•  1
    A second-generation expression system for tyrosine-sulfated proteins and its application in crop protection
    with B. Schwessinger, X. Li, T. L. Ellinghaus, L. J. G. Chan, T. Wei, Joe A., R. Pruitt, P. D. Adams, M. S. Chern, C. J. Petzold, C. C. Liu, and Ronald P. C.
    Posttranslational modification of proteins and peptides is important for diverse biological processes in plants and animals. The paucity of heterologous expression systems for PTMs and the technical challenges associated with chemical synthesis of these modified proteins has limited detailed molecular characterization and therapeutic applications. Here we describe an optimized system for expression of tyrosine-sulfated proteins in Escherichia coli and its application in a bio-based crop protecti…Read more
  •  16
    The Race for Consciousness
    Mind 110 (440): 1127-1130. 2001.
    This ambitious work apparently has two main aims. The first is to provide a survey of the currently burgeoning field of "Consciousness Studies", presented via the extended metaphor of a horse race whose winning post is a full scientific explanation of consciousness. The second, which receives much more space, is to present Taylor's own cognitive/neuroscientific theory, dubbed "relational consciousness", and to persuade us that it should be the odds-on favourite to win. Neither aim is very well r…Read more
  • Review of The Imagery Debate, by Michael Tye (review)
    Journal of Mind and Behavior 15 47-50. 1994.
  •  5
    What does implicit cognition tell us about consciousness?
    Journal of Consciousness Studies 4 (5-6): 5-6. 1997.
    here was a brief inaugural session of the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness during the Psychonomic Society Conference in Los Angeles in November 1995, but the first full conference of the Association was held this June in the very pleasant surroundings of the Claremont Colleges. Being at this conference was very different from being at ‘Tucson II’ the previous year. This was a less ballyhooed, more intimate event, maybe less exciting, and less intellectually eclectic, but als…Read more
  •  66
    Imagination, eliminativism, and the pre-history of consciousness
    Consciousness Research Abstracts 3. 1998.
    Classical and medieval writers had no term for consciousness in anything like the modern sense, and their philosophy seems not to have been troubled by the mind-body problem. Contemporary eliminativists find strong support in this fact for their claim that consciousness does not exist, or, at least, is not an appropriate scientific explanandum. They typically hold that contemporary conceptions of consciousness are artefacts of Descartes' (now outmoded) views about matter and his unrealistic crav…Read more
  •  2
    Imagery and the Coherence of Imagination
    Journal of Philosophical Research 22 95-127. 1997.
    Traditionally ‘imagination’ primarily denotes the faculty of mental imagery, other usages being derivative. However, contemporary philosophers commonly hold it to be a polysemous term, with several unrelated senses. This effectively eliminates this culturally important concept as an appropriate explanandum for science, and paves the way for a thoroughgoing eliminative materialism. White challenges both these views of imagination, arguing that ‘imagine’ never means ‘suppose,’ ‘believe,’ ‘pretend’…Read more
  •  11
    It may not be too much to hope that, despite heavy reliance on the underdeveloped metaphor of "mastery", this excellent article portends the arrival of a new, more realistic paradigm for the science of perception. The attempt to explain qualitative consciousness may fail, however, unless we read the authors' position as being more metaphysically venturesome than it might superficially appear
  •  6
    The false dichotomy of imagery
    Behavioral and Brain Sciences 25 (2): 211-211. 2002.
    Pylyshyn's critique is powerful. Pictorial theories of imagery fail. On the other hand, the symbolic description theory he manifestly still favors also fails, lacking the semantic foundation necessary to ground imagery's intentionality and consciousness. But, contrary to popular belief, these two theory types do not exhaust available options. Recent work on embodied, active perception supports the alternative perceptual activity theory of imagery
  •  5
    The concepts of imagination and consciousness have, very arguably, been inextricably intertwined at least since Aristotle initiated the systematic study of human cognition . To imagine something is ipso facto to be conscious of it , and many have held that our conscious thinking consists largely or entirely in a succession of mental images, the products of imagination . A venerable tradition also regards perceptual experiences, the main focus of most recent work on consciousness, as products of …Read more
  •  27
    Color realism: Toward a solution to the "hard problem"
    Consciousness and Cognition 10 (1): 140-145. 2001.
    This article was written as a commentary on a target article by Peter W. Ross entitled "The Location Problem for Color Subjectivism" [Consciousness and Cognition 10(1), 42-58 (2001)], and is published together with it, and with other commentaries and Ross's reply. If you or your library have the necessary subscription you can get PDF versions of the target article, all the commentaries, and Ross's reply to the commentaries here. However, I do not think that it is by any means essential for you t…Read more
  •  31
    Until a few years ago, Cognitive Science was firmly wedded to the notion that cognition must be explained in terms of the computational manipulation of internal representations or symbols. Although many people still believe this, the consensus is no longer solid. Whether it is truly threatened by connectionism is, perhaps, controversial, but there are yet more radical approaches that explicitly reject it. Advocates of "embodied" or "situated" approaches to cognition (e.g., Smith, 1991; Varela _e…Read more
  •  127
    Defining Imagery: Experience or Representation?<br>Historical Development of Ideas about Imagery<br>Subjective Individual Differences in Imagery Experience<br>Theories of Imagery, and their Implications for Consciousness<br> Picture theory<br> Description theory<br> Enactive theory.
