Frederik, lists, I haven't spent much time of late studying the literature of contemporary neuroscience in general and Barsalou's theory in particular. Since I'm away from my desk until this evening, I thought I'd at least take a glance at some of that literature before re-reading your section on psychologism in NP. An hour or so ago I found this brief and cogent commentary on Barsalou's 'Perceptual Symbol Systems' which might also serve (I think) as an outline of some of his principal ideas. See: http://www.vub.ac.be/CLEA/liane/Reviews/Barsalou.htm
Here's a link to Barsalou's paper commented on: http://psychology.emory.edu/cognition/barsalou/papers/Barsalou_BBS_1999_perceptual_symbol_systems.pdf I've cut and pasted some intriguing snippets from the beginning of the commentary by Lianne Gaboro: To insist [as Barsalou does] that abstractions are just arrangements of perceptual symbols is like insisting that a plant is just seed + water + sunlight. [Rather] it seems more parsimonious to say that what was once a constellation of memories of similar experiences has organized itself into an entity whose structure and pattern reside primarily at a level that was not present in the constituents from which it was derived. This does not mean that abstractions can't retain something of their "perceptual character" [p. 5]. One from the middle: Barsalou pays surprisingly little attention to the highly relevant work of connectionists. The only rationale he provides is to say that because 'the starting weights between connections are set to small *random *values' ... 'the relation between a conceptual representation and its perceptual input is arbitrary' [p. 5, S1.2P8]. This is misleading. Just because there are many paths to an attractor doesn't mean the attractor is not attracting. Surely there are analogous small random differences in real brains. This quick dismissal of connectionism is unfortunate because it has addressed many of the issues Barsalou addresses, but its more rigorous approach leads to greater clarity. Consider, for example, what happens when a neural network abstracts a prototype such as the concept 'depth', which is used in senses ranging from 'deep blue sea' to 'deep-freezed vegetables' to 'deeply moving book'. The various context-specific interpretations of the word cancel one another out; thus the concept is, for all intents and purposes, amodal, though acquired through specific instances. There is no reason to believe this does not happen in brains as well. The organizational role Barsalou ascribes to 'simulators' emerges implictly in the dynamics of the neural network. Moreover, since Barsalou claims that "a concept is equivalent to a simulator" [p. 15, S2.4.3P2], it is questionable whether the new jargon earns its keep. Why not just stick with the word 'concept'? And one from the latter part of the article, pointing to her own research: Harder to counter is Barsalou's critique that an amodal system necessitates "evolving a radically new system of representation" [p. 40, S4.2P3]. Barsalou repeatedly hints at but does not explicitly claim that the origin of abstract thought presents a sort of chicken-and-egg problem. That is, it is difficult to see how an abstraction could come into existence before discrete perceptual memories have been woven into an interconnected worldview that can guide representational redescription down potentially fruitful paths. Yet it is just as difficult to see how the interconnected worldview could exist prior to the existence of abstractions; one would expect them to be the glue that holds the structure together. In [Gabora, 1998; Gabora, in press] I outline a speculative model of how this might happen, drawing on Kauffman's [1993] theory of how an information-evolving system emerges through the self-organization of an autocatalytic network. Self-organizing processes are rampant in natural systems [Kauffman 1993], and could quite conceivably produce a phase transition the catapults the kind of change in representational strategy that Barsalou rightly claims is necessary. Perhaps more on this tomorrow after I reread and reflect on your remarks in NP, Frederik. Meanwhile, I'd be very interested to see what you and other list members think of Gabora's critique of Barsalou as well as her own suggestion that since self-organizing processes are ubiquitous in nature that they "*could quite conceivably produce a phase transition the catapults the kind of change in representational strategy that Barsalou rightly claims is necessary**."* Best, Gary *Gary Richmond* *Philosophy and Critical Thinking* *Communication Studies* *LaGuardia College of the City University of New York* *C 745* *718 482-5690 <718%20482-5690>* On Mon, Sep 22, 2014 at 5:37 AM, Frederik Stjernfelt <stj...@hum.ku.dk> wrote: > Dear Lists - > Now we have taken several weeks discussing ch. 2 of "Natural Propositions" > concerning (anti-)psychologism. > Many interesting viewpoints and subjects have been marshaled - including > some not addressed in the chapter. > Absent, however, have been the chapter's discussion of contemporary > psychologism, discussed in the versions of Barsalou's symbol theory as well > as in contemporary neuroscience (which was what prompted me to write the > chapter in the first place - rather than Peirce philology). > If anyone have comments about those parts of the chapter, however, I would > still be interested in hearing them! > Best > Frederik >
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