论适应性表征及其方法论意义

适应性是主体适应其环境的特性,是物理演化系统和生物演化系统的本质属性,反映在认知上就是适应性表征。适应性表征也因此成为知识显现的方式和创造的核心,具有协调性、匹配性、互补性、模拟性和类比性,其表现方式有直接具象表征、间接具象表征、直接抽象表征和间接抽象表征,分别对应于经验主义、建构经验主义、理性主义和科学实在论。适应性表征的实现是通过科学理论核心概念的变化、定律的凝练、理论的更替、模型推理和世界观的改变展开的,具有经验上的适当性。这种经验适当性不仅是感知层次的体验,更是一种认知模式。在认知意义上,经验也是基于心理模型的,心理建模的路径有思想语言、心理表象、心理命题、思想实验和心理模拟推理。这种基于心理建模的适应性表征为科学认知和科学发现提供了有益的方法论。

On Adaptive Representation and Its Methodological Significance

Adaptability is the characteristic of the subject adapting to its environment, the essential attribute of the physical and biological evolution system, and the adaptive representation in cognition.Therefore, adaptive representation has become the way of knowledge presentation and the core of creation, which are of coordinative, matching, complementary, simulating and analogical natures. There are four ways of adaptive representation: direct concrete representation, indirect concrete representation, direct abstract representation and indirect abstract representation, respectively corresponding to empiricism, constructive empiricism, rationalism and scientific realism. The realization of adaptive representation is carried out through the change of the core concepts of scientific theories, the conciseness of laws, the replacement of theories, the model reasoning and the change of world outlook, and it has the appropriateness in experience. This appropriateness is not only a perceptual experience, but also a cognitive model. Furthermore, in the sense of cognition, experience is also based on mental models. The paths of mental modeling include thought language, mental representation, mental proposition, thought experiment and mental simulation reasoning. This adaptive representation based on mental modeling provides a useful methodology for scientific cognition and scientific discovery.