Knowledge

2019 ◽  
pp. 58-91
Author(s):  
Paul Thagard
Keyword(s):  
Theory Of Mind ◽  
Mental Representations ◽  
Social Dimensions ◽  
Neural Firing ◽  
Motor Experience ◽  
The World ◽  
Sensory Motor

For the semantic pointer theory of mind, the bearers of knowledge are not abstract propositions but rather patterns of neural firing that constitute mental representations, including concepts, beliefs, nonverbal rules, images, and emotions. This neurocognitive perspective suggests new answers for questions about the generation of candidates for knowledge and their relations to the world via sensory-motor interactions. Semantic pointers support knowledge that beliefs are true or false, how to do things using multimodal rules, and of things via sensory-motor experience. The Semantic Pointer Architecture meshes well with coherence-based justification that abandons foundational certainty for fallible attempts to fit diverse elements of knowledge into the best overall explanation. Knowledge has important social dimensions.

scholarly journals Autistic Adults are Not Impaired at Maintaining or Switching Between Counterfactual and Factual Worlds: An ERP Study

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Heather J. Ferguson ◽  
Lena Wimmer ◽  
Jo Black ◽  
Mahsa Barzy ◽  
David Williams
Keyword(s):  
Theory Of Mind ◽  
Cognitive Flexibility ◽  
Mental Representations ◽  
Critical Word ◽  
Group Level ◽  
Contextual Cues ◽  
Brain Potential ◽  
The World ◽  
Autistic Adults ◽  
Set Up

AbstractWe report an event-related brain potential (ERP) experiment that tests whether autistic adults are able to maintain and switch between counterfactual and factual worlds. Participants (N = 48) read scenarios that set up a factual or counterfactual scenario, then either maintained the counterfactual world or switched back to the factual world. When the context maintained the world, participants showed appropriate detection of the inconsistent critical word. In contrast, when participants had to switch from a counterfactual to factual world, they initially experienced interference from the counterfactual context, then favoured the factual interpretation of events. None of these effects were modulated by group, despite group-level impairments in Theory of Mind and cognitive flexibility among the autistic adults. These results demonstrate that autistic adults can appropriately use complex contextual cues to maintain and/or update mental representations of counterfactual and factual events.

Mental Mechanisms

Mind-Society ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 22-47
Author(s):  
Paul Thagard
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Appraisal ◽  
Mental Representations ◽  
Special Kind ◽  
Neural Mechanisms ◽  
Emotional Information ◽  
Sensory Inputs ◽  
The World ◽  
Sensory Motor ◽  
Human Thinking ◽  
High Level

Psychological explanations based on representations and procedures can be deepened by showing how they emerge from neural mechanisms. Neurons represent aspects of the world by collective patterns of firing. These patterns can be bound into more complicated patterns that can transcend the limitations of sensory inputs. Semantic pointers are a special kind of representation that operates by binding neural patterns encompassing sensory, motor, verbal, and emotional information. The semantic pointer theory applies not only to the ordinary operations of mental representations like concepts and rules but also to the most high-level kinds of human thinking, including language, creativity, and consciousness. Semantic pointers also encompass emotions, construed as bindings that combine cognitive appraisal with physiological perception.

Meaning

2019 ◽  
pp. 207-227
Author(s):  
Paul Thagard
Keyword(s):  
Possible Worlds ◽  
Mental Representations ◽  
Three Dimensional ◽  
Meaning Of Life ◽  
Neural Mechanisms ◽  
Social Meaning ◽  
The World ◽  
Sensory Motor ◽  
Multiple Levels ◽  
Different Levels

Philosophical problems about the meaning of language and the meaning of life turn out to have interesting commonalities. Neither has plausible solutions that draw on supernatural entities such as abstract meanings, possible worlds, and divine plans. Rather, both can be approached by looking at mechanisms at four different levels: molecular, neural, mental, and social. Meaning is not a thing but a process that depends on interactions of parts occurring at multiple levels, resulting in multilevel emergence. The Semantic Pointer Architecture illuminates the neural mechanisms that operate in languages and valuable lives. Words are meaningful because their mental representations as concepts are brain processes that combine sensory-motor interactions with the world and interactions with other concepts. The meaning of life is also three-dimensional, requiring people to interact with language, the world, and other people.

