Dynamical Hypothesis: BBS Call for Commentators

[Stevan Harnad]

Below is the abstract of a forthcoming BBS target article on:

    THE DYNAMICAL HYPOTHESIS IN COGNITIVE SCIENCE
    by Tim van Gelder

This article has been accepted for publication in Behavioral and Brain
Sciences (BBS), an international, interdisciplinary journal providing
Open Peer Commentary on important and controversial current research in
the biobehavioral and cognitive sciences.

Commentators must be BBS Associates or nominated by a BBS Associate. To
be considered as a commentator for this article, to suggest other
appropriate commentators, or for information about how to become a BBS
Associate, please send EMAIL to:

    bbs at soton.ac.uk 

      or write to:

    Behavioral and Brain Sciences
    Department of Psychology
    University of Southampton
    Highfield, Southampton
    SO17 1BJ UNITED KINGDOM

    http://www.princeton.edu/~harnad/bbs.html
    http://cogsci.soton.ac.uk/bbs
    ftp://ftp.princeton.edu/pub/harnad/BBS
    ftp://cogsci.soton.ac.uk/pub/harnad/BBS
    gopher://gopher.princeton.edu:70/11/.libraries/.pujournals

If you are not a BBS Associate, please send your CV and the name of a
BBS Associate (there are currently over 10,000 worldwide) who is
familiar with your work. All past BBS authors, referees and commentators
are eligible to become BBS Associates.

To help us put together a balanced list of commentators, please give
some indication of the aspects of the topic on which you would bring
your areas of expertise to bear if you were selected as a commentator.
An electronic draft of the full text is available for inspection by
anonymous ftp (or gopher or world-wide-web) according to the
instructions that follow after the abstract.
____________________________________________________________________

        THE DYNAMICAL HYPOTHESIS IN COGNITIVE SCIENCE

        Tim van Gelder
        Department of Philosophy
        University of Melbourne
        Parkville VIC 3052
        Australia
        tgelder at ariel.unimelb.edu.au
        http.//ariel.its.unimelb.edu.au/~tgelder


    KEYWORDS: cognition, systems, dynamical systems, computers,
    computational systems, computability, modeling, time.

    ABSTRACT:  Recent years have seen increasing use of dynamics in
    cognitive science. If the heart of the dominant computational approach
    is the hypothesis that cognitive agents are digital computers, the
    heart of the alternative dynamical approach is the hypothesis that
    cognitive agents are dynamical systems. This target article attempts
    to articulate the dynamical hypothesis and to defend it as an
    empirical alternative to the computational hypothesis. Digital
    computers and dynamical systems are characterized as specific kinds of
    systems. The dynamical hypothesis has two major components: the nature
    hypothesis (cognitive agents are dynamical system) the knowledge
    hypothesis (cognitive agents can be understood dynamically). A wide
    range of objections to the general hypothesis are then rebutted.  The  
    conclusion is that cognitive systems may well be dynamical systems,
    and only sustained empirical research in cognitive science will
    determine the extent to which that is true.


--------------------------------------------------------------
To help you decide whether you would be an appropriate commentator for
this article, an electronic draft is retrievable by anonymous ftp from
ftp.princeton.edu according to the instructions below (the filename is
bbs.vangelder). Please do not prepare a commentary on this draft.
Just let us know, after having inspected it, what relevant expertise
you feel you would bring to bear on what aspect of the article.
-------------------------------------------------------------
These files are also on the World Wide Web and the easiest way to
retrieve them is with Netscape, Mosaic, gopher, archie, veronica, etc.
Here are some of the URLs you can use to get to the BBS Archive:

    http://www.princeton.edu/~harnad/bbs.html
    http://cogsci.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/bbs.html
    ftp://ftp.princeton.edu/pub/harnad/BBS/bbs.vangelder
    ftp://cogsci.ecs.soton.ac.uk/pub/harnad/BBS/bbs.vangelder
    gopher://gopher.princeton.edu:70/11/.libraries/.pujournals

To retrieve a file by ftp from an Internet site, type either:
ftp ftp.princeton.edu
   or
ftp 128.112.128.1
   When you are asked for your login, type:
anonymous
   Enter password as queried (your password is your actual userid:
   yourlogin at yourhost.whatever.whatever - be sure to include the "@")
cd /pub/harnad/BBS
   To show the available files, type:
ls
   Next, retrieve the file you want with (for example):
get bbs.vanGelder
   When you have the file(s) you want, type:
quit