The claims that “The brain processes information” or “Cognition is information processing” are accepted as truisms in cognitive science. However, it is unclear how to evaluate such claims absent a specification of “information” as it is used by neurocognitive theories. The aim of this article is, thus, to identify the key features of information that information-based neurocognitive theories posit. A systematic identification of these features can reveal the explanatory role that information plays in specific neurocognitive theories, and can, therefore, be (...) both theoretically and practically important. These features can be used, in turn, as desiderata against which candidate theories of information may be evaluated. After discussing some characteristics of explanation in cognitive science and their implications for “information”, three notions are briefly introduced: natural, sensory, and endogenous information. Subsequently, six desiderata are identified and defended based on cognitive scientific practices. The global workspace theory of consciousness is then used as a specific case study that arguably posits either five or six corresponding features of information. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is twofold. On the one hand, it aims to show that within contemporary philosophy of perception, it has become far from clear what proponents of the Content View mean when they claim that experience has accuracy conditions and, therefore, accuracy evaluable content. Two very different interpretations can be discerned here, one which holds that content _has_ accuracy conditions and one which explicitly identifies content with such conditions. On the other hand, the paper wants to argue (...) that neither of these versions succeeds in showing why we should attribute either accuracy conditions or accuracy evaluable content to perceptual experience. To this end, I will present an elaborated argument (which focuses on the moon illusion) to show why we have as yet no reason to think that perceptual experience has accuracy conditions and, therefore, accuracy evaluable content. Instead, it will be argued that perceptual experience is best thought of as accuracy _maker_, not as something which can itself be representationally accurate or inaccurate. (shrink)