How Brains Make Minds

Brain-Mind ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 18-49
Author(s):  
Paul Thagard
Keyword(s):  
Neural Networks ◽  
Mental Representations ◽  
Sensory Experience ◽  
Parallel Process ◽  
Neural Cells ◽  
Multiple Constraints ◽  
The World ◽  
Sensory Motor ◽  
High Level ◽  
High Level Thinking

Brains make minds because mental representations and processes are performed by neural mechanisms. Mental representations work by patterns of firing in neural groups. More complicated representations that go beyond sensory experience can be formed by binding representations together, combining patterns of firing into new ones. In particular, binding can produce semantic pointers that coalesce and compress different kinds of information, including sensory, motor, emotional and verbal information. Semantic pointers retain connections to sensory and motor experience while also acquiring the autonomy that is usually attributed to symbols. Eliasmith’s semantic pointer hypothesis shows how neural cells can interact to produce high-level thinking. Different representations compete with each other to provide accounts of what is going on in the world through a parallel process of satisfaction of multiple constraints. Neural networks can learn by changing the synaptic connections between neurons.

Triggers of Thought: Impressions within Hume’s Theory of Mind

2010 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 105-121
Author(s):  
Anik Waldow
Keyword(s):  
Theory Of Mind ◽  
Associative Processes ◽  
Sensory Inputs ◽  
The World ◽  
Theories Of Meaning ◽  
Conceptual Resources

This essay argues that Humean impressions are triggers of associative processes, which enable us to form stable patterns of thought that co-vary with our experiences of the world. It will thus challenge the importance of the Copy Principle by claiming that it is the regularity with which certain kinds of sensory inputs motivate certain sets of complex ideas that matters for the discrimination of ideas. This reading is conducive to Hume’s account of perception, because it avoids the impoverishment of conceptual resources so typical for empiricist theories of meaning and explains why ideas should be based on impressions, although impressions cannot be known to mirror matters of fact. Dieser Aufsatz argumentiert dafür, dass humesche Eindrücke („impressions“) Auslöser von assoziativen Prozessen sind, welche es uns ermöglichen, stabile Denkmuster zu bilden, die mit unseren Erfahrungen der Welt kovariant sind. Der Aufsatz stellt somit die Wichtigkeit des Kopien-Prinzips in Frage, nämlich dadurch, dass behauptet wird, für die Unterscheidung der Ideen sei die Regelmäßigkeit maßgeblich, mit der gewisse Arten von sensorischen Eingaben gewisse Mengen von komplexen Ideen motivieren. Diese Lesart trägt zu einem Verständnis von Humes Auffassung der Wahrnehmung bei, da sie die Verarmung der begrifflichen Mittel, die für empiristische Theorien der Bedeutung so typisch ist, vermeidet und erklärt, warum Ideen auf Eindrücken basieren sollten, obwohl Eindrücke nicht als Abbildungen von Tatsachen erkannt werden können.

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.

Methodological solipsism considered as a research strategy in cognitive psychology

1980 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-73 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. A. Fodor
Keyword(s):  
Theory Of Mind ◽  
Mental Representations ◽  
Propositional Attitudes ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Research Strategy ◽  
Computational Theory Of Mind ◽  
Mental Processes ◽  
Computational Theory ◽  
Methodological Solipsism ◽  
Semantic Properties

