In The Entangled Brain, Pessoa criticizes standard approaches in cognitive neuroscience in which the brain is seen as a functionally decomposable, modular system with causal operations built up hierarchically. Instead, he advocates for an emergentist perspective whereby dynamic brain networks are associated, not with traditional psychological categories, but with behavioral functions characterized in evolutionary terms. Here, we raise a number of concerns with such a radical approach. We ultimately believe that while much revision to cognitive neuroscience is welcome and needed, (...) Pessoa’s more radical proposals may be counterproductive. (shrink)

Functional robustness refers to a system’s ability to maintain a function in the face of perturbations to the causal structures that support performance of that function. Modularity, a crucial element of standard methods of causal inference and difference-making accounts of causation, refers to the independent manipulability of causal relationships within a system. Functional robustness appears to be at odds with modularity. If a function is maintained despite manipulation of some causal structure that supports that function, then the relationship between that (...) structure and function fails to be manipulable independent of other causal relationships within the system. Contrary to this line of reasoning, I argue that functional robustness often attends feedback control, rather than failures of modularity. Feedback control poses its own challenges to causal explanation and inference, but those challenges do not undermine modularity—and indeed, modularity is crucial to grappling with them. (shrink)

A number of authors have recently cited phenomenal effects of covert attention as a source of objection to representationalism. These authors maintain that covert attention brings about changes to phenomenology that cannot be explained by changes in representational content. This paper deals with two related issues that are central to this debate: (1) how attention interacts with representational content, and (2) how variations in the precision or determinacy of representational content should be incorporated into representationalist accounts of perceptual phenomenology. I (...) address these issues in the course of responding to several recent anti-representationalist arguments that have been advance by Ned Block. I argue that attention can increase the precision of range content and that this provides a basis for defusing both the concerns raised by Block and more general concerns related to covert attention. I conclude by situating my response with respect to analogous proposals that have been developed around the determination relation. (shrink)

If pragmatism, hitherto, has been content with elaborating theories of meaning and of truth, but has neglected epistemology, there are good reasons for that neglect. For one thing, much of the accepted vocabulary of epistemological discussion begs the questions under discussion. Again, much epistemology is simply an oblique metaphysics, and not an empirical investigation of knowledge, and hence throws no light on knowing as we practice it. But another reason for this neglect lies in the very simplicity of an experimental (...) theory of knowing. Its charms are not enhanced by undulating draperies of dialectic,' nor warded by the numerological incantations of a symbolic logic, nor made elusive by recondite reference to relativity physics. Nevertheless, it is to the exposition of this elementary doctrine that I mean now to proceed. And I shall do so simply, and with seeming dogmatism, by taking the categories of field, focus, and perspective, and working them for all they are worth in an experimental epistemology... (shrink)

This Is A New Release Of The Original 1906 Edition.

Despite a heightened political discourse surrounding food choices, few studies have identified connections between political beliefs and consumer perceptions. Using gluten as an example, this article identifies how political opinions relate to opinions of food products. If an avoidance of gluten is a biological condition and not a social construct, there should be no correlation between political opinions and gluten avoidance. Our study uncovers a complex relationship between the social construction of gluten avoidance and the potential role of political views. (...) Perhaps most surprising, we find that supporters of Donald Trump are more likely to identify as avoiding gluten, relative to non-supporters. Findings suggest that future research might benefit from considering the political beliefs of consumers when estimating models of food demand. (shrink)

