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  1. Identified Neurons: what if every neuron in the human brain has its own identity?Robert Vermeulen - manuscript
    Recent research suggests that human memories are stored not between neurons as synaptic weights, but within individual neurons themselves. This opens the possibility to replace the dominant paradigm of brain function – neural networks – with a new one. In this article, I explore how “identified neurons” could explain how memories are stored, and how human traits are implemented in the brain.
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  2. Robustness, exploitable relations and history: assessing varitel semantics as a hybrid theory of representation.Nicolás Sebastián Sánchez - forthcoming - Critica.
    A constitutive theory of representation must address two challenges. The content determination challenge requires specifying why a particular state has a given content. The job description challenge requires spelling out the explanatory role that representational notions play in that theory. Recently, Nicholas Shea has advanced *varitel semantics* as a hybrid approach to representation to answer those challenges, supplementing teleosemantics with non-historical features –namely, exploitable relations and robustness. In this paper, I critically assess the hybrid theory’s answers to both challenges, arguing (...)
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  3. Restricted Auditory Aspatialism.Douglas Wadle - forthcoming - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science.
    Some philosophers have argued that we do not hear sounds as located in the environment. Others have objected that this straightforwardly contradicts the phenomenology of auditory experience. And from this they draw metaphysical conclusions about the nature of sounds—that they are events or properties of vibrating surfaces rather than waves or sensations. I argue that there is a minimal, but recognizable, notion of audition to which this phenomenal objection does not apply. While this notion doesn’t correspond to our ordinary notion (...)
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  4. The Formats of Cognitive Representation: A Computational Account.Dimitri Coelho Mollo & Alfredo Vernazzani - 2023 - Philosophy of Science (3):682-701.
    Cognitive representations are typically analysed in terms of content, vehicle and format. While current work on formats appeals to intuitions about external representations, such as words and maps, in this paper we develop a computational view of formats that does not rely on intuitions. In our view, formats are individuated by the computational profiles of vehicles, i.e., the set of constraints that fix the computational transformations vehicles can undergo. The resulting picture is strongly pluralistic, it makes space for a variety (...)
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  5. Neural representations unobserved—or: a dilemma for the cognitive neuroscience revolution.Marco Facchin - 2023 - Synthese 203 (1):1-42.
    Neural structural representations are cerebral map- or model-like structures that structurally resemble what they represent. These representations are absolutely central to the “cognitive neuroscience revolution”, as they are the only type of representation compatible with the revolutionaries’ mechanistic commitments. Crucially, however, these very same commitments entail that structural representations can be observed in the swirl of neuronal activity. Here, I argue that no structural representations have been observed being present in our neuronal activity, no matter the spatiotemporal scale of observation. (...)
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  6. Neural Oscillations as Representations.Manolo Martínez & Marc Artiga - 2023 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 74 (3):619-648.
    We explore the contribution made by oscillatory, synchronous neural activity to representation in the brain. We closely examine six prominent examples of brain function in which neural oscillations play a central role, and identify two levels of involvement that these oscillations take in the emergence of representations: enabling (when oscillations help to establish a communication channel between sender and receiver, or are causally involved in triggering a representation) and properly representational (when oscillations are a constitutive part of the representation). We (...)
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  7. Muscles or Movements? Representation in the Nascent Brain Sciences.Zina B. Ward - 2023 - Journal of the History of Biology 56 (1):5-34.
    The idea that the brain is a representational organ has roots in the nineteenth century, when neurologists began drawing conclusions about what the brain represents from clinical and experimental studies. One of the earliest controversies surrounding representation in the brain was the “muscles versus movements” debate, which concerned whether the motor cortex represents complex movements or rather fractional components of movement. Prominent thinkers weighed in on each side: neurologists John Hughlings Jackson and F.M.R. Walshe in favor of complex movements, neurophysiologist (...)
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  8. Predictive processing and anti-representationalism.Marco Facchin - 2021 - Synthese 199 (3-4):11609-11642.
