[lingtalks] CogSci Distinguished Speaker: Patricia Carpenter Nov 1st

[Silvia Paparello]

The Cognitive Science Distinguished Speaker Series is honored to feature:


Professor Patricia A. Carpenter, Carnegie Mellon University.
http://www.psy.cmu.edu/faculty/carpenter/index.html

  "Mind and Brain and Embodiment."

Tuesday Nov 1st , 4:30pm in CSB 003


An informal reception will follow Professor Carpenter's talk in CSB 180.



For anyone interested, a link to a manuscript on which her talk is based
will be available in the Events section of the CogSci home page at
http://www.cogsci.ucsd.edu

Abstract:

A key to understanding the relation of mind and brain may be life itself,
particularly how life relates to its environment.  In cognitive science
and neuroscience, we typically assume that we represent an independent
environment, but this assumption may be a stumbling block. Instead, I will
describe a non-representational theory that generalizes the process of
enzyme catalysis to the level of the organism (Davia, in press). Catalysis
is a biochemical process that increases the speed of a chemical reaction
involving molecular reagents in order to form a thermodynamically more
stable product. Davia proposes that at every level of scale, from the
smallest to the largest and including the brain, life processes are
processes of catalysis.   Life persists by catalyzing or mediating its
environment.

I will explain and support the model by drawing on two phenomena.  The
first includes the traveling waves of activity in the nervous system, such
as the neuron.s action potential and the complex waves studied in EEG
research, and the traveling waves in behavior, exemplified by animal
locomotion. These waves resemble the traveling waves in enzyme catalysis.
The second phenomenon is from sensory-substitution research, in which
blind adults learn to .see;. this suggests that the implicit order of the
environmental event, rather than eyes, underlies the experience of
.seeing.. Similarly, in enzyme catalysis, the traveling waves depend on
the environment.s structure. An organism.s experience is about the world
it embodies, making explicit what is only implicit in the environment.
This proposal provides a contrasting approach to fundamental issues in
cognitive science, such as the relation of consciousness to biology,
neuroscience methods, such as localization in neuroimaging, and the
analysis of cognitive processes in terms of functions.



Davia, C. J. (in press). Life, catalysis and excitable media: A dynamic
systems approach to metabolism and cognition. In J. Tuszynski (Ed.)  The
emerging physics of consciousness.  Heidelberg, Germany: Springer-Verlag.
pp. 229-260.
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