Is an appropriate causal connection to the past experience it represents a necessary condition for a mental state to qualify as an episodic memory? For some years this issue has been the subject of an intense debate between the causalist theory of episodic memory (CTM) and the simulationist theory of episodic memory (STM). This paper aims at exploring the prospects for an embodied approach to episodic memory and assessing the potential case for causalism that could be founded on it. In (...) a critical section, it argues that the empirical data to which STM appeals are both incomplete and inconclusive, and on closer examination even provide support for a proceduralist version of CTM. In a constructive section, it elaborates on the notion of a necessary causal connection in terms of particular procedural patterns acquired at encoding and operative at retrieval, grounding this move on recent empirical data about eye movements in mnemonic mental imagery. (shrink)

Over the past fifteen years there has been a considerable amount of debate concerning what theoretical population dynamic models tell us about the nature of natural selection and drift. On the causal interpretation, these models describe the causes of population change. On the statistical interpretation, the models of population dynamics models specify statistical parameters that explain, predict, and quantify changes in population structure, without identifying the causes of those changes. Selection and drift are part of a statistical description of population (...) change; they are not discrete, apportionable causes. Our objective here is to provide a definitive statement of the statistical position, so as to allay some confusions in the current literature. We outline four commitments that are central to statisticalism. They are: 1. Natural Selection is a higher order effect; 2. Trait fitness is primitive; 3. Modern Synthesis (MS)-models are substrate neutral; 4. MS-selection and drift are model-relative. (shrink)

The concept of the environment appears to be indispensably involved in adaptive explanation. Quite what its role is, however, is a matter of some dispute. The environment is customarily viewed as the dual of the organism; a wholly external, discrete, autonomous cause of evolution. On this view, the external environment is the principal cause of the adaptedness of form, and the determinant of what it is to be an adaptation. I argue that this conception of the environment neither adequately explains (...) nor individuates evolutionary adaptations. Instead, adaptation, properly construed, is an evolutionary response to affordances. The environment, traditionally construed, underdetermines an organism’s affordances. Instead, I argue that the environment takes its place in evolutionary models not as a discrete causal entity, but as an abstraction. (shrink)

We distinguish dynamical and statistical interpretations of evolutionary theory. We argue that only the statistical interpretation preserves the presumed relation between natural selection and drift. On these grounds we claim that the dynamical conception of evolutionary theory as a theory of forces is mistaken. Selection and drift are not forces. Nor do selection and drift explanations appeal to the (sub-population-level) causes of population level change. Instead they explain by appeal to the statistical structure of populations. We briefly discuss the implications (...) of the statistical interpretation of selection for various debates within the philosophy of biologythe `explananda of selection' debate and the `units of selection' debate. (shrink)

In recent years, there has been an increasing interest among philosophers of memory in the questions of how to characterize and to account for the temporal phenomenology of episodic memory. One prominent suggestion has been that episodic memory involves a feeling of pastness, the elaboration of which has given rise to two main approaches. On the intentionalist approach, the feeling of pastness is explained in terms of what episodic memory represents. In particular, Fernández has argued that it can be explained (...) in terms of memory representing itself as being caused by a past perceptual experience. On the metacognitive approach, which we have recently developed in, the feeling of pastness results from the monitoring and interpretation of the processing features of episodic remembering. In this paper, we show that the metacognitive approach should be preferred over the intentionalist approach. We argue that intentionalism, and Fernández’ causal self-referential view in particular, ultimately fail as accounts of the feeling of pastness. The difficulties faced by intentionalism allows us to single out three constraints that any satisfactory account of the temporal phenomenology of episodic remembering needs to meet. We conclude by arguing that the metacognitive view satisfies those constraints in a neat way, and as such, that it should be preferred over intentionalism. (shrink)

Several notions of computability-theoretic reducibility between [Formula: see text] principles have been studied. This paper contributes to the program of analyzing the behavior of versions of Ramsey’s Theorem and related principles under these notions. Among other results, we show that for each [Formula: see text], there is an instance of RT[Formula: see text] all of whose solutions have PA degree over [Formula: see text] and use this to show that König’s Lemma lies strictly between RT[Formula: see text] and RT[Formula: see (...) text] under one of these notions. We also answer two questions raised by Dorais, Dzhafarov, Hirst, Mileti, and Shafer on comparing versions of Ramsey’s Theorem and of the Thin Set Theorem with the same exponent but different numbers of colors. Still on the topic of the effect of the number of colors on the computable aspects of Ramsey-theoretic properties, we show that for each [Formula: see text], there is an [Formula: see text]-coloring [Formula: see text] of [Formula: see text] such that every [Formula: see text]-coloring of [Formula: see text] has an infinite homogeneous set that does not compute any infinite homogeneous set for [Formula: see text], and connect this result with the notion of infinite information reducibility introduced by Dzhafarov and Igusa. Next, we introduce and study a new notion that provides a uniform version of the idea of implication with respect to [Formula: see text]-models of RCA0, and related notions that allow us to count how many applications of a principle [Formula: see text] are needed to reduce another principle to [Formula: see text]. Finally, we fill in a gap in the proof of Theorem 12.2 in Cholak, Jockusch, and Slaman. (shrink)

