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61Ambiguous Figures and Nonconceptual ContentProceedings of the Xxii World Congress of Philosophy 42 179-187. 2008.Macpherson (2006) argues that the square/regular diamond figure threatens representationalism, which holds that the phenomenal character of experience is either identical, or supervenes on, the nonconceptual content of experience (NCC). Her argument is that representationalism is committed to the thesis that differences in the phenomenal experience of ambiguous figures, the gestalt switch, should be explained by differences in the NCC of perception of these figures. However, with respect to the …Read more
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22The cognitive impenetrability of the content of early vision is a necessary and sufficient condition for purely nonconceptual contentPhilosophical Psychology 27 (5): 601-620. 2014.
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54Perception, Realism, and the Problem of Reference (edited book)Cambridge University Press. 2012.One of the perennial themes in philosophy is the problem of our access to the world around us; do our perceptual systems bring us into contact with the world as it is or does perception depend upon our individual conceptual frameworks? This volume of new essays examines reference as it relates to perception, action and realism, and the questions which arise if there is no neutral perspective or independent way to know the world. The essays discuss the nature of referring, concentrating on the wa…Read more
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353Deictic codes, demonstratives, and reference: A step toward solving the grounding problemIn Wayne D. Gray & Christian D. Schunn (eds.), CogSci 2002, 24th annual meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, Lawrence Erlbaum. pp. 762-767. 2002.In this paper we address the issue of grounding for experiential concepts. Given that perceptual demonstratives are a basic form of such concepts, we examine ways of fixing the referents of such demonstratives. To avoid ‘encodingism’, that is, relating representations to representations, we postulate that the process of reference fixing must be bottom-up and nonconceptual, so that it can break the circle of conceptual content and touch the world. For that purpose, an appropriate causal relation …Read more
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1Cartesian Deductivism and Newtonian Inductivism: A Comparative StudyDissertation, The Johns Hopkins University. 1994.It has been a traditional claim that Newtonian inductivism sharply contradicts Cartesian deductivism, and that Newton's rejection of the method of hypothesis is intended as a criticism of the Cartesian scientific methodology. There have been some sharp attacks against the received view that Descartes aimed at the construction of a purely a priori science, but despite this two beliefs still dominate even recent interpretations of Descartes' work. The first is the belief that a significant part of…Read more
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42Two types of object representations in the brain, one nondescriptive process of reference fixingBehavioral and Brain Sciences 27 (1): 47-48. 2004.I comment on two problems in Glover's account. First, semantic representations are not always available to awareness. Second, some functional properties, the affordances of objects, should be encoded in the dorsal system. Then I argue that the existence of Glover's two types of representations is supported by studies on “object-centered” attention. Furthermore, it foreshadows a nondescriptive causal reference fixing process.
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Reframing the Problem of Cognitive PenetrabilityIn Woosuk Park, Ping Li & Lorenzo Magnani (eds.), Philosophy and Cognitive Science Ii: Western & Eastern Studies, Springer Verlag. 2015.
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43Is perception informationally encapsulated? The issue of the theory‐ladenness of perceptionCognitive Science 25 (3): 423-451. 2001.Fodor has argued that observation is theory neutral, since the perceptual systems are modular, that is, they are domain‐specific, encapsulated, mandatory, fast, hard‐wired in the organism, and have a fixed neural architecture. Churchland attacks the theoretical neutrality of observation on the grounds that (a) the abundant top‐down pathways in the brain suggest the cognitive penetration of perception and (b) perceptual learning can change in the wiring of the perceptual systems. In this paper I …Read more
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73Cognitive Penetration Lite and Nonconceptual ContentErkenntnis 82 (5): 1097-1122. 2017.The Macpherson :24–62, 2012) argued that the perceptual experience of colors is cognitively penetrable. Macpherson also thinks that perception has nonconceptual content because this would provide a good explanation for several phenomena concerning perceptual experience. To have both, Macpherson must defend the thesis that the CP of perception is compatible with perception having NCC. Since the classical notion of CP of perception does not allow perception to have NCC, Macpherson proposes CP-lite…Read more
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Abductive Inference in Late VisionIn Woosuk Park, Ping Li & Lorenzo Magnani (eds.), Philosophy and Cognitive Science Ii: Western & Eastern Studies, Springer Verlag. 2015.
