Natika Newton

In this paper I sketch an account of (a) the origin of the terms and concepts of folk psychology, and (b) the true nature of mental states. I argue that folk psychology is built on metaphors for the functioning physical body, and that mental states are neurological traces which serve as schematic ‘mental images’ of those same functions. Special attention is paid to the folk psychology of self-consciousness. In particular, I argue that the notion of introspection is mistaken, and I criticize recent claims of Patricia and Paul Churchland on this subject. I conclude by discussingrecent empirical evidence in support of my approach.

The enactivist account of consciousness posits that motivated activation of sensorimotor action imagery anticipates possible action affordances of environmental situations, resulting in representation of the environment with a conscious “feel” associated with the valences motivating the anticipations. This approach makes the mind–body problem and the problem of mental causation easier to resolve, and offers promise for understanding how consciousness results from natural processes. Given a process-oriented understanding of the way many systems in non-conscious nature are “proto-motivated” toward realizing unactualized possibilities, and can use symbolic objects to “proto-represent” unactualized possibilities, it becomes more clear how self-organizing systems can subserve subjective consciousness. If a system executes, in a unified way, both a proto-desire and a proto-representation of the same unactualized possibility — in order to provide a kind of causal power for the unactualized possibility — then the result is the familiar experience of phenomenal consciousness

This paper looks at a central issue with embodiment theories in cognition: the role, if any, they provide for mental representation. Thelen and Smith hold that the concept of representations is either vacuous or misapplied in such systems. Others maintain a place for representations , but are imprecise about their nature and role. It is difficult to understand what those could be if representations are understood in the same sense as that used by computationalists: fixed or long-lasting neural structures that represent the sensory stimuli that caused them , or whose “meaning” is fixed innately or in early development for particular functions . The paper proposes a distinctions between, on the one hand, neural patterns, traces of sensory activation that while not in themselves representations are available for representational activity, and on the other the act of representing, which is what gives representational content to neural patterns

Understanding Quine's analysis puts us in a position to connect imagination and logical possibility. The description of what is to be imagined may induce an imaginative experience which can be related to the description in various ways. The description may be 'observational,' meaning that everything that it describes can be observed; in this case imagining under a description is decisive evidence for the possibility of what is described. If the description is non-observational, or contains more information than can be captured by observation alone, then imagining under the description is not proof of the possibility of what is described, although if the description is not believed to be the denial of an analytic sentence then imagining can be evidence that it describes a logical possibility. When the description is believed to be logically impossible, all experiences induced by it will be rejected as not conforming to it, and hence logically impossible things cannot be imagined. Finally, if there is doubt about the logical possibility of a description, attempts to imagine under it will not resolve the doubt, since one who rejects the description will reject attempts to apply it to any experience. Thus one's beliefs about what is possible cannot be changed by imagining per se, but only by independent argument that the description of what is imagined does not entail the denial of an analytic sentence. ;We then discuss the concept of logical possibility. We consider three approaches to the concepts; metaphysical theories, formal or logical theories, and conventionalist theories. Of these only the conventionalist approach sees possibility as something for which one could have evidence. We adopt a conventionalist account of possibility as describability in a given language, where something is describable if it is not the denial of an analytic sentence. We look in detail at W. V. O. Quine's account of analyticity, which involves his theory of language learning in general. One learns the meanings of certain sentences at the same time that one learns to assent to them; these are the sentences we call 'analytic'. Hearing the denial of such sentences later activates a disposition to dissent coupled with a feeling of bewilderment about the meaning of the sentence. ;This dissertation examines the connection between imagination and logical possibility. Both philosophers and non-philosophers use imagination as evidence for logical possibility, thereby taking for granted that a connection exists. We begin our research by looking at two theories of imagination, those of George Berkeley and David Hume, which show how imagination could be used as evidence for possibility. These philosophers analyze imagination as having both a conceptual and a perceptual component, which enable them to connect it with possibility. We then look at two contemporary theories. Gilbert Ryle offers a dispositional analysis of imagination, in which it is presented as a form of thinking, or more specifically as pretending. Bernard Williams discusses the connection between the description of what is to be imagined and the visualizing which follows. He examines ways in which one can be mistaken about what one is imagining. We use the theories of Ryle and Williams as a framework to develop our own theory. We speak of imagining as creating an imaginative experience under a description. An imaginative experience is defined dispositionally as being similar to actual sense experience. Elements of imaginative experience, which is derived from past experience, are then selected to conform to the description. Three constraints on imagination--the referential, the experiential, and the interpretive constraint--determine the acceptability and unacceptability of claims about imagining