The earliest known products of human imagination appear to express a primordial concern and struggle with thoughts of dying and of death and mortality. I argue that the structures and processes of imagination evolved in that struggle, in response to debilitating anxieties and fearful states that would accompany an incipient awareness of mortality. Imagination evolved to find that which would make the nascent apprehension of death more bearable, to engage in a search for alternative perceptions of death: a search that (...) was beyond the capability of the external senses. I argue that imagination evolved as flight and fight adaptations in response to debilitating fears that paralleled an emerging foreknowledge of death. Imagination, and symbolic language to express its perceptions, would eventually lead to religious behavior and the development of cultural supports. Although highly speculative, my argument draws on recent brain studies, and on anthropology, psychology, and linguistics. (shrink)

The claim has often been made that passing the Turing Test would not be sufficient to prove that a computer program was intelligent because a trivial program could do it, namely, the “Humongous-Table (HT) Program”, which simply looks up in a table what to say next. This claim is examined in detail. Three ground rules are argued for: (1) That the HT program must be exhaustive, and not be based on some vaguely imagined set of tricks. (2) That the HT (...) program must not be created by some set of sentient beings enacting responses to all possible inputs. (3) That in the current state of cognitive science it must be an open possibility that a computational model of the human mind will be developed that accounts for at least its nonphenomenological properties. Given ground rule 3, the HT program could simply be an “optimized” version of some computational model of a mind, created via the automatic application of program-transformation rules [thus satisfying ground rule 2]. Therefore, whatever mental states one would be willing to impute to an ordinary computational model of the human psyche one should be willing to grant to the optimized version as well. Hence no one could dismiss out of hand the possibility that the HT program was intelligent. This conclusion is important because the Humongous-Table Program Argument is the only argument ever marshalled against the sufficiency of the Turing Test, if we exclude arguments that cognitive science is simply not possible. (shrink)

In this paper I introduce some of the key elements of Daniel Dennett’s theory of intentional attribution and their relation with his notion of rationality. While doing so I will show that Dennett’s approach implies a circularity in the process of attribution of rationality, and that his resource to evolutionary arguments for trying to avoid an infinite regress does not help him to avoid the problem. My presentation will include a revision of Dennett’s arguments for epistemic intentional ascription and rationality (...) attribution as well as some criticisms developed against his proposal. At the end of the article I will extend the criticisms and present my view about his proposal for ideal rationality attribution. (shrink)

The comment addresses central issues of a "theory theory" approach as exemplified in Gopnik' and Goldman's BBS-articles. Gopnik, on the one hand, tries to demonstrate that empirical evidence from developmental psychology supports the view of a "theory theory" in which common sense beliefs are constructed to explain ourselves and others. Focusing the informational processing routes possibly involved we would like to argue that his main thesis (e.g. idea of intentionality as a cognitive construct) lacks support at least for two reasons: (...) one methodological and one structural. On the other hand, Goldman raises an important question when he is asking how people ascribe mental states to themselves. Reasons why Goldman's attempt to understand common sense mental representations by using an analogy from visual perception is problematic are discussed. The role which is attributed to a phenomenology is evaluated. (shrink)

Many debates in philosophy focus on whether folk or scientific psychological notions pick out cognitive natural kinds. Examples include memory, emotions and concepts. A potentially interesting type of kind is: kinds of mental representations (as opposed, for example, to kinds of psychological faculties). In this chapter we outline a proposal for a theory of representational kinds in cognitive science. We argue that the explanatory role of representational kinds in scientific theories, in conjunction with a mainstream approach to explanation in cognitive (...) science, suggest that representational kinds are multi-level. This is to say that representational kinds’ properties cluster at different levels of explanation and allow for intra- and inter-level projections. (shrink)

An introduction to functionalism in the philosophy of psychology/mind, and review of the current state of debate pro and con. Forthcoming in the Routledge Companion to the Philosophy of Psychology (John Symons and Paco Calvo, eds.).

I defend the claim that it is possible for thoughts to be context-sensitive. Assuming that a thought is a sentence of Mentalese and content is a function from indices to truth-values, then a thought, T, is context-sensitive IFF at least one of the following three conditions are met: T exhibits character-underdeterminacy, where T is character underdetermined iff a component of T makes an explicit reference to the context to establish content. T exhibits type-underdeterminacy, where T is type underdetermined iff there (...) are tokens of T that have distinct truth-values. T is token-underdetermined, where T is token underdetermined iff for some possible states of affairs its truth-value is indeterminate. Additionally, there must be a mechanism by which the content of T can be determined by appeal to the context. Otherwise T is not sensitive to the context. The most significant objection to the possibility of context-sensitive thoughts comes from a regress argument. The concern is that any process of removing context-sensitivity from a thought will token an additional thought. If that further thought is context-sensitive, then another thought will have to be tokened. This process will only terminate when a non-context-sensitive thought is arrived at. Yet this seems to show that context-sensitivity in thought, if possible, can only be a contingent, detachable feature of thoughts. To counter this argument, I will present three versions of context-sensitive thought, mirroring each of -. These views make use of a range of relationships between thoughts and their contents or extensions that are affected by the context, but I will argue they do not require the generation of an additional thought. This provides a range of views on which thoughts can be treated as essentially context-sensitive. (shrink)

