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143Cognition 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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135Consciousness: Don't Give Up on the BrainRoyal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 67 263-284. 2010.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 challen…Read more
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122Representations 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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106'X' means X: Fodor/warfield semantics (review)Minds and Machines 4 (2): 215-31. 1994.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…Read more
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105Connectionism and artificial intelligence: History and philosophical interpretationJournal for Experimental and Theoretical Artificial Intelligence 4 1992. 1992.Hubert and Stuart Dreyfus have tried to place connectionism and artificial intelligence in a broader historical and intellectual context. This history associates connectionism with neuroscience, conceptual holism, and nonrationalism, and artificial intelligence with conceptual atomism, rationalism, and formal logic. The present paper argues that the Dreyfus account of connectionism and artificial intelligence is both historically and philosophically misleading.
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104“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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103What is this cognition that is supposed to be embodied?Philosophical Psychology 28 (6): 755-775. 2015.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 u…Read more
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101Fodor’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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98The Systematicity ArgumentsKluwer Academic Publishers. 2003.The Systematicity Arguments is the only book-length treatment of the systematicity and productivity arguments.
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98Introduction to “The Material Bases of Cognition”Minds and Machines 23 (3): 277-286. 2013.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 Interfaci…Read more
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97Fodorian semantics, pathologies, and "Block's problem"Minds and Machines 3 (1): 97-104. 1993.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 Pathol…Read more
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93Explaining systematicityMind and Language 12 (2): 115-36. 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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90Distinguishing 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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86Rock 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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86Cognitive 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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84Defending pluralism about compositional explanationsStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 78 101-202. 2019.In the New Mechanist literature, most attention has focused on the compositional explanation of processes/activities of wholes by processes/activities of their parts. These are sometimes called “constitutive mechanistic explanations.” In this paper, we defend moving beyond this focus to a Pluralism about compositional explanation by highlighting two additional species of such explanations. We illuminate both Analytic compositional explanations that explain a whole using a compositional relatio…Read more
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78Walter Pitts and “A Logical Calculus”Synthese 162 (2): 235-250. 2008.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…Read more
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75Multiple realization and multiple “ways” of realization: A progress reportStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 68 3-9. 2018.One might have thought that if something has two or more distinct realizations, then that thing is multiply realized. Nevertheless, some philosophers have claimed that two or more distinct realizations do not amount to multiple realization, unless those distinct realizations amount to multiple “ways” of realizing the thing. Corey Maley, Gualtiero Piccinini, Thomas Polger, and Lawrence Shapiro are among these philosophers. Unfortunately, they do not explain why multiple realization requires multi…Read more
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66Manfred Spitzer, the mind within the net. Models of learning, thinking, and actingMinds and Machines 11 (3): 445-448. 2001.A review of Manfred Spitzer's The mind within the net: Models of learning, thinking, and acting.
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63Explaining 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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59Jeffrey 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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56Exhibiting verses explaining systematicity: A reply to Hadley and Hayward (review)Minds and Machines 7 (1): 39-55. 1997.
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53Some theoretical and empirical background to Fodor’s systematicity argumentsTheoria: Revista de Teoría, Historia y Fundamentos de la Ciencia 35 (1): 29-43. 2020.This paper aims to clarify certain features of the systematicity arguments by a review of some of the largely underexamined background in Chomsky’s and Fodor’s early work on transformational grammar.
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53Defending Non-Derived ContentPhilosophical Psychology 18 (6): 661-669. 2005.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 con…Read more
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52Scientific Composition and Metaphysical Ground (edited book)Palgrave-Macmillan. 2016.Part I -- Scientific Composition and the New Mechanism. - 1. Laura Franklin-Hall: New Mechanistic Explanation and the Need for Explanatory Constraints. - 2. Kenneth Aizawa: Compositional Explanation: Dimensioned Realization, New Mechanism, and Ground. - 3. Jens Harbecke: Is Mechanistic Constitution a Version of Material Constitution?. - 4. Derk Pereboom: Anti-Reductionism, Anti-Rationalism, and the Material Constitution of the Mental. Part II -- Grounding, Science, and Verticality in Nature. - 5…Read more
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49Is perceiving bodily action?Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 18 (5): 933-946. 2019.One of the boldest claims one finds in the enactivist and embodied cognition literature is that perceiving is bodily action. Research on the role of eye movements in vision have been thought to support PBA, whereas research on paralysis has been thought to pose no challenge to PBA. The present paper, however, will argue just the opposite. Eye movement research does not support PBA, whereas paralysis research presents a strong challenge that seems not to have been fully appreciated.
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46Terence Horgan and John Tienson, connectionism and the philosophy of psychologyMinds and Machines 9 (2): 270-273. 1999.A review of Terry Horgan and John Tienson's book.
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45The 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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