An emerging class of theories concerning the functional structure of the brain takes the reuse of neural circuitry for various cognitive purposes to be a central organizational principle. According to these theories, it is quite common for neural circuits established for one purpose to be exapted (exploited, recycled, redeployed) during evolution or normal development, and be put to different uses, often without losing their original functions. Neural reuse theories thus differ from the usual understanding of the role of neural plasticity (...) (which is, after all, a kind of reuse) in brain organization along the following lines: According to neural reuse, circuits can continue to acquire new uses after an initial or original function is established; the acquisition of new uses need not involve unusual circumstances such as injury or loss of established function; and the acquisition of a new use need not involve (much) local change to circuit structure (e.g., it might involve only the establishment of functional connections to new neural partners). Thus, neural reuse theories offer a distinct perspective on several topics of general interest, such as: the evolution and development of the brain, including (for instance) the evolutionary-developmental pathway supporting primate tool use and human language; the degree of modularity in brain organization; the degree of localization of cognitive function; and the cortical parcellation problem and the prospects (and proper methods to employ) for function to structure mapping. The idea also has some practical implications in the areas of rehabilitative medicine and machine interface design. (shrink)

It is commonly held that our intuitive judgements about imaginary problem cases are justified a priori, if and when they are justified at all. In this paper I defend this view — ‘rationalism’ — against a recent objection by Timothy Williamson. I argue that his objection fails on multiple grounds, but the reasons why it fails are instructive. Williamson argues from a claim about the semantics of intuitive judgements, to a claim about their psychological underpinnings, to the denial of rationalism. (...) I argue that the psychological claim — that a capacity for mental simulation explains our intuitive judgements — does not, even if true, provide reasons to reject rationalism. (More generally, a simulation hypothesis, about any category of judgements, is very limited in its epistemological implications: it is pitched at a level of explanation that is insensitive to central epistemic distinctions.) I also argue that Williamson’s semantic claim — that intuitive judgements are judgements of counterfactuals — is mistaken; rather, I propose, they are a certain kind of metaphysical possibility judgement. Several other competing proposals are also examined and criticized. (shrink)

Dual-process theories hold that there are two distinct processing modes available for many cognitive tasks: one that is fast, automatic and non-conscious, and another that is slow, controlled and conscious. Typically, cognitive biases are attributed to type 1 processes, which are held to be heuristic or associative, and logical responses to type 2 processes, which are characterised as rule-based or analytical. Dual-system theories go further and assign these two types of process to two separate reasoning systems, System 1 and System (...) 2 – a view sometimes described as ‘the two minds hypothesis’. It is often claimed that System 2 is uniquely human and the source of our capacity for abstract and hypothetical thinking. This study is an introduction to dual-process and dual-system theories. It looks at some precursors, surveys key work in the fields of learning, reasoning, social cognition and decision making, and identifies some recent trends and philosophical applications. (shrink)

Starting from the sixties of the past century theory change has become a main concern of philosophy of science. Two of the best known formal accounts of theory change are the post-Popperian theories of verisimilitude (PPV for short) and the AGM theory of belief change (AGM for short). In this paper, we will investigate the conceptual relations between PPV and AGM and, in particular, we will ask whether the AGM rules for theory change are effective means for approaching the truth, (...) i.e., for achieving the cognitive aim of science pointed out by PPV. First, the key ideas of PPV and AGM and their application to a particular kind of propositional theories - the so called "conjunctive propositions" - will be illustrated. Afterwards, we will prove that, as far as conjunctive propositions are concerned, AGM belief change is an effective tool for approaching the truth. (shrink)

As the title “Doing without Concepts” suggests Edouard Machery argues that psychologists should stop using the notion of concept because: (1) the only interesting generalizations about concepts can be drawn at the level of types of concepts (prototypes, exemplars and theories) and not the level of concept in general; and (2) competences such as categorization or induction can rely on these different types of concepts (there is not a one to one correspondence between type of concept and competence). I try (...) to make the point that these two elements are not wholly compatible. If several types of concepts are used to perform a given competence (point (2)), then they have to be well regulated (e.g. which type is activated when, which type wins in case of conflict). These regulatory mechanisms can then be the basis for interesting generalizations (against point (1)). On the other hand, it is possible that point (1) applies to competences as well: that there are no interesting generalizations to be drawn about categorization in general. In which case different types of categorization are likely to be underlain by different types of concepts (against point (2)). Even though the arguments laid out in the book are forceful and well supported by empirical evidence, a more positive thesis might have been both more successful rhetorically and more interesting scientifically. (shrink)

