Symbolic Cognition Research Articles

Politinio mąstymo metmenys Immanuelio Kanto kritinėje filosofijoje

Immanuel Kant’s critical philosophy revolutionised thinking and left unanswered the question of how politics as philosophy and science is possible. Hannah Arendt was right to associate politics with the reflective power of decision, but she left unanswered the questions of what conception of politics is implied by Kant’s critical system and what are the limits of political philosophy and political science. The paper argues that politics is an aesthetic idea and therefore has no objectively universal definition and remains necessarily open to interpretation by various epistemic and political communities. Aesthetic ideas also substantiate the possibility of political science as symbolic cognition and reformulate the challenge of political philosophy to confine politics solely within the judgment.

Prehistory, anti-Cartesianism, and the first-person viewpoint

AbstractThe concept of mind is widely used in today’s debates on the lives, behavior, and cognition of prehistoric hominins. It is therefore presumably an important concept. Yet it is very rarely defined, and in most cognitive-archaeological literature, it does not seem to point to anything distinctive. In recent years, talk of minds has also been criticized as being internalistic and dualistic, in supposed contrast to new materialistic and externalistic approaches. In this paper, I aim to defend a different concept of mind which can be used in theorizing about prehistoric hominin cognition. In short, my concept is simply that of the first-person viewpoint, understood in a naturalized manner, and as characterized by intentionality. The discussion proceeds by examining what I perceive to be three prevailing misconceptions about minds, which I derive mainly from the archaeological literature. I use this discussion to outline my own concept of mind, as well as to defend it against the frequently heard criticisms of dualism and internalism. In the final parts, I briefly discuss some potential practical applications of an intentional approach to past minds. Here I focus on certain conceptual problems in debates on symbolic cognition.

Intentionality, pointing, and early symbolic cognition

Concepts such as “symbolism” and “symbolic cognition” often remain unspecified in discussions the symbolic capacities of earlier hominins. In this paper, I use conceptual tools from phenomenology to reflect on the origins of early symbolic cognition. In particular, I discuss the possible early use of pointing gestures around the time of the earliest known stone tool industries. I argue that unlike more basic social acts such as expression, gaze following, and attention-getters, which are used by extant non-human great apes, communicative pointing involves key elements that are characteristic of symbolic cognition. In particular, it involves “third order intentionality” as well as “shared practice horizons”: shared frameworks of understanding which are required for the interpretation of communicative acts whose meaning is not codified indexically or iconically in the signaling behavior. In the final part, I briefly review some indications for the use of pointing gestures around the time of the Lomekwian and Oldowan industries, as a way to sustain cooperation and possibly learning by instruction. It is suggested that pointing is more complex than is standardly acknowledged, and that it may have been an important communicative act for Early Stone Age hominins in transitioning to more fully symbolic speech capacities.

기호 인지 체계의 전환 측면에서 글자 그림책의 교육적 활용 방안

Objectives This study explored the educational use of lettered picture books in terms of shifting the symbol cog-nition system.
 Methods Based on research in cognitive neuroscience, we discuss the symbolic cognitive switch that accom-panies learning to read. Symbolic cognition shifts mean that the same visual and auditory symbols are processed in different ways than before. At the early reading level, the educational use of picture books needs to focus on building an expert system for skillful decoding.
 Results Letter picture books are effective in promoting visual identification of letter forms, recognition and com-bination of words and materials, and mastery of phonological and representational correspondences. In light of this, the study suggested the following educational uses of letter picture books: visual exposure to different letter forms, opportunities to practice separating and combining graphemes, and play for mastery of phonological and representational correspondences.
 Conclusions This study attempts to bridge the gap between research in cognitive neuroscience and early reading learning by focusing on lettered picture books. Cognitive neuroscience research on reading has provided insights into the development of reading skills and learning to read that cannot be ignored. We look forward to productive communication between various academic disciplines centered on reading.

In the Land of Metaxú

The article poses a question about the role of symbolic cognition in philosophical cognition. The starting point is the analysis of Diotima's famous speech quoted by Socrates in Plato's Symposium. The issue is presented in a panoramic approach from ancient to modern times.

