Converging data from different disciplines are showing the role of classical conditioning processes in the elaboration of human and animal behavior to be larger than previously supposed. Restricted views of classically conditioned responses as merely secretory, reflexive, or emotional are giving way to a broader conception that includes problem-solving, and other rule-governed behavior thought to be the exclusive province of either operant conditiońing or cognitive psychology. These new views have been accompanied by changes in the way conditioning is conducted and (...) evaluated. Data from a number of seemingly unrelated phenomena such as relapse to drug abuse by postaddicts, the placebo effect, and the immune response appear to involve classical conditioning processes. Classical conditioning, moreover, has been found to occur in simpler and simpler organisms and recently even demonstrated in brain slices and in utero. This target article will integrate the several research areas that have used the classical conditioning process as an explanatory model; it will challenge teleological interpretations of the classically conditioned CR and offer some basic principles for testing conditioning in diverse areas. (shrink)

It is widely held that a successful theory of the mind will be neuroscientific. In this paper we ask, first, what this claim means, and, secondly, whether it is true. In answer to the first question, we argue that the claim is ambiguous between two views--one plausible but unsubstantive, and one substantive but highly controversial. In answer to the second question, we argue that neither the evidence from neuroscience itself nor from other scientific and philosophical considerations supports the controversial view.

Quine’s eliminativist theory has largely been ignored by the philosophical community. This is highly regrettable because Quine’s theory is probably close to correct. Now, the probable correctness of Quine’s theory has an important consequence since, according to the theory, there are no mental entities (events, states, phenomena, properties, etc.) nor do such entities play any role in a scientific account of the relevant phenomena. But the hundreds or probably thousands of publications that deal with issues such as mental causation, the (...) nature of qualia, supervenience of the mental, or multiple realizability, presume the existence of, or at least attribute a positive role to, mental entities. The probable correctness of Quine’s theory therefore suggests that all these publications are worthless and reading them is a waste of time just as reading studies about how crystal spheres can move planets is considered nowadays a waste of time. (shrink)

Quine’s eliminativist theory has largely been ignored by the philosophical community. This is highly regrettable because Quine’s theory is probably close to correct. Now, the probable correctness of Quine’s theory has an important consequence since, according to the theory, there are no mental entities (events, states, phenomena, properties, etc.) nor do such entities play any role in a scientific account of the relevant phenomena. But the hundreds or probably thousands of publications that deal with issues such as mental causation, the (...) nature of qualia, supervenience of the mental, or multiple realizability, presume the existence of, or at least attribute a positive role to, mental entities. The probable correctness of Quine’s theory therefore suggests that all these publications are worthless and reading them is a waste of time just as reading studies about how crystal spheres can move planets is considered nowadays a waste of time. (shrink)

We argue in this paper that so-called new wave reductionism fails to capture the nature of the interlevel relations between psychology and neuroscience. Bickle (1995, Psychoneural reduction of the genuinely cognitive: some accomplished facts, Philosophical Psychology, 8, 265-285; 1998, Psychoneural reduction: the new wave, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press) has claimed that a (bottom-up) reduction of the psychological concepts of learning and memory to the concepts of neuroscience has in fact already been accomplished. An investigation of current research on the phenomenon (...) of long-term potentiation reveals that this claim overstates the facts. Both the psychological and the neural concepts involved have not yet stabilized and face further correction under the influence of both bottom-up and top-down selection pressures. In addition, psychological concepts often refer to functions, and functions are indispensable and irreducible. Function ascriptions pick out objective patterns involving historical factors and distal goals. This view of functions implies that psychological facts cannot be simply read off from the neurophysiological facts. Although psychological theorizing is constrained by neurophysiology (and vice versa), psychology remains distinct at least to some degree. (shrink)

How should one attribute epistemic credit to an agent, and hence, knowledge, when cognitive processes include an extensive use of human or mechanical enhancers, informational tools, and devices which allow one to complement or modify one's own cognitive system? The concept of integration of a cognitive system has been used to address this question. For true belief to be creditable to a person's ability, it is claimed, the relevant informational processes must be or become part of the cognitive character of (...) the agent, as a result of a process of enculturation. We argue that this view does not capture the role of sensitivity to epistemic norms in forming true beliefs. An analysis of epistemic actions, basic and extended, is proposed as offering an appropriate framework for crediting an agent with knowledge. (shrink)

Psychoneural reduction has been debated extensively in the philosophy of neuroscience. In this article I will evaluate metascientific approaches that claim direct molecular and cellular explanations of cognitive functions. I will initially consider the issues involved in linking cellular properties to behaviour from the general perspective of neural circuits. These circuits that integrate the molecular and cellular components underlying cognition and behaviour, making consideration of circuit properties relevant to reductionist debates. I will then apply this general perspective to specific systems (...) where psychoneural reduction has been claimed, namely hippocampal long-term potentiation and the Aplysia gill-withdrawal reflex. (shrink)

Could anything provide a philosophically convincing mark of the mental in simple organisms (Lloyd 1984)? Individual organisms’ capacities to modify behavior adaptively as a result of past encounters with the environment might mark the first step in the phylogeny of minds. The simplest examples of mental representation are likely to be found in the simplest forms of animal learning.The most scientifically rigorous test case of “bottom- up” strategies in cognitive neuroscience is provided by current studies of the cellular and molecular (...) biology of associative learning in higher invertebrates, but particularly gastropod molluscs, snails or slugs (Quinn 1984). For the relevant neurobiological research community (Farley and Alkon 1985; Hawkins, Clark, and Kandel 1986), “Bottom-up” does not just mean letting one’s study of the properties of the nervous system control one’s analyses of animal behavior or cognition. (shrink)

Commonsense psychology and cognitive science both regularly assume the existence of representational states. I propose a naturalistic theory of representation sufficient to meet the pretheoretical constraints of a "folk theory of representation", constraints including the capacities for accuracy and inaccuracy, selectivity of proper objects of representation, perspective, articulation, and "efficacy" or content-determined functionality. The proposed model states that a representing device is a device which changes state when information is received over multiple information channels originating at a single source. The (...) changed state of a representing device is a representation. The unitary information source which would give rise to the information impinging on the representing device, and hence, give rise to the representation, is the content of the representation. The model meets the pretheoretic constraints, and also conforms to available neurobiological data for two invertebrate species. (shrink)

The ArgumentIn different contexts, beginning with different concerns, Pavlov, James, and Freud tried to achieve a neurophysiological explanation of mind, and suffered defeat. James and Freud acknowledged the defeat and attempted, in radically different ways, to construct an interim psychology, hoping that neural explanation would be achieved in the future. Pavlov came to the effort in his fifties, after decades of research that took for granted a sharp separation between neurophysiology and psychology. He changed his mind as he noticed the (...) descent of his discipline from study of whole-body and organ functions to concentration on the neuron and the molecule. Pavlov thought to save the discipline from chaos by providing laws of “higher nervous activity” to serve as an organizing framework. Hence his stubborn refusal to acknowledge the obvious errors in his supposed neural explanation of conditioned reflexes. The Russian context of ideological division and extreme social conflict reinforced the unwitting retreat of Pavlov and his school into a scientistic counterculture, while claiming to be developing the ultimate neural explanation of the mind. In countries of less extreme conflicts, classical conditioning continued to be a focal point of discord between psychologists who accept the inevitability of mentalist concepts and neuroscientists who insist that they must be avoided. In any context, neural explanation of mental phenomena has been a project that is impossible to avoid and impossible to accomplish. (shrink)