The concept of modularity has loomed large in philosophy of psychology since the early 1980s, following the publication of Fodor’s landmark book The Modularity of Mind (1983). In the decades since the term ‘module’ and its cognates first entered the lexicon of cognitive science, the conceptual and theoretical landscape in this area has changed dramatically. Especially noteworthy in this respect has been the development of evolutionary psychology, whose proponents adopt a less stringent conception of modularity than the one advanced by (...) Fodor, and who argue that the architecture of the mind is more pervasively modular than Fodor claimed. Where Fodor (1983, 2000) draws the line of modularity at the relatively low-level systems underlying perception and language, post-Fodorian theorists such as Sperber (2002) and Carruthers (2006) contend that the mind is modular through and through, up to and including the high-level systems responsible for reasoning, planning, decision making, and the like. The concept of modularity has also figured in recent debates in philosophy of science, epistemology, ethics, and philosophy of language—further evidence of its utility as a tool for theorizing about mental architecture. (shrink)

Social “construction,” “constructionism” and “constructivism” are terms in wide use in the humanities and social sciences, and are applied to a diverse range of objects including the emotions, gender, race, sex, homo- and hetero-sexuality, mental illness, technology, quarks, facts, reality, and truth. This sort of terminology plays a number of different roles in different discourses, only some of which are philosophically interesting, and fewer of which admit of a “naturalistic” approach—an approach that treats science as a central and successful (if (...) sometimes fallible) source of knowledge about the world. If there is any core idea of social constructionism, it is that some object or objects are caused or controlled by social or cultural factors rather than natural factors, and if there is any core motivation of such research, it is the aim of showing that such objects are or were under our control: they could be, or might have been, otherwise. (shrink)

The idea has recently taken root that evolutionary theory and social constructivism are less antagonistic than most theorists thought, and we have even seen attempts at integrating constructivist and evolutionary approaches to human thought and behaviour. We argue in this article that although the projected integration is possible, indeed valuable, the existing attempts have tended to be vague or overly simplistic about the claims of social constructivist. We proceed by examining how to give more precision and substance to the research (...) programme of evolutionary social constructivism, a task we accomplish by focusing on the specific selection pressures that may have shaped the psychological and cultural mechanisms that give rise to social constructions. The benefit of such an integration for social constructivism is to have a solid foundation in the natural sciences. For evolutionists, evolutionary social constructivism offers a wider assortment of methods with which to study the interplay between culture and human nature. (shrink)

This article deals with the relationship between language and thought, focusing on the question of whether language can be a vehicle of thought, as, for example, Peter Carruthers has claimed. We develop and examine a powerful argument—the "argument from explicitness"—against this cognitive role of language. The premises of the argument are just two: (1) the vehicle of thought has to be explicit, and (2) natural languages are not explicit. We explain what these simple premises mean and why we should believe (...) they are true. Finally, we argue that even though the argument from explicitness shows that natural language cannot be a vehicle of thought, there is a cognitive function for language. (shrink)

This entry provides an overview of theories of concepts that is organized around five philosophical issues: (1) the ontology of concepts, (2) the structure of concepts, (3) empiricism and nativism about concepts, (4) concepts and natural language, and (5) concepts and conceptual analysis.

I argue that we can reconcile two seemingly incompatible traditions for thinking about concepts. On the one hand, many cognitive scientists assume that the systematic redeployment of representational abilities suffices for having concepts. On the other hand, a long philosophical tradition maintains that language is necessary for genuinely conceptual thought. I argue that on a theoretically useful and empirically plausible concept of 'concept', it is necessary and sufficient for conceptual thought that a thinker be able to entertain many of the (...) potential thoughts produced by recombining her representational abilities apart from a direct confrontation with the states of affairs being represented. Such representational abilities support a cognitive engagement with the world that is flexible, abstract, and active. (shrink)

