If thinking can be modeled by the Dynamical System approach, the thinking will be a self-organized system. How free will this incorporated system be? What are parameters and state variables in such a system?
Hi,
You should check out this book:
"Radical Embodied Cognitive Science" by Anthony Chemero
It reviews how the dynamical systems approach could be applied to cognition, and discuss many results so far obtained with this approach, and also some idea for future research.
It is an excellent book and easy to follow (though dense). It blew my mind. I read it twice in a row :)
Dear All: Thanks for replies... I am aware of very few work in the field of Dynamic System Approach to Cognition. eg Van Gelder, A not B error. I wish to know some work in this framework specifically on " Thinking" ,not on Cognition.
This is another curiosity and I have asked another question on RG. Intuitively it seems both are different.
Robin Vallacher's, Steve Read's, and Andrzej Nowak's work using cellular automata and similar methods might be worthwhile. They've used this particular modeling technique to examine social cognition and group formation as well as personality (e.g. self-evaluation). Some articles...
Vallacher, R. R., Read, S. J., & Nowak, A. (2002). The dynamical perspective in personality and social psychology. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 6, 264-273.
Vallacher, R. R., Nowak, A., Froehlich, M., & Rockloff, M. (2002). The dynamics of self-evaluation. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 6, 370-379.
Nowak, A., Vallacher, R. R., & Zochowski, M. (2005). The emergence of personality: Dynamic foundations of individual variation. Developmental Review, 25, 351-385.
You can access some of these articles via Robin Vallacher's website: http://psy2.fau.edu/~vallacher/research_selfConcept.html
I seem to have come into this discussion late, but this is a great topic. First, the concept of a dynamical system is not as widely understood as some others. I also like it because, similar to systems thinking, its application was borrowed from the “hard sciences,” but is being used across disciplines. Systems, are self-organizing, but also change as the need arises so in terms of free will, I believe it is inherent in such an approach. A dynamical system of thinking is still a system. If that is true, it will adapt and structure itself. The parameters and state variables will change as the system changes (similar to people changing as they develop).
While there is an order to dynamical systems, it is based on maturation which allows it to evolve. There are many models of thinking that use a dynamical system approach. One of the earliest is Thelen and Smith’s development of cognition and action. I found some of their work on the Internet so I assume it was OK to attach it here.
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