There has recently been much interest in the role of attention in controlling action. The role has been mischaracterized as an element in necessary and sufficient conditions on agential control. In this paper I attempt a new characterization of the role. I argue that we need to understand attentional control in order to fully understand agential control. To fully understand agential control we must understand paradigm exercises of agential control. Three important accounts of agential control—intentional, reflective, and goal-represented control—do not (...) fully explain such exercises. I argue that understanding them requires understanding how deployments of visual attention implement flexible occurrent control, or a capacity to flexibly adjust the degree of control that individuals exercise over their actions. While such deployments of attention are neither necessary nor sufficient for exercising agential control, they constitute an attentional skill for controlling action, understanding which is central to fully understanding agential control. We can appreciate its centrality if we appreciate that this attentional skill for controlling action is plausibly crucial to acting non-negligently. (shrink)

What are the processes, from conception to adulthood, that enable a single cell to grow into a sentient adult? Neuroconstructivism is a pioneering 2 volume work that sets out a whole new framework for considering the complex topic of development, integrating data from cognitive studies, computational work, and neuroimaging.

There are two competing interpretations of the modern synthesis theory of evolution: the dynamical (also know as ‘traditional’) and the statistical. The dynamical interpretation maintains that explanations offered under the auspices of the modern synthesis theory articulate the causes of evolution. It interprets selection and drift as causes of population change. The statistical interpretation holds that modern synthesis explanations merely cite the statistical structure of populations. This paper offers a defense of statisticalism. It argues that a change in trait frequencies (...) in a population can be attributed only to selection or drift against the background of a particular statistical description of the population. The traditionalist supposition that selection and drift are description‐independent causes of population change leads the dynamical interpretation into a dilemma: it must face a contradiction or accept the loss of explanatory power. (shrink)

According to Aristotelian essentialism, the nature of an organism is constituted of a particular goal-directed disposition to produce an organism typical of its kind. This paper argues—against the prevailing orthodoxy—that essentialism of this sort is indispensable to evolutionary biology. The most powerful anti-essentialist arguments purport to show that the natures of organisms play no explanatory role in modern synthesis biology. I argue that recent evolutionary developmental biology provides compelling evidence to the contrary. Developmental biology shows that one must appeal to (...) the capacities of organisms to explain what makes adaptive evolution adaptive. Moreover, the specific capacities in question are precisely those that, according to Aristotle, constitute the nature of an organism. Essentialism 1.1 Aristotelian biological kinds Evolutionary anti-essentialism 2.1 Taxonomic anti-essentialism 2.2 Explanatory anti-essentialism Adaptation 3.1 Stability 3.2 Mutability 3.3 Phenotypic plasticity and adaptive evolution The natures of organisms Conclusion. (shrink)

This paper examines a doctrine which David Lewis has called 'Humean Supervenience' (hereafter 'HS'), and a problem which certain imaginary cases seem to generate for HS. They include rotating perfect spheres or discs, and flowing rivers, imagined as composed of matter which is perfectly homogeneous right down to the individual points. Before considering these examples, I shall introduce the doctrine they seem to challenge.

In paradigm exercises of agency, individuals guide their activities toward some goal. A central challenge for action theory is to explain how individuals guide. This challenge is an instance of the more general problem of how to accommodate individuals and their actions in the natural world, as explained by natural science. Two dominant traditions–primitivism and the causal theory–fail to address the challenge in a satisfying way. Causal theorists appeal to causation by an intention, through a feedback mechanism, in explaining guidance. (...) Primitivists postulate primitive agential capacities in their explanations. The latter neglect to explain how primitive capacities integrate with findings from natural science. The former do not explain why some feedback mechanism’s activity amounts to the agent’s guidance. In this paper I argue that both traditions should acknowledge a capacity to guide, as actually constituted by the executive system. I argue that appeals to this empirically discovered psychological system explain how individuals guide in a way that integrates with explanations from cognitive science. Individuals’ capacity to guide is embedded in the natural world through the activity of its constituent (mechanistic) components. (shrink)

