreed on the duality of body and mind, and certainly not to the degree Descartes pushed it. Aristoteles was more of the mind (sorry) that body and mind were linked, Plato leaned closer to Descartes, and so on.
I don't see where Darwin comes into play either. Can you give a source as to where the theories of Darwin have put the mind into the material body?
And I, like Nicolas, still don't see anything where standard philosophy (if that exists) gives a wrong answer, a wrong direction, whereas with CS, we go towards the correct answer. The "examples" you gave are logical, not philosophical, and I don't think a traditional philosopher would have disagreed with you (except the kind that doubts everything of course).

[coberst]

I think that Darwin enters into the picture because it is his theory of natural selection that seems to require that we find within our non-human ancestors the budding rationality that we humans possess. As we find evidence of how the hand evolved from the fin so we should find how our mental attributes to have evolved also. If the mind is transcendent then, of course, one cannot say the mind evolved through natural selection.

I speak of our Western philosophical tradition to be in error. Perhaps one cannot say Philosophy is wrong because Philosophy does not exist, it seems to be somewhat of a technicality, but one can say that the traditional view is wrong.

[Nicolas]

In that case, I disagree on that description of the traditional view. In philosophy, the separateness of body and mind as a fact has never been stretched to me. Sure, Descartes thought it was like that, others didn't. Some claimed that all considerations should be for the advantages of one's own body.

From that perspective, the whole Darwin thing is irrelevant, as I disagree with your premise that philosphy sees the total separateness of mind and body as a fact and bases its reasoning on that. What is the case though, is that for many phylosophical considerations the body is of little relevance. So in those cases, it simply does not matter what one thinks about the body, nor what one thinks about the weather or Lindsay Lohan's latest movie.

[Fram]

I think that Darwin enters into the picture because it is his theory of natural selection that seems to require that we find within our non-human ancestors the budding rationality that we humans possess. As we find evidence of how the hand evolved from the fin so we should find how our mental attributes to have evolved also. If the mind is transcendent then, of course, one cannot say the mind evolved through natural selection.

Circular reasoning, I think. If the mind is in the body, part of the body, then Darwin requires it to be so. If it doesn't, then Darwin has no problem with that either. So mentioning Darwin was unnecessary namedropping.

I speak of our Western philosophical tradition to be in error. Perhaps one cannot say Philosophy is wrong because Philosophy does not exist, it seems to be somewhat of a technicality, but one can say that the traditional view is wrong.
So because one aspect of a (major) part of Western philosophy is wrong in your view, we throw it all away? Perhaps it would be better to look for what other aspects of those philosophies are wrong because of this aspect, and how CS can do those better. I'm still waiting for one example of such an improvement.

[Celestial Mechanic]

Much as I would like to see "western philosophical tradition" creamed, I realize that that is not what is really important. There are more serious questions that should be asked about "cognitive science", namely "What does cognitive science observe and predict?"

Now I understand that as a squishy-soft science I should not expect the kind of precise numerical predictions that I get from QED or celestial mechanics, I'll settle for generalities but not so vague as to be meaningless. In other words, something a little more specific than your typical newspaper horoscope.

[coberst]

I do not think CS is in the prediction business I leave that to the weather bureau.

[Celestial Mechanic]

I do not think CS is in the prediction business I leave that to the weather bureau.
Oh, come on! Even psychology and sociology try to draw inferences from all their experiments! What sort of experiments do cognitive scientists perform? If there are no experiments then CS is just balloon-juice and no better than philosophy.

[coberst]

There is a large bibliography in "Philosophy in the Flesh"

[coberst]

Metaphors

Throughout our life we constantly make judgments about such abstract matters as difference, importance, difficulty, and morality, and we have subjective experiences such as affection, desire, love, intimacy and achievement. Cognitive science claims that the manner in which we conceptualize and reason about these matters are determined, to one extinct or another, by sensorimotor domains of experience. CS claims that, in many cases, early experiences of normal mundane manipulations of objects become the prototypes from which these later concrete and abstract judgments are made.

“When we conceptualize understanding an idea (subjective experience) in terms of grasping an object (sensorimotor experience) and failing to understand an idea as having it go right by us or over our heads” we are using a sensorimotor experience as the metaphor for the subjective experience. The metaphor ‘understand is grasp’ results from our conflating a sensorimotor happening with a later subjective experience.

Metaphor is a standard means we have of understanding an unknown by association with a known. When we analyze the metaphor ‘bad is stinky’ we will find: we are making a subjective judgment wherein the olfactory sensation becomes the source of the judgment. ‘This movie stinks’ is a subjective judgment and it is made in this manner because a sensorimotor experience is the structure for making this judgment.

Why is the premise “A straight line is the shortest distance between two points” self-evident. It is because this is one of the first things an infant learns and it is verified and reinforced constantly throughout life by our sensorimotor experiences. The metaphor ‘more is up’ is not so pervasive in our experience but its rationale is similar.

