Cognitive science is a multidisciplinary area. You have biology, philosophy, linguistics, neuroscience, and now the latest technological advancements, including AI.
In India, cognitive science is in its infancy. It is around 15 years old. We now have cognitive science programmes in many institutes in India, including many IITs. We [UoH] offer a Master’s and a PhD programme. We are trying to start a Bachelor’s integrated programme, which would be the country’s first in cognitive science. The field is now more in the public imagination. I first heard about cognitive science in Germany. I got exposed to the empirical side of studying the mind there.
I moved to the UoH in 2013. I always say that if you do not have a multidisciplinary background, by accident or by your own will, you cannot be a cognitive scientist. I studied linguistics, had exposure to speech and hearing pathology, got introduced to the biological side of neuroscience, and went to Europe. We still take students with no proper background. You should be interested in learning scientific techniques, philosophy and humanities.
In the 60s in America, when the cognitive science revolution happened, popular scientists, AI researchers, neuroscientists, and biologists all contributed. Traditional fields had failed to deliver to contemporary demands. Humans had come out of World War II. The darkest realities of the world were there, a lot of political upheavals… So, many new revolutionary ideas were brought forward. In the meeting that Noam Chomsky and many other like-minded people attended with Sloan Foundation support, they created this field. They put down that this field should be multidisciplinary — we would pursue both metaphysical and empirical questions.
I always say that if you think cognitive science is a true science, you are mistaken. It is not a true science in the way you understand science. Here, you have to be a philosopher who is also interested in doing experiments. Therefore, most people who come from traditional sciences feel a bit uncomfortable. Either they become reductionist, or, if they are capable, they get into the true spirit of cognitive science. The question of the mind is a metaphysical question. It cannot be nailed down to the mechanical, physical models that we already know. But for the sake of science, you have to consider the mechanical models. Therefore, reading Greek philosophers and Indian knowledge systems is important. But you have to learn modern techniques like brain imaging, computational tools and other forms of data collection.
In terms of cognitive science, how do you define the mind?
If you study the brain, do you study cognitive science? The answer is no, because you can be a neurophysiologist without any concern about mind or consciousness. Philosophers of mind define the mind differently, depending on their persuasion. Cognitive scientists after the 1960s, at least in America, have assumed the mind to be a collection of algorithms that make things happen, connecting to the outside world through the experience of the person. So, it is a computational algorithm, a collection of programmes—a purely computational view. Now comes the brain. The brain makes the mind happen, and the mind, you can say, is an emergent property of the brain. This is the mainstream view.
My view is that this could be right or it could be utterly wrong. Even though we know much about brain mechanics, we still cannot define the mind. If we say it is a collection of computer programmes, it looks very false because it is dominated by the computer metaphor. Now, we know the limitations of the computer. So why hold on to the metaphor? I hold that the mind is a metaphysical concept.
Now, the elephant in the room is how people in different cultures have defined the mind. You cannot have a universal, abstract view of the mind. I have been the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Cultural Cognitive Science. We started that journal with the spirit of first learning about the belief systems pertaining to the mind in different cultures.
As you said, it is tough to even define the mind. Now we are practically trying to mimic the mind through AI, even go beyond the mind. Is that possible?
The question is whether AI displays anything like the mind. AI is mimicking whatever it is fed. It doesn’t have those key properties; it doesn’t have intentionality. It doesn’t experience things. It doesn’t generate problems of its own. But then, psychologists would say, wait, they will generate some of this in their own manner. And we will not even know that they are capable of it. So that always remains a fear. But the philosophical argument is, does a computer programme have a mind of its own? The answer, clearly, as of now, is no. It’s a computational tool. It can massively process data. It can tell you what you want to know. But it’s using the knowledge resources that humans have created.
As with DeepSeek, the argument now is that it is better than Gemini. Each person is trying to kind of add those attributes to make it more lucrative. But there are ethical issues. The question is, to what extent do we allow them to mimic us? If they can talk to us like we want, then our connection with human beings will be limited and a lot of problems will happen. Right now, my opinion is that we are yet to see the real problem.
Coming to the practical side of cognitive science, I read your thoughts on Anthony Bourdain, the chef who died by suicide. We see that many in our society, be it students or others, they died by suicide or exhibit irrational behaviour. Is it because of certain things in the brain, or is it because of the so-called mind?
There are psychological theories on it—when you decide to finish your life, the most precious thing that you have... But cognitive scientists as such have not been studying it extensively, as we have clinical psychologists looking at it directly. There are cultural reasons, explaining why some people are more vulnerable. So we talk about willpower and the self. If you have a stronger self, then you will probably find a way to deal with the problem because you have a mind that functions as a problem-solving tool.
The Western mindset is different; the Eastern mindset is different. This is well established now. The collective unconscious of the East is holding us. There is a shroud on it, this has to be removed. … You can see this in the changes happening at the governmental and policy levels. There is a reason why these changes are happening. They are not simply due to a political party being in power at a given moment. We must view them from a broad perspective.
Am I trying to say that all the Western theories about the mind are bad? No, I am not saying that. But I have to live in my culture. The collective unconscious is what I encounter every day, not what Americans and Germans think. If I am unaware of the civilisational pull that is distinctly ours, I will behave like a stranger, and that indifference will cause pain. Our systems for strengthening and sustaining the mind are fabulous—yoga, meditation, kirtans, bhajans. Any collective participation is beneficial. Modern theories in social cognitive neuroscience essentially state this: when we come in contact with other minds, we energise our own minds. So we have to find avenues to come in contact with other minds.
Is empirical work on meditation, yoga, etc., going on in your centre? Or somewhere else in India?
Not in my centre, but my colleagues at IIT Kanpur, NIMHANS, and the Yoga University in Bengaluru are studying the effects of yoga and meditation on the brain, blood circulation, and particularly on attention and perception.
Are attention and consciousness interdependent?
I have written a little bit about it. One theory is that you need attention to be conscious. Other theories believe that consciousness operates without attention, with a state like awareness. You are very aware, but you are not really attending. So we have groups of people who buy into either one of these theories.
The big question in the field is: Do you need attention to be conscious? I fundamentally don’t believe that. I would say that it’s a different problem altogether. Attention gives you objective knowledge about a thing, for some. But a state of consciousness is natural. Most particularly, self-consciousness.
How do you see cognitive science evolving over the next 20 years? There is also an increasing dependency on AI right now.
Twenty years is a long time. In India, AI would be used as a business tool, not as a fundamental deep research tool. Everything we look for is how to quickly use it for a solution. Americans do not have that in their mind. So we have to now change our mindset to do AI research, rather than used it just as a tool.
TNIE team: Kalyan Tholeti, Prasanna RS, Vennapusala Ramya, Khyati Shah, Nitika Krishna, Lovely Majumdar, Siddhardha Gattimi