Defending Representation Realism

2020 ◽  
pp. 54-78
Author(s):  
William Ramsey
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Scientific Practice ◽  
Representational Content ◽  
The Brain

The representations that are invoked by theorists and researchers in cognitive science allow for a variety of different ontological interpretations. Along with both straightforward realist and eliminativist positions, there are various forms of deflationism. Deflationist accounts deny that the explanatory value or even accuracy of representational theories depends upon the existence of objectively real structures or states that play a representational role in the brain. Alternatively, many deny the existence of any sort of representational content that is objectively real and independent of our explanatory goals or interpretative activities. This chapter argues that this sort of representational deflationism doesn’t really work. After spelling out what a robust sort of realism does or does not entail, the chapter offers some general reasons for thinking realism is preferable to deflationism. Then it looks at three versions of deflationism and argues that all three either fail to capture our scientific practice, or collapse into a more straightforward sort of realism or eliminativism.

scholarly journals Neurophysiology of Ethnicity (based on foreign literature)

2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 43-54
Author(s):  
E.A. Varshaver
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Anterior Cingulate Cortex ◽  
Cingulate Cortex ◽  
Anterior Cingulate ◽  
Fusiform Face Area ◽  
Foreign Literature ◽  
Face Area ◽  
The Brain

This article contains a review of research in the realm of neurophysiology of ethnicity. According to this body of research, there are zones of the brain which get active in response to demonstration of ethnic stimuli. Among these zones are amygdala, anterior cingulate cortex, fusiform face area and others. The article describes the research focused on each of these zones, discusses their weaknesses and projects further research on the crossroads of neurophysiology, cognitive science, psychology and sociology.

scholarly journals Distributed Cognition, Neuroprostheses and their Implications to Non-Physicalist Theories of Mind

1970 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 123-142
Author(s):  
Jean Gové
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Functioning ◽  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Distributed Cognition ◽  
Common Assumption ◽  
Theories Of Mind ◽  
Organic Brain ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Brain

This paper investigates the notion of ‘distributed cognition’ – the idea that entities external to one’s organic brain participate in one’s overall cognitive functioning – and the challenges it poses. Related to this is also a consideration of the ever-increasing ways in which neuroprostheses replace and functionally replicate organic parts of the brain. However, the literature surrounding such issues has tended to take an almost exclusively physicalist approach. The common assumption is that, given that non- physicalist theories (dualism, hylomorphism) postulate some form of immaterial ‘soul’, then they are immune from the challenges that these advances in cognitive science pose. The first aim of this paper, therefore, is to argue that this is not the case. The second aim of this paper is to attempt to elucidate a route available for the non- physicalist that will allow them to accept the notion of distributed cognition. By appealing to an Aristotelian framework, I propose that the non-physicalist can accept the notion of distributed cognition by appeal to the notion of ‘unitary life’ which I introduce as well as Aristotle’s dichotomy between active and passive mind.

scholarly journals Emotional bonds: Bridging the gap between evolutionary and humanistic accounts of religious belief

2020 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
pp. 6-28
Author(s):  
Léon Turner
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Religious Belief ◽  
Social Bonding ◽  
Cognitive Mechanisms ◽  
Cognitive Science Of Religion ◽  
Evolutionary Account ◽  
Emotional Bonds ◽  
Pluralistic Approach ◽  
The Brain ◽  
Broad Consensus

Recent years have seen a growing willingness in the evolutionary cognitive science of religion (ECSR) to embrace an inclusive, theoretically pluralistic approach and the emergence of a broad consensus around some key themes that collectively constitute a central theoretical core of the field. Nevertheless, ECSR still raises serious problems for some in the humanities. In exploring the reasons for the perception of conflict between humanistic and cognitive evolutionary approaches to religion, I suggest that both ECSR’s default account of the origins of religion and religion’s role in social bonding rely upon notions of culturally unmediated universal cognitive mechanisms that preclude alternative humanistic explanations. I subsequently suggest that the gap between humanistic approaches and the evolutionary study of religion more broadly conceived may be narrowed by further expanding ECSR to include recent research into the brain opioid theory of social attachment (BOTSA), which emphasises the emotional rather than cognitive basis of religion’s social bonding functions. Finally, I outline a possible evolutionary account of the earliest forms of religious ideas and practices, which decouples the origins of religion from the evolution of specialised cognitive machinery and which humanists are likely to find more amenable than mainstream ECSR.

The Zeus Problem: Why Representational Content Biases Cannot Explain Faith in Gods

2010 ◽  
Vol 10 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 383-389 ◽  
Author(s):  
Will M. Gervais ◽  
Joseph Henrich
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Cultural Transmission ◽  
Representational Content ◽  
Cultural Groups ◽  
Cognitive Science Of Religion ◽  
Mickey Mouse ◽  
Santa Claus ◽  
Widespread Belief ◽  
Science Of Religion

AbstractIn a recent article, Barrett (2008) argued that a collection of five representational content features can explain both why people believe in God and why people do not believe in Santa Claus or Mickey Mouse. In this model ‐ and within the cognitive science of religion as a whole ‐ it is argued that representational content biases are central to belief. In the present paper, we challenge the notion that representational content biases can explain the epidemiology of belief. Instead, we propose that representational content biases might explain why some concepts become widespread, but that context biases in cultural transmission are necessary to explain why people come to believe in some counterintuitive agents rather than others. Many supernatural agents, including those worshipped by other cultural groups, meet Barrett’s criteria. Nevertheless, people do not come to believe in the gods of their neighbors. This raises a new challenge for the cognitive science of religion: the Zeus Problem. Zeus contains all of the features of successful gods, and was once a target for widespread belief, worship, and commitment. But Zeus is no longer a target for widespread belief and commitment, despite having the requisite content to fulfill Barrett’s criteria. We analyze Santa Claus, God, and Zeus with both content and context biases, finding that context ‐ not content ‐ explains belief. We argue that a successful cognitive science of religious belief needs to move beyond simplistic notions of cultural evolution that only include representational content biases.