I discuss Clark’s predictive processing/extended mind hybrid, diagnosing a problem: Clark’s hybrid suggests that, when we use them, we pay attention to mind-extending external resources. This clashes with a commonly accepted necessary condition of cognitive extension; namely, that mind-extending resources must be phenomenally transparent when used. I then propose a solution to this problem claiming that the phenomenal transparency condition should be rejected. To do so, I put forth a parity argument to the effect that phenomenal transparency cannot be a (...) necessary condition on cognitive extension: roughly, since internal cognitive resources can fail to be transparent when used, by parity, external resources can fail to be phenomenally transparent too. Further, I argue that phenomenal transparency is not even a reliable indicator of cognitive extension; hence its absence should not be considered a problem for Clark’s extended mind-predictive processing hybrid. Lastly, I consider and allay a number of worries my proposal might raise, and conclude the paper. (shrink)

This paper defends the avowal view of self-deception, according to which the self-deceived agent has been led by the evidence to believe that ¬p and yet is sincere in asserting that p. I argue that the agent qualifies as sincere in asserting the contrary of what they in the most basic sense believe in virtue of asserting what they are committed to believing. It is only by recognizing such commitments and distinguishing them from the more basic beliefs whose rational regulation (...) is automatic that the tension between the self-deceived agent’s actions and assertions can be explained in a core subset of cases of self-deception. (shrink)

In the novel Die Automate (Hoffmann, 1957 ed.), the German writer Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann (1776-1822) describes different kinds of musical automatons which play music with expression and musicality. The whole novel is based on the effect of the automatic performances on the feelings of the two personages and on the appearance of musical automatons which simulate, with their musical skill and expressiveness, the structures of the knowledge and feelings of human beings.

What psychological and philosophical significance should we attach to recent efforts at computer simulations of human cognitive capacities? In answering this question, I find it useful to distinguish what I will call "strong" AI from "weak" or "cautious" AI. According to weak AI, the principal value of the computer in the study of the mind is that it gives us a very powerful tool. For example, it enables us to formulate and test hypotheses in a more rigorous and precise fashion. (...) But according to strong AI, the computer is not merely a tool in the study of the mind; rather, the appropriately programmed computer really is a mind, in the sense that computers given the right programs can be literally said to. (shrink)

In this paper I will present a puzzle about epistemic akrasia, and I will use that puzzle to motivate accepting some non-standard views about the nature of epistemological judgment. The puzzle is that while it seems obvious that epistemic akrasia must be irrational, the claim that epistemic akrasia is always irrational amounts to the claim that a certain sort of justified false belief—a justified false belief about what one ought to believe—is impossible. But justified false beliefs seem to be possible (...) in any domain, and it’s hard to see why beliefs about what one ought to believe should be an exception. I will argue that when we get clearer about what sort of psychological state epistemic akrasia is, we can resolve the puzzle in favor of the intuitive view that epistemic akrasia is always irrational. (shrink)

In this paper, I claim that the personal/subpersonal distinction is first and foremost a distinction between two kinds of psychological theory or explanation: it is only in this form that we can understand why the distinction was first introduced, and how it continues to earn its keep. I go on to examine the different ontological commitments that might lead us from the primary distinction between personal and subpersonal explanations to a derivative distinction between personal and subpersonal states. I argue that (...) on one of the most common metaphysical interpretations of the explanatory distinction, talk of a distinction between personal and subpersonal states simply makes no sense. When people insist on applying the personal/subpersonal terminology to psychological states, I allow that they are often making a genuine distinction, but one that it is best understood in terms of Stich's (1978) distinction between doxastic and subdoxastic states. I end the paper by considering some other common misinterpretations of the personal/subpersonal distinction, such as those involving consciousness, normativity, or autonomy. (shrink)

RésuméSelon une thèse holistique sur les symboles, un symbole nepeut exister isolément mais doit faire partie d'un système symbolique. Une opinion, elle aussi plausible, veut que les systémes symboliques émergent graduellement chez un individu, un groupe ou une espéce. Le problème c'est qu'on voit mal, si le holisme des systémes symboliques tient, comment un système symbolique peut émerger graduellement, du moins pour la première fois. Ce n'est possible, semble-t-il, que si être un symbole est affaire de degré, thèse au départ (...) problématique. Cet article explique comment être un symbole cognitif peut après tout être affaire de degré. L'intuition contraire vient de ce que le processus d' interprétation nous force au tout ou rien, ce qui laisse unjeu dans la façon dont le matériel sous-jacent réalise les symboles à des degres divers. Les travaux de Daniel Dennett sont à cet égard éclairants. Le holisme vautpour les symboles tels qu'ils sont interprétés, tandis que le gradualisme vaut pour la façon dont le matériel sous-jacent réalise les symboles. (shrink)

Ethologists and others studying animal behavior in a spirit are in need of a descriptive language and method that are neither anachronistically bound by behaviorist scruples nor prematurely committed to particular Just such an interim descriptive method can be found in intentional system theory. The use of intentional system theory is illustrated with the case of the apparently communicative behavior of vervet monkeys. A way of using the theory to generate data - including usable, testable data - is sketched. The (...) underlying assumptions of this approach can be seen to ally it directly with theorizing in evolutionary biology, which has recently come under attack from Stephen Gould and Richard Lewontin, who castigate it as the Their arguments, which are strongly analogous to B. F, Skinner's arguments against point to certain pitfalls that attend the careless exercise of such thinking (and rival varieties of thinking as well), but do not constitute a fundamental objection to either adaptationist theorizing or its cousin, intentional system theory. (shrink)