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12Information without TruthIn Armen T. Marsoobian, Brian J. Huschle, Eric Cavallero & Patrick Allo (eds.), Putting Information First, Wiley‐blackwell. 2011-04-22.This chapter contains sections titled: Information and the Veridicality Thesis Information as a Mongrel Concept Natural Information Without Truth Nonnatural Information: The Case for the Veridicality Thesis Nonnatural Information Without Truth An Objection Conclusion Acknowledgments References.
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50Knowledge as Factually Grounded BeliefAmerican Philosophical Quarterly 59 (4): 403-417. 2022.Knowledge is factually grounded belief. This account uses the same ingredients as the traditional analysis—belief, truth, and justification—but posits a different relation between them. While the traditional analysis begins with true belief and improves it by simply adding justification, this account begins with belief, improves it by grounding it, and then improves it further by grounding it in the facts. In other words, for a belief to be knowledge, it's not enough that it be true and justifie…Read more
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47Neurocognitive Mechanisms Some ClarificationsJournal of Consciousness Studies 29 (7-8): 226-250. 2022.
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62Neurocognitive Mechanisms A Situated, Multilevel, Mechanistic, Neurocomputational, Representational Framework for Biological CognitionJournal of Consciousness Studies 29 (7-8): 167-174. 2022.
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107The Myth of Mind UploadingIn Inês Hipólito, Robert William Clowes & Klaus Gärtner (eds.), The Mind-Technology Problem : Investigating Minds, Selves and 21st Century Artefacts, Springer Verlag. pp. 125-144. 2021.It’s fashionable to maintain that in the near future we can become immortal by uploading our minds to artificial computers. Mind uploading requires three assumptions: that we can construct realistic computational simulations of human brains; that realistic computational simulations of human brains would have conscious minds like those possessed by the brains being simulated; that the minds of the simulated brains survive through the simulation. I will argue that the first two assumptions are imp…Read more
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79An Egalitarian Account of Composition and RealizationThe Monist 105 (2): 276-292. 2022.I argue that wholes are neither identical to nor distinct from their parts. Instead, wholes are invariants under some transformations in their parts. Similarly, higher-level properties are neither identical to nor distinct from their lower-level realizers. Instead, higher-level properties are aspects of their realizers that are invariant under some transformations in their realizers. Nowhere in this picture is there any ontological hierarchy between levels of composition or realization. Neither …Read more
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11Activities Are Manifestations of Causal PowersIn Marcus P. Adams, Zvi Biener, Uljana Feest & Jacqueline Anne Sullivan (eds.), Eppur Si Muove: Doing History and Philosophy of Science with Peter Machamer: A Collection of Essays in Honor of Peter Machamer, Springer. 2017.I reduce activities to properties, where properties include causal powers. Activities are manifestations of causal powers. Activities occur when an entity’s causal powers encounter partners for their manifestation. Given this reduction of activities to properties, entities and properties are all we need for an ontology of mechanisms.
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31Neurocognitive Mechanisms: Explaining Biological CognitionOxford University Press. 2020.Gualtiero Piccinini presents a systematic and rigorous philosophical defence of the computational theory of cognition. His view posits that cognition involves neural computation within multilevel neurocognitive mechanisms, and includes novel ideas about ontology, functions, neural representation, neural computation, and consciousness.
