Would IT have happened had Greenspan studied SGCS?

coberst

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Would IT have happened had Greenspan studied SGCS?

Allan Greenspan is the former director of the Federal Reserve; “IT” is the giant financial boondoggle that almost sent the globe into another Great Depression.

Greenspan admitted that the “model” he was trusting was mistaken. The model in which he had placed his trust is the utilitarian model also known as the consequentialist normative theory that, according to Fieser, means that “correct moral conduct is determined solely by a cost-benefit analysis of an action’s consequences”. Fieser, J. Ethics: Consequentialist Theories--Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

SGCS (Second Generation Cognitive Science) informs us that the “utilitarian person, for whom rationality is economic rationality—the maximization of utility—does not exist. Real human beings are not, for the most part, in conscious control of—or even consciously aware of—their reasoning.”

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 rule of thumb among cognitive scientists that unconscious thought is 95 percent of all thought—and that may be a serious underestimate.”

Categorization, the first level of abstraction from “Reality” is our first level of conceptualization and thus of knowing. Seeing is a process that includes categorization, we see something as an interaction between the seer and what is seen. “Seeing typically involves categorization.”

Our categories are what we consider to be real in the world: tree, rock, animal…Our concepts are what we use to structure our reasoning about these categories. Concepts are neural structures that are the fundamental means by which we reason about categories.

Human categories, the stuff of experience, are reasoned about in many different ways. These differing ways of reasoning, these different conceptualizations, are called prototypes and represent the second level of conceptualization

Typical-case prototype conceptualization modes are “used in drawing inferences about category members in the absence of any special contextual information. Ideal-case prototypes allow us to evaluate category members relative to some conceptual standard…Social stereotypes are used to make snap judgments…Salient exemplars (well-known examples) are used for making probability judgments…Reasoning with prototypes is, indeed, so common that it is inconceivable that we could function for long without them.”

When we conceptualize categories in this fashion we often envision them using spatial metaphors. Spatial relation metaphors form the heart of our ability to perceive, conceive, and to move about in space. We unconsciously form spatial relation contexts for entities: ‘in’, ‘on’, ‘about’, ‘across from’ some other entity are common relationships that make it possible for us to function in our normal manner.

When we perceive a black cat and do not wish to cross its path our imagination conceives container shapes such that we do not penetrate the container space occupied by the cat at some time in its journey. We function in space and the container schema is a normal means we have for reasoning about action in space. Such imaginings are not conscious but most of our perception and conception is an automatic unconscious force for functioning in the world.

Our manner of using language to explain experience provides us with an insight into our cognitive structuring process. Perceptual cues are mapped onto cognitive spaces wherein a representation of the experience is structured onto our spatial-relation contour. There is no direct connection between perception and language.

The claim of cognitive science is “that the very properties of concepts are created as a result of the way the brain and the body are structured and the way they function in interpersonal relations and in the physical world.”


Quotes from Philosophy in the Flesh by Lakoff and Johnson


 
Hi coberst,

This caught my eye:
SGCS (Second Generation Cognitive Science) informs us that the “utilitarian person, for whom rationality is economic rationality—the maximization of utility—does not exist. Real human beings are not, for the most part, in conscious control of—or even consciously aware of—their reasoning.”
Do you happen to have specific articles on this?
 
Hi coberst,

This caught my eye:
SGCS (Second Generation Cognitive Science) informs us that the “utilitarian person, for whom rationality is economic rationality—the maximization of utility—does not exist. Real human beings are not, for the most part, in conscious control of—or even consciously aware of—their reasoning.”
Do you happen to have specific articles on this?



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 rule of thumb among cognitive scientists that unconscious thought is 95 percent of all thought—and that may be a serious underestimate.”

Categorization, the first level of abstraction from “Reality” is our first level of conceptualization and thus of knowing. Seeing is a process that includes categorization, we see something as an interaction between the seer and what is seen. “Seeing typically involves categorization.”

