"There is no more beautiful and dangerous adventure than the renovation of modern man."
I am interested in the cognitive processes associated with acts of exploration, creation and judgement. These acts all require the assembly of conceptual structures, or maps, to interpret the world and to represent some inferred underlying order. Without such maps it is impossible to act in a meaningful and conscious manner.
We are all the beneficiaries of cognitive cartographers from prior generations who have struggled to explore new territories. Due to the sheer complexity of Being most civilized men spend time studying extant maps and using them to navigate the world. Much of human social activity consists of collectively reinforcing conceptual structures common to that society to buttress the societal members against uncertainty and chaos.
A few men have the courage, vision and ability to explore new territory and the maps that they draw in the process both threaten and entice those used to navigating with the extant maps.
My fascination with this tension between cartographer and navigator that manifests at every level of human existence has led me to research questions within three related categories:
Strategic Cognition
What aspects of human intelligence cannot be emulated or exceeded by an artificial intelligence? What cognitive processes cannot be reduced to an algorithm?Expanding Self-determination
The emerging understanding of the brain's adult neuroplastic potential has opened up vistas of man's development that have hitherto been poorly explored. How can we augment the brain's natural neuroplastic potential to accelerate learning and personality change?Teleological Processes
Where and how do teleological processes occur in the Self and in the world? Is there even a real distinction between the two? In contrast with a materialist worldview, could consciousness in fact be primary?