The psychology and phenomenology of our knowledge of other minds is not well captured either by describing it simply as perception, nor by describing it simply as inference. A better description, I argue, is that our knowledge of other minds involves both through ‘perceptual co-presentation’, in which we experience objects as having aspects that are not revealed. This allows us to say that we perceive other minds, but perceive them as private, i.e. imperceptible, just as we routinely perceive aspects of (...) physical objects as unperceived. I discuss existing versions of this idea, particularly Joel Smith’s, on which it is taken to imply that our knowledge of other minds is, in these cases, perceptual and not inferential. Against this, I argue that perceptual co-presentation in general, and mind-perception in particular, yields knowledge that is simultaneously both perceptual and inferential. (shrink)

Going beyond the biological and physiological limitations imposed on us by the human body is something which the human race has strived to do throughout its history. There is something about our human nature that compels us to strive for improvement and enhancement in our physical and mental performance, and to stretch ever further the boundaries of human accomplishment. Nowhere can a stronger desire for enhanced performance be found than in the realm of competitive sport and, it is certainly arguable (...) that, there are very few sports that can rival the competitiveness, endurance and physical exertion involved in the sport of boxing. Transhumanism is borne of this desire for continuous improvement and the refusal to resign ourselves to the restrictions placed on us by our natural biological constitution and environment, enhancing human capabilities and capacities by way of new and emergent technologies. With regard to sport, transhumanism could provide us with the ability to train longer, run, swim or cycle faster, jump higher, throw further and, in the case of boxing, punch harder. However, it is not restricted or confined to the enhancement of our physical powers, but could equally-well serve to improve our psychological capacities and alter the way in which we perceive and experience the world. In this way transhumanism could be employed to change the content of experience. (shrink)

This paper seeks to recover the function of universal history, which was to place particulars into relation with universals. By the 20th century universal history was largely discredited because of an idealism that served to lend epistemic coherence to the overwhelming complexity arising from universal history's comprehensive scope. Idealism also attempted to account for history's being "open"--for the human ability to transcend circumstance. The paper attempts to recover these virtues without the idealism by defining universal history not by its scope (...) but rather as a scientific method that provides an understanding of any kind of historical process, be it physical, biological or human. While this method is not new, it is in need of a development that offers a more robust historiography and warrant as a liberating historical consciousness. The first section constructs an ontology of process by defining matter as ontic probabilities rather than as closed entities. This is lent warrant in the next section through an appeal to contemporary physical science. The resulting conceptual frame and method is applied to the physical domain of existents, to the biological domain of social being and finally to the human domain of species being. It is then used to account for the emergence of human history's initial stage--the Archaic Socio-Economic Formation and for history' stadial trajectory--its alternation of evolution and revolution. (shrink)

The science of the mind, and of consciousness in particular, needs carefully to consider people's common-sense views of the mind, not just what the mind really is. Such views are themselves an aspect of the nature of (conscious) mind, and therefore part of the object of study for a science of mind. Also, since the common-sense views allow broadly successful social interaction, it is reasonable to look to the common-sense views for some rough guidance as to the real nature of (...) the mind. On the other hand, to the extent that common-sense views are inaccurate, and perhaps even in gross conflict with the true nature of the mind, one interesting scientific question is: why do we hold such views, given our access to our own minds? Why should introspection be limited in a way that allows inaccurate views to hold sway? Now, common-sense views of the mind are revealed in natural language discourse that describes mental states, and such descriptions are largely metaphorical. The metaphors are used within thinking about the mind as well as in language. Therefore the study of metaphor is central to the study of mind. The present article is a preliminary study of the importance of metaphor in the scientific study of consciousness. It concentrates on analysing the nature of a range of important metaphors of mind, briefly discussing the extent to which they can be used to describe or qualify states of consciousness, and pointing to important questions about the nature of consciousness that the study of the metaphors raises. The article further conjectures that the reason people use metaphors in describing themselves is often not (just) that they have intellectually worked out some structural analogy --- e.g., between interactions of physical objects in physical space and interactions of ideas in the mind --- but rather that they {\it feel} their own minds to be as described by the metaphor --- e.g., they feel that the ideas in their minds are interacting physical entities. This matter of how a mind feels to itself is an aspect of the central issue of consciousness, namely its phenomenal quality. -/- (NB: The archived file is a preprint. However, it is substantially the same as the published version.). (shrink)

