As a multi-layered theory of the foundations of “‘mathematicizing’ logic”, Husserlian pure logic is stratified on three levels (sub-theoretical, theoretical, meta-theoretical), which are then themselves transversally split in two sides (apophantic and ontological). This paper investigates how symbolic knowledge works in this framework—viz. in terms of ‘How can the subjective operating with symbols be justified in the process of obtaining objective contents of knowledge?’ To do so, it innovates in showing how Husserl’s theory of semiotic intentionality provides the epistemological-transcendental (...) foundation for the syntactic-semantic correspondence of the meaning relationship that is operative at the kernel of pure logic—i.e. on the theoretical level, between systems of axioms and formal manifolds. And thereby, it bridges the gap between the two volumes of the first edition of the Logical Investigations (namely, the Prolegomena and the six Investigations). (shrink)

The famous story of the choice of Hercules became one frequently depicted in Western art and, as Ernst Panofsky showed, the various treatments of this theme demonstrate the significance of cultural continuity through the centuries. At the same time, the motif of Hercules and his choice presents us with a challenge to current theoretical approaches to culture. We can either take the easy path and accept the current hermeneutic orthodoxies of popular cultural studies, or we can choose a harder but, (...) ultimately, more rewarding path: the philosophy of culture articulated by Ernst Cassirer. This volume brings together a collection of papers which reflects the broad sweep, both historical and theoretical, of Cassirer's philosophy of symbolic forms. They range from language-theory to myth and religion; and all are set, with varying degrees of emphasis, in a comparative context. (shrink)

This note presents an analysis of Symbolic Knowledge from Leibniz to Husserl, a collection of works from some members of The Southern Cone Group for the Philosophy of Formal Sciences. The volume delineates an outlook of the philosophical treatments presented by Leibniz, Kant, Frege, and the Booleans, as well as by Husserl, of some questions related to the conceptual singularities of symbolic knowledge –whose standard we find in the arts of algebra and arithmetic. The book’s unity of themes (...) and (at least in part) style is examined with the aim of showing the articulation of its parts. (shrink)

This paper compares Cassirer´s and Bohr´s views on symbolic knowledge in quantum physics. Although both of them consider quantum physics as symbolic knowledge, for Cassirer this amounts to a complete renunciation to intuition in quantum physics, while according to Bohr only spatio-temporal images may provide the mathematical formalism of the theory with physical reference. We show the Kantian roots of Bohr´s position and we claim that his Kantian concept of symbol enables Bohr to account for the sensible content (...) of quantum theory as well as for its systematic relation to classical physics. (shrink)

Symbolic arithmetic is fundamental to science, technology and economics, but its acquisition by children typically requires years of effort, instruction and drill1,2. When adults perform mental arithmetic, they activate nonsymbolic, approximate number representations3,4, and their performance suffers if this nonsymbolic system is impaired5. Nonsymbolic number representations also allow adults, children, and even infants to add or subtract pairs of dot arrays and to compare the resulting sum or difference to a third array, provided that only approximate accuracy is required6–10. (...) Here we report that young children, who have mastered verbal counting and are on the threshold of arithmetic instruction, can build on their nonsymbolic number system to perform symbolic addition and subtraction11–15. Children across a broad socio-economic spectrum solved symbolic problems involving approximate addition or subtraction of large numbers, both in a laboratory test and in a school setting. Aspects of symbolic arithmetic therefore lie within the reach of children who have learned no algorithms for manipulating numerical symbols. Our findings help to delimit the sources of children’s difficulties learning symbolic arithmetic, and they suggest ways to enhance children’s engagement with formal mathematics. We presented children with approximate symbolic arithmetic problems in a format that parallels previous tests of non-symbolic arithmetic in preschool children8,9. In the first experiment, five- to six-year-old children were given problems such as ‘‘If you had twenty-four stickers and I gave you twenty-seven more, would you have more or less than thirty-five stickers?’’. Children performed well above chance (65.0%, t1952.77, P 5 0.012) without resorting to guessing or comparison strategies that could serve as alternatives to arithmetic. Children who have been taught no symbolic arithmetic therefore have some ability to perform symbolic addition problems. The children’s performance nevertheless fell short of performance on non-symbolic arithmetic tasks using equivalent addition problems with numbers presented as arrays of dots and with the addition operation conveyed by successive motions of the dots into a box (71.3% correct, F1,345 4.26, P 5 0.047)8.. (shrink)

