May 31, 2011

RSA Animate - Language as a Window into Human Nature by Steven Pinker



In this new RSAnimate Steven Pinker shows us how the mind turns the finite building blocks of language into infinite meanings.

May 7, 2011

Exploring Paradoxes: A Refutation of the ‘Cosmological Argument’ for existence of God: Part 2

'Impossible Object' based on the Penrose Triangle:
An Examples of a Visuo-Cognitive Illusion. It Shows
how easily human perceptions based on intuition
can be fooled.
Comparison of paradoxes:  to discriminate between the 'Cognitive Paradox' and the 'Logical Paradox'

Now Paradox 1 (P1) is, as I’ve already pointed out a readily recognizable case of reasoning that appears satisfactory upon a casual run through the mind but reduces to a self-entangled mess upon serious reflection. To re-iterate... this is what is an ACTUAL case of a paradox.

Whereas Paradox 2 (P2) is, I would contend, only an ‘Apparent Paradox’ while actually being a perfectly legitimate logical scenario with no necessary falsehoods. Surely it does exude unmistakable paradoxedness for many people… and that is precisely what I’d account for.

De-constructing the Cognitive Illusion of ‘Beginnings and Ends’
a.) Differentiatedness of Cognition
The origin of this strong “feeling” or “sense” or “intuition” of a paradox, the paradoxedness therein, lays in one of the most fundamental features of human cognition, in fact it may be said, in the very foundational quality of human cognition – THE DIFFERENTIATEDNESS OF THE COGNITIVE FIELD. (which gives rise to certain ‘cognitive order(s)’ i.e. intrinsic patterns… that we ‘impose’ on the world of experience to cognitively apprehend it… we’ll come to this part later!!!)
Cognitive field here is the sum total of all that one cognizes, i.e. the total aggregate Sentience of a being, Experience considered in its phenomenological fullness!! To now grasp what Differentiatedness means, it’d do us good to begin by thinking counterfactually, so we’d first attempt to define what Undifferentiatedness of the cognitive field could mean! 
 Undifferentiated is a cognitive field without any differentiation, without any cognitive contours, without any cognitive definition, without any foreground-background relation, without any object-subject dichotomy, without any gradient of intensity, without any Qualia…. In fact it is a cognitive field approaching (but not equal to) Non-Sentience or Non-Cognition or “Cognitive Nothingness” … While Differentiation is the original process that generates “Cognitive Thingness”!