Consciousness and the Decline of Cognitivism

This note examines some paradigms within cognitive science, in part through the lens of consciousness studies, a recent discipline which takes seriously the experience of having a mind. In particular, it discusses cognitivism and representationalism, and some challenges to them based on broader contexts than the individual. Much of this material comes from my experience as editor in chief of the Journal of Consciousness Studies, a position which guarantees a steady stream of interesting and unusual things to read. This version is still a draft, which simpli es many complex issues in the interests of brevity and readability. Consciousness studies is a new, rapidly evolving, highly interdisciplinary eld. Disciplines involved include psychology, philosophy, physics, sociology, religion, dynamical systems, mathematics, computer science, neuroscience, art, biology, cognitive science, anthropology, and linguistics. Even in the early 1990s, most scientists considered consciousness taboo, but now it is often presented as the most important unsolved problem in science. We will see that it opens windows on the mind from many other dimensions, from quantum gravity to evolutionary biology, and that an important emerging theme is the role of distributed collectivities. In particular, we discuss a webbased system for distributed proving and some of its foundations, including a study of values in mathematics, and a social, ethical theory of information. The paper concludes with a meditation on the groundlessness of distributed collective practices.