•  136
    Cognitive Metascience: A New Approach to the Study of Theories
    Przeglad Psychologiczny 66 (1): 185-207. 2023.
    In light of the recent credibility crisis in psychology, this paper argues for a greater emphasis on theorizing in scientific research. Although reliable experimental evidence, preregistration, methodological rigor, and new computational frameworks for modeling are important, scientific progress also relies on properly functioning theories. However, the current understanding of the role of theorizing in psychology is lacking, which may lead to future crises. Theories should not be viewed as mere…Read more
  • Forging Connections: Uniting Neuroscience and Philosophy of Science (review)
    Levenstein, Daniel, Et Al. Andquot;on the Role of Theory and Modeling in Neuroscience.". 2023.
    Levenstein et al. aptly highlight some of the foundational issues in theoretical neuroscience, such as the role of abstraction and idealization in providing scientific explanations and understanding, and distinguishing under which conditions neuroscientific models provide genuine explanations, or mere descriptions, predictions, or control. The authors rightly emphasize that philosophers of science can also gain valuable insights from the vast body of neuroscience literature, by employing methods…Read more
  •  211
    Three special issues of Entropy journal have been dedicated to the topics of “InformationProcessing and Embodied, Embedded, Enactive Cognition”. They addressed morphological computing, cognitive agency, and the evolution of cognition. The contributions show the diversity of views present in the research community on the topic of computation and its relation to cognition. This paper is an attempt to elucidate current debates on computation that are central to cognitive science. It is written in t…Read more
  •  26
    Cognitive Artifacts and Their Virtues in Scientific Practice
    Studies in Logic, Grammar and Rhetoric 67 (1): 219-246. 2022.
    One of the critical issues in the philosophy of science is to understand scientific knowledge. This paper proposes a novel approach to the study of reflection on science, called “cognitive metascience”. In particular, it offers a new understanding of scientific knowledge as constituted by various kinds of scientific representations, framed as cognitive artifacts. It introduces a novel functional taxonomy of cognitive artifacts prevalent in scientific practice, covering a huge diversity of their …Read more
  •  387
    Computational Mechanisms and Models of Computation
    Philosophia Scientiae 18 215-228. 2014.
    In most accounts of realization of computational processes by physical mechanisms, it is presupposed that there is one-to-one correspondence between the causally active states of the physical process and the states of the computation. Yet such proposals either stipulate that only one model of computation is implemented, or they do not reflect upon the variety of models that could be implemented physically. In this paper, I claim that mechanistic accounts of computation should allow for a broad v…Read more
  •  114
    Hutchins w obronie interdyscyplinarnych badań nad poznaniem
    with Witold M. Wachowski
    Zagadnienia Filozoficzne W Nauce 72 (72). 2022.
    The article presents the interdisciplinary approach of Edwin Hutchins, analyzing his conception of distributed cognition as probably the most important and lasting contribution of anthropology to the repertoire of theoretical tools in cognitive science. At the same time, this conception resulted in one of the most interesting relationships between cognitive science and social sciences. These relationships are made possible by the assumptions of Hutchins’ conception, which directly contribute to …Read more
  •  259
    Testable or bust: theoretical lessons for predictive processing
    with Piotr Litwin
    Synthese 200 (6): 1-18. 2022.
    The predictive processing account of action, cognition, and perception is one of the most influential approaches to unifying research in cognitive science. However, its promises of grand unification will remain unfulfilled unless the account becomes theoretically robust. In this paper, we focus on empirical commitments of PP, since they are necessary both for its theoretical status to be established and for explanations of individual phenomena to be falsifiable. First, we argue that PP is a vari…Read more
  •  10
    Enough blanket metaphysics, time for data-driven heuristics
    with Wiktor Rorot, Tomasz Korbak, and Piotr Litwin
    Behavioral and Brain Sciences 45. 2022.
    Bruineberg and colleagues criticisms' have been received but downplayed in the free energy principle (FEP) literature. We strengthen their points, arguing that Friston blanket discovery, even if tractable, requires a full formal description of the system of interest at the outset. Hence, blanket metaphysics is futile, and we postulate that researchers should turn back to heuristic uses of Pearl blankets.
  •  11
    Turing’s Conceptual Engineering
    Philosophies 7 (3): 69. 2022.
