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Decoupling Topological Explanations from MechanismsPhilosophy of Science 90 (2). 2023.We provide three innovations to recent debates about whether topological or “network” explanations are a species of mechanistic explanation. First, we more precisely characterize the requirement that all topological explanations are mechanistic explanations and show scientific practice to belie such a requirement. Second, we provide an account that unifies mechanistic and non-mechanistic topological explanations, thereby enriching both the mechanist and autonomist programs by highlighting when a…Read more
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The aim of inquiry?Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 108 (2): 506-523. 2024.
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Permissivism and the Truth ConnectionErkenntnis 88 (2): 641-656. 2023.Permissivism is the view that, sometimes, there is more than one doxastic attitude that is perfectly rationalised by the evidence. Impermissivism is the denial of Permissivism. Several philosophers, with the aim to defend either Impermissivism or Permissivism, have recently discussed the value of (im)permissive rationality. This paper focuses on one kind of value-conferring considerations, stemming from the so-called “truth-connection” enjoyed by rational doxastic attitudes. The paper vindicates…Read more
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Inquiry and the doxastic attitudesSynthese 197 (11): 4947-4973. 2020.In this paper I take up the question of the nature of the doxastic attitudes we entertain while inquiring into some matter. Relying on a distinction between two stages of open inquiry, I urge to acknowledge the existence of a distinctive attitude of cognitive inclination towards a proposition qua answer to the question one is inquiring into. I call this attitude “hypothesis”. Hypothesis, I argue, is a sui generis doxastic attitude which differs, both functionally and normatively, from suspended …Read more
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How do narratives relate to heuristics?Behavioral and Brain Sciences 46. 2023.
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Moral barrier to compassion: How perceived badness of sufferers dampens observers' compassionate responsesCognition 237 (C): 105476. 2023.
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Fearful apes or nervous goats? Another look at functions of dispositions or traitsBehavioral and Brain Sciences 46. 2023.
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The human fear paradox turns out to be less paradoxical when global changes in human aggression and language evolution are consideredBehavioral and Brain Sciences 46. 2023.
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Beyond the number domainTrends in Cognitive Sciences 13 (2): 83-91. 2009.
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Epistemic Presuppositions and their ConsequencesMetaphilosophy 34 (1-2): 48-68. 2003.Traditional epistemology has, in the main, presupposed that the primary task is to give a complete account of the concept knowledge and to state under what conditions it is possible to have it. In so doing, most accounts have been hierarchical, and all assume an idealized knower. The assumption of an idealized knower is essential for the traditional goal of generating an unassailable account of knowledge acquisition. Yet we, as individuals, fail to reach the ideal. Perhaps more important, we hav…Read more
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Does Post-Newtonian Physics Suggest a Post-Kantian View of Human Experience?Pari Perspectives 6 (December 2020): 122-128. 2020.Immanuel Kant famously thought that the presuppositions of Newtonian physics are the necessary conditions of the possibility of experience in general – both “outer” and “inner” experience. Today we know, of course, that Newtonian physics only applies to a limited domain of physical reality and is radically inadequate in the quantum and relativistic domains. This gives rise to an interesting question: could the radical changes in physics suggest new conditions for the possibility of experience?…Read more
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Bohm's approach and individualityIn Thomas Pradeu & Alexandre Guay (eds.), Individuals Across The Sciences, Oxford University Press. 2016.Ladyman and Ross argue that quantum objects are not individuals and use this idea to ground their metaphysical view, ontic structural realism, according to which relational structures are primary to things. LR acknowledge that there is a version of quantum theory, namely the Bohm theory, according to which particles do have denite trajectories at all times. However, LR interpret the research by Brown et al. as implying that "raw stuff" or haecceities are needed for the individuality of particles…Read more
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Can mind affect matter via active information?Mind and Matter 3 (2): 8-27. 2005.Mainstream cognitive neuroscience typically ignores the role of quantum physical effects in the neural processes underlying cogni¬tion and consciousness. However, many unsolved problems remain, suggesting the need to consider new approaches. We propose that quantum theory, especially through an ontological interpretation due to Bohm and Hiley, provides a fruitful framework for addressing the neural correlates of cognition and consciousness. In particular, the ontological interpretation suggests …Read more
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Fundamental Physics and the Mind – Is There a Connection?In Atmanspacher H., Filk T. & Pothos E. (eds.), Quantum Interaction 2015: 9th International Conference, QI 2015,, Springer Publishing Company. pp. 76-87. 2016.Recent advances in the field of quantum cognition suggest a puzzling connection between fundamental physics and the mind. Many researchers see quantum ideas and formalisms merely as useful pragmatic tools, and do not look for deeper underlying explanations for why they work. However, others are tempted to seek for an intelligible explanation for why quantum ideas work to model cognition. This paper first draws attention to how the physicist David Bohm already in 1951 suggested that thought and q…Read more
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Is the Brain Analogous to a Quantum Measuring Apparatus?In A. C. Grayling S. Wuppuluri (ed.), Metaphors and Analogies in Sciences and Humanities: Words and Worlds. pp. 215-235. 2022.Researchers have suggested since the early days of quantum theory that there are strong analogies between quantum phenomena and mental phenomena and these have developed into a vibrant new field of quantum cognition during recent decades. After revisiting some early analogies by Niels Bohr and David Bohm, this paper focuses upon Bohm and Hiley’s ontological interpretation of quantum theory which suggests further analogies between quantum phenomena and biological and psychological phenomena, incl…Read more
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Quantum theory, active information and the mind-matter problemIn Pylkkänen Paavo (ed.), Contextuality from Quantum Physics to Psychology, World Scientific. pp. 325-334. 2016.
