On 11 Oct 1995 12:49:15 GMT,
Ronald Lemmen <ronaldl at cogs.susx.ac.uk > wrote:
>I have created a web-page in which I try to bring together information and
>links that might be of interest to those cognitive scientists who are
>interested in non-Cartesian approaches to cognition. Its address is:
>>http://www.cogs.susx.ac.uk/users/ronaldl/noncartesian.html>
Ronald:
I'm a bit puzzled by the nature of your page, because I would assume
that cognitive scientists would be more interested in investigatable
scientific issues than speculative philosophical ones. (Isn't that
the whole purpose of cognitive science?) I've personally found
comparitive ethology and teleological evolutionary adaptation
arguments to be very useful in understanding the brain and the mind,
but as with all powerful tools they are double-edged swords.
A lot of writing on the mind is also of the nature of "pop"
psychology and unscientific, in particular the works of Sigmund
Freud - I was somewhat surprised to see that psychoanalysis was the
major topic under "Mental Health". It was well recognized by the
scientific and medical communities at the time that Freud was
formulating his ideas that he was abusing cocaine, and that his
"monomania" about infant sexuality being the sole determinant of human
normal and abnormal psychology was the direct result of this abuse.
Because of the ouright rejection of his ideas by the scientific and
medical communities, Freud took his case to the general public by
writing popular books, which conveyed the false impression that his
ideas had already been clinically and scientifically proven. Freud
also made this claim in public on many occasions.
Bela Julesz, the noted vision researcher, has some interesting
comments on the "meta" scientific and "luxury" questions associated
with the mind in his recent book "Dialogues on Perception", which
references his reply to Searle in BBS.
Alan J. Robinson
Golden Hind International - Digital Image Processing, Artificial Intelligence
robin073 at maroon.tc.umn.edu
