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  1. Imaginability as Representability: A Wittgensteinian Approach to Aphantasia.Christian Oliver Scholz - 2023 - Master of Logic Thesis (Mol) Series.
    Aphantasia, i.e., the inability to voluntarily form visual mental images, affects approximately 2 to 5 percent of the population and plays an important role in a more general debate revolving around the role of imagery for our cognition. This thesis investigates aphantasia by means of an interdisciplinary approach, combining insights from contemporary neuroscientific research with historical philosophical arguments, with a specific focus on the later philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein. A new theoretical concept, meta-imagination, is developed and it is argued that (...)
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  • Familiar Properties and Phenomenal Properties.Thomas Raleigh - 2022 - Analytic Philosophy (2):274-300.
    Sometimes when we describe our own sensory experiences we seem to attribute to experience itself the same sorts of familiar properties – such as shape or colour – as we attribute to everyday physical objects. But how literally should we understand such descriptions? Can there really be phenomenal elements or aspects to an experience which are, for example, quite literally square? This paper examines how these questions connect to a wide range of different commitments and theories about the metaphysics of (...)
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  • The ephemeral stories of our lives.Nick Chater - 2023 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 46:e89.
    Johnson et al. make a persuasive case that qualitative, story-like reasoning plays a crucial role in everyday thought and decision-making. This commentary questions the cohesiveness of this type of reasoning and the representations that generate it. Perhaps narratives do not underpin, but are ephemeral products of thought, created when we need to justify our actions to ourselves and others.
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  • Inference and the structure of concepts.Matías Osta Vélez - 2020 - Dissertation, Ludwig Maximilians Universität, München
    This thesis studies the role of conceptual content in inference and reasoning. The first two chapters offer a theoretical and historical overview of the relation between inference and meaning in philosophy and psychology. In particular, a critical analysis of the formality thesis, i.e., the idea that rational inference is a rule-based and topic-neutral mechanism, is advanced. The origins of this idea in logic and its influence in philosophy and cognitive psychology are discussed. Chapter 3 consists of an analysis of the (...)
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  • Why Successful Performance in Imagery Tasks Does not Require the Manipulation of Mental Imagery.Thomas Park - 2019 - Avant: Trends in Interdisciplinary Studies 2 (X):1-11.
    Nanay (2017) argues for unconscious mental imagery, inter alia based on the assumption that successful performance in imagery tasks requires the manipulation of mental imagery. I challenge this assumption with the help of results presented in Shepard and Metzler (1971), Zeman et al. (2010), and Keogh and Pearson (2018). The studies suggest that imagery tasks can be successfully performed by means of cognitive/propositional strategies which do not rely on imagery.
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  • The man becomes Adam‎.Mony Almalech - 2018 - In Audroné Daubariené, Simona Stano & Ulrika Varankaité (eds.), Cross-Inter-Multi-Trans Proceedings of the 13th World Congress of the International Association for Semiotic Studies (IASS/AIS).
    The paper is focused on Genesis 1 – 3 where the primordial man [adàm] is created ‎and he was given the proper name Adam [adàm]. ‎ In Hebrew man and Adam are the same word, spelled the same way – [adàm]. ‎Different translations of Genesis 1-3 use for the first time the proper name Adam in ‎different places versions Gen 2:25; The German Luther ‎Bible Gen 3:8; Some English Protestant versions Gen 3:17; Bulgarian Protestant and many ‎English Protestant versions Gen (...)
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  • The Fallacy of the Homuncular Fallacy.Carrie Figdor - 2018 - Belgrade Philosophical Annual 31 (31):41-56.
    A leading theoretical framework for naturalistic explanation of mind holds that we explain the mind by positing progressively "stupider" capacities ("homunculi") until the mind is "discharged" by means of capacities that are not intelligent at all. The so-called homuncular fallacy involves violating this procedure by positing the same capacities at subpersonal levels. I argue that the homuncular fallacy is not a fallacy, and that modern-day homunculi are idle posits. I propose an alternative view of what naturalism requires that reflects how (...)
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  • Is There Progress in Philosophy? The Case for Taking History Seriously.Peter P. Slezak - 2018 - Philosophy 93 (4):529-555.
