Recent literature on the Young Hegelians attests to a renewed appreciation of their philosophical and political significance. Important new studies have linked them to the literary and political currents of their time, traced the changing patterns of their relationships with early French socialism, and demonstrated the affinity of their thought with Hellenistic theories of self-consciousness. The conventional interpretative context, which focuses on the left-Hegelian critique of religion and the problem of the realisation of philosophy, has also been decisively challenged. Ingrid (...) Pepperle emphasizes instead the centrality of practical philosophy, notably Hegel's dialectic of objectification, arguing that Bruno Bauer in particular derives from this a doctrine of autonomy with politically revolutionary implications. (shrink)

Those arguing for the existence of non-propositional content appeal to emotions for support, although there has been little engagement in those debates with developments in contemporary theory of emotion, specifically in connection with the kind of mental states that emotional experiences are. Relatedly, within emotion theory, one finds claims that emotional experiences per se have non-propositional content without detailed argument. This paper argues that the content of emotional experience is propositional in a weak sense, associated with aspectual experience and correctness (...) conditions. Furthermore, it provides an interpretation of purely-objectual emotional experiences which satisfies this weak view of propositional content. (shrink)

Many philosophers have understood the representational dimension of affective states along the model of sense-perceptual experiences, even claiming the relevant affective experiences are perceptual experiences. This paper argues affective experiences involve a kind of personal level affective representation disanalogous from the representational character of perceptual experiences. The positive thesis is that affective representation is a non-transparent, non-sensory form of evaluative representation, whereby a felt valenced attitude represents the object of the experience as minimally good or bad, and one experiences that (...) evaluative standing as having the power to causally motivate the relevant attitude. I show this view can make sense of distinctive features of affective experiences, such as their valence and connection to value in a way which moves beyond current evaluativist views of affect. (shrink)

Many philosophers have understood the representational dimension of affective states along the model of perceptual experiences. This paper argues affective experiences involve a kind of personal level affective representation disanalogous from the representational character of perceptual experiences. The positive thesis is that affective representation is a non-transparent, non-sensory form of evaluative representation, whereby a felt valenced attitude represents the object of the experience as minimally good or bad, and one experiences that evaluative standing as having the power to causally motivate (...) the relevant attitude. I show how this view can make sense of distinctive features of affective experiences, such as their valence and connection to value in a way which moves beyond current evaluativist views of affect. (shrink)

The standard view of classical cognitive science stated that cognition consists in the manipulation of language-like structures according to formal rules. Since cognition is ‘linguistic’ in itself, according to this view language is just a complex communication system and does not influence cognitive processes in any substantial way. This view has been criticized from several perspectives and a new framework (Embodied Cognition) has emerged that considers cognitive processes as non-symbolic and heavily dependent on the dynamical interactions between the cognitive system (...) and its environment. But notwithstanding the successes of the embodied cognitive science in explaining low-level cognitive behaviors, it is still not clear whether and how it can scale up for explaining high-level cognition. In this paper we argue that this can be done by considering the role of language as a cognitive tool: i.e. how language transforms basic cognitive functions in the high-level functions that are characteristic of human cognition. In order to do that, we review some computational models that substantiate this view with respect to categorization and memory. Since these models are based on a very rudimentary form of non-syntactic ‘language’ we argue that the use of language as a cognitive tool might have been an early discovery in hominid evolution, and might have played a substantial role in the evolution of language itself. (shrink)

Contemporary research on mindreading or theory of mind has resulted in three major findings: There is a difference in the age of passing of the elicited-response false belief task and its spontaneous–response version; 15-month-olds pass the latter while the former is passed only by 4-year-olds. Linguistic and social factors influence the development of the ability to mindread in many ways. There are cultures with folk psychologies significantly different from the Western one, and children from such cultures tend to show different (...) timetables of mindreading development. The traditional accounts of the data are nativism, rational constructivism, and two-systems theory. In this paper, we offer criticism of these traditional cognitivist accounts and explore an alternative, action-based framework. We argue that even though they all seem to explain the above empirical data, there are other, theoretical reasons why their explanations are untenable. Specifically, we discuss the problem of foundationalism and the related problem of innateness. Finally, we explore an alternative, action-based framework that avoids these theoretical limitations and offer an interpretation of the empirical data from that perspective. (shrink)

