Ken Aizawa

Sometimes neuroscientists discover distinct realizations for a single psychological property. In considering such cases, some philosophers have maintained that scientists will abandon the single multiply realized psychological property in favor of one or more uniquely realized psychological properties. In this paper, we build on the Dimensioned theory of realization and a companion theory of multiple realization to argue that this is not the case. Whether scientists postulate unique realizations or multiple realizations is not determined by the neuroscience alone, but by the psychological theory under examination. Thus, one might say that, in the splitting or non-splitting of properties, psychology enjoys a kind of autonomy from neuroscience.

Causal theories of mental content attempt to explain how thoughts can be about things. They attempt to explain how one can think about, for example, dogs. These theories begin with the idea that there are mental representations and that thoughts are meaningful in virtue of a causal connection between a mental representation and some part of the world that is represented. In other words, the point of departure for these theories is that thoughts of dogs are about dogs because dogs cause the mental representations of dogs.

An increasing number of writers (for example, Kim ((1992), (1999)), Bechtel and Mundale (1999), Keeley (2000), Bickle (2003), Polger (2004), and Shapiro ((2000), (2004))) have attacked the existence of multiple realization and wider views of the special sciences built upon it. We examine the two most important arguments against multiple realization and show that neither is successful. Furthermore, we also defend an alternative, positive view of the ontology, and methodology, of the special science. In contrast to the claims of recent critics, we show that methodological connections between the neurosciences and psychology are plausibly often the result of multiple realization.

Introduction to the 2009 Synthese Special Issue on Philosophy and Neuroscience. The papers are: The multiplicity of experimental protocols: a challenge to reductionist and non-reductionist models of the unity of neuroscience Jacqueline A. Sullivan Making sense of mirror neurons Lawrence Shapiro Evaluating the evidence for multiple realization Thomas W. Polger Multiple realization and methodological pluralism Robert C. Richardson Neuroscience and multiple realization: a reply to Bechtel and Mundale Ken Aizawa

In the extended mind literature, one sometimes finds the claim that there is no neural correlate of consciousness. Instead, there is a biological or ecological correlate of consciousness. Consciousness, it is claimed, supervenes on an entire organism in action. Alva Noë is one of the leading proponents of such a view. This paper resists Noë's view. First, it challenges the evidence he offers from neuroplasticity. Second, it presses a problem with paralysis. Third, it draws attention to a challenge from the existence of metamers and visual illusions.

Many cognitive scientists have recently championed the thesis that cognition is embodied. In principle, explicating this thesis should be relatively simple. There are, essentially, only two concepts involved: cognition and embodiment. After articulating what will here be meant by ‘embodiment’, this paper will draw attention to cases in which some advocates of embodied cognition apparently do not mean by ‘cognition’ what has typically been meant by ‘cognition’. Some advocates apparently mean to use ‘cognition’ not as a term for one, among many, causes of behavior, but for what has more often been called “behavior.” Some consequences for this proposal are considered

In an earlier paper, we argued that Fodorian Semantics has serious difficulties. However, we suggested possible ways that one might attempt to fix this. Ted Warfield suggests that our arguments can be deflected and he does this by making the very moves that we suggested. In our current paper, we respond to Warfield's attempts to revise and defend Fodorian Semantics against our arguments that such a semantic theory is both too strong and too weak. To get around our objections, Warfield proposes a modified reading of one of Fodor's conditions and proposes adding a new condition to the theory. We show that neither the modified reading nor the additional condition saves the asymmetric causal dependency approach to naturalized semantics

In two recent books, Jerry Fodor has developed a set of sufficient conditions for an object “X” to non-naturally and non-derivatively mean X. In an earlier paper we presented three reasons for thinking Fodor's theory to be inadequate. One of these problems we have dubbed the “Pathologies Problem”. In response to queries concerning the relationship between the Pathologies Problem and what Fodor calls “Block's Problem”, we argue that, while Block's Problem does not threatenFodor's view, the Pathologies Problem does

One trend in recent work on topic of the multiple realization of psychological properties has been an emphasis on greater sensitivity to actual science and greater clarity regarding the metaphysics of realization and multiple realization. One contribution to this trend is Bechtel and Mundale’s examination of the implications of brain mapping for multiple realization. Where Bechtel and Mundale argue that studies of brain mapping undermine claims about the multiple realization, this paper challenges that argument.