    In response to widespread doubts among professional philosophers (Russell, Horwich, Dietrich, McGinn, Chalmers), Stoljar argues for a ‘reasonable optimism’ about progress in philosophy. He defends the large and surprising claim that ‘there is progress on all or reasonably many of the big questions.’ However, Stoljar’s caveats and admitted avoidance of historical evidence permits overlooking persistent controversies in philosophy of mind and cognitive science that are essentially unchanged since the 17th Century. Stoljar suggests that his claims are commonplace in philosophy departments (...)
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  • Conceivability and possibility: some dilemmas for Humeans.Francesco Berto & Tom Schoonen - 2018 - Synthese 195 (6):2697-2715.
    The Humean view that conceivability entails possibility can be criticized via input from cognitive psychology. A mainstream view here has it that there are two candidate codings for mental representations (one of them being, according to some, reducible to the other): the linguistic and the pictorial, the difference between the two consisting in the degree of arbitrariness of the representation relation. If the conceivability of P at issue for Humeans involves the having of a linguistic mental representation, then it is (...)
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  • Explanation: a mechanist alternative.William Bechtel & Adele Abrahamsen - 2005 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 36 (2):421-441.
    Explanations in the life sciences frequently involve presenting a model of the mechanism taken to be responsible for a given phenomenon. Such explanations depart in numerous ways from nomological explanations commonly presented in philosophy of science. This paper focuses on three sorts of differences. First, scientists who develop mechanistic explanations are not limited to linguistic representations and logical inference; they frequently employ diagrams to characterize mechanisms and simulations to reason about them. Thus, the epistemic resources for presenting mechanistic explanations are (...)
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  • Why Are Some Phenomenal Experiences 'Vivid' and Others 'Faint'? Representationalism, Imagery, and Cognitive Phenomenology.David Bourget - 2017 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 95 (4):673-687.
    One central brand of representationalism claims that the specific phenomenal character of an experience is fully determined by its content. A challenge for this view is that cognitive and perceptual experiences sometimes seem to have the same representational content while differing in phenomenal character. In particular, it might seem that one can have faint imagery experiences or conscious thoughts with the same contents as vivid perceptual experiences. This paper argues that such cases never arise, and that they are probably metaphysically (...)
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  • The cognitive neuroscience revolution.Worth Boone & Gualtiero Piccinini - 2016 - Synthese 193 (5):1509-1534.
    We outline a framework of multilevel neurocognitive mechanisms that incorporates representation and computation. We argue that paradigmatic explanations in cognitive neuroscience fit this framework and thus that cognitive neuroscience constitutes a revolutionary break from traditional cognitive science. Whereas traditional cognitive scientific explanations were supposed to be distinct and autonomous from mechanistic explanations, neurocognitive explanations aim to be mechanistic through and through. Neurocognitive explanations aim to integrate computational and representational functions and structures across multiple levels of organization in order to explain (...)
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  • The Needlessness of Adverbialism, Attributeism and its Compatibilty with Cognitive Science.Hilla Jacobson & Hilary Putnam - 2014 - Philosophia 42 (3):555-570.
    Although adverbialism is not given much attention in current discussions of phenomenal states, it remains of interest to philosophers who reject the representationalist view of such states, in suggesting an alternative to a problematic ‘act-property’ conception. We discuss adverbialism and the formalization Tye once offered for it, and criticize the semantics he proposed for this formalization. Our central claim is that Tye’s ontological purposes could have been met by a more minimal view, which we dub “attributeism”. We then show that (...)
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  • Representation-hunger reconsidered.Jan Degenaar & Erik Myin - 2014 - Synthese 191 (15):3639-3648.
    According to a standard representationalist view cognitive capacities depend on internal content-carrying states. Recent alternatives to this view have been met with the reaction that they have, at best, limited scope, because a large range of cognitive phenomena—those involving absent and abstract features—require representational explanations. Here we challenge the idea that the consideration of cognition regarding the absent and the abstract can move the debate about representationalism along. Whether or not cognition involving the absent and the abstract requires the positing (...)
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  • Precis of.D. M. Wegner - 2004 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 27.
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  • Inner speech slips exhibit lexical bias, but not the phonemic similarity effect.Gary M. Oppenheim & Gary S. Dell - 2008 - Cognition 106 (1):528-537.
