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52Disunity defended: A reply to BayneAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 78 (2): 255-263. 2000.This Article does not have an abstract
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731Notes toward a structuralist theory of mental representationIn Hugh Clapin, Phillip Staines & Peter Slezak (eds.), Representation in Mind: New Approaches to Mental Representation, Elsevier. pp. 1--20. 2004.Any creature that must move around in its environment to find nutrients and mates, in order to survive and reproduce, faces the problem of sensorimotor control. A solution to this problem requires an on-board control mechanism that can shape the creature’s behaviour so as to render it “appropriate” to the conditions that obtain. There are at least three ways in which such a control mechanism can work, and Nature has exploited them all. The first and most basic way is for a creature to bump into …Read more
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38Sins of omission and commissionBehavioral and Brain Sciences 24 (5): 997-998. 2001.O'Regan & Noë (O&N) fail to address adequately the two most historically important reasons for seeking to explain visual experience in terms of internal representations. They are silent about the apparently inferential nature of perception, and mistaken about the significance of the phenomenology accompanying dreams, hallucinations, and mental imagery.
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71Finding a place for experience in the physical-relational structure of the brainBehavioral and Brain Sciences 22 (6): 966-967. 1999.In restricting his analysis to the causal relations of functionalism, on the one hand, and the neurophysiological realizers of biology, on the other, Palmer has overlooked an alternative conception of the relationship between color experience and the brain - one that liberalises the relation between mental phenomena and their physical implementation, without generating functionalism
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103What's really doing the work here? Knowledge representation or the higher-order thought theory of consciousness?Behavioral and Brain Sciences 22 (5): 778-779. 1999.Dienes & Perner offer us a theory of explicit and implicit knowledge that promises to systematise a large and diverse body of research in cognitive psychology. Their advertised strategy is to unpack this distinction in terms of explicit and implicit representation. But when one digs deeper one finds the “Higher-Order Thought” theory of consciousness doing much of the work. This reduces both the plausibility and usefulness of their account. We think their strategy is broadly correct, but that con…Read more
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225The mind: Embodied, embedded, but not extendedMetascience 7 8-83. 1998.This commentry focuses on the one major ecumenical theme propounded in Andy Clark's Being There that I find difficult to accept; this is Clarks advocacy, especially in the third and final part of the book, of the extended nature of the embedded, embodied mind
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24This issue brings together papers by Australasian philosophers on language, thought, and their relationship. Contributors were given complete freedom to treat these topics in any way they saw fit. The results reflect the diverse interests of Australasian philosophers, and, perhaps even more strikingly, the diversity of philosophical methods they employ to pursue these interests.
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52Defending the semantic conception of computation in cognitive scienceJournal of Cognitive Science 12 (4): 381-99. 2011.Cognitive science is founded on the conjecture that natural intelligence can be explained in terms of computation. Yet, notoriously, there is no consensus among philosophers of cognitive science as to how computation should be characterised. While there are subtle differences between the various accounts of computation found in the literature, the largest fracture exists between those that unpack computation in semantic terms (and hence view computation as the processing of representations) and …Read more
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38Distinctions: Subpersonal and subconsciousPsycoloquy. 1993.Puccetti argues that Dennett's views on split brains are defective. First, we criticise Puccetti's argument. Then we distinguish persons, minds, consciousnesses, selves and personalities. Then we introduce the concepts of part-persons and part-consciousnesses, and apply them to clarifying the situation. Finally, we criticise Dennett for some contribution to the confusion.
Adelaide, South Australia, Australia
Areas of Interest
Philosophy of Mind |
Philosophy of Cognitive Science |
Philosophy of Physical Science |