How to create interactive rituals: Key factors and strategic configurations for host-guest interaction in boutique hotels

Host-guest interactions in boutique hotels can improve guest satisfaction and word-of-mouth communication, as well as contribute to the sustainable development of the brand image of boutique hotels. However, existing studies have less research on the micro-sociological perspective of interaction in boutique hotels, and this issue needs to be further discussed. This study adopts grounded theory and fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (FsQCA)respectively, exploring the multiple paths and combinatorial relationships of the intrinsic influence of multiple factors on the host-guest interaction of boutique hotels from a holistic perspective, taking a typical boutique hotel in an ethnic minority region in China as an example. The results show that the intrinsic model of the host-guest interaction ritual of boutique hotels consists of two paths of interactive ritual preparation, elements, and results, the successful ritual path can lead to the interaction of the host-guest to generate brand symbolic cognition and group ethnic cultural identity, and the failed ritual path fails to form the collective ritual of host-guest interaction and brand image cognition, subsequently, there are four antecedent combinations that can realize the common influence of the interactive ritual of boutique hotels and combinatorial relationships, and these antecedent combinations are classified as behavior-intention dominant, interaction-satisfaction dominant, cultural interaction dominant, and behavior-satisfaction-cultural perception dominant. This study innovates the research perspective of micro-sociology of boutique hotels, identifying the key factors and multiple paths of successful host-guest interaction rituals, and expands the application of host-guest interaction theory to provide an empirical basis for the effectiveness transformation and brand value enhancement of existing boutique hotel host-guest interaction rituals.

SymCog: An open-source toolkit for assessing human symbolic cognition.

Symbol systems have a profound influence on human behavior, spanning countless modalities such as natural language, clothing styles, monetary systems, and gestural conventions (e.g., handshaking). Selective impairments in understanding and manipulating symbols are collectively known as asymbolia. Here we address open questions about the nature of asymbolia in the context of both historical and contemporary approaches to human symbolic cognition. We describe a tripartite perspective on symbolic cognition premised upon (1) mental representation of a concept, (2) a stored pool of symbols segregated from their respective referents, and (3) fast and accurate mapping between concepts and symbols. We present an open-source toolkit for assessing symbolic knowledge premised upon matching animated video depictions of abstract concepts to their corresponding verbal and nonverbal symbols. Animations include simple geometric shapes (e.g., filled circles, squares) moving in semantically meaningful ways. For example, a rectangle bending under the implied weight of a large square denotes "heaviness." We report normative data for matching words and images to these target animations. In a second norming study, participants rated target animations across a range of semantic dimensions (e.g., valence, dominance). In a third study, we normed a set of concepts familiar to American English speakers but lacking verbal labels (e.g., the feeling of a Sunday evening). We describe how these tools may be used to assess human symbolic processing and identify asymbolic deficits across the span of human development.

Major Transitions in Human Evolutionary History

Eörs Szathmáry and John Maynard Smith famously argued that the evolution of life on earth has been marked by a series of transitions to greater complexity, the last being from primate to human societies. I argue that this last transition, covering all of human evolutionary history, in turn comprises two phases: the first defined by increases in the capacity of the human brain/mind to structurally integrate causal inferences and selectively apply them to construct increasingly sophisticated sociocultural niches; the second defined by manipulation of the universal Darwinian mechanisms driving sociocultural evolution. During the first phase, hominin cognitive structure passed through three key transitions to produce the brain/mind of archaic Homo sapiens. The fourth transition, to fully modern Homo sapiens sapiens equipped with symbolic cognition and language, marks the fulcrum that leveraged the second phase in which changes in the scope and rate of niche construction were primarily driven by manipulation of sociocultural evolutionary mechanisms. The fifth transition to sedentary living enabled new selection pressures to be exerted through the concentration and application of social power, while the sixth transition multiplied the cognitive variation available to construct more elaborate sociocultural niches. Finally I note that decreasing intervals between transitions creates a pattern of accelerating sociocultural change.

G.W. Leibniz: From the “Symbolic Revolution” in Mathematics to the Concept of Suppositive Cognition

The transition from the exclusive use of words to the predominant use of symbols in mathematics continued for centuries, but by the seventeenth century it turned out to be explosive. This phenomenon became known as the “symbolic revolution” in mathematics. One of its main outcomes was the discovery of mathematical analysis almost simultaneously and independently by Isaac Newton and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. To both scientists their discovery served as the basis for far-reaching philosophical generalizations. For Leibniz, it led to the concept of suppositive cognition, the opposite of the prevailing notions at that time. He was the first to argue that the criterion of clarity and distinctness in cognition is impossible, because it relies on intuition about primary concepts, but these are in fact confuse and undistinct, and the foundation of such cognition is shaky. Using the successful use of symbols in mathematics as a model, Leibniz arrives at the concept of blind or symbolic cognition, cognitio caeca, which makes it possible to achieve validity and verifiability of results without reliance on intuition or primary concepts. The truthfulness of the result is found to depend more on grammar, which determines the substitution rules of some signs, or characters, for others, than on the connection between signs and the signified. Leibniz’s opening debate served as a prologue to the fundamental modernization of scientific discourse in the early Modern Time. Although he failed to achieve entirely his philosophical goals, the concept itself turned out to be extremely productive and modern, effectively decoupling the progress of natural science from its philosophical foundations. This innovative cognitive ideology opened up enormous prospects for the formation and accumulation of new knowledge, closed by the rigid requirements of the Cartesian paradigm of science still dominant in Leibniz’s time.

