Connectionism and classicism, it generally appears, have at least this much in common: both place some notion of internal representation at the heart of a scientific study of mind. In recent years, however, a much more radical view has gained increasing popularity. This view calls into question the commitment to internal representation itself. More strikingly still, this new wave of anti-representationalism is rooted not in armchair theorizing but in practical attempts to model and understand intelligent, adaptive behavior. In this paper (...) we first present, and then critically assess, a variety of recent anti-representationalist treatments. We suggest that so far, at least, the sceptical rhetoric outpaces both evidence and argument. Some probable causes of this premature scepticism are isolated. Nonetheless, the anti-representationalist challenge is shown to be both important and progressive insofar as it forces us to see beyond the bare representational/non-representational dichotomy and to recognize instead a rich continuum of degrees and types of representationality. (shrink)

According to so-called “thin” views about the content of experience, we can only visually experience low-level features such as colour, shape, texture or motion. According to so-called “rich” views, we can also visually experience some high-level properties, such as being a pine tree or being threatening. One of the standard objections against rich views is that high-level properties can only be represented at the level of judgment. In this paper, I first challenge this objection by relying on some recent studies (...) in social vision. Secondly, I tackle a different but related issue, namely, the idea that, if the content of experience is rich, then perception is cognitively penetrable. Against this thesis, I argue that the very same criteria that help us vindicate the truly sensory nature of our rich experiences speak against their being cognitively penetrable. (shrink)

This is a review of Mind and Supermind. By KEITH FRANKISH. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Pp xiv + 255. Price £45.00 (US $75.00). ISBN 0521 812038 (hardback).

In this paper, I argue against the view that the representational structure of the implicit attitudes responsible for implicitly biased behaviour is propositional—as opposed to associationist. The proposal under criticism moves from the claim that implicit biased behaviour can occasionally be modulated by logical and evidential considerations to the view that the structure of the implicit attitudes responsible for such biased behaviour is propositional. I argue, in particular, against the truth of this conditional. Sensitivity to logical and evidential considerations, I (...) contend, proves to be an inadequate criterion for establishing the true representational structure of implicit attitudes. Considerations of a different kind, which emphasize the challenges posed by the structural social injustice that implicit attitudes reflect, offer, I conclude, better support for deciding this issue in favour of an associationist view. (shrink)

It has recently been pointed out that perceptual nonconceptualism admits of two different and logically independent interpretations. On the first (content) view, perceptual nonconceptualism is a thesis about the kind of content perceptual experiences have. On the second (state) view, perceptual nonconceptualism is a thesis about the relation that holds between a subject undergoing a perceptual experience and its content. For the state nonconceptualist, it thus seems consistent to hold that both perceptual experiences and beliefs share the same (conceptual) content, (...) but that for a subject to undergo a perceptual experience, the subject need not possess the concepts involved in a correct characterization of such content. I argue that the consistency of this position requires a non-Fregean notion of content that fails to capture the way the subject grasps the world as being. Hence state nonconceptualism leaves perceptual content attribution unsupported. Yet, on a characterization of content along the relevant (neo-Fregean) lines, this position would become incoherent, as it would entail that a subject could exercise cognitive abilities she doesn’t possess. I conclude that, given the notion of content demanded by the debate, the state view does entail the content view after all. (shrink)

Is action-guiding vision cognitively penetrable? More specifically, is the visual processing that guides our goal-directed actions sensitive to semantic information from cognitive states? This paper critically examines a recent family of arguments whose aim is to challenge a widespread and influential view in philosophy and cognitive science: the view that action-guiding vision is cognitively impenetrable. I argue, in response, that while there may very well be top–down causal influences on action-guiding vision, they should not be taken to be an instance (...) of cognitive penetration. Assuming otherwise is to assign a computational role to the influencing states that they cannot perform. Although questions about cognitive penetrability are ultimately empirical, the issues addressed in this paper are largely philosophical. The discussion here highlights an important set of considerations that help better understand the relations between cognition, vision, and action. (shrink)

It has recently been argued that beliefs formed on the basis of implicit biases pose a challenge for accessibilism, since implicit biases are consciously inaccessible, yet they seem to be relevant to epistemic justification. Recent empirical evidence suggests, however, that while we may typically lack conscious access to the source of implicit attitudes and their impact on our beliefs and behaviour, we do have access to their content. In this paper, I discuss the notion of accessibility required for this argument (...) to work vis-à-vis these empirical results and offer two ways in which the accessibilist could meet the challenge posed by implicit biases. Ultimately both strategies fail, but the way in which they do, I conclude, reveals something general and important about our epistemic obligations and about the intuitions that inform the role of implicit biases in accessibilist justification. (shrink)

