Human Cognition in the Human brain.

This site contains texts that I wrote about cognitive psychology, by which I
mean the investigation of the way thinking (in its widest definition) is done.
I started with a model of the way the human cognition works, and then
added texts discussing points that have arisen from various comments I got.

If you have only casual interest in cognitive psychology, this page is

probably the most useful for you, and maybe this one. General pages are:
Blatant Nonsense Effect, Irrefutability of Nonsense-Arguments, "what is
evidence".

If you are not familiar with scientific practice, you should read this first.

All the texts in this site in a zip file (0.9Mb), gzipped tar file (0.7Mb, out
of date)

The main point that distinguishes my model from other models is that I try
to make it plausible neurobiologically. By 'neurobiologically' I mean the
characteristics of neurons and their connectivity in the brain. Very very
briefly, the main logic is:
(a) Humans think in the cortex.
(b) The connectivity inside the cortex is mostly stochastic (varies randomly
across individuals).
(c) Therefore the thinking system is not specified by the genes, i.e. not
innate.
(d) Hence what is innate is a learning system.

As far as I can see, all the current models of human thinking ignore
neurobiology, and more than that, they are neurobiologically implausible,
because they ignore the stochastic nature of the low-level connectivity of
neurons. See brain symbols for a discussion showing that symbolic systems
are implausible because of this reason. This text was first submitted for
publication in Apr96 and got quite impressive reviews. If reading these
reviews will not convince you that the current cognitive science is rotten,
nothing will.

The stochastic connectivity in the cortex is 'hidden' from the rest of the
public by neuroscientists, and here are online examples. [2Oct98] I have
submited a short letter to neuroscientists calling them to advertise the
stochastic connectivity of the cortex. [19Aug2001] A recent paper in
Science gives the impression that they found precise connectivity in the
cortex, but a closer inspection shows they didn't. It also gives a good
example of how the public is being mis-informed about the subject.

Here are some other various bits about the CNS.

New methods, like PET and fMRI, open new avenues in investigation of the
brain. However, currently the results are not replicable, and there is a strong
tendency to overinterpret the results, and worse, to avoid any discussion of
these overinterpretations. I was trying to publish a paper that shows the lack
of replicability in PET and fMRI. By now, the page also contains links to
the many reviews that the paper got, which are also quite impressive. There
is also a general discussion of cognitive brain imaging here, and here is an
example of what happens when you try to challenge these
overinterpretations. [6 Aug 2007] These pages are by now quite old, but the
facts that they higlight haven't change: there is no studies in cognitive brain
imaging which are reproducible acorss individuals in the details that they
show. Only gross anatomy is reproducible (sometimes).

While ignoring neurobiology, cognitive psychologists use other evidence to

support their models. In reasoning errors I list the typical reasoning errors
that they make when trying to support their models. I believe that currently
there is no model that is free from these reasoning errors, so if you think
you know a good model of thinking, you are invited to check it against this
list. In addition, there is also a list of myths and misconceptions that are
common in cognitive psychology.

MIT put online an Encyclopaedia of Cognitive Science (MITECS). I am

writing comments on MITECS, to show where the current consensus is
wrong. The advantage of this is that you can read both of the source and
the comments together (By now you can't, because they took it offline).

The most frequent criticism that I got about 'brain symbols' is that the
models that it criticizes are 'computational', and therefore do not need to be
implementable. This is based on Marr's ideas, as expressed in his book
Vision, though in somewhat distorted way. As a result, I wrote a Critique of
Vision by Marr, which, if you find Marr's ideas useful, is guaranteed to raise
your blood pressure.

An important question is why do the nonsense arguments that are based on

these reasoning errors, myths and misconceptions are effective in convincing
people. The Irrefutability of nonsense-arguments and the blatant nonsense
effect go some way to explain it. Probably a larger factor is the fundamental
methodological errors in the way cognitive scientists approach the question
of cognition.

Computer models form large portion of cognitive models. In Computer

models of cognition I argue that these models are not as useful as they are
supposed to be. I wrote this text because some people say they want to see
comparison between the performance for my model and other computer
models.
The current research in Psycholinguistics (by which I refer to anybody that
tries to learn about human thinking by learning about language) is the most
outrageous heap of nonsense around. Some more extended comments are
here. Chomsky worth a special mention. Did you know that Chomsky thinks
that science is 'blind luck'? Evolutionary Psychology is as bad as
Psycholinguistics by now. Some of my message to the Evolutionary
Psychology group that were rejected by the moderator.

The model itself is here. In short, it starts from the assumption that humans
are not born with a thinking system, which is almost direct corollary of the
stochastic connectivity of the cortex. Instead, humans are born with a
learning system, which learns how to think. The model describes the
learning system. Experience showed that people that haven't understood the
point of stochastic connectivity in the cortex and its implications cannot
actually see the point of the model, so unless you have read these pages
(above), you are probably wasting time trying to read the model itself.

A list of the major hypotheses of the model, which maybe useful to

navigate it can be found in Hypotheses.

The model's text does not contain a reference list. In Cognitive Psychology
Reading I explain why, and suggest how to go about learning more about
cognitive psychology.

A page trying to explain why cognitive psychology is so lousy.

Few other bits.

Comments are welcome, to yh@maldoo.com, but if you are interested in

some discussion, please read at least one neuroscience textbook before.
Please state the URL of the page(s) that you have read. It would also be
useful if you add some description of who you are, your ideas on the
subject and your home page.

Here are the most negative messages I got about this site.

[6 Aug 2007] I still don't mush progress. Here I list what I see as actual
progress in the field.

=========================================================
====================
Internet Free Zone Level 1

=========================================================
====================
ส่วนบนของฟอร์ม

Google Search human-brain.org;

Search human-brain.org Search maldoo.com Search WWW

ส่วนล่างของฟอร์ม

=========================================================
====================

Some personal details:

I did a degree in chemistry in Cambridge University, UK. I also did some

research in protein engineering, and publish several papers, but I lost
interest. Part of this is because of the stupid way scientific articles are
published currently.

Some pictures that I am drawing

Yehouda Harpaz
yh@maldoo.com
http://human-brain.org/
Maldoo is here.

Privacy statement: this site does not collect any information about the
identity of its visitors, and does not store any information on the client's
side.

Content Rating