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    Embodied Cognition
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    1. abalaj 05 Oct 2026
      The hope is that a carefully controlled laboratory setting makes possible the discovery of which features of the world are encoded for use in a particular cognitive task, and what effect these features have on cognitive performance.

      Again.. how is this ecologically valid. Every person's software is different. What part of the world is embedded in the cognitive process varies significantly across participants. Moreover, every person has a unique set of unconscious top-down rules which is not very accessible to analysis.

    2. abalaj 05 Oct 2026
      They tend to draw the boundaries of cognition at the same place that a computer scientist might draw the boundaries of computation – at the points of interface with the world.

      Very True. I wonder why the solipsistic view of cognitive science fails? Mind is still a computer, but a computer that extends beyond the anatomical brain into the physical world. Why should embodied cognition resist this solipsistic view? Don't we just need solipsistic view to be redefined?

    3. abalaj 05 Oct 2026
      On the other hand, one might wonder how useful GPS might be as a guide to all of cognition, given the very constrained nature of problems to which means-end analyses are suited

      I am inclined to think that all of cognition is means-end analyses. It is just that the steps from the starting point to the goal remains out of our conscious awareness. This reminds me of the Libet's EEG study where the spike was seen way ahead of even the conscious will to press a button. So, we have no idea of the workings of the mind beyond conscious awareness. GPS can model only those tasks that are operable within our conscious awareness.

    4. abalaj 05 Oct 2026
      As we shall see in the next chapter, some critics of standard cognitive science have sought to undermine the idea that cognition relies on linguistic structures.

      I wonder how cognition cannot fit into a linguistic framework. A linguistic model might still serve as a good metaphor to understand cognitive processes. I am reminded of an example from Psych 20: an image of an apple provides the raw sensory data - lines, edges, contrast- which are meaningfully combined (by rules) to create a geometric shape. This is further manipulated using top-down knowledge to realize that the image is an apple. Mind thus combines pieces of raw information (letters/words) into a concept(sentence).

    5. abalaj 05 Oct 2026
      The conditions for being a symbol do not, apparently, mandate that symbols be made of any particular stuff, but instead focus on functional criteria, on criteria about what symbols must do. Among the relevant conditions seem to be these. First, symbols can “stand for” or represent things.

      True, symbols have little to do with what they are made of. The focus is primarily on function. However, when it comes to the mind machine, I believe function and anatomy/biochemistry are interlinked. It is the sheer biochemistry of the brain that drives the symbol/neuronal firing pattern.

    6. abalaj 05 Oct 2026
      Subjects merely had to identify the rules that would transform one syntactical object into another and then apply them.

      This reminds me of the Chinese Room experiment which also involved symbol manipulation and means-end analyses. Though the methodology was essentially the same, I think the Chinese Room experiment inferred the opposite of GPS that mere symbol manipulation is mindless. Nonetheless, I still favor the idea of mind being computational.

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