Specificity Recognition and Social Cognition

Mainstream cognitive science claims that the essence of human cognition is its capacity to categorize the world into stones, trees, friends and foes, elements that form more or less homogeneous groups. But it has seldom been asked how individual entities like one's father or a work of art are in their uniqueness (or specificity) represented mentally, if at all. This book tackles that problem by surveying data and theories coming from various fields such as evolutionary biology, psychology, neurology and philosophy, and fitting them into a coherent, new theoretical framework of a broadly anti-representationalist ilk. In order to construct the framework, the authors introduce a series of new notions, reshape or interpret many already in currency (such as affordances, categories, misrepresentation, conceptual and non-conceptual content, aspect seeing, the analog-digital distinction and the evolutionary adaptivity of art), and formulate five criteria on the basis of which what is and what is not mentally represented can clearly be told apart. The book will be of interest to cognitive scientists in general.

Autorentext

The Authors: László Tarnay is an associate professor at the Department of Philosophy of the University of Pécs. He gives courses in the philosophy of language, the philosophy of the mind and modern epistemology. His special interest are French phenomenology, evolution theory and the theory of art. His recent publications include articles in cognitive film theory, argumentation theory, and pragmatics. He also translated two books by Emmanuel Lévinas.
Tamás Pólya teaches courses about theories of communication, linguistic pragmatics and the origins of art at Eszterházy Károly College, Eger and the University of Pécs. He is also interested in the philosophy of language and mind.
Both authors are currently involved in establishing a Center for the Study of the Moving Image and launching an undergraduate and graduate program in the history and theory of the moving image at the University of Pécs.

Inhalt
Contents: Individual Discrimination Affordances Categories Mental Representation Misrepresentation Conceptual and Non-conceptual Content Aspect Seeing The Analog-Digital Distinction Causal Theory of Information The Evolutionary Adaptivity of Art.