jonathanlibrarian's review against another edition
2.0
Perhaps revelatory whe first published, most was obvious and said before from my perspective. Perhaps goes too far with suggesting other organs play such a significant effect to the mind and personality
ccharland's review against another edition
4.0
Compassion and empathy as a cure to nihilism? The answer to the world's nonsense relies within all of us ♡
peterzh's review against another edition
4.0
The book is centred around a conflict between Cognitive Science and Human Experience: 1) cogsci findings show that the mind is fragmented into various divisions, 2) despite that, it feels like there is a single self that unifies our experience. To resolve this conflict the authors suggest that Human Experience should be expanded by Mindfulness/Awareness meditation to develop an intuitive feeling for the lack of a unified self. Likewise cognitive science should also be expanded by ideas of Enaction.
Classic ideas of cognitive cognitive science: cognitivism and connectionism. Cognitivism postulates that cognition comprises symbols which are physically-realised and have semantic content by representing pre-given properties in a pre-given world. Connectionism also hold that the mind represents properties in a pre-given world but suggests that this global state ‘emerges’ through local interaction among many ‘simple’ parts. There are many problems with this representational view of the mind.
Enaction rejects the representationalist idea that the world contains pre-given properties that the cognitive system has to re-produce. Instead Enaction views cognition as bringing about a domain of distinctions through internal dynamics (‘operational closure’) + coupling to the environment (‘structural coupling’). These kinds of self-organising autonomous systems cannot be described by representationalist models. Simple cellular automata can be structurally coupled to a random environment of stimuli, yet the internal dynamics and this coupling give rise to a domain of distinctions in that random environment: for example the automata can be selective to odd sequences of stimuli even though this was not hard coded anywhere. This principle applies to all biological systems.
This is the empirical project: a cognitive system can be described on two levels: 1) breaking down the cognitive system into parts, 2) analysing the possible couplings of the cognitive system as a whole to its milieu. Research should proceed by swapping between these types of descriptions, in order to determine the mechanisms of how the environment constrains the system and the mechanisms for how constraints are specified by the sensorimotor structure of the system. The enactive approach tries to understand perception by determining the lawful sensorimotor structures of the perceiver which permit action to be perceptually-guided. The mechanism will then shine light on how specific regularities arise. This has impacted fields such as robotics. For example Rodney Brooks: Intelligence without representation.
Classic ideas of cognitive cognitive science: cognitivism and connectionism. Cognitivism postulates that cognition comprises symbols which are physically-realised and have semantic content by representing pre-given properties in a pre-given world. Connectionism also hold that the mind represents properties in a pre-given world but suggests that this global state ‘emerges’ through local interaction among many ‘simple’ parts. There are many problems with this representational view of the mind.
Enaction rejects the representationalist idea that the world contains pre-given properties that the cognitive system has to re-produce. Instead Enaction views cognition as bringing about a domain of distinctions through internal dynamics (‘operational closure’) + coupling to the environment (‘structural coupling’). These kinds of self-organising autonomous systems cannot be described by representationalist models. Simple cellular automata can be structurally coupled to a random environment of stimuli, yet the internal dynamics and this coupling give rise to a domain of distinctions in that random environment: for example the automata can be selective to odd sequences of stimuli even though this was not hard coded anywhere. This principle applies to all biological systems.
This is the empirical project: a cognitive system can be described on two levels: 1) breaking down the cognitive system into parts, 2) analysing the possible couplings of the cognitive system as a whole to its milieu. Research should proceed by swapping between these types of descriptions, in order to determine the mechanisms of how the environment constrains the system and the mechanisms for how constraints are specified by the sensorimotor structure of the system. The enactive approach tries to understand perception by determining the lawful sensorimotor structures of the perceiver which permit action to be perceptually-guided. The mechanism will then shine light on how specific regularities arise. This has impacted fields such as robotics. For example Rodney Brooks: Intelligence without representation.
chrudos's review against another edition
2.0
The implementation of Merleau-Ponty's framework into modern cognitive science is definitely important and well presented (hence the 2 stars). But that's where the value of this book ends (IMHO).
What again is the added value of all the Buddhist references? Mindfulness is undoubtedly a promising research tool. However, I am a bit tired of all the "look, they used it for thousand of years, we have to listen to them". Show how Buddhist phenomenology can refine the western one or how it can offer a superior conceptual framework for our research of consciousness. If your whole point is show that it might and should be relevant, then I am not impressed. I want to see HOW. And if you want to - based on these weak arguments and related alleged authority - jump to some ethical conclusions, then I am not interested.
What again is the added value of all the Buddhist references? Mindfulness is undoubtedly a promising research tool. However, I am a bit tired of all the "look, they used it for thousand of years, we have to listen to them". Show how Buddhist phenomenology can refine the western one or how it can offer a superior conceptual framework for our research of consciousness. If your whole point is show that it might and should be relevant, then I am not impressed. I want to see HOW. And if you want to - based on these weak arguments and related alleged authority - jump to some ethical conclusions, then I am not interested.
braincabbage's review against another edition
3.0
I think I'm going to have to go back to this and also have a good look at the reviews here, because even though I found merit in a lot of the ideas that this book expresses, I'm not sure I completely understood all of it and the line of argumentation supporting it. Definitely a complex topic that I have to revisit to wrap my mind around it.
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