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Quantum Theory and the Place of Mind in the Causal Order of ThingsIn J. Acacio de Barros & Carlos Montemayor (eds.), Quanta and Mind: Essays on the Connection Between Quantum Mechanics and Consciousness, Springer Verlag. pp. 163-171. 2019.The received view in physicalist philosophy of mind assumes that causation can only take place at the physical domain and that the physical domain is causally closed. It is often thought that this leaves no room for mental states qua mental to have a causal influence upon the physical domain, leading to epiphenomenalism and the problem of mental causation. However, in recent philosophy of causation there has been growing interest in a line of thought that can be called causal antifundamentalism:…Read more
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Can Bohmian Quantum Information Help us to Understand Consciousness?In Paavo Pylkkänen (ed.), Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS), Springer Publishing Company. pp. 76-87. 2016.The paper explores whether David Bohm’ s proposal about quantum theoretical active information, and the mind-matter scheme he developed on the basis of it, can help us to explain consciousness. Here it is important to acknowledge that other researchers in philosophy of mind and consciousness studies have also made use of the concept of information in their theories of mind and consciousness. For example, Dretske and Barwise and Seligman have explored the possibility that information in the sense…Read more
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The crisis of intelligibility in physics and the prospects of a new form of scientific rationalityIn Niiniluoto Ilkka & Wallgren Thomas (eds.), On the Human Condition: Philosophical Essays in Honour of the Centennial Anniversary of Georg Henrik von Wright. Acta Philosophica Fennica vol 93., The Philosophical Society of Finland. 2017.
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Why the Brain Knows More than We DoBrain Sciences 2 1-21. 2011.Scientific studies have shown that non-conscious stimuli and représentations influence information processing during conscious experience. In the light of such evidence, questions about potential functional links between non-conscious brain representations and conscious experience arise. This article discusses models capable of explaining how statistical learning mechanisms in dedicated resonant circuits could generate specific temporal activity traces of non-conscious representations in the br…Read more
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The quantization error in a fixed-size Self-Organizing Map (SOM) with unsupervised winner-take-all learning has previously been used successfully to detect, in minimal computation time, highly meaningful changes across images in medical time series and in time series of satellite images. Here, the functional properties of the quantization error in SOM are explored further to show that the metric is capable of reliably discriminating between the finest differences in local contrast intensities an…Read more
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Consciousness beyond neural fields: Expanding the possibilities of what has not yet happenedFrontiers in Psychology 12 762349. 2022.In the field theories in physics, any particular region of the presumed space-time continuum and all interactions between elementary objects therein can be objectively measured and/or accounted for mathematically. Since this does not apply to any of thefield theories, or any other neural theory, of consciousness, their explanatory power is limited. As discussed in detail herein, the matter is complicated further by the facts than any scientifically operational definition of consciousness is inev…Read more
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The Weaponization of Artificial Intelligence: What The Public Needs to be Aware ofFrontiers in Artificial Intelligence 6 (1154184). 2023.Technological progress has brought about the emergence of machines that have the capacity to take human lives without human control. These represent an unprecedented threat to humankind. This paper starts from the example of chemical weapons, now banned worldwide by the Geneva protocol, to illustrate how technological development initially aimed at the benefit of humankind has, ultimately, produced what is now called the “Weaponization of Artificial Intelligence (AI)”. Autonomous Weapon Systems …Read more
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Color and figure-ground: From signals to qualia (edited book)Routledge. 2014.The laws which predict how the perceptual quality of figure-ground can be extracted from the most elementary visual signals were discovered by the Gestaltists, and form an essential part of their movement (see especially Metzger, 1930, and Wertheimer, 1923 translated and re-edited by Lothar Spillmann, 2009 and 2012, respectively). Distinguishing figure from ground is a prerequisite for perception of both form and space (the relative positions, trajectories, and distances of objects in the visual…Read more
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What is the Structure of Self-Consciousness and Conscious Mental States?Review of Philosophy and Psychology 13 (2): 295-309. 2022.I believe that there is a ubiquitous pre-reflective self-awareness accompanying first-order conscious states. However, I do not think that such self-awareness is itself typically conscious. On my view, conscious self-awareness enters the picture during what is sometimes called “introspection” which is a more sophisticated form of self-consciousness. I argue that there is a very close connection between consciousness and self-consciousness and, more specifically, between the structure of all cons…Read more
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Can Quantum Mechanics Solve the Hard Problem of Consciousness?In Shan Gao (ed.), Consciousness and Quantum Mechanics, Oxford University Press, Usa. 2022.The hard problem of consciousness is the problem of explaining how and why physical processes give rise to consciousness (Chalmers 1995). Regardless of many attempts to solve the problem, there is still no commonly agreed solution. It is thus very likely that some radically new ideas are required if we are to make any progress. In this paper we turn to quantum theory to find out whether it has anything to offer in our attempts to understand the place of mind and conscious experience in nature. I…Read more
Areas of Specialization
Science of Perception |
Narrative Explanation |
Perceptual Qualities |