In LOT 2: The Language of Thought Revisited, Jerry Fodor argues that concept learning of any kind—even for complex concepts—is simply impossible. In order to avoid the conclusion that all concepts, primitive and complex, are innate, he argues that concept acquisition depends on purely noncognitive biological processes. In this paper, we show (1) that Fodor fails to establish that concept learning is impossible, (2) that his own biological account of concept acquisition is unworkable, and (3) that there are in fact (...) many promising general models for explaining how concepts are learned. (shrink)

This paper takes a fresh look at the nativism–empiricism debate, presenting and defending a nativist perspective on the mind. Empiricism is often taken to be the default view both in philosophy and in cognitive science. This paper argues, on the contrary, that there should be no presumption in favor of empiricism (or nativism), but that the existing evidence suggests that nativism is the most promising framework for the scientific study of the mind. Our case on behalf of nativism has four (...) parts. (1) We characterize nativism’s core commitments relative to the contemporary debate between empiricists and nativists, (2) we present the positive case for nativism in terms of two central nativist arguments (the poverty of the stimulus argument and the argument from animals), (3) we respond to a number of influential objections to nativist theories, and (4) we explain the nativist approach to the conceptual system. (shrink)

The affirmative answer to the title question is justified in two ways: logical and empirical. The logical justification is due to Gödel’s discovery that in any axiomatic formalized theory, having at least the expressive power of PA, at any stage of development there must appear unsolvable problems. However, some of them become solvable in a further development of the theory in question, owing to subsequent investigations. These lead to new concepts, expressed with additional axioms or rules. Owing to the so-amplified (...) axiomatic basis, new routine procedures like algorithms, can be reached. Those, in turn, help to gain new insights which lead to still more powerful axioms, and consequently again to ampler algorithmic resources. Thus scientific progress proceeds to an ever higher scope of solvability. The existence of such feedback cycles –in a formal way rendered with Turing’s systems of logic based on ordinal – gets empirically supported by the history of mathematics and other exact sciences. An instructive instance of such a process is found in the history of the number zero. Without that insight due to some ancient Hindu mathematicians there could not arise such an axiomatic theory as PA. It defines the algorithms of arithmetical operations, which in turn help intuitions; those, inturn, give rise to algorithmic routines, not available in any of the previous phases of the process in question. While the logical substantiation of the point of this essay is a well-established result of logico-semantic inquiries, its empiricalclaim, based on historical evidences, remains open for discussion. Hence the author’s intention to address philosophers and historians of science, and to encourage their critical responses. (shrink)

A standard view within psychology is that there have been two important shifts in the study of concepts and that each has led to some improvements. The first shift was from the classical theory of concepts to probabilistic theories, including the prototype theory. The second shift was from probabilistic theories to theory-based theories. In this article, I critically evaluate the view that the first shift was a major advance and argue that the prototype theory suffers some of the same problems (...) that have been thought to challenge the classical theory. (shrink)

O'Brien & Opie's (O&O's) theory demands a view of unconscious processing that is incompatible with virtually all current PDP models of neural activity. Relative to the alternatives, the theory is closer to an AI than a parallel distributed processing (PDP) perspective, and its treatment of phenomenology is ad hoc. It raises at least one important question: Could features of network relaxation be the “switch” that turns an unconscious into a conscious network?

In this paper I discuss one of the key issuesin the philosophy of neuroscience:neurosemantics. The project of neurosemanticsinvolves explaining what it means for states ofneurons and neural systems to haverepresentational contents. Neurosemantics thusinvolves issues of common concern between thephilosophy of neuroscience and philosophy ofmind. I discuss a problem that arises foraccounts of representational content that Icall ``the economy problem'': the problem ofshowing that a candidate theory of mentalrepresentation can bear the work requiredwithin in the causal economy of a mind and (...) anorganism. My approach in the current paper isto explore this and other key themes inneurosemantics through the use of computermodels of neural networks embodied and evolvedin virtual organisms. The models allow for thelaying bare of the causal economies of entireyet simple artificial organisms so that therelations between the neural bases of, forinstance, representation in perception andmemory can be regarded in the context of anentire organism. On the basis of thesesimulations, I argue for an account ofneurosemantics adequate for the solution of theeconomy problem. (shrink)

Inquiry, Volume 57, Issue 1, Page 55-96, February 2014.

