Integration of cognitive systems
one of them being the integration of various levels of inquiry. The other the question of the integration of cognitive systems. The first question we expect just as there’re scientific faith and unity in nature or something, we expect that there’s going to be an answer to the first question whether we can find it or not. But there’s no particular reason to expect an answer to the second, there may be or there may not be. If there isn’t, there’s no unified cognitive science.
For the moment, there’s real progress in a few areas, incuding vision at the computational representational level and on this case, also at the cellular level. There’s progress in language, but almost solely at the computational representational level, and some performance, things like acquisition. There’s studies of conceptual development, closely related language quite interesting, there’s studies of probabilistic reasoning and error and various other topics. There all sorts of areas where there’s interesting results concerning human cognitive function, as far as I’m aware, or within the framework of pilot modular assumptions, which as I said, seemed to be natural. But we’re very far from any understanding of the articulation, the architecture, general structure of the mind brain apart from a very few specific modules which appear to have their own special design. That leaves most of the questions one might like to ask enshrouded in mystery, and it’s entirely possible that this is mystery of a kind that a human intelligence which after all has its own specific biological properties, is unable to penetrate even in principle.
One thing that struck me was that the statement of the child acquires language rapidly is interest relative in exactly the same fashion that the statement of Boston is near to New York. How do you answer some mind-brain functionalist, who comes to you and says the child acquires language excruciatingly slowly. We have this huge neural map. There are billions of synapse firings and billions of weight changes. If it is genuinely interest relative and the child acquires right language rapidly is only a true statement within some shared interest. How do you establish between yourself and mind brain person a shared interest that establish that your statement is true?
That’s a very good point. In fact, When I say that language is acquired very rapidly you’re absolutely right. That’s like John is almost home. What’s rapidly? That’s only meant to stimulate your imagination. It’s not meant as a proposal. The way to answer the question is to construct an explicit proposal as to how a language is acquired. Now there are specific proposals based on innate structure, kind of what I was saying before. If somebody can propose a general learning mechanism or some kind of a network or something that does anything, then we’ll have something to talk about. So far, the only thing we have is highly specific structures.
The idea that we seem to be wrecking our energies studying things that people don’t do very well that seems to point to something on even a mundane level for me. I get the feeling that all what might be called infrastructural problems in society are when it comes down to it moral problems we treat as economics problems and these sorts of things. And I believe that will have to do with people concentrating on things that humans do well. And when I think about it, I think that a lot of the things that people do well are very simple, subtle things that people also take for granted. And most of the people in this world seems to be running around trying to impress each other by doing things better that people don’t do very well. And I just wonder what you thought about this kind of thinking?
I’m not sure I understand the implications of what you’re saying. I agree with particular statements we ought to be studying things people do well, if we want to understand people. I also agree that the problems of society are in substantial part moral problems, but only in the sense that when we plan our actions, we try to change things or whatever. We’re, doing it in terms of some kind of moral values. We ought to be as clear about that as we can some conception of what’s right for people and so on, and good to be clear about that. But beyond that, I don’t know where to go. I think these subjects are too intellectually seen for deep analysis to carry us very far. You are creating us by instinct and intuition