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23What is foraging?Biology and Philosophy 39 (1): 1-25. 2024.Foraging is a central competence of all mobile organisms. Models and concepts from foraging theory have been applied widely throughout biology to the search for many kinds of external resources, including food, sexual encounters, minerals, water, and the like. In cognitive science and neuroscience, the tools of foraging theory are increasingly applied to a wide range of other types of search, including for abstract resources like information or for internal resources like memories, concepts, and…Read more
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92The Dynamicist LandscapeTopics in Cognitive Science. 2023.The dynamical hypothesis states that cognitive systems are dynamical systems. While dynamical systems play an important role in many cognitive phenomena, the dynamical hypothesis as stated applies to every system and so fails both to specify what makes cognitive systems distinct and to distinguish between proposals regarding the nature of cognitive systems. To avoid this problem, I distinguish several different types of dynamical systems, outlining four dimensions along which dynamical systems c…Read more
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5Mental kinematics: dynamics and mechanics of neurocognitive systemsSynthese 199 (1-2): 1091-1123. 2020.Dynamical systems play a central role in explanations in cognitive neuroscience. The grounds for these explanations are hotly debated and generally fall under two approaches: non-mechanistic and mechanistic. In this paper, I first outline a neurodynamical explanatory schema that highlights the role of dynamical systems in cognitive phenomena. I next explore the mechanistic status of such neurodynamical explanations. I argue that these explanations satisfy only some of the constraints on mechanis…Read more
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17Posterior cingulate cortex: adapting behavior to a changing worldTrends in Cognitive Sciences 15 (4): 143-151. 2011.
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20Cognitive RecyclingBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science 70 (1): 239-268. 2019.Theories in cognitive science, and especially cognitive neuroscience, often claim that parts of cognitive systems are reused for different cognitive functions. Philosophical analysis of this concept, however, is rare. Here, I first provide a set of criteria for an analysis of reuse, and then I analyse reuse in terms of the functions of subsystems. I also discuss how cognitive systems execute cognitive functions, the relation between learning and reuse, and how to differentiate reuse from related…Read more
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19Cognitive RecyclingBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science. 2016.Theories in cognitive science, and especially cognitive neuroscience, often claim that parts of cognitive systems are reused for different cognitive functions. Philosophical analysis of this concept, however, is rare. Here, I first provide a set of criteria for an analysis of reuse, and then I analyse reuse in terms of the functions of subsystems. I also discuss how cognitive systems execute cognitive functions, the relation between learning and reuse, and how to differentiate reuse from related…Read more
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10Neurocomputational Nosology: Malfunctions of Models and MechanismsFrontiers in Psychology 7 183139. 2016.Executive dysfunctions, psychopathologies arising from problems in the control and regulation of behavior, can occur as a result of the faulty execution of formal information processing models or as a result of malfunctioning neural mechanisms. The models correspond to the formal descriptions of how signals in the environment must be transformed in order to behave adaptively, and the mechanisms correspond to the signal transformations that nervous systems implement in order to execute those cogn…Read more
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7Mental machinesBiology and Philosophy 34 (6): 63. 2019.Cognitive neuroscientists are turning to an increasingly rich array of neurodynamical systems to explain mental phenomena. In these explanations, cognitive capacities are decomposed into a set of functions, each of which is described mathematically, and then these descriptions are mapped on to corresponding mathematical descriptions of the dynamics of neural systems. In this paper, I outline a novel explanatory schema based on these explanations. I then argue that these explanations present a no…Read more
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4Codes, functions, and causes: A critique of Brette's conceptual analysis of codingBehavioral and Brain Sciences 42. 2019.Brette argues that coding as a concept is inappropriate for explanations of neurocognitive phenomena. Here, we argue that Brette's conceptual analysis mischaracterizes the structure of causal claims in coding and other forms of analysis-by-decomposition. We argue that analyses of this form are permissible and conceptually coherent and offer essential tools for building and developing models of neurocognitive systems like the brain.
Areas of Specialization
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Areas of Interest
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