While the research programs in early cognitive science and artificial intelligence aimed to articulate what cognition was in ideal terms, much research in contemporary computational neuroscience looks at how and why brains fail to function as they should ideally. This focus on impairment affects how we understand David Marr's hypothesized three levels of understanding. In this essay, we suggest some refinements to Marr's distinctions using a population activity model of cortico-striatal circuitry exploring impulsivity and behavioral inhibition as a case study. (...) In particular, we urge that Marr's computational level should be redefined to include a description of how systems break down. We also underscore that feed-forward processing, cognition disconnected from behavioral context, and representations do not always drive cognition in the way that Marr originally assumed. (shrink)

There is an increasing suspicion that Multiple Personality Disorder is one extreme along a continuum of dissociative phenomena, ranging from children’s pretend play and dreams at one end, through borderline personality disorder, posttraumatic stress syndrome, dissociative disorders not originally specified to a severe and complete personality fragmentation at the other. In this essay, we address the questions of whether a continuum view is correct and how to characterize the differences among the various disorders through distinguishing multiplex from multiple selves. This (...) analysis has implications for how the symptoms of MPD should be characterized and treated as well as shedding some light on the relation between conscious experience and selfhood. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Evolution Evolutionary Psychology Ultimate vs. Proximate Causes of Behavior An Example of an Evolved Psychological Mechanism Solidified During the Pleistocene Epoch Summary Postscript: Counterpoint References.

or Browse over 3500 reviews in " by Valerie Hardcastle, Ph.D. " _Metapsychology_.

Some theorists have argued that we should understand the notion of free will from a functional perspective: free will just is our ability to choose effectively and adaptively in an ever-changing environment. Although far from what many philosophers normally mean by free will, those who adopt this biological-evolutionary perspective can clearly define and defend a notion of personal responsibility. One consequenceof this point of view is that addicts become responsible for their actions, for at each choice point, there is a (...) real sense in which the addict could have elected not to use or abuse. As a result, it has been argued that addiction is not a disease, that addictive behavior is voluntary, and that sometimes it is even rational. This paper defends a different way of thinking about addiction, one that aligns it with other complex chronic illnesses. The perspective put forth here suggests that these discussions about responsibility and free will represent an over-simplified and neuropsychologically inaccurate portrait of basic human capacities for behavioral choice. (shrink)

En este artículo se plantea una discusión con el enfoque doxástico de los delirios. A pesar de que esta línea de análisis ha hecho importantes aportes en cuanto a la comprensión del fenómeno, tiene dificultades importantes a la hora de aportar un marco explicativo completo de los delirios porque deja por fuera el aspecto total de la experiencia y sigue basándose implícitamente en la idea de que podemos estudiar de manera separada e independiente los aspectos físicos, cognitivos y experienciales de (...) un fenómeno tan complejo. Se propondrá que, más allá de la decisión acerca de si debemos considerar a los delirios como creencias irracionales o no, o de si puede concebírselos como creencias en absoluto, es necesario tener en cuenta la transformación drástica del mundo entero de experiencia que se da en el sujeto delirante, tal como lo plantea la fenomenología. (shrink)

The data discussed strongly suggest that neural imaging does not unduly sway judges and jurors; in fact, it is often counterproductive. The percentage of appellate cases in which the decision was favorable to defendants with brain scan data mirrored those of decisions without such proffered evidence. Moreover, fully two-thirds of the scans admitted were either inconclusive or showed normal brain structures. In decisions referencing brain scans, judges mentioned defendant behavior significantly more often than they referred to the defendant’s brain. Finally, (...) in the actual decisions themselves, judges often ignored relevant imaging data in favor of case precedent or misinterpreted the data so that they would fit with the judges’ initial reactions and opinions. (shrink)

Evolutionary psychologists claim that the mind contains “hundreds or thousands” of “genetically specified” modules, which are evolutionary adaptations for their cognitive functions. We argue that, while the adult human mind/brain typically contains a degree of modularization, its “modules” are neither genetically specified nor evolutionary adaptations. Rather, they result from the brain’s developmental plasticity, which allows environmental task demands a large role in shaping the brain’s information-processing structures. The brain’s developmental plasticity is our fundamental psychological adaptation, and the “modules” that result (...) from it are adaptive responses to local conditions, not past evolutionary environments. If different individuals share common environ- ments, however, they may develop similar “modules,” and this process can mimic the development of genetically specified modules in the evolutionary psychologist’s sense. (shrink)

