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1Peer commentary on Are There Neural Correlates of Consciousness?Journal of Consciousness Studies 11 (1): 45-51. 2004.
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826Individual Differences in Moral Behaviour: A Role for Response to Risk and Uncertainty?Neuroethics 6 (1): 97-103. 2012.Investigation of neural and cognitive processes underlying individual variation in moral preferences is underway, with notable similarities emerging between moral- and risk-based decision-making. Here we specifically assessed moral distributive justice preferences and non-moral financial gambling preferences in the same individuals, and report an association between these seemingly disparate forms of decision-making. Moreover, we find this association between distributive justice and risky decis…Read more
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200Evidence, Explanation, and ExperienceJournal of Philosophy 101 (5): 242-254. 2004.Creatures that have different physical realizations than human beings may or may not be conscious. Ned Block’s ‘harder problem of consciousness’ is that naturalistic phenomenal realists have no conception of a rational ground for belief that they have or have not discovered consciousness in such a creature. Drawing on the notion of inference to the best explanation, it appears the arguments to these conclusions beg the question and ignore that explanation may be a guide to discovery. Thus, best …Read more
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1519The search for neural correlates of consciousnessPhilosophy Compass 2 (3). 2007.Most consciousness researchers, almost no matter what their views of the metaphysics of consciousness, can agree that the first step in a science of consciousness is the search for the neural correlate of consciousness (the NCC). The reason for this agreement is that the notion of ‘correlation’ doesn’t by itself commit one to any particular metaphysical view about the relation between (neural) matter and consciousness. For example, some might treat the correlates as causally related, while other…Read more
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593A Case for Increased Caution in End of Life Decisions for Disorders of ConsciousnessMonash Bioethics 28 (2). 2009.Disorders of consciousness include coma, the vegetative state and the minimally conscious state. Such patients are often regarded as unconscious. This has consequences for end of life decisions for these patients: it is much easier to justify withdrawing life support for unconscious than conscious patients. Recent brain imaging research has however suggested that some patients may in fact be conscious.
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928The hypothesis testing brain: Some philosophical applicationsProceedings of the Australian Society for Cognitive Science Conference. 2010.According to one theory, the brain is a sophisticated hypothesis tester: perception is Bayesian unconscious inference where the brain actively uses predictions to test, and then refine, models about what the causes of its sensory input might be. The brain’s task is simply continually to minimise prediction error. This theory, which is getting increasingly popular, holds great explanatory promise for a number of central areas of research at the intersection of philosophy and cognitive neuroscienc…Read more
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826Social cognition as causal inference: implications for common knowledge and autismIn John Michael & Mattia Gallotti (eds.), Social Objects and Social Cognition, Springer. forthcoming.This chapter explores the idea that the need to establish common knowledge is one feature that makes social cognition stand apart in important ways from cognition in general. We develop this idea on the background of the claim that social cognition is nothing but a type of causal inference. We focus on autism as our test-case, and propose that a specific type of problem with common knowledge processing is implicated in challenges to social cognition in autism spectrum disorder (ASD). This proble…Read more
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38Quietism and cognitive commandPhilosophical Quarterly 47 (189): 495-500. 1997.Crispin Wright has sought to establish the possibility of ‘significant metaphysics’ in the shape of a common metric with which to measure the realism or robustness of various discourses. One means by which to place discourses in the metric is via the ‘cognitive command constraint’. Importantly, this constraint must be a priori. Richard Rorty has argued against this, that, given content is a function of standards of representationality, the a priori requirement cannot be satisfied. I show that th…Read more