If we recognize metaphor as a means to associate something new with something old, something known with something unknown, we can begin to understand what CS is proposing in this revolutionary theory. CS is presenting a theory based upon empirical evidence gathered by the combined effort of linguists, philosophers, and neural physicists that metaphor is a very necessary element of our ability to reason as we do.

We normally think of metaphor as a tool of language whereby one can enlighten another by making an association of an unknown with a known. CS is making a much more radical use of metaphor.

CS is claiming that the neural structure of sensorimotor experience is mapped onto the mental space for another experience that is not sensorimotor but subjective and that this neural mapping, which is unconscious and automatic, serves as part of the “DNA” of the subjective experience. The sensorimotor experience serves the role of an axiom for the subjective experience.

[Nicolas]

Can we have an example of CS getting better results than philosophy, that is a clear-cut direct example before we go to the next salad bar?

[Fram]

Can you give, umm, I don't know, perhaps, an example of CS making a much more radical use of metaphor? I see a lot of claims and words, but I can't imagine something concrete that you mean by this.

EDIT: plus what Nicolas said!

[Celestial Mechanic]

I'm feeling a bit verklaempt right now. I'll give you a topic: Cognitive Science is neither cognitive nor a science. Discuss among yourselves.
:)

[coberst]

CS is about Understanding

CS is not focused upon examples of knowing ‘how to’ but is focused upon understanding the relationship between what we know and how we know it. We will not find ready examples of knowing in the study of CS but if we try we can begin to grasp how we know and how this knowing becomes understanding, and how this understanding is grounded by our biological nature.

CS is not about knowing, CS is about understanding. “Where Mathematics Comes From” is one book in a series of books and research documents relating to cognition and the power of understanding.

We all learned how to ‘do math’ in our schooling. How to do math is about knowing; CS is about how to understand the nature of how it is possible for humans to create a domain of knowledge such as math.

I would give more detail except for the fact that I have not studied the matter enough to go beyond what I have already said.

[Nicolas]

So you claim CS is better than philosophy because CS describes how the mind functions, especially in relationship with the body.

Where is the functional principle of the mind of importance in philosophy? If the mind would work on steam engines and we would know exaclty when it evolved from say apes, what would it change to philosophy? Mind (pardon the pun) that the resulting mind (I mean our reasoning and things like that) is identical to the one we have know but of which we don't know the exact evolution and working principles. Philosophy looks at your software and no so much at the computer.

Or am I wrong here?

[Fram]

Again, as this is no answer, my previous post:
Can you give, umm, I don't know, perhaps, an example of CS making a much more radical use of metaphor? I see a lot of claims and words, but I can't imagine something concrete that you mean by this.

[coberst]

More is Up

Many years ago, before ‘self-service’, it was common to pull into a gas station and when the attendant came to the car the motorist would say “Fillerup”.

“More is up” is a common metaphor. I think of it every time I pour milk into a measuring cup when baking cornbread. The subjective judgment is quantity, the sensorimotor domain is vertical orientation, and the primary experience is the rise and fall of vertical levels as fluid is added or subtracted and objects are piled on top of or removed from a collection.

We can see (know is see) by this mechanism that we equate vertical motion in the spatial domain with quantity; we use the vertical domain to reason about quantity. We have a vast experience in vertical space domain reasoning and thus we derive this great experience to help us in reasoning about quantity; no doubt a very useful thing when first learning arithmetic. Teachers of mathematics, I suspect, depend upon this storehouse of knowledge to make abstract mathematical reasoning for children more comprehensible.

In a metaphor the source domain, ‘up’, is mapped onto the target domain ‘more’. The neural structure of the sensorimotor domain, the primary metaphor, is mapped onto the subjective domain ‘more’. Reasoning about the vertical motion in the spatial domain is mapped onto reasoning about the quantity domain. This is a one-way movement; reasoning about quantity is not mapped onto spatial domain reasoning. The direction of inference indicates which the source is and which the target domain is.

Physical experiences of all kinds lead to conceptual metaphors from which perhaps hundreds of ‘primary metaphors’, which are neural structures resulting from sensorimotor experiences, are created. These primary metaphors provide the ‘seed bed’ for the judgments and subjective experiences in life. “Conceptual metaphor is pervasive in both thought and language. It is hard to think of a common subjective experience that is not conventionally conceptualized in terms of metaphor.

[Celestial Mechanic]

[Snip!]CS is not focused upon examples of knowing ‘how to’ but is focused upon understanding the relationship between what we know and how we know it. We will not find ready examples of knowing in the study of CS but if we try we can begin to grasp how we know and how this knowing becomes understanding, and how this understanding is grounded by our biological nature.

CS is not about knowing, CS is about understanding.[Snip!]
Well, for a "soft science" it doesn't get much mushier than this. More touchy-feely New Age drivel. :sad:

[mid]

“More is up” is a common metaphor.

