Episode 26: Cognitive Science

So last time we took a look at the nature of cognitive science and argued for synoptic integration that addresses equivocation and fragmentation and the ignorance of the causal relation between these different levels which we talked about. It does that by trying to create plausible and potentially profound constructs.

I'm pretty sure that's the entire summary at the start of the next lecture? So I suppose I'll try to summarize some bits of it:

• "Cognitive science is born out of a particular way in which the scientific study of mind has unfolded. ... Mind refers to different levels of the reality of mind, with different disciplines that use different vocabularies, different theoretical styles of argumentation, different means of measuring phenomena, different ways of gathering evidence."
• Neuroscience talks about the brain, using patterns of neuroactivity using fMRI etc.
• AGI / machine learning talks about the information processing of the brain; algorithms, heuristics, etc.
• Psychologists talk about behavior, working memory, problem solving, decision-making.
• There are lots of bridges between things; psycholinguistics bridges between linguistics and psychology to try to figure out how the physical brain communicates, which relies touching both the study of the physical brain and the study of communication.
• Equivocation (question substitution / using a concept from one level to work in another leve) is the main thing to watch out for here, as it leads to bullshitting yourself. "No integration through equivocation!" Philosophy is useful mostly because it's about conceptual crispness / noticing and counteracting this equivocation while bridging between levels.
• His main sketch of a way out of the meaning crisis is that we need to develop the cognitive science of meaning cultivation. [My commentary is that this seems like the right sort of meta-process; like, rather than having 'a philosopher' you have 'philosophy' or something, and so error-correction seems much easier. You lose out on the unifying vision of one creative genius, but that's the price you pay for avoiding blind spots.]