"Linguistics is a branch of cognitive psychology" (Noam Chomsky).
"Paradoxically, Cognitive Science was founded on a mistake: to assume that the
on an error: the assumption that the brain is a digital computer and that the mind is a computer program."
(John Searle)
Cognitive Science
The birth of a science
Cognitive Science aims at studying the structure and functioning of the human mind. It is an inter-science, that is, a science with an interdisciplinary approach in which six sciences converge in the so-called "cognitive hexagon": philosophy, linguistics, cognitive psychology, artificial intelligence (AI), anthropology and neurology. The union of these six sciences is necessary because it is recognized that none of them is self-sufficient to study something so complex and that the collaborative effort of these 6 fundamental disciplines is required to achieve this goal.
Cognitive Science is a relatively new science. It is considered to have been conceptually born in 1956, at the Symposium on Information Theory at MIT, where the term "artificial intelligence" was coined, and where Simon and Newell presented their "theoretical logic machine", an artificial intelligence program that performed automatic proofs of logical theorems.
But Cognitive Science was formally born in the 1970's thanks to an initiative of the Sloan Foundation. This foundation financially supported the creation of the "Cognitive Science Society" and the journal "Cognitive Science". According to this foundation, Cognitive Science aims "to discover the representational and computational capacities of the mind, and the structural and functional representation in the brain" [Gardner, 1988].
The problem of mind
The problem of the mind covers several aspects, including the following:
The mind: What exactly is the mind? What is its structure and how does it function?
Thought: What is thought? Is there a language of thought? If it exists, is it possible to formalize it, to bring it to light? What are its semantics and syntax?
Mental processes: Are there types of mental processes?
Cognition: How is knowledge obtained? How do we interact with the environment?
Knowledge. How is knowledge represented internally? Is there a priori knowledge?
Reasoning: How are inferences made?
Consciousness. What is consciousness? Is consciousness part of the mind?
Concepts. Are there primary concepts on which other concepts are built?
Language: What is the relationship between language and thought?
Imagination. What is imagination and what role does it play in cognition and language?
Decisions. How do we make decisions?
The disciplines of the cognitive hexagon
Philosophy.
The history of philosophy is full of theories and discussions about the nature of physical reality, mental reality, and the relations between the two. That is, between ontology (what is) and epistemology (what we know) and the relations between the two.
Regarding the subject of the mind-body relationship, there are monistic theories (everything derives from the same reality) and dualistic theories (there are two separate realities). It is the eternal dispute between two extreme poles: realism (reality is objective) and idealism (reality is mental).
Modern philosophy was born with Descartes, who emphasized the importance of reason, and upheld mind-body dualism. From Descartes onward, epistemology (theory of knowledge) was the central theme of philosophy.
Linguistics.
According to Chomsky, there is an innate universal grammar in all human beings, i.e., the mental/brain structure is the same. The individual does not come as a "table rasa", but comes already endowed with that universal grammar.
Chomsky, with his transformational grammar, mathematically formalized linguistic structures by means of rules, the rules underlying the structure of a language. These rules describe the infinite possible sentences that can be generated without prior hearing. This was a milestone in the history of linguistic analysis.
According to the first Wittgenstein (that of the Tractatus), there is a correspondence between internal world and external world, between thought, language and reality.
Cognitive psychology.
Psychology as a science was born out of the human desire to understand the mind (the inner world) and behavior (interaction with the outside world). Cognitive psychology was born in the mid-1950s as a reaction to psychological behaviorism, which regarded the mind as an inaccessible "black box". Cognitive psychology deals with cognition, i.e. the deep mental processes involved in the acquisition of knowledge.
According to Chomsky, linguistics is a branch of cognitive psychology.
Artificial intelligence (AI).
There are two conceptions of AI with respect to the human mind: weak AI (AI can simulate the human mind) and strong AI (AI can emulate the human mind).
Anthropology.
The fundamental structure of the human mind is the same in all social groups and in all cultures. There is no human group superior to another. For Lévi-Strauss, culture is a phenomenon of nature.
Neurology.
Brain phenomena are localized in certain regions, and at the same time the brain seems to function on a holistic level, as an integrated whole. There are horizontal processes (present in all functions), and vertical processes (specific to particular functions).