The debate between the defenders of explanatory unification and explanatory pluralism has been ongoing from the beginning of cognitive science and is one of the central themes of its philosophy. Does cognitive science need a grand unifying theory? Should explanatory pluralism be embraced instead? Or maybe local integrative efforts are needed? What are the advantages of explanatory unification as compared to the benefits of explanatory pluralism? These questions, among others, are addressed in this Synthese’s special issue. In the introductory paper, (...) we discuss the background of the questions, distinguishing integrative theorizing from building unified theories. On the one hand, integrative efforts involve collaboration between various disciplines, fields, approaches, or theories. These efforts could even be quite temporary, without establishing any long-term institutionalized fields or disciplines, but could also contribute to developing new interfield theories. On the other hand, unification can rely on developing complete theories of mechanisms and representations underlying all cognition, as Newell’s “unified theories of cognition”, or may appeal to grand principles, as predictive coding. Here, we also show that unification in contemporary cognitive science goes beyond reductive unity, and may involve various forms of joint efforts and division of explanatory labor. This conclusion is one of the themes present in the content of contributions constituting the special issue. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that computationalism is a progressive research tradition. Its metaphysical assumptions are that nervous systems are computational, and that information processing is necessary for cognition to occur. First, the primary reasons why information processing should explain cognition are reviewed. Then I argue that early formulations of these reasons are outdated. However, by relying on the mechanistic account of physical computation, they can be recast in a compelling way. Next, I contrast two computational models of working memory (...) to show how modeling has progressed over the years. The methodological assumptions of new modeling work are best understood in the mechanistic framework, which is evidenced by the way in which models are empirically validated. Moreover, the methodological and theoretical progress in computational neuroscience vindicates the new mechanistic approach to explanation, which, at the same time, justifies the best practices of computational modeling. Overall, computational modeling is deservedly successful in cognitive science. Its successes are related to deep conceptual connections between cognition and computation. Computationalism is not only here to stay, it becomes stronger every year. (shrink)

In this article I discuss Daniel Dennett’s view of the role of natural language in the evolution of the human mind. In contrast with defenders of the Language of Thought Hypothesis, Dennett claims that natural language is an evolved tool for communication, originating in behavioural habits of which users were initially not aware. Once in place, such habits changed access to information in human brains and were crucial for the evolution of human consciousness. I assess Dennett’s approach from the viewpoint (...) of philosophy of mind and language and consider its ontological implications. I contrast Dennett’s views with the universalist and internalist claims of Jerry Fodor and Noam Chomsky and show how, by appealing to memes and cultural evolution, Dennett resists such claims. I then analyse how this picture goes together with a deflationary view of consciousness. I end by pointing out that although Dennett’s global picture seems to point towards a pluralistic ontology, he himself refrains from taking such a step. (shrink)

Most discussions frame the Liar Paradox as a formal logical-linguistic puzzle. Attempts to resolve the paradox have focused very little so far on aspects of cognitive psychology and processing, because semantic and cognitive-psychological issues are generally assumed to be disjunct. I provide a motivation and carry out a cognitive-computational treatment of the liar paradox based on a model of language and conceptual knowledge within the Predictive Processing framework. I suggest that the paradox arises as a failure of synchronization between two (...) ways of generating the liar situation in two different PP sub-models, one corresponding to language processing and the other to the processing of meaning and world-knowledge. In this way, I put forward the claim that the liar sentence is meaningless but has an air of meaningfulness. I address the possible objection that the proposal violates the Principle of Unrestricted Compositionality, which purportedly regulates the conceptual competence of thinkers. (shrink)