Many philosophers and cognitive scientists claim that our everyday or "folk" understanding of mental states constitutes a theory of mind. That theory is widely called "folk psychology" (sometimes "commonsense" psychology). The terms in which folk psychology is couched are the familiar ones of "belief" and "desire", "hunger", "pain" and so forth. According to many theorists, folk psychology plays a central role in our capacity to predict and explain the behavior of ourselves and others. However, the nature and status of folk (...) psychology remains controversial. (shrink)

Wegner (Wegner, D. (2002). The illusion of conscious will. MIT Press) argues that conscious will is an illusion, citing a wide range of empirical evidence. I shall begin by surveying some of his arguments. Many are unsuccessful. But one—an argument from the ubiquity of self-interpretation—is more promising. Yet is suffers from an obvious lacuna, offered by so-called ‘dual process’ theories of reasoning and decision making (Evans, J., & Over, D. (1996). Rationality and reasoning. Psychology Press; Stanovich, K. (1999). Who is (...) rational? Studies of individual differences in reasoning. Lawrence Erlbaum; Frankish, K. (2004). Mind and supermind. Cambridge University Press). I shall argue that this lacuna can be filled by a plausible a priori claim about the causal role of anything deserving to be called ‘a will.’ The result is that there is no such thing as conscious willing: conscious will is, indeed, an illusion. (shrink)

Clark and Chalmers propose that the mind extends further than skin and skull. If they are right, then we should expect this to have some effect on our way of knowing our own mental states. If the content of my notebook can be part of my belief system, then looking at the notebook seems to be a way to get to know my own beliefs. However, it is at least not obvious whether self-ascribing a belief by looking at my notebook (...) is a case of introspection the same way that knowing my non-extended beliefs is. Traditionally this sort of introspection is thought to be privileged and special in ways that the extended introspection case seems not to be. There is nothing privileged about looking at my notebook. Anyone could do it. The aim of the paper is to find out how to understand extended introspection and whether there is something privileged and special about knowing one’s own extended beliefs. Moreover, the notebook case has close analogs using twenty-first century technology. It seems possible to know our beliefs that are extended to smartphones, wearable technology or a cloud-based data store. First, I present the case of extended introspection. I then discuss whether it should be understood as ordinary introspection or as mind-reading. Both seem to be bad fits, which finally prompts an original account for extended introspection based on epistemic rules. (shrink)

Non-cognitive gadgets are fancy tools shaped to meet specific, local needs. Cecilia Heyes defines cognitive gadgets as dedicated psychological mechanisms created through social interactions and culturally, not genetically, inherited by humans. She has boldly proposed that many human cognitive mechanisms are gadgets. If true, these claims would have far-reaching implications for our scientific understanding of human social cognition. Here we assess Heyes’s cognitive gadget approach as it applies to mindreading. We do not think that the evidence supports Heyes’s thought-provoking thesis (...) that human children are taught to read minds the way they are taught to read words. We highlight a potential circularity lurking behind this analogy, and we explain why we are unpersuaded by Heyes’s anti-mentalistic proposal for handling data inconsistent with the gadget view, which others take to be evidence for mindreading in human infancy. We conclude that while human minds may well be filled with gadgets, mindreading is unlikely to be one of them. (shrink)

These preprints were automatically compiled into a PDF from the collection of papers deposited in PhilSci-Archive in conjunction with the PSA 2018.

Modular approaches to the architecture of the mind claim that some mental mechanisms, such as sensory input processes, operate in special-purpose subsystems that are functionally independent from the rest of the mind. This assumption of modularity seems to be in tension with recent claims that the mind has a predictive architecture. Predictive approaches propose that both sensory processing and higher-level processing are part of the same Bayesian information-processing hierarchy, with no clear boundary between perception and cognition. Furthermore, it is not (...) clear how any part of the predictive architecture could be functionally independent, given that each level of the hierarchy is influenced by the level above. Both the assumption of continuity across the predictive architecture and the seeming non-isolability of parts of the predictive architecture seem to be at odds with the modular approach. I explore and ultimately reject the predictive approach’s apparent commitments to continuity and non-isolation. I argue that predictive architectures can be modular architectures, and that we should in fact expect predictive architectures to exhibit some form of modularity. (shrink)