    Many philosophers claim that the neurocomputational framework of predictive processing entails a globally inferentialist and representationalist view of cognition. Here, I contend that this is not correct. I argue that, given the theoretical commitments these philosophers endorse, no structure within predictive processing systems can be rightfully identified as a representational vehicle. To do so, I first examine some of the theoretical commitments these philosophers share, and show that these commitments provide a set of necessary conditions the satisfaction of which allows (...)
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  9. Multivariate pattern analysis and the search for neural representations.Bryce Gessell, Benjamin Geib & Felipe De Brigard - 2021 - Synthese 199 (5-6):12869-12889.
    Multivariate pattern analysis, or MVPA, has become one of the most popular analytic methods in cognitive neuroscience. Since its inception, MVPA has been heralded as offering much more than regular univariate analyses, for—we are told—it not only can tell us which brain regions are engaged while processing particular stimuli, but also which patterns of neural activity represent the categories the stimuli are selected from. We disagree, and in the current paper we offer four conceptual challenges to the use of MVPA (...)
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  10. Probabilistic representations in perception: Are there any, and what would they be?Steven Gross - 2020 - Mind and Language 35 (3):377-389.
    Nick Shea’s Representation in Cognitive Science commits him to representations in perceptual processing that are about probabilities. This commentary concerns how to adjudicate between this view and an alternative that locates the probabilities rather in the representational states’ associated “attitudes”. As background and motivation, evidence for probabilistic representations in perceptual processing is adduced, and it is shown how, on either conception, one can address a specific challenge Ned Block has raised to this evidence.
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  11. Evolving Concepts of 'Hierarchy' in Systems Neuroscience.Philipp Haueis & Daniel Burnston - 2020 - In Fabrizio Calzavarini & Marco Viola (eds.), Neural Mechanisms: New Challenges in the Philosophy of Neuroscience. Springer.
    The notion of “hierarchy” is one of the most commonly posited organizational principles in systems neuroscience. To this date, however, it has received little philosophical analysis. This is unfortunate, because the general concept of hierarchy ranges over two approaches with distinct empirical commitments, and whose conceptual relations remain unclear. We call the first approach the “representational hierarchy” view, which posits that an anatomical hierarchy of feed-forward, feed-back, and lateral connections underlies a signal processing hierarchy of input-output relations. Because the representational (...)
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  12. Unifying the essential concepts of biological networks: biological insights and philosophical foundations.Daniel Kostic, Claus Hilgetag & Marc Tittgemeyer - 2020 - Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 375 (1796):1-8.
    Over the last decades, network-based approaches have become highly popular in diverse fields of biology, including neuroscience, ecology, molecular biology and genetics. While these approaches continue to grow very rapidly, some of their conceptual and methodological aspects still require a programmatic foundation. This challenge particularly concerns the question of whether a generalized account of explanatory, organisational and descriptive levels of networks can be applied universally across biological sciences. To this end, this highly interdisciplinary theme issue focuses on the definition, motivation (...)
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  13. A memória episódica, o problema da cotemporalidade, e o senso comum.César Schirmer Dos Santos - 2020 - In Giovanni Rolla & Gerson Albuquerque de Araújo Neto (eds.), Ciência e Conhecimento. Editora da Universidade Federal do Piauí. pp. 151-180.
    Os realistas diretos sobre a memória episódica alegam que um sujeito que lembra está em contato direto com um evento passado. No entanto, como seria possível estar em contato direto com um evento que deixou de existir? Este é o assim-chamado problema da cotemporalidade. A solução padrão para este problema, a qual foi proposta por Sven Bernecker, consiste em distinguir entre, por um lado, a ocorrência de um evento, e, por outro lado, a existência de um evento, de modo que (...)
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  14. (5 other versions)Joint action goals reduce visuomotor interference effects from a partner’s incongruent actions.Sam Clarke, Luke McEllin, Anna Francová, Marcell Székely, Stephen Andrew Butterfill & John Michael - 2019 - Scientific Reports 9 (1).
    Joint actions often require agents to track others’ actions while planning and executing physically incongruent actions of their own. Previous research has indicated that this can lead to visuomotor interference effects when it occurs outside of joint action. How is this avoided or overcome in joint actions? We hypothesized that when joint action partners represent their actions as interrelated components of a plan to bring about a joint action goal, each partner’s movements need not be represented in relation to distinct, (...)
