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Category: cognition

The Metaphorical Brain

The Metaphorical Brain

Lakoff’s last article was published in this open access Ebook edited by Seana Coulson and Vicky T. Lai, published by Frontiers Media SA in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience (March, 2016). The blurb: Metaphor has been an issue of intense research and debate for decades (see, for example [1]). Researchers in various disciplines, including linguistics, psychology, computer science, education, and philosophy have developed a variety of theories, and much progress has been made [2]. For one, metaphor is no longer considered…

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Mapping the brain’s metaphor circuitry

Mapping the brain’s metaphor circuitry

By George Lakoff, Frontiers in Human Neureoscience, Hypothesis and Theory Article (link), 2014. Introduction: “An overview of the basics of metaphorical thought and language from the perspective of Neurocognition, the integrated interdisciplinary study of how conceptual thought and language work in the brain. The paper outlines a theory of metaphor circuitry and discusses how everyday reason makes use of embodied metaphor circuitry.” Also see the section on experimental results for the studies.

Embodied philosophy in a nutshell

Embodied philosophy in a nutshell

In this 4-minute clip Lakoff summarizes how philosophy is changed by cognitive science. Particular philosophies get attached to a root metaphor (or blend) that entails certain premises and conclude that it is reality in toto without going further to understand that other metaphors entail different premises with equally logical conclusions. The embodied thesis helps us understand how our body-minds work to correct many of philosophy’s metaphysical assumptions while providing a postmetaphysical frame for an empirical, embodied and multifarious philosophy.

Who am I: the conscious and unconscious self

Who am I: the conscious and unconscious self

Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 2017; 11: 126. Some excerpts: “In this article we suggest the idea that the processing of self-referential stimuli in cortical midline structures (CMS) may represent an important part of the conscious self, which may be supplemented by an unconscious part of the self that has been called an ’embodied mind’ (Varela et al., 1991), which relies on other brain structures.” “When we describe the self as structure and organization we understand it as a system. But…

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Memes are like cognitive frames

Memes are like cognitive frames

It occurred to me that memes are a lot like frames as Lakoff describes them. Lakoff has done extensive cognitive scientific work on schemas, metaphors and frames. Check out this lengthy article in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 2014; 8: 958, “Mapping the brain’s metaphor circuitry.” Even though they don’t relate this to the concept of memes, there are some striking similarities. E.g.:  “Reddy had found that the abstract concepts of communication and ideas are understood via a conceptual metaphor: Ideas…

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Future discussion topic recommendations

Future discussion topic recommendations

Several of us met on Labor Day with the goal of identifying topics for at least five future monthly meetings. (Thanks, Dave N, for hosting!) Being the overachievers we are, we pushed beyond the goal. Following are the resulting topics, which will each have its own article on this site where we can begin organizing references for the discussion: sex-related influences on emotional memory gross and subtle brain differences (e.g., “walls of the third ventricle – sexual nuclei”) “Are there…

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Computational grounded cognition

Computational grounded cognition

From this article, which first describes the progress in grounded cognition theories, then goes into how this should be applied to robotics and artificial intelligence. Some excepts: “Grounded theories assume that there is no central module for cognition. According to this view, all cognitive phenomena, including those considered the province of amodal cognition such as reasoning, numeric, and language processing, are ultimately grounded in (and emerge from) a variety of bodily, affective, perceptual, and motor processes. The development and expression…

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The differences between sitting and moving meditative states

The differences between sitting and moving meditative states

Here is Thompson’s talk on the topic. As a dancer and martial artist, as well as an embodied cognitioner, this talk is particularly relevant to me. I’ve been saying since forever that these arts are meditative disciplines in themselves. And one doesn’t necessarily need the sitting still sort of meditation to achieve meta-cognition. Having done both kinds my anectodic report is that both sitting and moving meditation induce meta-cognition. But there are no studies on movement meditation to confirm it…

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Gender role bias in AI algorithms

Gender role bias in AI algorithms

Should it surprise us that human biases find their way into human-designed AI algorithms trained using data sets of human artifacts? Machine-learning software trained on the datasets didn’t just mirror those biases, it amplified them. If a photo set generally associated women with cooking, software trained by studying those photos and their labels created an even stronger association. https://www.wired.com/story/machines-taught-by-photos-learn-a-sexist-view-of-women?mbid=nl_82117_p2&CNDID=24258719