A. Newell and H. A. Simon were two of the most influential scientists in the emerging field of artificial intelligence (AI) in the late 1950s through to the early 1990s. This paper reviews their crucial contribution to this field, namely to symbolic AI. This contribution was constituted mostly by their quest for the implementation of general intelligence and (commonsense) knowledge in artificial thinking or reasoning artifacts, a project they shared with many other scientists but that in their case was (...) theoretically based on the idiosyncratic notions of symbol systems and the representational abilities they give rise to, in particular with respect to knowledge. While focusing on the period 1956-1982, this review cites both earlier and later literature and it attempts to make visible their potential relevance to today's greatest unifying AI challenge, to wit, the design of wholly autonomous artificial agents (a.k.a. robots) that are not only rational and ethical, but also self-conscious. (shrink)

The paper is divided into two parts. In the first one, I set forth a hypothesis to explain the failure of Husserl’s project presented in the Philosophie der Arithmetik based on the principle that the entire mathematical science is grounded in the concept of cardinal number. It is argued that Husserl’s analysis of the nature of the symbols used in the decadal system forces the rejection of this principle. In the second part, I take into account Husserl’s explanation of why, (...) albeit independent of natural numbers, the system is nonetheless correct. It is shown that its justification involves, on the one hand, a new conception of symbols and symbolic thinking, and on the other, the recognition of the question of “the formal” and formalization as pivotal to understand “the mathematical” overall. (shrink)

The _Symbolic Forms_ has long been considered the greatest of Cassirer’s works. Into it he poured all the resources of his vast learning about language and myth, religion, art, and science—the various creative symbolizing activities and constructions through which man has expressed himself and given intelligible objective form to this experience. “These three volumes alone make an outstanding contribution to epistemology and to the human power of abstraction. It is rather as if ‘The Golden Bough’ had been written in philosophical (...) rather than in historical terms.”—F.I.G. Rawlins, _Nature_. (shrink)

Introduces the problem of the symbolic structure of physics, surveys the modern history of symbols, proceeds to an epistemological discussion of the role of symbols in our knowledge of nature, and addresses key issues related to the methodology of physics and the character of its symbolic structures.

Resumen: En el presente artículo se propone una forma particular de problematizar lo que podemos comprender como conocimiento en ciencias sociales, que marginado de una perspectiva naturalista y más próximo a una fenomenológico-hermenéutica, vislumbra posibles intersecciones entre lo simbólico, lo social y lo cognitivo, con la finalidad de establecer desde una dimensión compleja y dialéctica un enfoque analítico de la ciencia social del conocimiento. Para ello, comenzaremos por figurar una problematización sobre el conocimiento en ciencias sociales, abordando algunas premisas sociológicas (...) y las funciones sociocognitivas para conceptualizar una perspectiva compleja del conocimiento. Posteriormente, un segundo apartado se sustenta sobre tres ejes principales: la objetividad, la subjetividad y la imaginación, como una tríada trascendental en esta perspectiva epistemológica. Para finalizar con la búsqueda de la relación entre el conocimiento y un pensamiento simbólico de acuerdo con los argumentos expuestos en los apartados anteriores, donde se entiende que las estructuras imaginario-arquetípicas circundantes en la realidad social, el proceso de comprensión e intersubjetividad constituyen, entre otros, los cimientos de los que vamos a entender por conocimiento en ciencias sociales.: This paper proposes a particular form of problematize what we can understand as knowledge in social sciences, that marginalized from a naturalistic perspective and closer to a phenomenological-hermeneutics glimpses possible intersections between the symbolic, the social and the cognitive, with the purpose of establishing from a complex and dialectical dimension an analytical approach of the social science of knowledge. To do this, we will begin by figuring out a problematization about knowledge in social sciences, addressing some sociological premises and socio-cognitive functions to conceptualize a complex perspective of knowledge. Subsequently, a second section is based on three main axes: objectivity, subjectivity and imagination, as a transcendental triad in this epistemological perspective. To end with the search for the relationship between knowledge and the symbolic thought according to the arguments outlined in the preceding paragraphs, where we understood that the imaginary-archetypal structures surrounding the social reality, the process of understanding and intersubjectivity constitute, among others, the foundations of which we will understand by knowledge in social sciences. (shrink)