scholarly journals Contribution of Cognitive Science and Artificial Intelligence in the Simulation of the Complex Human Mind

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 928-932
Keyword(s):  
Artificial Intelligence ◽  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Real Time ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
Scientific Study ◽  
Computational Procedures ◽  
The Mind ◽  
And Behavior ◽  
Interdisciplinary Theory ◽  
The Brain

The research incorporated encircles the interdisciplinary theory of cognitive science in the branch of artificial intelligence. It has always been the end goal that better understanding of the idea can be guaranteed. Besides, a portion of the real-time uses of cognitive science artificial intelligence have been taken into consideration as the establishment for more enhancements. Before going into the scopes of future, there are many complexities that occur in real-time which have been uncovered. Cognitive science is the interdisciplinary, scientific study of the brain and its procedures. It inspects the nature, the activities, and the elements of cognition. Cognitive researchers study intelligence and behavior, with an emphasis on how sensory systems speak to, process, and change data. Intellectual capacities of concern to cognitive researchers incorporate recognition, language, memory, alertness, thinking, and feeling; to comprehend these resources, cognitive researchers acquire from fields, for example, psychology, artificial intelligence, philosophy, neuroscience, semantics, and anthropology. The analytic study of cognitive science ranges numerous degrees of association, from learning and choice to logic and planning; from neural hardware to modular mind organization. The crucial idea 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."

The structure of non-human cognitive neuroscience: an epistemological critique

2019 ◽  
Vol 30 (8) ◽  
pp. 881-888
Author(s):  
Francisco Almeida
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Neuroscience ◽  
Scientific Practice ◽  
Continuous Process ◽  
Behavioral Theory ◽  
Cognitive Behavioral ◽  
Theoretical Assumptions ◽  
Theoretical Reasoning ◽  
Object Of Study ◽  
The Brain

Abstract Every scientific practice rests on implicit unrevised theoretical assumptions. Neuroscience, in particular, focuses on a very controversial object of study-the brain and is therefore prone to tacitly embrace philosophical positions in its everyday workings. It is thus, of utmost importance, to develop a critique of the structure of neuroscientific investigation so as to understand what the uncovered pillars of the field are, what pitfalls they may implicate and how we can correct them. In this paper, I gather the first critiques in animal cognitive neuroscience and hope to establish the first step in a continuous process of revision. By applying a conceptual division of neuroscience into cognitive, behavioral and neurobiological theories, I point out the main problems in articulating the three, based on actual scientific practice rather than purely theoretical reasoning. I conclude by proposing developments on behavioral theory and set an initial critique on assumptions on both cognitive and neurobiological theories.

Cognitive Informatics and Cognitive Computing in Year 10 and Beyond

2011 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 1-21 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yingxu Wang ◽  
Robert C. Berwick ◽  
Simon Haykin ◽  
Witold Pedrycz ◽  
Witold Kinsner ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Information Processing ◽  
Computer Science ◽  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Cognitive Computing ◽  
Cognitive Informatics ◽  
Internal Information ◽  
Processing Mechanisms ◽  
The Brain ◽  
Science Information ◽  
Intelligence Science

Cognitive Informatics (CI) is a transdisciplinary enquiry of computer science, information sciences, cognitive science, and intelligence science that investigates into the internal information processing mechanisms and processes of the brain and natural intelligence, as well as their engineering applications in cognitive computing. The latest advances in CI leads to the establishment of cognitive computing theories and methodologies, as well as the development of Cognitive Computers (CogC) that perceive, infer, and learn. This paper reports a set of nine position statements presented in the plenary panel of IEEE ICCI*CC’11 on Cognitive Informatics in Year 10 and Beyond contributed from invited panelists who are part of the world’s renowned researchers and scholars in the field of cognitive informatics and cognitive computing.

scholarly journals Coding of Visual, Auditory, Rule, and Response Information in the Brain: 10 Years of Multivoxel Pattern Analysis

2016 ◽  
Vol 28 (10) ◽  
pp. 1433-1454 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexandra Woolgar ◽  
Jade Jackson ◽  
John Duncan
Keyword(s):  
Representational Content ◽  
Brain Regions ◽  
Brain Organization ◽  
Frontoparietal Network ◽  
Response Information ◽  
Domain Generality ◽  
Cognitive Operations ◽  
Motor Information ◽  
Types Of Information ◽  
The Brain

How is the processing of task information organized in the brain? Many views of brain function emphasize modularity, with different regions specialized for processing different types of information. However, recent accounts also highlight flexibility, pointing especially to the highly consistent pattern of frontoparietal activation across many tasks. Although early insights from functional imaging were based on overall activation levels during different cognitive operations, in the last decade many researchers have used multivoxel pattern analyses to interrogate the representational content of activations, mapping out the brain regions that make particular stimulus, rule, or response distinctions. Here, we drew on 100 searchlight decoding analyses from 57 published papers to characterize the information coded in different brain networks. The outcome was highly structured. Visual, auditory, and motor networks predominantly (but not exclusively) coded visual, auditory, and motor information, respectively. By contrast, the frontoparietal multiple-demand network was characterized by domain generality, coding visual, auditory, motor, and rule information. The contribution of the default mode network and voxels elsewhere was minor. The data suggest a balanced picture of brain organization in which sensory and motor networks are relatively specialized for information in their own domain, whereas a specific frontoparietal network acts as a domain-general “core” with the capacity to code many different aspects of a task.

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