Models and Cognition

Abstract

A groundbreaking argument challenging the traditional linguistic representational model of cognition proposes that representational states should be conceptualized as the cognitive equivalent of scale models. In this groundbreaking book, Jonathan Waskan challenges cognitive science's dominant model of mental representation and proposes a novel, well-devised alternative. The traditional view in the cognitive sciences uses a linguistic (propositional) model of mental representation. This logic-based model of cognition informs and constrains both the classical tradition of artificial intelligence and modeling in the connectionist tradition. It falls short, however, when confronted by the frame problem—the lack of a principled way to determine which features of a representation must be updated when new information becomes available. Proposed alternatives, including the imagistic model, have not so far resolved this problem. Waskan proposes instead the Intrinsic Cognitive Models (ICM) hypothesis, which argues that representational states can be conceptualized as the cognitive equivalent of scale models. Waskan argues further that the proposal that humans harbor and manipulate these cognitive counterparts to scale models offers the only viable explanation for what most clearly differentiates humans from other creatures: their capacity to engage in truth-preserving manipulation of representations. Bradford Books imprint

A vehicular theory of corporeal qualia (a gift to computationalists)

“…Even so, at the higher level of the FEMs realized (and multiply realizable) by these computational media, one finds representations that share with non-sentential images and scale models several of the characteristics that distinguish them from sentential representations. I refer readers to Waskan (2003Waskan ( , 2006Waskan ( , 2008 for a fuller elaboration and defense of these claims. Here I will only provide a brief run-down of the characteristics that distinguish FEMs from sentential representations.…”

“…In other words, FEMs should, just like scale models, be classified as intrinsic representations, or intrinsic computational models (InCoMs). 11 In contrast, paradigmatic sentential representations of objects (e.g., production-system representations) are extrinsic representations in all high-level constraints must be built in antecedently and explicitly (see McCarthy and Hayes 1969;Waskan 2003Waskan , 2006Waskan , 2008.…”

“…For this reason, I have taken great pains to demonstrate that certain computer scientists and engineers have, by creating what are known as finite element models, inadvertently shown precisely this (Waskan 2003(Waskan , 2006(Waskan , 2008. What their work shows, in particular, is that because nonsentential images and models can be realized by (strict) computations, they too can-if not directly, then at least indirectly via computations-also be realized by neural machinations.…”

Untangling two questions about mental representation

“…The neural element is a representation in the sense of serving as a surrogate or "stand-in" for the relevant component of the target. 2 Cognitive researchers adopting this outlook include Gallistel (1998) andNadel (1978), while philosophers include Churchland (2012), Cummins (1989), Grush (2004), Ryder (2004), Swoyer (1991), and Waskan (2006).…”

Models and the locus of their truth

“…This could be taken to involve a language of thought with a mental logic, which would nowadays be viewed as an unattractive option. Alternatively, it could be taken to involve "cognitive equivalents of scale models" (Waskan 2006), which might be a more attractive idea. Closer to Giere's view of the stuff of models, we may take a model and the respective thought separable.…”