Jason Jordan

The present paper analyzes the regularities referred to via the concept ‘self.’ This is important, for cognitive science traditionally models the self as a cognitive mediator between perceptual inputs and behavioral outputs. This leads to the assertion that the self causes action. Recent findings in social psychology indicate this is not the case and, as a consequence, certain cognitive scientists model the self as being epiphenomenal. In contrast, the present paper proposes an alternative approach that is based on recently discovered regularities between perception and action. Specifically, these regularities indicate that perception and action planning utilize common neural resources. This leads to a coupling of perception, planning, and action in which the first two constitute aspects of a single system that is able to pre-specify and detect distal events. This distal-event system is then coupled with action in a constraining, as opposed to ‘causal’ manner. This model has implications for how we conceptualize the manner in which one infers the intentions of another, anticipates the intentions of another, and possibly even experiences another. In conclusion, it is argued that it may be possible to map the concept ‘self’ onto the regularities referred to in the event-control model, not in order to reify ‘the self’ as a causal mechanism, but to demonstrate its status as a useful concept that refers to regularities that are part of the natural order.

The present paper analyzes the regularities referred to via the concept 'self.' This is important, for cognitive science traditionally models the self as a cognitive mediator between perceptual inputs and behavioral outputs. This leads to the assertion that the self causes action. Recent findings in social psychology indicate this is not the case and, as a consequence, certain cognitive scientists model the self as being epiphenomenal. In contrast, the present paper proposes an alternative approach (i.e., the event-control approach) that is based on recently discovered regularities between perception and action. Specifically, these regularities indicate that perception and action planning utilize common neural resources. This leads to a coupling of perception, planning, and action in which the first two constitute aspects of a single system (i.e., the distal-event system) that is able to pre-specify and detect distal events. This distal-event system is then coupled with action (i.e., effector-control systems) in a constraining, as opposed to 'causal' manner. This model has implications for how we conceptualize the manner in which one infers the intentions of another, anticipates the intentions of another, and possibly even experiences another. In conclusion, it is argued that it may be possible to map the concept 'self' onto the regularities referred to in the event-control model, not in order to reify 'the self' as a causal mechanism, but to demonstrate its status as a useful concept that refers to regularities that are part of the natural order

There is quite a bit of disagreement in cognitive science regarding the role that consciousness and control play in explanations of how people do what they do. The purpose of the present paper is to do the following: (1) examine the theoretical choice points that have lead theorists to conflicting positions, (2) examine the philosophical and empirical problems different theories encounter as they address the issue of conscious agency, and (3) provide an integrative framework (Wild Systems Theory) that addresses these problems and potentially naturalizes conscious agency. It does so by grounding conscious and control in the notion of self-sustaining energy-transformation systems (i.e., living systems), versus computational or self- organizing systems, as is the case in information processing theory and dynamical systems theory, respectively. Given its assertion that content (and consciousness) emerges in self-sustaining systems, Wild Systems Theory may also provide a sound theoretical basis for a science of consciousness in general

There is quite a bit of disagreement in cognitive science regarding the role that consciousness and control play in explanations of how people do what they do. The purpose of the present paper is to do the following: (1) examine the theoretical choice points that have lead theorists to conflicting positions, (2) examine the philosophical and empirical problems different theories encounter as they address the issue of conscious agency, and (3) provide an integrative framework (Wild Systems Theory) that addresses these problems and potentially naturalizes conscious agency. It does so by grounding conscious and control in the notion of self-sustaining energy-transformation systems (i.e., living systems), versus computational or self- organizing systems, as is the case in information processing theory and dynamical systems theory, respectively. Given its assertion that content (and consciousness) emerges in self-sustaining systems, Wild Systems Theory may also provide a sound theoretical basis for a science of consciousness in general

In cognitive neuroscience and in philosophy of mind, causation is a notion that is immensely important but usually not defined precisely enough to afford careful application. A widespread basic flaw is the confusion of causation with correlation. All empirical knowledge in the sciences is based on observing correlations; assigning causal relations to them or interpreting them causally always requires a theoretical background that is implicitly or (better) explicitly stated. This entails that differing theoretical approaches might lead to different interpretations of correlations. In this special volume we attempt to contribute to an improved understanding of causation, in general, and its relationship to consciousness studies, specifically.

