In this reply to James H. Fetzer’s “Minds and Machines: Limits to Simulations of Thought and Action”, I argue that computationalism should not be the view that (human) cognition is computation, but that it should be the view that cognition (simpliciter) is computable. It follows that computationalism can be true even if (human) cognition is not the result of computations in the brain. I also argue that, if semiotic systems are systems that interpret signs, then both humans and computers are (...) semiotic systems. Finally, I suggest that minds can be considered as virtual machines implemented in certain semiotic systems, primarily the brain, but also AI computers. In doing so, I take issue with Fetzer’s arguments to the contrary. (shrink)

This paper examines the interaction between the philosophy and psychology of concepts and the modal characterization of the deductive concept of logical validity. The concept of logical consequence on which I focus is model-theoretic, where the concept records the property of necessary truth-preservation from the premise of an argument to its conclusion, as well as the condition that, in the class of all possible worlds in which a premise is true, a consequent formula or succedent class of formulas is true, (...) as well. Focusing on the case of logical necessity, I argue that the ability to account for the modal properties of concepts places a desideratum on the explanatory adequacy of theories of mental representation. I outline, then, five approaches to the nature of concepts pursued in philosophy and cognitive science, and argue that the above desideratum does not appear to be satisfiable by the candidate proposals. Given the limits of the foregoing, I appeal to a sixth approach -- namely, cognitivism about epistemic modality, according to which epistemic intensions are semantically imbued functions in the language of thought -- and endeavor to demonstrate how the proposal can sufficiently account for the modal profile of the concept of logical consequence. (shrink)

I propose a new approach to the constitutive problem of psychology ‘what is mind?’ The first section introduces modifications of the received scope, methodology, and evaluation criteria of unified theories of cognition in accordance with the requirements of evolutionary compatibility and of a mature science. The second section outlines the proposed theory. Its first part provides empirically verifiable conditions delineating the class of meaningful neural formations and modifies accordingly the traditional conceptions of meaning, concept and thinking. This analysis is part (...) of a theory of communication in terms of inter-level systems of primitives that proposes the communication-understanding principle as a psychological invariance. It unifies a substantial amount of research by systematizing the notions of meaning, thinking, concept, belief, communication, and understanding and leads to a minimum vocabulary for this core system of mental phenomena. Its second part argues that written human language is the key characteristic of the artificially natural human mind. Overall, the theory both supports Darwin’s continuity hypothesis and proposes that the mental gap is within our own species. (shrink)

Common sense is on the one hand a certain set of processes of natural cognition - of speaking, reasoning, seeing, and so on. On the other hand common sense is a system of beliefs (of folk physics, folk psychology and so on). Over against both of these is the world of common sense, the world of objects to which the processes of natural cognition and the corresponding belief-contents standardly relate. What are the structures of this world? How does the scientific (...) treatment of this world relate to traditional and contemporary metaphysics and formal ontology? Can we embrace a thesis of common-sense realism to the effect that the world of common sense exists uniquely? Or must we adopt instead a position of cultural relativism which would assign distinct worlds of common sense to each group and epoch? The present paper draws on recent work in computer science (especially in the fields of naive and qualitative physics), in perceptual and developmental psychology, and in cognitive anthropology, in order to consider in a new light these and related questions and to draw conclusions for the methodology and philosophical foundations of the cognitive sciences. (shrink)