The philosophical technical term "supervenience" is frequently used in the philosophy of mind as a concise way of characterizing the core idea of physicalism in a manner that is neutral with respect to debates between reductive physicalists and nonreductive physicalists. I argue against this alleged neutrality and side with reductive physicalists. I am especially interested here in debates between psychoneural reductionists and nonreductive functionalist physicalists. Central to my arguments will be considerations concerning how best to articulate the spirit of the (...) idea of supervenience. I argue for a version of supervenience, "fine-grained supervenience," which is the claim that if, at a given time, a single entity instantiates two distinct mental properties, it must do so in virtue of instantiating two distinct physical properties. I argue further that despite initial appearances to the contrary, such a construal of supervenience can be embraced only by reductive physicalists. (shrink)

This article describes what the earliest concepts are like and presents a theory of the spatial primitives from which they are formed. The earliest concepts tend to be global, like animal and container, and it is hypothesized that they consist of simplified redescriptions of innately salient spatial information. These redescriptions become associated with sensory and other bodily experiences that are not themselves redescribed, but that enrich conceptual thought. The initial conceptual base becomes expanded through subdivision, sometimes aided by language that (...) points up these divisions or suggests new spatial analyses, and by the analogical extension of spatially derived concepts to nonspatial domains. This formulation is contrasted with Fodor's (1998) metaphysical theory of concept formation. (shrink)

The goal of the present paper is to defend against a certain line of attack the view that conscious experience of color is no more fine-grained that the repertoire of non- demonstrative concepts that a perceiver is able to bring to bear in perception. The line of attack in question is an alleged empirical argument - the Diachronic Indistinguishability Argument - based on pairs of colors so similar that they can be discriminated when simultaneously presented but not when presented across (...) a memory delay. My aim here is to show that this argument fails. (shrink)

Computationalism about the brain is the view that the brain literally performs computations. For the view to be interesting, we need an account of computation. The most well-developed account of computation is Turing Machine computation, the account provided by theoretical computer science which provides the basis for contemporary digital computers. Some have thought that, given the seemingly-close analogy between the all-or-nothing nature of neural spikes in brains and the binary nature of digital logic, neural computation could be a species of (...) digital computation. A few recent authors have offered arguments against this idea; here, I review recent findings in neuroscience that further cement the implausibility of this view. However, I argue that we can retain the view that the brain is a computer if we expand what we mean by “computation” to include analog computation. I articulate an account of analog computation as the manipulation of analog representations based on previous work on the difference between analog and non-analog representations, extending a view originally articulated in Shagrir :271–279, 2010). Given that analog computation constitutes a significant chapter in the history of computation, this revision of computationalism to include analog computation is not an ad hoc addition. Brains may well be computers, but of the analog kind, rather than the digital kind. (shrink)

Current computational psychology, especially as described by Fodor (1975, 1980, 1981), Pylyshyn (1980), and Stich (1983), is both a bold, promising program for cognitive science and an alternative to naturalistic psychology (Putnam 1975). Whereas naturalistic psychology depends on the general scientific framework to fix the meanings of general terms and, hence, the content of thoughts utilizing or expressed in those terms, computational cognitive theory banishes semantical considerations in psychological investigations, embracing methodological, not ontological, solipsism. I intend to argue that computational (...) psychology cannot individuate thoughts as it promises. For, semantics is fundamental in fixing an important subset of the computational relations that, according to the computational theory, are supposed both to obtain among thoughts and, thereby, to determine their identity conditions. If what I contend is correct, then contrary to what its advocates maintain, computational psychology is not preferable to naturalistic psychology as a research strategy in cognitive science. (shrink)

