Shaun Gallagher

Theory of mind explanations of how we know other minds are limited in several ways. First, they construe intersubjective relations too narrowly in terms of the specialized cognitive abilities of explaining and predicting another person's mental states and behaviors. Second, they sometimes draw conclusions about secondperson interaction from experiments designed to test third-person observation of another's behavior. As a result, the larger claims that are sometimes made for theory of mind, namely, that theory of mind is our primary and pervasive means for understanding other persons, go beyond both the phenomenological and the scientific evidence. I argue that the interpretation of "primary intersubjectivity" as merely precursory to theory of mind is inadequate. Rather, primary intersubjectivity, understood as a set of embodied practices and capabilities, is not only primary in a developmental sense, but is the primary way we continue to understand others in second-person interactions

Recent significant research in a number of disciplines centers around the concept of the sense of agency. Because many of these studies cut across disciplinary lines there is good reason to seek a clear consensus on what ‘sense of agency’ means. In this paper I indicate some complexities that this consensus might have to deal with. I also highlight an important phenomenological distinction that needs to be considered in any discussion of the sense of agency, regardless of how it gets defined, and I offer some critical comments on some current models tied to the notion that the sense of agency has an ambiguous phenomenology.

Clear statements of both extended and enactive conceptions of cognition can be found in John Dewey and other pragmatists. In this paper I'll argue that we can find resources in the pragmatists to address two ongoing debates: in contrast to recent disagreements between proponents of extended vs enactive cognition, pragmatism supports a more integrative view—an enactive conception of extended cognition, and pragmatist views suggest ways to answer the main objections raised against extended and enactive conceptions—specifically objections focused on constitution versus causal factors, and the mark of the mental

I review the problem of how to define consciousness. I suggest that rather than continuing that debate, we should turn to phenomenological description of experience to discover the common aspects of consciousness. In this way we can say that consciousness is characterized by intentionality, phenomenality, and non-reflective self-awareness. I explore this last characteristic in detail and I argue against higher-order representational theories of consciousness, with reference to blindsight and motor control processes.

Michael Arbib was born in England, grew up in Australia, and studied at MIT where he received his PhD in Mathematics in 1963. He helped to found the Department of Computer and Information Science and the Center for Systems Neuroscience, the Cognitive Science Program, and the Laboratory for Perceptual Robotics at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Today he is Fletcher Jones Professor of Computer Science, a Professor of Neuroscience and the Director of the USC Brain Project at the University of Southern California. The title of his first book, Brains, Machines and Mathematics , gives a good indication of his scientific interests. For all his extensive research in these areas, however, Arbib has not ignored philosophical, social, and even theological topics . Central to his work in all of these areas is the concept of schema, and this is one of the topics that we discuss here

Diejenigen, die behaupten, der freie Wille sei Illusion, sind im Unrecht. Sie begründen ihre Behauptung auf einem wissenschaftlichen Beweis, der die falsche Ebene der Deskription des intentionalen Handelns testet. Der freie Wille bezieht sich nicht auf subpersonale neuronale Prozesse, Muskelaktivierung oder grundlegende Körperbewegungen, sondern auf kontextualisierte Handlungen in einem System, das größer ist als viele zeitgenössische Geistesphilosophen, Psychologen und Neurowissenschaftler annehmen. In diesem Artikel beschreibe ich die Art von Intentionalität, die mit der Ausübung des freien Willens einhergeht

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This chapter provides a review of theory of mind approaches to explaining certain dysfunctions of intersubjectivity in pathologies such as autism and schizophrenia. ToM approaches such as theory theory and simulation theory focus on mindreading but fail to explain important aspects of online intersubjective interaction. A phenomenological approach, focusing on embodied interaction, offers an alternative account of intersubjective processes and specific dysfunctions in pathology. Further research is needed on second-person, online interaction to develop this approach as a viable explanation of intersubjective problems in psychopathology.