Conceivability Errors and the Role of Imagination in Symbolization

n the years 1675-84, Leibniz sought to disprove Descartes’s account of clear and distinct perception by implementing a three-step argumentative strategy. The first part of the paper reconstructs the argument and highlights what aspects of Descartes’s epistemology it addresses. The reconstruction shows that the argument is based on conceivability errors. These are a kind of symbolic cognition that prove Descartes’s clear and distinct perception as introspectively indistinguishable from Leibniz’s symbolic cognition. The second part of the paper explores the epistemic implication of the indistinguishability between clear and distinct perception and symbolic cognition: the mind constitutively depends on products of the imagination. My conclusion addresses the role of the imagination in symbolization. Symbolization does not exceed imagination; it rather is an idealized use of cognitive surrogates, like characters, to submit to the imagination what is not subject to it.

Capturing the objects of vision with neural networks.

Human visual perception carves a scene at its physical joints, decomposing the world into objects, which are selectively attended, tracked and predicted as we engage our surroundings. Object representations emancipate perception from the sensory input, enabling us to keep in mind that which is out of sight and to use perceptual content as a basis for action and symbolic cognition. Human behavioural studies have documented how object representations emerge through grouping, amodal completion, proto-objects and object files. By contrast, deep neural network models of visual object recognition remain largely tethered to sensory input, despite achieving human-level performance at labelling objects. Here, we review related work in both fields and examine how these fields can help each other. The cognitive literature provides a starting point for the development of new experimental tasks that reveal mechanisms of human object perception and serve as benchmarks driving the development of deep neural network models that will put the object into object recognition.

Chuang Tzu’s selflessness: mind-state and the cultural semiotics of jingshen

Abstract The cognitive paradigm of symbols in ancient Chinese philosophy is quite distinct from that of Western semiotic circles. Chuang Tzu, one of the most influential ancient Chinese philosophers, concentrates his study on exploring the state of the subject’s selflessness and establishes his own cognitive paradigm of jingshen. This paper uses his statements of “I lost myself” and “The Perfect Man uses his mind like a mirror” in The adjustment of controversies of The Chuang Tzu, to investigate the ideal selfless mind-state and selflessness. It attempts to transfer the relationship between subject and object in symbolic cognition into the connection of intersubjectivity to construct jingshen’s cognitive paradigm of releasing symbolic meaning. The task of this research is to overcome the limitation created by the subject–object relation and finally to be “the Perfect Man” who can know the Dao.

Grounded separation: can the sensorimotor be grounded in the symbolic?

According to Lee and Schwarz, the sensorimotor experience of cleansing involves separating one physical entity from another and grounds mental separation of one psychological entity from another. We propose that cleansing effects may result from symbolic cognition. Instead of viewing abstract meanings as emerging from concrete physical acts of cleansing, this physical act may be appended with pre-existing, symbolic meaning.

The Cognitive Paradigm of Jingshen

Abstract At present, semiotic studies at home and abroad generally attach importance to the interpretation of symbols themselves, while the efforts in researching on the cognitive subject of symbols needs to be intensified and more attention should be paid to the process of symbolic activities. Cultural semiotics of jingshen attempts to construct a brand-new cognitive paradigm, not only to interpret the meaning of symbols, but also to develop the study of the relationship between the subject and the object in symbolic activities. In fact, the process of symbolic activities has been constantly emphasized in traditional Chinese culture. Although for an individual “the known” is infinite and “the knowable” is finite, the limitation of “the knowable” can be overcome through “self-cultivation.” The Chinese sages raised the concept of the “unity of three-tiered self-cultivation,” namely “unity of the mind and the body,” “unity of the mind and the objective world,” and “unity of apriorism and empiricism.” From the perspective of the cognitive paradigm, this concept gives due attention to the process of symbolic activities by emphasizing the effect of the cultivation of the cognitive subject on symbolic cognition and interpretation. The unity of the “three-tiered self-cultivation” of the cognitive subject can promote the development of a cultural semiotics of jingshen to construct an ideal cognitive paradigm in pursuing jingshen freedom and liberating symbolic meaning.

The computational origin of representation.

Each of our theories of mental representation provides some insight into how the mind works. However, these insights often seem incompatible, as the debates between symbolic, dynamical, emergentist, sub-symbolic, and grounded approaches to cognition attest. Mental representations-whatever they are-must share many features with each of our theories of representation, and yet there are few hypotheses about how a synthesis could be possible. Here, I develop a theory of the underpinnings of symbolic cognition that shows how sub-symbolic dynamics may give rise to higher-level cognitive representations of structures, systems of knowledge, and algorithmic processes. This theory implements a version of conceptual role semantics by positing an internal universal representation language in which learners may create mental models to capture dynamics they observe in the world. The theory formalizes one account of how truly novel conceptual content may arise, allowing us to explain how even elementary logical and computational operations may be learned from a more primitive basis. I provide an implementation that learns to represent a variety of structures, including logic, number, kinship trees, regular languages, context-free languages, domains of theories like magnetism, dominance hierarchies, list structures, quantification, and computational primitives like repetition, reversal, and recursion. This account is based on simple discrete dynamical processes that could be implemented in a variety of different physical or biological systems. In particular, I describe how the required dynamics can be directly implemented in a connectionist framework. The resulting theory provides an "assembly language" for cognition, where high-level theories of symbolic computation can be implemented in simple dynamics that themselves could be encoded in biologically plausible systems.

