Real-world agents do not know all consequences of what they know. But we are reluctant to say that a rational agent can fail to know some trivial consequence of what she knows. Since every consequence of what she knows can be reached via chains of trivial cot be dismissed easily, as some have attempted to do. Rather, a solution must give adequate weight to the normative requirements on rational agents’ epistemic states, without treating those agents as mathematically ideal reasoners. I’ll (...) argue that agents can fail to know trivial consequences of what they know, but never determinately. Such cases are epistemic oversights on behalf of the agent in question, and the facts about epistemic oversights are always indeterminate facts. As a result, we are never in a position to assert that such-and-such constitutes an epistemic oversight for agent i (for we may rationally assert only determinate truths). I then develop formal epistemic models according to which epistemic accessibility relations are vague. Given these models, we can show that epistemic oversights always concern indeterminate cases of knowledge. (shrink)

In this reply to James H. Fetzer’s “Minds and Machines: Limits to Simulations of Thought and Action”, I argue that computationalism should not be the view that (human) cognition is computation, but that it should be the view that cognition (simpliciter) is computable. It follows that computationalism can be true even if (human) cognition is not the result of computations in the brain. I also argue that, if semiotic systems are systems that interpret signs, then both humans and computers are (...) semiotic systems. Finally, I suggest that minds can be considered as virtual machines implemented in certain semiotic systems, primarily the brain, but also AI computers. In doing so, I take issue with Fetzer’s arguments to the contrary. (shrink)

This paper deals with the question: what are the key requirements for a physical system to perform digital computation? Time and again cognitive scientists are quick to employ the notion of computation simpliciter when asserting basically that cognitive activities are computational. They employ this notion as if there was or is a consensus on just what it takes for a physical system to perform computation, and in particular digital computation. Some cognitive scientists in referring to digital computation simply adhere to (...) Turing’s notion of computability . Classical computability theory studies what functions on the natural numbers are computable and what mathematical problems are undecidable. Whilst a mathematical formalism of computability may perform a methodological function of evaluating computational theories of certain cognitive capacities, concrete computation in physical systems seems to be required for explaining cognition as an embodied phenomenon . There are many non-equivalent accounts of digital computation in physical systems. I examine only a handful of those in this paper: (1) Turing’s account ; (2) The triviality “account”; (3) Reconstructing Smith’s account of participatory computation ; (4) The Algorithm Execution account . My goal in this paper is twofold. First, it is to identify and clarify some of the underlying key requirements mandated by these accounts. I argue that these differing requirements justify a demand that one commits to a particular account when employing the notion of computation in regard to physical systems. Second, it is to argue that despite the informative role that mathematical formalisms of computability may play in cognitive science, they do not specify the relationship between abstract and concrete computation. (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?

ABSTRACTIn this paper, we consider non-associative generalisations of Hájek's logics BL and psBL. As it was shown by Cignoli, Esteva, Godo, and Torrens, the former is the logic of continuous t-norms and their residua. Botur introduced logic naBL which is the logic of non-associative continuous t-norms and their residua. Thus, naBL can be viewed as a non-associative generalisation of BL. However, Botur has not presented axiomatization of naBL. We fill this gap by constructing an adequate Hilbert-style calculus for naBL. Although, (...) as was shown by Flondor, Georgescu, and Iorgulescu, there are no non-commutative continuous t-norms, Hájek's psBL can be viewed as BL's non-commutative generalisation. We present the logic psnaBL of psnaBL-algebras which can be viewed as naBL's non-commutative generalisation as well as psBL's non-associative generalisation and BL's both non-commutative and non-associative generalisation. (shrink)

In this paper we provide a detailed proof-theoretical analysis of a natural deduction system for classical propositional logic that (i) represents classical proofs in a more natural way than standard Gentzen-style natural deduction, (ii) admits of a simple normalization procedure such that normal proofs enjoy the Weak Subformula Property, (iii) provides the means to prove a Non-contamination Property of normal proofs that is not satisfied by normal proofs in the Gentzen tradition and is useful for applications, especially in formal argumentation, (...) (iv) naturally leads to defining a notion of depth of a proof, to the effect that, for every fixed natural k, normal k-depth deducibility is a tractable problem and converges to classical deducibility as k tends to infinity. (shrink)

