In opposition to the natural view that observer perspective memory is bound to be inauthentic, McCarroll argues for the surprising conclusion that memories in which the subject sees himself in the remembered scene are, in many cases, true to the subject’s original experience of the scene. By means of a careful reconstruction of his argument, this paper shows that McCarroll does not succeed in establishing his conclusion. It shows, in fact, that we ought to come to the opposed conclusion that, (...) while it may be possible in principle for observer perspective memory to be authentic, this is unlikely ever to happen in practice. The natural view, in short, is more or less right. (shrink)

Despite the large interest in the human ability to perceive space present in neuroscience, cognitive science and psychology, as well as philosophy of mind, the issues regarding egocentric space representation received relatively less attention. In this paper I take up a unique phenomenon related to this faculty: the “spatial purport” of perceptual experiences. The notion was proposed by Rick Grush to describe the subjective, qualitative aspects of egocentric representations of spatial properties and relations. Although Grush offered an explanation of the (...) mechanism giving rise to appearance of spatial purport, his model had considerable shortcomings. In the paper I thoroughly analyze both the notion of spatial purport and Grush’s explanation of the mechanism at its core in order to develop his theory using the insights provided by the predictive processing theory of mind, and more particularly by the active inference framework. The extended account I offer, named Predictive and Hierarchical Skill Theory, explains phenomena that escaped Grush’s model and furthers the research on egocentric space representation from the perspective of both neuroscience and philosophy of mind. (shrink)

I develop an interdisciplinary framework for understanding the nature of agents and agency that is compatible with recent developments in the metaphysics of science and that also does justice to the mechanistic and normative characteristics of agents and agency as they are understood in moral philosophy, social psychology, neuroscience, robotics, and economics. The framework I develop is internal perspectivalist. That is to say, it counts agents as real in a perspective-dependent way, but not in a way that depends on an (...) external perspective. Whether or not something counts as an agent depends on whether it is able to have a certain kind of perspective. My approach differs from many others by treating possession of a perspective as more basic than the possession of agency, representational content/vehicles, cognition, intentions, goals, concepts, or mental or psychological states; these latter capabilities require the former, not the other way around. I explain what it means for a system to be able to have a perspective at all, beginning with simple cases in biology, and show how self-contained normative perspectives about proper function and control can emerge from mechanisms with relatively simple dynamics. I then describe how increasingly complex control architectures can become organized that allow for more complex perspectives that approach agency. Next, I provide my own account of the kind of perspective that is necessary for agency itself, the goal being to provide a reference against which other accounts can be compared. Finally, I introduce a crucial distinction that is necessary for understanding human agency: that between inclinational and committal agency, and venture a hypothesis about how the normative perspective underlying committal agency might be mechanistically realized. (shrink)

Neuroscientists commonly assume that the brain generates representations of a scene in various non-retinotopic 3D coordinate frames, for example in 'egocentric' and 'allocentric' frames. Although neurons in early visual cortex might be described as representing a scene in an eye-centred frame, using 2 dimensions of visual direction and one of binocular disparity, there is no convincing evidence of similarly organized cortical areas using non-retinotopic 3D coordinate frames nor of any systematic transfer of information from one frame to another. We propose (...) that perception and action in a 3D world could be achieved without generating ego- or allocentric 3D coordinate frames. Instead, we suggest that the fundamental operation the brain carries out is to compare a long state vector with a matrix of weights to choose an output. The processes involved in perception of a 3D scene and action within it depend, we suggest, on successive iterations of this basic operation. Advantages of this proposal include the fact that it relies on computationally well-defined operations corresponding to well-established neural processes. Also, we argue that from a philosophical perspective it is at least as plausible as theories postulating 3D coordinate frames. Finally, we suggest a variety of experiments that would falsify our claim. (shrink)

In this paper, I critically assess the enactive account of visual perception recently defended by Alva Noë (2004). I argue inter alia that the enactive account falsely identifies an object’s apparent shape with its 2D perspectival shape; that it mistakenly assimilates visual shape perception and volumetric object recognition; and that it seriously misrepresents the constitutive role of bodily action in visual awareness. I argue further that noticing an object’s perspectival shape involves a hybrid experience combining both perceptual and imaginative elements—an (...) act of what I call ‘make‐perceive’. (shrink)