Psychedelic or ecodelic medicines (e.g., psilocybin, ayahuasca, iboga) for the care and treatment of addiction, post‐traumatic stress disorder, cancer, cluster headaches, anxiety, and depression have surged to the forefront of discussions about mental health in the US, leading to the emergence of well‐capitalized biotech companies offering multimillion‐dollar IPOs. Venture capital website Pitchbook reports “continuing investor interest and growing acceptance of what until recently was seen as a fringe area of medicine.” As scholars, activists, and practitioners who have been healed by (...) these medicines and applaud the recent wave of decriminalization after a long, strange trip of mass incarceration and widespread dangerous misinformation, we look forward to a culture that makes these medicines available in a safe and affordable way that respects the lineages of the knowledges that are essentially and not accidentally bundled with these plants—Indigenous and counterculture wisdoms for whom these medicines were never “fringe,” but always foundational. In place of corporadelia's pursuit of standardization, we emphasize the care and wisdom of the Indigenous and countercultural teachings—traditions that have made psychedelics available to the emerging corporate/research partnership in the first place. These knowledge traditions offer foils to the ongoing translation of university peer‐reviewed research into market copy, technical articles, and IPOs, and the concomitant emergence of psychedelic pundits. In particular, we examine instances where prominent researchers have overstated the findings of existing clinical trials in public‐facing representations of the field. We argue that these corporate priorities and tactics are being aided by a new wave of psychedelic “thought leaders” who seek to delegitimize non‐hierarchical approaches to knowledge production and community support within a psychedelic commons. While prominent psychedelic psychiatrists and behaviorists are focused on rooting out and transforming individual habits of mind, we argue that there is another, latent potential for psychedelics to draw attention to—and transform—the invisible, hegemonic infrastructures and ideologies that subtly naturalize and perpetuate deeply unequal societies. (shrink)

Wilkins & Wakefield suggest that changes in the hominid brain made it uniquely “preadaptive” for language, yet no precursor functions served as adaptive substrates to the emergence of language. We present contrary evidence that the ability to discriminate and process rapid and complex auditory information is a cross-species function subserving communication processes including, but not limited to, human speech perception. We suggest that auditory temporal processing served as an evolutionary precursor to speech processing and consequent language development in humans.

Theory-of-mind (ToM) involves modeling an individual’s mental states to plan one’s action and to anticipate others’ actions through recursive reasoning that may be myopic (with limited recursion) or predictive (with full recursion). ToM recursion was examined using a series of two-player, sequential-move matrix games with a maximum of three steps. Participants were assigned the role of Player I, controlling the initial and the last step, or of Player II, controlling the second step. Appropriate for the assigned role, participants either anticipated (...) or planned Player II’s strategy at the second step, and then determined Player I’s optimal strategy at the first step. Participants more readily used predictive reasoning as Player II (i.e., planning one’s own move) than as Player I (i.e., anticipating an opponent’s move), although they did not differ when translating reasoning outcome about the second step to optimal action in the first step. Perspective-taking influenced likelihood of predictive reasoning, but it did not affect the rate at which participants acquired it during the experimental block. We conclude that the depth of ToM recursion (related to perspective-taking mechanisms) and rational application of belief–desire to action (instrumental rationality) constitute separate cognitive processes in ToM reasoning. (shrink)

Braiding personal narratives and philosophical meditations, throughout this essay I reflect on what it means to care for more-than-human others when doing so often leaves us utterly compromised and when the broader conditions under which we coexist on earth with others are themselves antithetical to ecological continuity. Ecologically, the essay is situated in the midst of Cook Forest, an 8,500-acre public park in northwest Pennsylvania, where ancient eastern hemlocks (Tsuga canadensis) find themselves imperiled by the hemlock woolly adelgid (Adelges tsugae), (...) an aphid-like insect native to east Asia. Considering responses to the adelgid at Cook Forest, I engage in a series of philosophi­cal and ethical meditations about ecological care—about its complicities and its conditions of (im)possibility. And, finally, in conversation with Theodor Adorno and Judith Butler, I reflect upon how critique and resistance might open onto still more radical modes of ecological care. (shrink)

Abstract:Dwelling near Lake Superior in the Anthropocene, we uncover a greater intimacy and acquaintance with our earthly responsibilities. Thoughts wash over us like waves as our thinking ebbs and flows between the fact that we must learn to dwell here while also coming to terms with the planetary implications of our very being. That ebb and flow is presented here in a series of waves, which can be read in or out of order, in an orderly or disorderly fashion. These (...) waves crash into one another as we reflect on place, dwelling, hospitality, deep history, enchantment, wildness, and thinking itself. We discover in this mixture an invitation to think more deeply about our responsibilities by contemplating one of the other bodies with which we cohabit the earth: the deep, blue body of Lake Superior. (shrink)

Leadership in Education, Corrections and Law Enforcement: A Commitment to Ethics, Equity and Excellence fills a unique gap in the knowledge base - the juncture between leadership, ethics, law, and how public institutions/organizations understand and practice the essence of all three. Authors from law enforcement, corrections education, and educational leadership present different yet overlapping constructs around ethics and law, and make an important step towards reconciling these differing views to demonstrate the significance of collaboration and partnerships for a common purpose.