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2004 > |
Course Description |
Deconstructing
the Mind: Anti-Cartesian Perspective on Cognition
George Kampis
Eotvos University, Budapest, Hungary
The course will be focused on the
Anti-Cartesian Perspective on cognition and its role in understanding mental
representation and action. It discusses classic concepts of Embodiment together
with a new causal interactional account of organismic function. We discuss the
episodic and narrative organization of human and animal cognition and the
special causal structures supporting it, with consequences for language and
thinking. In an evolutionary application, we show how the concversion between
active and implicit phenotypes in context-dependent environmental interactions yield selection forces to obtain
sustained development. Together, these lectures give the sketch of a new,
materialist and non-linguistic model of biological cognition.
Although the present course
transcends it in a number of ways, the principal reference is my course of 9
lectures:
http://www.jaist.ac.jp/~g-kampis/Human_Knowledge.html
In what foillows below, I am giving mostly additional references only.
The students should therefore consult the above link for the courses first.
Day 1: Fundamentals of Embodiment and
Organismic Biology
Reference:
http://www.jaist.ac.jp/~g-kampis/Course/Three/Lecture_Three.html
Additional Readings:
e.g. Sporns, O. (2002) Embodied
Cognition.In: MIT Handbook of Brain Theory and Neural Networks, M. Arbib, Ed.,
MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.
http://php.indiana.edu/~osporns/sporns.pdf
Day 2: Active Perception and the Episodic
Organization of Embodied Cognition
Reference:
Kampis, G. (2003): Active
Perception, Lecture at Tokyo University and Tamagawa University,
http://www.jaist.ac.jp/~g-kampis/ActiveP/Active_Perception.html
Additional Readings:
Dino Felluga: Introduction to
Narratology, http://www.sla.purdue.edu/academic/engl/theory/narratology/index.html
Day 3: Mechanisms as Reduced Causal
Systems that Support Narratives
Reference:
http://www.jaist.ac.jp/~g-kampis/Course/Four/Lecture_Four.html
Additional Readings:
Kampis, G. (2003): Causal Depth
and the Modal View of Causality, IUHPS/DLMPS World Conference, Oviedo, Spain,
August 8-13.
Section B.1 Methodology: Explanation, Causality, and Laws, http://www.jaist.ac.jp/~g-kampis/Oviedo/CausalDepth.html
Day 4: Intentionality and Agency
Reference:
http://www.jaist.ac.jp/~g-kampis/Intentionality/Causal_Intentionality.html
Additional Readings:
Miklosi, A. 1999. The ethological
analysis of imitation. Biological Review 74:347–374. ;
http://www.ifi.unizh.ch/ailab/people/lunga/Download/Seminar2001/imitation1.pdf
Day 5: Phenotype-Based Evolution, an Application
Reference:
Kampis, G. and Gulyas, L. (2004):
Sustained Evolution from Changing Interaction, Alife IX, Boston, to appear in
Proceedings (MIT Press)..
http://hps.elte.hu/~gk/EvoTech/Sustained.pdf
Additional Readings:
Kampis, G. (2002): Towards an
Evolutionary Technology (Japanese, in press). English version: http://www.jaist.ac.jp/~g-kampis/EvoTech/Towards.html
Laland, K.N.; Odling-Smee, J.; and Feldman, M.W. 2000. Niche Construction, Biological
Evolution and Cultural Change, Behav. Brain Sc., 23(1):131—146.
http://www.bbsonline.org/documents/a/00/00/05/28/bbs00000528-00/bbs.laland.html