Natika Newton

The sensorimotor theory of cognition holds that human cognition, along with that of other animals, is determined by sensorimotor structures rather than by uniquely human linguistic structures. The theory has been offered to explain the use of bodily terminology in nonphysical contexts, and to recognize the role of experienced embodiment in cognition. This paper defends a version of the theory which specifies that reasoning makes use of mental models constructed by means of action-planning mechanisms. Evidence is offered from cognitive psychology, the neurosciences, and work in primatology and evolutionary theory. Further scientific and philosophical advantages of the theory are discussed: the theory is more parsimonious than its rival, and it offers better accounts of intrinsic intentionality and consciousness. The paper concludes with observations concerning the role of language in thought.

[opening paragraph]: It is easy to conceptualize a problem in a way that prevents a solution. If the conceptualization is entrenched in one's culture or profession, it may appear unalterable. But there is so much precedent for the discovery of fruitful reconceptualizations that in the case of most philosophical and scientific puzzles it is probably irrational ever to give up trying. The notion of qualia, understood as phenomenal properties of sensations that can exist as objects of experience for a conscious subject, is too recent in origin and too specialized in usage to warrant concluding that qualia cannot be understood in terms of physical processes. Humphrey offers an analysis of qualitative mental states that purportedly renders them commensurate with brain states, allowing them to be described in terms of the same dimensions. If his attempt is successful the conceptual gap between mind and body could be closed. Is it successful?

There is a distinction between phenomenal properties and the "phenomenality" of those properties: e.g. between what red is like and what it is like to experience red. To date, reductive accounts explain the former, but not the latter: Nagel is right that they leave something out. This paper attempts a reductive account of what it is like to have a perceptual experience. Four features of such experience are distinguished: the externality, unity, and self-awareness belonging to the content of conscious experience, and the phenomenon of awareness itself. It is argued that these features are accounted for in the work of recent scientists, including F. Crick, G. Edelman, C. Koch and V. Mountcastle. This account reinforces a common way of treating the "knowledge problem."

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.

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 intentional component with or without the formal component. I argue that the intentional state of a symbol's being meaningful to a subject is a functionally definable relation between the symbol and certain past and present states of the subject, and that a machine could bear this relation to a symbol. I sketch a machine which could be said to possess, in primitive form, the intentional component of understanding. Even if the machine, in lacking consciousness, lacks full understanding, it contributes to a theory of understanding and constitutes a counterexample to the Chinese Room argument

This paper argues that phenomenal consciousness arises from the forced blending of components that are incompatible, or even logically contradictory, when combined by direct methods available to the subject; and that it is, as a result, analytically, ostensively and comparatively indefinable. First, I examine a variety of cases in which unpredictable novelties arise from the forced merging of contradictory elements, or at least elements that are unable in human experience to co-occur. The point is to show that the uniqueness of consciousness is comprehensible in terms of a more general kind of emergence. I then argue that phenomenal consciousness essentially involves synchronous activations of representations of ‘identical’ intentional objects with distinct temporal tags, and is thus a case of the emergence of novelty from forced blending of incompatible components. It follows from the general nature of such emergence that consciousness would be indefinable and hence seem mysterious. This analysis will show why phenomenal consciousness would be impossible to resolve into its constituents by the conscious subject. The result is, I hope, a happy blend of physicalist explanation with respectful acknowledgement of the robustness of subjective experience

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