chapter 3&4 (Sally & Sabreena)

Chapter three talks about the cognitivist hypothesis.
The author begins by doing an examination of the cognitism perspective. First by ecploring the history of cognitivism. He tells us of how in its earlier days, this science was known as cybernetics, and it produced many results such as the mathematical logic that was used to understand the nervous system, and this eventually laid the foundation for artificial intelligence.
The results of this time was also due to a lot of interdisciplinary efforts, and the ides on the brain's interactivity was central to the invention of the digital computers. However, there were and still are many debates on whether logic alone is sufficient to understand the brain's distributed qualities, and whether the mind is a logic calculation.
The central idea behind cognitivism was that intelligence resembles computation in that cognition can be defined as a computation of symbols. The argument that contradicted this was that intelligent behaviors presupposed the ability to represent the world in a certain way. Therefore, if internal states have causal properties then we have to show how they can cause a behavior, and thus this is th notion of symbolic computation. In other words, thoughts consist of physical, symbolic computations.

Cognitivism is thus most visible in Artificial Intelligence, as it is in the brain,where the brain is an information processing device responds selectively to what is in its environment. In psychology, cognitivism admitted a long suppressed beginning of the understanding of the mind, and the psychoanalysis theory mirrored much of the development of cognitive science, such as the idea that instict is not an object of consciousness, but only the idea it represents. In the human experience, cognitivism postulated that there are mental / cognitive processes we are not aware of, and cannot become aware of. This led cognitivism to embrace the idea that the self or cognizing subject is fundamentally non-unified. Eventually this led cognivitism to embrace the idea that the self or cognizing subject is not unified. And thus cognition does not merely consist of the self, but the self is not even needed in cognition, and as such cognitivism consists of unsonscious symbolic computations, and the conscious experience.

In chapter four, the concept of the self(I /ego) as it relates to cognitivism is explored a bit further. The self, and the meaning of the self is discussed in more depth. An attempt is made to answer questions such as what do we mean by self. To explain this, the author looks at the current of restlessness, grasping anxiety, and unsatisfactoriness that pervades the experience, which is also known as Dukra, usually translattd as suffering. Descrates described the self in one phrase..."I think... I am". In the mindful awareness practice, the awareness of thinking emotions and bodily snesations become quite pronounced in the basic restlessness that we normally experience. Thus we can begin to understand the self by looking for the self in the aggregates.
According to Budha, ther is a tradition of analystic investigation of the nature of experience. These are what are known as the aggregates.

Budaha taught that there are 5 aggregates. These are:
Form
Feelings / senses
Perceptions (discernments) / impulses
Dispositional formulations
Consciousness.

All the 5 aggregates together form the psychophysical complex which makes up a person and that makes up each moment of experience. The form is the physical environment, and is strictly related to the 6 senses, and the organs that correspond to these senses. Feelings / sensations are.. well... just that. Perception / impulse deals with an action towards a thing, these actions being passion / desire, aggression / anger, and delusion / ignoring. Consciousness is the dualistic sense of experience and a relation(s) that bind them together. Basically what this means therefore is that there is no consciousness without an object of consciousness, and a relation to that object.

Andrea, Carina, Rebecca and Laurence

Quick notes chapter 3 & 4

Following a short description on the history of cognitivism, chapter 3 debates the significance of the consciousness and concept of intentionality in relation to cognition. The chapter follows the theories of several scientists in linking brain pattern recognition (i.e. symbols, patterns in various forms) with the computer’s intricate system. In comparing the computer’s mechanical model as a basis for thought patterns in the human brain, further questions were addressed in relation to mental representation and the self; what is the self? This question is raised, additionally to debate the use of consciousness. If there is no consciousness, or if it is not relevant in relation to cognition, then what is the self? Chapter 4 addresses this issue in a train of thought leading back to the beginning of the first two chapters.

As mentioned above, Chapter 4 explores the self in five aggregates; forms, feelings/sensations, perceptions (discernments) impulses, dispositional formations and consciousness; all of which intertwine with one another (and occasionally work in groups) to create the consciousness, or the idea of the self (whose existence is further questioned).

Andrea, Carina, Rebecca and Laurence.

September 27, 2007 1:14 PM

Book/author recommendation: Hofstadter

Douglas Hofstadter also came up in the text. There's a book by him that I highly recommend : Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid.



It's an excellent book exploring some of the issues surrounding AI and the study of cognition, as represented in the works of the three people in the title: Kurt Gödel, who was an Austrian mathematician working with ideas about what a logical system can accomplish, the artist M.C. Escher, and the composer J.S. Bach. The material is dense, but it's written for the layperson (honest! Not the way our text is "accessible to the layperson"), and uses a series of dialogues in the style of Lewis Carol, or the Greek philosophers to introduce each chapter's topic. Good stuff.

Hubert Dreyfus podcasts

Related to our discussion in class - Hubert Dreyfus, who came up as one of the important contemporary philosophers and critics of cognitive science, teaches philosophy at UC Berkeley. There's a podcast of the 2006 course available on their site for his 2007 course on Heidegger, and for his 2006 course on existentialism in film and literature.

Now if only they had a mike for people's questions...

Biographical Information_Varela

Francisco Varela

Website (outdated)

http://www.franzreichle.ch/images/Francisco_Varela/index.html


http://www.enolagaia.com/Varela.html



Evan Thompson

http://individual.utoronto.ca/evant


Eleanor Rosch

http://psychology.berkeley.edu/faculty/profiles/erosch.html

Some interesting blogs and sites

Here are some pertinent blogs and sites that address the kinds of issues and ideas we will start to focus on:

http://www.we-make-money-not-art.com/

http://www.interactivearchitecture.org


The digital media program at the Berlin University of the Arts (very much like CART):
Some very interesting student projects at:

http://www.digital.udk-berlin.de/en/projects.html

Another useful site dealing with interaction and architecture projects in public space:

http://www.interactionfield.de

More are coming

Cart 451_Fall 2007