  •  6
    Imagery and the Coherence of Imagination: A Critique of White
    Journal of Philosophical Research 22 95-127. 1997.
    Traditionally ‘imagination’ primarily denotes the faculty of mental imagery, other usages being derivative. However, contemporary philosophers commonly hold it to be a polysemous term, with several unrelated senses. This effectively eliminates this culturally important concept as an appropriate explanandum for science, and paves the way for a thoroughgoing eliminative materialism. White challenges both these views of imagination, arguing that ‘imagine’ never means ‘suppose,’ ‘believe,’ ‘pretend’…Read more
  •  59
    To the best of my knowledge, with the exception of Galton's original work (1880, 1883), Sommer's brief case study (1978), and Faw's (1997, 2009) articles, this is the only really substantial discussion of the phenomenon of non-brain-damaged "non-imagers" available anywhere.
  •  11
    The Imagery Debate (review)
    Journal of Mind and Behavior 15 (3): 291-294. 1994.
    This book is a philosopher's examination of the dispute, which raged amongst cognitive psychologists in the 1970s, and has continued to sputter on since, about the nature of mental imagery. As Tye sees things (and, indeed, as the textbooks generally have it) on the one side of the issue we find Stephen Kosslyn and certain close associates, arguing that mental images are best understood on analogy with pictures; and on the other side we find Zenon Pylyshyn, ably seconded by Geoffrey Hinton, argui…Read more
  •  62
    The so called "Knowledge Argument" of Frank Jackson 1 claims to show that there is something about the human mind that must inevitably escape the grasp of physical science: "There are truths about . . . people which escape the physicalist story" . In effect, materialism is false, and science, as opposed to metaphysics, cannot hope to attain to an understanding of consciousness
  •  8
    Galton and subsequent investigators find wide divergences in people's subjective reports of mental imagery. Such individual differences might be taken to explain the peculiarly irreconcilable disputes over the nature and cognitive significance of imagery which have periodically broken out among psychologists and philosophers. However, to so explain these disputes is itself to take a substantive and questionable position on the cognitive role of imagery. This article distinguishes three separable…Read more
  •  11
    Twentieth century philosophy and psychology have been peculiarly averse to mental images. Throughout nearly two and a half millennia of philosophical wrangling, from Aristotle to Hume to Bergson, images (perceptual and quasi-perceptual experiences), sometimes under the alias of "ideas", were almost universally considered to be both the prime contents of consciousness, and the vehicles of cognition. The founding fathers of experimental psychology saw no reason to dissent from this view, it was co…Read more
  •  78
    Not long ago, I received an email from a man who had been trying to get his seven-year-old son interested in science, and teach him a little bit about the workings of the brain. He had been showing his son one of those diagrams of a brain with various regions labeled as "speech center," vision center," and the like (something similar to this, I suppose), when the little boy suddenly asked, "Daddy, which part of the brain does imagination come from?". It was not on the diagram, and the father, al…Read more
  •  107
    Since the publication of my "Are Theories of Imagery Theories of Imagination? An _Active Perception_ Approach to Conscious Mental Content,", a good deal of published material has appeared or has come to my attention that either provides additional support for the Perceptual Activity Theory PA theory) of mental imagery presented in ATOITOI, or that throws further doubt on the rival theories that are criticized there. Other relevant evidence was not mentioned in ATOITOI because I lacked the space …Read more
  •  60
    Imagination, eliminativism, and the pre-history of consciousness
    Consciousness Research Abstracts 3. 1998.
    Classical and medieval writers had no term for consciousness in anything like the modern sense, and their philosophy seems not to have been troubled by the mind-body problem. Contemporary eliminativists find strong support in this fact for their claim that consciousness does not exist, or, at least, is not an appropriate scientific explanandum. They typically hold that contemporary conceptions of consciousness are artefacts of Descartes' (now outmoded) views about matter and his unrealistic crav…Read more
  •  55
    Stich & Ravenscroft (1994) have argued that (contrary to most people's initial assumptions) a simulation account of folk psychology may be consistent with eliminative materialism, but they fail to bring out the full complexity or the potential significance of the relationship. Contemporary eliminativism (particularly in the Churchland version) makes two major claims: the first is a rejection of the orthodox assumption that realistically construed propositional attitudes are fundamental to human …Read more
  •  114
    A theory of the structure and cognitive function of the human imagination that attempts to do justice to traditional intuitions about its psychological centrality is developed, largely through a detailed critique of the theory propounded by Colin McGinn. Like McGinn, I eschew the highly deflationary views of imagination, common amongst analytical philosophers, that treat it either as a conceptually incoherent notion, or as psychologically trivial. However, McGinn fails to develop his alternative…Read more
  •  19
    Mental imagery
    Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2001.
    Mental imagery (varieties of which are sometimes colloquially refered to as “visualizing,” “seeing in the mind's eye,” “hearing in the head,” “imagining the feel of,” etc.) is quasi-perceptual experience; it resembles perceptual experience, but occurs in the absence of the appropriate external stimuli. It is also generally understood to bear intentionality (i.e., mental images are always images of something or other), and thereby to function as a form of mental representation. Traditionally, vis…Read more