The most important question concerning picture perception is: what perceptual state are we in when we see an object in a picture? In order to answer this question, philosophers have used the results of the two visual systems model, according to which our visual system can be divided into two streams, a ventral stream for object recognition, allowing one to perceive from an allocentric frame of reference, and a dorsal stream for visually guided motor interaction, thus allowing one to perceive (...) from an egocentric frame of reference. Following this model, philosophers denied that we can be in a dorsal perceptual state when perceiving a depicted object. This is because a depicted object is not physically graspable or manipulable and, in turn, it cannot be egocentrically localized, as a normal object, by the dorsal stream. Thus, the impossibility of manipulating depicted objects and of localizing them from an egocentric frame of reference has led some people to be sceptical about the possibility of a representation of action properties in the perception of objects in pictures, which pertains to the dorsal visual system. The aim of the present paper is to show that it is possible for the depicted object to be represented by dorsal perception. That means that we can ascribe action properties to depicted objects as well, even if depicted objects cannot be egocentrically localized—at least, not as much as normal objects can. (shrink)

Fodor advocates a view of cognitive processes as computations defined over the language of thought (or Mentalese). Even among those who endorse Mentalese, considerable controversy surrounds its representational format. What semantically relevant structure should scientific psychology attribute to Mentalese symbols? Researchers commonly emphasize logical structure, akin to that displayed by predicate calculus sentences. To counteract this tendency, I discuss computational models of navigation drawn from probabilistic robotics. These models involve computations defined over cognitive maps, which have geometric rather than logical (...) structure. They thereby demonstrate the possibility of rational cognitive processes in an exclusively non-logical representational medium. Furthermore, they offer much promise for the empirical study of animal navigation. (shrink)

At the phenomenal level, consciousness can be described as a singular, unified field of recursive self-awareness, consistently coherent in a particualr way; that of a subject located both spatially and temporally in an egocentrically-extended domain, such that conscious self-awareness is explicitly characterized by I-ness, now-ness and here-ness. The psychological mechanism underwriting this spatiotemporal self-locatedness and its recursive processing style involves an evolutionary elaboration of the basic orientative reference frame which consistently structures ongoing spatiotemporal self-location computations as i-here-now. Cognition computes action-output (...) in the midst of ongoing movement, and consequently requires a constant self-locating spatiotemporal reference frame as basis for these computations. Over time, constant evolutionary pressures for energy efficiency have encouraged both the proliferation of anticipative feedforward processing mechansims, and the elaboration, at the apex of the sensorimotor processing hierarchy, of self-activating, highly attenuated recursively-feedforward circuitry processing the basic orientational schema independent of external action output. As the primary reference frame of active waking cognition, this recursive i-here-now processing generates a zone of subjective self-awareness in terms of which it feels like something to be oneself here and now. This is consciousness. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to defend what I call the action-oriented coding theory (ACT) of spatially contentful visual experience. Integral to ACT is the view that conscious visual experience and visually guided action make use of a common subject-relative or 'egocentric' frame of reference. Proponents of the influential two visual systems hypothesis (TVSH), however, have maintained on empirical grounds that this view is false (Milner & Goodale, 1995/2006; Clark, 1999; 2001; Campbell, 2002; Jacob & Jeannerod, 2003; Goodale & (...) Milner, 2004). One main source of evidence for TVSH comes from behavioral studies of the comparative effects of size-contrast illusions on visual awareness and visuo- motor action. This paper shows that not only is the evidence from illusion studies inconclusive, there is a better, ACT-friendly interpretation of the evidence that avoids serious theoretical difficulties faced by TVSH. (shrink)

