Related papers: Mind: An Archaeological Perspective
How did the human species evolve the capacity not just to communicate complex ideas to one another but to hold such conversations from across the globe, using remote devices constructed from substances that do not exist in the natural…
At the core of our uniquely human cognitive abilities is the capacity to see things from different perspectives, or to place them in a new context. We propose that this was made possible by two cognitive transitions. First, the large brain…
Because human cognition is creative and socially situated, knowledge accumulates, diffuses, and gets applied in new contexts, generating cultural analogs of phenomena observed in population genetics such as adaptation and drift. It is…
An origin is often an intriguing issue. It becomes doubly intriguing when the logical form of thinking is considered. In this paper we will investigate exactly that: we will conjecture on the origin of basic instruments of logical thinking.…
Many species engage in acts that could be called creative. However, human creativity is unique in that it has transformed our planet. Given that the anatomy of the human brain is not so different from that of the great apes, what enables us…
The term architecture has evolved considerably from its original Greek roots and its application to buildings and computers to its more recent manifestation for minds. This article considers lessons from this history, in terms of a set of…
Research at the interface between cognitive psychology, neuroscience, and the science of complex, dynamical systems, is piecing together an understanding of the creative process, including how it works, how it can be fostered, and the…
Some of the strongest evidence that human minds should be thought about in terms of symbolic systems has been the way they combine ideas, produce novelty, and learn quickly. We argue that modern neural networks -- and the artificial…
Human consciousness has been a long-lasting mystery for centuries, while machine intelligence and consciousness is an arduous pursuit. Researchers have developed diverse theories for interpreting the consciousness phenomenon in human brains…
Creativity is perhaps what most differentiates humans from other species. It involves the capacity to shift between divergent and convergent modes of thought in response to task demands. Divergent thought has been characterized as the kind…
Imagining what life on other planets, and intelligent life in particular, may be like is a long-running theme in human culture. It is a manifestation of the innate human curiosity about the Cosmos, and it has inspired numerous works of art…
Cognitive Science has profoundly shaped disciplines such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Philosophy, Psychology, Neuroscience, Linguistics, and Culture. Many breakthroughs in AI trace their roots to cognitive theories, while AI itself has…
Categorization is a fundamental function of minds, with wide ranging implications for the rest of the cognitive system. In humans, categories are shared and communicated between minds, thus requiring explanations at the population level. In…
Psychology has had difficulty accounting for the creative, context-sensitive manner in which concepts are used. We believe this stems from the view of concepts as identifiers rather than bridges between mind and world that participate in…
The brain is a powerful tool used to achieve amazing feats. There have been several significant advances in neuroscience and artificial brain research in the past two decades. This article is a review of such advances, ranging from the…
This paper proposes an explanation of the cognitive change that occurs as the creative process proceeds. During the initial, intuitive phase, each thought activates, and potentially retrieves information from, a large region containing many…
It is perhaps not so baffling that we have the ability to develop, refine, and manifest a creative idea, once it has been conceived. But what sort of a system could spawn the initial seed of creativity from which an idea grows? This paper…
Cognition and language seem closely related to the human cognitive process, although they have not been studied and investigated in detail. Our brain is too complex to fully comprehend the structures and connectivity, as well as its…
Those designing autonomous systems that interact with humans will invariably face questions about how humans think and make decisions. Fortunately, computational cognitive science offers insight into human decision-making using tools that…
It is proposed that the ability of humans to flourish in diverse environments and evolve complex cultures reflects the following two underlying cognitive transitions. The transition from the coarse-grained associative memory of Homo habilis…