In his work on the epistemology of testimony, Peter Lipton developed an account of testimonial inference that aimed at descriptive adequacy as well as justificatory sophistication. According to ‘testimonial inference to the best explanation’, we accept what a speaker tells us because the truth of her claim figures in the best explanation of the fact that she made it. In this paper, I argue for a modification of this picture. In particular, I argue that IBE plays a dual role in (...) the management and justification of testimony. On the one hand, the coherence and success of our testimony-based projects provides general abductive support for a default stance of testimonial acceptance; on the other hand, we are justified in rejecting specific testimonial claims whenever the best explanation of the instances of testimony we encounter entails, or makes probable, the falsity or unreliability of the testimony in question.Keywords: Testimony; Inference to the best explanation; Abduction; Epistemic justification. (shrink)

Many philosophers and scientists have argued that the difference between phenomenally conscious states and other kind of states lies in the implicit self-awareness that conscious states have. Higher-Order Representationalist theories, attempt to explain such a self-awareness by means of a higher-order representation. Consciousness relies on our capacity to represent our own mental states, consciousness depends on our Theory of Mind. Such an ability can, at least conceptually, be decomposed into another two: mindreading and metacognition. In this paper I will argue (...) that consciousness cannot depend on mindreading. The tenability of HOR theories depends, therefore, on the relation between mindreading and metacognition. I analyze several views on such a relation and argue that none of them seem to be a plausible option for HOR theories. (shrink)

Bullot & Reber (B&R) put forth a design stance to fuse psychological and art historical accounts of visual thinking into a single theory. We argue that this aspect of their proposal needs further fine-tuning. Issues of transgression and coherence are necessary to provide stability to the design stance. We advocate looking to Art Education for such fundamentals of picture understanding.

Human beings are subject to a range of cognitive and affective limitations which interfere with our ability to pursue our individual and social goals. I argue that shaping our environment to avoid triggering these limitations or to constrain the harms they cause is likely to be more effective than genetic or pharmaceutical modifications of our capacities because our limitations are often the flip side of beneficial dispositions and because available enhancements seem to impose significant costs. I argue that carefully selected (...) environmental interventions respect agents’ autonomy and are consistent with democratic decision making. (shrink)

The Architecture of Mind is an ambitious and informative work, surveying an impressive range of empirical literature and arguing that the mind is massively modular. However, it suffers from two major theoretical flaws. First, Carruthers’ concept of a module is weak, so much so that it robs his thesis of massive modularity of any real substance. Second, his conception of how the mind’s modules evolved ignores the role of niche construction and cultural evolution to its detriment.

This paper will argue that there is no such thing as introspective access to judgments and decisions. It won't challenge the existence of introspective access to perceptual and imagistic states, nor to emotional feelings and bodily sensations. On the contrary, the model presented in Section 2 presumes such access. Hence introspection is here divided into two categories: introspection of propositional attitude events, on the one hand, and introspection of broadly perceptual events, on the other. I shall assume that the latter (...) exists while arguing that the former doesn't (or not in the case of judgments and decisions, at least). Section 1 makes some preliminary points and distinctions, and outlines the scope of the argument. Section 2 presents and motivates the general model of introspection that predicts a divided result. Section 3 provides independent evidence for the conclusion that judgments and decisions aren't introspectable. Section 4 then replies to a number of objections to the argument, the most important of which is made from the perspective of so-called "dual systems theories" of belief formation and decision making. The upshot is a limited form of eliminativism about introspection, in respect of at least two core categories of propositional attitude. (shrink)

This paper examines the recent literature on meta-cognitive processes in non-human animals, arguing that in each case the data admit of a simpler, purely first-order, explanation. The topics discussed include the alleged monitoring of states of certainty and uncertainty, the capacity to know whether or not one has perceived something, and the capacity to know whether or not the information needed to solve some problem is stored in memory. The first-order explanations advanced all assume that beliefs and desires come in (...) various different _strengths_, or _degrees_. (shrink)

Arithmetical cognition is the result of enculturation. On a personal level of analysis, enculturation is a process of structured cultural learning that leads to the acquisition of evolutionarily recent, socio-culturally shaped arithmetical practices. On a sub-personal level, enculturation is realized by learning driven plasticity and learning driven bodily adaptability, which leads to the emergence of new neural circuitry and bodily action patterns. While learning driven plasticity in the case of arithmetical practices is not consistent with modularist theories of mental architecture, (...) it can be enriched by the theory of neural reuse. According to neural reuse, cerebral regions are reused to contribute to multiple neural circuits in functionally constrained ways throughout ontogeny. By hypothesis, learning driven plasticity is complemented by learning driven bodily adaptability, which suggests that there is an interesting functional relationship between finger gnosis, finger counting, and arithmetical practices. The emerging perspective on enculturated arithmetical cognition will be complemented by considerations on associated developmental and acquired disorders, namely developmental dyscalculia and acquired acalculia. The upshot is that we need to take the cerebral, extra-cerebral bodily, and socio-cultural dimensions of enculturation into account in order to arrive at a better understanding of the phylogenetic and ontogenetic conditions of arithmetical cognition. (shrink)

