Consciousness, explanatory inversion, and cognitive science

1990 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 585-596 ◽  
Author(s):  
John R. Searle
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Evolutionary Biology ◽  
Mental Representations ◽  
Explanatory Models ◽  
Essential Point ◽  
Functional Aspects ◽  
Neurophysiological Mechanisms ◽  
Aspectual Shape ◽  
The One ◽  
Functional Explanations

AbstractCognitive science typically postulates unconscious mental phenomena, computational or otherwise, to explain cognitive capacities. The mental phenomena in question are supposed to be inaccessible in principle to consciousness. I try to show that this is a mistake, because all unconscious intentionality must be accessible in principle to consciousness; we have no notion of intrinsic intentionality except in terms of its accessibility to consciousness. I call this claim the “Connection Principle.” The argument for it proceeds in six steps. The essential point is that intrinsic intentionality has aspectual shape: Our mental representations represent the world under specific aspects, and these aspectual features are essential to a mental state's being the state that it is.Once we recognize the Connection Principle, we see that it is necessary to perform an inversion on the explanatory models of cognitive science, an inversion analogous to the one evolutionary biology imposes on preDarwinian animistic modes of explanation. In place of the original intentionalistic explanations we have a combination of hardware and functional explanations. This radically alters the structure of explanation, because instead of a mental representation (such as a rule) causing the pattern of behavior it represents (such as rule-governed behavior), there is a neurophysiological cause of a pattern (such as a pattern of behavior), and the pattern plays a functional role in the life of the organism. What we mistakenly thought were descriptions of underlying mental principles in, for example, theories of vision and language were in fact descriptions of functional aspects of systems, which will have to be explained by underlying neurophysiological mechanisms. In such cases, what looks like mentalistic psychology is sometimes better construed as speculative neurophysiology. The moral is that the big mistake in cognitive science is not the overestimation of the computer metaphor (though that is indeed a mistake) but the neglect of consciousness.

scholarly journals Entity Realism About Mental Representations

Erkenntnis ◽  
2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bence Nanay
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Mental Representation ◽  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Mental Representations ◽  
Central Concept ◽  
The Real ◽  
Entity Realism ◽  
The One ◽  
The Mind

Abstract The concept of mental representation has long been considered to be central concept of philosophy of mind and cognitive science. But not everyone agrees. Neo-behaviorists aim to explain the mind (or some subset thereof) without positing any representations. My aim here is not to assess the merits and demerits of neo-behaviorism, but to take their challenge seriously and ask the question: What justifies the attribution of representations to an agent? Both representationalists and neo-behaviorists tend to take it for granted that the real question about representations is whether we should be realist about the theory of representationalism. This paper is an attempt to shift the emphasis from the debate concerning realism about theories to the one concerning realism about entities. My claim is that regardless of whether we are realist about representational theories of the mind, we have compelling reasons to endorse entity realism about mental representations.

scholarly journals Legal Concepts as Mental Representations

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marek Jakubiec
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Mental Representations ◽  
Legal Philosophy ◽  
Current Debate ◽  
Cognitive Tools ◽  
Cognitive Sciences ◽  
Cognitive Aspect ◽  
Fundamental Level ◽  
Legal Concepts ◽  
Mental Constructs

AbstractAlthough much ink has been spilled on different aspects of legal concepts, the approach based on the developments of cognitive science is a still neglected area of study. The “mental” and cognitive aspect of these concepts, i.e., their features as mental constructs and cognitive tools, especially in the light of the developments of the cognitive sciences, is discussed quite rarely. The argument made by this paper is that legal concepts are best understood as mental representations. The piece explains what mental representations are and why this view matters. The explanation of legal concepts, understood as mental representations is one of (at least) three levels of explanation within legal philosophy, but—as will be argued—it is the most fundamental level. This paper analyzes the consequences of such understanding of concepts used in the field of legal philosophy. Special emphasis is put on the current debate on the analogical or amodal nature of concepts.

scholarly journals Representations, Affordances, and Interactive Systems

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (5) ◽  
pp. 23
Author(s):  
Robert Rowe
Keyword(s):  
Artificial Intelligence ◽  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Data Structures ◽  
Digital Computer ◽  
Mental Representations ◽  
Interactive Systems ◽  
Algorithmic Composition ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of

The history of algorithmic composition using a digital computer has undergone many representations—data structures that encode some aspects of the outside world, or processes and entities within the program itself. Parallel histories in cognitive science and artificial intelligence have (of necessity) confronted their own notions of representations, including the ecological perception view of J.J. Gibson, who claims that mental representations are redundant to the affordances apparent in the world, its objects, and their relations. This review tracks these parallel histories and how the orientations and designs of multimodal interactive systems give rise to their own affordances: the representations and models used expose parameters and controls to a creator that determine how a system can be used and, thus, what it can mean.