Article is devoted to the social legitimation of knowledge. We study the contexts of implantation of knowledge products into the body of culture. The author proceeds from the need to study the process of objectification symbolic of object by applying the category of ‘facies‘, the introduction and justification of which on content and formal level were realized by the author in previous works. Such issues as the following are discussed in the article: the main stages of objectification, cognitions, different (...) worlds in science in the trend of unfolding cognitions, the basic principles of object-symbolic interpretation of the nature of knowledge. The author explores these questions by analyzing the basic epistemological trends that can be seen in the works of the greatest philosophers of both modern and recent times, globalizing the principle of a system approach on the basis of its synthesis with the elements of synergetics and semiotics. The author devotes a great place to criticism of Kant’s transcendental apriorism, revealing, however, its positive potential and determining its promising vector beating literally in the essence of contemporary cognitive science. Author takes on orbit of its original methodology conclusions of not only natural sciences and mathematics, but also poetic insights that allows creating of pulsating and at the same time quite certain interdisciplinary context. The main conclusions regarding the content of prerequisites of cognitive synthesis included in the final paragraph of article and are accompanied by convincing examples of modern physics. (shrink)

Although formal thought disorder (FTD) has been for long a clinical label in the assessment of some psychiatric disorders, in particular of schizophrenia, it remains a source of controversy, mostly because it is hard to say what exactly the “formal” in FTD refers to. We see anomalous processing of terminological knowledge, a core construct of human knowledge in general, behind FTD symptoms and we approach this anomaly from a strictly formal perspective. More specifically, we present here a symbolic computational (...) model of storage in, and activation of, a human semantic network, or semantic memory, whose core element is logical form; this is normalized by description logic (DL), namely by CL, a DL-based language – Conception Language – designed to formalize conceptualization from the viewpoint of individual cognitive agency. In this model, disruptions in the rule-based implementation of the logical form account for the apparently semantic anomalies symptomatic of FTD, which are detected by means of a CL-based algorithmic assessment. (shrink)

The _Symbolic Forms_ has long been considered the greatest of Cassirer’s works. Into it he poured all the resources of his vast learning about language and myth, religion, art, and science—the various creative symbolizing activities and constructions through which man has expressed himself and given intelligible objective form to this experience. “These three volumes alone make an outstanding contribution to epistemology and to the human power of abstraction. It is rather as if ‘The Golden Bough’ had been written in philosophical (...) rather than in historical terms.”—F.I.G. Rawlins, _Nature_. (shrink)

The class condition of women in contemporary Igbo society in particular and Africa in general, which is characterized by her peripherialization in the scheme of state building and knowledge production, has led to the need for the re-examination of her representation in specific cultural contexts in Africa prior to the major historical events (partition and colonization) in the continent. There is no doubt that the partition and colonization of Africa led to a pragmatic shift in local paradigms, and the significance (...) placed on the agencies of cultural transmission. This need to re-examine women s representation in cultures and societies in Africa has become imperative in order to make, where possible, a factual representation of women s place in specific cultural realities. This realization gives impetus for this paper. This article re-examines the perception that women have nothing to do with two key peace symbols—oji (kolanut) and ofo (staff of authority and justice)—in Igbo culture as has been presented in the literature on Igbo culture. Using a case study typology, the study uses Nanka in Anambra State, south-eastern Nigeria as the study area. It identifies the place of the Earth goddess in oji and ofo ritual performances and concludes that, as a key participant in these rituals, gender is mainstreamed in the usages of oji and ofo. (shrink)

