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4092The Allure of the Serial KillerIn Sara Waller (ed.), Serial Killers and Philosophy, John Wiley. 2010.What is it about serial killers that grips our imaginations? They populate some of our most important literature and art, and to this day, Jack the Ripper intrigues us. In this paper, we examine this phenomenon, exploring the idea that serial killers in part represent something in us that, if not good, is at least admirable. To get at this, we have to peel off layers of other causes of our attraction, for our attraction to serial killing is complex (it mixes with repulsion, too). For examp…Read more
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3955There Is No Progress in PhilosophyEssays in Philosophy 12 (2): 9. 2011.Except for a patina of twenty-first century modernity, in the form of logic and language, philosophy is exactly the same now as it ever was; it has made no progress whatsoever. We philosophers wrestle with the exact same problems the Pre-Socratics wrestled with. Even more outrageous than this claim, though, is the blatant denial of its obvious truth by many practicing philosophers. The No-Progress view is explored and argued for here. Its denial is diagnosed as a form of anosognosia, a mental co…Read more
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1979Homo sapiens 2.0 Why we should build the better robots of our natureIn M. Anderson S. Anderson (ed.), Machine Ethics, Cambridge Univ. Press. 2011.It is possible to survey humankind and be proud, even to smile, for we accomplish great things. Art and science are two notable worthy human accomplishments. Consonant with art and science are some of the ways we treat each other. Sacrifice and heroism are two admirable human qualities that pervade human interaction. But, as everyone knows, all this goodness is more than balanced by human depravity. Moral corruption infests our being. Why?
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1703Realism and Anti-Realism Are Both True (and False)Mind and Matter 18 (2): 121-148. 2020.The perennial nature of some of philosophy’s deepest problems is a puzzle. Here, one problem, the realism–anti-realism debate, and one type of explanation for its longevity, are examined. It is argued that realism and anti-realism form a dialetheic pair: While they are in fact each other’s logical opposite, nevertheless, both are true (and both false). First, several reasons why one might think such a thing are presented. These reasons are merely the beginning, however. In the following sections…Read more
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1442ComputationalismSocial Epistemology 4 (2): 135-154. 1990.This paper argues for a noncognitiveist computationalism in the philosophy of mind. It further argues that both humans and computers have intentionality, that is, their mental states are semantical -- they are about things in their worlds.
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1407It only seems as if zombies are logically possible, or how consciousness hides the truth of materialism: A critical review of The Conscious Mind (review)Minds and Machines 8 (3): 441-461. 1998.
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1349Role of the Frame Problem in Fodor's Modularity ThesisIn Ken Ford & Zenon Pylyshyn (eds.), The Robot's Dilemma Revisited, . 1996.It is shown that the Fodor's interpretation of the frame problem is the central indication that his version of the Modularity Thesis is incompatible with computationalism. Since computationalism is far more plausible than this thesis, the latter should be rejected.
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1320Analogy and Conceptual Change, or You can't step into the same mind twiceIn Eric Dietrich Art Markman (ed.), Cognitive Dynamics: Conceptual change in humans and machines., Lawrence Erlbaum. pp. 265--294. 2000.Sometimes analogy researchers talk as if the freshness of an experience of analogy resides solely in seeing that something is like something else -- seeing that the atom is like a solar system, that heat is like flowing water, that paint brushes work like pumps, or that electricity is like a teeming crowd. But analogy is more than this. Analogy isn't just seeing that the atom is like a solar system; rather, it is seeing something new about the atom, an observation enabled by 'looking' at atoms f…Read more
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1185Discrete thoughts: Why cognition must use discrete representationsMind and Language 18 (1): 95-119. 2003.Advocates of dynamic systems have suggested that higher mental processes are based on continuous representations. In order to evaluate this claim, we first define the concept of representation, and rigorously distinguish between discrete representations and continuous representations. We also explore two important bases of representational content. Then, we present seven arguments that discrete representations are necessary for any system that must discriminate between two or more states. It…Read more
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1143The Paradox of Consciousness and the Realism/Anti-Realism DebateLogos Architekton 3 (1): 7-37. 2009.Beginning with the paradoxes of zombie twins, we present an argument that dualism is both true and false. We show that avoiding this contradiction is impossible. Our diagnosis is that consciousness itself engenders this contradiction by producing contradictory points of view. This result has a large effect on the realism/anti-realism debate, namely, it suggests that this debate is intractable, and furthermore, it explains why this debate is intractable. We close with some comments on what our re…Read more
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1048Explanatory pluralism in cognitive scienceCognitive Science 33 (2): 739-742. 2009.This brief commentary has three goals. The first is to argue that ‘‘framework debate’’ in cognitive science is unresolvable. The idea that one theory or framework can singly account for the vast complexity and variety of cognitive processes seems unlikely if not impossible. The second goal is a consequence of this: We should consider how the various theories on offer work together in diverse contexts of investigation. A final goal is to supply a brief review for readers who are compelled by thes…Read more
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958Some strangeness in the proportion, or how to stop worrying and learn to love the mechanistic forces of darknessPhenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 7 (3): 349-352. 2008.Understanding humans requires viewing them as mechanisms of some sort, since understanding anything requires seeing it as a mechanism. It is science’s job to reveal mechanisms. But science reveals much more than that: it also reveals enduring mystery—strangeness in the proportion. Concentrating just on the scientific side of Selinger’s and Engström’s call for a moratorium on cyborg discourse, I argue that this strangeness prevents cyborg discourse from diminishing us.