Predictive Processing (PP) is an increasingly influential neurocognitive-computational framework. PP research has so far focused predominantly on lower level perceptual, motor, and various psychological phenomena. But PP seems to face a “scale-up challenge”: How can it be extended to conceptual thought, language, and other higher cognitive competencies? Compositionality, arguably a central feature of conceptual thought, cannot easily be accounted for in PP because it is not couched in terms of classical symbol processing. I argue, using the example of language, that (...) there is no strong reason to think that PP cannot be scaled up to higher cognition. I suggest that the tacitly assumed common-sense conception of language as Generative Grammar (“folk linguistics”) and its notion of composition leads to the scale-up concerns. Fodor’s Language of Thought Hypothesis (LOTH) plays the role of a cognitive computational paradigm for folk linguistics. Therefore, we do not take LOTH as facing problems with higher cognition, at least with regard to compositionality. But PP can plausibly play the role of a cognitive-computational paradigm for an alternative conception of language, namely Construction Grammar. If Construction Grammar is a plausible alternative to folk linguistics, then PP is not in a worse position than LOTH. (shrink)

The debate about the nature of the representational format of concepts seems to have reached an impasse. The debate faces two fundamental problems. Firstly, amodalists (i.e., those who argue that concepts are represented by amodal symbols) and modalists (i.e., those who see concepts as involving crucially representations including sensorimotor information) claim that the same empirical evidence is compatible with their views. Secondly, there is no shared understanding of what a modal or amodal format amounts to. Both camps recognize that the (...) two formats play essential roles in higher cognition, leading to an increasing number of hybrid proposals. In this paper, I argue that the existence of those fundamental problems should make us suspicious about a modal/amodal dichotomy. Also, I suggest that hybrid approaches, as they currently stand, do not provide suitable solutions to the impasse. Instead, we should overcome the dichotomy and treat the modal/amodal distinction as a graded phenomenon. I illustrate this hypothesis with an example of a cognitive-computational model of concepts based on the Predictive Processing framework. (shrink)

Celem niniejszego artykułu jest wyznaczenie kierunków badań edukacyjnych w działalności Polskiej Szkoły Argumentacji oraz zainicjowanie dyskusji w polskim środowisku filozoficznym i wśród nauczycieli szkolnych. Opierając się na dotychczasowej działalności Szkoły w badaniach nad edukacją i tworzeniu standardów nauczania sztuki argumentacji oraz wątków edukacyjnych wyeksponowanych podczas XV konferencji ArgDiaP, formułujemy postulaty, które mogą stanowić część planu edukacyjnego w najbliższych latach. Realizacja tych postulatów może stanowić punkt odniesienia do realizacji długoterminowego planu tworzenia standardów nauczania sztuki argumentacji.

The relativist position on knowledge is summarized by Protagoras’ phrase “Man is the measure of all things”. Protagoras’ detractors countered that there was no reason for his pupils to employ him since, by his own admission, his lessons lacked privilege. This the educationist’s relativist paradox. The Enlightenment tradition of Descartes, Locke and Kant solved this paradox by distinguishing given objective knowledge from constructed subjective knowledge, but this position has itself been discredited by the work of Sellars, Quine and many other (...) thinkers. Because the Enlightenment solution to the educationist’s relativist paradox is no longer satisfactory, an alternative solution to this paradox is proposed. This alternative re-examines both the basis of empiricism and the role and origins of language, and introduces the concepts of triggered hallucinations, cognitive evolutionary pressure, and cognitive empathetic resonance. Cognitive empathetic resonance provides a mechanism that can explain how our thoughts and actions are made possible by language; it is language that acts as a creative and generative force and helps us to live in the world we do. This approach inverts the empiricist claim that ideas start off grounded in an external reality and develop into more sophisticated concepts. The view of ideas presented here is that ideas are free-floating and, if they are grounded at all, are grounded as an active post-hoc process. The conclusion is that although facts do exist and are privileged, this is not because they are ‘given’ but because they are the ante required to join a space of discourse. (shrink)

