Explicitness has usually been approached from two points of view, labelled by Kirsh the structural and the process view, that hold opposite assumptions to determine when information is explicit. In this paper, we offer an intermediate view that retains intuitions from both of them. We establish three conditions for explicit information that preserve a structural requirement, and a notion of explicitness as a continuous dimension. A problem with the former accounts was their disconnection with psychological work on the issue. We (...) review studies by Karmiloff-Smith, and Shanks and St. John to show that the proposed conditions have psychological grounds. Finally, we examine the problem of explicit rules in connectionist systems in the light of our framework. (shrink)

O'Brien et al. reported that readers generated elaborative inferences only when a text contained characteristics that made it easy to predict the specific inference that a reader would draw, and virtually eliminated the possibility of the inference being discon-firmed. Garrod et al., however, offered two qualifications to these conclusions. First, the two text characteristics manipulated may have produced different types of elaborative inferencing: a biasing context results in a passive form of elaborative inferencing, involving setting up a context of interpretation, (...) whereas the presence of a demand sentence invites the reader to actively predict a subsequent expression. Secondly, clear evidence for either type of inference will be apparent only with truly anaphoric materials. This work describes how a passive form of elaborative inferencing, reported by Garrod et al, may be implemented in a connectionist manner. We take the connectionist model proposed by Shastri and Ajjanagadde in order to represent a text in the form of a network. Next we analyze and discuss how an attentional focus could operate with the proposed reasoner system in order to deal with inference control and anaphora resolution, during text understanding. Our own suggestion is that the system proposed by Shastri and Ajjanagadde could be extended by incorporating focus in order to apply it to some open problems related to text processing. However, this extension presents implementational problems due to its local character. Distributed models seem to be in a better position to deal with the shift of the attentional states, given that these systems can learn. Particularly, the model proposed by Sun is close to our aims, and so we will discuss its implications in order to design a cognitive architecture for text comprehension. (shrink)

Taking into account the difficulties that all attempts at a solution of the problem of causal-explanatory exclusion have experienced, we analyze in this paper the chances that mind-body causation is a case of overdetermination, a line of attack that has scarcely been explored. Our conclusion is that claiming that behaviors are causally overdetermined cannot solve the problem of causal-explanatory exclusion. The reason is the problem of massive coincidence, that can only be avoided by establishing a relation between mind and body; (...) that is, by denying overdetermination. The only way to defend that mind-body causation is a case of overdetermination would be by denying any modal force whatever to the principle of the causal closure of the physical, and this is a claim we would not like to reject. (shrink)

Research in cognitive science has often assumed the existence of a privileged level that unifies theoretical explanations arising from different disciplines. Philosophical accounts differ about the locus of those intertheory relations. In this paper, four different views are analyzed: classical, connectionist, pragmatist, and reductionist, as exemplified in the works of von Eckardt, Horgan and Tienson, Hardcastle, and Bickle, respectively. Their divergences are characterized in terms of the possibility of such a privileged level. The classical view favors a privileged computational level. (...) The connectionist revision tries to draw biological intuitions into computational models to provide a link between neurons and computations. The pragmatist approach rejects the idea of a privileged level and offers a more eclectic view of cognitive theory building. The reductionist account pursues theoretical unification by means of the reduction of higher level theories to basic level ones. /// La investigatión en ciencia cognitiva suele asumir la existencia de un nivel privilegiado que unifica las explicaciones teóricas provenientes de distintas disciplinas. Las interpretaciones filósoficas difieren respecto al locus de tales relaciones interteóricas. En este artículo se analizan cuatro concepciones: clásica, conexionista, pragmática y reduccionista, ejemplificadas respectivamente en las obras de von Eckardt, Horgan y Tienson, Hardcastle y Bickle. Sus divergencias se caracterizan en términos de la posible existencia del nivel privilegiado. El enfoque clásico propugna un nivel privilegiado computacional. La revisión conexionista importa intuiciones de la biología a los modelos computacionales, con la intentión de vincular lo neuronal con lo computacional. El enfoque pragmático rechaza la idea de un nivel privilegiado y ofrece una visión más ecléctica de la teorización cognitiva. La conceptión reduccionista promueve la unificatión teórica mediante la reductión de teorías de alto nivel a teorías de nivel básico. (shrink)

Classical approaches such as frames, scripts,... have been unable to deal with the kind of inferences necessary in natural language processing situations such as text comprehension. Shastri & Ajjanagadde (1993), proposed a local connectionist model for the sort of reasoning requiring such a fast inference. The problem with this system is that it controls only the adequacy of argument- fillers, leaving untouched the activation control issue, namely, why we perform certain inferences, and not others, in a given situation. The aim (...) of this paper is to examine how a focus, in the sense of Grosz (1981). could operate as a theoretic constraint with the above reasoner system to handle two aspects: inference control and anaphora resolution (i.e., antecedent activation), during text understanding. (shrink)

Taking into account the difficulties that all attempts at a solution of the problem of causal-explanatory exclusion have experienced, we analyze in this paper the chances that mind-body causation is a case of overdetermination, a line of attack that has scarcely been explored. Our conclusion is that claiming that behaviors are causally overdetermined cannot solve the problem of causal-explanatory exclusion. The reason is the problem of massive coincidence, that can only be avoided by establishing a relation between mind and body; (...) that is, by denying overdetermination. The only way to defend that mind-body causation is a case of overdetermination would be by denying any modal force whatever to the principle of the causal closure of the physical, and this is a claim we would not like to reject. (shrink)