Reconstructing the Cognitive World

Reconstructing the Cognitive World PDF Author: Michael Wheeler
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 9780262232401
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 372

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Book Description
An argument for a non-Cartesian philosophical foundation for cognitive science that combines elements of Heideggerian phenomenology, a dynamical systems approach to cognition, and insights from artificial intelligence-related robotics.

Reconstructing the Cognitive World

Reconstructing the Cognitive World PDF Author: Michael Wheeler
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 9780262232401
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 372

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Book Description
An argument for a non-Cartesian philosophical foundation for cognitive science that combines elements of Heideggerian phenomenology, a dynamical systems approach to cognition, and insights from artificial intelligence-related robotics.

Reconstructing Reason and Representation

Reconstructing Reason and Representation PDF Author: Murray Clarke
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 9780262262194
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 200

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Book Description
A study of the philosophical implications of evolutionary psychology, suggesting that knowledge is a set of natural kinds housed in the modules of a massively modular mind. In Reconstructing Reason and Representation, Murray Clarke offers a detailed study of the philosophical implications of evolutionary psychology. In doing so, he offers new solutions to key problems in epistemology and philosophy of mind, including misrepresentation and rationality. He proposes a naturalistic approach to reason and representation that is informed by evolutionary psychology, and, expanding on the massive modularity thesis advanced in work by Leda Cosmides and John Tooby, argues for a modular, adapticist account of misrepresentation and knowledge. Just as the reliability of representation can be defended on the basis of an account of the proper function of cognitive modularity, misrepresentation can be explained through an appeal to the "gap theory," by noting the divergence between the proper and actual domains of cognitive modules in a massively modular mind. Clarke argues for an externalist, modular reliabilism by suggesting that evolution has equipped us with generally reliable inferential systems even if they do not always produce true beliefs. He argues that reliable deductive and inductive inference occurs only when cognitive modules deal with actual domains that are sufficiently similar to their proper domains. This psychologically informed, naturalized adapticism leads to the suggestion that knowledge is a set of natural kinds housed in the modules of a massively modular mind. Typically, the proper function of these cognitive modules is to provide us with truths that enable us to satisfy our basic biological needs. Beyond reasoning modules, other cognitive modules discussed include the ability to orient ourselves in space, and our abilities with language, numbers, object reasoning, and social understanding. Clarke also defends Cosmides and Tooby's massive modularity hypothesis against such critics as Jerry Fodor by demonstrating that these critics consistently misrepresent Cosmides and Tooby's position.

After Cognitivism

After Cognitivism PDF Author: Karl Leidlmair
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 1402099924
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 231

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Book Description
There is a basic perplexity in our times. On the one hand, we ?nd a blind trust in technology and rationalism. In our neo-liberalistically dominated world only what can be rapidly exploited and commercialized seems to count. The only opposing reaction to this kind of rationalism is an extreme rejection of all kinds of reasoning, and sometimes attendant religious fundamentalism. But instead of re?ecting on the limits and possibilites of reasoning, dialogue is replaced by a demagogic struggle between cultures. One cause of the blind trust in technology is misunderstandings about the sign- cance and the application of theories in the reception of the so-called Enlightenment. The Enlightenment is essentially characterized by two forces: (i) the conception of society as a social contract and (ii) the new science (New- nian physics, etc.). But as a result we lost ground: Atomistic individualism nourished the illusion of a self-contained ego prior to man’s entering into a shared inter-subjective world. And in the new science, our constructions of reality became autonomous and indep- dent of our interventions. Thus we became caught in the inherent dynamism of our computational constructions of reality. Science, as it is applied today, operates with far too simple parameters and model-theoretic constructions – erroneously taking the latter (the models) as literal descriptions of reality.

Heidegger and Cognitive Science

Heidegger and Cognitive Science PDF Author: J. Kiverstein
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
ISBN: 9780230216556
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
This impressive volume of essays that includes contributions from Hubert Dreyfus, Mike Wheeler and Shaun Gallagher reflects an emerging trend in cognitive science, and explores this new approach to cognitive science informed by Heidegger's thoughts on human existence.

Radical Embodied Cognitive Science

Radical Embodied Cognitive Science PDF Author: Anthony Chemero
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262516470
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 269

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Book Description
A proposal for a new way to do cognitive science argues that cognition should be described in terms of agent-environment dynamics rather than computation and representation. While philosophers of mind have been arguing over the status of mental representations in cognitive science, cognitive scientists have been quietly engaged in studying perception, action, and cognition without explaining them in terms of mental representation. In this book, Anthony Chemero describes this nonrepresentational approach (which he terms radical embodied cognitive science), puts it in historical and conceptual context, and applies it to traditional problems in the philosophy of mind. Radical embodied cognitive science is a direct descendant of the American naturalist psychology of William James and John Dewey, and follows them in viewing perception and cognition to be understandable only in terms of action in the environment. Chemero argues that cognition should be described in terms of agent-environment dynamics rather than in terms of computation and representation. After outlining this orientation to cognition, Chemero proposes a methodology: dynamical systems theory, which would explain things dynamically and without reference to representation. He also advances a background theory: Gibsonian ecological psychology, “shored up” and clarified. Chemero then looks at some traditional philosophical problems (reductionism, epistemological skepticism, metaphysical realism, consciousness) through the lens of radical embodied cognitive science and concludes that the comparative ease with which it resolves these problems, combined with its empirical promise, makes this approach to cognitive science a rewarding one. “Jerry Fodor is my favorite philosopher,” Chemero writes in his preface, adding, “I think that Jerry Fodor is wrong about nearly everything.” With this book, Chemero explains nonrepresentational, dynamical, ecological cognitive science as clearly and as rigorously as Jerry Fodor explained computational cognitive science in his classic work The Language of Thought.