An account of the contents of the propositional attitudes is fundamental to the success of the cognitive sciences if, as seems correct, the cognitive sciences do presuppose propositional attitudes. Fodor has recently pointed the way towards a naturalistic explication of mental content in his Psychosemantics (1987). Fodor's theory is a version of the causal theory of meaning and thus inherits many of its virtues, including its intrinsic plausibility. Nevertheless, the proposal may suffer from two deficiencies: (1) It seems not to (...) provide an adequate explanation of misrepresentation. (2) It may also fail, as a species of empiricism, to provide a correct explication of the content of observational concepts and those non-observational concepts whose meaning is to be traced to their causal connections with observational concepts. (shrink)

The contemporary view of the relationship between conscious and unconscious intentionality consists in two claims: unconscious propositional attitudes represent the world the same way conscious ones do, and both sets of attitudes represent by having determinate propositional content. Crane has challenged both claims, proposing instead that unconscious propositional attitudes differ from conscious ones in being less determinate in nature. This paper aims to evaluate Crane's proposal. In particular, I make explicit and critique certain assumptions Crane makes in support of his (...) asymmetry, and argue for a conditional claim: if Crane is right that unconscious intentional states are indeterminate, this suggests that conscious intentional states are indeterminate in a similar fashion as well. (shrink)

According to many philosophers, psychological explanation canlegitimately be given in terms of belief and desire, but not in termsof knowledge. To explain why someone does what they do (so the common wisdom holds) you can appeal to what they think or what they want, but not what they know. Timothy Williamson has recently argued against this view. Knowledge, Williamson insists, plays an essential role in ordinary psychological explanation.Williamson's argument works on two fronts.First, he argues against the claim that, unlike knowledge, (...) belief is``composite'' (representable as a conjunction of a narrow and a broadcondition). Belief's failure to be composite, Williamson thinks, undermines the usual motivations for psychological explanation in terms of belief rather than knowledge.Unfortunately, we claim, the motivations Williamson argues against donot depend on the claim that belief is composite, so what he saysleaves the case for a psychology of belief unscathed.Second, Williamson argues that knowledge can sometimes provide abetter explanation of action than belief can.We argue that, in the cases considered, explanations that cite beliefs(but not knowledge) are no less successful than explanations that citeknowledge. Thus, we conclude that Williamson's arguments fail both coming andgoing: they fail to undermine a psychology of belief, and they fail tomotivate a psychology of knowledge. (shrink)

The question, ‘Is cognition linguistic?' divides recent cognitive theories into two antagonistic groups. Sententialists claim that we think in some language, while advocates of non linguistic views of cognition deny this claim. The Introspective Argument for Sententialism is one of the most appealing arguments for sententialism. In substance, it claims that the introspective fact of inner speech provides strong evidence that our thoughts are linguistic. This article challenges this argument. I claim that the Introspective Argument for Sententialism confuses the content (...) of our thoughts with their vehicles: while sententialism is a thesis about the vehicles of our thoughts, inner speech sentences are the content of auditory or articulatory images. The rebuttal of the introspective argument for sententialism is shown to have a general significance in cognitive science: Introspection does not tell us how we think. (shrink)

This article critically examines the contemporary resurgence of empiricism (or “neo-empiricism”) in philosophy, psychology, neuropsychology, and artificial intelligence. This resurgence is an important and positive development. It is the first time that this centuries-old empiricist approach to cognition is precisely formulated in the context of cognitive science and neuroscience. Moreover, neo-empiricists have made several findings that challenge amodal theories of concepts and higher cognition. It is argued, however, that the theoretical foundations of and the empirical evidence for neo-empiricism are not (...) as strong as is usually claimed by its proponents. The empirical evidence for and against neo-empiricism is discussed in detail. (shrink)

Although cognitive scientists have learned a lot about concepts, their findings have yet to be organized in a coherent theoretical framework. In addition, after twenty years of controversy, there is little sign that philosophers and psychologists are converging toward an agreement about the very nature of concepts. Doing without Concepts (Machery 2009) attempts to remedy this state of affairs. In this article, I review the main points and arguments developed at greater length in Doing without Concepts.