This thesis studies the role of conceptual content in inference and reasoning. The first two chapters offer a theoretical and historical overview of the relation between inference and meaning in philosophy and psychology. In particular, a critical analysis of the formality thesis, i.e., the idea that rational inference is a rule-based and topic-neutral mechanism, is advanced. The origins of this idea in logic and its influence in philosophy and cognitive psychology are discussed. Chapter 3 consists of an analysis of the (...) relationship between inference and representation. It is argued that inference has to be studied from a pluralistic per- spective due to its dependence on different formats of representing information. The following four chapters apply conceptual spaces, a formal theory of concepts within cognitive semantics, to three concept-based inference-types. First, an explication of Sellars notion of material inference is advanced. Later, the model is extended to account for nonmonotonic inference by studying the role expectations in reasoning. Finally, a conceptual space-model of category-based induction is presented. This model predicts most of the empirical properties of this psychological phenomenon and subsumes some of the previous theories in psychology. It is stated that the explanatory fruitfulness of this new approach is evidence for the failure of the formality thesis and calls for a unified model of rational inference that puts semantics at center stage. The last chapter of the thesis discusses how inference and concepts interact in scientific reasoning, which makes constant use of hybrid symbolic structures for representing conceptual information. Stephen Toulmin’s notions of method of representation and inferential technique are developed and applied in a case study about the emergence of the notion of instantaneous speed during the passage from geometrical physics to analytical mechanics. It is claimed that this analysis provides support to the pluralistic perspective for theorizing about reasoning. (shrink)

When I talk about the objects of belief I do not mean, e.g., the sun to which my thought that the sun will rise tomorrow refers; I do not mean the objects we think about. I take objects rather in a general philosophical sense; they simply are the bearers of properties and the relata of relations. I am thus concerned with the objects that are related by the belief relation „_a_ believes that _p_“. In this scheme „ _a _“ represents (...) a person or an epistemic subject; but I am not going to discuss what a person is. „ _p _“ or „that _p _“ represents an object, namely the object of belief; and I am going to discuss what this is. In other words, I am interested in belief contents – to use a less neutral, narrower and equally unclear term. (shrink)

More than a decade ago, philosopher John Searle started a long-running controversy with his paper “Minds, Brains, and Programs” (Searle, 1980a), an attack on the ambitious claims of artificial intelligence (AI). With his now famous _Chinese Room_ argument, Searle claimed to show that despite the best efforts of AI researchers, a computer could never recreate such vital properties of human mentality as intentionality, subjectivity, and understanding. The AI research program is based on the underlying assumption that all important aspects of (...) human cognition may in principle be captured in a computational model. This assumption stems from the belief that beyond a certain level, implementational details are irrelevant to cognition. According to this belief, neurons, and biological wetware in general, have no preferred status as the substrate for a mind. As it happens, the best examples of minds we have at present have arisen from a carbon-based substrate, but this is due to constraints of evolution and possibly historical accidents, rather than to an absolute metaphysical necessity. As a result of this belief, many cognitive scientists have chosen to focus not on the biological substrate of the mind, but instead on the abstract causal structure_ _that the mind embodies (at an appropriate level of abstraction). The view that it is abstract causal structure that is essential to mentality has been an implicit assumption of the AI research program since Turing (1950), but was first articulated explicitly, in various forms, by Putnam (1960), Armstrong (1970) and Lewis (1970), and has become known as _functionalism_. From here, it is a very short step to _computationalism_, the view that computational structure is what is important in capturing the essence of mentality. This step follows from a belief that any abstract causal structure can be captured computationally: a belief made plausible by the Church–Turing Thesis, which articulates the power. (shrink)

In the thesis I offer an analysis of the metaphysical underpinnings of the extended cognition thesis via an examination of standard views of metaphysical building (or, dependence) relations. -/- In summary form, the extended cognition thesis is a view put forth in naturalistic philosophy of mind stating that the physical basis of cognitive processes and cognitive processing may, in the right circumstances, be distributed across neural, bodily, and environmental vehicles. As such, the extended cognition thesis breaks substantially with the still (...) widely held view in cognitive science and philosophy of mind, namely that cognitive processes and cognitive processing take place within the skin-and-skull of individual organisms. The standard view of metaphysical building relations can be expressed as the conjunction of two theses. First, that a metaphysical building relation – such as composition, constitution, realization, supervenience or emergence – is a relation of ontological dependence, because if a metaphysical building relation holds between X (or the Xs) and Y, then it is in virtue of X (or the Xs) that Y exists. Second, metaphysical building relations are synchronic (durationless) relations of ontological dependence. In the thesis, I propose an alternative diachronic framework by which to extend the standard synchronic accounts of metaphysical dependence relations, and by which to reformulate the metaphysical foundation of the extended cognition thesis. The project fills an important gap between analytical metaphysics (in particular, the metaphysics of dependence relations) and naturalistic philosophy of mind (especially the extended cognition thesis). To my knowledge there has been no attempt to establish a robust diachronic account of metaphysical building (or, dependence) relations such as, e.g., composition and constitution. However, this is precisely what I argue is required to properly advance and ground the metaphysics of extended cognition. Ultimately, my aim of reformulating the metaphysics of extended cognition consists in taking several steps toward a third-wave of extended cognition. (shrink)

An introduction to philosophy of language since Frege, focusing on the 20th century.