Nonconceptualists maintain that there are ways of representing the world that do not reflect the concepts a creature possesses. They claim that the content of these representational states is genuine content because it is subject to correctness conditions, but it is nonconceptual because the creature to which we attribute it need not possess any of the concepts involved in the specification of that content. Appeals to nonconceptual content have seemed especially useful in attempts to capture the representational properties of perceptual (...) experiences, the representational states of pre-linguistic children and non-human animals, the states of subpersonal visual information-processing systems, and the subdoxastic states involved in tacit knowledge of the grammar of a language. Nonconceptual content is also invoked in the explanation of concept possession, concept acquisition, sensorimotor behaviour, and in the analysis of the notion of self-consciousness. The notion of nonconceptual content plays an important role in many discussions about the relationships between perception and thought. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue against the view that the representational structure of the implicit attitudes responsible for implicitly biased behaviour is propositional—as opposed to associationist. The proposal under criticism moves from the claim that implicit biased behaviour can occasionally be modulated by logical and evidential considerations to the view that the structure of the implicit attitudes responsible for such biased behaviour is propositional. I argue, in particular, against the truth of this conditional. Sensitivity to logical and evidential considerations, I (...) contend, proves to be an inadequate criterion for establishing the true representational structure of implicit attitudes. Considerations of a different kind, which emphasize the challenges posed by the structural social injustice that implicit attitudes reflect, offer, I conclude, better support for deciding this issue in favour of an associationist view.En este artículo cuestiono la tesis de que la estructura representacional de las actitudes implícitas responsables del comportamiento implícitamente sesgado es proposicional—en lugar de asociacionista. De acuerdo con la propuesta criticada, si la conducta implícita sesgada puede ocasionalmente ser modulada por consideraciones lógicas y evidenciales, entonces la estructura de las actitudes implícitas responsables de esa conducta es proposicional. Cuestiono, en particular, la verdad de este condicional. Sostengo que la sensibilidad de las actitudes implícitas a consideraciones lógicas y evidenciales resulta ser un criterio inadecuado para establecer su verdadera estructura representacional. Consideraciones de otro tipo, que enfatizan los desafíos planteados por la injusticia social estructural que las actitudes implícitas reflejan, ofrecen, concluyo, un mejor apoyo para decidir esta cuestión a favor de una visión asociacionista. (shrink)

In this paper I argue on two fronts. First, I press for the view that judging is a type of mental action, as opposed to those who think that judging is involuntary and hence not an action. Second, I argue that judging is specifically a type of non-voluntary mental action. My account of the non-voluntary nature of the mental act of judging differs, however, from standard non-voluntarist views, according to which ‘non-voluntary’ just means regulated by epistemic reasons. In addition, judging (...) is non-voluntary, I contend, because it is partially constituted by the exercise of a non-reason-governed skill. This skill, which I call ‘critical pop-out’, consists of an unreflective, often unconscious, ability to detect the kind of situations in which the reflective abilities that also partially constitute our acts of judging should be deployed. We are responsible for our judgments, I conclude, because in identifying such reflection-inviting situations, we reveal the kind of epistemic agents we are. (shrink)

I raise some doubts about the plausibility of Stanley and Williamson's view that all knowledge-how is just a species of propositional knowledge. By tackling the question of what is involved in entertaining a proposition, I try to show that Stanley and Williamson's position leads to an uncomfortable dilemma. Depending on how we understand the notion of contemplating a proposition, either intuitively central cases of knowing-how cannot be thus classified or we lose our grip on the very idea of propositional knowledge, (...) which then fails to demarcate any clear class of cases. I conclude with a brief discussion of the nature and role of knowledge-how, and its relation to the important, but less explored, notion of expertise. (shrink)

O'Regan and Noe present a wonderfully detailed and comprehensive defense of a position whose broad outline we absolutely and unreservedly endorse. They are right, it seems to us, to stress the intimacy of conscious content and embodied action, and to counter the idea of a Grand Illusion with the image of an agent genuinely in touch, via active exploration, with the rich and varied visual scene. This is an enormously impressive achievement, and we hope that the comments that follow will (...) be taken in a spirit of constructive questioning. Overall, we have two main reservations. (shrink)

