creators_name: Josephson, Brian D.
editors_name: Farre, George
editors_name: Grund, Cynthia
type: confpaper
datestamp: 2000-10-12
lastmod: 2011-03-11 08:54:23
metadata_visibility: show
title: Constructional Tools as the Origin of Cognitive Capacities
ispublished: inpress
subjects: dev-psy
full_text_status: public
keywords: development, cognition, learning, agents, neural networks, modules, tools, paradigms, domain specificity, issue resolution, language.
abstract: It is argued that cognitive capacities can be understood as the outcome of the collective action of a set of agents created by tools that explore possible behaviours and train the agents to behave in such appropriate ways as may be discovered. The coherence of the whole system is assured by a combination of vetting the performance of new agents and dealing appropriately with any faults that the whole system may develop. This picture is shown to account for a range of cognitive capacities, including language.
date: 2000
date_type: published
publisher: University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark
refereed: FALSE
referencetext: Elman, J.L. et al. (1997); Rethinking Innateness: A Connectionist Perspective on Development, MIT.
Karmiloff-Smith, A. (1992); Beyond Modularity: a Developmental Perspective on Cognitive Science, MIT. 
Minsky, M. (1987); The Society of Mind; Heinemann.
Pinker, S. (1994); The Language Instinct: the New Science of Language; Penguin.
Quartz, S.R. and Sejnowski, T.J. (1997); The neural basis of cognitive development: A constructivist manifesto; Behavioral and Brain Sciences, Vol. 20 (4): pp. 537+.
Winograd, T. (1972); Understanding Natural Language; Edinburgh.
citation:   Josephson, Brian D.  (2000) Constructional Tools as the Origin of Cognitive Capacities.  [Conference Paper]    (In Press)  
document_url: http://cogprints.org/983/1/echo4.html
document_url: http://cogprints.org/983/5/echo4.pdf