How do individuals guide their activities towards some goal? Harry Frankfurt once identified the task of explaining guidance as the central problem in action theory. An explanation has proved to be elusive, however. In this paper, I show how we can marshal empirical research to make explanatory progress. I contend that human agents have a primitive capacity to guide visual attention, and that this capacity is actually constituted by a sub-individual psychological control-system: the executive system. I thus illustrate how we (...) can explain exercises of individual-level guidance by appeal to its sub-individual constitution. This opens up a new avenue for explicating agency. (shrink)

This paper aims to provide a psychologically-informed philosophical account of the phenomenology of episodic remembering. The literature on epistemic or metacognitive feelings has grown considerably in recent years, and there are persuasive reasons, both conceptual and empirical, in favour of the view that the phenomenology of remembering—autonoetic consciousness, as Tulving influentially referred to it, or the feeling of pastness, as we will refer to it here—is an epistemic feeling, but few philosophical treatments of this phenomenology as an epistemic feeling have (...) so far been proposed. Building on insights from the psychological literature, we argue that a form of feeling-based metacognition is involved in episodic remembering and develop an integrated metacognitive feeling-based view that addresses several key aspects of the feeling of pastness, namely, its status as a feeling, its content, and its relationship to the first-order memories the phenomenology of which it provides. (shrink)

Brentano clearly asserts, in his Vienna lectures of 1887–1888, that his descriptive psychology is an a priori or “exact” science. Since he rejects Kant's idea of a synthetic a priori, this means that the descriptive psychologist's laws are analytic. My aim in this paper is to clarify and discuss this view. I examine Brentano's epistemology in the Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint and then its later developments. I conclude with a difficulty inherent in Brentano's psychological approach to a priori knowledge.

Skilled action typically requires that individuals guide their activities toward some goal. In skilled action, individuals do so excellently. We do not understand well what this capacity to guide consists in. In this paper I provide a case study of how individuals shift visual attention. Their capacity to guide visual attention toward some goal (partly) consists in an empirically discovered sub-system – the executive system. I argue that we can explain how individuals guide by appealing to the operation of this (...) sub-system. Understanding skill and skilled action thus requires appreciating the role of the executive system. (shrink)

It is commonly thought that evolution is a chance process, an idea found in popular writings on evolution, but also in academic writing in a broad range of scientific disciplines: scientific, philosophical and theological. One problem is that words such as ‘chance’ and ‘random’ are used with a range of different meanings according to context, and in evolutionary biology the word ‘chance’ is sometimes used in a way that is different from its use in mathematics and philosophy. The present article (...) aims to clarify the range of meanings and to argue the case that the evolutionary process is far from being a ‘theory of chance’ from biological, mathematical, or indeed philosophical and theological perspectives. (shrink)

Executive functioning has been said to bear on a range of traditional philosophical topics, such as consciousness, thought, and action. Surprisingly, philosophers have not much engaged with the scientific literature on executive functioning. This lack of engagement may be due to several influential criticisms of that literature by Daniel Dennett, Alan Allport, and others. In this paper I argue that more recent research on executive functioning shows that these criticisms are no longer valid. The paper clears the way to a (...) more fruitful philosophical engagement with findings on the central executive system. (shrink)

What is attention? On one influential position, attention constitutively is the selection of some stimulus for coupling with a response. Wayne Wu has proposed a master argument for this position that relies on the claim that cognitive science commits to an empirical sufficient condition (ESC), according to which, if a subject S perceptually selects (or response-couples) X to guide performance of some experimental task T, she therein attends to X. In this paper I show that this claim about cognitive science (...) is false. Cognitive science allows for inattentive selection-for-task, or inattentive response-coupling. This means that Wu’s account is without independent support. (shrink)

