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42If human cognition is adaptive, can human knowledge consist of encodings?Behavioral and Brain Sciences 14 (3): 488-489. 1991.
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34Critical principles: on the negative sideNew Ideas in Psychology 20 1-34. 2002.neglected aspect: knowledge of error, or ‘‘negative’’ knowledge. The development of knowledge of what counts as error occurs via a kind of internal variation and selection, or quasi-evolutionary, process. Processes of reflection generate a hierarchy of principles of error.
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78Operational definitions were a neo-Machean development that connected with the positivism of Logical Positivism. Logical Positivism failed, with the failure of operational definitions being just one of multiple and multifarious failures of Logical Positivism more broadly. Operationalism, however, has continued to seduce psychology more than half a century after it was repudiated by philosophers of science, including the very Logical Positivists who had first taken it seriously. It carries with i…Read more
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41You can't get there from here: Foundationalism and developmentBehavioral and Brain Sciences 34 (3): 124-125. 2011.The thesis of our commentary is that the framework used to address what are taken by Carey to be the open issues is highly problematic. The presumed necessity of an innate stock of representational primitives fails to account for the emergence of representation out of a nonrepresentational base. This failure manifests itself in problematic ways throughout Carey's book.
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162The dynamic emergence of representationIn Hugh Clapin (ed.), Representation in Mind, Elsevier. pp. 71--90. 2004.A final version of this paper is in press as: Bickhard, M. H.. The Dynamic Emergence of Representation. In H. Clapin, P. Staines, P. Slezak Representation in Mind: New Approaches to Mental Representation. Praeger
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53If the general arguments concerning the involvement of variation and selection in explanations of “fit” are valid, then variation and selection explanations should be appropriate, or at least potentially appropriate, outside the paradigm historistic domains of biology and knowledge. In this discussion, I wish to indicate some potential roles for variation and selection in foundational physics – specifically in quantum field theory. I will not be attempting any full coherent ontology for quantum …Read more
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102Mind as processIn F.G. Riffert & Marcel Weber (eds.), Searching for New Contrasts, Vienna: Peter Lang. pp. 285-294. 2002.assumptions about the phenomena of interest with process models. Thus, phlogiston has been replaced by combustion, caloric by random thermal motion, and vital fluid by far- from-equilibrium self-reproducing organizations of process. The most significant exceptions to this historical pattern are found in studies of the mind. Here, substance assumptions are still ubiquitous, ranging from models of representation to those of emotions to personality and psychopathology. Substance assumptions do pern…Read more
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33Representation: Emulation and anticipationBehavioral and Brain Sciences 27 (3): 418-418. 2004.We address the issue of the normativity of representation and how Grush might address it for emulations as constituting representations. We then proceed to several more detailed issues concerning the learning of emulations, a possible empirical counterexample to Grush's model, and the choice of Kalman filters as the form of model-based control.
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25Why believe in beliefs?Behavioral and Brain Sciences 27 (1): 100-101. 2004.A central pillar of Carpendale & Lewis's (C&L's) argument is Wittgenstein's later work on language. I suggest that this support is not as strong as might be wished, and offer an alternative approach to their conclusion that language learning, especially of folk psychology, involves a socially embedded constructivism.
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1Automata Theory, Artificial Intelligence and Genetic EpistemologyRevue Internationale de Philosophie 36 (4): 549. 1982.
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262The interactivist modelSynthese 166 (3). 2009.A shift from a metaphysical framework of substance to one of process enables an integrated account of the emergence of normative phenomena. I show how substance assumptions block genuine ontological emergence, especially the emergence of normativity, and how a process framework permits a thermodynamic-based account of normative emergence. The focus is on two foundational forms of normativity, that of normative function and of representation as emergent in a particular kind of function. This proc…Read more
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209Some notes on internal and external relations and representationConsciousness and Emotion 4 (1): 101-110. 2003.Internal relations are those relations that are intrinsic to the nature of one or more of the relata. They are a kind of essential relation, rather than an essential property. For example, an arc of a circle is internally related to the center of that circle in the sense that
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137In this paper I wish to address the question of the nature of psychopathology. It might naturally be felt that we already know a great deal about psychopathology, and thus that such a paper would be primarily a review and discussion of the literature; I will argue, however, that the most fundamental form of the question concerning the nature of psychopathology is rarely posed in the literature, that it is prevented from being posed by presuppositions inherent in standard theoretical approaches, …Read more
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23Interactive knowing: The metaphysics of intentionalityIn Roberto Poli & Johanna Seibt (eds.), Theory and Applications of Ontology: Philosophical Perspectives, Springer Verlag. pp. 207--229. 2010.
