What unites all of humanity?

[coberst]

What unites all of humanity?

 

Our cognitive structure unites all of humanity.

 

What is our cognitive structure?

 

SGCS (Second Generation Cognitive Science) has developed empirical evidence to support a revolutionary new comprehension of human cognition. These three major findings of a second generation of cognitive science are:

 

The mind is inherently embodied.

Thought is moistly unconscious.

Abstract concepts are largely metaphorical.

 

Taken together, in a gestalt understanding of human cognition, “these three findings from the science of the mind are inconsistent with central parts of Western philosophy”.

 

Our comprehension of cognition is of fundamental importance to our comprehension of our self and of the world that we inhabit. Our most basic beliefs are tied directly to our comprehension of human reason. “Reason has been taken for over two millennia as the defining characteristic of human beings. Reason includes not only our capacity for logical inference, but also our ability to conduct inquiry, to solve problems, to evaluate, to criticize, to deliberate about how we should act, and to reach an understanding of ourselves.”

 

The mind is inherently embodied

 

We have in our Western philosophy a traditional theory of faculty psychology wherein our reasoning is a faculty completely separate from the body. “Reason is seen as independent of perception and bodily movement.” It is this capacity of autonomous reason that makes us different in kind from all other animals. I suspect that many fundamental aspects of philosophy and psychology are focused upon declaring, whenever possible, the separateness of our species from all other animals.

 

This tradition of an autonomous reason began long before evolutionary theory and has held strongly since then without consideration, it seems to me, of the theories of Darwin and of biological science. Cognitive science has in the last three decades developed considerable empirical evidence supporting Darwin and not supporting the traditional theories of philosophy and psychology regarding the autonomy of reason. Cognitive science has focused a great deal of empirical science toward discovering the nature of the embodied mind.

 

“These findings of cognitive science are profoundly disquieting [for traditional thinking] in two respects. First, they tell us that human reason is a form of animal reason, a reason inextricably tied to our bodies and the peculiarities of our brains. Second, these results tell us that our bodies, brains, and interactions with our environment provide the mostly unconscious basis for our everyday metaphysics, that is, our sense of what is real...That is to say that the sensorimotor system in the human body can perform the functions required to conceptualize and, infer from those conceptions, in a manner required by human cognition. The logical assumption is that these self same sensorimotor neural networks are the networks the body uses to conceptualize during cognition.”

 

Thought is mostly unconscious

 

In the 1970s a new body of empirical research began to introduce findings that questioned the traditional Anglo-American cognitive paradigm of AI (Artificial Intelligence), i.e. symbol manipulation.

 

This research indicates that the neurological structures associated with sensorimotor activity are mapped directly to the higher cortical brain structures to form the foundation for subjective conceptualization in the human brain. In other words, our abstract ideas are constructed with copies of sensorimotor neurological structures as a foundation. “It is the rules of thumb among cognitive scientists that unconscious thought is 95 percent of all thought—and that may be a serious underestimate.”

 

Abstract concepts are largely metaphorical

 

Human reason is an extension of animal reason. The sensorimotor system in the human body can perform the functions required to conceptualize and to infer, i.e. the system controlling bodily movements and perception are theorized to be the same that is used for reasoning and that much of what we thing comes from the unconscious. That which comes from the unconscious has been conceptualized based upon our bodily interaction with the world. We have an embodied mind and the failure to recognize that fact is the primary difference

 

We constantly make subjective judgments regarding abstract things, such as morality, difficulty, importance; we also have subjective experiences such as affection, desire, and achievement.

 

The manner in which we reason, and visualize about these matters comes from other domains of experience. “These other domains are mostly sensorimotor domains…as when we conceptualize understanding an idea (subjective experience) in terms of grasping an object (sensorimotor experience)…The cognitive mechanism for such conceptualizations is conceptual metaphor, which allows us to use the physical logic of grasping to reason about understanding.”

 

Metaphor is pervasive throughout thought and language. Primary metaphors might properly be considered to be the fundamental building blocks for our thinking and our communication through language.