Women who are abused by their male intimate partners incur many costs, ranging in severity from fleeting physical pain to death. Previous research has linked the presence of children sired by a woman’s previous partner to increased risk of woman abuse and to increased risk of femicide. The current research extends this work by securing data from samples of 111 unabused women, 111 less severely abused women, 128 more severely abused women, and 26 victims of intimate partner femicide from the (...) Chicago Women’s Health Risk Study to document an ordinal trend in the risk of experiencing more severe forms of violence for women who have children in the household sired by a previous partner. The discussion addresses two potential explanations for this trend and highlights directions for future research. (shrink)

In this essay, we present three case studies which suggest that sometimes we are better off supporting a so–called irrational suicide, and that emotional or psychological distress – even if medically controllable – might justify a suicide. We underscore how complicated these decisions are and how murky a physician's moral role can be. We advocate a more individualized route to end–of–life care, eschewing well–meaning, principled, generalizations in favor of a highly contextualized, patient–centered, approach. We conclude that our Western traditions of (...) promoting reasoned behavior and life themselves may at times be counter–productive. (shrink)

In Sisyphus's Boulder, Eric Dietrich and Valerie Hardcastle argue that we will never get such a theory because consciousness has an essential property that..

Welcome to the twentieth anniversary issue of the Journal of Consciousness Studies! It is hard for me to believe that this journal has been in existence for that long. Although, I have to confess, I seem to be saying that about many things in my life these days. We wanted to do something a little different to mark the occasion of the anniversary issue: we invited the contributors to the very first volume to write more informal pieces on their work (...) in consciousness studies since they first published in JCS. We wanted to pause for a moment to reflect on where we were twenty years ago, what we have been doing, and where we should be going for the next twenty. I would like to take this introduction and greeting to this special issue to talk about some of the global trends I see with the journal. (shrink)

This book is perhaps the first to open a dialogue between the two disciplines.

Volume 19, Issue 12, December 2019, Page 66-68.

There is a bias in neuroscience toward localizing and modularizing brain functions. Single cell recording, imaging studies, and the study of neurological deficits all feed into the Gallian view that different brain areas do different things and the things being done are confined to particular processing streams. At the same time, there is a growing sentiment that brains probably don’t work like that after all; it is better to conceive of them as fundamentally distributed units, multi‐tasking at every level. This (...) sentiment, however, is much less congenial to the tried‐and‐true experimental protocols available today and to theorizing about the brain in general. This essay examines the tension between current experimental methods and large-scale views of the brain. We argue that this disconnection between experiment and what really are guiding theoretical metaphors seriously impedes progress in neuroscience. (shrink)

Spelling out in detail what we do and do not know about phenomenological experience, this book denies the common view of consciousness as a central decision...

There is a bias in neuroscience toward localizing and modularizing brain functions. Single cell recording, imaging studies, and the study of neurological deficits all feed into the Gallian view that different brain areas do different things and the things being done are confined to particular processing streams. At the same time, there is a growing sentiment that brains probably don’t work like that after all; it is better to conceive of them as fundamentally distributed units, multi‐tasking at every level. This (...) sentiment, however, is much less congenial to the tried‐and‐true experimental protocols available today and to theorizing about the brain in general. This essay examines the tension between current experimental methods and large-scale views of the brain. We argue that this disconnection between experiment and what really are guiding theoretical metaphors seriously impedes progress in neuroscience. (shrink)

What is required to be an interdisciplinary theory in cognitive science is for it to span more than one traditional domain. Generally speaking, as I discuss ...

Given what we know about the segregated nature of the brain and the relative absence of multi-modal association areas in the cortex, how percepts become unified is not clear. However, if we could work out how and where the brain joins together segregated outputs, we would have a start in localizing the neuronal processes that correlate with conscious perceptual experiences. In this essay, I critically examine data relevant for understanding the neurophysiological underpinnings of perception. In particular, I examine the possibility (...) that 40 Hz. oscillatory firing patterns in cortex are important lower-level neuronal events related to perceptual experiences. I suggest that `binding' - understood as a process of hooking together disparate psychological units - reduces to a property inherent in the structure of our brain's firing patterns. However, this reduction may not reflect the firing rates of individual cells, but instead a `higher level' order superimposed on individual cells' activity. (shrink)

