Abstract Descartes's theory of volition as expressed in his Passions of the Soul is analyzed and outlined. The focus is not on Descartes's proposed answers to questions about the nature and processes of volition, but on his way of formulating questions about the nature of volition. It is argued that the assumptions underlying Descartes's questions have become ?intellectual strait?jackets? for all who are interested in volition: neuroscientists, philosophers and psychologists. It is shown that Descartes's basic assumption?that volition causes change in (...) the brain/mind, not in the world around us?has set in train a series of ?themata? that have dominated studies of the will, severely curtailing our understanding. It is then shown that these Cartesian themata are so limiting and confusing that a number of internally contradictory ideas have actually become mainstays of most theories of volition; in particular, the concepts of unconscious sensations and of involuntary volitions. (shrink)

A conscious being is characterized by its ability to cope with the environment--to perceive it, sometimes change it, and perhaps reflect on it. Surprisingly, most studies of the mind's place in nature show little interest in such interaction. It is often implicitly assumed that the main questions about consciousness just concern the status of various entities, levels, etc., within the individual. The intertwined notions of " experience" and " consciousness" are considered. The predominant use of these notions in cognitive science (...) can be traced back to Cartesianism. What is important is the survival of the central methodological commitments despite seemingly profound changes of metaphysical outlook. The author argues that cognitive scientists typically assimilate perception to sensation, thereby ignoring ways in which descriptions of perception and descriptions of the environment are logically intertwined; that this involves methodological solipsism and an unacknowledged sceptical position that was originally part of Descartes' Dream argument; and that it is impossible to identify the object supposedly to be studied by a science of the phenomenal consciousness. A somewhat parallel argument is identified in Kant's critique of rationalist psychology. (shrink)

In this paper I consider the relation between Descartes' psychology of vision and the cognitive science approach to psychology (henceforth CS). In particular, I examine Descartes' the Optics (1637) in the light of David Marr's (1982) position in CS. My general claim is that CS can be seen as a rediscovery of Descartes' psychology of vision. In the first section, I point to a parallel between Descartes' epistemological revolution, which created the modem version of the problem of perception, and the (...) cognitive revolution. These fundamental revolutions in theoretical psychology were both inspired and legitimated by a revolution in mathematics. They took place in accordance with one of Marr's maxims: “To the desirable via the possible”. In the second section, I demonstrate that in the Optics, Descartes explains perception of metrical properties in a way that — on a detailed level — is in accordance with how Man argues that complex information processing systems have to be explained: both Descartes and Man emphasize the co-ordination of logical and physical analysis. In the third section, I claim that Descartes' arguments for a sharp distinction between mechanical transmission of sense data (sensation) and non-mechanical inferences on those sense data (thinking) are sound arguments seen from Man's position in CS. Descartes' arguments are based on his logical and physical analysis. Malebranche's radicalized version of Cartesian dualism turns Descartes' empirically-based assumption that mechanisms cannot realize inferences into a metaphysical assumption. In the final section, I argue that this metaphysical assumption contributes to an understanding of perception as a non-symbolic, non-inferential bottom-up process in mainstream monistic and mechanistic scientific psychology until the cognitive revolution. (shrink)

This article considers Helmholtz’s relation to philosophy, including Fichte’s philosophy. Recent interpreters find Fichtean influence on Helmholtz, especially concerning the role of voluntary movement in distinguishing subject from object, or “I” from “not-I.” After examining Helmholtz’s statements about Fichte, the article describes Fichte’s ego-doctrine and asks whether Helmholtz could accept it into his sensory psychology. He could not accept Fichte’s core position, that an intrinsically active I intellectually intuits its own activity and posits the not-I as limiting and determining that (...) activity, because that account requires cognitive abilities that conflict with Helmholtz’s claim that the development of spatial perception relies primarily on associative memory and involves no direct awareness of the ego’s activity as such. Helmholtz would have known various accounts of the distinction between subject and object, or self and world, from sensory physiology, including associative accounts invoking voluntary motor movements and accounts describing checks on the perceiver’s activity. Some of the accounts cite Fichte on the I and not-I, but most do not, and none adopt Fichte’s Idealism. Finally, the article examines Helmholtz’s relation to metaphysics, finding that in all periods he rejected Fichtean Idealism and that the modest metaphysics of his mature period is a version of structural realism. (shrink)

Philosophy and Memory Traces defends two theories of autobiographical memory. One is a bewildering historical view of memories as dynamic patterns in fleeting animal spirits, nervous fluids which rummaged through the pores of brain and body. The other is new connectionism, in which memories are 'stored' only superpositionally, and reconstructed rather than reproduced. Both models, argues John Sutton, depart from static archival metaphors by employing distributed representation, which brings interference and confusion between memory traces. Both raise urgent issues about control (...) of the personal past, and about relations between self and body. Sutton demonstrates the role of bizarre body fluids in moral physiology, as philosophers from Descartes and Locke to Coleridge struggled to control their own innards and impose cognitive discipline on 'the phantasmal chaos of association'. Going on to defend connectionism against Fodor and critics of passive mental representations, he shows how problems of the self are implicated in cognitive science. (shrink)