The Search for Mind

Seán Ó Nualláin

Description

The degree to which Cognitive Science can aspire to be the Science of the Mind is an ongoing debate. This highly influential book, published as a Second Edition, proposes a new approach to issues of the mind and of consciousness, drawing together themes from Philosophy right through to Artificial Intelligence.

Proposing an integrated approach to the science of mind, the book has been revised to meet the newest developments of its rapidly changing field. The author incorporates ideas from across the board into a new theory of consciousness, selfhood and cognitive development.

The first part presents clear introductions to the disciplines that are traditionally seen to constitute Cognitive Science - Philosophy, Psychology, Linguistics, Neuroscience, Artificial Intelligence and Ethnology. The second section focuses on the nature of symbol systems, detailing theories of consciousness and selfhood.

The two strands are woven together into a new theory of cognition and its development, and the author concludes that a science that fully attempts to treat cognition must remain au fait with the findings from all other approaches to the study of the mind, from the purely behaviourist to the purely experiential. As the Second Edition is published, The Search for Mind is unquestionably among the most acclaimed accounts of the area written by a single author. 

Preface (1)

Introduction (2)

1. The Constituent Disciplines of Cognitive Science
   
   
   
   1. Philosophical Epistemology (10)
   
   
   2. Psychology (50)
   
   
   3. Linguistics (94)
   
   
   4. Neuroscience (142)
   
   
   5. Artificial Intelligence (179)
   
   
   6. Ethology and Ethnoscience (212)
   
   
   
   


2. A New Foundation for Cognitive Science
   
   
   
   1. Symbol Systems (221)
   
   
   2. Consciousness and Selfhood (228)
   
   
   3. Cognitive Science and the Search for Mind (253)
   
   
   
   

Bibliography (262)

Author Index (275)

Subject Index (277)

Sujets

• Cognitive Science
• Performing Arts
• Sciences et techniques
• General officer
• General
• Cultural Studies
• Science

Informations

• Publié par: Intellect Books
• Date de parution: 01 janvier 2002
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781841508252
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

The Search For Mind
A new foundation for Cognitive Science
Se n Nuall in
This Edition Published in UK in 2002 by Intellect Books , PO Box 862, Bristol BS99 1DE, UK
This Edition Published in USA in 2002 by Intellect Books , ISBS, 5824 N.E. Hassalo St, Portland, Oregon 97213-3644, USA
Copyright 2002 Se n Nuall in
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission.
Consulting Editor: Masoud Yazdani Copy Editor: Peter Young