Prior to the twentieth century, theories of knowledge were inherently perceptual. Since then, developments in logic, statis- tics, and programming languages have inspired amodal theories that rest on principles fundamentally different from those underlying perception. In addition, perceptual approaches have become widely viewed as untenable because they are assumed to implement record- ing systems, not conceptual systems. A perceptual theory of knowledge is developed here in the context of current cognitive science and neuroscience. During perceptual experience, association areas in the (...) brain capture bottom-up patterns of activation in sensory-motor areas. Later, in a top-down manner, association areas partially reactivate sensory-motor areas to implement perceptual symbols. The stor- age and reactivation of perceptual symbols operates at the level of perceptual components – not at the level of holistic perceptual expe- riences. Through the use of selective attention, schematic representations of perceptual components are extracted from experience and stored in memory (e.g., individual memories of green, purr, hot). As memories of the same component become organized around a com- mon frame, they implement a simulator that produces limitless simulations of the component (e.g., simulations of purr). Not only do such simulators develop for aspects of sensory experience, they also develop for aspects of proprioception (e.g., lift, run) and introspec- tion (e.g., compare, memory, happy, hungry). Once established, these simulators implement a basic conceptual system that represents types, supports categorization, and produces categorical inferences. These simulators further support productivity, propositions, and ab- stract concepts, thereby implementing a fully functional conceptual system. Productivity results from integrating simulators combinato- rially and recursively to produce complex simulations. Propositions result from binding simulators to perceived individuals to represent type-token relations. Abstract concepts are grounded in complex simulations of combined physical and introspective events. Thus, a per- ceptual theory of knowledge can implement a fully functional conceptual system while avoiding problems associated with amodal sym- bol systems. Implications for cognition, neuroscience, evolution, development, and artificial intelligence are explored. (shrink)

Although ontogeny cannot recapitulate phylogeny, a two-level model of the acquisition of language will be here proposed and its implication for the evolution of the faculty of language will be discussed. It is here proposed that the identification of the cognitive requirements of language during ontogeny could help us in the task of identifying the phylogenetic achievements that concurred, at some point, to the acquisition of language during phylogeny. In this model speaking will be considered as a complex ability that (...) arises in two different steps. The first step of competence widely relies on a bodily-based format of knowledge. The second step relies on more abstract meta-representations and implies high-level socio-cognitive skills. It is hypothesized that in order to reach the second level of language competence, symbolic communication and interaction with a cultural community are needed. Hence, the origins of species-specific human complex language and cognition are in both the brain and culture. Moreover, in this model, data from the embodied language research will be discussed in the light of a usage-based account of language. (shrink)

(*This paper was awarded the Elisabeth and Werner Leinfellner Award 2017 for outstanding contributions.) -/- This paper provides an explanation of the skeptical puzzle. I argue that we can take two distinct points of view towards representations, mental representations like perceptual experiences and artificial representations like symbols. When focusing on what the representation represents we take an attached point of view. When focusing on the representational character of the representation we take a detached point view. From an attached point of (...) view, we have the intuition that we can know that p simply by using the representation and without having prior knowledge about the reliability of the source that delivers the representation. When taking a detached point of view, we tend to think that we must have this kind of prior knowledge. These two conflicting intuitions about knowledge and representations provide the basis for our intuition of immediate perceptual knowledge on the one hand and for the skeptical intuition of underdetermination on the other hand. (shrink)

v. 1. Language.--v. 2. Mythical thought.--v. 3. The phenomenology of knowledge.--v. 4. The metaphysics of symbolic forms.

Shao Yung1 Shao Yung (-77) was an extraordinary thinker who lived during an extraordinary age. Among the great thinkers of the Northern Sung (960-), ...