This essay primarily disputes Dreyfus’s account of Heidegger’s critique of Husserl’s theory of intentionality. Specifically, it raises objections to the three central claims of such an account; namely: (1) that Searle’s theory of intentional action can be used as a stand-in for Husserl’s; (2) that Heidegger rejects the primordiality of the intentionality of consciousness; and (3) that Heidegger distinguishes between conscious and unconscious types of intentional actions and he privileges the latter over the former. I show the first to be (...) unwarranted owing to a lack of fundamental parallelisms between Searle’s and Husserl’s theories of intentionality. I show the second to be mistaken for failing to take into account Heidegger’s strategic handling of the concept of consciousness and for contradicting Heidegger’s concept of care as the essential meaning of Dasein’s being-in-the-world. Lastly, I show the third to be highly problematic for lacking in textual evidence and explanatory power. (shrink)

Disertační práce se zabývá problematikou připisování myšlení jiným entitám, a to pomocí imitační hry navržené v roce 1950 britským filosofem Alanem Turingem. Jeho kritérium, známé v dějinách filosofie jako Turingův test, je podrobeno detailní analýze. Práce popisuje nejen původní námitky samotného Turinga, ale především pozdější diskuse v druhé polovině 20. století. Největší pozornost je věnována těmto kritikám: Lucasova matematická námitka využívající Gödelovu větu o neúplnosti, Searlův argument čínského pokoje konstatující nedostatečnost syntaxe pro sémantiku, Blockův návrh na použití brutální síly pro (...) řešení imitační hry, Frenchova teorie subkognitivních informací a Michieho skepticismus ohledně možnosti umělého vědomí. Závěr práce zachycuje současný stav recepce Turingova testu a představuje pokusy o jeho praktickou realizaci, například v každoroční soutěži o Loebnerovu cenu. Autor práce zastává názor, že ani po více než šedesáti letech od uveřejnění Turingova paradigmatického eseje stále neexistují žádné vážné důvody pro zamítnutí jeho tvrzení. Tradiční komputační funkcionalismus možná není ideální teorií vysvětlující činnost myslí a jako slibnější se může jevit vývoj v neurálních vědách, ale Turingův test je přesto užitečným a snad i jediným nástrojem pro detekci inteligence u lidmi vytvořených strojů. (shrink)

The possibility of autonomous artificially intelligent systems has awaken a well-known worry in the scientific community as well as in popular imaginary: the possibility that beings which have gained autonomous intelligence either turn against their creators or at least make the moral and ethical superiority of creators with respect to the created questionable. The present paper argues that such worries are wrong-headed. Specifically, if AAIs raise a worry about human ways of life or human value it is a worry for (...) a certain human way of thinking about what it is to be human. What is threatened is a way of thinking about what it is to be human, not human ways of life or human value. (shrink)

