Achievement

IGERT trainee Carlos Zednik is a philosopher of cognitive science interested in understanding and developing the conceptual framework for dynamical explanations of cognitive phenomena. Over the last year, he analyzed research projects ongoing at IU in dynamical modeling, systems neuroscience, and evolutionary robotics, to elucidate the nature and role of mechanistic explanation in embodied cognitive science. Analytic frameworks such as dynamical systems theory and graph theory were studied to show their utility in describing complex, distributed and large-scale cognitive mechanisms. A substantial result of this analysis is that, contrary to the claim of some philosophers of cognitive science, dynamical approaches cannot be treated as providing a single type of scientific explanation, and that the features of mechanistic explanation are to be found in some dynamical models.