Neurology seeks explanatory connections between the neuronal and representational levels. It seeks an adequate language to describe brain activity in such a way that it can lead to new theories. It is recognized that current mathematics is not adequate. Just as physics has been stimulated by the development of areas of mathematics, neuroscience can be stimulated by a new mathematics.
The conception of the mind throughout history
Although Cognitive Science was formally born in the 20th century, the problem of the nature of mind has been present at all points in history, although its theoretical and practical foundations date back to the ancient Greeks. Milestones in the evolution of the conception of the mind have been:
The Greek Logos.
For the ancient Greek philosophers, the mind possesses as an instrument of knowledge the Logos: reason, intelligence, sense, word. For Heraclitus, the Logos is the light of thought, a dialectical process that governs movement and knowledge.
Leibniz's universal language.
For Leibniz, thought must be founded on the basis of simple concepts (the alphabet of thought). All concepts would be obtained by combinatorics of the simple ones. Thought could be expressed in a symbolic language that would be the foundation of logic and mathematics.
Leibniz intuited that there must be an underlying universal language (Characteristica Universalis) that could be expressed by means of a symbolic language. This language would also serve as an instrument of reasoning (Calculus Ratiocinator): reasoning as calculation.
The Laws of Thought, by George Boole.
In 1854, Boole published the work "Inquiry into the laws of thought", in which he formulated the laws of thought on logical foundations: the algebra of logic. His aim was to overcome the ambiguities of natural language and to facilitate reasoning by means of abstract symbols.
Kant's Copernican revolution.
Kant called "categories of thought" to some elementary and abstract concepts of the understanding that form the mental foundation of all human beings and that allow to found and organize the experience and our perception of the world. All perception is psychological, because the mind always tries to categorize, to frame the perceptions in categories. There are 12 a priori and innate philosophical categories, grouped in 4 groups of 3:
Quantity: unity, plurality, totality.
Quality: reality, negation, limitation.
Relation: substance and accidents, cause and effect, reciprocal action.
Modality: possibility-impossibility, existence-non-existence, necessity and contingency.
Kant also postulated the existence of schemes, which act as intermediate processes between sensory (concrete) information and a priori abstractions (the categories). Our understanding applies categories and schemas.
The "Copernican revolution" −as Kant himself called it− was to put the focus on the mind, the mind as the center from which all sensible experience is evaluated and interpreted. Kant used the term "construction" to refer to the fact that mental contents are the subject's own creation and not a reflection of reality.
Mill's mental chemistry.
James Mill proposed the theory of "mental chemistry." Just as chemical compounds are based on the combination of simple elements, so complex ideas must be based on the combination of simple ideas.
James Mill contributed significantly to psychology with his work "Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind," which was revised by his son John Stuart. This work is considered the pinnacle of associationism: the psychological theory according to which any mental phenomenon derives from the association of simple ideas.
John Stuart generally supported the idea of mental chemistry, but qualified that some complex ideas are not always formed by simple ideas. The result of the fusion of simple ideas may produce an idea totally different from its components.
John Stuart Mill was the philosopher who has contributed most to the development of psychology as a science.
Structural linguistics.
Ferdinand de Saussure was the founder of structural linguistics: language as a structure of relations between its elements. Language is form and not substance. The units of language can only be defined by means of relations. He made language the specific object of a science by distinguishing between language (the internal or mental aspect) and speech (the external or manifested aspect).
Shannon's theory of information.
According to Claude Shannon (in his 1948 master's thesis) any logical or arithmetic operation can be implemented by electrical switching circuits. He defined the bit as the unit of information. Shannon's theory was described by Scientific American magazine as "the Magna Carta of the information age".
The universal Turing machine and the invention of the digital computer.
The universal Turing machine (MTU), a theoretical machine that made it possible to implement all types of computations, thanks to the key concept of "program stored in memory".
The great impulse that Cognitive Science received was due to the appearance of the digital computer (inspired by the MTU) and to the expectations created by artificial intelligence, which brought new lines of research. The computer made it possible to investigate the mind indirectly.
The possibility of performing epistemological experiments to test cognitive theories and simulate mental processes. It is the so-called "weak AI".
The possibility of building an artificial mind to emulate the human mind. This is the so-called "strong AI."
At the theoretical level, trying to discover the hypothetical language of the mind and mental primitives.