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45We define mereologically invariant composition as the relation between a whole object and its parts when the object retains the same parts during a time interval. We argue that mereologically invariant composition is identity between a whole and its parts taken collectively. Our reason is that parts and wholes are equivalent measurements of a portion of reality at different scales in the precise sense employed by measurement theory. The purpose of these scales is the numerical representation of …Read more
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191Towards a Cognitive Neuroscience of IntentionalityMinds and Machines 28 (1): 119-139. 2018.We situate the debate on intentionality within the rise of cognitive neuroscience and argue that cognitive neuroscience can explain intentionality. We discuss the explanatory significance of ascribing intentionality to representations. At first, we focus on views that attempt to render such ascriptions naturalistic by construing them in a deflationary or merely pragmatic way. We then contrast these views with staunchly realist views that attempt to naturalize intentionality by developing theorie…Read more
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101Conceived This Way: Innateness DefendedPhilosophers' Imprint 18. 2018.We propose a novel account of the distinction between innate and acquired biological traits: biological traits are innate to the degree that they are caused by factors intrinsic to the organism at the time of its origin; they are acquired to the degree that they are caused by factors extrinsic to the organism. This account borrows from recent work on causation in order to make rigorous the notion of quantitative contributions to traits by different factors in development. We avoid the pitfalls o…Read more
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37The Evolution of Psychological AltruismPhilosophy of Science 85 (5): 1054-1064. 2018.We argue that there are two different kinds of altruistic motivation: classical psychological altruism, which generates ultimate desires to help other organisms at least partly for those organisms’ sake, and nonclassical psychological altruism, which generates ultimate desires to help other organisms for the sake of the organism providing the help. We then argue that classical psychological altruism is adaptive if the desire to help others is intergenerationally reliable and, thus, need not be l…Read more
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81According to pancomputationalism, all physical systems – atoms, rocks, hurricanes, and toasters – perform computations. Pancomputationalism seems to be increasingly popular among some philosophers and physicists. In this paper, we interpret pancomputationalism in terms of computational descriptions of varying strength—computational interpretations of physical microstates and dynamics that vary in their restrictiveness. We distinguish several types of pancomputationalism and identify essential fe…Read more
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228Neural Representations ObservedMinds and Machines 28 (1): 191-235. 2018.The historical debate on representation in cognitive science and neuroscience construes representations as theoretical posits and discusses the degree to which we have reason to posit them. We reject the premise of that debate. We argue that experimental neuroscientists routinely observe and manipulate neural representations in their laboratory. Therefore, neural representations are as real as neurons, action potentials, or any other well-established entities in our ontology.
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81Mechanistic AbstractionPhilosophy of Science 83 (5): 686-697. 2016.We provide an explicit taxonomy of legitimate kinds of abstraction within constitutive explanation. We argue that abstraction is an inherent aspect of adequate mechanistic explanation. Mechanistic explanations—even ideally complete ones—typically involve many kinds of abstraction and therefore do not require maximal detail. Some kinds of abstraction play the ontic role of identifying the specific complex components, subsets of causal powers, and organizational relations that produce a suitably g…Read more
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274Alan Turing and the mathematical objectionMinds and Machines 13 (1): 23-48. 2003.This paper concerns Alan Turing’s ideas about machines, mathematical methods of proof, and intelligence. By the late 1930s, Kurt Gödel and other logicians, including Turing himself, had shown that no finite set of rules could be used to generate all true mathematical statements. Yet according to Turing, there was no upper bound to the number of mathematical truths provable by intelligent human beings, for they could invent new rules and methods of proof. So, the output of a human mathematician, …Read more
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109The functional account of computing mechanismsPhilSci Archive. 2004.This paper offers an account of what it is for a physical system to be a computing mechanism—a mechanism that performs computations. A computing mechanism is any mechanism whose functional analysis ascribes it the function of generating outputs strings from input strings in accordance with a general rule that applies to all strings. This account is motivated by reasons that are endogenous to the philosophy of computing, but it may also be seen as an application of recent literature on mechanisms…Read more
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47Physical Computation: A Mechanistic AccountOxford University Press UK. 2015.Gualtiero Piccinini articulates and defends a mechanistic account of concrete, or physical, computation. A physical system is a computing system just in case it is a mechanism one of whose functions is to manipulate vehicles based solely on differences between different portions of the vehicles according to a rule defined over the vehicles. Physical Computation discusses previous accounts of computation and argues that the mechanistic account is better. Many kinds of computation are explicated, …Read more
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173Some Neural Networks Compute, Others Don'tNeural Networks 21 (2-3): 311-321. 2008.I address whether neural networks perform computations in the sense of computability theory and computer science. I explicate and defend
the following theses. (1) Many neural networks compute—they perform computations. (2) Some neural networks compute in a classical way.
