Fenomen rozumienia

• Authors: Andrzej Chmielecki

Title variants

EN

A COGNITIVE MODEL OF UNDERSTANDING

• Languages of publication: PL

Abstracts

EN

Abstract In my paper I develop a cognitive model of understanding and its close kin – intellectual intuition. The model is based on my concept of information, by which I mean any detected difference. Information may take two basic forms – qualitative and structural – depending of what is meant by “difference”. The first one is attained when a system with appropriate detectors detects which of elementary states it is able to distinguish has just occurred. A system gains structural information if it is able to detect difference of concurrent states. Qualitative information is an elementary, first-order information. Structural information is built of elementary information and is therefore a second-order information. There are higher-order information also; I collectively term them synformation. A synformation integrally treated by a cognitive system as one, I call representation. In most cases representations are mappings of external world onto states of asensory system of the brain, preserving some relations, and therefore being a kind of morphism. Due to such morphisms, information contained in representation is – objectively – information of something, and representation has cognitive content. If a system is able to know that a representation is representation – i.e. that it represents (stands for) something else - the representation becomes a sign and thus can be treated either syntactically or semantically. (The representation in question is not an original, dynamic representation to which some causal role is attributed, but its inert copy – let’s call it a secondary representation - taken from a working memory). Within the realm of the mental I distinguish two levels: lower (psychical), available to all animals possessing senses/brains, and higher (spiritual), exclusively available to humans. The second I further divide into mental part (“mind” in narrower, technical sense of a power to manipulate with secondary representations on purely formal – in most cases associational or mnemonic – ground, i.e. regardless of their content) and intellectual part (“intellect”). Intellect operates on data taken from working memory. Intellect is thus a semantic power of making the cognitive content explicit to an agent (a person), and especially of grasping/constituting what is being represented by a sign. The power presupposes that the agent possesses an intuition of reality, a kind of understanding which is a base of all other forms of understanding (higher-order understanding). Intellectual intuition is a kind of understanding wherein all conventional signs (symbols) have been superseded (replaced) by representations having cognitive content. In the second part of the paper I try to substantiate the above ideas neurophysiologically.

Keywords

EN

UNDERSTANDING; SYNFORMATION; MORPHISM; COGNITIVE MODEL

• Publisher: Oficyna Wydawnicza Epigram
• Journal: Filo-Sofija
• Year: 2004
• Volume: 4
• Issue: 4
• Pages: 95-116

Contributors

author

Andrzej Chmielecki