    Alan Turing’s influence on subsequent research in artificial intelligence is undeniable. His proposed test for intelligence remains influential. In this paper, I propose to analyze his conception of intelligence by relying on traditional close reading and language technology. The Turing test is interpreted as an instance of conceptual engineering that rejects the role of the previous linguistic usage, but appeals to intuition pumps instead. Even though many conceive his proposal as a prime case …Read more
  •  14
    We argue that Yarkoni's proposed solutions to the generalizability crisis are half-measures because he does not recognize that the crisis arises from investigators' underappreciation of the roles of theory in experimental research. Rather than embracing qualitative analysis, the research community should make an effort to develop better theories and work toward consistently incorporating theoretical results into experimental practice.
  •  59
    Mechanistic Computational Individuation without Biting the Bullet
    with Nir Fresco
    British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 72 (2): 431-438. 2021.
    Is the mathematical function being computed by a given physical system determined by the system’s dynamics? This question is at the heart of the indeterminacy of computation phenomenon (Fresco et al. [unpublished]). A paradigmatic example is a conventional electrical AND-gate that is often said to compute conjunction, but it can just as well be used to compute disjunction. Despite the pervasiveness of this phenomenon in physical computational systems, it has been discussed in the philosophical l…Read more
  •  55
    Correspondence Theory of Semantic Information
    British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 74 (2): 485-510. 2023.
    A novel account of semantic information is proposed. The gist is that structural correspondence, analysed in terms of similarity, underlies an important kind of semantic information. In contrast to extant accounts of semantic information, it does not rely on correlation, covariation, causation, natural laws, or logical inference. Instead, it relies on structural similarity, defined in terms of correspondence between classifications of tokens into types. This account elucidates many existing uses…Read more
  •  363
    Thinking about Semantic Information
    Avant: Trends in Interdisciplinary Studies 11 (2): 1-10. 2020.
    In his recent book, Daniel Dennett defends a novel account of semantic information in terms of design worth getting (Dennett, 2017). While this is an interesting proposal in itself, my purpose in this commentary is to challenge several of Dennett’s claims. First, he argues that semantic information can be transferred without encoding and storing it. Second, this lack of encoding is what makes semantic information unmeasurable. However, the argument for both these claims, presented by Dennett as …Read more
  •  63
    The debate between the defenders of explanatory unification and explanatory pluralism has been ongoing from the beginning of cognitive science and is one of the central themes of its philosophy. Does cognitive science need a grand unifying theory? Should explanatory pluralism be embraced instead? Or maybe local integrative efforts are needed? What are the advantages of explanatory unification as compared to the benefits of explanatory pluralism? These questions, among others, are addressed in th…Read more
  •  349
    Unification by Fiat: Arrested Development of Predictive Processing
    with Piotr Litwin
    Cognitive Science 44 (7). 2020.
    Predictive processing (PP) has been repeatedly presented as a unificatory account of perception, action, and cognition. In this paper, we argue that this is premature: As a unifying theory, PP fails to deliver general, simple, homogeneous, and systematic explanations. By examining its current trajectory of development, we conclude that PP remains only loosely connected both to its computational framework and to its hypothetical biological underpinnings, which makes its fundamentals unclear. Inst…Read more
  •  25
    Prospection does not imply predictive processing
    with Piotr Litwin
    Behavioral and Brain Sciences 43. 2020.
    Predictive processing models of psychopathologies are not explanatorily consistent with the present account of abstract thought. These models are based on latent variables probabilistically mapping the structure of the world. As such, they cannot be informed by representational ontology based on mental objects and states. What actually is the case is merely some terminological affinity between subjective and informational uncertainty.
  •  180
    I argue that there are no plausible non-representational explanations of episodes of hallucination. To make the discussion more specific, I focus on visual hallucinations in Charles Bonnet syndrome. I claim that the character of such hallucinatory experiences cannot be explained away non-representationally, for they cannot be taken as simple failures of cognizing or as failures of contact with external reality—such failures being the only genuinely non-representational explanations of hallucinat…Read more
  •  2
    Podstawy etyki komputerowej
    Etyka 42 171-174. 2009.
