Date: 25.1.2016
Participants: Aviv, Alon, Galit, Noam, Ori, Avi, Jonathan
Presenter: Aviv
Summary:
Aviv presented his work on mathematical objects and their cognitive representations. Abstract:
What's considered to be objects in the realm of mathematics, are very different from what we usually take for objects, in real life. But to the extent that we do relate to them when doing mathematics, they too should be somehow represented in the mind. What kind of creatures are these representations? To what extent does the system managing them share substance with our ordinary objects representations management? Can we learn something about mathematical thinking from the regular cognitive functioning? Could we learn something about mathematics itself? Could anything be more fun than this?
The discussion following focused mostly on what being a mental representation is, the different kinds of representations, and what does it mean to say that there are no representations. However, we didn't get very far in this discussion and we agreed to return to Aviv's work next time to try and gain more prespective on his research and allow for another discussion. So- to be continued...