What is consciousness? Of course, each of us knows, privately, what consciousness is. And we each think, for basically irresistible reasons, that all other conscious humans by and large have experiences like ours. So we conclude that we all know what consciousness is. It's the felt experiences of our lives. But that is not the answer we, as cognitive scientists, seek in asking our question. We all want to know what physical process consciousness is and why it produces this very (...) strange, almost mysterious, phenomenon of felt experience. (shrink)

It is important to separate the question of binding from the problem of consciousness. Undoubtedly, there are some close connections between the two: my conscious experience is of a bound unity. But my unconscious experiences -- subliminal impressions, masked primings, etc. -- might be bound too for all I know. Hence, some of the recent commentators speak too loosely when they talk of 40 Hz oscillations solving some problem of conscious perception.

In their recent bookUnfit for the Future, Persson and Savulescu make a heartfelt plea for the increasing necessity of “moral enhancement”, interventions that improve human capacities for moral behaviour.3They argue that, with all the technological advances of the 20thand 21stcenturies, the sheer scope of horror that humans can now potentially wreak on their neighbours or the world is staggering. Hence, we are morally obliged to use interventions at our disposal to prevent such atrocities. However, as we learn more about human (...) behaviour and decision-making, the argument that we are morally obligated to morally enhance our friends, neighbours, or countrymen starts to fall apart. For us to be more moral requires more than sharpening our reasoning capacities so that we can more effectively recognise what is better or increasing personal motivation so that we are more likely to do what is good. It requires that we all agree on what the good is and how to achieve it, and that there are no social, cultural, physical, or psychological impediments that prevent us from recognising the good or acting on it. To illustrate my position, I use the phenomenon of self-radicalised terrorists as a case study. In particular, I focus on how historians, psychologists, sociologists, criminologists, and political scientists understand the process of self-radicalisation, who self-radicalises, and why, and what all this tells us about it should be “treated”. Part of my purpose in working my way through this case study is to demonstrate that many philosophers misunderstand or over-simplify the science behind so-called immoral actions; consequently, their discussions of whether to enhance someone's morality miss their mark. (shrink)

In trying to characterize the relationship between psychology and neuroscience, the trend has been to argue that reductionism does not work without suggesting a suitable substitute. I offer explanatory extension as a good model for elucidating the complex relationship among disciplines which are obviously connected but which do not share pragmatic explanatory features. Explanatory extension rests on the idea that one field can "illuminate" issues that were incompletely treated in another. In this paper, I explain how this "illumination" would work (...) between psychology and neuroscience. (shrink)

There is a difference between someone breaking a glass by accidentally brushing up against it and smashing a glass in a fit of anger. In the first case, the person's cognitive state has little to do with the event, but in the second, the mental state qua anger is quite relevant. How are we to understand this difference? What is the proper way to understand the relation between the mind, the brain, and the resultant behavior? This paper explores the popular (...) "middle ground" reply in which mental phenomena are claimed to be "as real as" other higher level properties. It argues that this solution fails to answer epistemological difficulties surrounding how to chose the appropriate factors in an explanation. A more sophisticated understanding of scientific theorizing and of the relation between ontology and explanation give us a framework in which we can determine when we should refer to mental states as being the causally efficacious agents for some behavior. (shrink)

In this essay, I hope to make clearer what the points of division between the materialists and the sceptics are. I argue that the rifts are quite deep and turn on basic differences in understanding the scientific enterprise. In section I, I outline the disagreements between David Chalmers and me, arguing that consciousness is not a brute fact about the world. In section II, I point out the fundamental difference between the materialists and the sceptics, suggesting that this difference is (...) not something that further discussion or argumentation can overcome. In the final section, I outline one view of scientific explanation and conclude that the source of conflict really turns on a difference in the rules each side has adopted in playing the game. (shrink)

What is consciousness? Of course, each of us knows, privately, what consciousness is. And we each think, for basically irresistible reasons, that all other conscious humans by and large have experiences like ours. So we conclude that we all know what consciousness is. It's the felt experiences of our lives. But that is not the answer we, as cognitive scientists, seek in asking our question. We all want to know what physical process consciousness is and why it produces this very (...) strange, almost mysterious, phenomenon of felt experience. (shrink)

