Cognitive Science

Research, articles & discussion. [Under construction]

Cognitive science involves studying, well, cognition, but is in some sense an emergent field, at the intersection of neuroscience/psychology, computer science (especially AI), and philosophy. Studying the brain and how it functions may provide us with not only answers for artificial intelligence, but a closer look into what we are.

Points of interest:

What is intelligence?
Relatedly, is general/super/"real" artificial intelligence possible? What would it entail? Are our current statistical optimization methods not good enough?
What are some neuro/biological mechanisms of the brain that we can learn from? Does the evidence point to a classical or connectionist approach, or neither?
What is consciousness?
What is it that makes humans so different from other animals?

Human-Unique Abilities: What Geometry Tells Us

Written on May 12, 2023

Humans clearly possess many unique abilities, which is part of the reason we find ourselves outpacing all other life on earth by an extremely large margin. We seem to be alone in our ability to build, imagine, study and invent. One particular ability we possess is knowledge of geometric shapes — which shows up in our artwork, buildings and other artifacts, dating back to ancient times…

Abduction as an Intuitive Form of Reasoning

Written on December 10, 2022

Abduction is a type of reasoning that is also known as ‘inference to the best explanation’. This entails choosing what seems to be the best explanation given some data.

If we want to be formal, we can define it like so: …

The Computational Theory of Mind: Classicalism, Connectionism, and AI

Written on September 20, 2022

Given that the focus of this part of the blog will be the relationship between AI, cognitive science, and various research questions, we should begin by discussing the foundational idea behind cognitive science – what is known as the computational theory of mind (or, cognition) – and in particular, work our way to the competing versions of this theory; classicalism, endorsed traditionally by cognitive scientists and linguists, and connectionism, which undergirds contemporary approaches to artificial intelligence.

This approach to studying the brain, cognition and behavior emerged in the 1950s…