AbstractThe paper explores the distinction between two doctrines, both of which inform theory construction in much of modern cognitive psychology: the representational theory of mind and the computational theory of mind. According to the former, propositional attitudes are to be construed as relations that organisms bear to mental representations. According to the latter, mental processes have access only to formal (nonsemantic) properties of the mental representations over which they are defined.The following claims are defended: (1) That the traditional dispute between “rational” and “naturalistic” psychology is plausibly viewed as an argument about the status of the computational theory of mind. Rational psychologists accept a formality condition on the specification of mental processes; naturalists do not. (2) That to accept the formality condition is to endorse a version of methodological solipsism. (3) That the acceptance of some such condition is warranted, at least for that part of psychology which concerns itself with theories of the mental causation of behavior. This is because: (4) such theories require nontransparent taxonomies of mental states; and (5) nontransparent taxonomies individuate mental states without reference to their semantic properties. Equivalently, (6) nontransparent taxonomies respect the way that the organism represents the object of its propositional attitudes to itself, and it is this representation which functions in the causation of behavior.The final section of the paper considers the prospect for a naturalistic psychology: one which defines its generalizations over relations between mental representations and their environmental causes, thus seeking to account for the semantic properties of propositional attitudes. Two related arguments are proposed, both leading to the conclusion that no such research strategy is likely to prove fruitful.

scholarly journals From Mind to Picture: A Systematic Review on Children’s and Adolescents’ Understanding of the Link between Artists and Pictures

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Romina Vivaldi ◽  
Richard P. Jolley ◽  
Sarah E Rose
Keyword(s):  
Systematic Review ◽  
Theory Of Mind ◽  
Web Of Science ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Child Psychology ◽  
Inclusion Criteria ◽  
Developmental Milestones ◽  
Italian Language ◽  
The World ◽  
The Subject

Pictorial symbols have multiple layers of meaning: not only do they represent objects, events and ideas about the world, they also represent the intentions of artists as well as other artist attributes (age, skill, originality and knowledge, mood, style and sentience). Although children’s developmental milestones of pictorial understanding have been the subject of a long-standing debate, their understanding of the relation between artists and pictures has often been neglected. The aim of this article was to conduct a systematic review on children’s and adolescents’ understanding of the relation between artists and pictures. PsycINFO and Web of Science databases were searched for English, Spanish, German, and Italian language empirical studies that examined this link in 2- to 18-year- olds. Forty-two citations (64 studies) from 14 different countries met the inclusion criteria. Results revealed the majority of the studies focused on the understanding of the artist’s intention. Although research on children’s and adolescents’ understanding of other attributes is scarce, and there were inconsistencies across the methodologies used, it seems that they first acknowledge intention and only later become more aware of how artist’s attributes are communicated through intention. The results of the review encourage subsequent research to provide a clearer conceptualised model of child and adolescent understanding of the artist-picture relationship. Such a model should be placed within a wider framework of the network of relationship between the artist, picture, world and beholder. Finally, consideration of how the development of understanding the artist-picture relationship is bi-directionally influenced with other developmental milestones in the child psychology is encouraged, particularly picture-production and theory of mind, and variations in atypical populations.

scholarly journals Communication in Action: Planning and Interpreting Communicative Demonstrations

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark K Ho ◽  
Fiery Andrews Cushman ◽  
Michael L. Littman ◽  
Joseph L. Austerweil
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Physical Environment ◽  
Mental Representations ◽  
Causal Structure ◽  
Action Planning ◽  
Formal Models ◽  
Cognitive Mechanisms ◽  
Intentional Behavior ◽  
The World ◽  
Communication Culture

Theory of mind enables an observer to interpret others' behavior in terms of unobservable beliefs, desires, intentions, feelings, and expectations about the world. This also empowers the person whose behavior is being observed: By intelligently modifying her actions, she can influence the mental representations that an observer ascribes to her, and by extension, what the observer comes to believe about the world. That is, she can engage in intentionally communicative demonstrations. Here, we develop a computational account of generating and interpreting communicative demonstrations by explicitly distinguishing between two interacting types of planning. Typically, instrumental planning aims to control states of the physical environment, whereas belief-directed planning aims to influence an observer's mental representations. Our framework (1) extends existing formal models of pragmatics and pedagogy to the setting of value-guided decision-making, (2) captures how people modify their intentional behavior to show what they know about the reward or causal structure of an environment, and (3) helps explain data on infant and child imitation in terms of literal versus pragmatic interpretation of adult demonstrators' actions. Additionally, our analysis of belief-directed intentionality and mentalizing sheds light on the socio-cognitive mechanisms that underlie distinctly human forms of communication, culture, and sociality.

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