This paper explores two models using which we might understand Heidegger's notion of ‘Eigentlichkeit’. Although typically translated as ‘authenticity’, a more literal construal of this term would be ‘ownness’ or ‘ownedness’; and in addition to the paper's exegetical value, it also develops two interestingly different understandings of what it is to have a judgment of one's own. The first model understands Heideggerian authenticity as the owning of what I call a ‘standpoint’. Although this model provides an understanding of a number (...) of key features of authenticity, it also invites an important objection—which I call ‘the closure objection’—that can be found in, for example, the work of Steven Galt Crowell and Tony Fisher. Although I argue that this objection can be met, the response for which it calls reveals that the feat of authenticity as understood through the standpoint model rests upon a further feat, and one which may itself have a stronger claim to be identified with Heideggerian authenticity. I develop this thought, introducing what I call the ‘all-things-considered judgment model’ of authenticity, the basis of which lies in, among other sources, Heidegger's appropriation of themes from Aristotle's discussion of phronesis. I explain the exegetical benefits of adopting this model and consider some objections that it invites, before closing with a discussion of how the two models understand the notion of ‘a judgment of one's own’. (shrink)

Good explanations are not only true or probably true, but are also relevant to a causal question. Current models of causal explanation either only address the question of the truth of an explanation, or do not distinguish the probability of an explanation from its relevance. The tasks of scenario construction and conversational explanation are distinguished, which in turn shows how scenarios can interact with conversational principles to determine the truth and relevance of explanations. The proposed model distinguishes causal discounting from (...) causal backgrounding , and makes predictions concerning the differential effects of contextual information about alternative explanations on: (a) the kind of mental models constructed; (b) belief revision about probable cause; and (c) the perceived quality of a focal explanation. Four experiments are reported that test these predictions. The significance of the notion of explanatory relevance for research on causal explanation is then discussed. (shrink)

In this article we argue for the necessity of a new double alliance between phenomenology and cognitive sciences (through embodied theory) onthe one hand, and between phenomenological pedagogy and the embodiment paradigm on the other. We strongly believe that phenomenological pedagogyshould enter into dialogue with the cognitive sciences movement called “Embodiment” in order to renew its educational theories and practices. Indeed, thenew suggestions about the mind that come from the embodiment paradigm can already have a huge impact on learning and (...) education, but a relatively structured “pedagogy of consciousness” is still missing. This topic will be discussed with a special focus on body and embodied consciousness, which nicelybrings together these different traditions. Finally, an actual example of how the embodiment paradigm and phenomenological pedagogy can converge will be presented through the practice of meditative experience. (shrink)

As the title asserts, it is impossible to teach the theory of special relativity without deceiving the student, which means that everyone who already accepts the theory as truth has been deceived. The resulting problem from this deception is, not only is science being held back as people not being told truth, these people are passing their deception onto others, even using time dilation as an answer to the distant starlight problem which many use to attack the account of Biblical (...) creation instead of focusing on the error which yields such exaggerated stellar measurements. The focus of this paper is to expose many of the deceptions within physics texts used to deceive the student, along with several lies which have been told in support of the theory, such as GPS requiring relativity, the Hafele-Keating experiment, muons, etc., while also revealing Einstein’s confusion concerning light. (shrink)

Brentano as well as many of his followers — with notable exceptions, especially Husserl — assigned to psychology a foundational role in the edifice of science, including philosophy. My suggestion in the present paper is that this view is a consequence of Brentano’s theory of intentionality. Brentano’s thesis of the intentionality of the mental, I argue, first and foremost expresses a strong epistemological position about what knowledge in general is: all knowledge, whether inner or outer, has its source in “inner (...) perception” and hence has somehow to do with psychology. Given this, I discuss Brentano’s accounts of a priori knowledge and of the distinction between psychology and physics — which are certainly among the most original and fruitful aspects of his epistemology and his philosophy as a whole. (shrink)

Einstein’s theory of Special relativity is founded on an error made by Hendrick Lorentz. It is not necessary to expose the mathematical inconsistencies of special relativity, since the theory collapses by simply exposing the error made by Lorentz. In doing so, it not only causes special relativity to collapse, but also general relativity, and the many theories built upon these two deceptive theories. There are many claims of tests made which supposedly prove SR or GR, such as the eclipse of (...) 1919, the Hafele-Keating experiment, GPS, the orbit of Mercury, and muons. The error of these will also be shown as well as an area of astronomy which has been negatively impacted by SR. The epistemology approach to special relativity: you can know it is a false theory when the theory requires deceiving the student for acceptance and the tests which support the theory can be proven false. (shrink)

Le jugement qu'on portera sur ce livre dépendra en grande partie de la façon dont on évaluera son contenu en fonction des attentes créées par son titre. Si l'on espère une mise au jour—qui, de fait, serait novatrice—d'une pensée précise, développée et systématique de Malebranche sur les thèmes cardinaux de la philosophie politique classique, on sera déçu: ce livre ne contient rien de tel, sinon, dans une certaine mesure, en sa troisième partie. Si l'on compte lire une monographie informée offrant (...) une synthèse sur des thèmes centraux du malebranchisme en relation avec la sphère du politique prise en un sens large (nature des... (shrink)