Our categories are what we consider to be real in the world: tree, rock, animal…Our concepts are what we use to structure our reasoning about these categories. Concepts are neural structures that are the fundamental means by which we reason about categories.

Human categories, the stuff of experience, are reasoned about in many different ways. These differing ways of reasoning, these different conceptualizations, are called prototypes and represent the second level of conceptualization

Typical-case prototype conceptualization modes are “used in drawing inferences about category members in the absence of any special contextual information. Ideal-case prototypes allow us to evaluate category members relative to some conceptual standard…Social stereotypes are used to make snap judgments…Salient exemplars (well-known examples) are used for making probability judgments…Reasoning with prototypes is, indeed, so common that it is inconceivable that we could function for long without them.”

When we conceptualize categories in this fashion we often envision them using spatial metaphors. Spatial relation metaphors form the heart of our ability to perceive, conceive, and to move about in space. We unconsciously form spatial relation contexts for entities: ‘in’, ‘on’, ‘about’, ‘across from’ some other entity are common relationships that make it possible for us to function in our normal manner.

When we perceive a black cat and do not wish to cross its path our imagination conceives container shapes such that we do not penetrate the container space occupied by the cat at some time in its journey. We function in space and the container schema is a normal means we have for reasoning about action in space. Such imaginings are not conscious but most of our perception and conception is an automatic unconscious force for functioning in the world.

Our manner of using language to explain experience provides us with an insight into our cognitive structuring process. Perceptual cues are mapped onto cognitive spaces wherein a representation of the experience is structured onto our spatial-relation contour. There is no direct connection between perception and language.

The claim of cognitive science is “that the very properties of concepts are created as a result of the way the brain and the body are structured and the way they function in interpersonal relations and in the physical world.”


Quotes from Philosophy in the Flesh by Lakoff and Johnson
 
Is Lakoff and Johnson saying that all choices are deterministic and therefore freewill is an illusion, and qualias are "flesh-bound"?
 
Is Lakoff and Johnson saying that all choices are deterministic and therefore freewill is an illusion, and qualias are "flesh-bound"?

Lakoff and Johnson are saying that much of our cognitive life is unconscious. However, we have a degree of freedom but it is not absolute as many might think.

One might reasonably say that we are all philosophers; especially we might say that we are all metaphysicians. Metaphysics is about what is real; of course we all constantly are deciding as to what is real. “It is through our conceptual systems that we are able to make sense of everyday life, and our everyday metaphysics is embodied in those conceptual systems.”

CS (cognitive science), a relatively new domain of knowledge, is a scientific discipline that utilizes empirical evidence, available to us now as a result of technology, to study conceptual systems. CS has discovered that most of our thought is unconscious.[/b]

Most of our thinking is unconscious not in the Freudian sense that it is repressed but in the sense that it operates below cognitive awareness; it operates too fast and it is not accessible to consciousness. Just examine an instance where you are having a conversation with a friend while driving: relevant memories must be accessed, language must be decoded into images (we think in images not in language), proper sentence structure is required to communicate coherently, interpreting body language of the friend, and all the while keeping the car on the road and driving in a safe manner.
 
Lakoff and Johnson are saying that much of our cognitive life is unconscious. However, we have a degree of freedom but it is not absolute as many might think.

So while impulses may rise up from our subconscious, we can override these impulses at the conscious level?

One might reasonably say that we are all philosophers; especially we might say that we are all metaphysicians. Metaphysics is about what is real; of course we all constantly are deciding as to what is real. “It is through our conceptual systems that we are able to make sense of everyday life, and our everyday metaphysics is embodied in those conceptual systems.”

CS (cognitive science), a relatively new domain of knowledge, is a scientific discipline that utilizes empirical evidence, available to us now as a result of technology, to study conceptual systems. CS has discovered that most of our thought is unconscious.[/b]

Most of our thinking is unconscious not in the Freudian sense that it is repressed but in the sense that it operates below cognitive awareness; it operates too fast and it is not accessible to consciousness. Just examine an instance where you are having a conversation with a friend while driving: relevant memories must be accessed, language must be decoded into images (we think in images not in language), proper sentence structure is required to communicate coherently, interpreting body language of the friend, and all the while keeping the car on the road and driving in a safe manner.