DESIGN DISCOURSE AND THE COGNITIVE SCIENCE OF DESIGN

2014 ◽  
Vol 79 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-53
Author(s):  
Jeroen de Ridder
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Science And Religion ◽  
The Other ◽  
Significant Progress ◽  
The Past ◽  
The One ◽  
Bare Bones ◽  
Single Focus

Much of Alvin Plantinga’s Where the Conflict Really Lies(2011) will contain few surprises for those who have been following his work over the past decades. This —I hasten to add — is nothing against the book. The fact alone that his ideas on various topics, which have appeared scattered throughout the literature, are now actualized, applied to the debate about the (alleged) conflict between science and religion, and organized into an overarching argument with a single focus makes this book worthwhile. Moreover, I see this book making significant progress on two opposite ends of the spectrum of views about science and religion. On the one end, we find the so-called new atheists and other conflict-mongers. Compared to the overheated rhetoric that oozes from their writings, this book is a breath of fresh air. Plantinga cuts right to the chase and soberly exposes the bare bones of the new atheists’ arguments. It immediately becomes clear how embarrassingly bare these bones really are. On the other end of the spectrum are theologians and scientists who envisage harmony and concord between science and religion.

scholarly journals Intentionality: A philosophical-cognitive approach to mental representations

2014 ◽  
Vol 26 (39) ◽  
pp. 819
Author(s):  
Cleverson Leite Bastos ◽  
Tomas Rodolfo Drunkenmolle
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Psychology ◽  
Mental Representation ◽  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Mental Representations ◽  
Hard Core ◽  
Explanatory Models ◽  
Cognitive Approach ◽  
Clear Cut ◽  
Points Of View ◽  
Definition Of

This article critically analyses the notion of intentionality from several philosophical cognitive points of view. The authors argue that the notion of mental representation in the wider sense and intentionality in the narrower sense remains elusive despite accommodated paradoxes, improved semantic precision and more sophisticated strategies in dealing with intentionality. We will argue that different approaches to intentionality appear to be coherent in their inferences. However, most of them become contradictory and mutually exclusive when juxtaposed and applied to borderline questions. While the explanatory value of both philosophy of mind as well as cognitive psychology should not be underestimated, we must note that not even hard-core neuroscience has been able to pin point what is going on in our minds, let alone come up with a clear cut explanation how it works or a definition of what thought really is. To date, however, intentionality is the best of all explanatory models regarding mental representations.

Supernatural agents may have provided adaptive social information

2004 ◽  
Vol 27 (6) ◽  
pp. 732-733 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jesse M. Bering ◽  
Todd K. Shackelford
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Evolutionary Biology ◽  
Explanatory Power ◽  
Social Information ◽  
Adaptive Function ◽  
Communicative Intent ◽  
Target Article

Atran & Norenzayan's (A&N's) target article effectively combines the insights of evolutionary biology and interdisciplinary cognitive science, neither of which alone yields sufficient explanatory power to help us fully understand the complexities of supernatural belief. Although the authors' ideas echo those of other researchers, they are perhaps the most squarely grounded in neo-Darwinian terms to date. Nevertheless, A&N overlook the possibility that the tendency to infer supernatural agents' communicative intent behind natural events served an ancestrally adaptive function.

scholarly journals Eccentric Computational Embodiments: Cognitive Domestication of External Entities

Proceedings ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 36
Author(s):  
Lorenzo Magnani
Keyword(s):  
Computer Science ◽  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Distributed Cognition ◽  
Contextual Factors ◽  
Motor Tasks ◽  
Morphological Aspects ◽  
Recent Computer ◽  
Morphological Computation ◽  
The One

Eco-cognitive computationalism sees computation in context, adopting the intellectual visions advanced by the cognitive science perspectives on embodied, situated, and distributed cognition. It is in this framework that we can fruitfully study the relevance in recent computer science devoted to the simplification of cognitive and motor tasks generated in organic entities by the morphological aspects. Ignorant bodies can be cognitively “domesticated” to become useful “mimetic bodies'', which originate eccentric new computational embodiments capable of rendering an involved computation simpler and more efficient. On the basis of these considerations, we will also see how the concept of computation changes, being related to historical and contextual factors, so that the “emergence'' of new kinds of computations can be epistemologically clarified, such as the one regarding morphological computation. Finally, my presentation will introduce and discuss the concept of overcomputationalism, as intertwined with the traditional concepts of pancognitivism, paniformationalism, and pancomputationalism, seeing them in a more naturalized intellectual disposition, more appropriate to the aim of bypass ontological or metaphysical overstatements.