This paper concerns the role of the structural properties of representations in determining the nature of their content. I take as a starting point Fodor's (2007) and Heck's (2007) recent arguments making the iconic structure of perceptual representations essential in establishing their content as content of a different (nonconceptual) kind. I argue that the prima facie state?content error this strategy seems to display is nothing but a case of ?state?content error error,? i.e., the mistake of considering that the properties that (...) characterize the type of content certain representations have are indeed independent of their structural properties. I also consider another objection to the general strategy, namely that it falls short of showing that the nonconceptual content of perceptual experiences thus established is the kind of content that figures in true explanations of intentional behavior. I concede this point in respect of Fodor's version of the strategy, while denying that it has any bearing on Heck's approach. The success of this objection in Heck's case ultimately depends, I argue, upon an unjustified commitment to a certain empirically suspect model of perception. (shrink)

(2014). Nonconceptualism and the cognitive impenetrability of early vision. Philosophical Psychology: Vol. 27, No. 5, pp. 621-642. doi: 10.1080/09515089.2014.893386.

I argue that findings in support of Adams and Kveraga’s functional forecast model of emotion expression processing help settle the debate between rich and sparse views of the content of perceptual experience. In particular, I argue that these results in social vision suggest that the distinctive phenomenal character of experiences involving high-level properties such as emotions and social traits is best explained by their being visually experienced as opposed to being brought about by perceptual judgments.

In this paper I approach the debate over non-human animals’ concepts from a metaphilosophical perspective. I compare exemplars of a full-fledged and an austere view of concepts and concept possession. A deflationist response to these views main- tains that the austere and the full-fledged theorist each makes claims that are true when they, respectively, assert and deny ‘nonhuman animals have concepts’. I will argue that the deflationist response is misplaced, using an analogy with the debate over the putative non-conceptual content (...) of perceptual experience. The argument turns on the type of intentional explanation that the austere view on concept posses- sion can support. For the deflationist response to be sustainable, adherents of the aus- tere view would need to have substantially weaker commitments to the explanatory power of their account of concepts and concept possession than, in fact, they do. (shrink)

Journal of Social Philosophy, EarlyView.

The paper has a negative and a positive side. The negative side argues that the classical notions of narrow and wide content are not suitable for the purposes of psychological explanation. The positive side shows how to characterize an alternative notion of content that is suitable for those purposes. This account is supported by a way of conceptualizing computation that is constitutively dependent upon properties external to the system and empirical research in developmental psychology. My main contention is that an (...) adequate computational explanation of the behavior involved in cognitive activities should invoke a concept of content that can capture the intimate dynamical relationship between the inner and the outer. The notion of content thus reaches out to include the set of skills, abilities and know-hows that an agent deploys in a constantly variable environment. The assumption underlying my attempt to characterize this ecological notion of content is that cognition is better understood when treated as embedded cognition and that the idea of cognitive significance ought to be cashed out in non-individualistic and pragmatic terms. (shrink)

Journal of Social Philosophy, EarlyView.

In a recent paper, Paul Coates defends a sophisticated dispositional account which allegedly resolves the sceptical paradox developed by Kripke in his monograph on Wittgenstein's treatment of following a rule (Kripke, 1982). Coates' account appeals to a notion of 'homeostasis', unpacked as a subject's second-order disposition to maintain a consistent pattern of extended first-order dispositions regarding her linguistic behavior. This kind of account, Coates contends, provides a naturalistic model for the normativity of intentional properties and thus resolves Kripke's sceptical paradox. (...) In this paper I argue that Coates' second-order dispositional account cannot solve the sceptic's problems regarding meaning and normativity. My main contention is that in order for second-order dispositions to be able to effectively regulate the coordinated responses constitutive of first-order dispositions, those first order dispositions must be independently identifiable. Yet that's precisely what Kripke's sceptical argument calls into question. I shall also argue, in a more positive fashion, that Coates' own appeal to practical breakdowns may suggest a different —and more effective— response to the sceptic's concern. (shrink)

