Tschacher W und Scheier C (1996): The Perspective of Situated
and Self-Organizing Cognition in Cognitive Psychology. In: CCAI
- Journal for the Integrated Study of Artificial Intelligence,
Cognitive Science, and Applied Epistemology, 13, 161-188.
Abstract: We discuss a theoretical framework of cognitive psychology
that allows for an understanding of the adaptivity, goal directedness,
and flexibility of behavior. Goals and intentions as explanatory
principles were banned from academic psychology under the influence
of behaviorism. With the advent of the information processing
view of cognitive psychology, this taboo has been overcome, but
scientific understanding of intentionality is still lacking. At
present a computational view of cognition and action dominates
throughout psychology. Such current syntactical models are usually
descriptive and make strong assumptions concerning internal representations;
they imply a manipulation of symbols and categories which are
supposed to correspond to entities in the world. Other recent
theories in cognitive psychology are oriented more toward motivational
constructs; they are based on volition and intention as explanations
for action regulation. These latter theories therefore encounter
the problem of teleology, because they rely on semantic homunculi
in the mind which allocate attention, retrieve information from
memory stores, and develop intentions, enabling the individual
to act.
In our view, two approaches may be helpful to achieve a coherent
new theoretical framework for cognitive psychology. First, synergetics
and self-organization research provide principles of pattern formation
and adaptivity which can be applied to complex systems such as
the mind. Second, 'New Artificial Intelligence' (New AI) and the
situated cognition approach have critizised classical AI research
for being in quite a similar kind of impasse as cognitive psychology
is. Consequently, the approach of 'situated and self-organizing
cognition' claims that emergent patterns in cognition regulate
action in an adaptive manner. Cognition is situated by control
parameters ('valences' which express environmental constraints).
Optimality of patterns is achieved by synergetic dynamics in the
valence-driven mind.
weiterer Tip:
Varela F, Thompson E & Rosch E (1991): The Embodied Mind - Cognitive
Science and Human Experience. Cambridge: MIT Press.