The theory of concepts advanced in the dissertation aims at accounting for a) how a concept makes successful practice possible, and b) how a scientific concept can be subject to rational change in the course of history. Traditional accounts in the philosophy of science have usually studied concepts in terms only of their reference; their concern is to establish a stability of reference in order to address the incommensurability problem. My discussion, in contrast, suggests that each scientific concept consists of (...) three components of content: 1) reference, 2) inferential role, and 3) the epistemic goal pursued with the concept's use. I argue that in the course of history a concept can change in any of these three components, and that change in one component—including change of reference—can be accounted for as being rational relative to other components, in particular a concept's epistemic goal.This semantic framework is applied to two cases from the history of biology: the homology concept as used in 19th and 20th century biology, and the gene concept as used in different parts of the 20th century. The homology case study argues that the advent of Darwinian evolutionary theory, despite introducing a new definition of homology, did not bring about a new homology concept (distinct from the pre-Darwinian concept) in the 19th century. Nowadays, however, distinct homology concepts are used in systematics/evolutionary biology, in evolutionary developmental biology, and in molecular biology. The emergence of these different homology concepts is explained as occurring in a rational fashion. The gene case study argues that conceptual progress occurred with the transition from the classical to the molecular gene concept, despite a change in reference. In the last two decades, change occurred internal to the molecular gene concept, so that nowadays this concept's usage and reference varies from context to context. I argue that this situation emerged rationally and that the current variation in usage and reference is conducive to biological practice.The dissertation uses ideas and methodological tools from the philosophy of mind and language, the philosophy of science, the history of science, and the psychology of concepts. (shrink)

Being social creatures in a complex world, we do things together. We act jointly. While cooperation, in its broadest sense, can involve merely getting out of each other’s way, or refusing to deceive other people, it is also essential to human nature that it involves more active forms of collaboration and coordination (Tomasello 2009; Sterelny 2012). We collaborate with others in many ordinary activities which, though at times similar to those of other animals, take unique and diverse cultural and psychological (...) forms in human beings. But we also work closely and interactively with each other in more peculiar and flexible practices which are in distinctive ways both species-specific and culturally and historically contingent: from team sports to shared labour, from committee work to mass demonstrations, from dancing to reminiscing together about old times. (shrink)

This paper primarily disputes Dreyfus’s account of Heidegger’s critique of Husserl’s theory of intentionality. Specifically, it raises objections to the three central claims of such an account; namely: that Searle’s theory of intentional action can be used as a stand-in for Husserl’s; that Heidegger rejects the primordiality of the intentionality of consciousness; and that Heidegger distinguishes between conscious and unconscious types of intentional actions and he privileges the latter over the former. I show the first to be unwarranted owing to (...) a lack of fundamental parallelisms between Searle’s and Husserl’s theories of intentionality. I show the second to be mistaken for failing to take into account Heidegger’s strategic handling of the concept of consciousness and for contradicting Heidegger’s concept of care as the essential meaning of Dasein’s being-in-the-world. Lastly, I show the third to be highly problematic for lacking in textual evidence and explanatory power. (shrink)

My goal is to try to understand the intentionality of consciousness from a naturalistic perspective. My basic methodological assumption is that embodied agents, through their sensory-motor, affective, and cognitive activities directed at objects, engage in intentional relations with these objects. Furthermore, I assume that intentional relations can be viewed from a first- and a third-person perspective. What is called primary consciousness is the first-person perspective of the agent engaged in a current intentional relation. While primary consciousness posits an implicit.

Philosophical exploration of individualism and externalism in the cognitive sciences most recently has been focused on general evaluations of these two views (Adams & Aizawa 2008, Rupert 2008, Wilson 2004, Clark 2008). Here we return to broaden an earlier phase of the debate between individualists and externalists about cognition, one that considered in detail particular theories, such as those in developmental psychology (Patterson 1991) and the computational theory of vision (Burge 1986, Segal 1989). Music cognition is an area in the (...) cognitive sciences that has received little attention from philosophers, though it has relatively recently been thrown into the externalist spotlight (Cochrane 2008, Kruger 2014, Kersten forthcoming). Given that individualism can be thought of as a kind of paradigm for research on cognition, we provide a brief overview of the field of music cognition and individualistic tendencies within the field (sections 2 and 3) before turning to consider externalist alternatives to individualistic paradigms (section 4-5) and then arguing for a qualified form of externalism about music cognition (section 6). (shrink)

This essay describes computational semantic networks for a philosophical audience and surveys several approaches to semantic-network semantics. In particular, propositional semantic networks are discussed; it is argued that only a fully intensional, Meinongian semantics is appropriate for them; and several Meinongian systems are presented.

