Online research in philosophy

The method of positron emission tomography (PET imaging) illustrates the circular logic popular in subtractive neuroimaging and linear reductive cognitive psychology. Both require that strictly feed-forward, modular, cognitive components exist, before the fact, to justify the inference of particular components from images (or other observables) after the fact. Also, both require a "true" componential theory of cognition and laboratory tasks, before the fact, to guarantee reliable choices for subtractive contrasts. None of these possibilities are likely. Consequently, linear reductive analysis has (...) failed to yield general, reliable, componential accounts. (shrink)

Borrett, Kelly and Kwan [(2000) Phenomenology, dynamical neural networks and brain function, Philosophical Psychology, 13, 000-000] claim that unbiased, self-evident, direct description is possible, and may supply the data that brain theories account for. Merleau-Ponty's [(1962) Phenomenology of perception, London: Routledge] description of Schneider's apraxia is offered as a case in point. According to the authors, Schneider's apraxia justifies brain components of (...) predicative and pre-predicative experience. The description derives from a bias, however, that parallels modularity's morphological reduction. The presence of biasing presuppositions contradicts the goal of direct description. Moreover, the authors' brain account is not necessary to explain Schneider's apraxia, and morphological reduction is not sufficient to explain emergent phenomena of motor control. (shrink)

The suggestion of seeking specificity in a higher-order array is attractive, but Stoffregen & Bardy (S&B) fail to provide a compelling empirical basis to their claim that specificity exists solely in the global array. Using the example of relative motion, the alternate hypotheses that must be considered are presented.

Models are not adequately evaluated simply by whether they capture the data, after the fact. Other criteria are needed. One criterion is parsimony; but utility and generality are at least as important. Even with respect to parsimony, however, the case against feedback is not as straightforward as Norris et al. present it. We use feedback consistency effects to illustrate these points.

This paper discusses the debate over whether emotional expressions are spontaneous or intentional actions. We describe a variety of empirical evidence supporting these two possibilities. But we argue that the spontaneous-intentional distinction fails to explain the psychological dynamics of emotional expressions. We claim that a complex systems perspective on intentions, as self-organized critical states, may yield a unified view of emotional expressions as a consequence of situated action. This account simultaneously acknowledges the embodied status of environment, evolution, culture and mind (...) in theories of emotion. (shrink)

In some areas of cognitive science we are confronted with ultrafast cognition, exquisite context sensitivity, and scale-free variation in measured cognitive activities. To move forward, we suggest a need to embrace this complexity, equipping cognitive science with tools and concepts used in the study of complex dynamical systems. The science of movement coordination has benefited already from this change, successfully circumventing analogous paradoxes by treating human activities as phenomena of self-organization. Therein, action and cognition are seen to be emergent in (...) ultrafast symmetry breaking across the brain and body; exquisitely constituted of the otherwise trivial details of history, context, and environment; and exhibiting the characteristic scale-free signature of self-organization. (shrink)

How do people decide what to say in context? Many theories of pragmatics assume that people have specialized knowledge that drives them to utter certain words in different situations. But these theories are mostly unable to explain both the regularity and variability in people’s speech behaviors. Our purpose in this article is to advance a view of pragmatics based on complexity theory, which specifically explains the pragmatic choices speakers make in conversations. The concept of self-organized criticality sheds light on how (...) a history of utterances and subtle details of a situation surrounding a conversation may directly specify language behavior. Under this view, pragmatic choice in discourse does not reflect the output of any dedicated pragmatic module but arises from a complex coordination or coupling between speakers and their varying communicative tasks. (shrink)

The commentators expressed concerns regarding the relevance and value of non-computational non-symbolic explanations of cognitive performance. But what counts as an “explanation” depends on the pre-theoretical assumptions behind the scenes of empirical science regarding the kinds of variables and relationships that are sought out in the first place, and some of the present disagreements stem from incommensurate assumptions. Traditional cognitive science presumes cognition to be a decomposable system of components interacting according to computational rules to generate cognitive performances (i.e., component-dominant (...) dynamics). We assign primacy to interaction-dominant dynamics among components. Though either choice can be a good guess before the fact, the primacy of interactions is now supported by much recent empirical work in cognitive science. Consequently, in the main, the commentators have failed so far to address the growing evidence corroborating the theory-driven predictions of complexity science. (shrink)

Readers of TopiCS are invited to join a debate about the utility of ideas and methods of complexity science. The topics of debate include empirical instances of qualitative change in cognitive activity and whether this empirical work demonstrates sufficiently the empirical flags of complexity. In addition, new phenomena discovered by complexity scientists, and motivated by complexity theory, call into question some basic assumptions of conventional cognitive science such as stable equilibria and homogeneous variance. The articles and commentaries that appear in (...) this issue also illustrate a new debate style format for topiCS. (shrink)

En este trabajo se define formamente el concepto de representacion en química utilizando homomorfismos desde estructuras algebraicas, que llamamos sistemas de tipo C, en otras estructuras especiales de símbolos muy relacionados con los que son habituales en la qímica experimental. Para la definicion de los sistemas de tipo C se ha seleccionado un conjunto minimo de relaciones y funciones, que son necesarias para expresar proposiciones significativas en química. Tambien se define un lenguaje formal de primer orden adecuado a los (...) sistemas de tipo C, que llamamos L(C). EI resultado principal que se demuestra es que toda representación que verifica las mismas sentencias de L(C) que un sistema de tipo C, es necesariamente isomorfo a él. Se concluye por lo tanto que puede existir un problema linguístico subyacente en la aplicacion que de la mecaníca cuántica se hace en la química teórica.The concept of representation in chemistry bas been formallv defined by means of homomorphisms from algebraical structures, which we call type-C systems, to some special sets of symbols which can be related to the symbols ordinarily used in experimental chemistry. A minimum number of relations and functions, which would suffice to express significant propositions in chemistry, have been chosen to define type-C systems. A first order formal language L(C) adequate to type-C systems has been defined. It has been shown that each representation that verifies the same sentences of L(C) as a type-C system is necessarily isomorphic to it. It is concluded that a systematic study of the representation problem in chemistry is in order because a deep language problem underlies the application of quantum mechanies to chemical problems. (shrink)

En este trabajo se define formamente el concepto de representacion en química utilizando homomorfismos desde estructuras algebraicas, que llamamos sistemas de tipo C, en otras estructuras especiales de símbolos muy relacionados con los que son habituales en la qímica experimental. Para la definicion de los sistemas de tipo C se ha seleccionado un conjunto minimo de relaciones y funciones, que son necesarias para expresar proposiciones significativas en química. Tambien se define un lenguaje formal de primer orden adecuado a los (...) sistemas de tipo C, que llamamos L(C). EI resultado principal que se demuestra es que toda representación que verifica las mismas sentencias de L(C) que un sistema de tipo C, es necesariamente isomorfo a él. Se concluye por lo tanto que puede existir un problema linguístico subyacente en la aplicacion que de la mecaníca cuántica se hace en la química teórica.The concept of representation in chemistry bas been formallv defined by means of homomorphisms from algebraical structures, which we call type-C systems, to some special sets of symbols which can be related to the symbols ordinarily used in experimental chemistry. A minimum number of relations and functions, which would suffice to express significant propositions in chemistry, have been chosen to define type-C systems. A first order formal language L(C) adequate to type-C systems has been defined. It has been shown that each representation that verifies the same sentences of L(C) as a type-C system is necessarily isomorphic to it. It is concluded that a systematic study of the representation problem in chemistry is in order because a deep language problem underlies the application of quantum mechanies to chemical problems. (shrink)