Neuropsychological findings used to motivate the "two visual systems" hypothesis have been taken to endanger a pair of widely accepted claims about spatial representation in conscious visual experience. The first is the claim that visual experience represents 3-D space around the perceiver using an egocentric frame of reference. The second is the claim that there is a constitutive link between the spatial contents of visual experience and the perceiver's bodily actions. In this paper, I review and assess three main sources (...) of evidence for the two visual systems hypothesis. I argue that the best interpretation of the evidence is in fact consistent with both claims. I conclude with some brief remarks on the relation between visual consciousness and rational agency. (shrink)

I put forward an externalist theory of social understanding. On this view, psychological sense making takes place in environments that contain both agent and interpreter. The spatial structure of such environments is social, in the sense that its occupants locate its objects by an exercise in triangulation relative to each of their standpoints. This triangulation is achieved in intersubjective interaction and gives rise to a triadic model of the social mind. This model can then be used to make sense of (...) others’ observed actions. Its possession plays a vital role in the development of the capacity for false belief reasoning. The view offers an integrated account of the development of social cognition from primary intersubjectivity to level-2 perspective taking. It incorporates insights from interactionism and mindreading theories of social cognition and thus offers a way out of the stalemate between defenders of the two views. Because psychological sense making is perspectival, the frame problem does not arise for social reasoners: the perspective they bring to bear on the action that is to be interpreted constrains the information they can select to make sense of what others do. (shrink)

Memories often come with a feeling of pastness. The events we remember strike us as having occurred in our past. What accounts for this feeling of pastness? In his recent book, Memory: A self-referential account, Jordi Fernández argues that the feeling of pastness cannot be grounded in an explicit representation of the pastness of the remembered event. Instead, he argues that the feeling of pastness is grounded in the self-referential causal content of memory. In this paper, I argue that this (...) account falls short. The representation of causal origin does not by itself ground a feeling of pastness. Instead, I argue that we can salvage the temporal localization account of the feeling of pastness by describing a form of egocentric temporal representation that avoids Fernández’s criticisms. (shrink)

Philosophers have suggested that, in order to understand the particular visual state we are in during picture perception, we should focus on experimental results from vision neuroscience—in particular, on the most rigorous account of the functioning of the visual system that we have from vision neuroscience, namely, the ‘Two Visual Systems Model’. According to the initial version of this model, our visual system can be dissociated, from an anatomo-functional point of view, into two streams: a ventral stream subserving visual recognition, (...) and a dorsal stream subserving the visual guidance of action. Following this model, philosophers have suggested that, since the two streams have different functions, they represent different properties of a picture. However, the original view proposed by the ‘Two Visual Systems Model’ about the presence of a strong anatomo-functional dissociation between the two streams has recently been questioned on both philosophical and experimental grounds. Indeed, the analysis of several new pieces of evidence seems to suggest that many visual representations in our visual system, related to different tasks, are the result of a deep functional interaction between the streams. In the light of the renewed status of the ‘Two Visual Systems Model’, also our best philosophical model of picture perception should be renewed, in order to take into account a view of the process of picture perception informed by the new evidence about such interaction. Despite this, no account fulfilling this role has been offered yet. The aim of the present paper is precisely to offer such an account. It does this by suggesting that the peculiar visual state we are in during picture perception is subserved by interstream interaction. This proposal allows us to rely on a rigorous philosophical account of picture perception that is, however, also based on the most recent results from neuroscience. Unless the explanation offered in this paper is endorsed, all the recent evidence from vision neuroscience will remain unexplained under our best empirically informed philosophical theory of picture perception. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:Are face-to-face perception and picture perception different perceptual phenomena? The question is controversial. On the one hand, philosophers have offered several solid arguments showing that, despite some resemblances, they are quite different perceptual phenomena and that pictures are special objects of perception. On the other hand, neuroscientists routinely use pictures in experimental settings as substitutes for normal objects, and this practice is successful in explaining how the human visual system works. But this seems to imply that face-to-face perception and picture (...) perception are very similar, if not actually the same. How can we decide between these two opposite intuitions? Here I offer a regimentation of the notion of picture perception that can reconcile these two apparently conflicting ideas about pictures. It follows that philosophers and neuroscientists can maintain their respective stances without any theoretical conflict. (shrink)

