VOLUME 10 (1997), ISSUE 2

Manuscripts:

MARYA SCHECHTMAN
The brain/body problem

• Abstract: It is a commonplace of contemporary thought that the mind is located in the brain. Although there have been some challenges to this view, it has remained mainstream outside of a few specialized discussions, and plays a prominent role in a wide variety of philosophical arguments. It is further assumed that the source of this view is empirical. I argue it is not. Empirical discoveries show conclusively that the brain is the central organ of mental life, but so not show that it is the mind's location. The data are just as compatible with a view where mentality is a human capacity on the model of circulation or respiration, with the brain playing he same kind of role as the heart or lungs. The standard conception of the brain as the locus of mind stems, I claim, from the imposition of a Cartesian conception of the self on a materialist ontology. Recognizing that the empirical data do not justify such a move casts doubt on the foundations of a number of philosophical discussions and raises new questions about the nature of the psychological subject.

BRENDAN J. LALOR
It is what you think: Intentional potency and anti-individualism

• Abstract: In this paper I argue against the worried view that intentional properties might be epiphenomenal. In naturalizing intentionality we ought to reject both the idea that local supervenience justifies worries about intentional epiphenomenality since our states could counterfactually lack their intentional properties and yet have the same effects. I contend that what's wrong with even the good guys (e.g., Dennett, Dretske, Allen) is that they implicitly grant that causal powers supervene locally. Finally, I argue that once we see the truth of an anti-individualism which sees cognition as a fundamentally embedded activity, it becomes clear both that granting local supervenience is granting too much, and that intentional properties do work that mere neurological properties could never do. I also suggest how a transcendental argument for intentional potency might go.

JOSÉ-LUIS DÍAZ
A patterned process approach to brain, consciousness, and behavior

• Abstract: The architecture of brain, consciousness, and behavioral processes is shown to be formally similar in that all three may be conceived and depicted as Petri net patterned processes structured by a series of elements occurring or becoming active in stochastic succession, in parallel, with different rhythms of temporal iteration, and with a distinct qualitative manifestation in the spatiotemporal domain. A patterned process theory is derived from the isomorphic features of the models and contrasted with connectionist, dynamic system notions. This empirically derived formulation is considered to be optimally compatible with the dual aspect theory in that the foundation of the diverse aspects would be a highly structured and dynamic process, the psychophysical neutral 'ground' of mind and matter posed (but not properly determined) by dual aspect and neutral monist theories. It is methodologically sound to approach each one of these processes with specific tools and to establish concurrences in real time between them at the organismic level of analysis. Such intra-level and inter-perspective correlations could eventually constitute psychophysical bridge-laws. A mature psychology of consciousness is necessary to situate and verify the bridges required by a genuine mind-body science.

DUANE M. RUMBAUGH
The psychology of Harry F. Harlow: A bridge from radical to rational behaviorism

• Abstract: Harry Harlow is credited with the discovery of learning set, a process whereby problem solving becomes essentially complete in a single trial of training. Harlow described that process as one that freed his primates from arduous trial-and-error learning. The capacity of the learner to acquire learning sets was in positive associations with the complexity and maturation of their brains. It is here argued that Harlow's successful conveyance of learning-set phenomena is of historic significance to the philosophy of psychology. Learning set is said to reflect the affirmative or rejection of hypotheses. Hypotheses are generated by the learner's brain, not its muscles. Thus, learning-set research served to advance the perspective that even nonhuman primates think and that their thinking reflects the active processing of information accrued from efforts to solve problems. Their learning processes are not simply the strengthening of some motor responses over others. Hence, learning-set research served to advance studies of animals a rational agents. This trend is serving to supplant the radical-behavioristic models, formulated earlier this century, with models predicted on rational processes for animals' complex learning and behavior.

Review Essays:

MARK REID
Narrative and fission: Review essay of MARYA SCHECHTMAN's The constitution of selves

• Abstract: This book presents, in method, logical form, and philosophical content, a counterproposal to mainstream personal identity theory. The latter's purported conflation of logical questions, i.e., reidentification with characterization, leads to an implausible reductionism about selves. A self-constituting narrative is the basis for identity, and contra reductionism, the ontological primitive of a person. As a dynamic valuational and intentional system, the narrative meaningfully constructs the autobiographical past through memory and both causally directs and emotively anticipates the experiences and form of future selves. Schechtman's account, in contrast to mainstream theories, rightly connects identity to those four features that weigh heavily in our values, viz., survival, self-concern, responsibility, and compensation. Though bold and original, the account dispels a couple of important issues along with its rejection of mainstream theory. These issues, encountered most notably through fission cases, are taken up in the evaluation with a "narrative split."

T.C. MEYERING
Representation and resemblance: Review essay of RICHARD A. WATSON's Representational ideas: From Plato to Patricia Churchland

• Abstract: Are experience and stimulus necessarily alike? Wertheimer spoke of this as an "insidious and insistent belief." By contrast, Watson devotes an entire book to the defense of the thesis that representation necessarily requires resemblance. I argue that this bold and important thesis is ambiguous between a historical and a systematic reading, and that in either one of these readings the thesis, for different reasons, will be found wanting. Second, a proper evaluation of it in either one of its possible interpretations requires a careful analysis of the notion of resemblance. I proceed to supply some necessary distinctions and argue that, given such an analysis, Watson's thesis may be historically applicable only to ancient and medieval philosophy, while its systematic import is untenable.

Book Reviews:

CRAIG DeLANCEY
Review of WILLIAM G. LYCAN's Consciousness and experience

RICK GRUSH
Review of ROBERT PORT & TIMOTHY van GELDER's Mind as motion: Explorations in the dynamics of cognition

VALERIE G. HARDCASTLE
Review of KATHLEEN AKINS' Perception

R. KEITH SAWYER
Review of BONNIE NARDI's Context and consciousness

BENNY SHANON
Review of HORST HENDRICKS-JANSEN's Catching ourselves in the act

ALBERTO GRECO
Review of SEAN O'NUALLAIN's The search for mind: A new foundation for cognitive science

JOHN A. BARKER
Review of SIMON BARON-COHEN's Mindblindness: An essay on autism and theory of mind