The question “What is the nature of experience?” is of perennial philosophical concern. It deals not only with the nature of experience qua experience, but additionally with related questions about the experiencing subject and that which is experienced. In other words, to speak of the philosophical problem of experience, one must also address questions about mind, world, and the various relations that link them together. Both William James and Kitarō Nishida were deeply concerned with these issues. Their shared notion of (...) “pure experience” is the conceptual cornerstone of their attempt to deal with the philosophical problem of experience. This dissertation is an analysis of “pure experience” and its relevance to several issues in contemporary hilosophy of mind. Drawing upon James’s and Nishida’s “pure experience”, I argue both for a sensorimotor-based, “extended” conception of consciousness and a bodily skills-based account of moral psychology. (shrink)

The perceptual psychologist J. J. Gibson embraces a radically externalistic view of mind and action. We have, for Gibson, not a Cartesian mind or soul, with its interior theater of contents and the consequent problem of explaining how this mind or soul and its psychological environment can succeed in grasping physical objects external to itself. Rather, we have a perceiving, acting organism, whose perceptions and actions are always already tuned to the parts and moments, the things and surfaces, of its (...) external environment. We describe how on this basis Gibson sought to develop a realist science of environments which will be ‘consistent with physics, mechanics, optics, acoustics, and chemistry’. (shrink)

Eliminative functionalism is the view that mental attributes, of humans and other machines, consist ultimately in behavioural abilities or dispositions. Hence, ‘Strong AI’: if a machine consistently acts as if it were fully conscious, then conscious it is. From these assumptions, optimistic futurists have derived a variety of remarkable visions of our ‘post-human’ future; from widely-recognised ‘robot rights’ to ‘mind uploading’, immortality, ‘apotheosis’ and beyond. It is argued here, however, that eliminative functionalism is false; for at least on our present (...) knowledge, the subjectively qualitative characteristics of conscious experience are neither deducible from, nor logically required to generate, the performance of any sort of overtly ‘intelligent’, or indeed, characteristically human behaviour. Thus, a machine could easily be designed to report awareness of phenomenal qualities, without necessarily possessing them; and Alan Turing’s ‘Imitation Game’ test for artificial thinking is unable to determine whether or not a machine is sentient. An alternative test is proposed, in which the machine is asked phenomenological questions under conditions designed to detect any form of cheating—whilst also, potentially revealing evidence for the occurrence of genuine qualitative experience. (shrink)

The concept of narrow content is still under discussion in the debate over mental representation. In the paper, one-factor dimensional accounts of representation are analyzed, particularly the case of Fodor's methodological solipsism. In methodological solipsism, semantic properties of content are arguably eliminated in favor of syntactic ones. If “narrow content” means content properties independent of external factors to a system (as in Segal's view), the concept of content becomes elusive. Moreover, important conceptual problems with one-factor dimensional account are pointed out (...) as a result of analysis arguments presented by J. Searle, S. Harnad and T. Burge. Furthermore, these problems are illustrated with psychological and ethological examples. Although understanding content as partially independent from contextual factors allows theorists to preserve content properties, it seems that understanding content in total abstraction from external factors of these properties is implausible. As a result, internalism is rejected in favor of externalism. (shrink)

El realismo intencional acérrimo quiere dos cosas que, según intentaré mostrar, son difíciles de lograr conjuntamente: estados con contenido semánticamente interpretable y que tengan rol causal en la producción de la conducta. Si bien no hay dificultades para obtener, el problema es con. La estrategia del RIA consiste en postular la existencia de leyes intencionales causales. El problema es que esas leyes son de un estatus dudoso, al punto que muchos consideran que no son posibles y ni siquiera necesarias. Según (...) el RIA, si no se puede obtener conjuntamente y se desprenderían dos consecuencias indeseables: si los estados intencionales no tienen rol causal qua intencionales significaría que no se es realista acerca de las creencias y deseos; y que no sean posibles las leyes intencionales implicaría que no se puede tener una psicología científica. En la primera parte del trabajo me ocuparé de exponer las tesis del RIA y mostraré que no puede cumplir conjuntamente con las exigencias y. En la segunda parte me ocuparé de defender la idea de que del hecho de que no se pueda conciliar y no se sigue un eliminativismo acerca de los estados intencionales ni la imposibilidad de que la psicología sea una ciencia. The Hairy Intentional Realism aims for two things that I shall try to show are difficult to jointly obtain: states with an interpretable semantic content, and with causal role in the production of behavior. There is no difficulty in obtaining, the problem is with. HIR's strategy consists in the postulation of causal intentional laws. The problem is that these laws have a doubtful status to the point that many consider them not possible and not even necessary. According to HIR, if and cannot be jointly obtained, two unwanted consequences emerge: if intentional states do not have a causal role qua intentional, that would mean ceasing to be realistic about them; and if intentional laws are not possible that would imply that we could not have a scientific psychology. In the first part of this paper I shall exhibit HIR's main theses and I shall show that it cannot accomplish the two demands. Second, I shall defend the idea that because of the fact that and cannot be reconciled, neither an eliminativism about intentional states, nor the impossibility that psychology is a science can follow. (shrink)