Interestingly, I've read that for those highly skilled in certain meditation, they could observe their subconscious activities. For example, they can see themselves falling asleep and waking up.

Btw, does CS has any explanations for the hard problem of qualias?
 
So while impulses may rise up from our subconscious, we can override these impulses at the conscious level?


Interestingly, I've read that for those highly skilled in certain meditation, they could observe their subconscious activities. For example, they can see themselves falling asleep and waking up.

Btw, does CS has any explanations for the hard problem of qualias?


Ego says, HOLD IT, TIME OUT! The ego allows us control the unconscous from becoming conscious.

The ego is our command center; it is the “internal gyroscope” and creator of time for the human. It controls the individual; especially it controls individual’s response to the external environment. It keeps the individual independent from the environment by giving the individual time to think before acting. It is the device that other animal do not have and thus they instinctively respond immediately to the world.

The id is our animal self. It is the human without the ego control center. The id is reactive life and the ego changes that reactive life into delayed thoughtful life. The ego is also the timer that provides us with a sense of yesterday, today, and tomorrow. By doing so it makes us into philosophical beings conscious of our self as being separate from the ‘other’ and placed in a river of time with a terminal point—death. This time creation allows us to become creatures responding to symbolic reality that we alone create.

As a result of the id there is a “me” to which everything has a focus of being. The most important job the ego has is to control anxiety that paradoxically the ego has created. With a sense of time there comes a sense of termination and with this sense of death comes anxiety that the ego embraces and gives the “me” time to consider how not to have to encounter anxiety.

Evidence indicates that there is an “intrinsic symbolic process” is some primates. Such animals may be able to create in memory other events that are not presently going on. “But intrinsic symbolization is not enough. In order to become a social act, the symbol must be joined to some extrinsic mode; there must exist an external graphic mode to convey what the individual has to express…but it also shows how separate are the worlds we live in, unless we join our inner apprehensions to those of others by means of socially agreed symbols.”

“What they needed for a true ego was a symbolic rallying point, a personal and social symbol—an “I”, in order to thoroughly unjumble himself from his world the animal must have a precise designation of himself. The “I”, in a word, has to take shape linguistically…the self (or ego) is largely a verbal edifice…The ego thus builds up a world in which it can act with equanimity, largely by naming names.” The primate may have a brain large enough for “me” but it must go a step further that requires linguistic ability that permits an “I” that can develop controlled symbols with “which to put some distance between him and immediate internal and external experience.”

I conclude from this that many primates have the brain that is large enough to be human but in the process of evolution the biological apparatus that makes speech possible was the catalyst that led to the modern human species. The ability to emit more sophisticated sounds was the stepping stone to the evolution of wo/man. This ability to control the vocal sounds promoted the development of the human brain.

Ideas and quotes from “Birth and Death of Meaning”—Ernest Becker


SGCS (Second Generation Cognitive Science) would answer your question about quale by saying that meaning is the foundation of all qualias.

"Meaning is not a thing; it involves what is meaningful to us. Nothing is meaningful in itself. Meaningfulness derives from the experience of functioning as a being of a certain sort in an envirinment of a certain sort."

I would say that all comprehension is a function of meaning. Comprehension can be usefully thought of as a pyramid with awareness at the base followed by consciousness (awareness that become conscious) followed by knowing with understanding at the pinnacle.
 
I don't know Coberst, but it looks suspiciously like a form of homunculus argument.
 
I don't know Coberst, but it looks suspiciously like a form of homunculus argument.



SGCS has introduced revolutionary theories that are incompatible with our cultural comprehension of the human sciences.

I have lived with this domain of knowledge for several years and my understanding is yet very sketchy.

Unfortunately new theories in the human sciences take generations to filter down to DickandJane. That is why I have reached the conclusion that our civilization and perhaps our species are not sustainable.
 
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