Natural and Artificial Cognition: On the Proper Place of Reason

Abstract

We explore the psychological foundations of Logic and Artificial Intelligence, touching on representation, categorisation, heuristics, consciousness, and emotion. Specifically, we challenge Dennett\'s view of the brain as a syntactic engine that is limited to processing symbols according to their structural properties. We show that cognitive psychology and neurobiology support a dual-process model in which one form of cognition is essentially semantical and differs in important ways from the operation of a syntactic engine. The dual-process model illuminates two important events in Logic and Artificial Intelligence, namely the emergence of non-monotonicity and of embodiment, events that changed the traditional paradigms of ‘Logic = the study of deductive inference' and ‘Symbolic AI'.

S. Afr. J. Philos. Vol.24(2) 2005: 137-151