For years, intentionality has referred to the directedness of mental states. As a result,discussions regarding intentionality have been conceptualized within a mental/physical framework that has made it difficult to integrate mental properties with physical systems. The purpose of the present paper is to present an approach to intentionality based on Wild Systems Theory ,a framework for cognitive science that avoids mental/physical distinctions. It does so by conceptualizing organisms as multi-scale, contextually-emergent, self-sustaining embodiments of context. Doing so renders self-sustaining systems both naturally and necessarily 'about ' the multi-scale contexts they have had to embody to sustain them-selves and naturally 'directed ' toward self-sustainment. As a result, such systems are naturally intentional

The purpose of this special issue and the conference that inspired it was to address the issue of conceptual integration in a science of consciousness. We felt this to be important, for while current efforts to scientifically investigate consciousness are taking place in an interdisciplinary context, it often seems as though the very terms being used to sustain a sense of interdisciplinary cooperation are working against it. This is because it is this very array of common concepts that generates a sense of unity among consciousness researchers, despite the fact the concepts mean different things in different disciplines. These Concepts of Consciousness include the following: realism, representation, intentionality, information, control, memory and self. Given this list, we believed we could best approach the issue of potential conceptual integration by addressing each concept from different perspectives and asking the following: how do uses of the concept differ, must these meanings be synthesized in order for there to be a unified science of consciousness, is a unified conceptual scheme necessary to establish an independent science of consciousness, is a unified conceptual scheme possible, if it is not possible, why not, and if it is possible, what might it look like? To this end we invited, for each concept, two scholars who made extensive use of the identified concept in their work. The papers entailed in this special issue constitute the outcome of this effort, and in what follows we offer a brief examination of possible forms of integration the papers seem to collectively suggest.

In cognitive neuroscience and in philosophy of mind, causation is a notion that is immensely important but usually not defined precisely enough to afford careful application. A widespread basic flaw is the confusion of causation with correlation. All empirical knowledge in the sciences is based on observing correlations; assigning causal relations to them or interpreting them causally always requires a theoretical background that is implicitly or (better) explicitly stated. This entails that differing theoretical approaches might lead to different interpretations of correlations. In this special volume we attempt to contribute to an improved understanding of causation, in general, and its relationship to consciousness studies, specifically.

The concept of contextual emergence has been introduced as a speci?c kind of emergence in which some, but not all of the conditions for a higher-level phenomenon exist at a lower level. Further conditions exist in contingent contexts that provide stability conditions at the lower level, which in turn accord the emergence of novelty at the higher level. The purpose of the present paper is to propose that consciousness is a contextually emergent property of self-sustaining systems. The core assumption is that living organisms constitute self-sustaining embodiments of the contingent contexts that accord their emergence. We propose that the emergence of such systems constitutes the emergence of content-bearing systems because the lower-level processes of such systems give rise to and sustain the macro-level whole in which they are nested, while the emergent macro-level whole constitutes the context in which the lower- level processes can be for something . Such embodied functionality is necessarily and naturally about the contexts that it has embodied. It is this notion of self- sustaining embodied aboutness that we propose to represent a type of content capable of evolving into consciousness

All knowledge 'begins with experience,' but it does not therefore 'arise' from experience.The classical American pragmatists are usually considered to be either empiricists or heirs to the empiricist tradition in philosophy. This is unsurprising given the nature of the pragmatist philosophical program as a late nineteenth-and early twentieth-century reaction against transcendental idealism. Pragmatists sought to ground their inquiry resolutely in experience sans speculative metaphysics. However, the pragmatists were also stridently opposed to certain doctrines and epistemological tendencies in British empiricism that they regarded as either implicitly idealist, or as laying a groundwork that stood as the ..

Within John Dewey's pragmatic naturalism, consciousness, meaning, and value were conceptualized as ontologically real phenomena. During the century that has passed since Dewey's time, naturalism has come to be dominated by physicalist and realist perspectives within which the reality of consciousness, meaning, and value are problematic. Given this historical tension in naturalism, the present paper does the following: describes why consciousness, causality, and the body were all at home in Dewey's naturalism, and why Dewey's naturalism fell out of favour during the century that followed, describes a sample of unsuccessful twentieth-century attempts to get consciousness back into naturalism, including the contemporary embodiment movement, presents a recently developed holist, post-naturalist philosophy of embodiment that challenges the physicalist and realist assumptions at work in most contemporary forms of naturalism, and presentsWST as an intra-disciplinary framework for scholarship, and as a potential means of addressing the scholarship-culture tensions that have emerged during the zeitgeist of naturalism.