At the practical level, experiment with topics such as stimulus-response and interaction with the environment.
Computation as a model of thinking.
The question of knowledge representation in machine memory as a model of knowledge representation in the mind/brain.
Jung's depth psychology.
The most important conceptual leap in understanding the mind, and reality in general, was made by Jung with his theory of the Unus Mundus and the primary archetypes. The primary archetypes are patterns or structures without content that constitute the foundation of the inner (mental) and outer (physical) reality, the Unus Mundus. The unification between the internal and external worlds was intuited by Jung thanks to the collaboration of the physicist Wolfgang Pauli. Both discovered that they were describing reality from two points of view (physical and psychic) and intuited that both aspects should be manifestations of something deeper: the primary archetypes.
Jung did not discover these primary archetypes. He only discovered the archetype of number, which was extensively studied by his disciple and collaborator Marie-Louise von Franz.
The primary primal archetypes are the foundation of reality and, therefore, are the foundation of Universal Science. The primary archetypes connect, from the deep level, all things, all manifestations. The primary archetypes are the definitive answer to the problem of the foundation of inner and outer reality.
Jung's theory of primary archetypes follows the principle of Occam's razor: among several possible theories of a phenomenon, one must choose the simplest one, which is the one most likely to be true.
The information and knowledge society.
The first time the knowledge society was discussed was in 1969 when Peter Druker (considered the father of the discipline of management) in his work "The Age of Discontinuity" included a section entitled "The Knowledge Society". Druker pointed out that the Internet implied the democratization, globalization and universality of knowledge (operational, descriptive or explanatory).
Cognitive revolutions
There have been several paradigm shifts on conceptions of the human mind, which have involved cognitive revolutions.
The first cognitive revolution is the inner revolution, the passage from behaviorism to cognitivism. It vindicates the role of mental processes against the conception of the mind as a "black box". It is a counter-revolution: against the prevailing behaviorist psychology of the time. He considers mental processes as an object of scientific study.
The most relevant events of this revolution were:
The invention of the computer. What prevented psychology from being a science is that internal (subjective) phenomena are unobservable. But the computer metaphor opened up new avenues of research.
Chomsky's [1977] 1959 critique of Skinner's [1957] "Verbal Behavior".
The publication in 1957 of the book " Cognitive Psychology" by Ulrich Neisser [2014], another attack on psychological behaviorism. Neisser is considered the father of cognitive psychology.
Thanks to cognitive principles, psychologists were able to unravel some mechanisms of the mind that had remained hidden: the operations of memory, the production of abstract reasoning, the rules of language, the formation of symbols, the generation of mental images, and so on.
The second cognitive revolution emphasized several ideas:
Human beings are open systems and active constructors of the world they inhabit.
The imaginative capacity to create possible universes and worlds.
Human behavior is based on intentions.
We are limited by our beliefs, our conception of the world and by the rules of logic.
The semantic nature of the mind. The human mind is much more than an information processor. The mind is always searching for meaning in everything and is the foundation of our understanding of reality. The main feature of the mind is its ability to categorize.
The analogy between brain/mind and computer
The main metaphor of Cognitive Science is "Mind is to brain as software is to hardware". This metaphor allowed to unite neurology (brain) and psychology (mind), but it has become almost a universal metaphor. The computer is a very powerful metaphor that has changed our conception of things.
Gregory Chaitin is one of the authors who has most recognized the universal character of the computer and its impact on all orders. Here are some of his views:
"The computer has produced a paradigm shift."
"The computer changes epistemology, it changes the meaning of understanding".
"For me, you understand something only when you can program it."
"The computer is a wonderful new philosophical and mathematical concept."
"God is a computer programmer".
"The computer was invented to help clarify a philosophical question of the foundations of mathematics."
"Now everything has been disrupted. It has been upset, not because of any philosophical argument, not because of Gödel's results or Turing's results or my own incompleteness results. It has been upset for one simple reason: the computer!".
