All posts filed under: Cognition

On Learning

Saturday, March 8, 2008
by Joseph Weissman
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abstract machine / code / Cognition / diagram / difference / energy / entropy / identity / knowledge / learning / memory / problem / structure / Thought / unconscious / wittgenstein

One way of approaching the difference between knowledge and learning (so profound in our opinion that, despite their entanglement, there can be postulated neither a material nor conceptual ground which could ever serve to unify them) is by considering that even while wholly disparate, they are not in the least opposed for that reason. To learn and to know are two divergent operations, contrapositive dynamisms, which are nevertheless always both active simultaneously, as the “cutting […]

Fractal Cognition

Tuesday, May 8, 2007
by Joseph Weissman
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assemblage / Cognition / desire / Fractal Structure / machine / multiplicity / Thought

Ignoring the obvious inadequacies of a functionalist line of thinking–namely it’s inability to conceive of reality as anything else than a series of static points connected by lines of force–let’s here call forth a question that allows itself to momentarily detained as a function, even if it ultimately shall cause our functionalizing schema to splinter: What is the nature of cognition? Is it a fundamental process or a secondary production? What is the relation between […]

On Epistemiology

Tuesday, February 20, 2007
by Joseph Weissman
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Cognition / epistemology / history / multiplicity / paradox / psychosituation

Every epoch is haunted by a series of paradoxes: every social formation, every expression or formulation of knowledge is structured by that which it cannot integrate into itself. The epoch defines the series, but the paradoxes structure the limit-boundary of the epistemic situation. There is no radical exterior to a given ‘psycho-situation.’ The ‘outside of knowledge’ is not merely clouded in ignorance, obscurity, but is, in fact, paradoxically absent. There is no ‘outside’ of the […]

The Cognition-Dissimulation Hypothesis

Thursday, February 15, 2007
by Joseph Weissman
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Cognition / Dissimulation Hypothesis / Fractal Structure / Interpretation / Thought / truth

No one has proposed, so far as I know, a correlate in cognitive science to Heisenberg’s Uncertainty principle: let’s call it the cognition-dissimulation hypothesis. It would state something like “Though there exist a multiplicity of legitimate modes of analyzing cognition, there is an upper limit on how much we can understand about our processes of understanding.” That multiple modes are possible is not incidental; this indicates a single explanatory appartus is insufficient to explain the […]