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  15. Informational Neuro-Connections of the Brain with the Body Supporting the Informational Model of Consciousness.Florin Gaiseanu - 2019 - Archives in Neurology and Neuroscience 4 (1):1-6.
    Introduction: The objective of this investigation is to analyse the informational circuits of the brain connections with the body from neurologic and neuroscience point of view, on the basis of the concepts of information promoted by the Informational Model of Consciousness. Analysis: Distinguishing between the virtual and matter-related information promoted by the Informational Model of Consciousness, the main specific features of consciousness are analyzed from the informational perspective, showing that the informational architecture of consciousness consists in seven groups of specific (...)
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  16. Teleosemantics, selection and novel contents.Justin Garson & David Papineau - 2019 - Biology and Philosophy 34 (3):36.
    Mainstream teleosemantics is the view that mental representation should be understood in terms of biological functions, which, in turn, should be understood in terms of selection processes. One of the traditional criticisms of teleosemantics is the problem of novel contents: how can teleosemantics explain our ability to represent properties that are evolutionarily novel? In response, some have argued that by generalizing the notion of a selection process to include phenomena such as operant conditioning, and the neural selection that underlies it, (...)
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  17. (1 other version)Entity Realism About Mental Representations.Bence Nanay - 2019 - Erkenntnis 87 (1):75-91.
    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 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 (...)
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  18. Representation and mental representation.Robert D. Rupert - 2018 - Philosophical Explorations 21 (2):204-225.
    This paper engages critically with anti-representationalist arguments pressed by prominent enactivists and their allies. The arguments in question are meant to show that the “as-such” and “job-description” problems constitute insurmountable challenges to causal-informational theories of mental content. In response to these challenges, a positive account of what makes a physical or computational structure a mental representation is proposed; the positive account is inspired partly by Dretske’s views about content and partly by the role of mental representations in contemporary cognitive scientific (...)
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  19. Modelling Empty Representations: The Case of Computational Models of Hallucination.Marcin Miłkowski - 2017 - In Gordana Dodig-Crnkovic & Raffaela Giovagnoli (eds.), Representation of Reality: Humans, Other Living Organism and Intelligent Machines. Heidelberg: Springer. pp. 17--32.
    I argue that there are no plausible non-representational explanations of episodes of hallucination. To make the discussion more specific, I focus on visual hallucinations in Charles Bonnet syndrome. I claim that the character of such hallucinatory experiences cannot be explained away non-representationally, for they cannot be taken as simple failures of cognizing or as failures of contact with external reality—such failures being the only genuinely non-representational explanations of hallucinations and cognitive errors in general. I briefly introduce a recent computational model (...)
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  20. Why Foot-Tapping Is Important but Not Enough? Some Methodological Problems in the Embodied Approach to Musical Meaning.Tomasz Szubart - 2017 - Avant: Trends in Interdisciplinary Studies 8 (1):101-106.
    In this short paper I critically analyze Marc Leman’s embodied approach to musical meaning and representation, suggesting that its explanatory value is not sufficient in order to be a good alternative for theories encompassing the concept of representation.
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  21. Vanilla PP for Philosophers: A Primer on Predictive Processing.Wanja Wiese & Thomas Metzinger - 2017 - Philosophy and Predictive Processing.
    The goal of this short chapter, aimed at philosophers, is to provide an overview and brief explanation of some central concepts involved in predictive processing (PP). Even those who consider themselves experts on the topic may find it helpful to see how the central terms are used in this collection. To keep things simple, we will first informally define a set of features important to predictive processing, supplemented by some short explanations and an alphabetic glossary. -/- The features described here (...)
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  22. Liberal Representationalism: A Deflationist Defense.Marc Artiga - 2016 - Dialectica 70 (3):407-430.
    The idea that only complex brains can possess genuine representations is an important element in mainstream philosophical thinking. An alternative view, which I label ‘liberal representationalism’, holds that we should accept the existence of many more full-blown representations, from activity in retinal ganglion cells to the neural states produced by innate releasing mechanisms in cognitively unsophisticated organisms. A promising way of supporting liberal representationalism is to show it to be a consequence of our best naturalistic theories of representation. However, several (...)