The main goal of this paper is to show that Pettit and Smith’s (1996) argument concerning the nature of free belief is importantly incomplete. I accept Pettit and Smith’s emphasis upon normative constraints governing responsible believing and desiring, and their claim that the responsibly believing agent needs to possess an ability to believe (or desire) otherwise when believing (desiring) wrongly. But I argue that their characterization of these constraints does not do justice to one crucial factor, namely, the presence of (...) an unreflective, sub-personally constituted, ability to spot the kind of situations in which the reflective critical abilities constitutive of responsible believing (and desiring) should be deployed. (shrink)

Dual factor theories of meaning are fatally flawed in at least two ways. First. their very duality constitutes a problem: the two dimensions of meaning cannot be treated as totally orthogonal without compromising the intuition that much of our linguistic and non linguistic behavior is based on the cognizer’s interaction with the world. Second, Conceptual Role Semantics is not adequate for explaining a crucial feature of linguistic representation, viz., the special kind of compositionality known as concatenative compositionality. Dual factor theories, (...) I conclude, cannot constitute an acceptable philosophical model of content. (shrink)

O'Regan and Noe present a wonderfully detailed and comprehensive defense of a position whose broad outline we absolutely and unreservedly endorse. They are right, it seems to us, to stress the intimacy of conscious content and embodied action, and to counter the idea of a Grand Illusion with the image of an agent genuinely in touch, via active exploration, with the rich and varied visual scene. This is an enormously impressive achievement, and we hope that the comments that follow will (...) be. (shrink)

It is sometimes said that humans are unlike other animals in at least one crucial respect. We do not simply form beliefs, desires and other mental states, but are capable of caring about our mental states in a distinctive way. We can care about the justification of our beliefs, and about the desirability of our desires. This kind of observation is usually made in discussions of free will and moral responsibility. But it has profound consequences, or so I shall argue, (...) for our conception of the very nature of beliefs and other mental states. Suitably developed, it allows us to draw a line between two distinct ways in which a creature may possess a belief, represent a scene, and fall into error. The first way (which I shall call the 'mindless' way) involves little more than an encoding of information in some way designed to guide appropriate response. This is the common heritage of humans, and many other animals. The second way (which I shall call the 'mindful' way) requires that the creature be capable in addition of a special kind of second-order reflection, and (importantly) be expert at detecting the kinds of situation in which such reflection is called for. The differences between these two ways of 'believing that P' are sufficiently deep and significant to warrant (or so I claim) our treating them as two distinct classes of mental states. For it is only courtesy of the second layer of complexity, I shall argue, that it becomes proper to hold someone accountable for their beliefs or other mental states, and it is this fact of (something like) accountability that in turn raises the most significant challenge for philosophical attempts to give naturalized accounts of meaning, belief, and mentality. (shrink)

We continuously form perceptual beliefs about the world based on how things appear to us in our perceptual experiences. I see that the ripe tomato in front of me is red and I form the belief that this tomato is red based on my seeing it, i.e. based on my veridical perceptual experience of this red tomato. Perceptual experiences and beliefs are representational mental states. Both are defined not by what they are, i.e. their physical properties, but by what they (...) are about, what they represent, by their content. The content of both perceptual experiences and beliefs is specified by how the world must be for them to represent things correctly; it is specified by stating the conditions under which they would be true. (shrink)

The contents of perceptual experience, it has been argued, often include a characteristic “non-conceptual” component (Evans, 1982). Rejecting such views, McDowell (1994) claims that such contents are conceptual in every respect. It will be shown that this debate is compromised by the failure of both sides to mark a further, and crucial, distinction in cognitive space. This is the distinction between what is doubted here as mindful and mindless modes of perceiving: a distinction which cross-classifies the conceptual / non-conceptual divide. (...) The goal of the paper is to show that there can be both mindful personal level perceptual experiences whose content cannot be considered conceptual — pace McDowell (1994)— and that there are mindless personal level perceptual experiences whose content cannot be considered —pace Evans (1982)— nonconceptual. The resulting picture yields a richer four dimensional carving of the space of perceptual experience, and provides a better framework in which to accommodate the many subtleties involved in our sensory confrontations with the world. (shrink)

