After Cognitivism: A Reassessment of Cognitive Science and Philosophy

ISBN-13: 9781402099915 / Angielski / Twarda / 2009 / 229 str.

Karl Leidlmair

Opis

There is a basic perplexity in our times. On the one hand, we ?nd a blind trust in technology and rationalism. In our neo-liberalistically dominated world only what can be rapidly exploited and commercialized seems to count. The only opposing reaction to this kind of rationalism is an extreme rejection of all kinds of reasoning, and sometimes attendant religious fundamentalism. But instead of re?ecting on the limits and possibilites of reasoning, dialogue is replaced by a demagogic struggle between cultures. One cause of the blind trust in technology is misunderstandings about the sign- cance and the application of theories in the reception of the so-called Enlightenment. The Enlightenment is essentially characterized by two forces: (i) the conception of society as a social contract and (ii) the new science (New- nian physics, etc.). But as a result we lost ground: Atomistic individualism nourished the illusion of a self-contained ego prior to man s entering into a shared inter-subjective world. And in the new science, our constructions of reality became autonomous and indep- dent of our interventions. Thus we became caught in the inherent dynamism of our computational constructions of reality. Science, as it is applied today, operates with far too simple parameters and model-theoretic constructions erroneously taking the latter (the models) as literal descriptions of reality."

Spis treści

1. The Pragmatic Dimension: a Reassessment of Scientific Theories. 1.1. Towards a Technology- and Action-oriented Methodology of Constructive Realism, H. Lenk. 1.2. The Three Enligthenments, H. Putnam. 2. Artificial Intelligence and the Embodiment of the Mind. 2.1. Why Heidggerian AI Failed and how Fixing it would Require making it more Heideggerian, H. Dreyfus. 2.2. The New Orthodoxy: Humans, Animals, Heidegger and Dreyfus, H. Collins. 2.3. The Key to the Chinese Room, S. Gallagher. 3. Socialization in the Internet between Dissolution and Extension of the Human Self. 3.1. The Play of Imagination: Extending the Literary Mind, D. Thomas, J.S. Brown. 3.2. Reading the World Upside-Down. How to Deal with Frozen Knowledge, K. Leidlmair. 3.3. On the significance of the 'lower' senses: Touch, Smell and Taste, B. Becker. 4. New Research Strategies in Psychology and Psychotherapy. 4.1. We can think with the implicit, as well as with fully-formed concepts, E. Gendlin. 4.2. Embodied Knowledge in Design, P. Sachse, M. Furtner. 4.3. The Second Cognitive Revolution, R. Harré. 5. Ethical and Economic aspects. 5.1. The illusion of free will and its acceptance, G. Trautteur. 5.2. Three Concepts of Liberty, S. Shanker. 5.3. Premises and Promises of Economic Theory Formation, F. Hörmann.

O autorze

1973-1979 studies in philosophy and psychology

1979 doctorate in philosophy (title of dissertation: Die hermeneutischen Grundlagen Wittgensteins)

1990 Habilitation (habilitation treatise: Künstliche Intelligence und Heidegger)

1990 bis 1994 (co)Director of International Summer Schools In Philosophy And Artificial Intelligence, Bozen/Italy

1993-1996 research assistent at IFF (Institute for interdisciplinary studies in technology at the universities of Innsbruck, Klagenfurt and Vienna).

1.October 1997 Associate Professor at the institute of psychology university Innsbruck

1.10.2008 Head of the department of the institute of psychology

Homepage: www.leidlmair.at

Blurb

The present book comprises a collection of papers dealing with the reassessment of thinking in Cognitive Science and in Philosophy today.

Still dependent on basic assumptions of Cartesian philosophy, Cognitive Science took over the mistakes of classical computational models. Instead of being treated as mere or pure explanations of mental processes with hindsight, these models were mistakenly used as more or less literal causal descriptions of the (working of the) mind. A clear insight into the relevance of embodied and embedded knowledge is not only a central topic in AI research; it can become a driving force for a reassessment of philosophy. Philosophy, which is struggling with the two opposite alternatives of cultural relativism and rationalism, both of which have turned out to be dead ends, is in need of a reassessment of reasoning. What is needed is a reasoning without reference to ultimate reasons which at the same time is grounded (and doesn’t fall into the trap of cultural relativism).