König, D. [1926. ‘Sur les correspondances multivoques des ensembles’, Fundamenta Mathematica, 8, 114–34] includes a result subsequently called König's Infinity Lemma. Konig, D. [1927. ‘Über eine Schlussweise aus dem Endlichen ins Unendliche’, Acta Litterarum ac Scientiarum, Szeged, 3, 121–30] includes a graph theoretic formulation: an infinite, locally finite and connected graph includes an infinite path. Contemporary applications of the infinity lemma in logic frequently refer to a consequence of the infinity lemma: an infinite, locally finite tree with a root has (...) a infinite branch. This tree lemma can be traced to [Beth, E. W. 1955. ‘Semantic entailment and formal derivability’, Mededelingen der Kon. Ned. Akad. v. Wet., new series 18, 13, 309–42]. It is argued that Beth independently discovered the tree lemma in the early 1950s and that it was later recognized among logicians that Beth's result was a consequence of the infinity lemma. The equivalence of these lemmas is an easy consequence of a well known result in graph theory: every connected, locally finite graph has among its partial subgraphs a spanning tree. (shrink)

Lucas-Penrose type arguments have been the focus of many papers in the literature. In the present paper we attempt to evaluate the consequences of Gödel’s incompleteness theorems for the philosophy of the mind. We argue that the best answer to this question was given by Gödel already in 1951 when he realized that either our intellectual capability is not representable by a Turing Machine, or we can never know with mathematical certainty what such a machine is. But his considerations became (...) known only in recent times when many scholars were already aware of Benacerraf’s and Chihara’s analyses on the consequences of Gödel’s incompleteness theorems for the philosophy of the mind. Benacerraf and Chihara, in fact, discussing Lucas’ paper, arrived at the same conclusions as Gödel in the sixties, but in a more formal way. After Penrose’s provocative arguments, Shapiro again shed light on the question. In our paper, after a broad and simple presentation of the contributions to the debate made by different authors, we show how to present Gödel’s argument in a rigorous way, highlighting the necessary philosophical premises of Gödel’s argument and more in general of Gödelian arguments. (shrink)

After C. L. Hamblin's groundbreaking work Fallacies, re-interpreting what used to be known as "mistakes in reasoning" or "bad arguments" since Aristotle, the study of fallacies started to bloom, coming up with ever new perspectives and conceptualizations of what should count as a mistake in reasoning and argumentation, and why a certain kind of reasoning should at all be considered a mistake. This paper will be concerned with two questions. First, an epistemological one: do we commit fallacies, or do we (...) use them? Secondly, a methodological one: when we detect a fallacy, on what conceptual grounds do we differentiate between committed and used fallacies? Aren't we forced to commit "fallacies" whenever we talk about other people, their views, or their work? Examples from Critical Discourse Analysis will be used to extensively illustrate this point. (shrink)

Cognitive science has been dominated by the computational conception that cognition is computation across representations. To the extent to which cognition as computation across representations is supposed to be a purposive, meaningful, algorithmic, problem-solving activity, however, computers appear to be incapable of cognition. They are devices that can facilitate computations on the basis of semantic grounding relations as special kinds of signs. Even their algorithmic, problem-solving character arises from their interpretation by human users. Strictly speaking, computers as such — apart (...) from human users — are not only incapable of cognition, but even incapable of computation, properly construed. If we want to understand the nature of thought, then we have to study thinking, not computing, because they are not the same thing. (shrink)

If we take "experimental philosophy" in a wider sense, it is almost the same as methodological naturalism in philosophy. Experiments of this kind would be available and also fruitful in the philosophy of mathematics. They surely will have a substantial contribution to epistemology of mathematics. At present, however, the phrase "experimental philosophy" is used in a much narrower sense. It refers exclusively to a branch of naturalized philosophy that uses the data gathered through questionnaire surveys to investigate the intuitions of (...) ordinary people. We claim that experimental philosophy in this narrower sense will have little relevance to the philosophy of mathematics, since the philosophy of mathematics is not engaged in conceptual analysis despite of its appearance. (shrink)

O'Brien & Opie do not address the question of the psychotherapeutic role of unconscious representational states such as beliefs. A dilemma is proposed: if they accept the legitimacy of such states then they should modify what they say about dissociation, and if they do not, they owe us an account of why.