In his recent paper, Winch attacks a group of theories he calls cognitivism. These theories agree in holding that ‘the ability to think, both consciously and subconsciously, amounts to an ability to internally manipulate symbolic representations of that which we think about.The relevance of this attack to education is that ‘Cognitivism’ supplies plausible‐looking reasons for thinking that learning can take place without instruction, practice, memorisation or training and its prestige as a theory of learning devalues those activities within education.Its rejection (...) should therefore lead us to re‐examine our need for explicit teacher‐oriented pedagogies’.Cognitivism has led to an emphasis on autonomous learning and a consequent devaluing of the role of overt teaching, ‘the active transmission of knowledge and technique by an authoritative figure’. (shrink)

The paper looks at the intersection of extended cognition and social cognition. The central claim is that the mechanisms of shared intentionality can equally be considered as coupling mechanisms of cognitive extension into the social domain. This claim will be demonstrated by investigating a detailed example of cooperative action, and it will be argued that such cases imply that socially extended cognition is not only about cognitive vehicles, but that content must additionally to be taken into account. It is finally (...) outlined how social content externalism can in principle be grounded in socially extended cognition. (shrink)

Recent worries about possible epiphenomenalist consequences of nonreductive materialism are misplaced, not, as many have argued, because nonreductive materialism does not have epiphenomenalist implications but because the epiphenomenalist implications are actually virtues of the theory, rather than vices. It is only by showing how certain kinds of mental properties are causally impotent that cognitive scientific explanations of mentality as we know them are possible.

The cognitive neuropsychological understanding of a cognitive system is roughly that of a ‘mental organ’, which is independent of other systems, specializes in some cognitive task, and exhibits a certain kind of internal cohesiveness. This is all quite vague, and I try to make it more precise. A more precise understanding of cognitive systems will make it possible to articulate in some detail an alternative to the Fodorian doctrine of modularity (since not all cognitive systems are modules), but it will (...) also provide a better understanding of what a module is (since all modules are cognitive systems). (shrink)

Bermúdez (2003) argues that (T1) nonlinguistic creatures can think thoughts about protocausal conditional states of affairs and engage in rudimentary forms of reasoning, but (T2) they cannot ‘in principle’ think thoughts about thoughts (propositions)—in particular, they cannot have higher-order propositional attitudes (PAs). I reconstruct Bermúdez’s argument for T2 and show that it rests upon an implausible empirical assumption and is, therefore, not a threat to current empirical research into nonlinguistic higher-order PAs. I argue that even on an interpretation of the (...) argument that would pose a threat to this research, a parallel argument would seem to disprove T1. Finally, I argue that on an interpretation of Bermúdez’s argument that would not pose a threat to the above empirical research but would still present a significant philosophical thesis about thought and language, the argument either appears to confuse thoughts with their representational vehicles or the representational vehicles of thoughts with those representations used to hold thoughts in mind. (shrink)

Some philosophers of education think that there is a pedagogically informative concept of training that can be gleaned from Wittgenstein's later writings: training as initiation into a form of life. Stickney, in 'Training and Mastery of Techniques in Wittgenstein's Later Philosophy: A response to Michael Luntley'takes me to task for ignoring this concept. In this essay I argue that there is no such concept to be ignored. I start by noting recent developments in Wittgenstein scholarship that raise serious issues about (...) how we should handle the translation of Arbrichtung and arbrichten. I then concentrate on the substantive philosophical issues about the very idea that training can have a pedagogically productive role in education. I show that what work training does is a function of the prior skill set of the trainee. This means that we have to endorse some form of rationalism and acknowledge that the learner can only respond to training if they already possess sufficient mental equipment to generate the appropriate responses. (shrink)