A cognitivist account of decision-making views choice behaviour as a serial process of deliberation and commitment, which is separate from perception and action. By contrast, recent work in embodied decision-making has argued that this account is incompatible with emerging neurophysiological data. We argue that this account has significant overlap with an embodied account of predictive processing, and that both can offer mutual development for the other. However, more importantly, by demonstrating this close connection we uncover an alternative perspective on the (...) nature of decision-making, and the mechanisms that underlie our choice behaviour. This alternative perspective allows us to respond to a challenge for predictive processing, which claims that the satisfaction of distal goal-states is underspecified. Answering this challenge requires the adoption of an embodied perspective. (shrink)

Theories of cognition and theories of social practices and institutions have often each separately acknowledged the relevance of the other; but seldom have there been consistent and sustained attempts to synthesize these two areas within one explanatory framework. This is precisely what my dissertation aims to remedy. I propose that certain recent developments and themes in philosophy of mind and cognitive science, when understood in the right way, can explain the emergence and dynamics of social practices and institutions. Likewise, the (...) view I construct explains how social practices and institutions shape the character of cognition of their constituent agents. Moreover, I explain both cognitive and social agency under the single explanatory framework provided by Dynamic Systems Theory. Drawing upon the phenomenological tradition, "embodied, "extended", "embedded", "enactive", and "ecological" approaches to cognition, as well as the conceptual resources of Dynamic Systems Theory, I construct a theory of agency that sees cognitive and social agents as far-from-equilibrium, open, recursively self-maintenant dynamic systems. Depending on the specifics of concrete circumstances, such systems, which I call "Dynamic Embodied Agents", may develop and possess emergent capacities for error-detection, flexible learning, normative behavior, representation, self-reflection, various modes of pattern-recognition, a temporal sense of self, and even moral responsibility. Some such systems are also sensitive to perceived social influences ; while reciprocally constituting and causally affecting them. (shrink)

"It is difficult not to notice a curious unrest in the philosophic atmosphere of the time, a loosening of old landmarks, a softening of oppositions, a mutual borrowing from one another on the part of systems anciently closed, and an interest in new suggestions, however vague, as if the one thing sure were the inadequacy of extant school-solutions. The dissatisfactions with these seems due for the most part to a feeling that they are too abstract and academic. Life is confused (...) and superabundant, and what the younger generation appears to crave is more of the temperament of life in its philosophy, even though it were at some cost of logical rigor and formal purity." - William James (1904). -/- Abstract: The study of model-based reasoning (MBR) is one of the most interesting recent developments at the intersection of psychology and the philosophy of science. Although a broad and eclectic area of inquiry, one central axis by which MBR connects these disciplines is anchored at one end in theories of internal reasoning (in cognitive science), and at the other, in C.S. Peirce’s semiotics (in philosophy). In this paper, we attempt to show that Peirce’s semiotics actually has more natural affinity on the psychological side with ecological psychology, as originated by James J. Gibson and especially Egon Brunswik, than it does with non-interactionist approaches to cognitive science. In particular, we highlight the strong ties we believe to exist between the triarchic structure of semiotics as conceived by Peirce, and the similar triarchic stucture of Brunswik’s lens model of organismic achievement in irreducibly uncertain ecologies. The lens model, considered as a theory of creative abduction, provides a concrete instantiation of at least one, albeit limited, interpretation of Peirce’s semiotics, one that we believe could be quite fruitful in future theoretical and empirical investigations of MBR in both science an philosophy. (shrink)

