Loops and recursions in cognitive science : cross-roads between methodology and epistemology

Klauser, Florian (author), Kordeš, Urban (author)

This article addresses the need for cognitive science to loop back and examine its roots and presuppositions, pointing out the three recursive issues: 1.) The observer effect or how observing a phenomenon affects the phenomenon that is being observed, an issue that has been acknowledged by natural science, which cognitive science attempts to emulate, and empirical phenomenology, but not cognitive science itself; 2.) Human kinds or how our research affects us, the researchers, and society (people’s self-understandings), an issue which forms a loop with the observer effect – observation thus changing the observed, the observer, as well as itself, and 3.) The dangers of over-eager extrapolation or how complexity is lost during shifts in explanatory level, issues pertaining to using findings from studies of one explanatory level (e.g. experiments with rats) to inform a different explanatory level (issues within human society). Finally, the article presents a fourth recursive loop which presents a potential solution to the above: a self-correcting mechanism that allows science to recursively correct its mistakes and improve on its own work.

• Language: English
• Keywords: observer effect, human kinds, recursion, looping effects, philosophy of science
• Work type: Article
• Typology: 1.01 - Original Scientific Article
• Organization: PEF - Faculty of Education
• Publication status: Published
• Publication version: Version of Record
• Year: 2018
• Number of pages: Str. 524-532
• Numbering: Vol. 16, iss. 4
• PID: 20.500.12556/RUL-105951
• UDC: 165.194
• ISSN on article: 1334-4676
• DOI: 10.7906/indecs.16.4.1
• COBISS.SI-ID: 12264265

Copyright

Podatek o licenci CC BY 4.0 je naveden na spletni strani revije (https://indecs.eu/). (Datum opombe: 5. 9. 2025)

• Publication date in RUL: 04.01.2019

Record is a part of a journal

• Title: Interdisciplinary description of complex systems
• Shortened title: Interdiscip. descr. complex syst.
• Publisher: Hrvatsko interdisciplinarno društvo = Croatian Interdisciplinary Society
• ISSN: 1334-4676
• COBISS.SI-ID: 6480201

Licences

• License: CC BY 4.0, Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
• Link: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
• Description: This is the standard Creative Commons license that gives others maximum freedom to do what they want with the work as long as they credit the author.

Secondary language

• Language: Slovenian
• Keywords: kognitivna znanost, človeška vrsta, rekurzije, zankasti učinki