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928Whither structured representation?Behavioral and Brain Sciences 22 (4): 626-627. 1999.The perceptual symbol system view assumes that perceptual representations have a role-argument structure. A role-argument structure is often incorporated into amodal symbol systems in order to explain conceptual functions like abstraction and rule use. The power of perceptual symbol systems to support conceptual functions is likewise rooted in its use of structure. On Barsalou's account, this capacity to use structure (in the form of frames) must be innate.
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862Let's dance! The equivocation in Chalmers' dancing qualia argumentMinds and Machines 8 (2): 237-249. 1998.David Chalmers' dancing qualia argument is intended to show that phenomenal experiences, or qualia, are organizational invariants. The dancing qualia argument is a reductio ad absurdum, attempting to demonstrate that holding an alternative position, such as the famous inverted spectrum argument, leads one to an implausible position about the relation between consciousness and cognition. In this paper, we argue that Chalmers' dancing qualia argument fails to establish the plausibility of qualia b…Read more
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842Science Generates Limit ParadoxesAxiomathes 25 (4): 409-432. 2015.The sciences occasionally generate discoveries that undermine their own assumptions. Two such discoveries are characterized here: the discovery of apophenia by cognitive psychology and the discovery that physical systems cannot be locally bounded within quantum theory. It is shown that such discoveries have a common structure and that this common structure is an instance of Priest’s well-known Inclosure Schema. This demonstrates that science itself is dialetheic: it generates limit paradoxes. Ho…Read more
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837In defense of representationCognitive Psychology 40 (2): 138--171. 2000.The computational paradigm, which has dominated psychology and artificial intelligence since the cognitive revolution, has been a source of intense debate. Recently, several cognitive scientists have argued against this paradigm, not by objecting to computation, but rather by objecting to the notion of representation. Our analysis of these objections reveals that it is not the notion of representation per se that is causing the problem, but rather specific properties of representations as they a…Read more
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837Analogical insight: toward unifying categorization and analogy.Cognitive Processing 11 (4): 331-. 2010.The purpose of this paper is to present two kinds of analogical representational change, both occurring early in the analogy-making process, and then, using these two kinds of change, to present a model unifying one sort of analogy-making and categorization. The proposed unification rests on three key claims: (1) a certain type of rapid representational abstraction is crucial to making the relevant analogies (this is the first kind of representational change; a computer model is presented that d…Read more
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755Concepts: Fodor's little semantic BBs of thought - A critical look at Fodor's theory of concepts -J. Of Experimental and Theoretical AI 13 (2): 89-94. 2001.I find it interesting that AI researchers don't use concepts very often in their theorizing. No doubt they feel no pressure to. This is because most AI researchers do use representations which allow a system to chunk up its environment, and basically all we know about concepts is that they are representations which allow a system to chunk up its environment.
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723Review of David Chalmers, The Conscious Mind (review)Minds and Machines 8 (3): 441-461. 1998.When Charles Darwin died in April, 1882, he left behind a world changed forever. Because of his writings, most notably, of course, The Origin of Species, by 1882, evolution was an almost universally acknowledged fact. What remained in dispute, however, was how evolution occurred. So because of Darwin’s work, everyone accepted that new species emerge over time, yet few agreed with him that it was natural selection that powered the change, as Darwin hypothesized. Chalmers’ book, The Conscious Mind…Read more
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705After the Humans are GonePhilosophy Now 61 (May/June): 16-19. 2007.Recently, on the History Channel, artificial intelligence (AI) was singled out, with much wringing of hands, as one of the seven possible causes of the end of human life on Earth. I argue that the wringing of hands is quite inappropriate: the best thing that could happen to humans, and the rest of life of on planet Earth, would be for us to develop intelligent machines and then usher in our own extinction.
