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113Attention in the Predictive MindConsciousness and Cognition 47 99-112. 2017.It has recently become popular to suggest that cognition can be explained as a process of Bayesian prediction error minimization. Some advocates of this view propose that attention should be understood as the optimization of expected precisions in the prediction-error signal (Clark, 2013, 2016; Feldman & Friston, 2010; Hohwy, 2012, 2013). This proposal successfully accounts for several attention-related phenomena. We claim that it cannot account for all of them, since there are certain forms of …Read more
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251The Good of Friendship at the End of LifeInternational Journal of Philosophical Studies 23 (4): 445-459. 2015.This article attempts to explain the value that we assign to the presence of friends at the time when life is ending. It first shows that Aristotle’s treatment of friendship does not provide a clear account of such value. It then uses J. L. Austin’s notion of performativity to supplement one recent theory of friendship – given by Dean Cocking and Jeanette Kennett – in such a way that that theory can then account for friendship’s special value at our time of death.
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190A methodological flaw in ‘The neural basis of flashback formation: the impact of viewing trauma’Psychological Medicine 46 (8): 1785-1786. 2016.In their 2013 study of traumatic flashback formation, Bourne, Mackay and Holmes raise the question of whether the propensity of a traumatic experience to produce flashbacks is determined by the emotions that are felt at the time of that experience. They suggest that it is not, but the grounds on which they make this suggestion are flawed. Further research is required. That research will need to overcome a significant methodological difficulty — one which is hard to avoid when fMRI data and int…Read more
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187Nineteen Fifty Eight: Information Technology and the Reconceptualization of CreativityThe Cambridge Quarterly 40 (4): 301-327. 2011.Nineteen fifty-eight was an extraordinary year for cultural innovation, especially in English literature. It was also a year in which several boldly revisionary positions were first articulated in analytic philosophy. And it was a crucial year for the establishment of structural linguistics, of structuralist anthropology, and of cognitive psychology. Taken together these developments had a radical effect on our conceptions of individual creativity and of the inheritance of tradition. The present…Read more
APA Western Division
Vancouver, Canada
Areas of Interest
Philosophy of Mind |
Aesthetics |
Philosophy of Cognitive Science |