Ecological cognitive science: principles for interaction with the world
Serge Sharoff
Russian Research Institute for Artificial Intelligence
Montag, 15.01.2001, 16 c.t. Uhr, Hörsaal 9
In different sciences that are aimed at the research of the human mind we
often found two types of approaches, which are complementary both in their
purposes and in their results. The first approach is aimed at the logical
analysis of structures that are necessary for cognitive operations. In the
study of language, this approach is instantiated as formal linguistics,
according to which language is considered as a set of rules for specifying
grammatical structures, such as the construction of a transitive sentence
with "verb + object". The second approach is aimed at the interaction of
cognitive agents with their biological or social environment. In contrast to
the logic-centered approach, the approach of the second type can be called
eco-logical. In the study of language, this approach is instantiated as
functional linguistics, according to which language is considered as a
resource for communication, i.e. for exchanging meanings by means of
words. The talk will be based on notions from systemic-functional linguistics
(SFL), which considers such resource types as ideational (e.g. material or
mental processes), interpersonal (statements, questions or orders) and
textual (theme, rheme) resources.
The talk will explore principles of ecological cognitive science, namely in
their relation to the phenomenological movement originated by Husserl.
Husserl is sometimes claimed as a founder of cognitive science (due to his
project of phenomenology as a rigorous research of the human mind). This is
true with respect to the intent of Husserl"s research, however, a lot of
crucial phenomenological ideas are missed in modern cognitive science. In
particular this concerns:
- intentionality as a correlation of noema and noesis, i.e. of an experienced
phenomenon and its mode of being experienced. In cognitive science terms
this means a correlation of descriptive structures and phenomena that are
represented using these structures.
- the model of internal time consciousness (ITC) as the common pivot for
unfolding all mental phenomena through continuous modification of manifold
of retentions and constitution of protentions (expectations).
In linguistics, the ecological approach means the attention to actual usage of
grammatical constructions and lexical items with respect to the purposes
with which they are uttered. The concordance software allows to test
linguistic hypotheses against a big amount of parallel texts (in the project,
in English and Russian) and develop a corpus-driven approach, which answers
to the question: "What is the semantic potential of lexical items for
referring to pieces of reality in discourse?". The semantic potential of lexical items
is represented by the choice network in the SFL tradition.
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