There is a difference between someone breaking a glass by accidentally brushing up against it and smashing a glass in a fit of anger. In the first case, the person’s cognitive state has little to do with the event, but in the second, the mental state qua anger is quite relevant. How are we to understand this difference? What is the proper way to understand the relation between the mind, the brain, and the resultant behavior? This paper explores the popular (...) “middle ground” reply in which mental phenomena are claimed to be “as real as” other higher level properties. It argues that this solution fails to answer epistemological difficulties surrounding how to chose the appropriate factors in an explanation. A more sophisticated understanding of scientific theorizing and of the relation between ontology and explanation give us a framework in which we can determine when we should refer to mental states as being the causally efficacious agents for some behavior. (shrink)

I examine what happens in the brain when patients experience chronic pain and when subjects are addicted to alcohol. We can find important parallels between these two cases, and these parallels can perhaps point us toward new ways of treating (or at least understanding) both issues. Interestingly, we can understand both cases as our pleasure system gone awry. In brief, I argue that chronic pain and alcohol addiction both stem from a dysregulation in our brain’s reward structure. This dysregulation in (...) what should be our pleasure circuitry pushes individuals to behave in ways counterproductive to their needs and to feel unpleasant things. In other words, there is likely both something quite right and perhaps quite wrong about how some philosophers are thinking about pain as an evaluative state. I shall be arguing that pain is both hedonic and evaluative, though perhaps not in the ways they are imagining. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 10.4 (2003) 353-355 [Access article in PDF] Emotions and Narrative Selves Valerie Gray Hardcastle In their commentaries, both Phillips (2003) and Woody (2003) agree that the affective side of personhood needs to be better addressed in narrative views of self. In their arguments, they focus mainly on how a patient or a subject is here and now. In contrast, Kennett and Matthews (2003) (...) take a longer view and argue for the importance of a diachronic unity for selfhood. This commentary seeks to integrate these views by discussing how emotions are central to building our personal sense of unified agency. 1Phillips and Woody are right: most philosophical discussions of the narrative view of self are overly cognitive and focus too much attention on our linguistic story-telling abilities and not enough on what it is like to be a person experiencing the world. This is too bad, for it is our affective reactions that drive our personal life narratives. Consider: of all the experiences in the world, we only chose a small subset to become or represent who we are. I regularly eat cold cereal for breakfast before heading off to work, but if you ask me to describe myself, I describe my work or my children, not my breakfast-eating habits. Why is this? I identify with my work, my family life, or my play, but not with my sleeping patterns, the trajectories I chose when I drive, or how I brush my teeth. How is it that I have selected the former activities to highlight in my self-stories, but not the latter?I maintain that I choose the former because I have strong affective ties to them, ties that I do not have to driving routes or personal hygiene. And these ties are what determine what gets into our narratives of self. Actually, my claim is stronger than that. I believe that our emotions not only color what we do but they also allow us to act in the first place (this discussion is greatly expanded in my forthcoming book).Humans delight in pretending that our most prized and most humanly attribute is our forebrain, which houses, we also pretend, our capacity for rational thought. Since Plato at least we have held that subduing our passions to the iron rule of reason is our supreme aspiration; it is the ideal for human cognition. Ironically, we think that the more we are like Star Trek's alien Mr. Spock, the more human we really are.But what would life really be like with an overdeveloped forebrain and without emotion? Let us consider more carefully what it is we really prize about being human. We can rationalize well, it is true, but we do so in the service of personal goals. As Aristotle reminds us, we have practical rationality; we have means-ends reasoning with a point. This is just another way of saying that it is imperative that we identify what is important to us prior to cognizing.Obviously, one might scoff, we need an end to engage in means-ends reasoning. But often, I think, what having an end entails is not well appreciated. These days it is fashionable to believe that our fundamental ends—survival and reproduction—are set by our biology and that all [End Page 353] other ends (or most other ends) derive from them in some fashion. Maybe this story is true, but it obscures how ends—whether they be hardwired in or they come later—function in the human psyche.At a bare minimum, that we have particular ends tells us that we have to tag our abstractions, interpretations, and matched patterns with valances—some things are good, some things are bad, and some are indifferent. Tagging our experiences thus is just what it means to have emotions; we are reacting affectively to our world around us. And it is these reactions that determine which inputs we respond to and which we ignore. We literally cannot move about in our world without emotion. I think, perhaps, that this fact is what Phillips and Woody are... (shrink)