Models of Self-Replicators

2010 ◽  
pp. 282-314
Author(s):  
Eleonora Bilotta ◽  
Pietro Pantano
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
External World ◽  
Human Cognition ◽  
Natural Languages ◽  
Cognitive Representations ◽  
Christopher Alexander ◽  
On Line ◽  
Instinctive Behavior ◽  
Species Specific ◽  
The Way

Structural models and patterns are vitally important for human beings. From birth, we base our emotional and cognitive representations of the external world on species-specific signals (the human face) and exploit these signals to structure our instinctive behavior. The creation of cognitive patterns to represent the world lies at the very heart of human cognition. It is this process that underlies our efficient use of signs, our ability to communicate with natural languages and to build cognitive artifacts, the way we organize the external world, and the way we organize external events in our memories and our flow of consciousness. Patterns are sometimes called schemas, or models, and discussed in terms of a gestalt (Piaget, 1960; 1970; Koelher, 1974). In the middle ages a pattern meant “the.original.proposed.to.imitation;.the. archetype;.that.which.is.to.be.copied;.an.exemplar” (from the On Line Etymology Dictionary). Modern use dates back to the XVIII century. In 1977 Christopher Alexander introduced a new way of using the term in architecture. For Alexander, a pattern was a model used to encode and organize existing knowledge, avoiding the need to reinvent the knowledge every time it was needed. For Alexander a pattern was “a three part rule, which expresses a relation between a certain context, a problem, and a solution” (Alexander et al., 1977).

scholarly journals Apprehension and Existence, Appearance and Reality: The Reception of Nafs al-amr Debates after the 13th Century

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-39
Author(s):  
Murat Kaş
Keyword(s):  
External World ◽  
Human Cognition ◽  
13Th Century ◽  
The Real ◽  
Human Understanding ◽  
The Absolute ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Muslim Scholars ◽  
The Way

The structure of human cognition and the means of apprehension is suitable only for partly and gradually conceiving reality. This limitation has led to a certain distance between appearance and reality. This means that there will always be a gap between the judgments of the mind about the external world and its contents, which are entities, cases, facts, and states. This partiality and partiteness of human understanding has produced the truth-maker problem with regard to mind judgments. Muslim scholars who admit the correlation between the structure of reality and the categories of the mind but reject the notion of the construction and the determination of reality by the mind refer to the realm that is independent of the mind’s personal judgments as nafs al-amr. This realm is concerned with the all degrees of reality, namely—from the existent to the non-existent, from the necessity to the contingency and impossibility, from the absolute to the relative, from the material to the non-physical, from the external to the mental, and from the real entities to the abstracted ones—which step into the shot of human cognition or not. Carrying the concept of nafs al-amr from the logical plane to the metaphysical realm that intersects epistemology and ontology has led to debates that pave the way for various treatments. In particular, Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī’s (d. 672/1274) nafs al-amr epistle that posited it to the cosmic sphere resulted in criticisms of this conception of nafs al-amr, and these criticisms are the same ones directed to the Avicennian theory of emanation and its epistemological implications. Scholars who use this concept free from any metaphysical presumption and implication argue against his leap from the logical to the cosmic sphere. During the following period, this tension occasioned debates that led to the approaches that refer to the various degrees of reality, i.e., to the cosmic spheres, the spiritual realms, and the divine realms. This work aims to create a map of treatments, arguments and problems with regard to the concept of nafs al-amr.

Language and speech

1981 ◽  
Vol 295 (1077) ◽  
pp. 215-222 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Linear Time ◽  
Universal Grammar ◽  
Grammatical Function ◽  
Natural Languages ◽  
Language System ◽  
Psychological Mechanisms ◽  
On Line ◽  
Development Of Language ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Species Specific

This paper is intended to serve as an introduction both to the first session and to the Discussion Meeting as a whole. I begin by distinguishing natural human languages, in relation to their apparent species-specificity, from non-natural languages and from non-human languages. I then explain the technical terms ‘language system’, ‘grammar’, ‘lexicon’, ‘competence’ and ‘performance’. Languages, as we know them, are manifest in two mediums: in the phonic medium when spoken; in the graphic medium when written. Although there are good reasons for saying that speech is primary in relation to writing, in any discussion of the psychological mechanisms of language, it is important to maintain a distinction between language and medium, as follows. (1) It is possible that the integration of syntax and phonology, though based on a species-specific biological endowment for the acquisition of language and for vocalization, is a product of the normal environmental conditions in which languages are acquired and should not be ascribed to what Chomsky identifies as universal grammar. (2) Spoken utterances have a linear, time-related, structure. Sentences, as medium-independent units, do not. What, then, are the factors that determine the linearization of sentences so that, in particular contexts of utterance, one order of words and phrases, rather than another, is adopted? Are the same factors responsible for the fixation of word-order in those languages in which the order of words and phrases has a grammatical function? More generally, do such psychological factors, including the requirements of on-line processing, have an influence upon the historical development of language systems? (3) Is the language system, including the lexicon, stored in the brain in a medium-independent format, so that it can be accessed equally well in both speech and writing and without either of them influencing the other?

