Cognitive Science in Search of Unity

About the Project

The objective of the project “Cognitive Science in Search of Unity” is to develop an account of unification and integration in cognitive science. Cognitive science is an interdisciplinary research field, in which methods, tools, and concepts from other disciplines are used. One can ask a fundamental question whether anything unifies the field; or whether it is not just a hotchpotch of heterogeneous research. This kind of doubt can be articulated with regard to any interdisciplinary research field. However, the existence of interdisciplinary collaboration means that there are real connections between disciplines and that their problems are related. But to really dispel the doubt against interdisciplinary research, one needs to answer the question what makes such conglomerates as cognitive science actually unified.

The hypothesis is that despite diversity – or rather thanks to diversity – interdisciplinary research fields can be unified, even if there is some proclivity towards disintegration or some disciplines absorb others. The unity in question does not rely on using one fundamental notion (such as “cognition” or “mental representation”) or one methodology but on assuming a common set of hypotheses about cognitive mechanisms, described on multiple levels of organization by multiple disciplines. The primary tool of unification is developing multi-level models of mental mechanisms. The full description of the research project is available in the PDF format here: Integration and unification.

Publications of the project

Bielecka, K., & Marcinów, M.. (2017). Mental Misrepresentation in Non-Human Psychopathology. Biosemiotics 10(2), 195-210. doi:10.1007/s12304-017-9299-2.
Bielecka, K., & Miłkowski, M. (2018). Marksołak a rzeczywistość. In S. Gromadzki & M. Miłkowski (Eds.), Leszek Kołakowski a filozofia (pp. 75–95). Warszawa: Wydawnictwo IFiS PAN.