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  • The diversity of the schizophrenias.Raymond Faber - 1986 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 9 (3):522-522.
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  • Who may I say is calling?Kathleen A. Akins & Daniel C. Dennett - 1986 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 9 (3):517-518.
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  • Cognition and comparative psychology.George A. Miller - 1983 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 6 (1):152-153.
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  • The abstract code as a translation device.David Premack - 1983 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 6 (1):158-167.
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  • A new abstract code or the new possibility of multiple codes?Annette Karmiloff Smith - 1983 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 6 (1):149-150.
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  • Underestimating the importance of the implementational level.Michael Van Kleeck - 1987 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 10 (3):497-498.
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  • The evolutionary aspect of cognitive functions.J. -P. Ewert - 1987 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 10 (3):481-483.
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  • The study of cognition and instructional design: Mutual nurturance.Robert Glaser - 1987 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 10 (3):483-484.
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  • Ambiguities in “the algorithmic level”.Alvin I. Goldman - 1987 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 10 (3):484-485.
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  • Eye scanpaths during visual imagery reenact those of perception of the same visual scene.Bruno Laeng & Dinu-Stefan Teodorescu - 2002 - Cognitive Science 26 (2):207-231.
    Eye movements during mental imagery are not epiphenomenal but assist the process of image generation. Commands to the eyes for each fixation are stored along with the visual representation and are used as spatial index in a motor‐based coordinate system for the proper arrangement of parts of an image. In two experiments, subjects viewed an irregular checkerboard or color pictures of fish and were subsequently asked to form mental images of these stimuli while keeping their eyes open. During the perceptual (...)
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  • Body and Mind: Zajonc’s (Re)introduction of the Motor System to Emotion and Cognition.Paula M. Niedenthal, Maria Augustinova & Magdalena Rychlowska - 2010 - Emotion Review 2 (4):340-347.
    Zajonc and Markus published a chapter in 1984 that proposed solutions to the difficult problem of modeling interactions between cognition and emotion. The most radical of their proposals was the importance of the motor system in information processing. These initial preoccupations, when wedded with the vascular theory of emotional efference (VTEE), propelled theory and research about how the face works to control emotion and to control interpersonal interaction. We discuss the development of Bob’s thinking about facial expression—facial efference is the (...)
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  • Embodied Social Cognition.Shannon Spaulding - 2011 - Philosophical Topics 39 (1):141-162.
    In this paper I evaluate embodied social cognition, embodied cognition’s account of how we understand others. I identify and evaluate three claims that motivate embodied social cognition. These claims are not specific to social cognition; they are general hypotheses about cognition. As such, they may be used in more general arguments for embodied cognition. I argue that we have good reasons to reject these claims. Thus, the case for embodied social cognition fails. Moreover, to the extent that general arguments for (...)
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  • Seeing the language: a diagrammatic approach to natural discourse.Aránzazu San Ginés - 2012 - Synthese 186 (1):411-439.
    The key idea behind the diagrammatic approach presented in the paper is that the sophisticated mechanisms of human visual construction also play an important role in natural languages. We propose a diagrammatic representation of English, giving examples, translation rules, and semantics. Special attention will be paid to anaphoric phenomena, in particular, the possibility of a uniform treatment of anaphoric pronouns.
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  • The multidimensional spectrum of imagination: Images, Dreams, Hallucinations, and Active, Imaginative Perception.Nigel J. T. Thomas - 2014 - Humanities 3 (2):132-184.
    A theory of the structure and cognitive function of the human imagination that attempts to do justice to traditional intuitions about its psychological centrality is developed, largely through a detailed critique of the theory propounded by Colin McGinn. Like McGinn, I eschew the highly deflationary views of imagination, common amongst analytical philosophers, that treat it either as a conceptually incoherent notion, or as psychologically trivial. However, McGinn fails to develop his alternative account satisfactorily because (following Reid, Wittgenstein and Sartre) he (...)
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  • (1 other version)The philosophy of computer science.Raymond Turner - 2013 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
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  • Theory of mind and other domain-specific hypotheses.C. M. Heyes - 2001 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 24 (6):1143-1145.