Symbolic Cognition in Poetic Experience: Re-representing the Paraphrase Paradox

Abstract This article considers an apparent tension between, on the one hand, a widespread belief among literature teachers that the appreciation of a poem involves an experience of form-content inseparability and, on the other hand, these same teachers’ use of paraphrase to encourage appreciation. Using Terrence Deacon’s model of art experience, I argue that the tensions of this ‘paraphrase paradox’ mirror tensions inherent in poetic experience. Section II draws upon work by Rafe McGregor, Peter Lamarque, and Peter Kivy to frame an approach to the form-content distinction, and to offer a brief overview of the paraphrase paradox. Sections III-IV summarize Deacon’s model of aesthetic experience, and argue that this model implies that poetic experience both triggers an impulse towards paraphrase, and frustrates this impulse. Section V looks at implications for the poetry teacher’s attempts to navigate the paraphrase paradox. Section VI tests these implications through an analysis of Philip Larkin’s poem ‘Faith Healing’.

Nothing to dance about: unclear evidence for symbolic representations and numerical competence in honeybees. A Comment on: Symbolic representation of numerosity by honeybees (Apis mellifera): matching characters to small quantities.

Nothing to dance about: unclear evidence for symbolic representations and numerical competence in honeybees. A Comment on: Symbolic representation of numerosity by honeybees (Apis mellifera): matching characters to small quantities.

What is Symbolic Cognition?

Humans’ capacity for so-called symbolic cognition is often invoked by evolutionary theorists, and in particular archaeologists, when attempting to explain human cognitive and behavioral uniqueness. But what is meant by “symbolic cognition” is often left underspecified. In this article, I identify and discuss three different ways in which the notion of symbolic cognition might be construed, each of them quite distinct. Getting clear on the nature of symbolic cognition is a necessary first step in determining what symbolic cognition might plausibly explain.

Links Between Painting and Neurology: The Example of Dementia.

Art is a system of human communication arising from symbolic cognition, conveying ideas, experiences, and feelings. The goal of this review is to describe the link between painting and dementia. Individuals with neurodegenerative diseases inevitably experience cognitive dysfunction that has the potential to limit and impair the artist's ability to realize their creative and expressive intentions through painting. The strategy to advance our understanding of the neural bases for art is to map locations and nature of neural damage to changes onto artistic production.

Rememorando o perigo: os discursos da mídia nas sucessivas retomadas dos grandes acidentes de origem científico-tecnológica

Embora focando o discurso jornalístico, este artigo discute a relação entre a informação apresentada em veículo de comunicação e sua repercussão no imaginário social. Essa aproximação entre as questões informacionais e as comunicacionais permite refletir teoricamente a respeito de seus impactos sobre a construção simbólica da população que recebe a informação. Além disso, ilustra o aparato teórico que estabelece relação direta entre informação e memória. É o que será abordado neste artigo. A referência a alguns dos piores desastres no cenário mundial leva em consideração aqueles que tiveram maior efeito sobre as pessoas e o meio ambiente. Observar os discursos jornalísticos empregados nos aniversários de grandes tragédias pode ajudar a descobrir o que pode ser apreendido em relação à essas rememorações periódicas que a mídia realiza, no intuito de compreender seu impacto no imaginário social. A rememoração cíclica dos grandes acidentes mundiais é o viés escolhido para analisar a memória de construção do discurso provocador do medo atômico. Trabalha-se com as múltiplas representações que a ideia de tempo pode ter dentro do jornalismo e observa-se que, ao celebrizar este ou aquele acontecimento, repetindo-o a cada período de tempo, a mídia se aproveita dele para autopromoção. O tempo e a memória representam estratégias discursivas para o jornalista, pois os vários usos do passado podem construir novas redes de sentido aos acontecimentos atuais, fazendo com que o valor-notícia desses fatos aumente. Como ilustração dessa premissa, analisam-se alguns artigos de celebrações de acidentes de origem nuclear: Chernobyl, em 1986, e Fukushima, em 2011, através dos quais, devido à uma distância temporal de 25 anos, é possível observar e ponderar sobre os discursos pré-construídos e os discursos transversos a esses acontecimentos, em um processo histórico de interpretação e de disputa na produção de sentidos.