Rethinking the explanatory power of dynamical models in cognitive science

2018 ◽  
Vol 31 (8) ◽  
pp. 1131-1161 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dingmar van Eck
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Explanatory Power ◽  
Dynamical Models

Supernatural agents may have provided adaptive social information

2004 ◽  
Vol 27 (6) ◽  
pp. 732-733 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jesse M. Bering ◽  
Todd K. Shackelford
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Evolutionary Biology ◽  
Explanatory Power ◽  
Social Information ◽  
Adaptive Function ◽  
Communicative Intent ◽  
Target Article

Atran & Norenzayan's (A&N's) target article effectively combines the insights of evolutionary biology and interdisciplinary cognitive science, neither of which alone yields sufficient explanatory power to help us fully understand the complexities of supernatural belief. Although the authors' ideas echo those of other researchers, they are perhaps the most squarely grounded in neo-Darwinian terms to date. Nevertheless, A&N overlook the possibility that the tendency to infer supernatural agents' communicative intent behind natural events served an ancestrally adaptive function.

Living on the Boundary: Scriptural Authority and Psychology

2005 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 98-112 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter C. Hill
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Explanatory Power ◽  
Psychological Theory ◽  
Christian Theology ◽  
Novel Approaches ◽  
Cultural Interest ◽  
Mainstream Psychology

For Christian psychologists to move from their marginalized position with mainstream psychology, they must be able to substantively demonstrate the unique insights that the integration of psychology with Christian theology offers to the discipline. To do this, Christian psychologists must be able to show, not just claim, the authority of Scripture by demonstrating its explanatory power on psychology's terms. Three factors in psychology's new zeitgeist provide both opportunities and challenges to demonstrating Scriptural authority: a growing cultural interest in spirituality, postmodernism, and novel approaches to cognitive science. Cognitive-Experiential Self Theory (CEST) is provided as a concrete example where Christian thinking provides greater understanding of an emerging psychological theory, thus demonstrating explanatory power and providing Scripture a more authoritative position.

The dynamics of what?

1998 ◽  
Vol 21 (5) ◽  
pp. 644-645
Author(s):  
Fred A. Keijzer ◽  
Sacha Ben ◽  
Lex van der Heijden
Keyword(s):  
Dynamical Systems ◽  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Dynamical Models ◽  
The Core ◽  
Embedded Cognition ◽  
Core Issue ◽  
Embedded Process ◽  
Digital Computers

Van Gelder presents the distinction between dynamical systems and digital computers as the core issue of current developments in cognitive science. We think this distinction is much less important than a reassessment of cognition as a neurally, bodily, and environmentally embedded process. Embedded cognition lines up naturally with dynamical models, but it would also stand if combined with classic computation.

Disentangling dynamics, computation, and cognition

1998 ◽  
Vol 21 (5) ◽  
pp. 654-661 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tim van Gelder
Keyword(s):  
Dynamical System ◽  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Digital Computer ◽  
Multiple Realizability ◽  
Dynamical Models ◽  
Target Article ◽  
Ontological Claim ◽  
Qualitative Structure ◽  
Dynamical Hypothesis

The nature of the dynamical hypothesis in cognitive science (the DH) is further clarified in responding to various criticisms and objections raised in commentaries. Major topics addressed include the definitions of “dynamical system” and “digital computer”; the DH as Law of Qualitative Structure; the DH as an ontological claim; the multiple-realizability of dynamical models; the level at which the DH is formulated; the nature of dynamics; the role of representations in dynamical cognitive science; the falsifiability of the DH; the extent to which the DH is open; the role of temporal and implementation considerations; and the novelty or importance of the DH. The basic formulation and defense of the DH in the target article survives intact, though some refinements are recommended.

scholarly journals Static-Dynamic Hybridity in Dynamical Models of Cognition

2022 ◽  
pp. 1-37
Author(s):  
Naftali Weinberger ◽  
Colin Allen
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Dynamical Models ◽  
Common Strategy ◽  
The Relationship

Abstract Dynamical models of cognition have played a central role in recent cognitive science. In this paper, we consider a common strategy by which dynamical models describe their target systems neither as purely static nor as purely dynamic, but rather using a hybrid approach. This hybridity reveals how dynamical models involve representational choices that are important for understanding the relationship between dynamical and non-dynamical representations of a system.

Perceptualism, Not Introspectionism: The Interpretation of Intuition-Based Theories

2009 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 121-130
Author(s):  
Mark DeBellis
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Music Cognition ◽  
Explanatory Power ◽  
Perceptual Judgment ◽  
Public Language ◽  
Satisfactory Account

DAVID TEMPERLEY HAS INTERPRETED INTUITION-BASED theories in music cognition, such as GTTM and his own theories, along introspectionist lines. Perception is a better model for such theories than introspection. It is obscure what introspective mechanism would make unconscious representations conscious while reliably preserving their content. The analyses that furnish data for intuition-based theories, moreover, must be in a public language for which there is a satisfactory account of meaning and understanding. It is unclear how this requirement is satisfied on an introspectionist model. A construal of intuition as perceptual judgment avoids these objections. The introspectionist model misleads us into thinking that intuition-based theories warrant conclusions about non-analytical listening. Limiting the data of intuition-based theories to appearances limits their scope and explanatory power, warranting complementation by other approaches in cognitive science.

Language as a mental travel guide

2020 ◽  
Vol 43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles P. Davis ◽  
Gerry T. M. Altmann ◽  
Eiling Yee
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Human Cognition ◽  
Travel Guide

Abstract Gilead et al.'s approach to human cognition places abstraction and prediction at the heart of “mental travel” under a “representational diversity” perspective that embraces foundational concepts in cognitive science. But, it gives insufficient credit to the possibility that the process of abstraction produces a gradient, and underestimates the importance of a highly influential domain in predictive cognition: language, and related, the emergence of experientially based structure through time.

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