  •  14
    Is there a field of social intelligence? Many various disciplines approach the subject and it may only seem natural to suppose that different fields of study aim at explaining different phenomena; in other words, there is no special field of study of social intelligence. In this paper, I argue for an opposite claim. Namely, there is a way to integrate research on social intelligence, as long as one accepts the mechanistic account to explanation. Mechanistic integration of different explanations,…Read more
  •  424
    In this paper, we defend a novel, multidimensional account of representational unification, which we distinguish from integration. The dimensions of unity are simplicity, generality and scope, non-monstrosity, and systematization. In our account, unification is a graded property. The account is used to investigate the issue of how research traditions contribute to representational unification, focusing on embodied cognition in cognitive science. Embodied cognition contributes to unification even…Read more
  • The focus of this special issue of Theory & Psychology is on explanatory mechanisms in psychology, especially on problems of particular prominence for psychological science such as theoretical integration and unification. Proponents of the framework of mechanistic explanation claim, in short, that satisfactory explanations in psychology and related fields are causal. They stress the importance of explaining phenomena by describing mechanisms that are responsible for them, in particular by elucid…Read more
  •  59
    In this paper, I argue that embodied cognition, like many other research traditions in cognitive science, offers mostly fallible research heuristics rather than grand principles true of all cognitive processing. To illustrate this claim, I discuss Aizawa’s rebuttal of embodied and enactive accounts of vision. While Aizawa’s argument is sound against a strong reading of the enactive account, it does not undermine the way embodied cognition proceeds, because the claim he attacks is one of fallible…Read more
  •  26
    Cognitive Artifacts for Geometric Reasoning
    Foundations of Science 24 (4): 657-680. 2019.
    In this paper, we focus on the development of geometric cognition. We argue that to understand how geometric cognition has been constituted, one must appreciate not only individual cognitive factors, such as phylogenetically ancient and ontogenetically early core cognitive systems, but also the social history of the spread and use of cognitive artifacts. In particular, we show that the development of Greek mathematics, enshrined in Euclid’s Elements, was driven by the use of two tightly intertwi…Read more
  •  455
    Mechanistic Computational Individuation without Biting the Bullet
    British Journal for the Philosophy of Science. 2019.
    Is the mathematical function being computed by a given physical system determined by the system’s dynamics? This question is at the heart of the indeterminacy of computation phenomenon (Fresco et al. [unpublished]). A paradigmatic example is a conventional electrical AND-gate that is often said to compute conjunction, but it can just as well be used to compute disjunction. Despite the pervasiveness of this phenomenon in physical computational systems, it has been discussed in the philosophical l…Read more
  •  295
    The purpose of this paper is to argue against the claim that morphological computation is substantially different from other kinds of physical computation. I show that some (but not all) purported cases of morphological computation do not count as specifically computational, and that those that do are solely physical computational systems. These latter cases are not, however, specific enough: all computational systems, not only morphological ones, may (and sometimes should) be studied in various…Read more
  •  540
    Replicability and reproducibility of computational models has been somewhat understudied by “the replication movement.” In this paper, we draw on methodological studies into the replicability of psychological experiments and on the mechanistic account of explanation to analyze the functions of model replications and model reproductions in computational neuroscience. We contend that model replicability, or independent researchers' ability to obtain the same output using original code and data, an…Read more
  •  476
    From Wide Cognition to Mechanisms: A Silent Revolution
    with Robert Clowes, Zuzanna Rucińska, Aleksandra Przegalińska, Tadeusz Zawidzki, Joel Krueger, Adam Gies, Marek McGann, Łukasz Afeltowicz, Witold Wachowski, Fredrik Stjernberg, Victor Loughlin, and Mateusz Hohol
    Frontiers in Psychology 9. 2018.
    In this paper, we argue that several recent ‘wide’ perspectives on cognition (embodied, embedded, extended, enactive, and distributed) are only partially relevant to the study of cognition. While these wide accounts override traditional methodological individualism, the study of cognition has already progressed beyond these proposed perspectives towards building integrated explanations of the mechanisms involved, including not only internal submechanisms but also interactions with others, groups…Read more
  •  1087
    Objections to Computationalism: A Survey
    Roczniki Filozoficzne 66 (3): 57-75. 2018.
    In this paper, the Author reviewed the typical objections against the claim that brains are computers, or, to be more precise, information-processing mechanisms. By showing that practically all the popular objections are based on uncharitable interpretations of the claim, he argues that the claim is likely to be true, relevant to contemporary cognitive science, and non-trivial.
  •  450
    In this paper, I argue that computationalism is a progressive research tradition. Its metaphysical assumptions are that nervous systems are computational, and that information processing is necessary for cognition to occur. First, the primary reasons why information processing should explain cognition are reviewed. Then I argue that early formulations of these reasons are outdated. However, by relying on the mechanistic account of physical computation, they can be recast in a compelling way. Nex…Read more
  •  303
    Is there a field of social intelligence? Many various disciplines approach the subject and it may only seem natural to suppose that different fields of study aim at explaining different phenomena; in other words, there is no special field of study of social intelligence. In this paper, I argue for an opposite claim. Namely, there is a way to integrate research on social intelligence, as long as one accepts the mechanistic account to explanation. Mechanistic integration of different explanations,…Read more