Reliable misrepresentation is getting things wrong in the same way all the time. In Mendelovici 2013, I argue that tracking theories of mental representation cannot allow for certain kinds of reliable misrepresentation, and that this is a problem for those views. Artiga 2013 defends teleosemantics from this argument. He agrees with Mendelovici 2013 that teleosemantics cannot account for clean cases of reliable misrepresentation, but argues that this is not a problem for the views. This paper clarifies and improves the argument (...) in Mendelovici 2013 and response to Artiga's arguments. Tracking theories, teleosemantics included, really do need to allow for clean cases of reliable misrepresentation. (shrink)

According to intentionalism, phenomenal properties are identical to, supervenient on, or determined by representational properties. Intentionalism faces a special challenge when it comes to accounting for the phenomenal character of moods. First, it seems that no intentionalist treatment of moods can capture their apparently undirected phenomenology. Second, it seems that even if we can come up with a viable intentionalist account of moods, we would not be able to motivate it in some of the same kinds of ways that intentionalism (...) about other kinds of states can be motivated. In this article, I respond to both challenges: First, I propose a novel intentionalist treatment of moods on which they represent unbound affective properties. Then, I argue that this view is indirectly supported by the same kinds of considerations that directly support intentionalism about other mental states. (shrink)

The current renewal of connectionist techniques using networks of neuron-like units has started to have an influence on cognitive modelling. However, compared with classical artificial intelligence methods, the position of connectionism is still not clear. In this article artificial intelligence and connectionism are systematically compared as cognitive models so as to bring out the advantages and shortcomings of each. The problem of structured representations appears to be particularly important, suggesting likely research directions.

Niedenthal et al's classification of smiles erroneously conflates psychological mechanisms and adaptive functions. This confusion weakens the rationale behind the types of smiles they chose to individuate, and it obfuscates the distinction between the communicative versus denotative nature of smiles and the role of perceived-gaze direction in emotion recognition.

Over the coming decades, the so-called telematic technologies are destined to grow more and more encompassing in scale and the repercussions they will have on our professional and personal lives will become ever more accentuated. The transformations resulting from the digitization of data have already profoundly modified a great many of the activities of human life and exercise significant influence on the way we design, draw up, store and send documents, as well as on the means used for locating information (...) in libraries, databases and on the net. These changes are transforming the nature of international communication and are modifying the way in which we carry out research, engage in study, keep our accounts, plan our travel, do our shopping, look after our health, organize our leisure time, undertake wars and so on. The time is not far off when miniaturized digital systems will be installed everywhere - in our homes and offices, in the car, in our pockets or even embedded within the bodies of each one of us. They will help us to keep control over every aspect of our lives and will efficiently and effectively carry out multiple tasks which today we have to devote precious time to. As a consequence, our ways of acting and thinking will be transformed. These new winds of change, which are blowing strongly, are giving birth to a new culture to which the name ‘digital culture’ has been given. It is timely that a study should be made of the different aspects and consequences of this culture, but that this study should not be just undertaken from the point of view of the simple user who quickly embraces the latest successful innovation, in reaction essentially to market forces. The major challenge for this culture resides not so much in the development of even more tiny microchips, faster processors or more refined software, but in the honing of conceptual instruments which will give us the ability to analyse and evaluate the radical changes that this revolution is bringing about and which it will continue to provoke in all of our lives. (shrink)

Smolensky's (1995) proposal for a connectionist explanation of systematicity doesn't work.

00 Students of philosophy, psychology, sociology, and literature will welcome this collection of original essays on self-deception and related phenomena such as ...