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  23. Teleosemantic modeling of cognitive representations.Marc Artiga - 2016 - Biology and Philosophy 31 (4):483-505.
    Naturalistic theories of representation seek to specify the conditions that must be met for an entity to represent another entity. Although these approaches have been relatively successful in certain areas, such as communication theory or genetics, many doubt that they can be employed to naturalize complex cognitive representations. In this essay I identify some of the difficulties for developing a teleosemantic theory of cognitive representations and provide a strategy for accommodating them: to look into models of signaling in evolutionary game (...)
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  24. Predictive coding and representationalism.Paweł Gładziejewski - 2016 - Synthese 193 (2).
    According to the predictive coding theory of cognition , brains are predictive machines that use perception and action to minimize prediction error, i.e. the discrepancy between bottom–up, externally-generated sensory signals and top–down, internally-generated sensory predictions. Many consider PCT to have an explanatory scope that is unparalleled in contemporary cognitive science and see in it a framework that could potentially provide us with a unified account of cognition. It is also commonly assumed that PCT is a representational theory of sorts, in (...)
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  25. Attention in bodily awareness.Gregor Hochstetter - 2016 - Synthese 193 (12):3819-3842.
    The aim of this paper is to develop and defend an Attentional View of bodily awareness, on which attention is necessary for bodily awareness. The original formulation of the Attentional View is due to Marcel Kinsbourne. First, I will show that the Attentional View of bodily awareness as formulated by Kinsbourne is superior to other accounts in the literature for characterizing the relationship between attention and bodily awareness. Kinsbourne’s account is the only account in the literature so far which can (...)
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  26. Action guidance is not enough, representations need correspondence too: A plea for a two-factor theory of representation.Paweł Gładziejewski - 2015 - New Ideas in Psychology:doi:10.1016/j.newideapsych.2015..
    The aim of this article is to critically examine what I call Action-Centric Theories of Representation (ACToRs). I include in this category theories of representation that (1) reject construing representation in terms of a relation that holds between representation itself (the representational vehicle) and what is represented, and instead (2) try to bring the function that representations play for cognitive systems to the center stage. Roughly speaking, according to proponents of ACToRs, what makes a representation (that is, what is constitutive (...)
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  27. Satisfaction conditions in anticipatory mechanisms.Marcin Miłkowski - 2015 - Biology and Philosophy 30 (5):709-728.
    The purpose of this paper is to present a general mechanistic framework for analyzing causal representational claims, and offer a way to distinguish genuinely representational explanations from those that invoke representations for honorific purposes. It is usually agreed that rats are capable of navigation because they maintain a cognitive map of their environment. Exactly how and why their neural states give rise to mental representations is a matter of an ongoing debate. I will show that anticipatory mechanisms involved in rats’ (...)
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  28. Review of Space, Time, and Number in the Brain. [REVIEW]Carlos Montemayor & Rasmus Grønfeldt Winther - 2015 - Mathematical Intelligencer 37 (2):93-98.
    Albert Einstein once made the following remark about "the world of our sense experiences": "the fact that it is comprehensible is a miracle." (1936, p. 351) A few decades later, another physicist, Eugene Wigner, wondered about the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences, concluding his classic article thus: "the miracle of the appropriateness of the language of mathematics for the formulation of the laws of physics is a wonderful gift which we neither understand nor deserve" (1960, p. 14). (...)
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  29. A framework for the first‑person internal sensation of visual perception in mammals and a comparable circuitry for olfactory perception in Drosophila.Kunjumon Vadakkan - 2015 - Springerplus 4 (833):1-23.
    Perception is a first-person internal sensation induced within the nervous system at the time of arrival of sensory stimuli from objects in the environment. Lack of access to the first-person properties has limited viewing perception as an emergent property and it is currently being studied using third-person observed findings from various levels. One feasible approach to understand its mechanism is to build a hypothesis for the specific conditions and required circuit features of the nodal points where the mechanistic operation of (...)
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  30. Extended Mind and Representation.F. Thomas Burke - 2014 - In John R. Shook & Tibor Solymosi (eds.), Pragmatist Neurophilosophy: American Philosophy and the Brain. New York: Bloomsbury Academic. pp. 177-202.