I argue that Stich's Syntactic Theory of Mind (STM) and a naturalistic narrow content functionalism run on a Language of Though story have the same exact structure. I elaborate on the argument that narrow content functionalism is either irremediably holistic in a rather destructive sense, or else doesn't have the resources for individuating contents interpersonally. So I show that, contrary to his own advertisement, Stich's STM has exactly the same problems (like holism, vagueness, observer-relativity, etc.) that he claims plague content-based (...) psychologies. So STM can't be any better than the Representational Theory of Mind (RTM) in its prospects for forming the foundations of a scientifically respectable psychology, whether or not RTM has the problems that Stich claims it does. (shrink)

I argue in opposition to Sam Rakover that the current lack of fully adequate theories of the subjective and qualitative aspects of mind does not justify the adoption of what he calls “methodological dualism” (Rakover, this issue). Scientific understanding of consciousness requires the continuation of attempts to explain it in terms of the neural mechanisms that support it. It would be premature to adopt a methodological stance that could foreclose on the possibility of more reductionistic approaches. The effects of such (...) a stance would be especially pernicious insofar as methodological dualism lacks rigorous methods for testing specific models. (shrink)

Recent literature in the Philosophy of Language has focused on a variety of puzzles about de se belief--belief about oneself formed by the use of the indexical 'I' or the reflexive pronoun 'she herself'. These puzzle cases suggest that de se belief cannot be represented in the traditional way as a two-place relation between an individual and a proposition. Nevertheless, there are some versions of this traditional analysis that have not been fully discussed in the literature. ;In this dissertation I (...) examine a number of proposals for analyzing de se belief, and show how many of these entail privileged access for the agents of self-attributed belief. Privileged access for an agent takes the form of either a proposition or a belief that only the agent can entertain. Privileged access emerges as a consequence of two-place relations of belief between believers and propositions when the proposition is construed as a first-person proposition, a first-person propositional guise, an individual essence, or a Fregean 'I' thought. In all these cases I argue that privileged access for an agent leads to counter-intuitive consequences about sentence meaning and belief content. For this reason I investigate ways to avoid privileged access altogether. I conclude that the most viable alternatives are three-place relations of belief. (shrink)

In this paper, the role of the environment and physical embodiment of computational systems for explanatory purposes will be analyzed. In particular, the focus will be on cognitive computational systems, understood in terms of mechanisms that manipulate semantic information. It will be argued that the role of the environment has long been appreciated, in particular in the work of Herbert A. Simon, which has inspired the mechanistic view on explanation. From Simon’s perspective, the embodied view on cognition seems natural but (...) it is nowhere near as critical as its proponents suggest. The only point of difference between Simon and embodied cognition is the significance of body-based off-line cognition; however, it will be argued that it is notoriously over-appreciated in the current debate. The new mechanistic view on explanation suggests that even if it is critical to situate a mechanism in its environment and study its physical composition, or realization, it is also stressed that not all detail counts, and that some bodily features of cognitive systems should be left out from explanations. (shrink)

Not long ago the standard view in cognitive science was that representations are symbols in an internal representational system or language of thought and that psychological processes are computations defined over such representations. This orthodoxy has been challenged by adherents of functional analysis and by connectionists. Functional analysis as practiced by Marr is consistent with an analysis of representation that grants primacy to a stands for conception of representation. Connectionism is also compatible with this notion of representation; when conjoined with (...) functional analysis, it provides a means of analyzing psychological systems in term of rules and representations without becoming committed to symbolism. Direct theorists, who rejected the orthodox symbolist conception of representation because it violated their strictures against cognitive mediational mechanisms, should find it possible to accept rules-and-representations and information-processing analyses of the mechanisms of information pickup couched in terms of functional analysis. (shrink)