This dissertation examines representationalism about sensory phenomenology—the claim that for a sensory experience to have a particular phenomenal character is a matter of it having a particular representational content. I focus on a particular issue that is central to representationalism: whether reductive versions of the theory should be internalist or externalist. My primary goals are to demonstrate that externalist representationalism fails to provide a reductive explanation for phenomenal qualities, and to present a reductive internalist version of representationalism that utilizes the (...) empirical framework of psychophysics and neuroscience to develop a philosophical theory of content. The bulk of the project is an attempt to provide the outlines of what such an empirically-based representationalist theory would look like. In chapter 2, I argue that reductive externalist representationalism fails because it is vulnerable to the problem of bad structural correlation: the mismatch between the structure of phenomenal qualities and the structure of physical properties “tracked” by our sensory systems with which phenomenal qualities are identified. In chapter 3, I develop the outlines of a reductive internalist version of representationalism that characterizes phenomenal qualities as modes of presentation of sensory representations that can be reductively characterized in terms of a location in a psychophysically-defined quality space, which can in turn be given a neurophysiological interpretation. In addition, I argue that the neural mechanisms responsible for the representation of spatial locations and visual objects serve a referential role in sensory psychosemantics that grounds the intentionality of sensory states. In chapter 5 I provide a detailed account of the representation of spatial locations in sensory experience, and in chapter 6 I examine the “binding problem”, demonstrating how object-based sensory representations function to demonstratively pick out sensory individuals without explicitly representing any of their features. I describe the resulting view as methodological representationalism: an attempt to demonstrate how a particular philosophical theory of sensory phenomenology can be integrated into the empirical framework of cognitive science, and thereby provide an explanatory psychosemantic framework for sensory phenomenology that is valuable to both philosophers and cognitive scientists. (shrink)

Representationalists hold that the phenomenal character of a perceptual experience is identical with, or supervenes on, an aspect of its representational content. As such, representationalism could be disproved by a counter-example consisting of two experiences that have the same representational content but differ in phenomenal character. In this paper, I discuss two recently proposed counter-examples to representationalism that involve ambiguous or reversible figures. I pursue two goals. My first, and most important, goal is to show that the representationalist can offer (...) plausible responses to both counter-examples. My second goal is to show the implications of these responses for the nature of the spatial representational contents of perceptual experiences. (shrink)

The current paper argues for synchronising spatial frames of reference for achieving effective multiparty communication in collaborative virtual environments. Synchronising nonverbal behaviour from different modalities is an important step for simulating face-to-face-interaction where all nonverbal cues are available. Such synchronisation also serves as an effective basis for building multimodal interfaces especially if these have to be deployed for multiparty communication. It is argued that common spatial reference frames are helpful in coordinating different points of attention and facilitating work by serving (...) as the springboard for joint attention among members of the team. Consequently, it is desirable to aim for such common grounds and not just focus on coordinating disjointed virtual spaces for facilitating decision-making by reducing felt collaborative effort. Implementing the synchronisation of spatial reference frames for modern technologies thus serves dual purposes by achieving common grounds in communication and maintaining autonomy of each member at the same time. Towards this end, the current paper proposes the concept of decentred egocentric frame, the origin of which is one’s own body and the spatial relation between two objects is defined with respect to this origin. This frame seems to be important for separating each member’s focus from his own body (self/activities) and also helps in coordinating one’s focus with those of the others whether interacting verbally or nonverbally. This is an important conceptual development as the proposed classification is hypothesised to function in a similar manner across different sensory modalities. The paper concludes with issues on implementation and other future conceptual developments. (shrink)