Descartes’ Dualism of Mind and Body in the Development of Psychological Thought

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Deborah Brown ◽  
Brian Key
Keyword(s):  
19Th Century ◽  
Evolutionary Biology ◽  
Self Regulation ◽  
Voluntary Action ◽  
Special Science ◽  
Physiological Processes ◽  
Mind And Body ◽  
The One ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The 19Th Century

Few practitioners or researchers in psychology would think of the 17th-century French philosopher, René Descartes, as the founding father of their discipline. Yet, it is difficult to see how psychology could have emerged as a discipline in its own right without the contributions of Descartes. Descartes’ theoretical and experimental contributions to our understanding of rationality, consciousness, sensation, feeling, attention, psychological self-regulation and voluntary action, and indeed the very concept of mind that lies at the heart of his philosophy, have been pivotal to the evolution of psychology since its emergence as a special science in the 19th-century. These contributions tend to get overshadowed by the unpalatable aspects of his dualism of mind and body and his denial of animal consciousness, doctrines for which he was and still is much pilloried. However, both doctrines are relevant to understanding how from its inception the subject matter and scope of psychological investigation was framed, for underlying the Cartesian concept of mind is not one dualism but two: a dualism of mind and body and a dualism of life and mind. The mind, for Descartes, could not be theorized on its own terms without conceiving of it at least to some extent independently of the physiological processes of the human body, on the one hand, and the life functions of biological organisms, on the other. Descartes’ legacy for psychology as a discipline is thus twofold. It created the conceptual space for the concept of mind to emerge as a threshold concept in its own right, distinct from the concept of matter that defined mechanics, and it demarcated those uniquely human capacities that enabled psychology to differentiate itself from the newly emerging evolutionary biology of the 19th-century, even though it would remain more closely aligned with biology than physics thenceforth. Without both dualisms of mind and body and life and mind, it is difficult to envisage how psychology as a special science distinct from anatomy and the life sciences could have emerged, and for this the discipline of psychology owes Monsieur Descartes a considerable debt.

scholarly journals Eccentric Computational Embodiments: Cognitive Domestication of External Entities

Proceedings ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 36
Author(s):  
Lorenzo Magnani
Keyword(s):  
Computer Science ◽  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Distributed Cognition ◽  
Contextual Factors ◽  
Motor Tasks ◽  
Morphological Aspects ◽  
Recent Computer ◽  
Morphological Computation ◽  
The One

Eco-cognitive computationalism sees computation in context, adopting the intellectual visions advanced by the cognitive science perspectives on embodied, situated, and distributed cognition. It is in this framework that we can fruitfully study the relevance in recent computer science devoted to the simplification of cognitive and motor tasks generated in organic entities by the morphological aspects. Ignorant bodies can be cognitively “domesticated” to become useful “mimetic bodies'', which originate eccentric new computational embodiments capable of rendering an involved computation simpler and more efficient. On the basis of these considerations, we will also see how the concept of computation changes, being related to historical and contextual factors, so that the “emergence'' of new kinds of computations can be epistemologically clarified, such as the one regarding morphological computation. Finally, my presentation will introduce and discuss the concept of overcomputationalism, as intertwined with the traditional concepts of pancognitivism, paniformationalism, and pancomputationalism, seeing them in a more naturalized intellectual disposition, more appropriate to the aim of bypass ontological or metaphysical overstatements.

Redrawing the Map and Resetting the Time: Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences

2003 ◽  
Vol 29 ◽  
pp. 93-132 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shaun Gallagher ◽  
Francisco J. Varela
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Phenomenological Method ◽  
Negative Attitudes ◽  
Cognitive Sciences ◽  
Strong Emphasis ◽  
Science Of Mind ◽  
The One ◽  
Critical Lines

In recent years there has been some hard-won but still limited agreement that phenomenology can be of central and positive importance to the cognitive sciences. This realization comes in the wake of dismissive gestures made by philosophers of mind who mistakenly associate phenomenological method with untrained psychological introspection (e.g., Dennett 1991). For very different reasons, resistance is also found on the phenomenological side of this issue. There are many thinkers well versed in the Husserlian tradition who are not willing to consider the validity of a naturalistic science of mind. For them cognitive science is too computational or too reductionistic to be seriously considered as capable of explaining experience or consciousness. In some cases, when phenomenologists have seriously engaged the project of the cognitive sciences, rather than pursing a positive rapprochement with this project, they have been satisfied in drawing critical lines that identify its limitations. On the one hand, such negative attitudes are understandable from the perspective of the Husserlian rejection of naturalism, or from strong emphasis on the transcendental current in phenomenology.

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