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10Can you tickle yourself if you swap bodies with someone else?Consciousness and Cognition 22 (4): 1-11. 2013.The effect of the body transfer illusion on the perceived strength of self- and externally-generated “tickle” sensations was investigated. As expected, externally generated movement produced significantly higher ratings of tickliness than those associated with self-generated movements. Surprisingly, the body transfer illusion had no influence on the ratings of tickliness, suggesting that highly surprising, and therefore hard to predict, experiences of body image and first-person perspective do n…Read more
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28Neural correlates and causal mechanismsConsciousness and Cognition 21 (2): 691-692. 2012.What Joseph Neisser calls for is exactly right: more philosophy of science will help us better understand and refine the idea of neural correlates of consciousness . But the key bit of philosophy of science Neisser appeals to is itself in need of clarification; the orthodox NCC definition is more resourceful than Neisser allows, and it is possible to resist the phenomenological conception of conscious experience that fuels some of Neisser’s argument
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113Distrusting the presentPhenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 15 (3): 315-335. 2016.We use the hierarchical nature of Bayesian perceptual inference to explain a fundamental aspect of the temporality of experience, namely the phenomenology of temporal flow. The explanation says that the sense of temporal flow in conscious perception stems from probabilistic inference that the present cannot be trusted. The account begins by describing hierarchical inference under the notion of prediction error minimization, and exemplifies distrust of the present within bistable visual perceptio…Read more
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67Variability, convergence, and dimensions of consciousnessIn Morten Overgaard (ed.), Behavioral Methods in Consciousness Research, Oxford University Press. 2015.15 page
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187Capacities, explanation and the possibility of disunityInternational Studies in the Philosophy of Science 17 (2). 2003.Nancy Cartwright argues that so-called capacities, not universal laws of nature, best explain the often complex way events actually unfold. On this view, science would represent a world that is fundamentally "dappled", or disunified, and not, as orthodoxy would perhaps have it, a world unified by universal laws of nature. I argue, first, that the problem Cartwright raises for laws of nature seems to arise for capacities too, so why reject laws of nature? Second, that in so far as there is a prob…Read more
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2093The Rubber Hand Illusion Reveals Proprioceptive and Sensorimotor Differences in Autism Spectrum DisordersJournal of Autism and Developmental Disorders. 2011.Autism spectrum disorder is characterised by differences in unimodal and multimodal sensory and proprioceptive processing, with complex biases towards local over global processing. Many of these elements are implicated in versions of the rubber hand illusion, which were therefore studied in high-functioning individuals with ASD and a typically developing control group. Both groups experienced the illusion. A number of differences were found, related to proprioception and sensorimotor processes. …Read more
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348Top-down and bottom-up in delusion formationPhilosophy Psychiatry and Psychology 11 (1): 65-70. 2004.In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 11.1 (2004) 65-70 [Access article in PDF] Top-Down and Bottom-Up in Delusion Formation Jakob Hohwy Keywords delusions, top-down, bottom-up, predictive coding Some delusions may arise as responses to unusual experiences (Davies et al. 2001; Maher 1974;). The implication is that delusion formation in some cases involves some kind of bottom-up mechanism—roughly, from perception to belief. Delusion fo…Read more
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230This chapter seeks to recover an approach to consciousness from a general theory of brain function, namely the prediction error minimization theory. The way this theory applies to mental and developmental disorder demonstrates its relevance to consciousness. The resulting view is discussed in relation to a contemporary theory of consciousness, namely the idea that conscious perception depends on Bayesian metacognition; this theory is also supported by considerations of psychopathology. This Baye…Read more
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93The felt presence of other minds: Predictive processing, counterfactual predictions, and mentalising in autismConsciousness and Cognition 36 376-389. 2015.
