VOLUME 10 (1997), ISSUE 3

Manuscripts:

GERARD O'BRIEN & JON OPIE
Cognitive science and phenomenal consciousness: A dilemma, and how to avoid it

• Abstract: When it comes to applying computational theory to the problem of phenomenal consciousness, cognitive scientists appear to face a dilemma. The only strategy that seems to be available is one that explains consciousness in terms of special kinds of computational process. But such theories, while they dominate the field, have counter-intuitive consequences; in particular, they force one to accept that phenomenal experience is composed of information processing effects. For cognitive scientists, therefore, it seems to come down to a choice between a counter-intuitive theory or no theory at all. We offer a way out of this dilemma. We argue that the computational theory of mind does not force cognitive scientists to explain consciousness in terms of computational processes, as there is an alternative strategy available: one that focuses on the representational vehicles that encode information in the brain. This alternative approach to consciousness allows us to do justice to the standard intuitions about phenomenal experience, yet remain within the confines of cognitive science.

R. HANS PHAF & GEZINUS WOTLERS
A constructivist and connectionist view on conscious and nonconscious processes

• Abstract: Recent experimental findings reveal dissociations of conscious and nonconscious performance in may fields of psychological research, suggesting that conscious and nonconscious effects result from qualitatively different processes. A connectionist view of these processes is put forward in which consciousness is the consequence of construction processes taking place in three types of working memory in a specific type of recurrent neural network. The recurrences arise by feeding back output to the input of a central (representational) network. They are assumed to be internalizations of motor-sensory feedback through the environment. In this manner, a sunvocal-phonological, a visuo-spatial, and a somatosensory working memory may have developed. Representation in the central network, which constitutes long-term memory, can be kept active by rehearsal in the feedback loops. The sequentially recurrent architecture allows for recursive symbolic operations and the formation of (auditory, visual or somatic) models of the external world which can be maintained, transformed and temporarily combined with other information in working memory. Moreover, the quasi-input from the loop directs subsequent attentional processing. The view may contribute to a formal framework to accommodate findings from disparate fields such as working memory, sequential reasoning, and conscious and nonconscious processes in memory and emotion. In theory, but probably not very soon in practice, such connectionist models might simulate aspects of consciousness.

LAWRENCE A. SHAPIRO
The nature of nature: Rethinking naturalistic theories of intentionality

• Abstract: While there is controversy over which of several naturalistic theories of the mental is most plausible, there is consensus regarding the desideratum of a naturalistically respectable theory. A naturalistic theory of the mental, it is agreed, must explicate representation in non-intentional terms. I argue that this constraint does not get at the heart of what it is to be natural. On the one hand, it fails to provide us with a meaningful distinction between the natural and the unnatural. On the other hand, it unfairly suggests that we withhold judgment on those successes our sciences of the mind have already achieved until a convincing decomposition of the mental is available. I urge a new conception of naturalism that focuses less upon ontological considerations and more upon methodological ones.

JAMES BAILLIE
Personal identity and mental content

• Abstract: In this paper, I attempt to map out the 'logical geography' of the territory in which issues of mental content and of personal identity meet. In particular, I investigate the possibility of combining a psychological criterion of person identity with an externalist theory of content. I argue that this can be done, but only by accepting an assumption that has been widely accepted but barely argued for, namely that when someone switches linguistic communities, the contents of their thoughts do not change immediately, but only after the person becomes integrated within the new linguistic community. I also suggest that recent work on personal identity, notably by Derek Parfit, has tacitly assumed internalism regarding mental content. I do not intend to argue for either externalism or a psychological criterion. My aim is merely to explicate the issues involved in making them compatible.

Symposium: Connectionism and computationalism

TERENCE HORGAN & JOHN TIENSON
Précis of Connectionism and the philosophy of psychology

• Abstract: Connectionism was explicitly put forward as an alternative to classical cognitive science. The questions arise: how exactly does connectionism differ from classical cognitive science, and how is it potentially better? The classical 'rules and representations' conception of cognition is that cognitive transitions are determined by exceptionless rules that apply to the syntactic structure of symbols. Many philosophers have seen connectionism as a basis for denying structures symbols. We, on the other hand, argue that cognition is too rich and flexible to simulable by the exceptionless representation-level rules that classicism requires. However, this very richness of cognition requires syntactically structures representations-what philosophers call a language of thought. The natural propose that the mathematics of dynamical systems, not the mathematics of algorithms, holds the key to how cognitive structure and cognitive processes can be realized in the physical structure and processes of a network.

MARY LITCH
Computation, connectionism and modeling the mind

• Abstract: Any analysis of the concept of computation as it occurs in the context if a discussion of the computational model of the mind must be consonant with the philosophic burden traditionally carried by that concept as providing a bridge between a physical and a psychological description of an agent. With this analysis in hand, one may ask the question: are connectionist-based systems consistent with the computational model of the mind? The answer depends upon which of several versions of connectionism one presupposes: non-learning connectionist-based systems as simulated on digital computers are consistent with the computational model of the mind, whereas connectionist-based systems (/dynamical systems) qua analog systems are not.

TERENCE HORGAN
Modeling the noncomputational mind: Reply to Litch

• Abstract: I explain why, within the nonclassical framework for cognitive science we describe in the book, cognitive-state transitions can fail to be tractably computable even if they are subserved by a discrete dynamical system whose mathematical-state transitions are tractably computable. I distinguish two ways that cognitive processing might conform to programmable rules in which all operations that apply to representation-level structure are primitive, and two corresponding constraints on models of cognition. Although Litch is correct in maintaining that classical cognitive science is not committed to the first constraint, it is committed to the second. This fact constitutes an illuminating gloss on our claim that one foundational assumption of classicism is that human cognition conforms to programmable, representation-level rules.

VALERIE G. HARDCASTLE
Distinction without differences: Commentary on HORGAN & TIENSON's Connectionism and the philosophy of psychology

• Abstract: Donald MacKay's description of the embodiment of an efficacious conscious mind is reviewed as a version of non-reductive physicalism. Particular focus is given to MacKay's analysis of the emergence of consciousness in the capacity for self-evaluation which results from informational feedback regarding the results of action. Unique to MacKay's posthumously published Gifford Lectures is his analysis of agents in dialog as a particular form of an environmental feedback loop. His analysis of dialog is reviewed and expanded to encompass concepts of a First and Second Order Theory of Mind. Finally, MacKay's view of the status of the soul is considered, and the particular role of dialogue as critical to the instantiation of soul is suggested.

JOHN TIENSON
What the differences are: Reply to Hardcastle

• Abstract: Hardcastle argues that we make distinctions where there are no differences when we speak of (1) levels of description, (2) cognitive forces, and (3) soft laws in psychology. Concerning (1) and (2), the differences just are differences in description. The same state is referred to by three different descriptions, and talk of cognitive forces is appropriate and useful at the cognitive level of description. And concerning (3), if our view of cognition is correct, then the laws of psychology are importantly different in form from those of physics.

Book Reviews:

MARYA SCHECHTMAN
Review of ANDY CLARK's Being there: Putting brain, body, and world together again

HUIB LOOREN de JONG
Review of BENNY SHANON's The representational and the presentational: An essay on cognition and the study of mind

ANDREW BEEDLE
Review of JEAN AITCHISON's The seeds of speech: Language origin and evolution

MICHAEL BRADIE
Review of GARY CZIKO's Without miracles: Universal selection theory and the second Darwinian revolution

IRENE APPELBAUM
Review of ALVIN LIBERMAN's Speech: A special code