In this paper, I first argue against various attempts to justify idealizations in scientific models that explain by showing that they are harmless and isolable distortions of irrelevant features. In response, I propose a view in which idealized models are characterized as providing holistically distorted representations of their target system. I then suggest an alternative way that idealized modeling can be justified by appealing to universality.

In this article we defend the inferential view of scientific models and idealisation. Models are seen as “inferential prostheses” (instruments for surrogative reasoning) construed by means of an idealisation-concretisation process, which we essentially understand as a kind of counterfactual deformation procedure (also analysed in inferential terms). The value of scientific representation is understood in terms not only of the success of the inferential outcomes arrived at with its help, but also of the heuristic power of representation and their capacity to (...) correct and improve our models. This provides us with an argument against Sugden’s account of credible models: the likelihood or realisticness (their “credibility”) is not always a good measure of their acceptability. As opposed to “credibility” we propose the notion of “enlightening”, which is the capacity of giving us understanding in the sense of an inferential ability. (shrink)

In Section 1, I introduce three views that explain human cognitive development from different standpoints: Marcus’s neo-nativism, standard neuroconstructivism, and neo-neuroconstructivism. In Section 2, I assess Marcus’s attempt to reconcile nativism with developmental flexibility. In Section 3, I argue that in structurally reconfiguring nativism, Marcus ends up transforming it into an unrecognizable form, and I claim that his view could be accommodated within the more general framework provided by standard neuroconstructivism. In Section 4, I focus on recent empirical findings in (...) neuropsychology and cultural/social neuroscience, and propose a friendly revision to standard neuroconstructivism, thus developing the neo-neuroconstructivist view. I conclude the article in Section 5 by analysing the implications of the results discussed in Section 4 for both neo-nativism and standard neuroconstructivism. 1 Introduction2 Marcus’s Neo-nativism3 Is Marcus’s Neo-nativism Really a Form of Nativism?4 Neo-neuroconstructivism and Dynamic Enskillment5 Conclusion. (shrink)

In contrast to earlier views that argued for a particular kind of concept, several recent accounts have proposed that there are multiple distinct kinds of concepts, or that there is a plurality of concepts for each category. In this paper, I argue for a novel account of concepts as pluralistic hybrids. According to this view, concepts are pluralistic because there are several concepts for the same category whose use is heavily determined by context. In addition, concepts are hybrids because they (...) typically link together several different kinds of information that are used in the same cognitive processes. This alternative view accounts for the available empirical data, allows for greater cognitive flexibility than Machery's recent account, and overcomes several objections to traditional hybrid views. (shrink)

This paper analyzes two ways idealized biological models produce factive scientific understanding. I then argue that models can provide factive scientific understanding of a phenomenon without providing an accurate representation of the features of their real-world target system. My analysis of these cases also suggests that the debate over scientific realism needs to investigate the factive scientific understanding produced by scientists’ use of idealized models rather than the accuracy of scientific models themselves.

El problema de marco cuestiona cómo los procesos cognitivos determinan qué información, de entre toda la disponible, es relevante dada una tarea determinada. Aunque postulamos una definición posible, especificar de qué trata este problema es una tarea complicada. Una manera de obtener claridad sobre esta cuestión es explorar distintas interpretaciones del problema de marco, interpretación lógica y filosófica, para dilucidar luego la dificultad en común. Como resultado de nuestro análisis concluimos que, sea la interpretación del problema de marco que se (...) tenga en mente, la dificultad subyacente es la misma: examinar vasta cantidad de información. La dificultad de la vastedad de información, a modo de puente entre ambas interpretaciones, permitiría no solo comprender más claramente de qué trata el problema de marco sino también resolverlo. The frame problem questions how cognitive processes determine what information is relevant, among all available, given a particular task. Although we proposed a possible definition, it is a difficult task to specify what this problem is about. One way to get insight into this matter is to explore different interpretations of the frame problem, a logical interpretation and a philosophical interpretation, to then elucidate the difficulty in common. The conclusion drawn from our analysis is that, irrespective of the interpretation of the frame problem you may have in mind, the underlying difficulty is the same: to examine a vastness of information. The difficulty posed by the vastness of information, taken as a bridge between both interpretations, would not only allow a clearer insight into the frame problem but also to solve it. (shrink)