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60Knowing levels and the child's understanding of mindBehavioral and Brain Sciences 16 (1): 33-34. 1993.
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226EmergenceIn P.B. Andersen, Claus Emmeche, N.O. Finnemann & P.V. Christiansen (eds.), Downward Causation, University of Aarhus Press. pp. 322-348. 2000.* This paper was to have been written jointly with Don Campbell. His tragic death on May 6, 1996, occurred before we had been able to do much planning for the paper. As a result, this is undoubtedly a very different paper than if Don and I had written it together, and, undoubtedly, not as good a paper. Nevertheless, I believe it maintains at least the spirit of what we had discussed. Clearly, all errors are mine alone
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83Troubles with computationalismIn W. O'Donahue & Richard F. Kitchener (eds.), The Philosophy of Psychology, Sage Publications. pp. 173--183. 1996.
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76Autonomy, function, and representationCommunication and Cognition-Artificial Intelligence 17 (3-4): 111-131. 2000.
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129Representational content in humans and machinesJournal of Experimental and Theoretical Artificial Intelligence 5 285-33. 1993.This article focuses on the problem of representational content. Accounting for representational content is the central issue in contemporary naturalism: it is the major remaining task facing a naturalistic conception of the world. Representational content is also the central barrier to contemporary cognitive science and artificial intelligence: it is not possible to understand representation in animals nor to construct machines with genuine representation given current (lack of) understanding o…Read more
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40Mechanism is not enoughPragmatics and Cognition 15 (3): 573-585. 2007.I will argue that mechanism is not sufficient to capture representation, thus cognition. More generally, mechanism is not sufficient to capture normativity of any sort. I will also outline a model of emergent normativity, representational normativity in particular, and show how it transcends these limitations of mechanism. To begin, I will address some illustrative attempts to model representation within mechanistically naturalistic frameworks, first rather generally, and then in the cases of th…Read more
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84Information and representation in autonomous agentsCognitive Systems Research 1 (2): 65-75. 2000.Information and representation are thought to be intimately related. Representation, in fact, is commonly considered to be a special kind of information. It must be a _special_ kind, because otherwise all of the myriad instances of informational relationships in the universe would be representational -- some restrictions must be placed on informational relationships in order to refine the vast set into those that are truly representational. I will argue that information in this general sense is …Read more
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50What could cognition be if not computation…Or connectionism, or dynamic systems?Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology 35 (1): 53-66. 2015.
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38Benny Shanon, the representational and the presentational: An essay on cognition and the study of the mind, hemel hempstead, hertfordshire, U.k.: Harvester wheatsheaf, 1993, ISBN 0-7450-1095-4; paramus, NJ: Prentice-hall, 1994, VI + 409 pp., $66.00 (paper), ISBN 0-13-302225- (review)Minds and Machines 10 (2): 313-317. 2000.
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35The interactivist approach to development generates a framework of types of constraints on what can be constructed. The four constraint types are based on: (1) what the constructed systems are about; (2) the representational relationship itself; (3) the nature of the systems being constructed; and (4) the process of construction itself. We give illustrations of each constraint type. Any developmental theory needs to acknowledge all four types of constraint; however, some current theories conflat…Read more
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229Social Ontology as ConventionTopoi 27 (1-2): 139-149. 2008.I will argue that social ontology is constituted as hierarchical and interlocking conventions of multifarious kinds. Convention, in turn, is modeled in a manner derived from that of David K. Lewis. Convention is usually held to be inadequate for models of social ontologies, with one primary reason being that there seems to be no place for normativity. I argue that two related changes are required in the basic modeling framework in order to address this (and other) issue(s): (1) a shift to an int…Read more
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180Process and emergence: Normative function and representationAxiomathes - An International Journal in Ontology and Cognitive Systems 14 135-169. 2004.Emergence seems necessary for any naturalistic account of the world — none of our familiar world existed at the time of the Big Bang, and it does now — and normative emergence is necessary for any naturalistic account of biology and mind — mental phenomena, such as representation, learning, rationality, and so on, are normative. But Jaegwon Kim’s argument appears to render causally efficacious emergence impossible, and Hume’s argument appears to render normative emergence impossible, and, in its…Read more
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77Levels of representationalityJournal of Experimental and Theoretical Artificial Intelligence 10 (2): 179-215. 1998.The dominant assumptions -- throughout contemporary philosophy, psychology, cognitive science, and artificial intelligence -- about the ontology underlying intentionality, and its core of representationality, is that of encodings -- some sort of informational or correspondence or covariation relationship between the represented and its representation that constitutes that representational relationship. There are many disagreements concerning details and implementations, and even some suggestions…Read more
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