11 found
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  1. Empiricism without Magic: Transformational Abstraction in Deep Convolutional Neural Networks.Cameron Buckner - 2018 - Synthese (12):1-34.
    In artificial intelligence, recent research has demonstrated the remarkable potential of Deep Convolutional Neural Networks (DCNNs), which seem to exceed state-of-the-art performance in new domains weekly, especially on the sorts of very difficult perceptual discrimination tasks that skeptics thought would remain beyond the reach of artificial intelligence. However, it has proven difficult to explain why DCNNs perform so well. In philosophy of mind, empiricists have long suggested that complex cognition is based on information derived from sensory experience, often appealing to (...)
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  2. Morgan’s Canon, meet Hume’s Dictum: avoiding anthropofabulation in cross-species comparisons.Cameron Buckner - 2013 - Biology and Philosophy 28 (5):853-871.
    How should we determine the distribution of psychological traits—such as Theory of Mind, episodic memory, and metacognition—throughout the Animal kingdom? Researchers have long worried about the distorting effects of anthropomorphic bias on this comparative project. A purported corrective against this bias was offered as a cornerstone of comparative psychology by C. Lloyd Morgan in his famous “Canon”. Also dangerous, however, is a distinct bias that loads the deck against animal mentality: our tendency to tie the competence criteria for cognitive capacities (...)
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  3. (1 other version)A property cluster theory of cognition.Cameron Buckner - 2013 - Philosophical Psychology (3):1-30.
    Our prominent definitions of cognition are too vague and lack empirical grounding. They have not kept up with recent developments, and cannot bear the weight placed on them across many different debates. I here articulate and defend a more adequate theory. On this theory, behaviors under the control of cognition tend to display a cluster of characteristic properties, a cluster which tends to be absent from behaviors produced by non-cognitive processes. This cluster is reverse-engineered from the empirical tests that comparative (...)
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  4. The Semantic Problem(s) with Research on Animal Mind‐Reading.Cameron Buckner - 2014 - Mind and Language 29 (5):566-589.
    Philosophers and cognitive scientists have worried that research on animal mind-reading faces a ‘logical problem’: the difficulty of experimentally determining whether animals represent mental states (e.g. seeing) or merely the observable evidence (e.g. line-of-gaze) for those mental states. The most impressive attempt to confront this problem has been mounted recently by Robert Lurz. However, Lurz' approach faces its own logical problem, revealing this challenge to be a special case of the more general problem of distal content. Moreover, participants in this (...)
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  5. Functional kinds: a skeptical look.Cameron Buckner - 2015 - Synthese 192 (12):3915-3942.
    The functionalist approach to kinds has suffered recently due to its association with law-based approaches to induction and explanation. Philosophers of science increasingly view nomological approaches as inappropriate for the special sciences like psychology and biology, which has led to a surge of interest in approaches to natural kinds that are more obviously compatible with mechanistic and model-based methods, especially homeostatic property cluster theory. But can the functionalist approach to kinds be weaned off its dependency on laws? Dan Weiskopf has (...)
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  6. Interventionist Methods for Interpreting Deep Neural Networks.Raphaël Millière & Cameron Buckner - forthcoming - In Gualtiero Piccinini (ed.), Neurocognitive Foundations of Mind. Routledge.
    Recent breakthroughs in artificial intelligence have primarily resulted from training deep neural networks (DNNs) with vast numbers of adjustable parameters on enormous datasets. Due to their complex internal structure, DNNs are frequently characterized as inscrutable ``black boxes,'' making it challenging to interpret the mechanisms underlying their impressive performance. This opacity creates difficulties for explanation, safety assurance, trustworthiness, and comparisons to human cognition, leading to divergent perspectives on these systems. This chapter examines recent developments in interpretability methods for DNNs, with a (...)
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  7. Transitional Gradation in the Mind: Rethinking Psychological Kindhood.Cameron Buckner - 2016 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 67 (4):1091-1115.
    I here critique the application of the traditional, similarity-based account of natural kinds to debates in psychology. A challenge to such accounts of kindhood—familiar from the study of biological species—is a metaphysical phenomenon that I call ‘transitional gradation’: the systematic progression of slightly modified transitional forms between related candidate kinds. Where such gradation proliferates, it renders the selection of similarity criteria for kinds arbitrary. Reflection on general features of learning—especially on the gradual revision of concepts throughout the acquisition of expertise—shows (...)
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  8.  50
    Transitional gradation and the distinction between episodic and semantic memory.Hunter Gentry & Cameron Buckner - 2024 - Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 379 (1913).
    In this article, we explore various arguments against the traditional distinction between episodic and semantic memory based on the metaphysical phenomenon of transitional gradation. Transitional gradation occurs when two candidate kinds A and B grade into one another along a continuum according to their characteristic properties. We review two kinds of arguments—from the gradual semanticization of episodic memories as they are consolidated, and from the composition of episodic memories during storage and recall from semantic memories—that predict the proliferation of such (...)
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  9. A Portrait of the Artist as an Aesthetic Expert.Christy Mag Uidhir & Cameron Buckner - 2014 - In Greg Currie, Matthew Kieran, Aaron Meskin & Jon Robson (eds.), Aesthetics and the Sciences of Mind. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
    For the most part, the Aesthetic Theory of Art—any theory of art claiming that the aesthetic is a descriptively necessary feature of art—has been repudiated, especially in light of what are now considered traditional counterexamples. We argue that the Aesthetic Theory of Art can instead be far more plausibly recast by abandoning aesthetic-feature possession by the artwork for a claim about aesthetic-concept possession by the artist. This move productively re-frames and re-energizes the debate surrounding the relationship between art and the (...)
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  10. The Ego Tunnel: The Science of Mind and the Myth of the Self.Cameron Buckner - 2012 - Philosophical Psychology 25 (3):457-461.
    Philosophical Psychology, Volume 0, Issue 0, Page 1-5, Ahead of Print.
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  11. In search of balance: a review of Povinelli’s world without weight: Daniel J. Povinelli: World without weight: perspectives on an alien mind. Oxford University Press, 2012, 353 pp. [REVIEW]Cameron Buckner - 2013 - Biology and Philosophy 28 (1):145-152.
    Povinelli and colleagues ask whether chimpanzees can understand the concept of weight, answering with a resounding ‘‘no’’. They justify their answer by appeal to over thirty previously unpublished experiments. I here evaluate in detail Povinelli’s arguments against his targets, questioning the assumption that such comparative questions will be resolved with an unequivocal ‘‘yes’’ or ‘‘no’’.
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