    Good old-fashioned cognitive science characterizes human thinking as symbol manipulation qua computation and therefore emphasizes the processing of symbolic representations as a necessary if not sufficient condition for “general intelligent action.” Recent alternative conceptions of human thinking tend to deemphasize if not altogether eschew the notion of representation. The present paper shows how classical American pragmatist conceptions of human thinking can successfully avoid either of these extremes, replacing old-fashioned conceptions of representation with one that characterizes both representatum and representans in (...)
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  31. The Self‐Evidencing Brain.Jakob Hohwy - 2014 - Noûs 50 (2):259-285.
    An exciting theory in neuroscience is that the brain is an organ for prediction error minimization. This theory is rapidly gaining influence and is set to dominate the science of mind and brain in the years to come. PEM has extreme explanatory ambition, and profound philosophical implications. Here, I assume the theory, briefly explain it, and then I argue that PEM implies that the brain is essentially self-evidencing. This means it is imperative to identify an evidentiary boundary between the brain (...)
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  32. Skillful action in peripersonal space.Gabrielle Benette Jackson - 2014 - Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 13 (2):313-334.
    In this article, I link the empirical hypothesis that neural representations of sensory stimulation near the body involve a unique motor component to the idea that the perceptual field is structured by skillful bodily activity. The neurophenomenological view that emerges is illuminating in its own right, though it may also have practical consequences. I argue that recent experiments attempting to alter the scope of these near space sensorimotor representations are actually equivocal in what they show. I propose resolving this ambiguity (...)
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  33. Representations gone mental.Alex Morgan - 2014 - Synthese 191 (2):213-244.
    Many philosophers and psychologists have attempted to elucidate the nature of mental representation by appealing to notions like isomorphism or abstract structural resemblance. The ‘structural representations’ that these theorists champion are said to count as representations by virtue of functioning as internal models of distal systems. In his 2007 book, Representation Reconsidered, William Ramsey endorses the structural conception of mental representation, but uses it to develop a novel argument against representationalism, the widespread view that cognition essentially involves the manipulation of (...)
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  34. Memory, environment, and the brain.César Schirmer Dos Santos - 2013 - Filosofia Unisinos 14 (3):204-214.
    In recent decades, investigation of brain injuries associated with amnesia allowed progress in the philosophy and science of memory, but it also paved the way for the hubris of assuming that memory is an exclusively neural phenomenon. Nonetheless, there are methodological and conceptual reasons preventing a reduction of the ecological and contextual phenomenon of memory to a neural phenomenon, since memory is the observed action of an individual before being the simple output of a brain (or, at least, so we (...)
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  35. Intentional Models as Essential Scientific Tools.Eric Hochstein - 2013 - International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 27 (2):199-217.
    In this article, I argue that the use of scientific models that attribute intentional content to complex systems bears a striking similarity to the way in which statistical descriptions are used. To demonstrate this, I compare and contrast an intentional model with a statistical model, and argue that key similarities between the two give us compelling reasons to consider both as a type of phenomenological model. I then demonstrate how intentional descriptions play an important role in scientific methodology as a (...)
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  36. Pretense, imagination, and belief: the Single Attitude theory.Peter Langland-Hassan - 2012 - Philosophical Studies 159 (2):155-179.
    A popular view has it that the mental representations underlying human pretense are not beliefs, but are “belief-like” in important ways. This view typically posits a distinctive cognitive attitude (a “DCA”) called “imagination” that is taken toward the propositions entertained during pretense, along with correspondingly distinct elements of cognitive architecture. This paper argues that the characteristics of pretense motivating such views of imagination can be explained without positing a DCA, or other cognitive architectural features beyond those regulating normal belief and (...)
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  37. A Role for Representation in Cognitive Neurobiology.Jacqueline Anne Sullivan - 2010 - Philosophy of Science (Supplement) 77 (5):875-887.
    What role does the concept of representation play in the contexts of experimentation and explanation in cognitive neurobiology? In this article, a distinction is drawn between minimal and substantive roles for representation. It is argued by appeal to a case study that representation currently plays a role in cognitive neurobiology somewhere in between minimal and substantive and that this is problematic given the ultimate explanatory goals of cognitive neurobiological research. It is suggested that what is needed is for representation to (...)