What are the vehicles of conceptual thought? Recently, cognitive scientists and philosophers of psychology have developed quite different theories about what kinds of representations concepts are. At one extreme, amodal theories claim that concepts are representations whose vehicles are distinct from those used in perceptual processes. At the other end of the spectrum, neo-empiricism proposes that concepts are perceptual representations grounded in the mind's sensory, motor, and affective systems. In this essay, I examine how evidence from the neuropsychological disorder semantic (...) dementia bears on philosophical debates about the nature of conceptual vehicles. I argue that the pattern of deficits in semantic dementia undermines recent neo-empiricist predictions about where and how conceptual knowledge is organized in the brain. I do not intend my analysis of semantic dementia to wholly discredit neo-empiricism; instead, I draw lessons for future theorizing about conceptual vehicles. (shrink)

In the course of defending both a unified model of intertheoretic relations in science and scientific realism, Paul Churchland has attempted to reinvigorate eliminative materialism. Churchland's eliminativism operates on three claims: (1) that some intertheoretic contexts involve incommensurable theories, (2) that such contexts invariably require the elimination of one theory or the other, and (3) that the relation of psychology and neuroscience is just such a context. I argue that a more detailed account of intertheoretic relations, which distinguishes between the (...) relations that hold between successive theories at a particular level of analysis over time and those that hold between theories at different levels of analysis at the same time, offers grounds for denying Churchland's second and third claims and, therefore, undermines his eliminativism. The paper concludes by suggesting why it is, nonetheless, not unreasonable, given this more detailed model of intertheoretic relations, to expect the eventual elimination of common sense psychology. (shrink)

The New Evil Demon Problem is often seen as a serious objection to externalist theories of justification. In fact, some internalists think it is a decisive counterexample to externalism. Recently, Moon has argued that internalists face their own New Evil Demon Problem. According to Moon, it is possible for a demon to remove one’s unaccessed mental states while leaving the justificatory status of her accessed mental states unaffected. Since this is contrary to the claims of many forms of internalism, Moon (...) maintains that his New Evil Demon Problem for Internalism shows that internalists face a problem that is just as troubling as the original NEDP. I argue that moderate internalists have nothing to fear from Moon’s demon. (shrink)

Many think that the perceptual theory known as “conceptualism” cannot honor a common and intuitive constraint on concept acquisition—that we gain the initial power to deploy primitive concepts through experience. Their argument is: if experience involves the deployment of concepts, then one must possess the power to deploy those concepts prior to experience. I argue that the plausibility of this argument rests on a subtle equivocation. It’s true that conceptualism requires a particular kind of power to deploy concepts prior to (...) experience, but not the sort referenced in the intuitive constraint mentioned above. I end by proposing how the conceptualist might satisfy this constraint. I conclude that conceptualism is better situated to account for primitive concept acquisition than typically thought. (shrink)

Most discussions frame the Liar Paradox as a formal logical-linguistic puzzle. Attempts to resolve the paradox have focused very little so far on aspects of cognitive psychology and processing, because semantic and cognitive-psychological issues are generally assumed to be disjunct. I provide a motivation and carry out a cognitive-computational treatment of the liar paradox based on a model of language and conceptual knowledge within thePredictive Processing(PP) framework. I suggest that the paradox arises as a failure of synchronization between two ways (...) of generating the liar situation in two different (idealized) PP sub-models, one corresponding to language processing and the other to the processing of meaning and world-knowledge. In this way, I put forward the claim that the liar sentence is meaningless but has an air of meaningfulness. I address the possible objection that the proposal violates thePrinciple of Unrestricted Compositionality, which purportedly regulates the conceptual competence of thinkers. (shrink)

Most discussions frame the Liar Paradox as a formal logical-linguistic puzzle. Attempts to resolve the paradox have focused very little so far on aspects of cognitive psychology and processing, because semantic and cognitive-psychological issues are generally assumed to be disjunct. I provide a motivation and carry out a cognitive-computational treatment of the liar paradox based on a cognitive-computational model of language and conceptual knowledge within the Predictive Processing framework. I suggest that the paradox arises as a failure of synchronization between (...) two ways of generating the liar situation in two different PP sub-models, one corresponding to language processing and the other to the processing of meaning and world-knowledge. In this way, I put forward the claim that the liar sentence is meaningless but has an air of meaningfulness. I address the possible objection that the proposal violates the Principle of Unrestricted Compositionality, which purportedly regulates the conceptual competence of thinkers. (shrink)

