Certain of our concepts are innate, but many others are learned. Despite the plausibility of this claim, some have argued that the very idea of concept learning is incoherent. I present a conception of learning that sidesteps the arguments against the possibility of concept learning, and sketch several mechanisms that result in the generation of new primitive concepts. Given the rational considerations that motivate their deployment, I argue that these deserve to be called learning mechanisms. I conclude by replying to (...) the objections that these mechanisms cannot produce genuinely new content and cannot be part of genuinely cognitive explanations. (shrink)

Traditionally, the language faculty was supposed to be a device that maps linguistic inputs to semantic or conceptual representations. These representations themselves were supposed to be distinct from the representations manipulated by the hearer’s perceptual and motor systems. Recently this view of language has been challenged by advocates of embodied cognition. Drawing on empirical studies of linguistic comprehension, they have proposed that the language faculty reuses the very representations and processes deployed in perceiving and acting. I review some of the (...) evidence and arguments in favor of the embodied view of language comprehension, and argue that none of it is conclusive. Moreover, the embodied view itself blurs two important distinctions: first, the distinction between linguistic comprehension and its typical consequences; and second, the distinction between representational content and vehicles. Given that these distinctions are well-motivated, we have good reason to reject the embodied view of linguistic understanding.Keywords: Language; Comprehension; Perception; Action; Embodied cognition; Representation. (shrink)

Theories concerning the structure, or format, of mental representation should (1) be formulated in mechanistic, rather than metaphorical terms; (2) do justice to several philosophical intuitions about mental representation; and (3) explain the human capacity to predict the consequences of worldly alterations (i.e., to think before we act). The hypothesis that thinking involves the application of syntax-sensitive inference rules to syntactically structured mental representations has been said to satisfy all three conditions. An alternative hypothesis is that thinking requires the construction (...) and manipulation of the cognitive equivalent of scale models. A reading of this hypothesis is provided that satisfies condition (1) and which, even though it may not fully satisfy condition (2), turns out (in light of the frame problem) to be the only known way to satisfy condition (3). (shrink)

The authors favor a “color realism” theory that considers colors to be physical properties residing in objects that reflect, emit, or transmit light. It is opposed to the theory that colors are sensations or visual experiences. This commentary suggests that both theories are correct, and that context usually indicates which of these dual aspects is being considered.

Using the method of Descriptive Experience Sampling, some subjects report experiences of thinking that do not involve words or any other symbols [Hurlburt, R. T., and C. L. Heavey. 2006. Exploring Inner Experience. Amsterdam: John Benjamins; Hurlburt, R. T., and S. A. Akhter. 2008. “Unsymbolized Thinking.” Consciousness and Cognition 17 : 1364–1374]. Even though the possibility of this unsymbolized thinking has consequences for the debate on the phenomenological status of cognitive states, the phenomenon is still insufficiently examined. This paper analyzes (...) the main properties of unsymbolized thinking and advances an explanation of its origin. According to our analysis, unsymbolized thoughts appear as propositional states, that is, they are experienced as compositional conceptual phenomena, with semantic and syntactic features analogous to those of the contents of utterances. Based on this characterization, we hypothesize that UT is continuous with the activity of inner speech, in particular, it i... (shrink)

According to the thesis of semantic underdetermination, most sentences of a natural language lack a definite semantic interpretation. This thesis supports an argument against the use of natural language as an instrument of thought, based on the premise that cognition requires a semantically precise and compositional instrument. In this paper we examine several ways to construe this argument, as well as possible ways out for the cognitive view of natural language in the introspectivist version defended by Carruthers. Finally, we sketch (...) a view of the role of language in thought as a specialized tool, showing how it avoids the consequences of semantic underdetermination. (shrink)

Glenberg's account falls short in several respects. Besides requiring clearer explication of basic concepts, his account fails to recognize the autonomous nature of perception. His account of what is remembered, and its description, is too static. His strictures against connectionist modeling might be overcome by combining the notions of psychological space and principled learning in an embodied and situated network.

