Traditional cognitive science is Cartesian in the sense that it takes
as fundamental the distinction between the mental and the physical, the
mind and the world. This leads to the claim that cognition is representational
and best explained using models derived from AI and computational theory.
The authors in this special issue depart radically from this model.
Contents
Embodied, Evolving and Ecological Minds
Andy Clark, Visual Awareness and Visuomotor Action
Jana M. Iverson & Esther Thelen, Hand, Mouth and Brain:
The dynamic emergence of speech and gesture
Rafael Núñez, Could the Future Taste Purple?
Reclaiming mind, body and cognition
Eleanor Rosch, Reclaiming Concepts
Christine A. Skarda, The Perceptual Form of Life
M.T. Turvey & Robert E. Shaw, Ecological Foundations
of Cognition I. Symmetry and specificity of animal–environment systems
Robert E. Shaw & M.T. Turvey, Ecological Foundations
of Cognition II. Degrees of freedom and conserved quantities in animal–environment
systems
Mathematical Neurobiology
Paul Cisek, Beyond the Computer: Behaviour as control
Walter J. Freeman, Consciousness, Intentionality and Causality
Ravi V. Gomatam, Quantum Theory and the Observation Problem
Giuseppe Longo, Mathematical Intelligence, Infinity and Machines:
Beyond the Gödelite
J.S. Nicolis & I. Tsuda, Mathematical Description of
Brain Dynamics in Perception and Action
Philosophy of Action, Intention and Emotion
Brian Goodwin, Reclaiming a Life of Quality
Valerie Gray Hardcastle, It’s OK to be Complicated: The case
for emotion
Hilary Rose, Changing Constructions of Consciousness
Maxine Sheets-Johnstone, Emotion and Movement: A beginning
empirical-phenomenological analysis of their relationship
Full Synopsis
In recent decades many cognitive scientists have come to identify a predominant
approach to the study of mental processes as ‘cognitivism’. This label
has come to be narrowly applied to certain viewpoints, grounding their
conceptual framework on dualism and functionalism, which commonly share
five features:
First, cognitivism takes different forms of the computer metaphor
for minds literally, ignoring fundamental and relevant biological phenomena.
It infers that brains make representations of the external world from sensory
information, store them, and process them by computable algorithms.
Secondly, cognitivism (using rule-driven symbol manipulation)
has come to be identified with neuro-computationalism, which takes neural
subsystems as computing devices that process information by logical operations
based in numbers and mathematics.
Thirdly, cognitivism holds that in order to study cognition one
has to isolate thinking from the other mental faculties. It treats emotional
and conative aspects of cognitive psychology as irrelevant and disruptive
or at best secondary to rational discourse.
Fourthly, because cognitivism bases higher brain functions on
abstract principles and formal logic, it largely ignores the very biological
nature of human cognition grounded in phylogenetic and ontogenetic evolution.
Fifthly, cognitivism assumes that the study of the mind deals
primarily with self-contained individuals. This ignores the gregarious
nature of the human animal and the biology of the evolution of human brains
as organs of social action, and so fails to take account of the cultural
and social dimensions of minds.
‘Reclaiming Cognition’ will be a collection of new papers from a variety
of disciplines concerned with the scientific study of the mind. The common
thread will be a determination to understand the biological nature of the
human animal and to develop conceptual frameworks and methodologies freed
from the assumptions of cognitivism outlined above.
Topics will be grouped in three sections:
(1) Empirical results:
Reviewing experimental results from different disciplines showing how
we can replace cognitivism by looking at the living human animal.
Studying meaning, intentionality and conceptual structure through the
analysis of everyday language.
Reviewing the biology of meaningful spontaneous and unconscious gestures
and autonomic states.
(2) Methodological issues:
Exploring dynamical systems as a source of new terms, concepts, and
techniques.
Developing analogue devices for ‘computer simulations’ in theory building,
by which to avoid the limitations of numerical simulations with digital
computers.
Interpreting developmental neurophenomenology in conjunction with introspection
and the psychophysics of emotion and conation.
(3) Philosophical and theoretical issues:
Overcoming old dichotomies such as the mind-body problem, objective
vs. subjective, cognitive vs. emotional, rational vs. irrational thinking,
etc.
Refuting assumptions of zombie and silicon-brain thought experiments.
Exploring active perception as opposed to passive perception.
Discussing new forms of cognitivism which have gradually moved the computational
assumptions from an overt CPU towards finer structural levels such as neurons
(or even sub-neuronal components) conceived as microscopic computing devices.