Cognitive scientists must understand not just what the mind does, but how it does what it does. In this paper, I consider four aspects of cognitive architecture: how the mind develops, the extent to which it is or is not modular, the extent to which it is or is not optimal, and the extent to which it should or should not be considered a symbol‐manipulating device (as opposed to, say, an eliminative connectionist network). In each case, I argue that insights (...) from developmental and evolutionary biology can lead to substantive and important compromises in historically vexed debates. (shrink)

recent defence of the massive modularity thesis. However, as this paper seeks to show, there are major flaws in its structure. If construed deductively, it is unsound: modular mental architecture is not necessarily the best architecture, and even if it were, this alone would not show that this architecture evolved. If construed inductively, it is not much more convincing, as it then appears to be too weak to support the kind of modularity Carruthers is concerned with. The upshot of this (...) is that whatever reason we might have for believing that the mind is massively modular, it is not based on the argument from design. Introduction Carruthers’ Argument from Design Modularity and Optimality: Problems for the Deductive Argument from Design Degrees of Modularity: Problems for the Inductive Argument from Design Conclusion CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

This chapter offers a brief characterization of creativity, followed by a review of some of the reasons people have been skeptical about the possibility of explaining creativity. It surveys some of the recent work on creativity that is naturalistic in the sense that it presumes creativity is natural, as opposed to magical, occult, or supernatural, and is therefore amenable to scientific inquiry. The chapter divides into two categories. The broader category is empirical philosophy, which draws on empirical research while addressing (...) questions that have traditionally been regarded as philosophical. The second category is experimental philosophy, a special branch of empirical philosophy in which experiments are designed by philosophers with the explicit purpose of addressing philosophical questions. This categorization is admittedly somewhat artificial, but it is a familiar one in the prevailing division of intellectual labor, and it will be a useful organizational tool for the chapter. (shrink)

Two long-standing arguments in cognitive science invoke the assumption that holistic inference is computationally infeasible. The first is Fodor’s skeptical argument toward computational modeling of ordinary inductive reasoning. The second advocates modular computational mechanisms of the kind posited by Cosmides, Tooby and Sperber. Based on advances in machine learning related to Bayes nets, as well as investigations into the structure of scientific and ordinary information, I maintain neither argument establishes its architectural conclusion. Similar considerations also undermine Fodor’s decades-long diagnosis of (...) artificial intelligence research as confounded by an inability to circumscribe the amount of information relevant to inferential processes. This diagnosis is particularly inapposite with respect to Bayes nets, since one of their strengths as machine learning systems has been their capacity to reason probabilistically about large data sets whose size overwhelms the capacities of individual human reasoners. A general moral follows from these criticisms: Insights into artificial and human cognitive systems are likely to be cultivated by focusing greater attention on the structure and density of connections among items of information that are available to them. (shrink)

The main thesis of Heyes' book is that all of the domain-specific learning mechanisms that make the human mind so different from the minds of other animals are culturally created and culturally acquired gadgets. The only innate differences are some motivational tweaks, enhanced capacities for associative learning, and enhanced executive function abilities. But Heyes' argument depends on contrasting cognitive gadgets with cognitive instincts, which are said to be innately specified. This ignores what has for some years been the mainstream nativist/anti-empiricist (...) view, which commits only to partially specified learning systems that become elaborated and built through domain-specific learning. (shrink)

This is an updated version of my Stanford Encyclopedia entry on Evolutionary Psychology. The 2018 version contains a new section on Human Nature as well as some new material on recent developments in Evolutionary Psychology.