First Published in 1998. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

First published in 1998. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

The study of perception and the role of the senses have recently risen to prominence in philosophy and are now a major area of study and research. However, the philosophical history of the senses remains a relatively neglected subject. Moving beyond the current philosophical canon, this outstanding collection offers a wide-ranging and diverse philosophical exploration of the senses, from the classical period to the present day. Written by a team of international contributors, it is divided into six parts: -/- Perception (...) from Non-Western Perspectives Perception in the Ancient Period Perception in the Medieval Latin/Arabic Period Perception in the Early Modern Period Perception in the Post-Kantian Period Perception in the Contemporary Period. The volume challenges conventional philosophical study of perception by covering a wide range of significant, as well as hitherto overlooked, topics, such as perceptual judgment, temporal and motion illusions, mirror and picture perception, animal senses and cross-modal integration. By investigating the history of the senses in thinkers such as Plotinus, Auriol, Berkeley and Cavendish; and considering the history of the senses in diverse philosophical traditions, including Chinese, Indian, Byzantine, Greek and Latin it brings a fresh approach to studying the history of philosophy itself. -/- Including a thorough introduction as well as introductions to each section by the editors, The Senses and the History of Philosophy is essential reading for students and researchers in the history of philosophy, perception, philosophy of mind, philosophical psychology, aesthetics and eastern and non-western philosophy. It will also be extremely useful for those in related disciplines such as psychology, religion, sociology, intellectual history and cognitive sciences. (shrink)

Summarizes and illuminates two decades of research Gathering important papers by both philosophers and scientists, this collection illuminates the central themes that have arisen during the last two decades of work on the conceptual foundations of artificial intelligence and cognitive science. Each volume begins with a comprehensive introduction that places the coverage in a broader perspective and links it with material in the companion volumes. The collection is of interest in many disciplines including computer science, linguistics, biology, information science, psychology, (...) neuroscience, iconography, and philosophy. Examines initial efforts and the latest controversies The topics covered range from the bedrock assumptions of the computational approach to understanding the mind, to the more recent debates concerning cognitive architectures, all the way to the latest developments in robotics, artificial life, and dynamical systems theory. The collection first examines the lineageof major research programs, beginning with the basic idea of machine intelligence itself, then focuses on specific aspects of thought and intelligence, highlighting the much-discussed issue of consciousness, the equally important, but less densely researched issue of emotional response, and the more traditionally philosophical topic of language and meaning. Provides a gamut of perspectives The editors have included several articles that challenge crucial elements of the familiar research program of cognitive science, as well as important writings whose previous circulation has been limited. Within each volume the papers are organized to reflect a variety of research programs and issues. The substantive introductions that accompany each volume further organize the material and provide readers with a working sense of the issues and the connection between articles. (shrink)

While applauding the bulk of the account on offer, we question one apparent implication viz, that every difference in sensorimotor contingencies corresponds to a difference in conscious visual experience.

In this paper I display a general metaphysical assumption that characterizes basic naturalistic views and that is inherited, in a residual form, by their leading teleological rivals. The assumption is that intentional states require identifiable inner vehicles and that to explain intentional properties we must develop accounts that bind specific contents to specific vehicles. I show that this assumption is deeply rooted in representationalist and reductionist theories of content and I argue that it is deeply inappropriate. I sketch the main (...) features of plausible alternatives: such alternatives are either anti-representationalist (Dynamical Systems' models) or anti-reductionist (institution-based approaches), and are not committed to any such metaphysical premise. (shrink)

In this paper I attempt to develop a notion of responsibility (semantic responsibility) that is to the notion of belief what epistemic responsibility is to the notion of justification. 'Being semantically responsible' is shown to involve the fulfilment of cognitive duties which allow the agent to engage in the kind of reason-laden discourses which render her beliefs appropriately sensitive to correction. The concept of semantic responsibility suggests that the notion of belief found in contemporary philosophical debates about content implicitly encompasses (...) radically different classes of beliefs. In what follows I make those different types explicit, and sketch some implications for naturalisation projects in semantics and for accounts of the (putative) non-conceptual content of perceptual experiences. (shrink)

Journal of Social Philosophy, EarlyView.

