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96Rock beats scissors: Historicalism fights backAnalysis 57 (4): 273-81. 1997.Jerry Fodor (1994) thinks that content is not historically determined. In this paper we will consider Fodor's reasons.
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133Representations without rules, connectionism and the syntactic argumentSynthese 101 (3): 465-92. 1994.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 Tiens…Read more
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62Jeffrey L. Elman, Elizabeth A. Bates, mark H. Johnson, Annette karmiloff-Smith, Domenico Parisi, and Kim Plunkett, (eds.), Rethinking innateness: A connectionist perspective on development, neural network modeling and connectionism series and Kim Plunkett and Jeffrey L. Elman, exercises in rethinking innateness: A handbook for connectionist simulations (review)Minds and Machines 9 (3): 447-456. 1999.
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596This is a plausible reading of what Clark and Chalmers had in mind at the time, but it is not the radical claim at stake in the extended cognition debate.[1] It is a familiar functionalist view of cognition and the mind that it can be realized in a wide range of distinct material bases. Thus, for many species of functionalism about cognition and the mind, it follows that they can be realized in extracranial substrates.[2] And, in truth, even some non-functionalist views of cognition apparently a…Read more
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894Defending the bounds of cognitionIn Richard Menary (ed.), The Extended Mind, Mit Press. pp. 67--80. 2010.This chapter discusses the flaws of Clark’s extended mind hypothesis. Clark’s hypothesis assumes that the nature of the processes internal to an object has nothing to do with whether that object carries out cognitive processing. The only condition required is that the object is coupled with a cognitive agent and interacts with it in a certain way. In making this tenuous connection, Clark commits the most common mistake extended mind theorists make; alleging that an object becomes cognitive once …Read more
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157Cognition and behaviorSynthese 194 (11): 4269-4288. 2017.An important question in the debate over embodied, enactive, and extended cognition has been what has been meant by “cognition”. What is this cognition that is supposed to be embodied, enactive, or extended? Rather than undertake a frontal assault on this question, however, this paper will take a different approach. In particular, we may ask how cognition is supposed to be related to behavior. First, we could ask whether cognition is supposed to be behavior. Second, we could ask whether we shoul…Read more
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229Understanding the embodiment of perceptionAPA Proceedings and Addresses 79 (3): 5-25. 2006.Obviously perception is embodied. After all, if creatures were entirely disembodied, how could physical processes in the environment, such as the propagation of light or sound, be transduced into a neurobiological currency capable of generating experience? Is there, however, any deeper, more subtle sense in which perception is embodied? Perhaps. Alva Nos (2004) theory of enactive perception provides one proposal. Where it is commonly thought that
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756Why the mind is still in the headIn Murat Aydede & P. Robbins (eds.), The Cambridge Handbook of Situated Cognition, Cambridge University Press. pp. 78--95. 2009.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, the confusion of 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 …Read more
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214The Boundaries Still Stand: A Reply to FisherJournal of Mind and Behavior 31 (1): 37. 2010.In his recent critical notice of The Bounds of Cognition in this journal, Justin Fisher advances a set of concerns that favor the hypothesis that, under certain circumstances, cognitive processes span the brain, body, and world. One is that it is too much to require that representations in cognitive process must have non-derived content. A second is that it is possible that extended objects bear non-derived content. A third is that extended cognition might advocate the extension of certain gener…Read more
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116Fodor’s Asymmetric Causal Dependency Theory and Proximal ProjectionsSouthern Journal of Philosophy 35 (4): 433-437. 1997.In “A Theory of Content, 11: The Theory,” Jerry Fodor presents two reasons why his asymmetric causal dependency theory does not lead to the conclusion that syntactic items “X” mean proximal sensory stimulations, rather than distal environmental objects. Here we challenge Fodor’s reasoning.
