Please distribute...
You are hereby invited to our twenty-first "Evolution, Complexity and
Cognition (ECCO)" seminar of 2005:
Muscularity of
Mind:
Towards an Explanation of the
Transition from Unconscious to Conscious
by
(Tata Institute of Fundamental
Research, Mumbay, India)
Place: room 3C204 (building C, 3rd floor), VUB campus
Oefenplein
Time:
Thursday, August 4, at 17:30 h.
(note: this is not on the usual Friday!)
Abstract:
It is argued in this essay that the problem of higher cognitive
abilities including consciousness cannot be solved without
establishing the physiological coupling that exists between nervous,
sensory and muscular subsystems (modules) of a cognitive agent.
Current scholarship neglected the role of the motor subsystem in
higher cognition and therefore failed to solve the puzzle. The
argument begins by making a crucial distinction between harder and
softer motor operations, where the latter are produced by the
voluntary muscles that are emancipated from the mandatory biological
(hard-wired) operations. Such operations form the basis of
cognition by modulating the perceptual field generated by the input
subsystems, contra encapsulated modules. The root of
consciousness is due to another layer of self generated operations,
softer reflexive motor operations. Modulation of modules help
in creating cross-representations and differentiation of difference,
which forms the basis for declarative knowledge, thus explaining the
transition from unconscious procedural knowledge to conscious
declarative knowledge.
More info:
full paper: http://cogprints.org/4352/.
and a related paper:
http://db.hbcse.tifr.res.in/gn/finalReview.pdf
About the speaker:
Dr. Nagarjuna G. works at the Homi Bhabha Centre for Science
Education, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research as Fellow E.
He works in the area of Biological roots of cognition, Knowledge
Organization, Metacognitive studies, History and Philosophy of
Science, and is an advocate of Free Software for Education and
Research. Currently he is developing an expert system for
knowledge management called "GNOWSYS: Gnowledge Networking and
Organizing System" developed in Python and Zope. He is the
coordinator of the Centre's portal site development for science and
mathematics education, which will be launched soon at
http://www.gnowledge.org/ and http://www.gnoware.org /
He will be staying at ECCO, VUB as visiting scientist until the
end of August. He is currently engaged in writing about four
metasystem transitions:
- from matter to living matter
- from living matter to cognitive systems
- from cognitive systems to conscious cognitive systems
- from folklore to science.
ECCO seminar programme coming weeks
This is the second in a series of ECCO seminars by Dr. Nagarjuna
on major metasystem transitions. The next one will be on:
- Towards a Model of Life and Cognition.
--
Francis Heylighen
"Evolution, Complexity and Cognition" research group
Free University of Brussels
http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/HEYL.html
http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/HEYL.html
--
Francis Heylighen
Evolution, Complexity and Cognition group
Free University of Brussels
http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/HEYL.html
Francis Heylighen
Evolution, Complexity and Cognition group
Free University of Brussels
http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/HEYL.html
