From Molecule to Metaphor - Towards a Unified Cognitive Science

***SYMBOLIC SYSTEMS FORUM***

From Molecule to Metaphor: Towards a Unified Cognitive Science by Jerry Feldman Computer Science Division and Institute for Cognitive and Brain Sciences, UC Berkeley Thursday, Nov. 2, 2006 4:15-5:30 pm Building 380, Room 380C (Math Corner) - MAP (Parking in nearby lots at no charge after 4 pm) Abstract: The neural revolution in cognitive science, which was always inevitable, is well under way. There is already enough known about how our brains process information to render many traditional theories obsolete and a unified neurally-based cognitive science is emerging. Linguistics and Philosophy have, for both historical and technical reasons, been slow to integrate even the most basic neuroscience. Much of fundamental neuroscience is done with animals and, since only people use language, there has been no easy way to extend animal findings to human thought and language. The talk is based on a new book that is a systematic attempt to show how human language and thought arise as an extension of the physiology and experiences that people share with other animals. Integrating findings from all the cognitive sciences yields a foundation for an explicitly neural theory of language that is an integral part of contemporary science. Many, but not all, of the fundamental issues about brain and mind become clearer in a Unified Cognitive Science.

metavalent, extropian, , cognitive science