Ordinary digital computers, which are very large networks of logic gates, belong in this class of neural networks. (3) Other neural networks
compute in a non-classical way. (4) Yet other neural networks do not perform computations.…Read more -
838Integrating psychology and neuroscience: functional analyses as mechanism sketchesSynthese 183 (3): 283-311. 2011.We sketch a framework for building a unified science of cognition. This unification is achieved by showing how functional analyses of cognitive capacities can be integrated with the multilevel mechanistic explanations of neural systems. The core idea is that functional analyses are sketches of mechanisms , in which some structural aspects of a mechanistic explanation are omitted. Once the missing aspects are filled in, a functional analysis turns into a full-blown mechanistic explanation. By thi…Read more
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506Computation vs. information processing: why their difference matters to cognitive scienceStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 41 (3): 237-246. 2010.Since the cognitive revolution, it has become commonplace that cognition involves both computation and information processing. Is this one claim or two? Is computation the same as information processing? The two terms are often used interchangeably, but this usage masks important differences. In this paper, we distinguish information processing from computation and examine some of their mutual relations, shedding light on the role each can play in a theory of cognition. We recommend that theoris…Read more
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127The following three theses are inconsistent: (1) (Paradigmatic) connectionist systems perform computations. (2) Performing computations requires executing programs. (3) Connectionist systems do not execute programs. Many authors embrace (2). This leads them to a dilemma: either connectionist systems execute programs or they don't compute. Accordingly, some authors attempt to deny (1), while others attempt to deny (3). But as I will argue, there are compelling reasons to accept both (1) and (3). …Read more
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180Turing's rules for the imitation gameMinds and Machines 10 (4): 573-582. 2000.In the 1950s, Alan Turing proposed his influential test for machine intelligence, which involved a teletyped dialogue between a human player, a machine, and an interrogator. Two readings of Turing's rules for the test have been given. According to the standard reading of Turing's words, the goal of the interrogator was to discover which was the human being and which was the machine, while the goal of the machine was to be indistinguishable from a human being. According to the literal reading, th…Read more
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310Scientific Methods Must Be Public, and Descriptive Experience Sampling QualifiesJournal of Consciousness Studies 18 (1): 102-117. 2011.I defend three main conclusions. First, whether a method is public is important, because non-public methods are scientifically illegitimate. Second, there are substantive prescriptive differences between the view that private methods are legitimate and the view that private methods are illegitimate. Third, Descriptive Experience Sam-pling is a public method
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267Access denied to zombiesUnpublished (1): 1-13. 2008.According to the zombie conceivability argument, phenomenal zombies are conceivable, and hence possible, and hence physicalism is false. Critics of the conceivability argument have responded by denying either that zombies are conceivable or that they are possible. Much of the controversy hinges on how to establish and understand what is conceivable, what is possible, and the link between the two—matters that are at least as obscure and controversial as whether consciousness is physical. Becau…Read more
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320Neural Computation and the Computational Theory of CognitionCognitive Science 37 (3): 453-488. 2013.We begin by distinguishing computationalism from a number of other theses that are sometimes conflated with it. We also distinguish between several important kinds of computation: computation in a generic sense, digital computation, and analog computation. Then, we defend a weak version of computationalism—neural processes are computations in the generic sense. After that, we reject on empirical grounds the common assimilation of neural computation to either analog or digital computation, conclu…Read more
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426Functionalism, computationalism, and mental contentsCanadian Journal of Philosophy 34 (3): 375-410. 2004.Some philosophers have conflated functionalism and computationalism. I reconstruct how this came about and uncover two assumptions that made the conflation possible. They are the assumptions that (i) psychological functional analyses are computational descriptions and (ii) everything may be described as performing computations. I argue that, if we want to improve our understanding of both the metaphysics of mental states and the functional relations between them, we should reject these assumptions…Read more
Columbia, Missouri, United States of America