The representational dynamics of the brain is a subsymbolic process, and it has to be conceived as an "agent-free" type of dynamical self-organization. However, in generating a coherent internal world-model, the brain decomposes target space in a certain way. In doing so, it defines an "ontology": to have an ontology is to interpret a world. In this paper we argue that the brain, viewed as a representational system aimed at interpreting the world, possesses an ontology too. It decomposes target space (...) in a way that exhibits certain invariances, which in turn are functionally significant. A challenge for empirical research is to determine which are the functional regularities guiding this decomposition process. What are the explicit and implicit assumptions about the structure of reality, which at the same time shape the causal profile of the brain's motor output and the representational deep structure of the conscious mind arising from it (its "phenomenal output")? How do they constrain high-level phenomena like conscious experience, the emergence of a first-person perspective, or social cognition? By reviewing a series of neuroscientific results, we focus on the contribution the motor system makes to this process. As it turns out, the motor system constructs goals, actions, and intending selves as basic constituents of the world it interprets. It does so by assigning a single, unified causal role to them. Empirical evidence now clearly shows how the brain actually codes movements and action goals in terms of multimodal representations of organism-object relations. Under a representationalist analysis, this process can be interpreted as an internal representation of the intentionality relation itself. We try to show how such a more complex form of representational content, once it is in place, can later function as the building block for social cognition and a for more complex, consciously experienced representation of the first-person perspective as well. The motor system may therefore play a decisive role in understanding how the functional ontology of the human brain could be gradually extended into the subjective and social domains. (shrink)

Before one can talk about global arrays and multimodal detection, one must be clear about the concept of information: How is it different from energy and how is it detected? And can it come to specify a needed movement? We consider these issues in our commentary.

An attempt is made to defend a general approach to the spatial content of perception, an approach according to which perception is imbued with spatial content in virtue of certain kinds of connections between perceiving organism's sensory input and its behavioral output. The most important aspect of the defense involves clearly distinguishing two kinds of perceptuo-behavioral skills—the formation of dispositions, and a capacity for emulation. The former, the formation of dispositions, is argued to by the central pivot of spatial content. (...) I provide a neural information processing interpretation of what these dispositions amount to, and describe how dispositions, so understood, are an obvious implementation of Gareth Evans' proposal on the topic. Furthermore, I describe what sorts of contribution are made by emulation mechanisms, and I also describe exactly how the emulation framework differs from similar but distinct notions with which it is often unhelpfully confused, such as sensorimotor contingencies and forward models. (shrink)

Loneliness is often described as an experience that is about the absence of other people. But loneliness also has an important self-directed aspect: it is oneself one experiences as lonely. I begin by taking it that what the lonely person experiences as absent are not simply other people but rather certain kinds of social relationships with them. Loneliness then involves a disappointed self-relation, a form of estrangement from oneself. I substantiate this view by appeal to psychological model theory. Social agents (...) operate with triadic models of their environments that they themselves, together with the other person and the environment, help constitute. Social models are formed on the basis of intersubjective interaction and enable the social agent to contribute to these interactions. Conceptually more sophisticated versions of social models are at play in the conduct of complex social relationships like friendships or partnerships. Participants in these relationships regulate their social activities by applying the model to concrete situations and then acting so as to adjust the social situation to the model they entertain of it. The self thus features twice in the social agent’s experience, as a participant in the interaction and as an observing and regulating perceiver. Loneliness is the result of one way in which social reality can fail to be in tune with the model the person has of it. It involves a discrepancy between the model of her social life, including her own role in it, and how she perceives that social life to be. (shrink)

Reality testing is the process by which we distinguish our own perceptual states from imagination or episodic memory. I argue that reality testing is a metacognitive process. Since reality testing is also accomplished by creatures who lack mental state concepts, it follows that reality testing is a nonconceptual metacognitive process. I also provide prima facie evidence that reality testing is a necessary condition for prototypical cognitive states like belief. It follows that metacognition is phylogenetically and logically prior to cognition in (...) many cases. (shrink)

In this special issue, we put together papers that explore the theme “objectivity, space, and mind” from various angles. In the introduction we minimally discuss what are involved in this theme.