 

“The integrated theory –the four parts together—has an overwhelming implication: We acquire a large system of primary metaphors automatically and unconsciously simply by functioning in the most ordinary of ways in the everyday world from our earliest days…we all naturally think using hundreds of primary metaphors.”

 

In summation, we have many hundreds of primary metaphors, which together provide a rich inferential structure, imagery, and qualitative feel. These primary metaphors permit our sensorimotor experiences to be used to create subjective experiences. Thus abstract ideas are created that are grounded in everyday experiences.

 

In modern society new human science theories take generations to seep into the social consciousness. However, new natural science theories are quickly accepted or rejected; when accepted they can immediately impact the world in which we live.

 

Darwin informs us that the species that is unable to adapt adequately to the changing environment will quickly becomes toast.

 

Can our civilization, with such a disparity of innovative conditioning, long survive?

 

Quotes from Philosophy in the Flesh by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson

[Donk]

Thought is moistly unconscious.

Hence wetware. Nicely Freudian :lol:

[coberst]

I funny typo.

[Larv]

Coberst, I greatly enjoyed your post. Lot’s of interesting things there to mull over. I agree with some of it, but, naturally, I see things a little differently. I see language itself as the taproot of cognitive functions. But that’s a different tangent. What you are saying has positive meaning for me, especially when it comes down to metaphors. We cannot think or speak without metaphors. We cannot do science or religion without metaphors. A baby develops cognitive skills when it learns to swim in a sea of metaphors.

 

Can abstract cognition even happen without growing a metaphor out of the seed of experience?

 

As such, and risking OT criticism, I see our ocean of metaphors as a system of archetypes. It’s gotten so acute that I can see seasonal archetypes—spring, summer, fall and winter—in every human affair. I see geometric archetypes that cross over from astrology to physics. And I can see psychological archetypes that run from the Meyers-Briggs type indicator test to the I Ching. I'm dog paddling in an ocean of archetypes and metaphors, or so it seems. Without them I would surely drown.

[coberst]

Larv

 

It is a delight to run across someone who recognizes the importance of these discoveries. I post on other forums and seldom do I find a responder who can appreciate the importance of this theory. As I mentioned in the post new theories in the human sciences take generations to seep into the culture and that is very unfortunate.

 

I might just say that if one accepts the theory of evolution one must recognize that human cognition cannot originate with language.

[Larv]

Just a few thoughts, coberst:

 

I suspect that many fundamental aspects of philosophy and psychology are focused upon declaring, whenever possible, the separateness of our species from all other animals.

I can’t speak for all psychologists and philosophers but all scientists do not regard humans as separate from all other animals.

 

Besides that, here’s how I think scientists would react to other claims in your OP:

 

Our comprehension of cognition is of fundamental importance to our comprehension of our self and of the world that we inhabit. Our most basic beliefs are tied directly to our comprehension of human reason. “Reason has been taken for over two millennia as the defining characteristic of human beings. Reason includes not only our capacity for logical inference, but also our ability to conduct inquiry, to solve problems, to evaluate, to criticize, to deliberate about how we should act, and to reach an understanding of ourselves.”

OK, but later you go one to say that:

 

Human reason is an extension of animal reason.

This begs a rigorous definition of “reason,” because, to a scientist, attributing reason to animals is a gross error of anthropomorphism.

 

Metaphor is pervasive throughout thought and language. Primary metaphors might properly be considered to be the fundamental building blocks for our thinking and our communication through language.

Did reason come before language, or was it the other way around?

 

Thought is mostly unconscious

As a scientist I can’t imagine an unconsciousness thought. How would you ever know if you had one if you are unconscious of it. This part of the theory needs work.

 

In modern society new human science theories take generations to seep into the social consciousness. However, new natural science theories are quickly accepted or rejected; when accepted they can immediately impact the world in which we live.

 

Darwin informs us that the species that is unable to adapt adequately to the changing environment will quickly becomes toast.