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1349Functional integration and the mindSynthese 159 (3): 315-328. 2007.Different cognitive functions recruit a number of different, often overlapping, areas of the brain. Theories in cognitive and computational neuroscience are beginning to take this kind of functional integration into account. The contributions to this special issue consider what functional integration tells us about various aspects of the mind such as perception, language, volition, agency, and reward. Here, I consider how and why functional integration may matter for the mind; I discuss a genera…Read more
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949Delusions as Forensically Disturbing Perceptual InferencesNeuroethics 5 (1): 5-11. 2011.Bortolotti’s Delusions and Other Irrational Beliefs defends the view that delusions are beliefs on a continuum with other beliefs. A different view is that delusions are more like illusions, that is, they arise from faulty perception. This view, which is not targeted by the book, makes it easier to explain why delusions are so alien and disabling but needs to appeal to forensic aspects of functioning
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710The Sense of Self in the Phenomenology of Agency and PerceptionPSYCHE: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Research On Consciousness 13. 2007.The phenomenology of agency and perception is probably underpinned by a common cognitive system based on generative models and predictive coding. I defend the hypothesis that this cognitive system explains core aspects of the sense of having a self in agency and perception. In particular, this cognitive model explains the phenomenological notion of a minimal self as well as a notion of the narrative self. The proposal is related to some influential studies of overall brain function, and to psych…Read more
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133A Reductio of Kripke-Wittgenstein's Objections to Dispositionalism about MeaningMinds and Machines 13 (2): 257-268. 2003.A central part of Kripke's influential interpretation of Wittgenstein's sceptical argument about meaning is the rejection of dispositional analyses of what it is for a word to mean what it does. In this paper I show that Kripke's arguments prove too much: if they were right, they would preclude not only the idea that dispositional properties can make statements about the meanings of words true, but also the idea that dispositional properties can make true statements about paradigmatic dispositio…Read more
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41The neural correlates of consciousness: Room for improvement, but on the right track: CommentJournal of Consciousness Studies 11 (1): 45-51. 2004.
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771Equality, Efficiency, and Sufficiency: Responding to Multiple Parameters of Distributive Justice During Charitable DistributionReview of Philosophy and Psychology 4 (4): 659-674. 2013.Distributive justice decision making tends to require a trade off between different valued outcomes. The present study tracked computer mouse cursor movements in a forced-choice paradigm to examine for tension between different parameters of distributive justice during the decision-making process. Participants chose between set meal distributions, to third parties, that maximised either equality (the evenness of the distribution) or efficiency (the total number of meals distributed). Across diff…Read more
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91Reflections on predictive processing and the mind. An InterviewAvant: Trends in Interdisciplinary Studies (3): 145-152. 2014.
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45Preserved Aspects of Consciousness in Disorders of Consciousness A Review and Conceptual AnalysisJournal of Consciousness Studies 19 (3-4): 3-4. 2012.The last decade has seen impressive and intriguing advances in the exploration of vestiges of consciousness in patients with disorders of consciousness . Consciousness is an extremely complex area of research so it is difficult to provide unequivocal interpretations of these new findings from DOC-studies. This review therefore provides a conceptual analysis of a series of key studies in this area of research. The main upshot is that different studies of preserved consciousness in DOC are best se…Read more
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205Explanation and two conceptions of the physicalErkenntnis 62 (1): 71-89. 2005.Any position that promises genuine progress on the mind-body problem deserves attention. Recently, Daniel Stoljar has identified a physicalist version of Russells notion of neutral monism; he elegantly argues that with this type of physicalism it is possible to disambiguate on the notion of physicalism in such a way that the problem is resolved. The further issue then arises of whether we have reason to believe that this type of physicalism is in fact true. Ultimately, one needs to argue for thi…Read more
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70Cognitive neuropsychiatry: Conceptual, methodological and philosophical perspectivesWorld Journal of Biological Psychiatry 6 (3): 192-197. 2005.Cognitive neuropsychiatry attempts to understand psychiatric disorders as disturbances to the normal function of human cognitive organisation, and it attempts to link this functional framework to relevant brain structures and their pathology. This recent scientific discipline is the natural extension of cognitive neuroscience into the domain of psychiatry. We present two examples of recent research in cognitive neuropsychiatry: delusions of control in schizophrenia, and affective disorders. The …Read more
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Monash UniversityDepartment of Philosophy
Centre for Consciousness and Contemplative StudiesProfessor
Clayton, Victoria, Australia
Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Cognitive Science |
Philosophy of Mind |
Areas of Interest
Philosophy of Cognitive Science |
Philosophy of Mind |