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490The unity of consciousnessConsciousness and Cognition 9 (2). 2000.Human consciousness usually displays a striking unity. When one experiences a noise and, say, a pain, one is not conscious of the noise and then, separately, of the pain. One is conscious of the noise and pain together, as aspects of a single conscious experience. Since at least the time of Immanuel Kant (1781/7), this phenomenon has been called the unity of consciousness . More generally, it is consciousness not of A and, separately, of B and, separately, of C, but of A-and-B- and-C together, a…Read more
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19Jackendoff on consciousnessPragmatics and Cognition 4 (1): 81-92. 1995.In "How language helps us think", Jackendoff explores some of the relationships between language, consciousness, and thought, with a foray into attention and focus. In this paper, we will concentrate on his treatment of consciousness. We will examine three aspects of it: I. the method he uses to arrive at his views; 2. the extent to which he offers us a theory of consciousness adequate to assess his views; and 3. some of the things that we might need to add to what he offers to achieve an adequa…Read more
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105Fodor's new theory of content and computationMind and Language 12 (3-4): 459-74. 1997.In his recent book, The Elm and the Expert, Fodor attempts to reconcile the computational model of human cognition with information‐theoretic semantics, the view that semantic, and mental, content consists of nothing more than causal or nomic relationships, between words and the world, or (roughly) brain states and the world. In this paper, we do not challenge the project. Nor do we show that Fodor has failed to carry it out. instead, we urge that his analysis, when made explicit, turns out rath…Read more
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58Though there has been a huge resurgence of interest in consciousness in the past decade, little attention has been paid to what the philosopher Immanuel Kant and others call the unity of consciousness. The unity of consciousness takes different forms, as we will see, but the general idea is that each of us is aware of many things in the world at the same time, and often many of one's own mental states and of oneself as their single common subject, too.
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47Judgments and drafts eight years laterIn Andrew Brook, Don Ross & David L. Thompson (eds.), Dennett's Philosophy: A Comprehensive Assessment, Mit Press. 2000.Now that some years have passed, how does this picture of consciousness look? On the one hand, Dennett's work has vastly expanded the range of options for thinking about conscious experiences and conscious subjects. On the other hand, I suspect that the implications of his picture have been oversold (perhaps more by others than by Dennett himself). The rhetoric of _CE_ is radical in places but I do not sure that the actual implications for commonsense views of Seemings and Subjects are nearly as…Read more
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77Phenomenology: Contribution to cognitive scienceAbstracta SPECIAL ISSUE II, Pp. 54 – 70, 2008 (3): 54-70. 2008.My comments will focus on the issue of what, according to Gallagher and Zahavi (2008, hereafter G&Z; all references will be to this book unless otherwise noted), the phenomenological approach can contribute to the cognitive sciences (including cognitive neuroscience), one of their major themes. Toward the end of the paper, I will say something about a second major theme of theirs, the relationship of phenomenology to philosophy of mind. Conventional wisdom within cognitive science has it is that…Read more
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110Review of 'The Unity of Consciousness', by Tim Bayne (review)Australasian Journal of Philosophy 90 (3): 599-602. 2012.Australasian Journal of Philosophy, Volume 0, Issue 0, Page 1-4, Ahead of Print
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252Cognition and the Brain: The Philosophy and Neuroscience Movement (edited book)Cambridge University Press. 2005.This volume provides an up to date and comprehensive overview of the philosophy and neuroscience movement, which applies the methods of neuroscience to traditional philosophical problems and uses philosophical methods to illuminate issues in neuroscience. At the heart of the movement is the conviction that basic questions about human cognition, many of which have been studied for millennia, can be answered only by a philosophically sophisticated grasp of neuroscience's insights into the processi…Read more
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211Making consciousness safe for neuroscienceIn Andrew Brook & Kathleen Akins (eds.), Cognition and the Brain: The Philosophy and Neuroscience Movement, Cambridge University Press. pp. 397. 2005.
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34Kant: A unified representational base for all consciousnessIn Uriah Kriegel & Kenneth Williford (eds.), Self-Representational Approaches to Consciousness, Mit Press. pp. 89-109. 2006.
