Presentacin de PowerPoint

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From Symbolic Cognition to Digital Environments
A Long Term Perspective Luis
Moreno-Armella University of
MassachusettsMassachusetts, DartmouthKaput
Center KKaput kaput
Massachusetts, Dartmouth
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The human brain has traveled a long way to
become symbolic.
Basic animal awareness intuits the mysteries of
the worlddirectly, allowing the universe to
carve out its own imagein the mind.
WIRED
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Wired intentionality
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Somewhere in evolution, the evolving nervous
system must have acquired the mechanisms needed
for symbolic thinking while retaining its
original, implicit/analog base.
This is the story of our own evolutionary
adventure. How
did it begin?
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conscious control of body movements
Skills cutting, throwing, manufacturing
TOOLS level zero of symbolic culture
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Our deepest cultural roots lie in collective
action and mimetic thought.
Technology of memory
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With symbols, we crossed our cognitive Rubicon
culture became our new environment.
What is a symbol?
Signifier
Reference field
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The first level of symbolization results
from crystallizing the intentionality and
the actions IN THE SYMBOL.
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Signifier without reference field
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Cognition
Culture
The study of human cognition has been too often
carried on as though humans had no culture, no
variability and no history.
Baldwin effect
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Symbolic technology
40,000
Orality
125,000
Externalization of memory
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Ancient Counting Technologies Evidence of the
construction of one-to-one correspondences
between arbitrary collections of concrete
objects and a model set (a template) can already
be found in between 40,000 and 10,000 B.C.
Hunter-gatherers used bones with marks
(tallies) as reckoning devices.
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The new symbolic capacity
- Cuneiform writing
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In Mesopotamia, between 10000 B.C. and 8000,
B.C., People used sets of clay bits as modeling
sets. However, this technique had severe
limitations.
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The idea that emerged was to replace the
elements of the model set with clay pieces of
diverse shapes and sizes, whose numerical value
were conventional.
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The shape of the counter was impressed on the
outer side of the envelope. The mark on the
surface indicates the counter inside.
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Later, instead of impressing the counters
against the clay, due perhaps to the increasing
complexity of the shapes involved, scribes began
to draw on the clay the shapes of former
counters.
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The contextual constraints of the diverse
numerical systems, constituted an obstacle to the
mathematical evolution of number
What was needed?
Context-free numerical system
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There is still a problem to solve zero, (of
primordial importance in a positional system to
eliminate representational ambiguities).
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At the same time invention and evolution of
writing
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Pictographs
ideograms
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Alphabetic writing --- Greece
Phaedrus
(impact of writing in Greek society)
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for this discovery of yours will create
forget-fulness in the learners' souls, because
they will not use their memories they will trust
to the external written characters and not
remember of themselves.
Plato, Phaedrus
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Writing became
infrastructural
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Today Digital technologies
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New status of symbol
EXECUTABLE SYMBOL
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The nature of mathematical symbols have evolved
in recent years from static, inert inscriptions
that users have little personal identification
with, to dynamic objects or diagrams that are
constructible, interactive.
Malleability
examples
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In a digital ecology, our semiotic becomes
digital. Executability is intrinsic to the new
symbols and representations We are
externalizing memory AND cognition!
Person, society
Digital environment
Co-action
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New cognitive societies
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We shall, never cease from exploration and
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I dedicate this presentation to my friend
Jim Kaput Thanks for being here
with us.
October, 26th, 2007, Kaput Center