Reader Comments
Post a new comment on this article
Post Your Discussion Comment
Please follow our guidelines for comments and review our competing interests policy. Comments that do not conform to our guidelines will be promptly removed and the user account disabled. The following must be avoided:
- Remarks that could be interpreted as allegations of misconduct
- Unsupported assertions or statements
- Inflammatory or insulting language
Thank You!
Thank you for taking the time to flag this posting; we review flagged postings on a regular basis.
close"Science" and maps in the 21st century
Posted by mapologist on 04 Aug 2009 at 20:35 GMT
This paper makes a strong case for eliminating historical (psychologic, economic, hypersocial) concepts and terms "inherited" from the 19th century (etc.) -- e.g., words like "reward", "utility", etc. -- and may constitute a big step toward a new neurobiology in the 21st century being built on less biased (and hence more "scientific") terms and concepts.
For example, according to the authors, "the agent only needs to optimise its perceptual model [i.e., its neural map]" within some free-energy landscape (or: potential landscape).
As a result, "classical rewards and punishments only have meaning when one [hypersocial, h.s.] agent [i.e., a member of Homo sapiens, H.s.] teaches another, for example in social neuroscience" [O.E.].
In this vein I really hope for a much "more subtle time than mine" where even the "evolutionary biologists" will have given up their anthropomorphic, herd-breeders' and hypersocially biased terms like "evolution" (instead of: history), "selection" (instead of: temporary stabilizations), "fitness costs", "cooperation", "altruism" etc. etc.