Sunrise over the horizon at dawn

Meaning expressed in language. What does it take to come to meaning in language? And how come our experience seems always already fully loaded with meaning? How are we able to create such a complex web of meanings that at the same time adds richness to the reality we experience individually?

Let’s recap some of the journey already made. It started with the seed principles P2 Language is the medium through which a subject experiences reality and P3 Language is where subjects share knowledge about reality. Meaning is the hidden currency that is traded at the level of individual experience and when we share with others. SPLectrum translates this in a metaphysics where epistemology is about how we learn from experience and sharing, ontology deals with concepts (in language) of reality and aesthetics is concerned with the dynamic of meaning and language. All of this remains quite abstract.

As a continuation of this journey I started looking on the more practical side: what are the process models in operation in the brain, what are the parallels with the current AI developments, are there philosophical areas of interest. I found myself surrounded by many things that seemed to point in the same direction but unable to bring them under one umbrella.

And then a word dropped out: cognition. What’s the definition? From the Oxford dictionary: Cognition is the mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses. This definition carries a lot of implicit baggage, about the mind, and the relation between (abstract) thought, experience and the senses. However, at the same time, it reads very much as a process that associates well with SPLectrum’s seed principles. Why did it take me so long to bring in cognition? It should have been there all along. Cognition is part of so many disciplines in science and philosophy!

Now, what is the relation between meaning and cognition? And here it becomes interesting, because it is twofold. There is meaning as what cognition produces, but also meaning as what cognition works in.

Meaning as what cognition produces. Cognition makes sense of what comes in; meaning is that sense. It distills, extracting a distinction rather than keeping the whole as what having meaning amounts to.

Meaning as what cognition works in. The input already bears meaning before any is applied. Cognition doesn’t confer meaning, it operates where meaning is already present. You can’t extract from a meaningless substrate, since there is nothing to extract from.

Cognition in its standard definition has a lot of anthropocentric baggage, and from SPLectrum’s point of view this is more of a hindrance than a help. SPLectrum runs with a simplified definition, keeping its core. There are two changes:

Firstly, the definition talks about acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience and the senses. There are two redundancies here: thought and the senses are part of experience. For the definition of cognition it is unnecessary to split them out. In fact in SPLectrum’s view all experience is built up from the senses, and thoughts arise from meanings derived from sensory input. So acquiring knowledge and understanding through experience will do.

Secondly, why define cognition as a mental action or process? Yes, the mind is where we first encountered it and where the main focus of study has been. But that is in my opinion not a good reason to constrain it. At this moment this has become a barrier to recognising and dealing with other expressions of cognition — e.g. distributed cognition in ant colonies or behaviours exhibited by AI. Maybe more correct would be: an action or process, in language, of acquiring knowledge and understanding. For SPLectrum’s definition, mental can simply be dropped.

That leaves us with: Cognition is the process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through experience. The next post will focus on cognition and the seed principles.

This post is part of the conversations series. See also The seed and Cognition.

Photo: ekrem osmanoglu / Unsplash