Because of its characteristics of universality and potentiality, the general-purpose computer has been regarded as a metaphor for the brain and mind. The analogies between computer and brain/mind are as follows:
Computer
Brain/Mind
Hardware
Brain
Software
Mind
Internal and External Memory
Memory
Set of instructions
Mental lexicon (lexical semantics)
Machine language
Language of the mind (structural semantics)
Computational processing
Thought
Symbolic representations
Mental representations
Boolean Logic
Logic of Human Reasoning
Input-Output
Sensory (input) organs and output responses to the outside: interaction with the environment
outward: interaction with the environment
Initially, the metaphor of the computer as a new model of the mind/brain was considered the "master key" that unlocked the doors to the explanation of the human mind and behavior. Computers were referred to as "electronic brains". However, the limitations of the model were soon realized because the human mind is so complex that no computer model can replicate it. The computer, structurally and functionally, is still very far from approximating the human mind:
It lacks semantics. It only processes or manipulates symbols and has no knowledge or awareness of what it is doing.
It has no intentionality or initiative or purpose. All behavior is predetermined. The computer model is mechanistic, deterministic.
Its capacity for self-organization is very reduced or non-existent.
Their ability to perceive and recognize objects in the environment is very limited.
It does not have an adaptive and evolutionary behavior in its interaction with the outside world.
It does not possess the capacity for reflection, reflection of reflection, etc., a property linked to consciousness.
It does not possess creativity, that is, the capacity to relate or cross concepts to produce new concepts.
They do not have the capacity for self-learning, for autonomous learning.
One of the first who immediately realized the importance of the computer as a model of the mind was John von Neumann, the pioneer of digital computers.
Hilary Putnam adopted the metaphor of the computer as a model in the mind-body problematic, for it clarified the problem or mystery of the mind-body relationship: the mind is to the body as the software is to the hardware. For Hilary Putnam, the invention of the computer was a very important event for the philosophy of mind.
The computer metaphor became the new paradigm of Cognitive Science. This paradigm was superior to the prevailing behaviorist paradigm until then based on the stimulus-response model and the mind as a "black box" about which nothing was known or nothing was wanted to be known. The behaviorist point of view was justified because science must be based on objective facts and the mind is something subjective, but the computer made it possible to study the mind indirectly.
The computer metaphor has not only been applied to the mind. There was also speculation that the universe itself was a gigantic computer running a program. The computer became a universal metaphor: of the internal (mental) world and the external (physical) world. "The universe a digital computer" (Konrad Zuse, Edward Fredkin, Stephen Wolfram).
The problem of semantics and consciousness
Historically, the general-purpose computer was built by applying some very simple, surface-type concepts, the concepts of binary logic, i.e., of very low semantic level. However, this semantic level has been increasing with the evolution of computing in general and programming languages in particular. We have moved from machine language to fourth-generation languages (4GL), languages close to natural language, and to AI languages (fifth generation).
There is no universal consensus as to whether machines can become thinking, intelligent, or conscious. Artificial intelligence researchers seek a single paradigm to explain consciousness, in imitation of the "Theory of Everything" in physics.
Robots see and hear much better than we do, but they do not "understand" what they see and hear. A robot does not recognize chairs, tables, etc. in a room because it only sees pixels, so it needs a complex and lengthy process to recognize them and assign semantics (depth) to syntax (surface). Ray Kurzweil envisions a point he calls "singularity" in which robots process information exponentially and create, in turn, new robots.
The human being has a conscious and a subconscious. The subconscious performs a series of internal processes to have an understanding of reality in general and of what is happening in its environment in particular. Machines must also have these two aspects, if we want them to have intelligence and consciousness.
John Searle rejects the idea that the human mind is a program (or software) of a computer (the brain). He rejects strong AI, but not weak AI (the simulation of the mind). He illustrates with a significant example (the Chinese box) the impossibility of a machine being able to think, that strong AI is impossible.
According to Roger Penrose, we will never be able to make an intelligent machine because it will never have self-awareness, it will never have an "I", so it will never be able to match the human mind because it lacks semantics and consciousness. In any case, the idea of simulating an "I" is being worked on.
The problem of common sense
For machines to be intelligent, they must be able to have "common sense," that is, to recognize things and relationships that are obvious to us but not to machines, such as: time does not run backwards, fire burns, parents are older than children, ropes are no good for pushing, a hot thing warms a cold thing, etc.
The most ambitious attempt to implement common sense human reasoning was the CYC system (acronym for "encyclopedia"), an idea of Douglas Lenat [Lenat & Guha, 1990]. His motto was that "intelligence is 10 million rules". One of the goals of CYC was that the system, after a certain point, would be able to pick up new information on its own by reading books and magazines.