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9Jackendoff on consciousnessPragmatics and Cognition 4 (1): 81-92. 1996.In "How language helps us think", Jackendoff explores some of the relationships between language, consciousness, and thought, with a foray into attention and focus. In this paper, we will concentrate on his treatment of consciousness. We will examine three aspects of it: I. the method he uses to arrive at his views; 2. the extent to which he offers us a theory of consciousness adequate to assess his views; and 3. some of the things that we might need to add to what he offers to achieve an adequa…Read more
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31Fodor's New Theory of Content and ComputationMind and Language 12 (3-4): 459-474. 1997.In his recent book, The Elm and the Expert, Fodor attempts to reconcile the computational model of human cognition with information‐theoretic semantics, the view that semantic, and mental, content consists of nothing more than causal or nomic relationships, between words and the world, or (roughly) brain states and the world. In this paper, we do not challenge the project. Nor do we show that Fodor has failed to carry it out. instead, we urge that his analysis, when made explicit, turns out rath…Read more
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39Further routes to psychological constructionismBehavioral and Brain Sciences 35 (3): 153-154. 2012.In this commentary, we do two things. First, we sketch two further routes to psychological constructionism. They are complementary to Lindquist et al.'s meta-analyses and have potential to add new evidence. Second, we look at a challenging kind of case for constructionism, namely, emotional anomalies where there are correlated, and probably relevant, brain anomalies. Psychopaths are our example
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104The Appearance of ThingsIn Andrew Brook & Don Ross (eds.), Daniel Dennett, Cambridge University Press. pp. 41. 2002.
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270Kant, self-awareness, and self-referenceIn Andrew Brook & R. DeVidi (eds.), Self-Reference and Self-Awareness, John Benjamins. pp. 9--30. 2001.
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44Kant's A Priori Methods for Recognizing Necessary TruthsCanadian Journal of Philosophy 22 (sup1): 215-252. 1992.
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4Jerome Neu, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Freud Reviewed byPhilosophy in Review 13 (1): 43-45. 1993.
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102Unified consciousness and the selfJournal of Consciousness Studies (5-6): 5-6. 2002.I am in complete sympathy with Galen Strawson's conclusions in ‘The Self’ . He takes a careful, measured approach to a topic that lends itself all too easily to speculation and intellectual extravaganzas. The results are for the most part balanced and plausible. I am even in sympathy with his claim that a memory-produced sense of continuity over time is less central to selfhood than many researchers think, though he may go too far in the opposite direction. Thus my purpose in these comments is n…Read more
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108Neuroscience versus psychology in FreudAnnals of the New York Academy of Sciences 843 (1): 66-79. 1998.In the 1890's, Freud attempted to lay out the foundations of a complete, interdisciplinary neuroscience of the mind. The conference that gave rise to this collection of papers, Neuroscience of the Mind on the Centennial of Freud's Project for a Scientific Psychology, celebrated the centrepiece of this work, the famous Project (1895a). Freud never published this work and by 1896 or 1897 he had abandoned the research programme behind it. As he announced in the famous Ch. VII of The Interpretation …Read more
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135Kant, Cognitive Science and Contemporary Neo-KantianismJournal of Consciousness Studies 11 (10-11): 10-11. 2004.Through nineteenth-century intermediaries, the model of the mind developed by Immanuel Kant has had an enormous influence on contemporary cognitive research. Indeed, Kant could be viewed as the intellectual godfather of cognitive science. In general structure, Kant's model of the mind shaped nineteenth-century empirical psychology and, after a hiatus during which behaviourism reigned supreme , became influential again toward the end of the twentieth century, especially in cognitive science. Kant…Read more
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126Kant and cognitive scienceTeleskop. 2003.Some of Kant's ideas about the mind have had a huge influence on cognitive science, in particular his view that sensory input has to be worked up using concepts or concept-like states and his conception of the mind as a system of cognitive functions. We explore these influences in the first part of the paper. Other ideas of Kant's about the mind have not been assimilated into cognitive science, including important ideas about processes of synthesis, mental unity, and consciousness and self-consc…Read more
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47Kant and the MindPhilosophical Review 104 (4): 590. 1995.Consciousness, self-consciousness, mental unity, and the necessary conditions for cognition are issues of paramount importance for two prima facie distinct intellectual endeavors: contemporary cognitive science and interpretations of Kant. The goal of Andrew Brook’s timely and useful book is to contribute to both of these projects by showing how a better understanding of Kant’s views can also illuminate current controversies about how to model the mind.
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82Tracking a Person Over Time Is Tracking What?Topics in Cognitive Science 6 (4): 585-598. 2014.Tracking persons, that is, determining that a person now is or is not a specific earlier person, is extremely common and widespread in our way of life and extremely important. If so, figuring out what we are tracking, what it is to persist as a person over a period of time, is also important. Trying to figure this out will be the main focus of this chapter
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