 

Can our civilization, with such a disparity of innovative conditioning, long survive?

This seems a bit fluffy and fuzzy to me. Please bear in mind that humans civilization is doomed; it’s only a matter of time. We’ve living in an interglacial period, for one thing, and the glaciers will be back soon enough to plow us asunder, with or without global warming. Either that or the sun will enter its red giant phase 5 billion years from now and fry everything on this planet.

 

We are no different from other animals biologically, with one exception: we have a digital symbolic language with syntax, while other animals do not. You might call it an “extended phenotype” (Dawkins) or a tool invented by humans to enable their reflection and expedite their communication. A spider does not think when it builds its web, but a human has to think to build a fire.

 

So, after thinking about it for many, many years, I believe a human can have an experience without using a digital symbolic language filled with syntax and metaphors, but I don’t believe the human can reason or even think about the experience without such a language.

 

To me, a thought is not an experience; it is what you get out of an experience. You need a language—words & syntax—to have a thought. In fact, this is so deeply embedded in the roots of “human understanding” that it shows up in John 1:1: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

 

Try sometime to have a wordless thought. Maybe you can do it, but I can’t.

 

Well, what about dreams? They are not thoughts; they are experiences. When you think about a dream you automatically do so against a backdrop of metaphors, with which you construct your thought containing syntax through a symbolic language.

[coberst]

All of our acts and thoughts are based upon philosophical assumptions. Metaphysics is a fancy word for our concern about ‘what is real’. For example, whenever we think or speak about responsibility we are assuming causality. Without causality there is no responsibility. The nature and status of the self is another speculation, and an important one, in most decisions we make daily.

 

Politics is about forming perceived reality in accordance with points of view. In America we have two parties and each party attempts to move the electorate to perceive that party’s point of view is better than the other’s point of view.

 

We rely on our unconscious to furnish the building blocks for comprehension of reality. If we examine the cognitive sciences and other human sciences we see a constant emphasis about the unconscious. It is through our conceptual systems, which are unconscious, that we make sense of our every day existence and our everyday metaphysics exists within our conceptual system.

 

It appears to me that cognitive science has two paradigms; symbolic manipulation, which is also called AI (Artificial Intelligence) and the second paradigm, which might be called ‘conceptual metaphor’, or it might be called ‘embodied mind’, or ‘embodied realism’.

 

AI (Artificial Intelligence) research began shortly after WWII. Alan Turing was one of the important figures who decided that their efforts would not be focused on building machines but in programming computers.

 

The new potential paradigm for cognitive science has given us evolution-based realism. This is also called embodied-realism because it has abandoned the mind/body dichotomy that characterizes other forms of realism and is convinced that natural selection is the process by which the human species has developed.

 

Cognitive science studies our conceptual systems. Cognitive science has, since the 1970s, amassed a great deal of empirical evidence to conclude that most of our conceptual activities fly below our conscious radar. Our unconscious, which contains our stealth conceptual system, has been ignored by our Western philosophical tradition, thereby leading us astray in matters of great importance.

 

The ‘cognitive’ in cognitive science is used “for any kind of mental operation or structure that can be studied in precise terms. Most of these structures and operations have been found to be unconscious.” Visual and auditory processing--memory and attention--all aspects of thought and language--mental imagery--emotions and conceptual aspects of motor operations--and neural modeling of cognitive operation; all of these are part of the science known as cognitive science.

 

“Most of what we [sGCS (Second Generation Cognitive Science)] will be calling cognitive unconscious is thus for many philosophers not considered cognitive at all.” Cognitive for many philosophers’ means that which has truth-conditional meaning, “that is, meaning defined not internally in the mind or body, but by reference to things in the external world.”

 

This branch of cognitive science, “because our conceptual systems and our reason arise from our bodies, will also use the term cognitive for aspects of our sensorimotor system that contribute to our abilities to conceptualize and to reason. Since cognitive operations are largely unconscious, the term cognitive unconscious accurately describes all unconscious mental operations concerned with conceptual systems, meaning, inference, and language.”