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Electronic ISBN 1-84150-825-X / ISBN 1-84150-069-0 (cloth) /
ISBN 1-84150-021-6 (paper)
Printed and bound in Great Britain by Cromwell Press, Wiltshire
Contents
Preface
Introduction
0.1 In search of mind
0.2 The field of Cognitive Science, as treated in this book
0.3 History of Cognitive Science
0.4 Topics treated
0.5 User s guide to this book
0.6 Further reading
Part 1 - The Constituent Disciplines of Cognitive Science
1 Philosophical Epistemology
Glossary
1.0 What is Philosophical Epistemology?
1.1 The reduced history of Philosophy Part I - The Classical Age
1.2 Mind and World - The problem of objectivity
1.3 The reduced history of Philosophy Part II - The twentieth century
1.4 The philosophy of Cognitive Science
1.5 Mind in Philosophy: summary
1.6 The Nolanian Framework (so far)
2 Psychology
2.0 Why is Psychology so difficult?
2.1 A brief history of Experimental Psychology
2.2 Methodologies in Psychology
2.3 Perception
2.4 Memory
2.5 Mind in Psychology
3 Linguistics
3.0 Introduction
3.1 Why Linguistics?
3.2 Computation and Linguistics
3.3 The main grammatical theories
3.4 Language development and linguistics
3.5 Toward a definition of context
3.6 The multifarious uses of Language
3.7 Linguistics and Computational Linguistics
3.8 Language and other symbol systems
3.9 On the notion of context
3.10 Mind in Linguistics: summary
4 Neuroscience
4.0 The constituent disciplines of Neuroscience
4.1 The methodology of Neuroscience
4.2 Gross Neuroanatomy
4.3 Some relevant findings
4.4 Connectionism (PDP)
4.5 The victory of Neuroscience?
4.6 Mind in Neuroscience: summary
5 Artificial Intelligence
5.0 Introduction
5.1 AI and Cognitive Science
5.2 Skeptics and their techniques
5.3 AI as Computer Science
5.4 AI as software
5.5 The current methodological debate
5.6 Context, syntax and semantics
5.7 Mind in AI
5.8 Texts on AI
6 Ethology and Ethnoscience
6.1 Ethology
6.2 Ethnoscience
6.3 Mind in Ethology and Ethnoscience
Part II - A New Foundation for Cognitive Science
7 Symbol Systems
7.1 Characteristics of symbol systems
7.2 Context and the layers of symbol systems
7.3 Mind and symbol systems
8 Consciousness and Selfhood
8.0 Introduction
8.1 Cognitive views
8.2 What is at stake?
8.3 Consciousness as treated in Philosophy
8.4 The Development of Selfhood
8.5 The minimal requirements for this theory
8.6 Self as a filter
8.7 Self and motivation
8.8 Conclusions
8.9 Recent developments
9 Cognitive Science and the Search for Mind
9.1 Introduction
9.2 Review
9.3 A Theory of Mind anyone?
9.4 Foundational considerations
9.5 Coda: the Nolanian Framework
Bibliography
Author Index
Subject Index
Preface
Since this book first came out in 1995 to gratifying reviews, the ante has gone up considerably for it and related enterprises. For a start, practically all the material it covers is available on the web; secondly, encyclopaediae of cognitive science (here, CS) are beginning to proliferate. This makes the job of synthesis ever more important. Readers looking for new material would be better rewarded by this book s companion volume Being Human (nothing to do with the Robin Williams movie!). I have left the text of the 1995 book essentially intact, and updated sections like neuroscience that have at least given the impression of rapid change. Neural simulation software and ancillary material can be found at www.nous-research.com/tools
In the intervening years, several themes from this book became the leitmotifen of various international conferences. Both www.nous-research.com/mind1 and www.nous-research.com/mind4 feature conferences discussing the tangled relationships between consciousness, cognition, spirituality, and cosmology. www.nous-research.com/LVM explored the commonalties and otherwise of the modalities of language, vision, and music discussed in Chapter 7. www.nous-research.com/GUT takes up a theme from Chapter 4 on the possibility of a grand unified theory of language. www.nous-research.com/mind3 explored spatial cognition, and with it one future path for AI research suggested by this book.
And yes, it s time for that anti-acknowledgement section again. The Dublin Gardai (cops), diligent as ever, busted Melanie and me on our way home yet again as they kept the Dublin streets safe from cyclists. The positive side; I wish to thank Melanie, my colleagues in the Irish Comhaontas Glas/Green Party, my squash team-mates at Trinity, the Cistercian monks of Ireland, Judge Louise Morgan, and all others who managed to stay sane as Ireland suffered an economic boom . Let s hope it s the last. Abroad, thanks to Jacob Needleman, Neil Scott, Charles Fillmore, Jerry Feldman and the Mahe family of Guisseny, Brittany.
I dedicate this edition to the memory of my parents, Ettie (1916-1976) and Michael (1920-2000) who, depending on what view on monism/dualism is correct, are finally at peace or have a whole lot to catch up on.
Introduction 0.1 In search of mind
At the time of writing, Cognitive Science (CS) is academia s best shot at an integrated, multi-disciplinary science of mind. If its ambitions could even partially be realized, the importance of such a science cannot be overstated. Our view of the mind not only shapes our view of ourselves; less obviously, it also shapes our view of that part of our experience we conceive of as dealing with the external world. As we learn about the structure of this aspect of experience, we find that the world presents itself to consciousness only after being mediated to lesser or (more often) greater extents by mental structures and processes. Consequently, truly to realize the ambitions of a science of mind does not solely involve learning about such issues as how we know, perceive and solve problems; it involves finding out to what extent the world outside us is knowable by us, and indeed prescribing the limits of inquiry for disciplines like Physics which claim to afford knowledge of the external physical world.
Small wonder, then, that the stakes in this field should be so high. The contest has been so fierce, and the evidential standards assumed for science so restrictive, that there still remains a degree of skepticism abroad that academia can deliver a science of mind that does justice to the overwhelming bounty of human conscious experience while remaining constrained by the rather medieval intellectual ascesis of current Western Science. A cursory scan of the racks at any major magazine shop or bookstore will yield a vast harvest of titles (at least one of which will be the Science of Mind ) which attempt to satisfy the human hunger for some degree of self-understanding through disciplines ranging from the wacky through that application of accumulated human wisdom we call common sense. That the higher insights of this residue are still outside our purview in academia is our loss.
The reasons for this intellectual bereavement rest in scientific method s insatiable drive for ever harder i.e. more externalized evidence. The details of this issue as well as that of the rest of this section need not concern us here (I have dealt with them in Nuall in (1994)). To return to the main theme, CS and the science of mind, we should note that CS is now being attacked with a great deal of justification precisely for its perceived inability to deal with experience itself as attempted in consciousness studies, and the emotional and social factors which play a large part in the infrastructure of experience. The insight which originated CS and which comprised the greater part of its seed capital, often stated in oversimplified fashion as the brain is a computer and mind is a set of programs run on this computer, precluded the acceptance of these factors. It is now clear that, its original momentum exhausted, there is a host of problems with the view of mind and its proper study given rise to by this insight.
In the wake of this debate, a second issue, that of the degree to which CS is an integrated subject, arises. One problem is the sheer range of disciplines included in CS; the subjects examined here, i.e. philosophy, psychology, linguistics, neuroscience, artificial intelligence, ethnoscience, ethology and consciousness studies are each masterable only by a scholar of rare gifts. To complicate matters further, they each admit of numerous subdivisions, by no means exhaust the domain inhabited by researchers who consider themselves cognitive scientists and, finally, are extremely diverse. We need to see if there are any precedents. Biochemistry, says one account, existed as a subject in the 1950s before it found a proper focus in the gene. A series of such proposals has been made for CS by such workers as Fodor and Pylyshyn (Von Eckardt 1993). In general, academic programs in CS have built themselves explicitly or implicitly on such proposals. However, the resulting structures are riddled by the tension which arises when CS strives for the science of mind mantle. An alternative view is that CS is yet another academic animal looking for an ecological niche. As it evolves, it usurps new areas of academic inquiry (like consciousness) and needs a single unifying princi