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705Excellent Beauty: The Naturalness of Religion and the Unnaturalness of the WorldColumbia University Press. 2015.Flipping convention on its head, Eric Dietrich argues that science uncovers awe-inspiring, enduring mysteries, while religion, regarded as the source for such mysteries, is a biological phenomenon. Just like spoken language, Dietrich shows that religion is an evolutionary adaptation. Science is the source of perplexing yet beautiful mysteries, however natural the search for answers may be to human existence. _Excellent Beauty_ undoes our misconception of scientific inquiry as an executioner of b…Read more
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701The Bishop and Priest: Toward a point-of-view based epistemology of true contradictions.Logos Architekton 2 (2). 2008.True contradictions are taken increasingly seriously by philosophers and logicians. Yet, the belief that contradictions are always false remains deeply intuitive. This paper confronts this belief head-on by explaining in detail how one specific contradiction is true. The contradiction in question derives from Priest's reworking of Berkeley's argument for idealism. However, technical aspects of the explanation offered here differ considerably from Priest's derivation. The explanation uses novel…Read more
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681It Does So: Review of Jerry Fodor, The Mind Doesn't Work That Way (review)AI Magazine 22 (4): 121-24. 2001.Objections to AI and computational cognitive science are myriad. Accordingly, there are many different reasons for these attacks. But all of them come down to one simple observation: humans seem a lot smarter that computers -- not just smarter as in Einstein was smarter than I, or I am smarter than a chimpanzee, but more like I am smarter than a pencil sharpener. To many, computation seems like the wrong paradigm for studying the mind. (Actually, I think there are deeper and darker reasons why A…Read more
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655Semantics and the Computational Paradigm in Cognitive PsychologySynthese 79 (1): 119-141. 1989.There is a prevalent notion among cognitive scientists and philosophers of mind that computers are merely formal symbol manipulators, performing the actions they do solely on the basis of the syntactic properties of the symbols they manipulate. This view of computers has allowed some philosophers to divorce semantics from computational explanations. Semantic content, then, becomes something one adds to computational explanations to get psychological explanations. Other philosophers, such as Step…Read more
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651AI, Situatedness, Creativity, and Intelligence; or the Evolution of the Little Hearing BonesJ. Of Experimental and Theoretical AI 8 (1): 1-6. 1996.Good sciences have good metaphors. Indeed, good sciences are good because they have good metaphors. AI could use more good metaphors. In this editorial, I would like to propose a new metaphor to help us understand intelligence. Of course, whether the metaphor is any good or not depends on whether it actually does help us. (What I am going to propose is not something opposed to computationalism -- the hypothesis that cognition is computation. Noncomputational metaphors are in vogue these days, an…Read more
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647AI, Concepts, and the Paradox of Mental Representation, with a brief discussion of psychological essentialismJ. Of Exper. And Theor. AI 13 (1): 1-7. 2001.Mostly philosophers cause trouble. I know because on alternate Thursdays I am one -- and I live in a philosophy department where I watch all of them cause trouble. Everyone in artificial intelligence knows how much trouble philosophers can cause (and in particular, we know how much trouble one philosopher -- John Searle -- has caused). And, we know where they tend to cause it: in knowledge representation and the semantics of data structures. This essay is about a recent case of this sort of thin…Read more
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632Subvert the dominant paradigm!J. Of Experimental and Theoretical AI. 2002.We again press the case for computationalism by considering the latest in ill- conceived attacks on this foundational idea. We briefly but clearly define and delimit computationalism and then consider three authors from a new anti- computationalist collection.
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537The Prepared Mind: The Role of Representational Change in Chance DiscoveryIn Yukio Ohsawa Peter McBurney (ed.), Chance Discovery by Machines, Springer-verlag, Pp. 208-230.. 2003.Analogical reminding in humans and machines is a great source for chance discoveries because analogical reminding can produce representational change and thereby produce insights. Here, we present a new kind of representational change associated with analogical reminding called packing. We derived the algorithm in part from human data we have on packing. Here, we explain packing and its role in analogy making, and then present a computer model of packing in a micro-domain. We conclude that packi…Read more
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504Banbury Bound, or Can a machine be conscious?J. Of Experimental and Theoretical AI 13 (2): 177-180. 2001.In mid-May of 2001, I attended a fascinating workshop at Cold Spring Harbor Labs. The conference was held at the lab's Banbury Center, an elegant mansion and its beautiful surrounding estate, located on Banbury Lane, in the outskirts of Lloyd Harbor, overlooking the north shore of Long Island in New York. The estate was formerly owned by Charles Sammis Robertson. In 1976, Robertson donated his estate, and an endowment for its upkeep, to the Lab. The donation included the Robertson's mansion, now…Read more
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461A Counterexample t o All Future Dynamic Systems Theories of CognitionJ. Of Experimental and Theoretical AI 12 (2): 377-382. 2000.Years ago, when I was an undergraduate math major at the University of Wyoming, I came across an interesting book in our library. It was a book of counterexamples t o propositions in real analysis (the mathematics of the real numbers). Mathematicians work more or less like the rest of us. They consider propositions. If one seems to them to be plausibly true, then they set about to prove it, to establish the proposition as a theorem. Instead o f setting out to prove propositions, the psychologist…Read more
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