 

The ‘bible’ for embodied-realism is “Philosophy in the Flesh” by Lakoff and Johnson. The paradigm of this cognitive science is ‘conceptual metaphor’. The fundamental findings from which all principles flow are:

• The mind is inherently embodied.

• Thought is mostly unconscious.

• Abstract concepts are largely metaphorical.

 

Let us imagine how human reason might have been born. The question seeking an answer is: how can natural selection (evolution) account for human reason?

 

Somewhere back in time we must encounter the signs of reason within the capacity of our ancestors. What is the essence of reason? The necessary and sufficient conditions for reason are conceptual and inference ability. To conceptualize is to create neural structures that can be used to facilitate making if-then inferences.

 

Imagine an early water dwelling creature, which must survive utilizing only the ability to move in space and to discriminate light and shadow. The sense of a shadow can indicate a friend or foe and can indicate eat or not eat. Assume that this sensibility has a total range of two feet, i.e. a shadow within a radius of two feet of the creature can be detected.

 

A shadow comes within sensible range, the creature can ‘decide’ by the size of the shadow whether the shadow is friend or foe and as a possible lunch. If the shadow is large the creature must ‘run’ if it is small the creature might ‘decide’ to pursue.

 

It seems obvious to me this simple creature must have the ability to reason in order to survive. This creature must be capable of ascertaining friend/foe and eat/not eat. It must also determine how to move based upon that conceptual structure. It must be able to make inferences from these concepts, these neural structures of what is sensed, to survive. This creature must have the capacity to perceive, conceive, infer, and move correctly in space in order to survive.

 

Continuing my imaginary journey; I have a friend who is the project engineer on a program to design robots. I ask this friend if it is possible for the computer model of a robot in action can perform the essential operations required for reasoning. She says, “I think so, but I will ask my robot simulation to do the things that are considered to be reasoning”.

 

She performs this operation and tells me that it is within the capacity of the robot movement system to also do reasoning. I conclude that if the sensorimotor control system of a creature also has the ability to reason, then biology would not recreate such a capacity and thus this sensorimotor capacity is also a reasoning capacity that evolves into our human capacity to reason.

 

Quotes from Philosophy in the Flesh by Lakoff and Johnson

[enorbet2]

Greetz Coberst, all

 

Before I go any further I would very much like to have your take on Robert Lanza, wunderkind of genetics, who seems to be making a crossover bid with biocentrism . Your thoughts please? While I am fairly confident that you, coberst, are familiar with this new theory, I post a link for anyone else interested.

Robert Lanza doesn’t seem to be kidding | Wired Science

and more recently

Robert Lanza, M.D.: Biocentrism, The New Face Of The Cosmos

 

So though I am interested in anything you have to say on biocentrism, naturally, I am wondering if it is consistent or even part of the cause for what you are saying here in this thread.

[coberst]

Greetz Coberst, all

 

Before I go any further I would very much like to have your take on Robert Lanza, wunderkind of genetics, who seems to be making a crossover bid with biocentrism . Your thoughts please? While I am fairly confident that you, coberst, are familiar with this new theory, I post a link for anyone else interested.

Robert Lanza doesn’t seem to be kidding | Wired Science

and more recently

Robert Lanza, M.D.: Biocentrism, The New Face Of The Cosmos

 

So though I am interested in anything you have to say on biocentrism, naturally, I am wondering if it is consistent or even part of the cause for what you are saying here in this thread.

 

 

I have made a brief scan of this theory and must say that it holds little inerest for me. I take just one paragraph:

"By treating space and time as fundamental and independent things, we pick a completely wrong starting point for understanding the world. In fact, new experiments are starting to confirm that quantum effects apply to the everyday world of human-scale objects."

 

It is, I agree, a common view that space and time are mind independent reality but it certainly has not been such for a long time to those who are a bit more sophsticated.

 

His effort to use QM to speak about these matters tend to turn me off. However, I will say that his ideas might have merit but they do not interest me enough to direct much effort in that direction.