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245Perceptual systems and realismSynthese 164 (1). 2008.Constructivism undermines realism by arguing that experience is mediated by concepts, and that there is no direct way to examine those aspects of objects that belong to them independently of our conceptualizations; perception is theory-laden. To defend realism one has to show first that perception relates us directly with the world without any intermediary conceptual framework. The result of this direct link is the nonconceptual content of experience. Second, one has to show that part of the no…Read more
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100Descartes’ Proof of the Essence of Matter and the Cartesian Scientific SystemJournal of Philosophical Research 21 209-229. 1996.It has been a traditional claim that Descartes sought to construct a deductive scientific system in which everything could be deduced from a priori truths. I shall call this thesis strong a priorism. In view of the overwhelming amount of evidence that Descartes thought experience to be a necessary part of his method, the traditional interpretation has undergone several transformations. One interpretation resulting from this transformation holds that Descartes sought to prove the first principles…Read more
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433Was cartesian science ever meant to be a priori? A comment on HatfieldPhilosophy of Science 62 (1): 150-160. 1995.In a recent article G. Hatfield claims that Descartes for a certain time thought a purely a priori science to be possible. Hatfield's evidence consists of his reading of the Cartesian method in the Regulae and of a letter to Mersenne, written in May 1632. I argue that Hatfield misinterprets the Cartesian method and Descartes' claim in the letter to Mersenne. I first show that the latter does not argue for an a priori science. Then, I show that the method of the Regulae is not a priori. Finally, …Read more
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74The cognitive impenetrability of the content of early vision is a necessary and sufficient condition for purely nonconceptual contentPhilosophical Psychology (5): 1-20. 2013.I elaborate on Pylyshyn's definition of the cognitive impenetrability (CI) of early vision, and draw on the role of concepts in perceptual processing, which links the problem of the CI or cognitive penetrability (CP) of early vision with the problem of the nonconceptual content (NCC) of perception. I explain, first, the sense in which the content of early vision is CI and I argue that if some content is CI, it is conceptually encapsulated, that is, it is NCC. Then, I examine the definitions of N…Read more
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54Nonconceptual content: A reply to Toribio's “Nonconceptualism and the cognitive impenetrability of early vision”Philosophical Psychology 27 (5): 643-651. 2014.No abstract
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72Cognitive Penetrabiity of Perception: Attention, Strategies and Bottom-Up Constraints (edited book)Nova Science. 2005.The chapters in this book address directly the issue of the cognitive penetrability of perception.
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71Cartesian analysis and synthesisStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 34 (2): 265-308. 2003.This paper aims to provide an explication of the meaning of ‘analysis’ and ‘synthesis’ in Descartes’ writings. In the first part I claim that Descartes’ method is entirely captured by the term ‘analysis’, and that it is a method of theory elaboration that fuses the modern methods of discovery and confirmation in one enterprise. I discuss Descartes’ methodological writings, assess their continuity and coherence, and I address the major shortcoming of previous interpretations of Cartesian methodol…Read more
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898The phenomenal content of experienceMind and Language 21 (2): 187-219. 2006.We discuss at some length evidence from the cognitive science suggesting that the representations of objects based on spatiotemporal information and featural information retrieved bottomup from a visual scene precede representations of objects that include conceptual information. We argue that a distinction can be drawn between representations with conceptual and nonconceptual content. The distinction is based on perceptual mechanisms that retrieve information in conceptually unmediated ways. Th…Read more
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University of CyprusRegular Faculty
Areas of Specialization
Epistemology |
General Philosophy of Science |