Fresco, N., & Miłkowski, M. (2019). Mechanistic Computational Individuation without Biting the Bullet. The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science. doi:10.1093/bjps/axz005
Gładziejewski, P., & Miłkowski, M. (2017). Structural representations: causally relevant and different from detectors. Biology & Philosophy, 32, 337–355. doi:10.1007/s10539-017-9562-6
Hohol, M., & Miłkowski, M. (2019). Cognitive Artifacts for Geometric Reasoning. Foundations of Science, 24(4), 657–680. doi:10.1007/s10699-019-09603-w
Hohol, M. (2020). Foundations of geometric cognition. London–New York: Routledge.
Litwin, P. (2020). Extending Bayesian Models of the Rubber Hand Illusion. Multisensory Research, 33(2), 127–160. https://doi.org/10.1163/22134808-20191440
Litwin, P., & Miłkowski, M. (2020). Prospection does not imply predictive processing. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 43, e137. doi: 10.1017/S0140525X19002991
Marcinów, M. (2020). Methodology of ‘History of Polish Madness.’ AVANT. The Journal of the Philosophical-Interdisciplinary Vanguard, 11(1). doi: 10.26913/avant.2020.01.07
Matyja, J. R. (2016). Embodied Music Cognition: Trouble Ahead, Trouble Behind. Frontiers in Psychology, 7. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01891
Matyja, J. R., & Dolega, K. (2015). Commentary: The embodied brain: towards a radical embodied cognitive neuroscience. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 9. doi:10.3389/fnhum.2015.00669
Miłkowski, M. (2016a). Integrating cognitive (neuro)science using mechanisms. Avant: Journal of Philosophical-Interdisciplinary Vanguard, VI(2), 45–67.
Miłkowski, M. (2016b). Sztuczna inteligencja. In J. Hołówka & B. Dziobkowski (Eds.), Panorama współczesnej filozofii (pp. 309–328). Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN.
Miłkowski, M. (2016c). Unification Strategies in Cognitive Science. Studies in Logic, Grammar and Rhetoric, 48(1), 13–33. doi:10.1515/slgr-2016-0053
Miłkowski, M. (2016d). Kognitywistyka i modele umysłu. dwutygodnik.com. Warszawa. http://www.dwutygodnik.com/artykul/6322-kognitywistyka-i-modele-umyslu.html. Accessed 26 February 2017
Miłkowski, M. (2017a). Situatedness and Embodiment of Computational Systems. Entropy, 19(4), 162. doi:10.3390/e19040162
Miłkowski, M. (2017b). Why think that the brain is not a computer? APA Newsletter on Philosophy and Computers, 16(2), 22–28.
Miłkowski, M. (2017c). Is Empiricism Empirically False? Lessons from Early Nervous Systems. Biosemiotics, 10(2), 229–245. doi:10.1007/s12304-017-9294-7.
Miłkowski, M. (2017d) Objections to Computationalism. A Survey. In Proceedings of the 39th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society. Computational Foundations of Cognition, 2723–28. London: Cognitive Science Society, 2017. https://mindmodeling.org/cogsci2017/papers/0515/index.html.
Miłkowski, M. (2017e). Mechanisms and the Mental. In The Routledge Handbook of Mechanisms and Mechanical Philosophy, edited by Stuart S Glennan and Phyllis Illari, 74–88. New York: Routledge (Taylor & Francis Group), 2017.
Miłkowski, M. (2018a). Autopoiesis nie wywołała rewolucji. In G. Króliczak, K. Łastowski, Ł. Przybylski, P. Przybysz, & M. Urbański (Eds.), Filozof w krainie umysłów. Profesorowi Andrzejowi Klawiterowi w darze (pp. 217–227). Poznań: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Wydziału Nauk Społecznych UAM.
Miłkowski, M. (2018b). From Computer Metaphor to Computational Modeling: The Evolution of Computationalism. Minds and Machines, 28(3), 515–541. doi:10.1007/s11023-018-9468-3
Miłkowski, M. (2018c). Objections to Computationalism: A Survey. Roczniki Filozoficzne, 66(3), 57–75. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.18290/rf.2018.66.3-3
Miłkowski, M. (2018d). “Morphological Computation: Nothing but Physical Computation.” Entropy 20 (12): 942. https://doi.org/10.3390/e20120942.
Miłkowski, M. (2019a). Embodied cognition. In The Routledge Handbook of the Computational Mind (pp. 323–338). Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon; New York: Routledge. doi:10.4324/9781315643670-25
Miłkowski, M. (2019b). Fallible Heuristics and Evaluation of Research Traditions. The Case of Embodied Cognition. Ruch Filozoficzny, 75(2), 223–236. doi:10.12775/RF.2019.031
Miłkowski, M. (2019c). Social intelligence: How to integrate research? A mechanistic perspective. AI & SOCIETY, 34(4), 735–744. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-017-0787-3
Miłkowski, M. (2020). Thinking about Semantic Information. Avant, XI(2), 1–10. doi: 10.26913/avant.2020.02.08
Miłkowski, M., Hohol, M., Nowakowski, P. (Eds.) (2019), Mechanisms in psychology: The road towards unity? Theory & Psychology, 29(5), 567–735.
Miłkowski, M., Hohol, M. Nowakowski, P. (2019). Mechanisms in psychology: The road towards unity?. Theory & Psychology, 29(5), 567–578 https://doi.org/10.1177/0959354319875218
Miłkowski, M., Hensel, W. M., & Hohol, M. (2018). Replicability or reproducibility? On the replication crisis in computational neuroscience and sharing only relevant detail. Journal of Computational Neuroscience. doi:10.1007/s10827-018-0702-z
Miłkowski, Marcin, Robert William Clowes, Zuzanna Rucińska, Aleksandra Przegalińska, Tadeusz Zawidzki, Adam Gies, Joel Krueger, et al. 2018. “From Wide Cognition to Mechanisms: A Silent Revolution.” Frontiers in Psychology 9. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.02393.
Miłkowski, M., & Nowakowski, P. (2019). Representational unification in cognitive science: Is embodied cognition a unifying perspective? Synthese. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-019-02445-w
Motyka, P., & Litwin, P. (2019). Proprioceptive Precision and Degree of Visuo-Proprioceptive Discrepancy Do Not Influence the Strength of the Rubber Hand Illusion. Perception, 48(9), 882–891. https://doi.org/10.1177/0301006619865189
Nowakowski, P. R. (2017). Embodied Cognition: Looking Inward. Hybris, (38), 74–97.
Nowakowski, P. R. (2019). Epistemic Challenges: Engaging Philosophically in Cognitive Science. Ruch Filozoficzny, 75(2), 237–255. https://doi.org/10.12775/RF.2019.032

Nowakowski, P. (2020). Tracking the Objects of the Psychopathology. AVANT. The Journal of the Philosophical-Interdisciplinary Vanguard, XI(1), 1–14. https://doi.org/10.26913/avant.2020.01.05
Wachowski, W. (2019). 30 lat Dizajnu na co dzień. Komentarz i recenzja przekładu książki Dona Normana. AVANT. The Journal of the Philosophical-Interdisciplinary Vanguard. doi: 10.26913/avant.2019.03.23

Wachowski, W. M. (2019). What it is like to be a pickpocket. Culture & Psychology, 1354067X1989493. doi: 10.1177/1354067X19894934

Wołoszyn, K., & Hohol, M. (2017). Commentary: The poverty of embodied cognition. Frontiers in Psychology, 8. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00845

The project has been funded by National Science Center under the decision DEC-2014/14/E/HS1/00803 in May 2015 for 1548000.00 PLN. The duration of the project is 5 years. The Principal Investigator is Marcin Miłkowski.