Special Issue: The Material Bases of Cognition Guest Editors: Fred Adams · Kenneth Aizawa Compositional Explanatory Relations and Mechanistic Reduction K.L. Theurer 287 Constitution, and Multiple Constitution, in the Sciences: Using the Neuron to Construct a Starting Framework C. Gillett 309 The Mark of the Cognitive F. Adams · R. Garrison 339 Dynamics and Cognition L.A. Shapiro 353 Causal Parity and Externalisms: Extensions in Life and Mind P. Huneman 377 Did I Do That? Brain–Computer Interfacing and the Sense of Agency P. Haselager 405

In ‘‘The Myth of Original Intentionality,’’ Daniel Dennett appears to want to argue for four claims involving the familiar distinction between original (or underived) and derived intentionality. 1. Humans lack original intentionality. 2. Humans have derived intentionality only. 3. There is no distinction between original and derived intentionality. 4. There is no such thing as original intentionality. We argue that Dennett’s discussion fails to secure any of these conclusions for the contents of thoughts.

Philosophical interest in situated cognition has been focused most intensely on the claim that human cognitive processes extend from the brain into the tools humans use. As we see it, this radical hypothesis is sustained by two kinds of mistakes, confusing coupling relations with constitutive relations and an inattention to the mark of the cognitive. Here we wish to draw attention to these mistakes and show just how pervasive they are. That is, for all that the radical philosophers have said, the mind is still in the head.

Despite the considerable attention that the systematicity argument has enjoyed, it is worthwhile examining the argument within the context of similar explanatory arguments from the history of science. This kind of analysis helps show that Connectionism, qua Connectionism, really does not have an explanation of systematicity. Second, and more surprisingly, one finds that the systematicity argument sets such a high explanatory standard that not even Classicism can explain the systematicity of thought.

This paper has a two-fold aim. First, it reinforces a version of the "syntactic argument" given in Aizawa (1994). This argument shows that connectionist networks do not provide a means of implementing representations without rules. Horgan and Tlenson have responded to the syntactic argument in their book and in another paper (Horgan & Tlenson, 1993), but their responses do not meet the challenge posed by my formulation of the syntactic argument. My second aim is to describe a kind of cognitive architecture. This architecture might be called a computational architecture, but it is not a rules and representations architecture nor the representations without rules architecture that Horgan and Tlenson wish to endorse.

Many years after the publication of “A Logical Calculus of the Ideas Immanent in Nervous Activity,” Warren McCulloch gave Walter Pitts credit for contributing his knowledge of modular mathematics to their joint project. In 1941 I presented my notions on the flow of information through ranks of neurons to Rashevsky’s seminar in the Committee on Mathematical Biology of the University of Chicago and met Walter Pitts, who then was about seventeen years old. He was working on a mathematical theory of learning and I was much impressed. He was interested in problems of circularity, how to handle regenerative nervous activity in closed loops....For two years Walter and I worked on these problems whose solution depended upon modular mathematics of which I knew nothing, but Walter did.. In this paper, we will fill in some of the details regarding Pitts’s interest in problems of circularity, regenerative activity in closed loops of neurons, and modular mathematics, and the way in which they relate to “A Logical Calculus.”

Abstract: There has recently been controversy over the existence of 'multiple realization' in addition to some confusion between different conceptions of its nature. To resolve these problems, we focus on concrete examples from the sciences to provide precise accounts of the scientific concepts of 'realization' and 'multiple realization' that have played key roles in recent debates in the philosophy of science and philosophy of psychology. We illustrate the advantages of our view over a prominent rival account ( Shapiro, 2000 and 2004 ) and use our work to rebut recent objections to the long-standing claim that psychological properties are multiply realized. For we use scientific evidence, in combination with our more precise theoretical framework, to show that we have strong reason to believe that psychological properties are indeed multiply realized both at the biochemical and neuronal levels.

  Terry Horgan and John Tienson have suggested that connectionism might provide a framework within which to articulate a theory of cognition according to which there are mental representations without rules (RWR) (Horgan and Tienson 1988, 1989, 1991, 1992). In essence, RWR states that cognition involves representations in a language of thought, but that these representations are not manipulated by the sort of rules that have traditionally been posited. In the development of RWR, Horgan and Tienson attempt to forestall a particular line of criticism, theSyntactic Argument, which would show RWR to be inconsistent with connectionism. In essence, the argument claims that the node-level rules of connectionist networks, along with the semantic interpretations assigned to patterns of activation, serve to determine a set of representation-level rules incompatible with the RWR conception of cognition. The present paper argues that the Syntactic Argument can be made to show that RWR is inconsistent with connectionism