Phil and Steven, (01)
These issues arise from trying to relate words of ordinary language
to technical terms in various branches of cognitive science. I agree
that some discussion of the relationships is useful in a book with
the scope of Phil's dissertation. (02)
But it's important to distinguish formal terms in a theory, data
derived by experimental procedures and observations, and informal
words whose meanings evolved through thousands of years of usage.
They are related, but not in any one-to-one correspondence. (03)
Phil
> Consciousness is a dynamic property of a system observing itself and
> its relation to its environment. This property is evidenced by the
> creation of conceptual structures that represent a system's observations
> and thoughts about itself and its environment. (04)
This is an attempt to define a common word by a technical definition.
It's misleading on both sides: (1) attempts to legislate how people
use words have little or no effect on practice; (2) using informal
words in a technical sense is confusing for the reader, who can't
avoid mixing preconceived ideas with the formal presentation. (05)
As an example, I would cite Dehaene's term 'signature of consciousness'.
That's a technical term with 'signature' as the head word (focus).
The common word 'consciousness' is in a qualifier that serves as a
reminder that this technical term is related to the informal term. * (06)
In my writing, I use the term 'conceptual graph' as a technical term,
in which the head word is 'graph'. I also use the word 'concept',
but I emphasize that it has no formal meaning other than "a node
in a graph". (07)
If anybody asks what a concept means in the theory, I just repeat:
"Formally, a concept is a node in a graph. Its only meaning comes
from the operations that are defined on the graphs." (08)
* Dehaene, Stanislas (2014) _Consciousness and the Brain_,
New York: Viking. (09)
John (010)
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