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  38. The Nature and Implementation of Representation in Biological Systems.Mike Collins - 2009 - Dissertation, City University of New York
    I defend a theory of mental representation that satisfies naturalistic constraints. Briefly, we begin by distinguishing (i) what makes something a representation from (ii) given that a thing is a representation, what determines what it represents. Representations are states of biological organisms, so we should expect a unified theoretical framework for explaining both what it is to be a representation as well as what it is to be a heart or a kidney. I follow Millikan in explaining (i) in terms (...)
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  39. (1 other version)Problems of representation I: nature and role.Dan Ryder - 2009 - In Sarah Robins, John Symons & Paco Calvo (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Psychology. New York, NY: Routledge. pp. 233.
    Introduction There are some exceptions, which we shall see below, but virtually all theories in psychology and cognitive science make use of the notion of representation. Arguably, folk psychology also traffics in representations, or is at least strongly suggestive of their existence. There are many different types of things discussed in the psychological and philosophical literature that are candidates for representation-hood. First, there are the propositional attitudes – beliefs, judgments, desires, hopes etc. (see Chapters 9 and 17 of this volume). (...)
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  40. Evolving artificial minds and brains.Alex Vereschagin, Mike Collins & Pete Mandik - 2007 - In Drew Khlentzos & Andrea Schalley (eds.), Mental States Volume 1: Evolution, function, nature. John Benjamins.
    We explicate representational content by addressing how representations that ex- plain intelligent behavior might be acquired through processes of Darwinian evo- lution. We present the results of computer simulations of evolved neural network controllers and discuss the similarity of the simulations to real-world examples of neural network control of animal behavior. We argue that focusing on the simplest cases of evolved intelligent behavior, in both simulated and real organisms, reveals that evolved representations must carry information about the creature’s environ- ments (...)
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  41. What is a brain state?Richard Brown - 2006 - Philosophical Psychology 19 (6):729-742.
    Philosophers have been talking about brain states for almost 50 years and as of yet no one has articulated a theoretical account of what one is. In fact this issue has received almost no attention and cognitive scientists still use meaningless phrases like 'C-fiber firing' and 'neuronal activity' when theorizing about the relation of the mind to the brain. To date when theorists do discuss brain states they usually do so in the context of making some other argument with the (...)
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  42. (1 other version)On thinking of kinds: A neuroscientific perspective.Dan Ryder - 2006 - In Graham Macdonald & David Papineau (eds.), Teleosemantics: New Philo-sophical Essays. New York: Oxford: Clarendon Press. pp. 115-145.
    Reductive, naturalistic psychosemantic theories do not have a good track record when it comes to accommodating the representation of kinds. In this paper, I will suggest a particular teleosemantic strategy to solve this problem, grounded in the neurocomputational details of the cerebral cortex. It is a strategy with some parallels to one that Ruth Millikan has suggested, but to which insufficient attention has been paid. This lack of attention is perhaps due to a lack of appreciation for the severity of (...)
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  43. Action-oriented representation.Pete Mandik - 2005 - In Andrew Brook & Kathleen Akins (eds.), Cognition and the Brain: The Philosophy and Neuroscience Movement. New York: Cambridge University Press. pp. 284--305.
    Often, sensory input underdetermines perception. One such example is the perception of illusory contours. In illusory contour perception, the content of the percept includes the presence of a contour that is absent from the informational content of the sensation. (By “sensation” I mean merely information-bearing events at the transducer level. I intend no further commitment such as the identification of sensations with qualia.) I call instances of perception underdetermined by sensation “underdetermined perception.” The perception of illusory contours is just one (...)
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  44. The Introduction of Information into Neurobiology.Justin Garson - 2003 - Philosophy of Science 70 (5):926-936.
    The first use of the term "information" to describe the content of nervous impulse occurs 20 years prior to Shannon`s (1948) work, in Edgar Adrian`s The Basis of Sensation (1928). Although, at least throughout the 1920s and early 30s, the term "information" does not appear in Adrian`s scientific writings to describe the content of nervous impulse, the notion that the structure of nervous impulse constitutes a type of message subject to certain constraints plays an important role in all of his (...)
