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The Center
for Cognitive Science is a multi-modal laboratory to experiment
with the construction and re-construction of the mental.
Our guided tour of the Laboratory starts at the Philosophy-terminal.
Here we find ourselves in a world of philosophical thought
experiments. Thinking about the mind began very early in
civilisation when our first philosophers conjured myriad
images of the mind for which the only laboratory required
was the mind itself. These thought experiments showed us
how something as intangible as the mind - something we can
neither see, nor touch nor smell, nor taste, nor hear -
is yet so real and experienced. When seen from the other
side, the mind fills every nook and corner of our life-world
and is still so elusive. The Phenomenology Lab is an attempt
to capture and frame this elusive phenomenon.
At the other end of the journey, we have the AI Lab &
Robotics Lab where we find an attempt to give tangible shape
to ephemeral mental states and processes by building computer
and robotic models. Here we get our first peek into a modern-day
scientific lab, quite different from the mind lab we earlier
encountered.
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Right
at the middle is a very fascinating laboratory - the laboratory
of the body-brain. The teeming neurons are the lanes and
by lanes meeting at the many synaptic junctures, telling
us stories about possible mind modules involved in perception,
reasoning, language, belief-revision, imagery etc.
In between, we also stop at the Logic Lab where one can
meet logicians at work - people who are busy unravelling
algorithms and heuristics for tackling the uncertainties
and certainties, inconsistencies and consistencies of our
mentalistic existence. |
This huge task force, employed in the Lab of Mind is engaged
in the study of representations of various types in multiple
tiers. The mother of all representations, that is, the first
tier, is the representation of the world by the mind. The
second tier comprises of folk representations of mind by mind.
This is embodied in our Folk Psychology. At the higher levels
of representation, the mind and its representation of itself
are subjects of concentrated investigation by the members
of the various labs. At the highest tier - something yet to
come, something far out of reach yet not unreachable - is
what the Laboratory of Mind, the Center for Cognitive Science
aims to reach. The Zenith of Representation, if one may call
it so, is an integrated output of multidisciplinary research.
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