In treating cognition as problem solving, Andy Clark suggests, we may often abstract too far from the very body and world in which our brains evolved to guide...

Hilary Putnam deals in this book with some of the most fundamental persistent problems in philosophy: the nature of truth, knowledge and rationality. His aim is to break down the fixed categories of thought which have always appeared to define and constrain the permissible solutions to these problems.

Testing the validity of knowledge requires formal expression of that knowledge. Formality of an expression is defined as the invariance, under changes of context, of the expression's meaning, i.e. the distinction which the expression represents. This encompasses both mathematical formalism and operational determination. The main advantages of formal expression are storability, universal communicability, and testability. They provide a selective edge in the Darwinian competition between ideas. However, formality can never be complete, as the context cannot be eliminated. Primitive terms, observation (...) set-ups, and background conditions are inescapable parts of formal or operational definitions, that all refer to a context beyond the formal system. Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle and Gödel's Theorem provide special cases of this more universal limitation principle. Context-dependent expressions, on the other hand, have the benefit of being more flexible, intuitive and direct, and putting less strain on memory. It is concluded that formality is not an absolute property, but a context-dependent one: different people will apply different amounts of formality in different situations or for different purposes. Some recent computational and empirical studies of formality and contexts illustrate the emerging scientific investigation of this dependence. (shrink)

An alarming number of philosophers and cognitive scientists have argued that mind extends beyond the brain and body. This book evaluates these arguments and suggests that, typically, it does not. A timely and relevant study that exposes the need to develop a more sophisticated theory of cognition, while pointing to a bold new direction in exploring the nature of cognition Articulates and defends the “mark of the cognitive”, a common sense theory used to distinguish between cognitive and non-cognitive processes Challenges (...) the current popularity of extended cognition theory through critical analysis and by pointing out fallacies and shortcoming in the literature Stimulates discussions that will advance debate about the nature of cognition in the cognitive sciences. (shrink)

The papers gathered in this book were published over a period of more than twenty years in widely scattered journals. They led to the discovery of randomness in arithmetic which was presented in the recently published monograph on?Algorithmic Information Theory? by the author. There the strongest possible version of G”del's incompleteness theorem, using an information-theoretic approach based on the size of computer programs, was discussed. The present book is intended as a companion volume to the monograph and it will serve (...) as a stimulus for work on complexity, randomness and unpredictability, in physics and biology as well as in metamathematics. (shrink)

A critique of the hypothesis of extended cognition.

The mysteries of consciousness have gripped the human imagination for over 2,500 years. At the dawn of the new millennium, Understanding Consciousness provides new solutions to some of the deepest puzzles surrounding its nature and function. Drawing on recent scientific discoveries, Max Velmans challenges conventional reductionist thought, providing an understanding of how consciousness relates to the brain and physical world that is neither dualist, nor reductionist. Understanding Consciousness will be of great interest to psychologists, philosophers, neuroscientists and other professionals concerned (...) with mind/body relationships, and all who care deeply about this subject. (shrink)

Any system based on axioms is incomplete because the axioms cannot be proven from the system, just believed. But one system can be less-incomplete than other. Neutrosophy is less-incomplete than many other systems because it contains them. But this does not mean that it is finished, and it can always be improved. The comments presented here are an attempt to make Neutrosophy even less-incomplete. I argue that less-incomplete ideas are more useful, since we cannot perceive truth or falsity or indeterminacy (...) independently of a context, and are therefore relative. Absolute being and relative being are defined. Also the "silly theorem problem" is posed, and its partial solution described. The issues arising from the incompleteness of our contexts are presented. We also note the relativity and dependance of logic to a context. We propose "metacontextuality" as a paradigm for containing as many contexts as we can, in order to be less-incomplete and discuss some possible consequences. (shrink)

The author makes an introduction to non-standard analysis, then extends the dialectics to “neutrosophy” – which became a new branch of philosophy. This new concept helps in generalizing the intuitionistic, paraconsistent, dialetheism, fuzzy logic to “neutrosophic logic” – which is the first logic that comprises paradoxes and distinguishes between relative and absolute truth. Similarly, the fuzzy set is generalized to “neutrosophic set”. Also, the classical and imprecise probabilities are generalized to “neutrosophic probability”.

As science, knowledge, and ideas evolve and are increased and refined, the branches of philosophy in charge of describing them should also be increased and refined. In this work we try to expand some ideas as a response to the recent approach from several sciences to complex systems. Because of their novelty, some of these ideas might require further refinement and may seem unfinished, but we need to start with something. Only with their propagation and feedback from critics they might (...) be improved. We make a brief introduction to complex systems, for then defining abstraction levels. Abstraction levels represent simplicities and regularities in nature. We make an ontological distinction of absolute being and relative being, and then discuss issues on causality, metaphysics, and determinism. (shrink)

To cope with problems arising in the description of (1) contextual interactions, and (2) the generation of new states with new properties when quantum entities become entangled, the mathematics of quantum mechanics was developed. Similar problems arise with concepts. We use a generalization of standard quantum mechanics, the mathematical lattice theoretic formalism, to develop a formal description of the contextual manner in which concepts are evoked, used, and combined to generate meaning.

1 INTIMACY Among Descartes's most and consequential achievements has been his of the mental as an independent ontological domain. By taking the mind as a substance, with cognitions as its modes, he accorded them a status as self-standing and determinate on their own, without essential regard to other entities. Only with this metaphysical conception in place, could the idea of solipsism-the idea of an intact ego existing with nothing else in the universe-so much as make sense. And behind that engine (...) have trailed the sorry boxcars of hyperbolic doubt. the mind-body problem, the problem of the external world, the problem of other minds, and so on. -/- Although the assumptions have been under fire, off and on. at least since Hegel-including with renewed intensity in recent years … the Cartesian separation that is still so pervasive as to be almost invisible. In particular, inter-relationist accounts retain a principled distinction between the mental and the corporeal-a distinction that is reflected in contrasts like semantics versus syntax, the space of reasons versus the space of causes, or the intentional versus the physical. (Notice that each of these contrasts can be heard either as higher versus lower’ level" or as inner versus outer 'sphere‘.) The contrary of this separation-or battery of separations-is not inter-relationist holism but something that I would like to call the intimacy of the mind's embodiment and embeddedness in the world. The term 'intimacy' is meant to suggest more than just necessary interrelation or interdependence but a kind of commingling or integralness of mind, body,and world-that is, to undermine their very distinctness. The challenge is as much to spell out what this could mean as to make a case for it. Indeed, no sooner does such a possibility seem intelligible at all, than ways bring out its plausibility and significance turn up everywhere. -/- There is little original in what follows. The strategy will be to bring some well known principles of systems analysis to bear on the mind- body-world 'system' in a way that refocuses questions of division and unity, and then to canvas a selection of investigations and proposals - some fairly recent, others not-in the light of this new focus. The hope is that these superficially disparate ideas, none of them new, will seem to converge around the theme of intimacy in a way that illuminates and supports them all. Sorting and and aligning issues in this manner has sometimes been discussed under titles like 'embedded computation’ and 'situated cognition'. (shrink)

One of the objectives of Artificial Intelligence has been the modelling of "human" characteristics, such as emotions, behaviour, conscience, etc. But in such characteristics we might find certain degree of contradiction. Previous work on modelling emotions and its problems are reviewed. A model for emotions is proposed using multidimensional logic, which handles the degree of contradiction that emotions might have. The model is oriented to simulate emotions in artificial societies. The proposed solution is also generalized for actions which might overcome (...) contradiction (conflictive goals in agents, for example.). (shrink)