Putnam and Searle famously argue against computational theories of mind on the skeptical ground that there is no fact of the matter as to what mathematical function a physical system is computing: both conclude (albeit for somewhat different reasons) that virtually any physical object computes every computable function, implements every program or automaton. There has been considerable discussion of Putnam's and Searle's arguments, though as yet there is little consensus as to what, if anything, is wrong with these arguments. In (...) the present paper we show that an analogous line of reasoning can be raised against the numerical measurement (i.e., numerical representation) of physical magnitudes, and we argue that this result is a reductio ad absurdum of the challenge to computational skepticism. We then use this reductio to get clearer about both (i) what's wrong with Putnam's and Searle's arguments against computationalism, and (ii) what can be learned about both computational implementation and numerical measurement from the shortcomings of both sorts of skeptical argument. (shrink)

The so-called post-Wittgensteinian Oxford philosophers are often criticized not only for failing to provide for the causal explanation of human behavior and psychological states, but also for failing to recognize that psychological explanations require appeal to sub-personal or molecular processes. Three strategies accommodating this criticism appear in so-called homunculus theories and include: (1) that the sub-systems be assigned intentional or informational content purely heuristically; (2) that the intentional or informational content of molar states be analyzed without remainder in terms of (...) molecular processing; (3) that the entire or salient range of mental or informational molar states be accessible at the molecular level, or vice versa. Option (2) proves to be the most radical and is favored by Dennett. (1) relevantly requires a reduction of the intentional. (3) is illustrated in various ways by the views of Freud, Chomsky, Fodor. (2) is shown to depend on (1) or to be idle; and (3) embraces at least in part an appeal to molar-level explanation. The argument developed attempts to show the sense in which discourse about molar and molecular-level phenomena in the psychological context is fundamentally different from macroscopic and microtheoretical-level discourse about physical phenomena. The conclusion drawn is that neither a molar nor a sub-personal level theory is suitably explanatory in the psychological sense: a psychological theory is committed rather to a set of sub-personal components of such systems, that serve to explain molar phenomena. (shrink)

Within the interactivist, process approach to metaphysics, Bickhard (Social life and social knowledge: toward a process account of development. Lawrence Erlbaum, New York, 2008a; Topoi 27: 139–149, 2008b; New Ideas Psychol, in press) has developed a social ontology of persons that avoids many well-known philosophical difficulties concerning the genesis, development, and application of the rational and moral capabilities and responsibilities that characterize persons. Interactivism positions developing persons inside sets of social conventions within which they participate in their own constitution as (...) rational and moral agents who constantly transform themselves and their world. Following a description of Bickhard’s social ontology and an evaluation of its philosophical merits, two suggestions are offered with the intention of extending the explanatory reach of an interactivist ontology of persons. One of these suggestions concerns a recommended shift from processes of interaction and constructivism to processes of coordination and constitutionism. A second, related recommendation concerns the need for a more precise detailing of processes of coordinated constitution that explain the developing person’s embodied and enactive transformation from a social to a psychological being. (shrink)

This paper addresses a recent argument of the Churchlands against the "linguistic-rationalist" tradition exemplified by current cognitive-computational psychology. Because of its commitment to methodological solipsism--the argument goes--computational psychology cannot provide an account of how organisms are able to represent and "hook up to" the world. First I attempt to determine the exact nature of this charge and its relation to the Churchlands' long-standing polemic against 'folk psychology' and the linguistic-rationalist methodology. I then turn my attention to the Churchlands' account of (...) what it is for computational psychology to be methodologically solipsistic. I argue that there is no reason to suppose that methodological solipsism commits one to a purely syntactic theory of the mind (of the kind that Stephen Stich has recently advocated): the formality constraints that methodological solipsism imposes on psychological explanation do not exclude 'essential' reference to the representational content of mental states, as long as this content is construed in the 'narrow' sense. I conclude by raising a problem for computational psychology that may provide some real cause for concern. (shrink)