Cognitive Justice in a Global World

Cognitive Justice in a Global World PDF Author: Boaventura de Sousa Santos
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 0739153137
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 463

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Book Description
Cognitive Justice in a Global World: Prudent Knowledges for a Decent Life is an edited collection that springs from the now dormant debates known as 'The Science Wars,' which questioned the nature of scientific theories. Learning from the debates about the plurality of truths and opinions, editor Boaventura de Sousa Santos has realized an opportunity for strengthening the relations between the natural and social sciences with more epistemological affinities and for opening up new transnational dialogues between scientists and other producers of knowledge. This book analyses in detail some of the topics that amount to a set of problematic relations between science and ethics; between objectivity and neutrality; between the sociological and theoretical condition of production and the limits of scientific rigor; between public faith in science and the economic powers that determine scientific priorities; and between science and other kinds of knowledge existing in society. Maintaining that global social injustice is by and large epistemological injustice and that there can be no global social justice without global cognitive justice, Cognitive Justice in a Global World is an important collection for higher-level students and researchers in the social sciences, philosophy of science, and intellectual history.

Enactivist Interventions

Enactivist Interventions PDF Author: Shaun Gallagher
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198794320
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 262

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Book Description
Enactivist Interventions is an interdisciplinary work that explores how theories of embodied cognition illuminate many aspects of the mind, including intentionality, representation, the affect, perception, action and free will, higher-order cognition, and intersubjectivity. Gallagher arguesfor a rethinking of the concept of mind, drawing on pragmatism, phenomenology and cognitive science. Enactivism is presented as a philosophy of nature that has significant methodological and theoretical implications for the scientific investigation of the mind. Gallagher argues that, like the basicphenomena of perception and action, sophisticated cognitive phenomena like reflection, imagining, and mathematical reasoning are best explained in terms of an affordance-based skilled coping. He offers an account of the continuity that runs between basic action, affectivity, and a rationality thatin every case remains embodied.Gallagher's analysis also addresses recent predictive models of brain function and outlines an alternative, enactivist interpretation that emphasizes the close coupling of brain, body and environment rather than a strong boundary that isolates the brain in its internal processes. The extensiverelational dynamics that integrates the brain with the extra-neural body opens into an environment that is physical, social and cultural and that recycles back into the enactive process. Cognitive processes are in-the-world rather than in-the-head; they are situated in affordance spaces definedacross evolutionary, developmental and individual histories, and are constrained by affective processes and normative dimensions of social and cultural practices.

Experiments of the Mind

Experiments of the Mind PDF Author: Emily Martin
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691232075
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 308

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Book Description
An inside view of the experimental practices of cognitive psychology—and their influence on the addictive nature of social media Experimental cognitive psychology research is a hidden force in our online lives. We engage with it, often unknowingly, whenever we download a health app, complete a Facebook quiz, or rate our latest purchase. How did experimental psychology come to play an outsized role in these developments? Experiments of the Mind considers this question through a look at cognitive psychology laboratories. Emily Martin traces how psychological research methods evolved, escaped the boundaries of the discipline, and infiltrated social media and our digital universe. Martin recounts her participation in psychology labs, and she conveys their activities through the voices of principal investigators, graduate students, and subjects. Despite claims of experimental psychology’s focus on isolated individuals, Martin finds that the history of the field—from early German labs to Gestalt psychology—has led to research methods that are, in fact, highly social. She shows how these methods are deployed online: amplified by troves of data and powerful machine learning, an unprecedented model of human psychology is now widespread—one in which statistical measures are paired with algorithms to predict and influence users’ behavior. Experiments of the Mind examines how psychology research has shaped us to be perfectly suited for our networked age.

Reconstructing the Past

Reconstructing the Past PDF Author: Elliott Sober
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 9780262691444
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 298

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Book Description
Reconstructing the Past seeks to clarify and help resolve the vexing methodological issues that arise when biologists try to answer such questions as whether human beings are more closely related to chimps than they are to gorillas. It explores the case for considering the philosophical idea of simplicity/parsimony as a useful principle for evaluating taxonomic theories of evolutionary relationships. For the past two decades, evolutionists have been vigorously debating the appropriate methods that should be used in systematics, the field that aims at reconstructing phylogenetic relationships among species. This debate over phylogenetic inference, Elliott Sober observes, raises broader questions of hypothesis testing and theory evaluation that run head on into long standing issues concerning simplicity/parsimony in the philosophy of science. Sober treats the problem of phylogenetic inference as a detailed case study in which the philosophical idea of simplicity/parsimony can be tested as a principle of theory evaluation. Bringing together philosophy and biology, as well as statistics, Sober builds a general framework for understanding the circumstances in which parsimony makes sense as a tool of phylogenetic inference. Along the way he provides a detailed critique of parsimony in the biological literature, exploring the strengths and limitations of both statistical and nonstatistical cladistic arguments.

Cognitive Capitalism

Cognitive Capitalism PDF Author: Yann Moulier-Boutang
Publisher: Polity
ISBN: 0745647324
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description
This book argues that we are undergoing a transition from industrial capitalism to a new form of capitalism - what the author calls & lsquo; cognitive capitalism & rsquo;