Let’s consider the following paradox (Fodor [1989], Jackson and Petit [1988] [1992], Drestke [1988], Block [1991], Lepore and Loewer [1987], Lewis [1986], Segal and Sober [1991]): i) The intentional content of a thought (or any other intentional state) is causally relevant to its behavioural (and other) effects. ii) Intentional content is nothing but the meaning of internal representations. But, iii) Internal processors are only sensitive to the syntactic structures of internal representations, not their meanings. Therefore it seems that if we (...) want to defend the idea -absolutely plausible from an intuitive point of view- that mental / intentional states are causally responsible for behavioural outputs and we want to do it on the physicalist basis of any scientific methodology, we will have to give up the conviction that such intentional states qua intentional, i. e. as having a particular meaning, are the ones causally responsible for our behaviour. The path that takes us to mental epiphenomenalism is clear: 1) the causal powers of any event are completely determined by its physical properties; 2) although intentional properties supervene on physical properties, they can’t be identified with them; 3) intentional properties, as intentional, are not causally responsible for behaviour, because they don’t take part in the causal powers of the states to which they belong, i. e., intentional properties are epiphenomenal. Let’s consider now a different yet parallel position to the one just described. There is an important debate in cognitive science about whether the class of mechanisms to which we belong and which the computational modelling project of cognitive processes refers to is best represented by classical or connectionist approaches (McClelland, Rumelhart et. al [1986], Smolensky [1987] [1988], Fodor and Pylyshyn [1988], Pinker and Prince [1988], Clark [1989], Ramsey, Stich and Rumelhart [1991], Clark and Karmiloff-Smith [forthcoming]).In classical, serial processing models, information is encoded in terms of rules that have a linguistic character. In connectionist or parallel distributed processing (PDP) models, the causal relationships among the units that constitute the system determine how the information is processes by the network, although these units don’t have a direct semantic interpretation. But, for both, classical and connectionist models, all the computations can be explained without any reference to the content of the processed information, i.e., in both cases the properties that seem to be responsible for the system’s behaviour are ultimately physical properties nor intentional ones. This situation mirrors thus, within cognitive science, the philosophical discussion concerning the causal efficacy of semantic properties. Now, if in this debate we opt for the classical paradigm, there is a way of finding a solution to the computational version of the epiphenomenalism paradox. This solution is based mainly on the notion of supervenience or, more precisely, on the notion of mereological supervenience (Kim [1984] [1988])1 . The idea of intentional properties supervening on physical properties makes sense within the classical context because there exists an easily isolable supervenience base comprising the syntactic items in the socalled language of thought. But, what happens if we opt for the connectionist paradigm?. The situation here doesn’t seem to favour the use of the same supervenience strategy. For it has been argued (Ramsey, Stich and Garon [1991]) that beliefs, desires, and other mental states are nor, in the connectionist paradigm, individuable as weight or activation states of the system. This is because information is encoded by the network in distributed and superpositional representations, i.e., there are no straightforwardly isolable vehicles at the physical level that can be identified as the articulated supervenience base on which the semantic properties supervene2 . If this is true, then the connectionist not only loses the battle against epiphenomenalism but more drastically, seems to offer a standing invitation to eliminativism, since talk of beliefs and desires, etc. now seems to be floating free of any acceptable scientific underpinning, i.e., she has lost the necessary theoretical apparatus for supporting the intuitive idea that propositional attitudes -beliefs, desires and any mental states with semantic content- are physically realized. This second line of argumentation doesn’t take us to a paradox but to a dilemma: either we accept eliminativism, if connectionist hypothesis are correct or we defend the causal efficacy of mental states with semantic content by showing that, after all, connectionist networks are not plausible cognitive models (Davies [1991]). From my point of view, however, both lines of argumentation need to be revised. The aim of this paper is to find an account of the causal efficacy of content that avoids the aforementioned epiphenomenalist objections and that doesn’t require the discovery of inner symbols in the computational modelling of such contentful mental states. In short, the aim is to find a meeting point where a philosophical story about content and cause and the connectionist computational model can be brought together (Cfr. Clark [1989]). (shrink)

Recent evidence regarding a novel functionality of the mirror neuron system , a so-called 'space mirror mechanism', seems to reinforce the central role of the MNS in social cognition. According to the space mirror hypothesis, neural mirroring accounts for understanding not just what an observed agent is doing, but also the range of potential actions that a suitably located object affords an observed agent in the absence of any motor behaviour. This paper aims to show that the advocate of this (...) space mirror hypothesis faces a crippling dilemma. Either what observed agents can do remains underdetermined by space mirror representations, and no proper understanding of action potentiality is gained; or, if it is just understanding of potential motor acts that is achieved through the sensorimotor representations generated by shared object-related affordances, the very explanatory role of space mirroring is compromised. (shrink)