    The commentators do not contest the target article's claim that there is no compelling evidence of theory of mind in primates, and recent empirical studies further support this view. If primates lack theory of mind, they may still have other behavior control mechanisms that are adaptive in complex social environments. The Somatic Marker Mechanism (SMM) is a candidate, but the SMM hypothesis postulates a much weaker effect of natural selection on social cognition than the theory of mind hypothesis (on inputs (...)
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  • Are theories of imagery theories of imagination? An active perception approach to conscious mental content.Nigel J. T. Thomas - 1999 - Cognitive Science 23 (2):207-245.
    Can theories of mental imagery, conscious mental contents, developed within cognitive science throw light on the obscure (but culturally very significant) concept of imagination? Three extant views of mental imagery are considered: quasi‐pictorial, description, and perceptual activity theories. The first two face serious theoretical and empirical difficulties. The third is (for historically contingent reasons) little known, theoretically underdeveloped, and empirically untried, but has real explanatory potential. It rejects the “traditional” symbolic computational view of mental contents, but is compatible with recentsituated (...)
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  • How minds can be computational systems.William J. Rapaport - 1998 - Journal of Experimental and Theoretical Artificial Intelligence 10 (4):403-419.
    The proper treatment of computationalism, as the thesis that cognition is computable, is presented and defended. Some arguments of James H. Fetzer against computationalism are examined and found wanting, and his positive theory of minds as semiotic systems is shown to be consistent with computationalism. An objection is raised to an argument of Selmer Bringsjord against one strand of computationalism, namely, that Turing-Test± passing artifacts are persons, it is argued that, whether or not this objection holds, such artifacts will inevitably (...)
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  • Representations and cognitive explanations: Assessing the dynamicist challenge in cognitive science.William Bechtel - 1998 - Cognitive Science 22 (3):295-317.
    Advocates of dynamical systems theory (DST) sometimes employ revolutionary rhetoric. In an attempt to clarify how DST models differ from others in cognitive science, I focus on two issues raised by DST: the role for representations in mental models and the conception of explanation invoked. Two features of representations are their role in standing-in for features external to the system and their format. DST advocates sometimes claim to have repudiated the need for stand-ins in DST models, but I argue that (...)
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  • Connectionism and cognitive architecture: A critical analysis.Jerry A. Fodor & Zenon W. Pylyshyn - 1988 - Cognition 28 (1-2):3-71.
    This paper explores the difference between Connectionist proposals for cognitive a r c h i t e c t u r e a n d t h e s o r t s o f m o d e l s t hat have traditionally been assum e d i n c o g n i t i v e s c i e n c e . W e c l a i m t h a t t h (...)
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  • (2 other versions)The imagery debate.Kim Sterelny - 1986 - Philosophy of Science 53 (December):560-83.
    One central debate in cognitive science is over imagery. Do images constitute, or constitute evidence for, a distinctive, depictive form of mental representation? The most sophisticated advocacy of this view has been developed by Kosslyn and his coworkers. This paper focuses on his position and argues (i) that though Kosslyn has not developed a satisfactory account of depiction, there is nothing in principle unintelligible about the idea of depictive neural representation, but (ii) Kosslyn's model of imagery rescues the intelligibility of (...)
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  • Mental imagery.Nigel J. T. Thomas - 2001 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
    Mental imagery (varieties of which are sometimes colloquially refered to as “visualizing,” “seeing in the mind's eye,” “hearing in the head,” “imagining the feel of,” etc.) is quasi-perceptual experience; it resembles perceptual experience, but occurs in the absence of the appropriate external stimuli. It is also generally understood to bear intentionality (i.e., mental images are always images of something or other), and thereby to function as a form of mental representation. Traditionally, visual mental imagery, the most discussed variety, was thought (...)
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  • Imagery.Zenon Pylyshyn - 2004 - In Richard Langton Gregory (ed.), The Oxford companion to the mind. New York: Oxford University Press.
    In Gregory, Richard. Oxford Companion to the Mind (Second Edition, 2006) Oxford University Press.
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  • Mental imagery: In search of a theory.Zenon W. Pylyshyn - 2002 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 25 (2):157-182.
    It is generally accepted that there is something special about reasoning by using mental images. The question of how it is special, however, has never been satisfactorily spelled out, despite more than thirty years of research in the post-behaviorist tradition. This article considers some of the general motivation for the assumption that entertaining mental images involves inspecting a picture-like object. It sets out a distinction between phenomena attributable to the nature of mind to what is called the cognitive architecture, and (...)
