Realism: Evolution-Based

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Realism: Metaphysical, Representational, Symbol-Based, and Evolution-Based

What is real and how can we know it?

Aristotle gave us classical metaphysical realism. Aristotle concluded that we can know reality because our mind grasped directly the essences of things in the world.

Descartes gave us representational realism. Ideas in the mind were representational of things in the world. Ideas correspond to things in the world.

Analytic Philosophy gave us symbol-based realism. I will not even try to say what this means because I do not know and it appears to me that there are multiple variations on this concept.

Cognitive science has given us evolution-based realism. This is also called embodied-realism because it has abandoned the mind/body dichotomy that characterizes other forms of realism and is convinced that natural selection is the process by which the human species has developed.

There are two major world views of cognitive scientists; Artificial Intelligence and embodied-realism. AI is a symbol based realism and embodied-realism is an evolution-based realism.

The ‘bible’ for embodied-realism is “Philosophy in the Flesh” by Lakoff and Johnson. The paradigm of this cognitive science is ‘conceptual metaphor’. The fundamental findings from which all principles flow are:
• The mind is inherently embodied.
• Thought is mostly unconscious.
• Abstract concepts are largely metaphorical.

The ‘bible’ states that “What we take to be true [real] in a situation depends on our embodied understanding of the situation, which is in turn shaped by all these factors.”

It seems to me that all of Western traditional philosophy and thus almost everyone’s comprehension is based upon classical metaphysical reality or some aspect of that philosophy. If so, I would expect all of these forces to find error in this Book. That does not mean that there is not error but only time will tell. Darwin is still being attacked as misguided constantly by many if not most citizens in the US.

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CS (cognitive science) is about the fundamental aspects of knowing. It brings illumination upon the assumptions that philosophy took 2500 years ago. CS has utilized technology to gain a comprehension of what our Greek thinkers based their assumptions on, which then became the foundation of Western traditional philosophy.

Do not make the mistake of accepting or rejecting this new paradigm of CS until you have studied the matter. Hold your judgment until you are inclined to take the time to study the matter. It is a completely new concept and will take a good deal of effort to comprehend.

CS is not focused upon examples of knowing ‘how to’ but is focused upon understanding the relationship between what we know and how we know it. We will not find ready examples of knowing in the study of CS but if we try we can begin to grasp how we know and how this knowing becomes understanding, and how this understanding is grounded by our biological nature.

CS is not about knowing, CS is about understanding. “Where Mathematics Comes From” is one book in a series of books and research documents relating to cognition and the power of understanding.

We all learned how to ‘do math’ in our schooling. How to do math is about knowing; CS is about how to understand the nature of how it is possible for humans to create a domain of knowledge such as math.

Infants at an early age of a few months display the capacity for subitizing, an ability we humans share with many other animals. This is the ability to instantly recognize small numbers (by number here we mean a cardinal number, a number that specifies how many objects there are in a collection,) of items, and a capacity for the simplest forms of addition and subtraction of small quantities in a collection.

Arithmetic requires in addition to this subitizing an ability to count. Counting requires the additional capacities of:
Grouping capacity is the ability to group discrete elements; ordering capacity is the ability to place objects in a sequence; paring capacity entails paring a number with an object etc.

Subitizing ability is limited to 4 or less objects. To go beyond this limit the child often learns to count fingers and with the following additional capacities can go beyond 4:
Combinatorial-grouping capacity is the ability to put groups together, and symbolizing capacity is the ability to associate symbols (words) with numbers (conceptual entities).

Thus subitizing and counting experience allows the child to move to greater quantities and with metaphorizing and conceptual-blending capacity the child is prepared to learn arithmetic and higher forms of mathematics.

“What we have found is that there are two types of conceptual metaphor used in projecting from subitizing, counting, and the simplest arithmetic of newborns to an arithmetic of natural numbers…The first are what we call grounding metaphors—metaphors that allow you to project from everyday experiences (like putting things into piles) onto abstract concepts (like addition). The second are what we call linking metaphors, which link arithmetic to other branches of mathematics—for example, metaphors that allow you to conceptualize arithmetic in spatial terms, linking say, geometry to arithmetic, as when you conceive of numbers as points on a line.”

Quotes are from “Where Mathematics Comes From”. A large number of book reviews are located at:
perso.unifr.ch/rafael.nunez/reviews.html