How can we explain the intentional nature of an expert’s actions, performed without immediate and conscious control, relying instead on automatic cognitive processes? How can we account for the differences and similarities with a novice’s performance of the same actions? Can a naturalist explanation of intentional expert action be in line with a philosophical concept of intentional action? Answering these and related questions in a positive sense, this dissertation develops a three-step argument. Part I considers different methods of explanations in (...) cognitive neuroscience (Bennett & Hacker’s philosophical, conceptual analysis; Marr’s three levels of explanation; Neural Correlates of Consciousness research; mechanistic explanation), defending ‘mechanistic explanation’ as a method that provides the necessary tools for integrating interdisciplinary insights into human action. Furthermore, a dynamic, explanatory mechanism allows the assessment of the impact of learning and development on expert action in a valuable way that other methods don’t. Part II continues by scrutinizing several cognitive neuroscientific theories of learning and development (neuroconstructivism; dual-processing theories; simulation theory; extended mind/cognition hypothesis), arguing for the complex interactions between different types of processing and different action representations involved in expert action performances. Moreover, according to our discussion of a particular ‘simulation theory’ these interactions can be influenced in several ways with the use of language, allowing an agent to configure a specific action representation for performance at a later stage. The results of Parts I and II are then applied in Part III to a parallel discussion of philosophical analyses of intentional action (discussing i.a. Frankfurt, Bratman, Pacherie and Ricoeur) and cognitive neuroscientific insights in it. Both approaches are found to converge in emphasizing the importance for an expert to develop stable patterns of actions that comply maximally not only with his intentions, but also with his motor expertise and with situational conditions. Consequently, his actions – automatic, or not – rely on this ‘sculpted space of actions’. (shrink)

I survey recent work on mental causation. The discussion is conducted under the twin presumptions that mental states, including especially what subjects believe and desire, causally explain what subjects do, and that the physical sciences can in principle give a complete explanation for each and every bodily movement. I start with sceptical discussions of various views that hold that, in some strong sense, the causal explanations offered by psychology are autonomous with respect to those offered by the physical sciences. I (...) then proceed to views that see the problem of mental causation as that of identifying where in the physical story about us and our world lie the parts that in effect tell us abut mental causation - the kind of position that is pretty much standard in the cognitive science community - and consider issues raised by various forms of functionalism and externalism. The general thrust of my discussion is sympathetic to the story about mental causation suggested by those type-type versions of the mind-brain identity theory that allow for the possiblity of multiple realisability. I include a brief discussion of how a map-system account of belief, by contrast with a language of thought one, should understand explanations of behaviour in terms of what a subject believes. (shrink)

Recent work in the methodology of connectionist explanation has I'ocrrsccl on the notion of levels of explanation. Specific issucs in conncctionisrn hcrc intersect with rvider areas of debate in the philosophy of psychology and thc philosophy of science generally. The issues I raise in this chapter, then, are not unique to cognitive science; but they arise in new and important contexts when connectionism is taken seriously as a model of cognition. The general questions are the relation between levels and the (...) status of levels which have no obvious relation to others. In speaking of levels, what is the connection, if there is one, between explanation and ontology? Which, if any, conccpt of reduction is applicable to connectionist systems? What kind of legitinrtcy can the constructs of common sense psychology, or of that vclsion ol intentional realism represented by classical symbol-systems n I, hirvc irr ir full-scale connectionist theory of mind? (shrink)

Philosophical interest in intentional action has flourished in recent decades. Typically, action theorists propose necessary and sufficient conditions for a movement's being an action, conditions derived from a conceptual analysis of folk psychological action ascriptions. However, several key doctrinal and methodological features of contemporary action theory are troubling, in particular (i) the insistence that folk psychological kinds like beliefs and desires have neurophysiological correlates, (ii) the assumption that the concept of action is "classical" in structure (making it amenable to definition (...) in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions for its proper application), and (iii) the assumption that deferring to intuitions about the application of the concept of action amidst the context of fantastical thought experiments furnishes an effective method for judging the adequacy of proposed analyses. After consideration of these problems it is argued that action theory needs to be reoriented in a more naturalistic direction, the methods and aims of which are continuous with those of the empirical sciences. The paper concludes with a sketch (and defense) of the methodological foundations of a naturalistic approach to intentional action. (shrink)

This book contains a representationalist theory of self-consciousness and of the phenomenal first-person perspective. It draws on empirical data from the cognitive and neurosciences.

E-approaches to the mind stress the embodied, embedded and enactive nature of mental phenomena. In their more radical, non-representational variants these approaches offer innovative and powerful new ways of understanding fundamental modes of intersubjective social interaction: I-approaches. While promising, E and I accounts have natural limits. In particular, they are unable to explain human competence in making sense of reasons for actions in folk-psychological terms. In this paper I outline the core features of the 'Narrative Practice Hypothesis' (NPH), showing how (...) it might take up that burden in a way which complements non-representationalist E and I accounts. I conclude by addressing a new-order eliminativist challenge from Ratcliffe that questions, inter alia, the very idea that there is anything like a well-defined folk-psychological competence that needs explaining, thereby rendering the NPH otiose. Additionally, I respond to Ratcliffe's claim that the relevant structures needed for the development of that competence do not reveal themselves in relevant narratives, rendering the NPH's developmental story impossible. (shrink)

