On The Origin And Nature Of Cognition

This book is the first to introduce the study of cognition in terms of the major conceptual themes that underlie virtually all the substantive topics.

Numerous scholars, in particular anthropologists, historians, economists, linguists, and biologists, have, over the last few years, studied forms of knowledge and use of nature, and of the ways nature can be protected and conserved. Some of the most prominent scholars have come together in this volume to reflect on what has been achieved so far, to compare the work carried out in the past, to discuss the problems that have emerged from different research projects, and to map out the way forward.

This monograph is an extension of the earlier monographs dealing with the application of the new modified involuted manifold model. This monograph has two objectives. Firstly, it seeks to integrate neuronal organization with cognitive functionalities. Secondly, it tries to formalize a structural template of cognitive functionalities. It is based on the postulate that cognitive functionalities are essentially natural phenomena and therefore amenable to formal naturalistic description. Therefore, it employs a topological model of spacetime proposed earlier to define a new framework wherein neuronal networks occupy the four-dimensional configurations of spacetime, and cognitive functionalities occupy higher dimensional configurations of spacetime. Using the Darwinian conception of natural selection, the monograph outlines a model of natural selection operating at more than one level. Thus, natural selection at the four-dimensional configurations of spacetime leads to structural agnosticism so prevalent in neuronal organization. At the same time, natural selection at the higher dimensional configurations of spacetime leads to natural selection of cognitive functionalities. Since the proposed model offers a new computational paradigm formalized in another monograph, this monograph provides a new way to formalize cognitive computations.

Edwin Hutchins combines his background as an anthropologist and an open ocean racing sailor and navigator in this account of how anthropological methods can be combined with cognitive theory to produce a new reading of cognitive science. His theoretical insights are grounded in an extended analysis of ship navigation—its computational basis, its historical roots, its social organization, and the details of its implementation in actual practice aboard large ships. The result is an unusual interdisciplinary approach to cognition in culturally constituted activities outside the laboratory—"in the wild." Hutchins examines a set of phenomena that have fallen in the cracks between the established disciplines of psychology and anthropology, bringing to light a new set of relationships between culture and cognition. The standard view is that culture affects the cognition of individuals. Hutchins argues instead that cultural activity systems have cognitive properties of their own that are different from the cognitive properties of the individuals who participate in them. Each action for bringing a large naval vessel into port, for example, is informed by culture: the navigation team can be seen as a cognitive and computational system. Introducing Navy life and work on the bridge, Hutchins makes a clear distinction between the cognitive properties of an individual and the cognitive properties of a system. In striking contrast to the usual laboratory tasks of research in cognitive science, he applies the principal metaphor of cognitive science—cognition as computation (adopting David Marr's paradigm)—to the navigation task. After comparing modern Western navigation with the method practiced in Micronesia, Hutchins explores the computational and cognitive properties of systems that are larger than an individual. He then turns to an analysis of learning or change in the organization of cognitive systems at several scales. Hutchins's conclusion illustrates the costs of ignoring the cultural nature of cognition, pointing to the ways in which contemporary cognitive science can be transformed by new meanings and interpretations. A Bradford Book

Pinker's seminal research explores the workings of language and its connections to cognition, perception, social relationships, child development, human evolution, and theories of human nature. This eclectic collection spans Pinker's thirty-year career, exploring his favorite themes in greater depth and scientific detail. It includes thirteen of Pinker's classic articles, ranging over topics such as language development in children, mental imagery, the recognition of shapes, the computational architecture of the mind, the meaning and uses of verbs, the evolution of language and cognition, the nature-nurture debate, and the logic of innuendo and euphemism. Each outlines a major theory or takes up an argument with another prominent scholar, such as Stephen Jay Gould, Noam Chomsky, or Richard Dawkins.

usually called the classical (scientific) attitude (according to which there is a dichotomy between nature and cognition) and suggestions for better understanding of their mutual encroach ment. The authors belong more or less to the non-standard systems science, the third order cybernetics, or find themselves already beyond the third stage in the history of artificial intelli 1 gence ). They take the inescapability of the mutual implication of the description of nature and that of cognition seriously. Fourth ly, closely linking up with the previous, it emphatically calls attention to the forgotten microscopic dimension of science. If I am not mistaken we have at this moment reached the historic stage where the tremendous renascence of the mechanistic-structural paradigm, remarkably enough, calls for its functional-dynamic counterparts. The volume strives to respond to this secret trend in various disciplines and to put into words that which is tacitly alive in the minds of the ever increasing number of people in this systemsage. The investigation on the intertwinement of nature and cognition finds itself in this very paradoxical niche structured by those two opposite developments.

Bridging the gap between evolutionary theory and cultural psychology, Michael Tomasello argues that the roots of the human capacity for symbol-based culture are based in a cluster of uniquely human cognitive capacities. These include capacities for understanding that others have intentions of their own, and for imitating, not just what someone else does, but what someone else has intended to do. Tomasello further describes with authority and ingenuity how these capacities work over evolutionary and historical time to create the kind of cultural artifacts and settings within which each new generation of children develops.