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  • How direct is visual perception? Some reflections on Gibson's 'ecological approach'.Jerry A. Fodor & Zenon W. Pylyshyn - 1981 - Cognition 9 (2):139-96.
    Examines the theses that the postulation of mental processing is unnecessary to account for our perceptual relationship with the world, see turvey etal. for a criticque.
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  • Mental Representation.David Pitt - 2020 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
    The notion of a "mental representation" is, arguably, in the first instance a theoretical construct of cognitive science. As such, it is a basic concept of the Computational Theory of Mind, according to which cognitive states and processes are constituted by the occurrence, transformation and storage (in the mind/brain) of information-bearing structures (representations) of one kind or another.
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  • The tripartite model of representation.Peter Slezak - 2002 - Philosophical Psychology 15 (3):239-270.
    Robert Cummins [(1996) Representations, targets and attitudes, Cambridge, MA: Bradford/MIT, p. 1] has characterized the vexed problem of mental representation as "the topic in the philosophy of mind for some time now." This remark is something of an understatement. The same topic was central to the famous controversy between Nicolas Malebranche and Antoine Arnauld in the 17th century and remained central to the entire philosophical tradition of "ideas" in the writings of Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Reid and Kant. However, the scholarly, (...)
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  • Cognitive science and the problem of semantic content.Kenneth M. Sayre - 1987 - Synthese 70 (February):247-69.
    The problem of semantic content is the problem of explicating those features of brain processes by virtue of which they may properly be thought to possess meaning or reference. This paper criticizes the account of semantic content associated with fodor's version of cognitive science, And offers an alternative account based on mathematical communication theory. Its key concept is that of a neuronal representation maintaining a high-Level of mutual information with a designated external state of affairs under changing conditions of perceptual (...)
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  • Propositional attitude psychology as an ideal type.Justin Schwartz - 1992 - Topoi 11 (1):5-26.
    This paper critiques the view, widely held by philosophers of mind and cognitive scientists, that psychological explanation is a matter of ascribing propositional attitudes (such as beliefs and desires) towards language-like propositions in the mind, and that cognitive mental states consist in intentional attitudes towards propositions of a linguistic quasi-linguistic nature. On this view, thought is structured very much like a language. Denial that propositional attitude psychology is an adequate account of mind is therefore, on this view, is tantamount to (...)
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  • Mental representation: What language is brainese?Kim Sterelny - 1983 - Philosophical Studies 43 (May):365-82.
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  • A Defense of Meaning Eliminativism: A Connectionist Approach.Tolgahan Toy - 2022 - Dissertation, Middle East Technical University
    The standard approach to model how human beings understand natural languages is the symbolic, compositional approach according to which the meaning of a complex expression is a function of the meanings of its constituents. In other words, meaning plays a fundamental role in the model. In this work, because of the polysemous, flexible, dynamic, and contextual structure of natural languages, this approach is rejected. Instead, a connectionist model which eliminates the concept of meaning is proposed.
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  • How do we know what babies know? The limits of inferring cognitive representations from visual fixation data.Isaac Davis - 2021 - Philosophical Psychology 34 (2):182-209.
    Most infant cognitive studies use visual fixation time as the measure of interest. There are, however, some serious methodological and theoretical concerns regarding what these studies reveal about infant cognition and how their results ought to be interpreted. We propose a Bayesian modeling framework which helps address these concerns. This framework allows us to more precisely formulate hypotheses about infants’ cognitive representations, formalize “linking hypotheses” that relate infants’ visual fixation behavior with stimulus complexity, and better determine what questions a given (...)
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  • Phenomenal Specificity.Tony Cheng - 2014 - Dissertation, University College London
    The essay is a study of phenomenal specificity. By ‘phenomenal’ here we mean conscious awareness, which needs to be cashed out in detail throughout the study. Intuitively, one dimension of phenomenology is along with specificity. For example it seems appropriate to say that one’s conscious awareness in the middle of the visual field is in some sense more specific than the awareness in the periphery under normal circumstances. However, it is difficult to characterise the nature of phenomenal specificity in an (...)
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  • Language process and hallucination phenomenology.Murray Alpert - 1986 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 9 (3):518-519.
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