There is a compelling idea in the air. Both contemporary philosophers of mind and philosophers of language are engaged in developing theories of content that are naturalistic. The stand has been taken: semantic properties are not part of the primitive ontological furniture of the world. If we want to vindicate those properties as real, we will have to show that it is possible to unpack them into some other –primitive– set of properties. It is taken for granted that there is (...) no alternative way of avoiding circularity in explaining the semantic properties of mental or linguistic representations. The following quote from Fodor's Psychosemantics is probably the locus classicus for this trend: "I suppose that sooner or later the physicists will complete the catalogue they've been compiling of the ultimate and irreducible properties of things. When they do, the likes of spin, charm, and charge will perhaps appear upon their list. But aboutness surely won't; intentionality simply doesn't go that deep. It's hard to see, in the face of this consideration, how one can be a Realist about intentionality without also being, to some extent or other, a Reductionist. If the semantic and the intentional are real properties of things, it must be in virtue of their identity with properties that are themselves neither intentional nor semantic. If aboutness is real, it must be really something else." The naturalistic project seems thus to be deeply rooted in the search for a non-circular, explanatory account of intentional categories. Although, in principle, one should not take naturalism in regard to some realm as committing one to any sort of reductive explanation of that realm, in the context of contemporary philosophy of mind and philosophy of language, naturalism and reductionism como easily upon a meeting point. The reason is that explanatory, non-circular answers are taken to be reductionist. If this is correct, we would have to conclude that naturalism entails reductionism or, even more strongly, that naturalism is constitutively dependent upon the defense of a reductionist thesis. In this case, we would have to admit that there cannot be a non-reductionist naturalistic theory of content. The main aim of this paper is to cast some light on the issue of what naturalism means regarding a theory of content. It is a matter of a some urgency to find out exactly what it takes for a theory of content to be naturalistic. Until we do so, we cannot properly evaluate the existing theories. I will center my discussion of this topic on the question of whether naturalistic theories of content ought to be reductionist theories. The claim I want to defend is that, despite the current trend regarding the relations between naturalism and reductionism, the former is not constitutively dependent upon the latter. I will argue that, in fact, the strong requirements of a reductionist thesis are the very reason the project of naturalization seems to be doomed. However, I will try to show that once we have weakened those requirements, non-reductionist answers are certainly acceptable, in the sense of being informative, non-circular, and above all, explanatory. I propose a safe[r] characterization of naturalism that seems to better fit our theoretical views about content, and to turn the whole project into a more promising enterprise. (shrink)

Semantic properties are not commonly held to be part of the basic ontological furniture of the world. Consequently, we confront a problem: how to 'naturalize' semantics so as to reveal these properties in their true ontological colors? Dominant naturalistic theories address semantic properties as properties of some other kind. The reductionistic flavor is unmistakable. The following quote from Fodor's Psychosemantics is probably the contemporary locus classicus of this trend. Fodor is commendably unapologetic: "I suppose that sooner or later the physicists (...) will complete the catalogue they've been compiling of the ultimate and irreducible properties of things. When they do, the likes of spin, charm, and charge will perhaps appear upon their list. But aboutness surely won't; intentionality simply doesn't go that deep. It's hard to see, in the face of this consideration, how one can be a Realist about intentionality without also being, to some extent or other, a Reductionist. If the semantic and the intentional are real properties of things, it must be in virtue of their identity with properties that are themselves neither intentional nor semantic. If aboutness is real, it must be really something else." Notice the shape of this explanatory project. Intentional properties will count as real in virtue of their identity with, or supervenience on, some set of lower-level physical properties. Fodor thus assumes, in effect, that the program of naturalization demands a higher-to-lower, top-to-bottom, kind of explanatory strategy. This paper addresses precisely that assumption, namely, that the non-semantic properties on which semantic properties depend, belong to what are intuitively lower levels of description than the intentional level itself. It also questions the higher-to-lower explanatory scheme associated with that assumption. My discussion of this topic draws on Robert Brandom's recent work and can be considered an analysis of Brandom's stance and its implications. The discussion should help to explain the general lack of progress in the project of naturalizing content. It should also help show why attempts to eliminate the normative vocabulary employed in specifying the practices that guide the use of a language are unlikely to succeed. I shall start by displaying the general order of explanation that characterizes typical naturalization projects, showing that even when a full reduction to physics is avoided, some important assumptions inherited from the explanatory model of physics remain. These include the demand for an array of causal explanations couched in terms of ultimate properties of the world, and the idea that such non-semantic properties should be constitutive of whatever semantic properties are in question. Extending Brandom's idea that the normativity of content is not reducible to physics, I shall argue that even such residual demands are inappropriate. More positively, I suggest that, despite the deep irreducibility of the normative dimension of content, we need not consider that dimension either primitive or inexplicable. Instead, such normative aspects can be unpacked by invoking a different, lower-to-higher, explanatory scheme in which the explanans includes higher level features such as skilled know-how and social frames of action. (shrink)

