International symposium
Cognition and Interpretation

Institute of philosophy,
Zagreb, October 10-11, 2003

Klaus Mainzer (Augsburg)
On Computational, Evolutionary, and Philosophical Interpretations of Cognition

Modern cognitive science cannot be understood without recent developments in computer science, artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, neuroscience, biology, linguistics, and psychology. Classic analytic philosophy as well as traditional AI assumed that all kinds of knowledge must explicitly be represented by formal or programming languages. This assumption is in contradiction to recent insights into the biology of evolution and developmental psychology of the human organism. Most of our knowledge is implicit and unconscious. It is not formally represented, but embodied knowledge which is learnt by doing and understood by bodily interacting with ecological niches and social environments. That is true not only for low-level skills, but even for high-level domains of categorization, language, and abstract thinking. Embodied cognitive science, AI, and robotics try to build the embodied mind in an artificial evolution. Neuromorphic engineering is, of course, a dramatic challenge of ethics. From a philosophical point of view, it is amazing that traditional concepts of cognitive science and AI with formal representations of knowledge are in a traditional line of philosophers from Descartes, Leibniz, Kant, and Husserl up to Carnap and Quine, while the idea of an embodied mind has roots in the philosophy of Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, and Dewey.Literature: K. Mainzer, Thinking in Complexity. The Complex Dynamics of Matter, Mind, and Mankind, 4th enlarged ed. Springer 2003; KI- Künstliche Intelligenz. Grundlagen künstlicher Systeme, Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft 2003; Computerphilosophie – Zur Einführung, Junius Verlag 2003; Gehirn, Computer, Komplexität, Springer 1997; Computernetze und virtuelle Realität. Leben in der Wissensgesellschaft, Springer 1999; Computer – Neue Flügel des Geistes? 2. Aufl. De Gruyter 1995.