Recursionism and Reality: Representing and understanding the world (original) (raw)

Recursion and the Mind-Body Problem

This is a rewrite of the second half of my paper, "An Ontological Solution to the Mind-Body Problem. It is meant to be read as a stand alone paper

SOME REFLECTIONS ON THE NOTION OF RECURSION

The paper examines the different ways in which the notion of ‘recursion’ has been conceived and defined in linguistics, from Chomsky’s early works to the present day. Two meanings appear to especially stand out: recursion as an iterative operation and recursion as self-embedding of structures. Furthermore, it is argued that a particular type of self-embedding, namely the clausal one, has been the focus of attention of most linguists, independently of the theoretical frameworks they subscribe to.

Recursion: what is it, who has it, and how did it evolve? INTRODUCTION

Recursion is a topic of considerable controversy in linguistics, which stems from its varying definitions and its key features, such as its universality, uniqueness to human language, and evolution. Currently, there appear to be at least two common senses of recursion: (1) embeddedness of phrases within other phrases, which entails keeping track of long-distance dependencies among phrases and (2) the specification of the computed output string itself, including meta-recursion, where recursion is both the recipe for an utterance and the overarching process that creates and executes the recipes. There are also at least two evolutionary scenarios for the adaptive value of recursion in human language. The gradualist position posits precursors, such as animal communication and protolanguages, and holds that the selective purpose of recursion was for communication. The saltationist position assumes no gradual development of recursion and posits that it evolved for reasons other than communication. In the latter view, some heritable event associated with a cognitive prerequisite of language, such as Theory of Mind or working memory capacity, allowed recursive utterances. Evolutionary adaptive reasons for recursive thoughts were also proffered, including diplomatic speech, perlocutionary acts, and prospective cognitions. 

Recursion: what is it, who has it, and how did it evolve?

Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Cognitive Science, 2010

Recursion is a topic of considerable controversy in linguistics, which stems from its varying definitions and its key features, such as its universality, uniqueness to human language, and evolution. Currently, there appear to be at least two common senses of recursion: (1) embeddedness of phrases within other phrases, which entails keeping track of long-distance dependencies among phrases and (2) the specification of the computed output string itself, including meta-recursion, where recursion is both the recipe for an utterance and the overarching process that creates and executes the recipes. There are also at least two evolutionary scenarios for the adaptive value of recursion in human language. The gradualist position posits precursors, such as animal communication and protolanguages, and holds that the selective purpose of recursion was for communication. The saltationist position assumes no gradual development of recursion and posits that it evolved for reasons other than communication. In the latter view, some heritable event associated with a cognitive prerequisite of language, such as Theory of Mind or working memory capacity, allowed recursive utterances. Evolutionary adaptive reasons for recursive thoughts were also proffered, including diplomatic speech, perlocutionary acts, and prospective cognitions.

Loops and Recursions in Cognitive Science: Cross-Roads between Methodology and Epistemology

Interdisciplinary Description of Complex Systems

This article addresses the need for cognitive science to loop back and examine its roots and presuppositions, pointing out the three recursive issues: 1.) The observer effect or how observing a phenomenon affects the phenomenon that is being observed, an issue that has been acknowledged by natural science, which cognitive science attempts to emulate, and empirical phenomenology, but not cognitive science itself; 2.) Human kinds or how our research affects us, the researchers, and society (people's self-understandings), an issue which forms a loop with the observer effectobservation thus changing the observed, the observer, as well as itself, and 3.) The dangers of over-eager extrapolation or how complexity is lost during shifts in explanatory level, issues pertaining to using findings from studies of one explanatory level (e.g. experiments with rats) to inform a different explanatory level (issues within human society). Finally, the article presents a fourth recursive loop which presents a potential solution to the above: a self-correcting mechanism that allows science to recursively correct its mistakes and improve on its own work.

A model of mind from the perspective of temporal structuralism

2009

Symmetry and symmetry-breaking have, in the last one hundred and fifty years, become incorporated as central explanatory concepts within the natural sciences and mathematics. An abbreviated review of the incorporation of symmetry within the disciplines of mathematics, physics, philosophy and biology, provides a frame within which to develop of a model of mind. This thesis combines the framework provided by symmetry and symmetry-breaking with a structural understanding of self-referential dynamics in examining the implied Kantian model of mind. It considers that Kant's assumption of a transcendental self unnecessarily isolates consciousness from being understood as a product of complex natural processes. Kant's structural model of mind is examined and reformulated in terms of a more fundamental form and process. The space required for any non-reductionist model of mind is proposed as being generated through an enfolding of dimensionality in the occurrence of categorical level symmetry breaking during evolutionary development. The temporally extended function is accounted for in terms of self-referential structural dynamics operating within the primary temporal asymmetry. The model of mind proposed is created through application of naturalistic explanations incorporating symmetry and has attributes that may prove of interest to non-reductionists. The phenomenological geometry established provides a framework to understand the experiential phenomenon of qualia while conforming to the requirements of a natural explanation. Information is conceived as being transmitted in waveforms propagated across spaces of enfolded dimensionalities through structural frames demarcating nested spaces and condensing in the synthesis of unity in the object of attention, or image, and returning to distribute, the now reformulated, information outward across contextual frames and spaces. This simplified dynamic is considered to operate at all levels of natural phenomena and involves the reintroduction of Bohm's concepts of implicate and explicate order. The result is a model of mind employing a minimum structural form and selfreferential dynamics that has potential for integration across the discipline theoretic frames of the natural sciences while retaining, for the domain of conscious phenomena, an independent causal significance in terms of a temporal structuralism.

Explortions in the Discursive Mind: Theoretical Model

International Journal …, 2010

ABSTRACT. In the article we describe the model of discursive architecture of mind, which expresses the ideas of DST in more cognitive terms and adapts it to experimental research. We show how is this model connected to many contemporary approaches to human mind ...