M. Estep

A Theory of Immediate Awareness

Self-Organization and Adaptation in Natural Intelligence

• Broschiertes Buch

Produktbeschreibung

This book is multi- and interdisciplinary in both scope and content. It draws upon philosophy, the neurosciences, psychology, computer science, and engineering in efforts to resolve fundamental issues about the nature of immediate awareness. Approximately the first half of the book is addressed to historical approaches to the question whether or not there is such a thing as immediate awareness, and if so, what it might be. This involves reviewing arguments that one way or another have been offered as answers to the question or ways of avoiding it. It also includes detailed discussions of some complex questions about the part immediate awareness plays in our over-all natural intelligence. The second half of the book addresses intricate and complex issues involved in the computability of immediate awareness as it is found in simple, ordinary things human beings know how to do, as weIl as in some highly extraordinary things some know how to do. Over the past 2,500 years, human culture has discovered, created, and built very powerful tools for recognizing, classifying, and utilizing patterns found in the natural world. The most powerful of those tools is mathematics, the language of nature. The natural phenomenon of human knowing, of natural intelligence generally, is a very richly textured set of patterns that are highly complex, dynamic, self-organizing, and adaptive.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Springer / Springer Netherlands
• Artikelnr. des Verlages: 978-90-481-6251-2
• Softcover reprint of hardcover 1st ed. 2003
• Seitenzahl: 348
• Erscheinungstermin: 30. Dezember 2010
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 235mm x 155mm x 19mm
• Gewicht: 528g
• ISBN-13: 9789048162512
• ISBN-10: 9048162513
• Artikelnr.: 32006233

Inhaltsangabe

1. The Problem of Immediate Awareness.- 2. The Primitive Relations of Knowledge by Acquaintance.- 3. Arguments Against Immediate Awareness: The Case of Naturalism.- 4. What does the Evidence Show?.- 5. Boundary Set S: At the Core of Multiple Intelligences.- 6. Can Neural Networks Simulate Boundary Set S?.- 7. Computability of Boundary Set S.- 8. Summary and Conclusions.- References.

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Dedication. Contents. List Of Figures. Preface. Acknowledgements. Introduction. 1: The Problem of Immediate Awareness. 1.1. The Influence of Nominalism, Idealism, and Behaviorism. 1.2. A Place for Ontological Questions. 1.3. Historical Background of the Problem: The Dualist Legacy of Descartes' Crooked Question. 1.4. From The Linguistic Turn to the Cognitive Naturalistic Turn. 1.5. The Knowing That and Knowing How Distinction: Manner of a Performance and Multiple Intelligences. 1.6. The Limits of Representation (Classification): The Role of Indexicals and Unique Objects Present. 1.7. Analyze This. 1.8. The Indexical Operator, Unlike Any Other: Sui Generis Objects. 1.9. The Basic Computational Idea and Argument. 2: The Primitive Relations of Knowledge by Acquaintance. 2.1. A Realist Theory of Immediate Awareness. 2.2. Analysis of Experience: Russell's Knowledge by Acquaintance. 2.3. Acquaintance with Mathematical Objects: Problems with Unnameables, Nameability and the Berry Paradox. 2.4. The Primitive Relations. 2.5. The Concept of Image. 2.6. Imagination and Sensation Defined. 2.7. Primitive Acquaintance with Relations Themselves. 2.8. Summary. 3: Arguments Against Immediate Awareness: The Case of Naturalism. 3.1. Definitions of Certain Terms. 3.2. Non-Inferential Beliefs: Self-Evident Beliefs and a Vox Populi Theory of Knowledge. 3.3. Indeterminacy of Translation and Other Problems. 3.4. Are There Immaculate Sensations? 3.5. Matching Up Stimulations. 3.6. Are Meaning Structures Equivalent to Neural Structures? STR