One problem with the regularities framework is that, like other frameworks, it is an interlocking set of conceptual intuitions and hypotheses that do not lead to an easy definition. It is almost OK to say that regularities are not definable…
I am giving a talk at NIAS tomorrow on what I am calling the cognitive synthesis. Cognition and it’s cognates such as mind, thought etc are now among the most important topics of investigation in the sciences and in philosophy.…
In my previous post I introduced the idea of a concrete universal and asked if it wasn’t a contradiction in terms. The critic might argue that a concrete entity, like this computer in front of me has shape and size…
There was a time in the 1960’s and 70’s when mathematical psychology was considered an important field. One of the defining tomes produced in that era is the three volume Foundations of Measurement by Krantz, Suppes, Luce and Tversky. Measurement…
Organisms are both physical as well as experiential beings and it always useful to be accurate about when we are talking about one or the other. For example, it is well known that we have a blind spot in our…
Regularities are not permanent markers of the world; often they are a ledge to rest before climbing onwards. To take the most obvious example, walking is nothing other than controlled falling. Each time you lift one foot, you are falling…
It is easy to think of a regularity as a platonic ideal, an eternal form that regulates a particular phenomenon or process. However, the platonic regularity is not the view I have in mind. In fact, a regularity is a…
The last fifty years have seen a great expansion of our knowledge of the mind/brain and it relationship to the external world. Significant advances have been made on the experimental front, in areas as diverse as Psychophysics, Neurophysiology and Cognitive…
The Inner-Outer dyad is a regularity that shows its trace in many domains of human thought and action. Many fields of inquiry base themselves on a cognitive core involving a mapping between the microcosm and the macrocosm. Consider mystical traditions:…
The idea of a primeval order or design is central to Indo European cultures — it is there in the Rig-Vedic corpus in the notion of Rta, and it is there in Plato when he talks about ideas. Someone like Thomas McEvilley…