Switch to: References

Add citations

You must login to add citations.
  1. Anatomy’s role in mechanistic explanations of organism behaviour.Aliya R. Dewey - 2024 - Synthese 203 (5):1-32.
    Explanations in behavioural neuroscience are often said to be mechanistic in the sense that they explain an organism’s behaviour by describing the activities and organisation of the organism’s parts that are “constitutively relevant” to organism behaviour. Much has been said about the constitutive relevance of working parts (in debates about the so-called “mutual manipulability criterion”), but relatively little has been said about the constitutive relevance of the organising relations between working parts. Some New Mechanists seem to endorse a simple causal-linking (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Introduction to the topical collection ‘locating representations in the brain: interdisciplinary perspectives’.Sarah K. Robins & Felipe De Brigard - 2024 - Synthese 203 (5):1-18.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • The Dynamicist Landscape.David L. Barack - 2023 - Topics in Cognitive Science.
    The dynamical hypothesis states that cognitive systems are dynamical systems. While dynamical systems play an important role in many cognitive phenomena, the dynamical hypothesis as stated applies to every system and so fails both to specify what makes cognitive systems distinct and to distinguish between proposals regarding the nature of cognitive systems. To avoid this problem, I distinguish several different types of dynamical systems, outlining four dimensions along which dynamical systems can vary: total-state versus partial-state, internal versus external, macroscopic versus (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • The best game in town: The reemergence of the language-of-thought hypothesis across the cognitive sciences.Jake Quilty-Dunn, Nicolas Porot & Eric Mandelbaum - 2023 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 46:e261.
    Mental representations remain the central posits of psychology after many decades of scrutiny. However, there is no consensus about the representational format(s) of biological cognition. This paper provides a survey of evidence from computational cognitive psychology, perceptual psychology, developmental psychology, comparative psychology, and social psychology, and concludes that one type of format that routinely crops up is the language-of-thought (LoT). We outline six core properties of LoTs: (i) discrete constituents; (ii) role-filler independence; (iii) predicate–argument structure; (iv) logical operators; (v) inferential (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   14 citations  
  • Reflex theory, cautionary tale: misleading simplicity in early neuroscience.M. Chirimuuta - 2021 - Synthese 199 (5-6):12731-12751.
    This paper takes an integrated history and philosophy of science approach to the topic of "simplicity out of complexity". The reflex theory was a framework within early twentieth century psychology and neuroscience which aimed to decompose complex behaviours and neural responses into simple reflexes. It was controversial in its time, and did not live up to its own theoretical and empirical ambitions. Examination of this episode poses important questions about the limitations of simplifying strategies, and the relationship between simplification and (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • How computation explains.Andrew Richmond - forthcoming - Mind and Language.
    Cognitive science givescomputational explanationsof the brain. Philosophers have treated these explanations as if they simply claim that the brain computes. We have therefore assumed that to understand how and why computational explanation works, we must understand what it is to compute. In contrast, I argue that we can understand computational explanation by describing the resources it brings to bear on the study of the brain. Specifically, I argue that it introduces concepts and formalisms that complement cognitive science's modeling goals. This (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • The physicality of representation.Corey J. Maley - 2021 - Synthese 199 (5-6):14725-14750.
    Representation is typically taken to be importantly separate from its physical implementation. This is exemplified in Marr’s three-level framework, widely cited and often adopted in neuroscience. However, the separation between representation and physical implementation is not a necessary feature of information-processing systems. In particular, when it comes to analog computational systems, Marr’s representational/algorithmic level and implementational level collapse into a single level. Insofar as analog computation is a better way of understanding neural computation than other notions, Marr’s three-level framework must (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  • 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. (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark