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4212 The Evolutionary Origins of VolitionIn Don Ross, David Spurrett, Harold Kincaid & G. Lynn Stephens (eds.), Distributed Cognition and the Will: Individual Volition and Social Context, Mit Press. pp. 255. 2007.
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44In order to investigate cognition fundamental assumptions must be made about what, in general terms, it is. In cognitive science it is usually assumed that cognition is computational and representational. There have been well known disputes over these assumptions, with rival claims that cognition is dynamical, situated and embodied. In this paper I emphasize the relations between cognition and control. I present a model of cognition that makes the claim that it is a form of high-order control, a…Read more
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463Critical review of Chaffin, Imreh, and Crawford, Practicing Perfection: memory and piano performance.Empirical Musicology Review 3 (3): 163-172. 2008.How do concert pianists commit to memory the structure of a piece of music like Bach’s Italian Concerto, learning it well enough to remember it in the highly charged setting of a crowded performance venue, yet remaining open to the freshness of expression of the moment? Playing to this audience, in this state, now, requires openness to specificity, to interpretation, a working dynamicism that mere rote learning will not provide. Chaffin, Imreh and Crawford’s innovative and detailed research sugg…Read more
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139Self-directedness: A Process Approach to Cognition (review)Global Philosophy 14 (1-3): 157-175. 2004.Standard approaches to cognition emphasise structures (representations and rules) much more than processes, in part because this appears to be necessary to capture the normative features of cognition. However the resultant models are inflexible and face the problem of computational intractability. I argue that the ability of real world cognition to cope with complexity results from deep and subtle coupling between cognitive and non-cognitive processes. In order to capture this, theories of cogni…Read more
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35Neuroscience in Context: The New Flagship of the Cognitive SciencesBiological Theory 1 (1): 78-83. 2006.Cognitive neuroscience has come to be viewed as the flagship of the cognitive sciences and is transforming our understanding of the nature of mind. In this paper we survey several research fields in cognitive neuroscience (lateralization, neuroeconomics, and cognitive control) and note that they are making rapid progress on fundamental issues. Lateralization research is developing a comparative framework for evolutionary analysis, and is identifying individual- and population-level factors that …Read more
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129A complex systems theory of teleologyBiology and Philosophy 11 (3): 301-320. 1996.Part I [sections 2–4] draws out the conceptual links between modern conceptions of teleology and their Aristotelian predecessor, briefly outlines the mode of functional analysis employed to explicate teleology, and develops the notion of cybernetic organisation in order to distinguish teleonomic and teleomatic systems. Part II is concerned with arriving at a coherent notion of intentional control. Section 5 argues that intentionality is to be understood in terms of the representational propertie…Read more
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The interactivist-constructivist approach to evolution and intentionalityContemporary Naturalist Theories of Evolution and Intentionality, Canadian Journal of Philosophy. forthcoming.
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Review of KM Ford, C. Glymour & PJ Hayes (Eds) Android epistemology (review)Philosophical Psychology 10 130-132. 1997.
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100Color categories in biological evolution: Broadening the paletteBehavioral and Brain Sciences 28 (4): 492-493. 2005.The general structure of Steels & Belpaeme's (S&B's) central premise is appealing. Theoretical stances that focus on one type of mechanism miss the fact that multiple mechanisms acting in concert can provide convergent constraints for a more robust capacity than any individual mechanism might achieve acting in isolation. However, highlighting the significance of complex constraint interactions raises the possibility that some of the relevant constraints may have been left out of S&B's own models…Read more
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506Expanding Expertise: Investigating a Musician’s Experience of Music PerformanceASCS09: Proceedings of the 9th Conference of the Australasian Society for Cognitive Science 106-113. 2010.Seeking to expand on previous theories, this paper explores the AIR (Applying Intelligence to the Reflexes) approach to expert performance previously outlined by Geeves, Christensen, Sutton and McIlwain (2008). Data gathered from a semi-structured interview investigating the performance experience of Jeremy Kelshaw (JK), a professional musician, is explored. Although JK’s experience of music performance contains inherently uncertain elements, his phenomenological description of an ideal performa…Read more
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55In this paper, I discuss connections between self-directedness, integration and higher cognition. I present a model of self-directedness as a basis for approaching higher cognition from a situated cognition perspective. According to this model increases in sensorimotor complexity create pressure for integrative higher order control and learning processes for acquiring information about the context in which action occurs. This generates complex articulated abstractive information processing, whic…Read more
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4330Putting pressure on theories of choking: towards an expanded perspective on breakdown in skilled performancePhenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 14 (2): 253-293. 2015.There is a widespread view that well-learned skills are automated, and that attention to the performance of these skills is damaging because it disrupts the automatic processes involved in their execution. This idea serves as the basis for an account of choking in high pressure situations. On this view, choking is the result of self-focused attention induced by anxiety. Recent research in sports psychology has produced a significant body of experimental evidence widely interpreted as supporting …Read more
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A general interactivist-constructivist model of intentionalityContemporary Naturalist Theories of Evolution and Intentionality, Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Special Supplementary Volume. forthcoming.
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113Mindreading as social expertiseSynthese 191 (5): 1-24. 2014.In recent years, a number of approaches to social cognition research have emerged that highlight the importance of embodied interaction for social cognition (Reddy, How infants know minds, 2008; Gallagher, J Conscious Stud 8:83–108, 2001; Fuchs and Jaegher, Phenom Cogn Sci 8:465–486, 2009; Hutto, in Seemans (ed.) Joint attention: new developments in psychology, philosophy of mind and social neuroscience, 2012). Proponents of such ‘interactionist’ approaches emphasize the importance of embodied r…Read more
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139The organization of knowledge: Beyond Campbell's evolutionary epistemologyPhilosophy of Science 66 (3): 249. 1999.Donald Campbell has long advocated a naturalist epistemology based on a general selection theory, with the scope of knowledge restricted to vicarious adaptive processes. But being a vicariant is problematic because it involves an unexplained epistemic relation. We argue that this relation is to be explicated organizationally in terms of the regulation of behavior and internal state by the vicariant, but that Campbell's selectionist approach can give no satisfactory account of it because it is op…Read more
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94Self-directed AgentsCanadian Journal of Philosophy 31 (Supplement): 19-52. 2001.Wayne D. Christensen and Cliff A. Hooker.
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62Ian Apperly, Mindreaders: the cognitive basis of theory of mind: Psychology Press, 2011, 232 pages, $80.00 (review)Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 12 (4): 907-914. 2013.
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Adaptiveness and adaptation: There's more than selectionBiology and Philosophy. Submitted. forthcoming.
Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Biology |
Philosophy of Cognitive Science |
Areas of Interest
Philosophy of Mind |