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41Problem 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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1Conscious emotion in a dynamic system: How I can know how I feelIn Ralph D. Ellis & Natika Newton (eds.), The Caldron of Consciousness: Motivation, Affect and Self-Organization - an Anthology, John Benjamins. 2000.
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2The unity of consciousness: An enactivist approachJournal of Mind and Behavior 26 (4): 225-280. 2005.The enactivist account of consciousness posits that motivated activation of sensorimotor action imagery anticipates possible action affordances of environmental situations, resulting in representation of the environment with a conscious “feel” associated with the valences motivating the anticipations. This approach makes the mind–body problem and the problem of mental causation easier to resolve, and offers promise for understanding how consciousness results from natural processes. Given a proce…Read more
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Representation in Theories of Embodied CognitionAvant: 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 hold that the concept of representations is either vacuous or misapplied in such systems. Others maintain a place for representations , 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 or long-lasting neural s…Read more
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122Introspection and perceptionTopoi 7 (March): 25-30. 1988.Sydney Shoemaker argues that introspection, unlike perception, provides no identification information about the self, and that knowledge of one''s mental states should be conceived as arising in a direct and unmediated fashion from one''s being in those states. I argue that while one does not identify aself as the subject of one''s states, one does frequently identify and misidentify thestates, in ways analogous to the identification of objects in perception, and that in discourse about one''s…Read more
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41A critical review of Nicholas Maxwell's the human world in the physical universe: Consciousness, free will, and evolution (review)Philosophical Psychology 16 (1). 2003.Nicholas Maxwell takes on the ambitious project of explaining, both epistemologically and metaphysically, the physical universe and human existence within it. His vision is appealing; he unites the physical and the personal by means of the concepts of aim and value, which he sees as the keys to explaining traditional physical puzzles. Given the current popularity of theories of goal-oriented dynamical systems in biology and cognitive science, this approach is timely. But a large vision requires …Read more
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28The Caldron of Consciousness: Motivation, Affect, and Self-organization : an Anthology (edited book)John Benjamins. 2000.CHAPTER 1 Integrating the Physiological and Phenomenological Dimensions of Affect and Motivation Ralph D. Ellis Clark Atlanta University A neglected but ...
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49Machine understanding and the chinese roomPhilosophical Psychology 1 (2). 1988.John Searle has argued that one can imagine embodying a machine running any computer program without understanding the symbols, and hence that purely computational processes do not yield understanding. The disagreement this argument has generated stems, I hold, from ambiguity in talk of 'understanding'. The concept is analysed as a relation between subjects and symbols having two components: a formal and an intentional. The central question, then becomes whether a machine could possess the inten…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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36Introspection 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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55The 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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22Acting 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.
Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Action |
Philosophy of Mind |
Philosophy of Cognitive Science |
Areas of Interest
Philosophy of Mind |
Philosophy of Cognitive Science |