I happened upon an article in Plus about the vector analysis that ants seem to be using to find their way home. Studies exploring insect navigation tools are relevant, not only to building robot navigation tools, but also to understanding the extent to which cognitive structures exist in other living things (and, perhaps, how they […]
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My last post caused me to survey some things related to Bayesian statistics as they relate to mathematics and cognition. First, I want to say that despite the fact that I have been looking more closely at 19th century developments in mathematics, I didn’t know until today that Laplace, in 1814, described a system of […] It happens many times in class that I say, “in mathematics when you see something you don’t know, you try to figure it out using something you do know. And, recently, in the context of thinking about the generalizations that blossomed in late 19th and early 20th century mathematics, I’ve also wondered how it is […] I had the opportunity to listen to Paul Churchland when he gave a talk last Friday, on Cognitive Enhancement, at the University of Texas at Dallas. He used the time to address, not enhancement drugs or exercises, but the enhancement effects of language and symbol. I poked around today to find more more on the […] I’ve thought that one of the reasons it’s difficult to resolve questions about the nature of mathematical reality is that we’re not exactly clear on what it means to ‘perceive’ something. Trying to establish whether or not even the data of our senses is somehow independently ‘real,’ has fueled centuries of philosophical debate. I found […] I started today by taking a look at what might be the latest on what cognitive scientists were saying about mathematics. The broad scope of cognitive science includes the investigation of what Mark Turner calls (in the title of one of his books) “the riddle of human creativity.” When exploring the origins of conceptual systems, […] In a recent post I said that one of the things that dissuades us from accepting the existence of a truly Platonic mathematical world, or believing in the timeless existence of its forms independent of human minds, is the habit we have of distinguishing ourselves from the rest of nature, despite all the evidence we’ve […] Let’s ask again, “What is the nature of the bridge between sense perceptions and concepts? It’s a simple question to ask, but a fairly difficult one to answer. Raphael Nunez contributed a chapter to the Springer book, Recasting Reality: Wolfgang Pauli’s Philosophical Ideas and Contemporary Science. A pdf of the chapter can be found here. […] |
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