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  45. Zu Evolution und Entwicklung von Hirn und Bewusstsein. Über Zellen und neuronale Netze zu Qualia.Paul Gottlob Layer - 2003 - der Entthronte Mensch? Menthis Verlag, Paderborn:79-97.
    Physiologie und Struktur komplexer Gehirne lassen sich durch Betrachtung evolutions- und entwicklungsbiologischer Abläufe analysieren, was der Hirnforschung tiefe Einblicke bis zur molekularen Ebene erlaubt. In knappster Form werden grundlegende Aspekte der Stammes- und Individualentwicklung (Phylo- und Ontogenese) von Gehirnen im Tierreich beschrieben, bis hin zum menschlichen Gehirn, dessen Grobgliederung skizziert wird. Das Lernvermögen insbesondere von Kleinkindern ist aufgrund postnataler Hirnplastizität erklärbar. Systematische Unterschiede zwischen einzelnen Zellen und Neuronenverbänden sind für selbstorganisierende Bewußtseinsprozesse bedeutsam. Am Beispiel der stufenweisen visuellen Signalverarbeitung wird die (...)
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  46. Varieties of representation in evolved and embodied neural networks.Pete Mandik - 2003 - Biology and Philosophy 18 (1):95-130.
    In this paper I discuss one of the key issuesin the philosophy of neuroscience:neurosemantics. The project of neurosemanticsinvolves explaining what it means for states ofneurons and neural systems to haverepresentational contents. Neurosemantics thusinvolves issues of common concern between thephilosophy of neuroscience and philosophy ofmind. I discuss a problem that arises foraccounts of representational content that Icall ``the economy problem'': the problem ofshowing that a candidate theory of mentalrepresentation can bear the work requiredwithin in the causal economy of a mind and (...)
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  47. Networks of Gene Regulation, Neural Development and the Evolution of General Capabilities, Such as Human Empathy.Alfred Gierer - 1998 - Zeitschrift Für Naturforschung C - A Journal of Bioscience 53:716-722.
    A network of gene regulation organized in a hierarchical and combinatorial manner is crucially involved in the development of the neural network, and has to be considered one of the main substrates of genetic change in its evolution. Though qualitative features may emerge by way of the accumulation of rather unspecific quantitative changes, it is reasonable to assume that at least in some cases specific combinations of regulatory parts of the genome initiated new directions of evolution, leading to novel capabilities (...)
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  48. The perception of phantom Limbs: The D. O. Hebb lecture.Vilayanur S. Ramachandran & William Hirstein - 1998 - Brain 121:1603-1630.
    Almost everyone who has a limb amputated will experience a phantom limb--the vivid impression that the limb is not only still present, but in some cases, painful. There is now a wealth of empirical evidence demonstrating changes in cortical topography in primates following deafferentation or amputation, and this review will attempt to relate these in a systematic way to the clinical phenomenology of phantom limbs. With the advent of non-invasive imaging techniques such as MEG (magnetoencephalogram) and functional MRI, topographical reorganization (...)
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  49. Connectionist value units: Some concerns.John A. Barnden - 1986 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 9 (1):92-93.
    This paper is a commentary on the target article by Dana H. Ballard, “Cortical connections and parallel processing: Structure and function”, in the same issue of the journal, pp. 67–120. -/- I raise some issues about the connectionist or neural-network implementation of information and information processing. Issues include the sharing of information by different parts of a connectionist/neural network, the copying of complex information from one place to another in a network, the possibility of connection weights not being synaptic weights, (...)
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  50. A theory of the epigenesis of neuronal networks by selective stabilization of synapses.Jean Pierre Changeux, Philippe Courrège & Antoine Danchin - 1973 - Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Usa 70 (10):2974-8.
    A formalism is introduced to represent the connective organization of an evolving neuronal network and the effects of environment on this organization by stabilization or degeneration of labile synapses associated with functioning. Learning, or the acquisition of an associative property, is related to a characteristic variability of the connective organization: the interaction of the environment with the genetic program is printed as a particular pattern of such organization through neuronal functioning. An application of the theory to the development of the (...)
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