One common factor underlying the set of disciplines clustered together under the label of Cognitive Science is a computational model of the mind. Cognitive capacities are to be treated as information-processing operations and to be characterized in computational terms. Computational processes are defined, in turn, in terms of operations on representations. For a few years, one of the most important debates in Cognitive Science has been whether the class of mechanisms to which cognizers belong and to which the computational modelling (...) project of cognitive processes refers is best represented by classical or connectionist approaches. In either a classical or connectionist fashion though, the cognitive scientific style has remained computational all the way through. (shrink)

On the Origin of Objects is, at heart, an extended search for a non-circular and nonreductive characterization of two key notions: intentionality and computation. Only a non-circular and non-reductive account of these key notions can, Smith believes, provide a secure platform for a proper understanding of the mind. The project has both a negative and a positive aspect. Negatively, Smith rejects views that attempt to identify the key notions with lower-level physical properties, arguing instead for a more abstract and systemic (...) understanding. This negative effort occupies Part I of the book. In Part II, we encounter the positive side of Smith's proposal: an attempt to develop a non-reductive analysis of computation and meaning able to meet the requirements laid out in Part I. One purpose of this critical review is to lay out this project in fairly simple terms. This is necessary since Smith's own treatment and prose sometimes obscures the flow of the argument. I suggest that, properly understood, Smith's proposal bears a clear affinity to ideas emerging from the dynamical systems movement within Cognitive Science, and that this tie-in can help put flesh on several of the more metaphorical characterizations in the book. My main criticism is that the book ultimately fails to provide an account able to meet Smith's own requirements for a truly non-reductive account of intentionality. This is especially the case regarding Smith's commitment to licensing a partition of the world based on no a priori assumptions whatsoever. The exercise is a valuable one, however, since it forces us to look harder at some foundational assumptions and at least hints at a new and refreshing perspective: one in which the key explanatory relations are grounded in facts about human practice and pragmatically established social norms. (shrink)

The main goal of this paper is to defend the thesis that the content of know-how states is an accuracy assessable type of nonconceptual content. My argument proceeds in two stages. I argue, first, that the intellectualist distinction between types of ways of grasping the same kind of content is uninformative unless it is tied in with a distinction between kinds of contents. Second, I consider and reject the objection that, if the content of know-how states is non-conceptual, it will (...) be mysterious why attributions of knowing how create opaque contexts. I show that the objection conflates two distinct issues: the nature of the content of know-how states and the semantic evaluability of know-how ascriptions. (shrink)

Fodor claims that the modularity of mind helps undermine relativism in various forms. I shall show first, that the modular vision of mind provides insufficient support for the rejection of relativism, and second, that an alternative model may, in fact, provide a better empirical response to the relativist challenge.

"Consciousness", it is widely agreed, does not name any single cognitive phenomenon. But nor is the gathering of distinct phenomena under that single label an accident. What seems to unify the range of cognitive goods in this "variety store" is the central yet elusive notion of the availability of some content or feeling in subjective experience. The paper begins by building a rough taxonomy of the various ways different approaches have tried to give an account of this central target. Among (...) these approaches there are two to which special attention is paid. According to the first, our very cognitive constitution makes the issue of subjective experience scientifically intractable . According to the second , the philosophical worries about the subjectivity of experience are solved once consciousness is analyzed as the result of a long process of evolution that turns the flexible architecture of the brain into a virtual sequential machine. It is my contention that noconceptual argument of the first kind can establish the impossibility of one day achieving a scientific understanding of the property of being conscious. It is also my contention that a better understanding of the underlying neurophysiological and computational mechanisms is needed if Dennett′s theory is to resolve, rather than side-step, those problems related to the subjective phenomenology of consciousness. In short, I aim to show that there is no cause to regard a scientific theory of subjective experience to be in principle unobtainable. But that, contra Dennett, the form of such a scientific understanding is not yet clear. (shrink)