RE: RT list: Cognitive effects and processing effort

Want to buy (rent) neuro-joule-o-meter (possibly used but with the
latest firmware revision which includes optional RT/OT interface and
boot option) for my research on the cognitive processing of euphemisms!

Anyone selling? :-)

Best,

Andre

-----Original Message-----
 
Since Relevance (1986), we have argued that relevance, effort and effect
pay a role in comparing actually competing cognitive inputs or
interpretations. The possibility of such local comparisons does not
depend on an ability to quantify or measure these variable in the
abstract. Then and since, numerous examples have been given comparing
inputs and interpretations in terms of effort and effect, and
experiments have shown how these could be used to derive and test
predictions. In a more recent paper ("Modularity and relevance" in The
Innate Mind: Structure and Content. Edited by Peter Carruthers, Stephen
Laurence, & Stephen Stich, available at
<http://www.dan.sperber.com/relevance%20and%20modularity.htm>
http://www.dan.sperber.com/relevance%20and%20modularity.htm) I have
suggested how the mind cound indeed be geared towards the maximisation
of relevance (i.e. the "Cognitive principle of relevance") on the sole
basis of these local comparisons. In fact even "comparison" might be
more than is needed, if by this we were to mean a cognitive operation of
ranking alternatives. A non-cognitive sensitivity to gradients of effort
and effect might be all that is required.

So, you might say, maybe our minds, in their ordinary workings, just
locally compare and don't quantify effect and effort, but we scientists
still would like to be able to do so. If you are moved by this crave for
measurement, then let me point out that what you should be after are
neurological variables. Effort is just consumption of energy and should
be measured in joules (how in practice, this is another matter). The
measure of effect is more tricky and may have to do with spread of
activation, which itself may have neurochemical correlates. What I don't
see is why the fact that we don't know how to measure such variables
should worry pragmatists, and particularly relevance theorists. If "how
to quantify and measure degrees of cognitive effects and processing
effort" is, as Bach claims, "the most obvious problem" with relevance
theory, then let's cheerfully keep working on less obvious and more
challenging problems in the field.

Cheers, Dan

 
Received on Sun Oct 15 09:03:45 2006