Saturday 2 January 2016

(7b. Comment Overflow) (50+)

(7b. Comment Overflow) (50+)

1 comment:

  1. The coolest thing about university is how often you realise that something you barely thought about, just a passing thought, is given so much attention by people in that field, and how many tools have been developed in attempts to solve that problem, and just in general how in-depth each specialization really is. It’s just so amazing/humbling.
    For some reason, this paper reminds me of the comparisons made by computationalists regarding computers & humans. Similar in how they test computers’ cognitive skills using humans as a standard to understand cognition better. I wonder if one day someone will say, “Apes cognize better than humans!”, like computationalists will sometimes say about computers (“More human than human”).
    But from that comparison (computationalists & these guys), we can be cautious about what phylogenics can actually tell us. The authors did a good job distinguishing the 4 questions at the beginning (ontogeny, causality, phylogeny, and function). One thing would be that we can only ever test the compared thing (computer, animal)’s cognition through our own. The tests have to show us as cognitively capable, otherwise what remains the definition of cognition? The issue with this is that it cannot shed light on our cognition so much as ask the question, “How close can animals get to approaching humans?” and ultimately, is that the question we really want to ask?

    ReplyDelete