In this paper I outline an answer to the following question: What are the abilities that make you the sort of subject who can learn, who can acquire new concepts, new skills? There are many traits that matter in providing an answer. But I want to suggest that the ability for creative and imaginative engagement with and sustenance of the playful patterns of our aesthetic experience is core. I identify a core sense of play that fills this role. Play's the (...) thing that makes learning possible. The ability to imaginatively explore non concept-involving patterns to experience—the aesthetics of experience—is foundational for learning and should be at the heart of any serious pedagogy. (shrink)

In this paper I take up Peters' invitation to think of education in terms of initiation. I argue that the concept of initiation demands much closer scrutiny and analysis in order to provide a substantive thesis about education. A key challenge concerns how we conceive of the initiate. The very idea of initiation suggests that, in some interesting sense, the pupil qua initiate joins in learning activities; their role is more than that of passive recipient of values and belief. But (...) it is a substantive challenge to give a principled account of the trajectory from initiate to full member of a learning community. It requires that we take seriously the question: ‘How can a pupil be engaged in something that they do not yet understand?’. This can be taken as an abstract philosophical question—a ‘How possible’ question closely connected to the paradox of learning—and also as an empirical question about the preferred specifics of a pedagogy for engaging learners. I sketch options for answering the first and review how my preferred option segues into the details of an answer to the latter. (shrink)

This paper argues that sociocultural accounts of learning fail to answer the key question about learning—how is it possible? Accordingly, we should adopt an individualist bootstrapping methodology in providing a theory of learning. Such a methodology takes seriously the idea that learning is staged and distinguishes between a non-comprehending engagement with things and a comprehending engagement. It suggests that, in the light of recent work in psychology with insights from Wittgenstein, there is rich scope for a bootstrapping account of learning. (...) The paper also argues that sociocultural approaches when pushed, either require some such bootstrapping account, or they collapse into an obscure Ficthean metaphysics in which individual abilities are ‘summoned into being’ by the attitudes of others. (shrink)

Conceptual development requires learning. It requires learning to make discriminations that were previously unavailable to the subject. Notwithstanding the descriptions of learning available in the psychological and educational literature, there is no account available that shows that it is so much as possible. There can be no such account unless there is an answer to Jerry Fodor’s paradox of learning. On our current understanding of concept acquisition, there is no such thing as learning. In this paper I explore a way (...) of avoiding this conclusion. The enquiry is foundational, an enquiry into the very possibility of learning and development. The account of learning that I sketch has, however, clear consequences for our basic ideas about education. (shrink)

One holistic thesis about symbols is that a symbol cannot exist singly, but only as apart of a symbol system. There is also the plausible view that symbol systems emerge gradually in an individual, in a group, and in a species. The problem is that symbol holism makes it hard to see how a symbol system can emerge gradually, at least if we are considering the emergence of a first symbol system. The only way it seems possible is if being (...) a symbol can be a matter of degree, which is initially problematic. This article explains how being a cognitive symbol can be a matter of degree after all. The contrary intuition arises from the way a process of interpretation forces an all-or-nothing character on symbols, leaving room for underlying material to realize symbols to different degrees in a way that Daniel Dennett’s work can help illuminate. Holism applies to symbols as interpreted, while gradualism applies to how the underlying material realizes symbols.Selon une thèse holistique sur les symboles, un symbole ne peut exister isolément mais doit faire partie d’un systéme symbolique. Une opinion, elle aussi plausible, veut que les systèmes symboliques émergent graduellement chez un individu, un groupe ou une espèce. Le problème c’est qu’on voit mal, si le holisme des systèmes 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 un jeu dans la façon dont le matériel sous-jacent réalise les symboles à des degrés divers. Les travaux de Daniel Dennett sont à cet égard éclairants. Le holisme vaut pour les symboles tels qu’ils sont interprétés, tandis que le gradualisme vaut pour la façon dont le matériel sous-jacent réalise les symboles. (shrink)

