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weekly quote #27: W. Brian Arthur May 12, 2008

Posted by ocmpoma in : economics , trackback

W. Brian Arthur’s paper “Cognition: the black box of economics” (which, according to the version I’ve read is chapter 3 of The complexity vision and the teaching of economics excerpted) is about how economics views the process of cognition and its implications for teaching and studying the field.

Within the paper is a section titled ‘The mind as a fast-pattern completer’ which I found quite engrossing. In it Arthur discusses what makes our minds what they are; I was caught up fairly early into it when Arthur wrote that “[i]n association we impose intelligible patterns.” That alone deserves to be cited (the idea that we create, rather than ’see’, patterns, is a big deal to me), but I found this quote, probably the longest I’ve done yet, the best of it:

“Our minds then are extremely good at associating things, using metaphors, memories, structures, patterns, theories. In other words, the mind is not given. It’s not an empty bucket for puring data in. The mind itself is emergent. This idea is new in Western thinking but there’s plenty of precedent for it in the East… The mind doesn’t contain ideas. It’s these ideas — these associations — that instead contain the mind or constitute the mind. The mind is not fixed in any way; it consists in its associations and the apparatus to manipulate these. In this sense it’s emergent. So strictly speaking I shouldn’t say as I did earlier that meaning resides in the mind, because deep enough within cognitive philosophy the concept of mind itself dissolves. Meaning resides in associations our neural apparatus connects with the data presented. We are far now from seeing reasoning as deduction that takes place in a container of variables whose values are updated by “information.” If reasoning is largely association, it depends on the past experiences of the reasoner. The framing of a situation, the “sense” made of it, are therefore dependent on the reasoner’s history. And so is the outcome.”

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Comments»

1. ubs - 12 May 19:21

In his autobiography Bertrand Russell tells us he dropped
his interest in economics after half a year’s study because he
thought it was too simple.

Funny, because that is exactly what draws me to it. Thank you ocmpoma, great find.

Also, on the subject of the magazine “Lapham’s Quarterly.” You can pick up individual copies at Barnes and Nobel. It’s against my religion to commit to an expense stream.

2. ocmpoma - 13 May 7:09

I buckled under and subscribed; still awaiting the first arrival.