Je soutiens qu’accepter les explications réalistes intentionnelles du comportement cognitif conduit inévitablement à endosser l’hypothèse du langage de la pensée, et que cette position théorique est, par conséquent, largement répandue chez les philosophes de l’esprit. Au cours de la discussion, je propose un exposé succinct et précis de cette hypothèse et j’analyse une série d’exemples représentatifs de l’argumentation pro-LOT. Après avoir examiné deux cas de résistance à ce type de raisonnement, je conclus en montrant que le soutien accordé à la (...) LOT est empiriquement substantiel, en dépit de la flexibilité et du caractère incomplet de cette hypothèse. (shrink)

What, in essence, characterizes the mind? According to Searle, the potential to be conscious provides the only definitive criterion. Thus, conscious states are unquestionably "mental"; "shallow unconscious" states are also "mental" by virtue of their capacity to be conscious (at least in principle); but there are no "deep unconscious mental states" - i.e. those rules and procedures without access to consciousness, inferred by cognitive science to characterize the operations of the unconscious mind are not mental at all. Indeed, according to (...) Searle, they have no ontological status - they are simply ways of describing some interesting facets of purely physiological phenomena. (shrink)

A commentary on a target article by Alison Gopnik (1993) How we know our minds: the illusion of first-person knowledge of intentionality. Focusing on evidence of how children acquire a theory of mind, this commentary argues that there are internal inconsistencies in theories that both argue for the functional role of conscious experiences and the irreducibility of those experiences to third-person viewable information processing.

According to the dominant computational approach in cognitive science, cognitive agents are digital computers; according to the alternative approach, they are dynamical systems. This target article attempts to articulate and support the dynamical hypothesis. The dynamical hypothesis has two major components: the nature hypothesis (cognitive agents are dynamical systems) and the knowledge hypothesis (cognitive agents can be understood dynamically). A wide range of objections to this hypothesis can be rebutted. The conclusion is that cognitive systems may well be dynamical systems, (...) and only sustained empirical research in cognitive science will determine the extent to which that is true. (shrink)

The reflectance types that Byrne & Hilbert identify with colors count as types only in a way that is more dependent on, and more relative to color perceivers, than their account suggests. Their account of perceptual content may be overly focused on input conditions and distal causes.

It is argued that the only response to the mereological objections of the ordinary language philosopher available to the scientistic philosopher of mind requires the adoption of the view that ordinary psychological talk is theoretical and falsified by the findings of brain science. The availability of this sort of response produces a kind of stalemate between these opposed views and viewpoints: the claim that attribution of psychological predicates to parts of organisms is nonsense is met with the claim that it (...) is only nonsensical if our ordinary ways of talking are – naively – taken to be sacrosanct. The aim of the paper is to show that the ordinary language philosopher has a reply here that the scientistic philosopher is not in a position to ignore. Namely, that the only way to resist mereological objections is to adopt conceptions of personhood that are inimical to naturalistic accounts of mentality. (shrink)

A set of hypotheses is formulated for a connectionist approach to cognitive modeling. These hypotheses are shown to be incompatible with the hypotheses underlying traditional cognitive models. The connectionist models considered are massively parallel numerical computational systems that are a kind of continuous dynamical system. The numerical variables in the system correspond semantically to fine-grained features below the level of the concepts consciously used to describe the task domain. The level of analysis is intermediate between those of symbolic cognitive models (...) and neural models. The explanations of behavior provided are like those traditional in the physical sciences, unlike the explanations provided by symbolic models. Higher-level analyses of these connectionist models reveal subtle relations to symbolic models. Parallel connectionist memory and linguistic processes are hypothesized to give rise to processes that are describable at a higher level as sequential rule application. At the lower level, computation has the character of massively parallel satisfaction of soft numerical constraints; at the higher level, this can lead to competence characterizable by hard rules. Performance will typically deviate from this competence since behavior is achieved not by interpreting hard rules but by satisfying soft constraints. The result is a picture in which traditional and connectionist theoretical constructs collaborate intimately to provide an understanding of cognition. (shrink)