Posts filed under 'Cognitive Science'
I have struggled, as someone raised outside a strictly religious family, but with Christian influence, and having turned from the teachings of the faith with the idea of how to raise my own children. I do not want to bring them up under Christian theology. I do not want them to feel they are inherantly sinful, or somehow incomplete unless they accept a particular belief system, or to fear that they, or their loved ones may end up in hell (all ideas I struggled with as a child).And yet it seems inescapable to me that the young mind be raised with myth.
Our minds, particularly the minds of our children, are deeply structured on narrative–and in that sense whatever is given to them will be taken as myth. And so I shudder at the idea of raising them, in such a consumerist culture with no structural ideas as their myth. And yet even more frightening to me is the idea of sending them to ‘atheist’ or ’secular’ sunday schools (which are now popping up)–because the last thing you need is a child to develop skepticism as their myth.
Rational engagement with ideas and the development of compassion for others through understanding their choices and needs are ideals I would promote–and those are not ideals afforded by any faith (besides Buddhism) any more than they are promoted by modern day atheism which avidly declares religions to be the antithesis of science.
At the end of the day, I feel it is often lost that believing in God, or claiming that there is a God, is only as ludicrous as believing or claiming there is no God. It seems to me, lost on some secular rationalists that admitting agnosticism, in the true sense of the word, is the only “rational” claim.
February 1st, 2008
I just finished Steven Pinker’s The Blank Slate. I had high expectations, I’ll admit. It was recommended to me, in my second year of university, during a heated debate. A few people were trying to dash my naive hopes for progress in humanity by flouting about ideas to do with self-interest and greed etc. etc. and I was grasping at trying to communicate that while I could appreciate those aspects of our humanity I felt that we had evolved the ability to understand these parts of ourselves, their pros and cons, and the possibility of growing away from the damaging ones…or something. And the one individual present who was sympathetic to my underdeveloped ideas pointed me toward this book as a place where these ideas were explored.
Sure enough The Blank Slate is a powerful argument for the reality of Human Nature, and the role it plays in the dark side of what people are capable of, but Pinker makes it clear that he points these things out not to justify them but to encourage us to learn about them so that we can better prevent crime and inhumane acts etc. It’s good. It just often left me with a bad taste in my mouth. It was almost as if while Pinker kept claiming to feel that the exposition of his ideas would mean progress, the connections couldn’t be followed through in his writing. Perhaps because despite all the work he pulled together he was working exclusively through a Western philosophical framework and that seemed to limit his ability to build on human universals he was uncovering.*
All-in-all worth the read though. Another thing I read was The Embodied Mind and it was really wonderful. It was difficult to get through at times, simply because of the density of the material, but left me with a fantastic taste in my mouth. It too was deeply concerned with elements of human nature but was more invested in the experience of rising above it (through Buddhist-esque* meditation etc). Which brings me to a quotation I found in the Blank Slate from The African Queen in which Katherine Hepburn says to Humphrey Bogart, “Nature, Mr. Allnut, is what we are put in this world to rise above.”
*There are rough allusions here to something which could be taken as simply deferring to Eastern philosophy with no justification aside from its being ‘exotic’, but that is not what I mean to be doing. There is a sense in which I feel like incorporating some Eastern philosophy will be necessary to dig us out of the moralistic and spiritual hole that secular science has been digging us into. Particularly research in Human Nature is revealing more and more about the impermanence of human life and that our notion of a ’self’ emerges from activity in the body. While someone like Pinker may not mean this as a spiritually defeating idea, for alot of Westerners it has to be–Judaeo-Christianity simply hasn’t prepared us for anything like it. In order to deal with it looking to traditions like Buddhism which deal actively with the impermanence and illusion of the self may be deeply helpful.
January 9th, 2008
I’ve noticed something recently. When people ask me what I study, I get bashful. I say “Cognitive Science”, and immediately clarify that I mean “psychology and philosophy”. Then, without looking them in the eye, I mutter and stutter something about not being able to get a job when I graduate because I’m unqualified for anything. Tonight I even said in a meek voice, as if asking a question “I think I’m looking to teach?”
I don’t know if it’s something I’ve just started to do, or something I’ve done for a while. I don’t know if it’s because I’ve lived in Japan where you have to be incredibly humble and self-deprecating, or if it’s because my sense of self-worth has taken a blow while I’ve been suffering from depression. …What I do know is that I thought long and hard about what I wanted to study and am very proud of the courses I have taken. I’m happy about what I study… and I’m excited and proud about the idea of being involved in education.
I need to stop waffling when people ask me what I do.
March 11th, 2007
“Computers are incredably fast, accurate and stupid. Human beings are incredably slow, inaccurate, and brilliant. Together they are powerful beyond imagination.”
September 6th, 2006
Believe it or not, I’m finally coming to terms with Cognitive Science’s fascination with Artificial Intelligence. I maintain my stance that it will not provide an explanation of cognition, but I have finally come to understand that that debate is not actually the point…what the field of Artificial Intelligence provides for us, is a framework in which to experiment with theories we do get about how the mind works. …Theory first…then implementation.
I get that now, I think.
It’s still not my area though. I’m still signifigantly more fascinated by the semantics of mind, and the physical realization of saide semantics. …..an anlogy:
When we observe an artist painting a landscape, we can ask two kinds of questions about the product taking form. We can wonder about the artist’s physical coorination or the expenditure of caloric energy in getting the job done. But we can ignore such mechanical questions and consider teh painting as an intended end product. Why this interpretation of the scene and not another? What was the artist striving to communicate? What goal did he or she have in mind? …The psychological question was not the “how of motion but the “why” of one style of movement rather than another.
I understand that what the behaviourists are discovering is fascinating, and neurochemical research is certainly an important field for countless reasons. ….but that’s not all there is to understanding the mind. There is an entire other field to do with why the mind does the fascinating things that it does. It is that phenomenon that I want to study.
March 19th, 2006
Have you heard that old Winston Churchill quote? “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the rest”…
That’s about how I’m feeling about my chosen area of study at the moment. Which means that I would like it on the record that I am very frustrated and slightly angry.
I study Cognitive Science because it purports to be an interdisciplinary look at understanding the human mind, uniting research in psychology, linguistics, philosophy and neuroscience to put together a complete picture.
And instead what happens in my cognitive science lectures? I listen to endless theories and analyses of artificial intelligence.
We are not talking about the mind! We are not unifying anything! And we are certainly not on track toward understanding cognition…
We are barelling down our own path, which as far as I can see is even more off track than any of the disciplines we began by denouncing for being to single-minded.
I am beginning to get a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach that more than anything else cognitive science is a haven for self-righteous programming geeks who are a little bit too versed in philosophy for their own health.
*Cognition could only be like computation if we really were designed to think in the way propogated by the rational tradition that followed the enlightenment. This just in: we don’t.
Somehow I seem to have gotten myself all wrapped up in the worst possible example of academics-as-rational-masturbation offerred at the undergraduate level. I would like to thank both my parents, and of course the academy…
March 2nd, 2006