What is the purpose of cognition?

2020 ◽  
Vol 43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aba Szollosi ◽  
Ben R. Newell
Keyword(s):  
Infinite Number ◽  
Human Cognition ◽  
The Way

Abstract The purpose of human cognition depends on the problem people try to solve. Defining the purpose is difficult, because people seem capable of representing problems in an infinite number of ways. The way in which the function of cognition develops needs to be central to our theories.

Explaining Perceptual Knowledge

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barry Stroud
Keyword(s):  
Perceptual Experience ◽  
External World ◽  
Satisfactory Explanation ◽  
Perceptual Knowledge ◽  
Epistemological Problem ◽  
The Way

This chapter offers a response to Quassim Cassam’s ‘Seeing and Knowing’, which challenges some of the conditions Cassam thinks the author has imposed on a satisfactory explanation of our knowledge of the external world. According to Cassam, the conditions he specifies can be fulfilled in ways that explain how the knowledge is possible. What is at stake in this argument between Cassam and the author is the conception of what is perceived to be so that is needed to account for the kind of perceptual knowledge we all know we have. That is what must be in question in any promising move away from the overly restrictive conception of perceptual experience that gives rise to the hopelessness of the traditional epistemological problem. The author suggests that we should explore the conditions of successful ‘propositional’ perception of the way things are and emphasizes the promise of such a strategy.

The Castle of Otranto

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Horace Walpole
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Literary Genre ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Gothic Fiction ◽  
English Novel ◽  
Game Changer ◽  
The Way ◽  
The Grotesque

‘Look, my lord! See heaven itself declares against your impious intentions’ The Castle of Otranto (1764) is the first supernatural English novel and one of the most influential works of Gothic fiction. It inaugurated a literary genre that will be forever associated with the effects that Walpole pioneered. Professing to be a translation of a mysterious Italian tale from the darkest Middle Ages, the novel tells of Manfred, prince of Otranto, whose fear of an ancient prophecy sets him on a course of destruction. After the grotesque death of his only son, Conrad, on his wedding day, Manfred determines to marry the bride–to–be. The virgin Isabella flees through a castle riddled with secret passages. Chilling coincidences, ghostly visitations, arcane revelations, and violent combat combine in a heady mix that terrified the novel's first readers. In this new edition Nick Groom examines the reasons for its extraordinary impact and the Gothic culture from which it sprang. The Castle of Otranto was a game-changer, and Walpole the writer who paved the way for modern horror exponents.

Linguistic fire and human cognitive powers

2012 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 275-294 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen J. Cowley
Keyword(s):  
Lived Experience ◽  
Cognitive Theory ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Human Cognition ◽  
Action Perception ◽  
Cultural Traditions ◽  
Word Forms ◽  
Species Specific ◽  
Opening Up

To view language as a cultural tool challenges much of what claims to be linguistic science while opening up a new people-centred linguistics. On this view, how we speak, think and act depends on, not just brains (or minds), but also cultural traditions. Yet, Everett is conservative: like others trained in distributional analysis, he reifies ‘words’. Though rejecting inner languages and grammatical universals, he ascribes mental reality to a lexicon. Reliant as he is on transcriptions, he takes the cognitivist view that brains represent word-forms. By contrast, in radical embodied cognitive theory, bodily dynamics themselves act as cues to meaning. Linguistic exostructures resemble tools that constrain how people concert acting-perceiving bodies. The result is unending renewal of verbal structures: like artefacts and institutions, they function to sustain a species-specific cultural ecology. As Ross (2007) argues, ecological extensions make human cognition hypersocial. When we link verbal patterns with lived experience, we communicate and cognise by fitting action/perception to cultural practices that anchor human meaning making.

