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- Defining Cognitive Science: Luke Kersten
- Defining Cognitive Science: Mark Blair
- Defining Cognitive Science: What are (statistical) model assumptions about?
- Lab Pizza: Language Production Lab & Language Learning and Development Lab
- LING/COGS Colloquium: Audio-visual alignment in speech perception
- LING/COGS Colloquium: How should we sound when we talk to babies? Rethinking what we know about the phonetics and phonology of infant directed speech
- Defining Cognitive Science: The Eighteenth-Century Origins of the Concept of Mixed-Strategy Equilibrium
- Defining Cognitive Science: Prediction during language comprehension
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Defining Cognitive Science
The Hierarchical Correspondence View of Levels: A Case Study in Cognitive Science
Dr. Luke Kersten
Date: Friday May 17th at 3:30PM
Location: WMC 3220
Note that this talk is sponsored by 丁香园AV Philosophy and Cognitive Science
Abstract: There is a general conception of levels in philosophy which says that the world is arrayed into a hierarchy of levels and that there are different modes of analysis that correspond to each level of this hierarchy, what can be labelled the 鈥楬ierarchical Correspondence View of Levels鈥� (or HCL). The trouble is that despite its considerable lineage and general status in philosophy of science and metaphysics the HCL has largely escaped analysis in specific domains of inquiry. The goal of this paper is to take up a recent call to domain-specificity by examining the role of the HCL in cognitive science. I argue that the HCL is, in fact, a conception of levels that has been employed in cognitive science and that cognitive scientists should avoid its use where possible. The argument is that the HCL is problematic when applied to cognitive science specifically because it fails to distinguish two important kinds of shifts used when analysing information processing systems: shifts in grain and shifts in analysis. I conclude by proposing a revised version of the HCL which accommodates the distinction.