That isn't a metaphor - it's just a conclusion that arises from the usually correct assumption that the other dimensions of the liquid container are constrained.

[coberst]

mid

That might be a good definition of metaphor! I think you are getting the idea of CS already! Carry that thought forward and you begin to see what CS is all about. CS is not complex but it is difficult because the concepts are so strange to us.

[Fram]

So you can't give an example, and you can't see the difference between a metaphor and a generalisation?
But let's just, for the sake of argument, assume that "more is up" is a metaphor. So what? What have I learned now? What new insight have I reached? What can I do with this? Which mistake can be corrected by knowing this?

All this in addition to the standing questions about previous posts of yours, of course, as you still haven't given an answer.

[Nicolas]

And I see no link with philosophy

[N C More]

...So what? What have I learned now? What new insight have I reached? What can I do with this? Which mistake can be corrected by knowing this?

All this in addition to the standing questions about previous posts of yours, of course, as you still haven't given an answer.

Waiting for answers that make sense? How about a little Samuel Beckett (http://samuel-beckett.net/Waiting_for_Godot_Part1.html) to pass the time!

[R.A.F.]

More is Up

I don't know...

Third base!!


With apologies to A and C.

[Roving Philosopher]

I did a quick google search on Cognitive Science and came up with this link (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/cognitive-science/) to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. I get the impression that the description of CS in this thread is overly narrow. From the link,

"The central hypothesis of cognitive science is that thinking can best be understood in terms of representational structures in the mind and computational procedures that operate on those structures."

This thread seems to concern what is more like a school of thought within CS (much in the same way there are different schools of thought in metaphysics or epistemology). The Stanford link explicitly talks about the the role of philosophy in CS. The hypothesis above isn't contrary to philosophy. I suspect even a Cartesian dualist could accept it.

[N C More]

I don't know...

Third base!!


With apologies to A and C.

Ok, I'll clear this up:


Costello: Same as you! Same as YOU! I throw the ball to who. Whoever it is drops the ball and the guy runs to second. Who picks up the ball and throws it to What. What throws it to I Don't Know. I Don't Know throws it back to Tomorrow, Triple play. Another guy gets up and hits a long fly ball to Because. Why? I don't know! He's on third and I don't give a darn!

Abbott: What?

Costello: I said I don't give a darn!


Abbott: Oh, that's our shortstop.



http://www.cosgan.de/images/midi/frech/k015.gif

[Fram]

Thanks, Roving Philosopher. And thanks to the other for some light entertainment!
For the sake of clarity (one thing we don't have in this thread), when I refer here to CS, I mean CS as explained by coberst.

[Nicolas]

*snip*
This thread seems to concern what is more like a school of thought within CS (much in the same way there are different schools of thought in metaphysics or epistemology). The Stanford link explicitly talks about the the role of philosophy in CS. The hypothesis above isn't contrary to philosophy. I suspect even a Cartesian dualist could accept it.

Apparently it takes those who did not study CS less time to get that than those who did...

[coberst]

I think that the difference between genius and regular folks is that regular folks take months to understand what the genius understands after two readings. I suspect mid might be one of those genius types.

[Nicolas]

Pretending that Mid agrees with you, calling him a genius (always nice to link a genius to yourself), implying that the others here aren't that smart and on top of it not going into the remarks themselves does not help your case.

We have remarks here stating that CS can't be right where philosophy is wrong as you presented it, as philosophy is part of CS (like I said early on already in post 14: "Philosophy is a study of one element used in CS."). What do you have to say about those remarks?

[coberst]

Nicolas

I shall have to study that statement.

[coberst]

Nicolas

Your statements have become foolish and provocative. You have morphed into a heckler. If you have the authority to ban me then do so or get out of my face.

[Nicolas]

I do not have that authority, nor do I want you to be banned. As far as I know you have done nothing that would justify a banning so there's no reason for that. Although answering questions would be very helpful for this thread.

What I want from you is to comment on the philosophy vs CS issue that you raised. You have more or less explained that you can't give the asked clear cut examples, but still you can address the raised remarks that some people think there is no such thing as philosophy versus CS, because philosophy is an element of CS?

I'll step out this discussion now. If things cool down I might return.

[ToSeek]

Nicolas

Your statements have become foolish and provocative. You have morphed into a heckler. If you have the authority to ban me then do so or get out of my face.

Coberst, this is a totally inappropriate response. Even if Nicolas has done something to provoke this (which I don't see that he has), we expect all posters here to remain civil.

You are opening your ideas up for discussion here, and you are bound to get some comments that make you uncomfortable. Deal with it in a mature, reasonable fashion or you will be banned for good.

Since you have already violated the rules of this forum (by posting political topics here (http://www.bautforum.com/showthread.php?t=35868) and here (http://64.207.216.12/showthread.php?t=35895)), I am banning you for a week. Please take the opportunity to review the rules of our forum in that interval or before you post again.