In the domain of evolutionary cognitive archaeology, the early body ornaments from the Middle Stone Age/Palaeolithic are generally treated as mere by-products of an evolved brain-bound cognitive architecture selected to cope with looming social problems. Such adaptive artefacts are therefore taken to have been but passive means of broadcasting a priori envisaged meanings, essentially playing a neutral role for the human mind. In contrast to this epiphenomenalist view of material culture, postphenomenology and the Material Engagement Theory have been making a (...) case for the active role of artefacts on the count that they can actually shape and restructure the human mind. By bringing these dissenting voices together, the paper at hand employs an enactive way of thinking in order to challenge the epiphenomenalist take on early body ornaments. In fact, two variants of enactivism are presented, each advancing a unique explanation of how the engagement of early humans with body ornaments transformed their minds along the two postphenomenological categories of embodied and hermeneutic cognition. Our theoretical frameworks specifically seek to explore how early beadworks could have scaffolded the creation of semiotic categories and the development of cognitive processes. Despite relying on inherently different premises, both theories suggest that beads fostered the emergence of an epistemic apparatus which thoroughly transformed the way humans engaged with the world. Having concurred on the ornaments’ transformative effects, we ultimately conclude that the epiphenomenalist paradigm best be replaced with an enactive approach grounded on the dictates of postphenomenology and the MET. (shrink)

Many have argued that early visual processing is encapsulated from the influence of higher-level goals, expectations, and knowledge of the world. Here we confront the main arguments offered in support of such a view, showing that they are unpersuasive. We also present evidence of top–down influences on early vision, emphasizing data from cognitive neuroscience. Our conclusion is that encapsulation is not a defining feature of visual processing. But we take this conclusion to be quite modest in scope, readily incorporated into (...) mainstream vision science. (shrink)

Some evolutionary psychologists claim that humans are good at creating superstimuli, and that many pleasure technologies are detrimental to our reproductive fitness. Most of the evolutionary psychological literature makes use of some version of Lorenz and Tinbergen’s largely embryonic conceptual framework to make sense of supernormal stimulation and bias exploitation in humans. However, the early ethological concept “superstimulus” was intimately connected to other erstwhile core ethological notions, such as the innate releasing mechanism, sign stimuli and the fixed action pattern, notions (...) that nowadays have, for the most part, been discarded by ethologists. The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, we will reconnect the discussion of superstimuli in humans with more recent theoretical ethological literature on stimulus selection and supernormal stimulation. This will allow for a reconceptualisation of evolutionary psychology’s formulation of (supernormal) stimulus selection in terms of domain-specificity and modularity. Second, we will argue that bias exploitation in a cultural species differs substantially from bias exploitation in non-cultural animals. We will explore several of those differences, and explicate why they put important constraints on the use of the superstimulus concept in the evolutionary social sciences. (shrink)

1. People standardly communicate by uttering phrases or sentences with certain intonation patterns, accompanied by facial expressions, eye contact and often a variety of gestures. If all goes well...

While there is ongoing debate about the existence of basic emotions and about their status as natural kinds, these debates usually carry on under the assumption that basic emotions are modular and therefore cannot account for behavioral variability in emotional situations. Moreover, both sides of the debate have assumed that these putative features of basic emotions distinguish them as products of evolution rather than products of culture and experience. I argue that these assumptions are unwarranted, that there is empirical evidence (...) against them, and that evolutionary theory itself should not lead us to expect that behavioral invariability and modularity mark the distinction between evolved emotions and higher cognitive emotions. I further suggest that claims about behavioral invariability and modularity have functioned as defeasible conjectures aimed at helping test basic emotion theory. Finally, I draw out the implications of these claims for debates about the existence of basic emotions in humans. (shrink)