Four experiments examined people’s folk-psychological concept of intentional action. The chief question was whether or not _evaluative _considerations — considerations of good and bad, right and wrong, praise and blame — played any role in that concept. The results indicated that the moral qualities of a behavior strongly influence people’s judgements as to whether or not that behavior should be considered ‘intentional.’ After eliminating a number of alternative explanations, the author concludes that this effect is best explained by the hypothesis (...) that evaluative considerations do play some role in people’s concept of intentional action.<b> </b>. (shrink)

n the analytic tradition, the appeal to intuition has been a common philosophical practice that supposedly provides us with epistemic standards. The authoress argues that the high epistemological standards of traditional analytic philosophy cannot be pursued by this method. Perhaps within a naturalistic, reliable frame intuitions can be evoked more coherently. Philosophers can use intuition as scientists do, in hypothesis- construction or data- collection. This is an ironic conclusion: Traditional analytic epistemologists rely on the appeal to intuition, but cannot justify (...) it. Naturalists, on the other hand, are not those who need such a method; yet they can better accommodate it within their view. (shrink)

Anthropocentric biases manifest themselves in two different ways in research on animal cognition. Some researchers claim that only humans have the capacity for reasoning, beliefs, and interests; and others attribute mental concepts to nonhuman animals on the basis of behavioral evidence, and they conceive of animal cognition in more or less human terms. Both approaches overlook the fact that language-use deeply informs mental states, such that comparing human mental states to the mental states of nonlinguistic animals is misguided. In order (...) to avoid both pitfalls -- assuming that animals have mental lives just like we do, or assuming that they have no mental lives at all -- I argue for a functional methodological approach. Researchers should study animal cognition by identifying environmental inputs, the functional role of internal states, and behavioral outputs. Doing so will allow for cross-species comparisons in a way that the use of folk psychological terms does not. (shrink)

The article analyzes the role of theories of embodied cognition for the development of emotion research. The role and position of emotions changed as philosophy developed. In classical and modern European philosophy, the idea of the “primacy of reason” prevailed over emotions and physicality, emotions and affective life were described as low-ranking phenomena regarding cognitive processes or were completely eliminated as an unknown quantity. In postmodern philosophy, attention focuses on physicality and sensuality, which are rated higher than rational principle, mind (...) and intelligence. Within the framework of this approach, there is a recently emerged theory of embodied cognition, which allows to take a fresh look at the place of emotions in the architecture of mental processes – thinking, perception, memory, imagination, speech. The article describes and analyzes a number of empirical studies showing the impossibility of excluding emotional processes and the significance of their research for understanding the architecture of embodied cognition. However, the features of the architecture of embodied cognition remain unclear, and some of the discoveries of recent years (mirror neurons or neurons of simulation) rather raise new questions and require further research. The rigorously described and clear architecture of the embodied cognition can grow the theoretical basis that will allow to advance the studies of learning processes, language understanding, psychotherapy techniques, social attitudes and stereotypes, highlight the riddle of consciousness and create new theories of consciousness or even create an anthropomorphic artificial intelligence that is close to “strong artificial intelligence.”. (shrink)

This thesis evaluates a variety of important modern approaches to the study of the mind/brain in the light of recent developments in the debate about how evidence should be used to support a theory and its constituent hypotheses. Although all these approaches are ostensibly based upon the principles of scientific realism, this evaluation will demonstrate that all of them fall well short of these requirements. Consequently, the more modern, co-evolutionary theories of the mind/brain do not constitute the significant advance upon (...) more traditional theories that their authors take them to be. There are two fundamental elements within my discussion of the relationship between evidence and the constituent hypotheses of a theory. Firstly, I shall demonstrate that the traditional veil-of-perception issue has a wider relevance than that which has historically been attributed to it, since it is the paradigm case of an attempt to construct a two level theory on the basis of evidence tha~ does not adequately support either hypothesis. This interpretation of the issue can be represented by constructing a semantically inconsistent tetrad. It is shown that similar tetrads can be constructed for each of the theories of the mind/brain discussed in this thesis. Secondly, I shall argue that the theories discussed all employ a variety of the bootstrap strategy. This strategy is a relatively recent development in the philosophy of science, which suggests a way in which the same evidence can be used to generate both a general and a specific hypothesis within a theory without violating the constraints of scientific realism. However, I contend that recent use of this strategy in the investigation of mind is largely unsatisfactory as a result of a neglect of structural as well as more informal influences upon the kinds of evidence employed to support the hypotheses contained in the theories. The thesis is divided into three major sections. The first (Section A) discusses the influence of the motivations of the individual theorists upon their arguments and provides a critical discussion of the issues of the veil-of-perception and bootstrapping. The second section (Section B) comprises a detailed examination of a range of modern theories of the mind/brain and critically analyses their success. The final section (Section C) draws together general conclusions and methodological consequences of the detailed analysis of the nature of realism and evidence in the philosophy of mind. (shrink)

The paper considers our ordinary mentalistic discourse in relation to what we should expect from any genuine science of the mind. A meta-scientific eliminativism is commended and distinguished from the more familiar eliminativism of Skinner and the Churchlands. Meta-scientific eliminativism views folk psychology qua folksy as unsuited to offer insight into the structure of cognition, although it might otherwise be indispensable for our social commerce and self-understanding. This position flows from a general thesis that scientific advance is marked by an (...) eschewal of folk understanding. The latter half of the paper argues that, contrary to the received view, Chomsky's review of Skinner offers not just an argument against Skinner's eliminativism, but, more centrally, one in favour of the second eliminativism. (shrink)