Language and creativity: a Construction Grammar approach to linguistic creativity

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Hoffmann
Keyword(s):  
Construction Grammar ◽  
Linguistic Theory ◽  
Human Cognition ◽  
Evolutionary Adaptation ◽  
Theory Construction ◽  
Conceptual Blending ◽  
Cognitive Linguistic ◽  
Explanatory Account ◽  
The Way

AbstractCreativity is an important evolutionary adaptation that allows humans to think original thoughts, to find solutions to problems that have never been encountered before and to fundamentally change the way we live. One particular domain of human cognition that has received considerable attention is linguistic creativity. The present paper discusses how the leading cognitive linguistic theory, Construction Grammar, can provide an explanatory account of creativity that goes beyond the issue of linguistic productivity. At the same time, it also outlines how Construction Grammar can benefit from insights from Conceptual Blending.

Ritual and reality in the early medieval ordines

1975 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
pp. 41-51 ◽  
Author(s):  
Janet L. Nelson
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Church And State ◽  
Early Medieval ◽  
Know How ◽  
Full Picture ◽  
The Middle Ages ◽  
The Way

To know what was generally believed in all ages, the way is to consult the liturgies, not any private man’s writings.’ John Selden’s maxim, which surely owed much to his own pioneering work as a liturgist, shows a shrewd appreciation of the significance of the medieval ordines for the consecration of kings. Thanks to the more recent efforts of Waitz, Eichmann, Schramm and others, this material now forms part of the medievalist’s stock in trade; and much has been written on the evidence which the ordines provide concerning the nature of kingship, and the interaction of church and state, in the middle ages. The usefulness of the ordines to the historian might therefore seem to need no further demonstration or qualification. But there is another side to the coin. The value of the early medieval ordines can be, not perhaps overestimated, but misconstrued. ‘The liturgies’ may indeed tell us ‘what was generally believed’—but we must first be sure that we know how they were perceived and understood by their participants, as well as by their designers. They need to be correlated with other sources, and as often as possible with ‘private writings’ too, before the full picture becomes intelligible.

Church Discipline in the Later Middle Ages: the Priors of Durham as Archdeacons

2004 ◽  
Vol 40 ◽  
pp. 95-105
Author(s):  
Margaret Harvey
Keyword(s):  
Recent Work ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Church Discipline ◽  
Full Account ◽  
Church Courts ◽  
Medieval Church ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Way

It is often forgotten that the medieval Church imposed public penance and reconciliation by law. The discipline was administered by the church courts, among which one of the most important, because it acted at local level, was that of the archdeacon. In the later Middle Ages and certainly by 1435, the priors of Durham were archdeacons in all the churches appropriated to the monastery. The priors had established their rights in Durham County by the early fourteenth century and in Northumberland slightly later. Although the origins of this peculiar jurisdiction were long ago unravelled by Barlow, there is no full account of how it worked in practice. Yet it is not difficult from the Durham archives to elicit a coherent account, with examples, of the way penance and ecclesiastical justice were administered from day to day in the Durham area in this period. The picture that emerges from these documents, though not in itself unusual, is nevertheless valuable and affords an extraordinary degree of detail which is missing from other places, where the evidence no longer exists. This study should complement the recent work by Larry Poos for Lincoln and Wisbech, drawing attention to an institution which would reward further research. It is only possible here to outline what the court did and how and why it was used.

scholarly journals EXPLORING CULTURAL LANDSCAPES OF KAZAKHSTAN IN A SEMIOTIC WAY

Adam alemi ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 90 (4) ◽  
pp. 11-20
Author(s):  
R.T. Khassenova ◽  
◽  
M. S. Sarkulova ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Cultural Landscapes ◽  
National Program ◽  
Umberto Eco ◽  
Philosophy Of Culture ◽  
The World ◽  
The Future ◽  
Spiritual Legacy ◽  
The Way

The article considers the project “Tugan Zher” (“Homeland”) of the Kazakhstani national program “Course towards the future: modernization of Kazakhstan’s identity” and the possibility to resort to the works and ideas of the well-known Italian philosopher and semiotician, recognized expert in Middle ages Umberto Eco while implementing the program, as in his numerous works the Italian scientist reflects much on the meaning of such notions like signification, reconstruction and memory. His philosophy of culture is the study of signs and languages and belief that understanding of the world requests understanding how we interpret it through the language and signs we use, constant mediation that stands in the way between us and the world. The poetics of openness, advocated much by Eco, is especially actual under the current realities. The present research proves the semiotic concept of U. Eco to be effective in exploring cultural landscapes, which being regarded as signs, carriers of some valuable information, add much to the spiritual legacy of the nation.

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