Epistemic feelings like tip-of-the-tongue experiences, feelings of knowing, and feelings of confidence tell us when a memory can be recalled and when a judgment was correct. Thus, they appear to be a form of metacognition, but a curious one: they tell us about content we cannot access, and the information is supplied by a feeling. Evaluativism is the claim that epistemic feelings are components of a distinct, primitive metacognitive mechanism that operates on its own set of inputs. These inputs are (...) heuristics that correlate with the presence of mental content that can’t be accessed directly. I will argue that evaluativism is unmotivated, unsupported, and ill-conceived. I will critique the philosophical and empirical arguments for evaluativism and conclude that there is no reason to posit a distinct mechanism to explain epistemic feelings. I will conclude, however, that epistemic feelings may constitute a nonconceptual form of metacognition, which if true is a significant claim. (shrink)

To have an ontology is to interpret a world. In this paper we argue that the brain, viewed as a representational system aimed at interpreting our world, possesses an ontology too. It creates primitives and makes existence assumptions. It decomposes target space in a way that exhibits a certain invariance, which in turn is functionally significant. We will investigate which are the functional regularities guiding this decomposition process, by answering to the following questions: What are the explicit and implicit assumptions (...) about the structure of reality, which at the same time shape the causal profile of the brain's motor output and its representational deep structure, in particular of the conscious mind arising from it (its ''phenomenal output'')? How do they constrain high-level phenomena like conscious experience, the emergence of a first-person perspective, or social cognition? By reviewing a series of neuroscientific results and integrating them with a wider philosophical perspective, we will emphasize the contribution the motor system makes to this process. As it will be shown, the motor system constructs goals, actions, and intending selves as basic constituents of the world it interprets. It does so by assigning a single, unified causal role to them. Empirical evidence demonstrates that the brain models movements and action goals in terms of multimodal representations of organism-object-relations. Under a representationalist analysis, this process can be conceived of as an internal, dynamic representation of the intentionality-relation itself. We will show how such a complex form of representational content, once it is in place, can later function as a functional building block for social cognition and for a more complex, consciously experienced representation of the first-person perspective as well. (shrink)

Philosophical considerations as well as several recent studies from neurophysiology, neuropsychology, and psychophysics converged in showing that the peripersonal space is structured in a body-centred manner and represented through integrated sensory inputs. Multisensory representations may deserve the function of coding peripersonal space for avoiding or interacting with objects. Neuropsychological evidence is reviewed for dynamic interactions between space representations and action execution, as revealed by the behavioural effects that the use of a tool, as a physical extension of the reachable space, (...) produces on visual–tactile extinction. In particular, tool-use transiently modifies action space representation in a functionally effective way. The possibility is discussed that the investigation of multisensory space representations for action provides an empirical way to consider in its specificity pre-reflexive self-consciousness by considering the intertwining of self-relatedness and object-directness of spatial experience shaped by multisensory and sensorimotor integrations. (shrink)

Ferdinand Pöhlmann argues that a sense of one’s own basic abilities to move is a constitutive condition on the ability to perceive the world spatially. This constitutive relation explains why egocentric spatial representation is to be regarded as a kind of self-representation. In arguing for these claims, conceptual as well as empirical questions are discussed and an overview of accounts that take action as a constitutive condition on spatial representation is given. The picture that emerges is linked to the phenomenological (...) (Scheler) as well as to the analytic (Evans) tradition in the Philosophy of Mind.​. (shrink)

I put forward an externalist theory of social understanding. On this view, psychological sense making takes place in environments that contain both agent and interpreter. The spatial structure of such environments is social, in the sense that its occupants locate its objects by an exercise in triangulation relative to each of their standpoints. This triangulation is achieved in intersubjective interaction and gives rise to a triadic model of the social mind. This model can then be used to make sense of (...) others’ observed actions. Its possession plays a vital role in the development of the capacity for false belief reasoning. The view offers an integrated account of the development of social cognition from primary intersubjectivity to level-2 perspective taking. It incorporates insights from interactionism and mindreading theories of social cognition and thus offers a way out of the stalemate between defenders of the two views. Because psychological sense making is perspectival, the frame problem does not arise for social reasoners: the perspective they bring to bear on the action that is to be interpreted constrains the information they can select to make sense of what others do. (shrink)