Dynamical Hypothesis: BBS Call for Commentators

Below is the abstract of a forthcoming BBS target article on: THE DYNAMICAL HYPOTHESIS IN COGNITIVE SCIENCE by Tim van Gelder This article has been accepted for publication in Behavioral and Brain Sciences (BBS), an international, interdisciplinary journal providing Open Peer Commentary on important and controversial current research in the biobehavioral and cognitive sciences. Commentators must be BBS Associates or nominated by a BBS Associate. To be considered as a commentator for this article, to suggest other appropriate commentators, or for information about how to become a BBS Associate, please send EMAIL to: bbs(a)soton.ac.uk or write to: Behavioral and Brain Sciences Department of Psychology University of Southampton Highfield, Southampton SO17 1BJ UNITED KINGDOM http://www.princeton.edu/~harnad/bbs.html http://cogsci.soton.ac.uk/bbs ftp://ftp.princeton.edu/pub/harnad/BBS ftp://cogsci.soton.ac.uk/pub/harnad/BBS gopher://gopher.princeton.edu:70/11/.libraries/.pujournals If you are not a BBS Associate, please send your CV and the name of a BBS Associate (there are currently over 10,000 worldwide) who is familiar with your work. All past BBS authors, referees and commentators are eligible to become BBS Associates. To help us put together a balanced list of commentators, please give some indication of the aspects of the topic on which you would bring your areas of expertise to bear if you were selected as a commentator. An electronic draft of the full text is available for inspection by anonymous ftp (or gopher or world-wide-web) according to the instructions that follow after the abstract. ____________________________________________________________________ THE DYNAMICAL HYPOTHESIS IN COGNITIVE SCIENCE Tim van Gelder Department of Philosophy University of Melbourne Parkville VIC 3052 Australia tgelder(a)ariel.unimelb.edu.au http.//ariel.its.unimelb.edu.au/~tgelder KEYWORDS: cognition, systems, dynamical systems, computers, computational systems, computability, modeling, time. ABSTRACT: Recent years have seen increasing use of dynamics in cognitive science. If the heart of the dominant computational approach is the hypothesis that cognitive agents are digital computers, the heart of the alternative dynamical approach is the hypothesis that cognitive agents are dynamical systems. This target article attempts to articulate the dynamical hypothesis and to defend it as an empirical alternative to the computational hypothesis. Digital computers and dynamical systems are characterized as specific kinds of systems. The dynamical hypothesis has two major components: the nature hypothesis (cognitive agents are dynamical system) the knowledge hypothesis (cognitive agents can be understood dynamically). A wide range of objections to the general hypothesis are then rebutted. The conclusion is that cognitive systems may well be dynamical systems, and only sustained empirical research in cognitive science will determine the extent to which that is true. -------------------------------------------------------------- To help you decide whether you would be an appropriate commentator for this article, an electronic draft is retrievable by anonymous ftp from ftp.princeton.edu according to the instructions below (the filename is bbs.vangelder). Please do not prepare a commentary on this draft. Just let us know, after having inspected it, what relevant expertise you feel you would bring to bear on what aspect of the article. ------------------------------------------------------------- These files are also on the World Wide Web and the easiest way to retrieve them is with Netscape, Mosaic, gopher, archie, veronica, etc. Here are some of the URLs you can use to get to the BBS Archive: http://www.princeton.edu/~harnad/bbs.html http://cogsci.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/bbs.html ftp://ftp.princeton.edu/pub/harnad/BBS/bbs.vangelder ftp://cogsci.ecs.soton.ac.uk/pub/harnad/BBS/bbs.vangelder gopher://gopher.princeton.edu:70/11/.libraries/.pujournals To retrieve a file by ftp from an Internet site, type either: ftp ftp.princeton.edu or ftp 128.112.128.1 When you are asked for your login, type: anonymous Enter password as queried (your password is your actual userid: yourlogin(a)yourhost.whatever.whatever - be sure to include the "@") cd /pub/harnad/BBS To show the available files, type: ls Next, retrieve the file you want with (for example): get bbs.vanGelder When you have the file(s) you want, type: quit