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159Multiple realization by compensatory differencesEuropean Journal for Philosophy of Science 3 (1): 69-86. 2013.One way that scientifically recognized properties are multiply realized is by “compensatory differences” among realizing properties. If a property G is jointly realized by two properties F1 and F2, then G can be multiply realized by having changes in the property F1 offset changes in the property F2. In some cases, there are scientific laws that articulate how distinct combinations of physical quantities can determine one and the same value of some other physical quantity. One moral to draw is t…Read more
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72Explaining SystematicityMind and Language 12 (2): 115-136. 1997.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 thou…Read more
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13Biology and sufficiency in connectionist theoryIn J. Dinsmore (ed.), The Symbolic and Connectionist Paradigms: Closing the Gap, Lawrence Erlbaum. pp. 69--88. 1992.
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50The role of the systematicity argument in classicism and connectionismIn S. O'Nuallain (ed.), Two Sciences of Mind, John Benjamins. 1997.Despite the prominence of the systematicity argument in the debate between Classicists and Connectionists, there is extremely widespread misunderstanding of the nature of the argument. For example, Matthews (1994), has argued that the systematicity argument is a kind of trick, where Niklasson and van Gelder (1994), have claimed that it is obscure. More surprisingly, once one examines the argument carefully, one finds that Fodor, Pylyshyn, and McLaughlin, themselves have not fully understood it. …Read more
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199Rules in programming languages and networksIn J. Dinsmore (ed.), The Symbolic and Connectionist Paradigms: Closing the Gap, Lawrence Erlbaum. 1992.1. Do models formulated in programming languages use explicit rules where connectionist models do not? 2. Are rules as found in programming languages hard, precise, and exceptionless, where connectionist rules are not? 3. Do connectionist models use rules operating on distributed representations where models formulated in programming languages do not? 4. Do connectionist models fail to use structure sensitive rules of the sort found in "classical" computer architectures? In this chapter we argue…Read more
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182Supersizing the mind: Embodiment, action, and cognitive extension – Andy ClarkPhilosophical Quarterly 60 (240): 662-664. 2010.This is a review of Andy Clark's book, Supersizing the Mind.
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441Challenges to active externalismIn P. Robbins & Murat Aydede (eds.), Cambridge Handbook on Situated Cognition, Cambridge University Press. forthcoming.
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350Lloyd's dialectical theory of representationMind and Language 9 (1): 1-24. 1994.This is a critique of Lloyd's theory which appeared in his book, Simple Minds.
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104Distinguishing virtue epistemology and extended cognitionPhilosophical Explorations 15 (2). 2012.This paper pursues two lines of thought that help characterize the differences between some versions of virtue epistemology and the hypothesis that cognitive processes are realized by brain, body, and world
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101Cognitive architecture: The structure of cognitive representationsIn Stephen P. Stich & Ted A. Warfield (eds.), The Blackwell Guide to Philosophy of Mind, Blackwell. pp. 172--189. 2003.
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332Understanding The Embodiment of PerceptionJournal of Philosophy 104 (1): 5-25. 2007.Obviously perception is embodied. After all, if creatures were entirely disembodied, how could physical processes in the environment, such as the propagation of light or sound, be transduced into a neurobiological currency capable of generating experience? Is there, however, any deeper, more subtle sense in which perception is embodied? Perhaps. Alva Noë’s theory of en- active perception provides one proposal. Noë suggests a radical constitutive hypothesis according to which (COH) Perceptual ex…Read more
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110“X” means X: Semantics Fodor-style (review)Minds and Machines 2 (2): 175-83. 1992.InPsychosemantics Jerry Fodor offered a list of sufficient conditions for a symbol “X” to mean something X. The conditions are designed to reduce meaning to purely non-intentional natural relations. They are also designed to solve what Fodor has dubbed the “disjunction problem”. More recently, inA Theory of Content and Other Essays, Fodor has modified his list of sufficient conditions for naturalized meaning in light of objections to his earlier list. We look at his new set of conditions and giv…Read more
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1092The Enactivist RevolutionAvant: Trends in Interdisciplinary Studies (2): 19-42. 2014.Among the many ideas that go by the name of “enactivism” there is the idea that by “cognition” we should understand what is more commonly taken to be behavior. For clarity, label such forms of enactivism “enactivismb.” This terminology requires some care in evaluating enactivistb claims. There is a genuine risk of enactivist and non-enactivist cognitive scientists talking past one another. So, for example, when enactivistsb write that “cognition does not require representations” they are not…Read more
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