Cognitive modules are internal mental structures. Some theorists and empirical researchers hypothesize that the human mind is either partially or massively comprised of structures that are modular in nature. Modules are also invoked to explain cognitive capacities associated with the performance of specific functional tasks. Jerry Fodor (1983) considered that modules are useful only for explaining relatively low-level systems (input systems). These are the systems involved in capacities like perception and language. For Fodor, the central (high-level) systems of mind — (...) those involved in capacities like judgment (the “fixation of belief” in Fodor’s jargon), planning (practical reasoning), decision-making, and so forth — are not explainable in terms of modular mechanisms. However, some other philosophers as well as proponents and practitioners of evolutionary psychology consider that it is sensible — and even necessary — to invoke modules for explaining these systems, too. Indeed, the debate over modularity is mainly a debate over the modularity of central systems (high-level cognitive capacities). Admittedly, it is also possible to raise doubts about the modularity of peripheral systems (Prinz, 2006), but this kind of skepticism is not widespread in the literature. In contrast, both the empirical and the theoretical (a priori) cases in favor of central modularity are usually contested on multiple fronts and in tough terms. The case for the modularity of central systems is the core of the case for the massive modularity of mind hypothesis (viz. the hypothesis that consists in asserting that both the peripheral and the central systems of human mind are largely composed of modules). Granted, the massive modularity of mind hypothesis is an empirical statement and, as such, its truth should be ultimately decided in an empirical way, not a priori (Sperber, 1994, 2001). Nonetheless, much of the debate over massive modularity has taken place on theoretical grounds. This is due to an alleged underdetermination of the hypotheses regarding the modularity of central systems by data. In such conditions, the remaining open option has been to advance theoretical considerations in favor of the plausibility — and not directly in favor of the empirical truth or truthlikeness — of the massive modularity of mind generally, and of the modularity of some central systems in particular. These theoretical considerations are mostly based on an adaptationist view of evolution cum a classical computationalist approach to mind. They include arguments about the nature and evolution of hierarchically ordered complex systems (the evolvability of complexity argument), a presumption of optimality expressed in the apparent design of phenotypic traits shaped by natural selection (the task-specificity argument) and dismissing nonmodular mental architectures as computationally intractable (the tractability argument). Is the massive modularity of mind hypothesis a cogent view about the ontological nature of human mind or is it, rather, an effective/ineffective adaptationist discovery heuristic for generating predictively successful hypothesis about both heretofore unknown psychological traits and unknown properties of already identified psychological traits? Considering the inadequacies of the case in favor of massive modularity as an ontological hypothesis, I suggest approaching and valuing massive modularity as an adaptationist discovery heuristic. (shrink)

En este trabajo, revisamos la literatura clásica en modularidad cognitiva. Ofrecemos una descripción cognitiva neuronal de la modularidad, que incluye: patrones de disfunción específicos, la doble disociación, una actividad cerebral asociada, y un proceso de especialización funcional. Posteriormente, analizamos un módulo de cognición social, i.e., el módulo de detección de tramposos. Compilamos las objeciones clásicas a este módulo, y ofrecemos algunas nuevas, para posteriormente contrastarlas con las primeras. En la última parte, ofrecemos algunas implicaciones y direcciones futuras para los estudios (...) actuales sobre cognición social. (shrink)

The leading hypothesis concerning the “reuse” or “recycling” of neural circuits builds on the assumption that evolution might prefer the redeployment of established circuits over the development of new ones. What conception of cognitive architecture can survive the evidence for this hypothesis? In particular, what sorts of “modules” are compatible with this evidence? I argue that the only likely candidates will, in effect, be the columns which Vernon Mountcastle originally hypothesized some 60 years ago, and which form part of the (...) well-known columnar hypothesis in neuroscience—systems that cannot handle gross cognitive functions as distinct from strictly exiguous subfunctions. This is in stark contrast to the modules postulated by much of cognitive psychology, cognitive neuropsychology, and evolutionary psychology. And yet the fate of this revised notion is unclear. The main issue confronting it is the effect of the neural network context on local function. At some point the effects of context are so strong that the degree of specialization required for modularity is not able to be met. Still, despite indications from neuroimaging that peripheral and central systems deploy shared circuitry, some skills clearly do seem to display modularization and autonomy. This article: provides an in-depth analytical and historical review of the fortunes of modular thinking in cognitive science; offers a systematic calibration of brain regions in terms of degrees of functional specificity and robustness; and suggests another way of accounting for the partially encapsulated character of expertise and other highly practiced skills without having to resort to domain-specific modules. (shrink)

Most discussion of Sellars’ deployment of the distinct images of “man-in-the-world” in Philosophy and the Scientific Image of Man focus entirely on the manifest and the scientific images. But the original image is important as well. In this essay I explore the importance of the original image to the Sellarsian project of naturalizing epistemology, connecting Sellars’ insights regarding this image to recent work in cognitive development.

The aim of this paper is to present a challenge to the received view in folk psychology. According to this challenge, the semantic assumption behind the received view, which considers that propositional attitude ascriptions are descriptions of the internal causally efficacious states underlying behavior, cannot account for the main function of reasons in terms of mental states.