CYC is an example of ontology in the domain of knowledge representation. The project started in 1984, eventually covering 100,000 concepts and one million rules or inferences. It was written in the CycL language, based on the predicate calculus.
CYC uses a structured set of concepts. The highest level concept is Thing. Anything is an instance (particular instance) of Thing. Below this level are other less abstract concepts such as: individual object, collection, substance, event, process, agent, properties, etc.
CYC is currently considered a failed project. The reason is that one cannot approach this subject from the particular, the superficial. It is necessary to base everything on the universal, on the deep, starting from some initial, primitive or universal concepts and from there to derive all the derived concepts and the relations between them, including the relations of common sense.
The language of the mind
Throughout history, different models have been suggested that have attempted to explain the workings of the mind. However, the hypothesis of the existence of an internal, mental language is the model that has aroused most interest:
It transcends the various models of the mind, which could be manifestations of the language of the mind.
Foundations the disciplines of Cognitive Science.
It has a theoretical aspect and a practical aspect (it allows experimentation).
It concretizes or reifies something that is essentially complex.
It brings a paradigm shift. No longer is the computer the metaphor for the mind, but the language of the computer is a manifestation of the language of the mind.
For Chomsky, the interpretation of the world is based on systems of representation inherent in the structure of the mind, language being the best model for conceptualizing thought processes.
Jerry Fodor's book "The Language of Thought", published in 1976, is a landmark in Cognitive Science. Its central thesis is that "the computational point of view is the only plausible way to understand mental activity". Fodor uses the metaphor of the computer in its literal sense, defending by analogy the existence of a "language of thought": mentalese (Latin word that in English translates as "mentalés"). This hypothetical language would have the following characteristics:
It is universal and innate, common to all human beings, in the same way that a computer already comes with its machine language.
It is different and independent from natural language.
Like any language, it has its syntax and semantics.
It relies on internal representations (symbols), which represent mental states. Mental states are representational.
Its "instruction set" is a set of formal operations performed on internal representations.
Mental processes are computational and are causal sequences of mental states.
Cognitive processes are processes of manipulating symbols, which are abstract entities with no necessary relation to the entities they denote. Mental processes are computational processes and, therefore, must have representations of those computations.
Other authors:
For Pylishin, cognition is computation.
According to Anna Wierzbicka, there are grammatical patterns that are language-specific, but there are also some grammatical patterns that are universal. They are combinatorial universals. One can thus speak of a universal or innate grammar associated with semantics: the syntax of universal semantic primitives. The set of the innate and universal lexicon of concepts, together with such universal syntax, constitutes the language of thought ("lingua mentalis").
For Frege, mathematics is the language of thought.
Steven Pinker, in his book "The Language Instinct" [2005], believes (like Chomsky) in the existence of a universal grammar underlying all languages. That thought is independent of language. And that we think, not in a concrete language, but in a metalanguage that precedes all language (or is at a higher abstract level). From this metalanguage or language of thought arise particular languages.
"Mathematics is not a real language capable of expressing thoughts, but rather the logical syntax of language" (Carnap). "Is mathematics the syntax of language" (Gödel).
MENTAL, the New Cognitive Revolution
Beyond the cognitive hexagon
In the cognitive hexagon, each of the 6 disciplines establishes more or less close relationships with all the others. They are interdisciplinary relationships, although all of them revolving around the same objective: to try to know the mind.
MENTAL integrates the 6 disciplines of the cognitive hexagon and more disciplines, all of them with a common foundation:
Linguistics. MENTAL is a universal formal language and a universal grammar (lexical semantics is the same as structural semantics). It is also a metalanguage (or parent language) from which particular languages can be constructed. MENTAL is the universal grammar sought by Chomsky.
Philosophy. The primitives of MENTAL are also philosophical categories.
Psychology. The primitives of MENTAL are primary archetypes or archetypes of consciousness. MENTAL is the primary language of consciousness. They are the primary archetypes sought by Jung and Pauli. Furthermore, the primitives of MENTAL are like the instruction set of the mind. MENTAL is not a particular model of the mind, just as it is not a particular language. MENTAL is a meta-model of the mind, a model based on degrees of freedom.