This paper is about the pragmatic inferences in play as conversational implicatures (Grice, P. 1989. Studies in the way of words. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press) occur. First, it constructs the deductivism versus abductivism debate that transpires from the extant literature but is rarely elaborated. Against deductivism, the paper argues that implicating inferences in conversational implicatures can instantiate an abductive logical form, as abductivism suggests. Against abductivism, however, it grants to deductivism that implicating inferences can have a deductive form provided (...) the latter is of a defeasible type. In sum, it thus argues for pluralist defeasibilism. Second, it turns to the issue of the ontological nature of implicating inferences and advocates normative inferentialism, on which these inferences are not primarily real psychological processes but rules of the practice of implicating. While this allows for the possibility of their psychological instantiation, to be sure, the paper also insists that psychological inferring processes in implicatures are neither necessarily isomorphic to the aforementioned rules nor even necessarily occur as an implicature occurs. (shrink)

This paper aims to suggest that Brentano’s theory of intentionality, at least in its later formulation, is not only about mind and also belongs to a tradition of deconstructing language that includes prominent figures of Austrian and German philosophy such as Mach, Vaihinger, and Wittgenstein. In order to establish this, the author explores some differences and similarities between this theory and Fritz Mauthner’s critique of language. He argues that the very starting point of both is one and the same fact: (...) the failure of existential generalization. (shrink)

The work of the Latvian phenomenologist Theodor Celms provides an interesting attempt to reinterpret Husserl’s phenomenological reduction in terms of Natorp’s subjectivation. This paper summarizes in broad outline some salient features of Celms’ theory of subjectivation and discusses some of its similarities and differences with Husserl’s and Natorp’s views. I focus on two more central points. First, Celms proposes to interpret Husserlian reduction as radicalizing or generalizing an operation of thought that is pervasive throughout all forms of cognition. Secondly, he (...) makes a distinction between epistemological and ontological subjectivation that leads him to adopt a critical stance toward both Husserl’s transcendental idealism and Natorp’s general psychology. (shrink)

Part 1 of this paper discusses some uses of arguments from radical moral disagreement—in particular, as directed against absolutist cognitivism—and surveys some semantic issues thus made salient. It may be argued that parties to such a disagreement cannot be using the relevant moral claims with exactly the same absolutist cognitive content. That challenges the absolutist element of absolutist cognitivism, which, combined with the intractable nature of radical moral disagreement, in turn challenges the viability of a purely cognitivist account of moral (...) judgments. Such a conclusion could be staved off if it could be held that a sufficient condition for commonality of cognitive content in moral judgments could consist, despite the presence of radical moral disagreement, in the parties’acceptance of a common set of fundamental moral principles. Part 1 begins, and Part 2 further develops, a destructive critique of that idea, leading thereby to a skeptical appraisal of the important role sometimes assigned, in metaethical theorizing, to moral rules. Inter alia the paper is intended to suggest the possibility of overlap between relativist and particularist agendas. (shrink)

Three‐ to 4‐month‐old infants show asymmetric exclusivity in the acquisition of cat and dog perceptual categories. The cat perceptual category excludes dog exemplars, but the dog perceptual category does not exclude cat exemplars. We describe a connectionist autoencoder model of perceptual categorization that shows the same asymmetries as infants. The model predicts the presence of asymmetric retroactive interference when infants acquire cat and dog categories sequentially. A subsequent experiment conducted with 3‐ to 4‐month‐olds verifies the predicted pattern of looking time (...) behaviors. We argue that bottom‐up, associative learning systems with distributed representations are appropriate for modeling the operation of short‐term visual memory in early perceptual category learning. (shrink)

Whole brain failure constitutes the diagnostic criterion for death determination in most clinical settings across the globe. Yet the conceptual foundation for its adoption was slow to emerge, has evoked extensive scientific debate since inception, underwent policy revision, and remains contentious in praxis even today. Complications result from the need to relate a unitary construal of the death event with an adequate account of organismal integration and that of the human organism in particular. Advances in the neuroscience of higher human (...) faculties, such as the self, personal identity, and consciousness, and dynamical philosophy of science accounts, however, are yielding a portrait of higher order global integration shared between body and brain. Such conceptual models of integration challenge a praxis relying exclusively on a neurological criterion for death. (shrink)