Whether computational algorithms such as latent semantic analysis (LSA) can both extract meaning from language and advance theories of human cognition has become a topic of debate in cognitive science, whereby accounts of symbolic cognition and embodied cognition are often contrasted. Albeit for different reasons, in both accounts the importance of statistical regularities in linguistic surface structure tends to be underestimated. The current article gives an overview of the symbolic and embodied cognition accounts and shows how meaning induction (...) attributed to a specific statistical process or to activation of embodied representations should be attributed to language itself. Specifically, the performance of LSA can be attributed to the linguistic surface structure, more than special characteristics of the algorithm, and embodiment findings attributed to perceptual simulations can be explained by distributional linguistic information. (shrink)

Ernst Cassirer occupies a unique space in Twentieth-century philosophy. A great liberal humanist, his multi-faceted work spans the history of philosophy, the philosophy of science, intellectual history, aesthetics, epistemology, the study of language and myth, and more. The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms is Cassirer's most important work. It was first published in German in 1923, the third and final volume appearing in 1929. In it Cassirer presents a radical new philosophical worldview - at once rich, creative and controversial - (...) of human beings as fundamentally "symbolic animals," placing signs and systems of expression between themselves and the world. This major new translation, the first for over fifty years, brings Cassirer's magnum opus to a new generation of students and scholars. Volume 1: Language is a fascinating examination of arguably the most fundamental of these systems of expression: human language. Cassirer traces the problem of language and expression far back in the history of philosophy, considering the work of the early Greek rationalists. He then examines the later empiricist tradition, up to the romantic tradition in the nineteenth century tackling fundamental questions about representation, signification and expression as well as language and conceptual thought in mathematics and science. Correcting important errors in previous English editions, this translation reflects the contributions of significant advances in Cassirer scholarship over the last twenty to thirty years. Each volume includes a new introduction and translator's notes by S. G. Lofts, a foreword by Peter Gordon, a glossary of key terms, and a thorough index. (shrink)

We describe and try to motivate our project to build systems using both a knowledge based and a neural network approach. These two approaches are used at different stages in the solution of a problem, instead of using knowledge bases exclusively on some problems, and neural nets exclusively on others. The knowledge base (KB) is defined first in a declarative, symbolic language that is easy to use. It is then compiled into an efficient neural network (NN) representation, run, and (...) the results from run time and (eventually) from learning are decompiled to a symbolic description of the knowledge contained in the network. After inspecting this recovered knowledge, a designer would be able to modify the KB and go through the whole cycle of compiling, running, and decompiling again. The central question with which this project is concerned is, therefore, How do we go from a KB to an NN, and back again? We are investigating this question by building tools consisting of a repertoire of language/translation/network types, and trying them on problems in a variety of domains. (shrink)

Cognitive, or knowledge, agents, who are in some way aware of describing their own view of the world (based on their mental concepts), need to become concerned with the expressions of their own conceptions. My main supposition is that agents’ conceptions are mainly expressed in the form of linguistic expressions that are spoken, written, and represented based on e.g. letters, numbers, or symbols. This research especially focuses on symbolic conceptions (that are agents’ conceptions that are manifested in the form (...) of their symbols). I attempt to logically (and using ????LSYM) analyse symbolic conceptions in terminological systems. ????LSYM is an assertional fragment of my developed Conception Language (????L), which is utilised as a formal-logical system for representing and explicating agents’ conceptions of the world. Keywords: assertional logic; cognitive agent; knowledge agent; conception language; conception; symbol; symbolic conception. (shrink)

