The authors present a neurological theory of how cognitive information and emotional information are integrated in the nucleus accumbens during effective decision making. They describe how the nucleus accumbens acts as a gateway to integrate cognitive information from the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and the hippocampus with emotional information from the amygdala. The authors have modeled this integration by a network of spiking artificial neurons organized into separate areas and used this computational model to simulate 2 kinds of cognitive–affective integration. The (...) model simulates successful performance by people with normal cognitive–affective integration. The model also simulates the historical case of Phineas Gage as well as subsequent patients whose ability to make decisions became.. (shrink)

The reason for characterizing mental states as propositional attitudes is sentence form: ‘S Vs that p’. However, many mental states are not ascribed by means of such sentences, and the sentences that ascribe them cannot be appropriately paraphrased. Moreover, even if a paraphrase were always available, that in itself would not establish the characterization. And the mental states that are ascribable by appropriate senses do not form any natural subset of mental states. A reason for the characterization relying on beliefs, (...) etc., about non‐existing things is also rejected. Last, some sentences ascribing abilities and dispositions have the same grammatical form as some senses that ascribe mental states, so that the attempt to paraphrase the latter would obscure the conceptual relations between the two sorts. It follows that mental states are not relations to propositions. (shrink)