Artificial intelligence. MENTAL is an artificial intelligence language, more powerful and simpler than Lisp and Prolog.
Neurology. According to the Principle of Downward Causality, the brain is an instrument of the mind, and the mind is not an epiphenomenon of the brain.
Anthropology. Mental structure is universal and common to all cultures.
MENTAL, it also integrates more formal sciences:
Mathematics. MENTAL provides a mathematical language and a foundation of mathematics through universal semantic primitives. MENTAL is a meta-mathematics, the long-sought foundation of mathematics.
Computer science. MENTAL is a universal programming language with which all possible paradigms can be expressed, all with a common linguistic structure. It is also a specification language, a language for the web and the foundation of every operating system.
Cybernetics. MENTAL can be used to establish objectives or goals and feedback mechanisms to achieve those goals.
Systemic. MENTAL is not a concrete system. It is a universal system (or meta-system) with which particular systems can be built.
Other topics
Interscience vs. metascience.
In MENTAL, the relationships between the different disciplines are not direct, but are established indirectly: through the deep level of the primary archetypes. MENTAL is a meta-science. It provides a unifying paradigm. It goes beyond Cognitive Science, because this, as an inter-science, does not contemplate mathematics and computer science, nor other formal sciences such as systemics and cybernetics.
Cognitive Science is an interdisciplinary attempt to understand the mind. But what is needed is a transdisciplinary approach, towards universality, towards a universal paradigm.
The question of intentionality.
The computer lacks intentionality. But one approach to intentionality (or simulation of intentionality) is by heuristic rules associated with the goal to be achieved. There could also be meta-rules (rules that generate rules depending on the circumstances of the environment). For example, in a chess program, the evaluation function is a function that estimates how far it is from the objective, which is to win the game. There could also be evaluation subfunctions associated with subgoals.
But in the computer the heuristic rules have to be preprogrammed, you can't create them yourself. And they would also have to be dynamic, i.e. vary according to circumstances.
Imagination.
It is not possible to think without images. Images are generated by the imagination, another faculty of the soul, like consciousness. Already Aristotle, in his treatise "On the Soul" had come to the conclusion that all thought is impossible without images.
Intention is really a directed imagination (visualization). Everything we imagine tends to come true. With MENTAL, intentions can be programmed by means of generic expressions that pursue at all times a specific purpose.
The categories.
Categorizing is the faculty that human beings have to make reality intelligible and to interact with it. The primary categories are the primary archetypes, which are innate, and which connect inner world and outer world. Concepts are mental patterns, they are second order categories that are created on the primary archetypes.
The problem of consciousness
Consciousness is situated at a higher level than semantics. Semantics belongs to the mental world. Consciousness belongs to the soul. However, consciousness manifests itself at the mental level through the primary archetypes.
The computer has always been considered a metaphor for the mind. If the primitives of MENTAL were implemented, the computer would be more than a metaphor for the mind: it would be the closest possible approximation to a mind.
The human mind cannot be reduced to the superficial, formal or computational because at this level knowledge cannot be represented. The human mind is based on the deep, on semantics. The human mind could be reduced to a reduced number of cognitive elements or essential metaphors, and rules or combinatory patterns of these elements capable of generating an infinite number of ideas or thoughts.
Conclusions
MENTAL is a new cognitive revolution, but it goes further because the real revolution is not the cognitive one. The real revolution is the universalist one, the Jungian one, the one of the Unus Mundus of the primary archetypes, which goes beyond the mind to contemplate the common deep structure of reality that is structured as a universal language.
MENTAL is the universal language sought by Leibniz. It is Mill's mental chemistry. It is the universal grammar sought by Chomsky.
The new cognitive revolution is not based on the computer, but on the "mental computer", the computer that implements the set of instructions or primitives of MENTAL.
MENTAL is the culmination of the process of searching for the nature of mind. Mind is not something concrete that can be grasped. The mind cannot understand itself, it cannot analyze itself. It is necessary to contemplate it from a higher level, which is consciousness, a faculty that is above the mind. The mind is a space of freedom. The inner reality is governed by degrees of freedom.
The information and knowledge society is entirely dependent on the languages used. A universal language such as MENTAL would further accelerate the development of the information and knowledge society by democratizing and standardizing the language of programming, artificial intelligence and knowledge representation.
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