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37The function of the cerebellum in cognition, affect and consciousness: Empirical support for the embodied mindConsciousness and Emotion 2 (2): 273-309. 2002.Editors’ note: These four interrelated discussions of the role of the cerebellum in coordinating emotional and higher cognitive functions developed out of a workshop presented by the four authors for the 2000 Conference of the Cognitive Science Society at the University of Pennsylvania. The four interrelated discussions explore the implications of the recent explosion of cerebellum research suggesting an expanded cerebellar role in higher cognitive functions as well as in the coordination of emo…Read more
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42Problem reprezentacji w teoriach poznania ucieleśnionegoAvant: Trends in Interdisciplinary Studies 3 (T): 66-82. 2012.This paper looks at a central issue with embodiment theories in cognition: the role, if any, they provide for mental representation. Thelen and Smith (1994) hold that the concept of representations is either vacuous or misapplied in such systems. Others maintain a place for representations (e.g. Clark 1996), but are imprecise about their nature and role. It is difficult to understand what those could be if representations are understood in the same sense as that used by computationalists: fixed …Read more
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Imagination and Logical PossibilityDissertation, State University of New York at Stony Brook. 1980.Understanding Quine's analysis puts us in a position to connect imagination and logical possibility. The description of what is to be imagined may induce an imaginative experience which can be related to the description in various ways. The description may be 'observational,' meaning that everything that it describes can be observed; in this case imagining under a description is decisive evidence for the possibility of what is described. If the description is non-observational, or contains more …Read more
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74Three paradoxes of phenomenal consciousness: Bridging the explanatory gapJournal of Consciousness Studies 5 (4): 419-42. 1998.Any physical explanation of consciousness seems to leave unresolved the ‘explanatory gap': Isn't it conceivable that all the elements in that explanation could occur, with the same information processing outcomes as in a conscious process, but in the absence of consciousness? E.g. any digital computational process could occur in the absence of consciousness. To resolve this dilemma, we propose a biological-process-oriented physiological- phenomenological characterization of consciousness that ad…Read more
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30Arguing about consciousness: A blind Alley and a red HerringBehavioral and Brain Sciences 22 (1): 162-163. 1999.O'Brien & Opie hold that phenomenal experience should be identified with “stable patterns of activation” across the brain's neural networks, and that this proposal has the potential for closing the ‘explanatory gap' between mental states and brain processes. I argue that they have too much respect for the conceivability argument and that their proposal already does much to close the explanatory gap, but that a “perspicuous nexus” can in principle never be achieved.
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16Review of “self-deception unmasked” by Alfred R. Mele (review)Consciousness and Emotion 2 (1): 173-180. 2001.
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37Introspection and the secret agentBehavioral and Brain Sciences 22 (4): 629-629. 1999.The notion of introspection is unparsimonious and unnecessary to explain the experiential grounding of our mentalistic concepts. Instead, we can look at subtle proprioceptive experiences, such as the experience of agency in planning motor acts, which may be explained in part by the phenomenon of collateral discharge or efference copy. Proprioceptive sensations experienced during perceptual and motor activity may account for everything that has traditionally been attributed to a special mental ac…Read more
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57The role of action representations in the dynamics of embodied cognitionBehavioral and Brain Sciences 24 (1): 58-59. 2001.Thelen et al. present a convincing explanation of the A-not-B error, but contrary to their own claims, their explanation essentially involves mental representations. As is too common among cognitive scientists, they equate mental representations with representations of external physical objects. They clearly show, however, that representations of bodily actions on physical objects are central to the dynamical system producing the error.
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37Foundations of UnderstandingJohn Benjamins. 1996.How can symbols have meaning for a subject? Foundations of Understanding argues that this is the key question to ask about intentionality, or meaningful thought. It thus offers an alternative to currently popular linguistic models of intentionality, whose inadequacies are examined: the goal should be to explain, not how symbols, mental or otherwise, can refer to or mean states of affairs in the external world, but how they can mean something to us, the users. The essence of intentionality is sho…Read more
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23Acting and perceiving in body and mindPhilosophy Research Archives 11 407-429. 1985.In this paper I sketch an account of (a) the origin of the terms and concepts of folk psychology, and (b) the true nature of mental states. I argue that folk psychology is built on metaphors for the functioning physical body, and that mental states are neurological traces which serve as schematic ‘mental images’ of those same functions. Special attention is paid to the folk psychology of self-consciousness. In particular, I argue that the notion of introspection is mistaken, and I criticize rece…Read more
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27Review of The Bodily Nature of Consciousness by Kathleen V. Wider, Cornell University Press, 1997, 207 pp (review)Behavior and Philosophy 25 (2). 1997.
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33The sensorimotor theory of cognitionPragmatics and Cognition 1 (2): 267-305. 1993.The sensorimotor theory of cognition holds that human cognition, along with that of other animals, is determined by sensorimotor structures rather than by uniquely human linguistic structures. The theory has been offered to explain the use of bodily terminology in nonphysical contexts, and to recognize the role of experienced embodiment in cognition. This paper defends a version of the theory which specifies that reasoning makes use of mental models constructed by means of action-planning mechan…Read more
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11Privileged Access and Merleau-PontyIn Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka (ed.), The visible and the invisible in the interplay between philosophy, literature, and reality, Kluwer Academic Publishers. pp. 71--78. 2002.
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33Humphreys solutionJournal of Consciousness Studies 7 (4): 62-66. 2000.[opening paragraph]: It is easy to conceptualize a problem in a way that prevents a solution. If the conceptualization is entrenched in one's culture or profession, it may appear unalterable. But there is so much precedent for the discovery of fruitful reconceptualizations that in the case of most philosophical and scientific puzzles it is probably irrational ever to give up trying. The notion of qualia, understood as phenomenal properties of sensations that can exist as objects of experience fo…Read more
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30Consciousness, qualia, and re-entrant signalingBehavior and Philosophy 19 (1): 21-41. 1991.There is a distinction between phenomenal properties and the "phenomenality" of those properties: e.g. between what red is like and what it is like to experience red. To date, reductive accounts explain the former, but not the latter: Nagel is right that they leave something out. This paper attempts a reductive account of what it is like to have a perceptual experience. Four features of such experience are distinguished: the externality, unity, and self-awareness belonging to the content of cons…Read more
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11Acting and Perceiving in Body and MindPhilosophy Research Archives 11 407-429. 1985.In this paper I sketch an account of (a) the origin of the terms and concepts of folk psychology, and (b) the true nature of mental states. I argue that folk psychology is built on metaphors for the functioning physical body, and that mental states are neurological traces which serve as schematic ‘mental images’ of those same functions. Special attention is paid to the folk psychology of self-consciousness. In particular, I argue that the notion of introspection is mistaken, and I criticize rece…Read more
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46The art of representation: Support for an enactive approachBehavioral and Brain Sciences 27 (3): 411-411. 2004.Grush makes an important contribution to a promising way of viewing mental representation: as a component activity in sensorimotor processes. Grush shows that there need be no entities in our heads that would count as representations, but that, nevertheless, the process of representation can be defined so as to include both natural and artificial (e.g., linguistic or pictorial) representing.
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94Consciousness and Emotion: Agency, Conscious Choice, and Selective PerceptionJohn Benjamins. 2005.The papers in this volume of Consciousness & Emotion Book Series are organized around the theme of "enaction.
Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Action |
Philosophy of Mind |
Philosophy of Cognitive Science |
Areas of Interest
Philosophy of Mind |
Philosophy of Cognitive Science |