David Chalmers argues that virtual objects exist in the form of data structures that have causal powers. I argue that there is a large class of virtual objects that are social objects and that do not depend upon data structures for their existence. I also argue that data structures are themselves fundamentally social objects. Thus, virtual objects are fundamentally social objects.

The integration of learning cognitive agents in the research agenda is an important step in the evolution of economics. However, relying on a retrospective analysis of the treatment of decision making in economics, this article argues that the cognitive programme aims to justify rational behaviour in an equilibrium framework rather than to integration an interpretative conception of agents' behaviour. As a consequence, the level of generality of analytical results remains limited and economists miss the opportunity to establish a discussion with (...) other social sciences. In particular, it fails to analyse a class of situations related to the problem of knowledge creation and the subsequent learning paradox. Building on recent advances in heterodox cognitive science, we suggest a behavioural approach that discriminates different learning situations. If applied, this approach would permit a better understanding of human behaviour and a richer analysis of coordination mechanisms in unfamiliar environment with no loss of rigour. (shrink)

The philosophy of information (PI) is a new area of research with its own field of investigation and methodology. This article, based on the Herbert A. Simon Lecture of Computing and Philosophy I gave at Carnegie Mellon University in 2001, analyses the eighteen principal open problems in PI. Section 1 introduces the analysis by outlining Herbert Simon's approach to PI. Section 2 discusses some methodological considerations about what counts as a good philosophical problem. The discussion centers on Hilbert's famous analysis (...) of the central problems in mathematics. The rest of the article is devoted to the eighteen problems. These are organized into five sections: problems in the analysis of the concept of information, in semantics, in the study of intelligence, in the relation between information and nature, and in the investigation of values. (shrink)

The double negation has always been considered by the logical systems from ancient times to the present. In fact, that is an issue that the current syntactic theories studying human reasoning, for example, the mental logic theory, address today. However, in this paper, I claim that, in the case of some languages such as Spanish, the double negation causes problems for the cognitive theories mainly based on formal schemata and supporting the idea of a universal syntax of thought in the (...) human mind. Thus, I propose that, given those problems, semantic frameworks such as that of the mental models theory seem to be more appropriate for explaining the human inferential activity. (shrink)

Previous studies have shown that object properties are processed faster when they follow properties from the same perceptual modality than properties from different modalities. These findings suggest that language activates sensorimotor processes, which, according to those studies, can only be explained by a modal account of cognition. The current paper shows how a statistical linguistic approach of word co-occurrences can also reliably predict the category of perceptual modality a word belongs to (auditory, olfactory–gustatory, visual–haptic), even though the statistical linguistic approach (...) is less precise than the modal approach (auditory, gustatory, haptic, olfactory, visual). Moreover, the statistical linguistic approach is compared with the modal embodied approach in an experiment in which participants verify properties that share or shift modalities. Response times suggest that fast responses can best be explained by the linguistic account, whereas slower responses can best be explained by the embodied account. These results provide further evidence for the theory that conceptual processing is both linguistic and embodied, whereby less precise linguistic processes precede precise simulation processes. (shrink)

The main goal of the paper is to present an objection to the mental files framework. Alongside being representational resources that the mind exploits when having attitudes concerning particulars, many philosophers have explored the idea that singular concepts can serve another function: that of storing alleged information about their referents. In other words, singular concepts are characterized as mental files. Given that the latter implies an overwhelming and unnecessary complication of what’s in our minds, I argue that we should only (...) keep the representational function of concepts. The work files are supposed to do, I claim, can be exported to other aspects of the cognitive system. (shrink)