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43A critical review of Nicholas Maxwell's the human world in the physical universe: Consciousness, free will, and evolution (review)Philosophical Psychology 16 (1). 2003.Nicholas Maxwell takes on the ambitious project of explaining, both epistemologically and metaphysically, the physical universe and human existence within it. His vision is appealing; he unites the physical and the personal by means of the concepts of aim and value, which he sees as the keys to explaining traditional physical puzzles. Given the current popularity of theories of goal-oriented dynamical systems in biology and cognitive science, this approach is timely. But a large vision requires …Read more
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28The Caldron of Consciousness: Motivation, Affect, and Self-organization : an Anthology (edited book)John Benjamins. 2000.CHAPTER 1 Integrating the Physiological and Phenomenological Dimensions of Affect and Motivation Ralph D. Ellis Clark Atlanta University A neglected but ...
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51Machine understanding and the chinese roomPhilosophical Psychology 1 (2). 1988.John Searle has argued that one can imagine embodying a machine running any computer program without understanding the symbols, and hence that purely computational processes do not yield understanding. The disagreement this argument has generated stems, I hold, from ambiguity in talk of 'understanding'. The concept is analysed as a relation between subjects and symbols having two components: a formal and an intentional. The central question, then becomes whether a machine could possess the inten…Read more
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30Arguing about consciousness: A blind Alley and a red HerringBehavioral and Brain Sciences 22 (1): 162-163. 1999.O'Brien & Opie hold that phenomenal experience should be identified with “stable patterns of activation” across the brain's neural networks, and that this proposal has the potential for closing the ‘explanatory gap' between mental states and brain processes. I argue that they have too much respect for the conceivability argument and that their proposal already does much to close the explanatory gap, but that a “perspicuous nexus” can in principle never be achieved.
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16Review of “self-deception unmasked” by Alfred R. Mele (review)Consciousness and Emotion 2 (1): 173-180. 2001.
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37Introspection and the secret agentBehavioral and Brain Sciences 22 (4): 629-629. 1999.The notion of introspection is unparsimonious and unnecessary to explain the experiential grounding of our mentalistic concepts. Instead, we can look at subtle proprioceptive experiences, such as the experience of agency in planning motor acts, which may be explained in part by the phenomenon of collateral discharge or efference copy. Proprioceptive sensations experienced during perceptual and motor activity may account for everything that has traditionally been attributed to a special mental ac…Read more
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57The role of action representations in the dynamics of embodied cognitionBehavioral and Brain Sciences 24 (1): 58-59. 2001.Thelen et al. present a convincing explanation of the A-not-B error, but contrary to their own claims, their explanation essentially involves mental representations. As is too common among cognitive scientists, they equate mental representations with representations of external physical objects. They clearly show, however, that representations of bodily actions on physical objects are central to the dynamical system producing the error.
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37Foundations of UnderstandingJohn Benjamins. 1996.How can symbols have meaning for a subject? Foundations of Understanding argues that this is the key question to ask about intentionality, or meaningful thought. It thus offers an alternative to currently popular linguistic models of intentionality, whose inadequacies are examined: the goal should be to explain, not how symbols, mental or otherwise, can refer to or mean states of affairs in the external world, but how they can mean something to us, the users. The essence of intentionality is sho…Read more
Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Action |
Philosophy of Mind |
Philosophy of Cognitive Science |
Areas of Interest
Philosophy of Mind |
Philosophy of Cognitive Science |