topic
my notes
- Different levels of the reality of mind with different disciplines, vocabularies, argumentation, measurement, ways of gathering evidence.
- Levels of reality and disciplines
- Fragments us
- Helps to formulate and specialize people - its a good thing, but it is problematic: fragments us: mind becomes equivocal
- Equivocation: when fall into confusion because don’t keep track of meaning of your terms. Same word but not the same thing.
- Nothing is better than long life and happiness
- A peanut butter sandwich is better than nothing
- Therefore a PBS is better than long life and happiness
- The various levels of reality influence one another but the disciplines don’t capture that.
- That’s why creating hybrids like psycho-linguistics
- How to study the relationship between the levels? Has to be an astute practice. Can’t just equivocate.
- Philosophy is the discipline that has us take conceptual care to bridge between these different vocabularies and methodologies
- The discipline that tries to come up with a philosophically astute integration between these disciplines so that we can avoid equivocation is cognitive science
- CS already addressing one of the ways in which the meaning crisis in which scientific worldview fragmenting us falling into ignorance about who and what we are.
- Addressing meaning generation process.
- Different ways to practice CS - he’s not neutral - presenting what he thinks is the best way
- Some have “interfaith dialogue” with other disciplines.
- Problem is that not really capturing why people are drawn to creating bridges: it’s either too weak or too strong.
- Best vision of CS is “synoptic integration”
- We need to build something between the disciplines that addresses the equivocations, deals with the fragmentation and fills in the ignorance: tells us about how the levels are all casually interacting and constraning each other
- Not saying the same thing, but not saying different things either: need bridging vocabulary
Metaphors
- Metaphor: The difference gets me outside of my framing, step back through the difference, look through the identity - allows to see and understand the other in a different way
- Want a metaphor that balances these well - apt
- Metaphors provoke insight
(seems like a similar role to myth)
- Allows to keep the differences but find relevant identities in an insightful way
- Step back from behaviour into linguistics, look - keep distance, what can see in psychology through the lens of linguistics
- Multi-aptness: trying to bridge the gap between multiple domains
- Start to create an overarching integration.
- Plausibility:
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- high probability (not the one mean)
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- reasonable, making good sense, deserving to be taken seriously
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- When say theory is elegant saying it is multi-apt
- Also want them produced in a certain way: many convergent independent lines of investigation
- Convergence: We prefer information that comes in multiple senses: ex: seeing and hearing better than just hearing - multiple channels, less chance not a distortion → bias reduction
- Convergence gives bias reduction
- Trustworthiness
- Conspiracy theories: if have just elegance but not produced in trustworthymanner
(this is part of the problem I have with taking the religious texts as history, or believing in God. There is some elegance there - which theists bring up all the time - it seems to “explain” things, but I don’t consider the evidence reliable - or trustworthy - enough to reach a confident conclusion on it. The psycho-technology aspect of religion provides a more plausible reason for its longevity)
- Opposite: have tremendous convergence, but little insight or integration: trivial
- Doesn’t mean false, but no transformative power, makes no difference, affords no insight
- Can equivocate on these.
- Daniel Dennett: deepity
- Also can say something that seems deep, then challenged and say no I meant this trivial thing
- Can lead to bullshitting ourselves
- Abuse suggests how we can improve it
- Want high convergence and high elegance = profound
- Profound =/ true: means very reasonable and should be taken very seriously
- Cognitive Science trying to bring about profound synoptic integration, create constructs that bridge between the disciplines that addresses equivocation, fragmentation, and ignorance
The Science of Cognition: Intelligence
- Faculty in us for core meaning capacity = intelligence, makes you a cognitive agent. Working with meaning
- Test for intelligence: general problem solver
- If try and make intelligence try to make a problem solver
- Cup holding water very limited in problem solving capacity
- We are capable of solving a wide variety of problems in a wide variety of ways
- Newell and Simon: general problem solver
- Intelligence =/ rational
- We should care not about intelligence but about how rational we can become
- Want intelligence separate from knowledge
- Want to ask what is it to solve a problem
- Hallmark of rationality is valuing the process, not just fixating on the conclusion
- Newell and Simon: deeply influencial:
- 4 basic features for a problem:
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- Difference from the state you are in (initial state) and goal state (goal state)
- System has to represent the initial state and goal state.
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- actions/operations: change the state I’m in initially to another state
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- path constraints:
- Don’t want to just find any solution. One way to make lunch for self is to burn down house. Will cook my food. Don’t want to solve this problem in a way that causes other problems
- Solving a problem is to have a sequence of operations that will transform the initial state into the goal state while obeying the path constraints