Every statement about language is also a statement by and about psyche. Guided by this primary assumption, and inspired by the works of Carl Jung, in _Symptom, Symbol, and the Other of Language_, Bret Alderman delves deep into the symbolic and symptomatic dimensions of a deconstructive postmodernism infatuated with semiotics and the workings of linguistic signs. This book offers an important exploration of linguistic reference and representation through a Jungian understanding of symptom and symbol, using techniques including amplification, dream (...) interpretation, and symbolic attitude. Focusing on Ferdinand de Saussure, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, and Richard Rorty, Alderman examines the common belief that words and their meaning are grounded purely in language, instead envisioning a symptomatic expression of alienation and collective dissociation. Drawing upon the nascent field of ecopsychology, the modern disciplines of phenomenology and depth psychology, and the ancient knowledge of myth and animistic cosmologies, Alderman dares us to re-imagine some of the more sacrosanct concepts of the contemporary intellectual milieu informed by semiotics and the linguistic turn. Symptom, Symbol, and the Other of Language is essential reading for academics and students engaged in the study of depth psychology. However, the interdisciplinary approach of the work ensures that it will also be of great interest to those researching and studying in the areas of ethology, ecopsychology, philosophy, linguistics and mythology. (shrink)

This article demonstrates the broad applicability of the concept of symbol in human communication, beyond but including verbal language. The starting point is Charles Sanders Peirce’s understanding of symbolicity as signification grounded on habits. The goal is to be able to conceptualize mediality in general and media interrelations, particularly in relation to symbolicity. Informed by a multimodal view on media, the author provides a systematic overview of symbolicity within the context of communication among human minds structured around two crossing parameters: (...) symbols being limited or widespread among people and symbols not being part of or being part of systems – languages. Based on this overview, I clarify the role of culture in language notions and conceptualize language in relation to mediality. I also suggest a way of more precisely describing similarities and differences between languages and media types, without either conflating or totally separating the two concepts. Finally, I investigate how the dependence of language and media type conceptions on culture affects the idea of intermediality. Together, these investigations and conceptualizations promote a more comprehensive understanding of symbolicity in general and a deeper knowledge of the role of symbolicity in human communication, including verbal language, and intermedial relations involving all kinds of different media types. (shrink)

A summary of issues related to symbolic capital, authorial presences, and intellectual property rights, and the necessity of finding a way out of 500-600 years of capitalist exploitation of the knowledge commons.

This ambitious work reclassifies and restructures the history of ideas and the philosophy of culture through a wide-ranging and novel use of the idea of the organon. It does so by radically revising standard interpretations and theories of all branches of philosophy, and by providing an intellectual and philosophical foundation for the new organon of the cultural sciences. Furthermore, the seeded idea that saw its growth in the form of this book is the unshakable conviction that the only way by (...) which a new apparatus of philosophy, an organon, could be created is by harking back to the vast sources of imagination, inspiration and mimÄ"sis. This entire study is based on the notion that metaphysics, insofar as it is concerned with the world in its entirety and with human beingâ (TM)s existence and thought, should provide the foundation for the organon of cultural sciences, based on symbolic forms. Given that the colossal amount of information and knowledge of philosophy, arts, humanities, logic, mathematics, social sciences and natural sciences cannot be comprised, analyzed and comprehended per se, it is the organonâ (TM)s objective to extract the main principles, ideas, postulates, theorems and theories of the cultural sciences, and, subsequently, to shape and restructure them as symbolic forms. Since all these principles are grounded on Becomingâ "which is not a stable or fixed entity such as Being, substance or thingâ "the symbolic forms preserve and change, elevate and further the organon of the cultural sciences, via a critical-dialectical process. (shrink)

Does geometry constitues a core set of intuitions present in all humans, regarless of their language or schooling ? We used two non verbal tests to probe the conceptual primitives of geometry in the Munduruku, an isolated Amazonian indigene group. Our results provide evidence for geometrical intuitions in the absence of schooling, experience with graphic symbols or maps, or a rich language of geometrical terms.

The symbol grounding problem is concerned with the question of how the knowledge used in AI programs, expressed as tokens in one form or another or simply symbols, could be grounded to the outside world. By grounding the symbols, it is meant that the system will know the actual objects, events, or states of affairs in the world to which each symbol refers and thus be worldly-wise. Solving this problem, it was hoped, would enable the program to understand its own (...) action and hence be truly intelligent ). The problem becomes more acute after a challenge posed by Searle in his now famous Chinese Room Gedanken experiment. Searle argued that no AI programs can be said to understand or have other cognitive states, if all they do is formal symbol manipulation. (shrink)