VOLUME 10 (1997), ISSUE 4

Manuscripts:

JAY L. GARFIELD
Mentalese not spoken here: Computation, cognition, and causation

• Abstract: Classical computational modelers of mind urge that the mind is something like a van Neumann computer operating over a system of symbols, constituting a language of thought. Such an architecture, they argue, presents us with the best explanation of the compositionality, systematicity and productivity of thought. The language of thought hypothesis is supported by additional independent arguments made popular by Jerry Fodor. Paul Smolensky has developed a connectionist architecture he claims adequately explains compositionality, systematicity and productivity without positing any language of thought, and without positing any operations over a set of symbols. This architecture encodes the information represented in linguistic trees without explicitly representing those trees or their constituents, and indeed without employing any representational vehicles with constituent structure. In a recent article, Fodor (1997; Connectionism and systematicity, Cognition, 62, pp. 109-119) argues that Smolensky's proposal does not work. I defend Smolensky against Fodor's attack, and use this interchange as a vehicle for exploring and criticizing the "Language of Thought" hypothesis more generally and the arguments Fodor adduces on its behalf.

ARTHUR S. REBER
Caterpillars and consciousness

• Abstract: The dominant position in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) is computationalism where the operative principle is that cognition in general and consciousness in particular can be captured by identification of the proper set of computations. This position has been attacked from several angles, most effectively, in my opinion, by John Searle in his now famous Chinese Room thought experiment. I critique this Searlean perspective on the grounds that, while it is probably correct in its essentials, it does not go far enough. Quite simply, it runs afoul of the problem of emergentism. The proffered solution to this problem is that consciousness (or very rudimentary forms of it) needs to be viewed as an inherent property of organic form. While this recasting of the problem solves the emergentist dilemma it opens up a number of other issues. However, the new problems, unlike the old, appear in principle to amenable to scientific analysis.

BRIAN J. SCHOLL
Reasoning, rationality, and architectural resolution

• Abstract: Recent evidence suggests that performance on reasoning tasks may reflect the operation of a number of distinct cognitive mechanisms and processes. This paper explores the implications of this view of the mind for the descriptive and normative assessment of reasoning. I suggest that descriptive questions such as 'Are we equipped to reason using rule X?' and normative questions such as 'Are we rational?' are obsolete—they do not possess a fine enough grain of architectural resolution to accurately characterize the mind. I explore how this general lesson can apply to specific experimental interpretations, and suggest that 'rationality' must be evaluated along a number of importantly distinct dimensions.

Symposium: The Philosophy of Donald M. MacKay

DAVID A. WASHBURN & MICHAEL J. RULON
Under his microscope: Donald M. MacKay

• Obituary and Symposium Introduction: To mark the decade that has passed since the death of Donald M. MacKay (on 6 February 1987, following a lengthy battle with cancer), a symposium was organized for the 1997 meeting of the Southern Society for Philosophy and Psychology. In that symposium, a panel composed of psychologists and a philosopher recounted MacKay's life and contributions. Three of these psychologists (Ludwig, Brown, and Rulon) worked with Prof. MacKay during separate sabbatical visits to Keele University. All have studied MacKay's work and have been influenced greatly by his writings. The papers from that symposium have been expanded for publication here.

DAVID A. WASHBURN
The MacKay-Skinner debate: a case for 'nothing buttery'

• Abstract: Donald M. MacKay believed that freedom of action and human dignity are compatible with a science of behavior. In 1971 he argued this position with B.F. Skinner in a televised debate. After a brief biography of MacKay, several major points from this debate will be reviewed. The discussion serves to emphasize the correspondence rather than competition between levels of analysis, whether the levels are disciplinary (e.g., psychology, neuroscience, physics) or a matter of perspective (inside story, outside story).

CHARLES Q. WU
Complementarity in vision and cognition

• Abstract: In information theory there is a fundamental principle, usually referred to as the informational 'uncertainty principle', which expresses a limitation of any information processing system (or agent) in terms of a relation between the system's response property and its inherent processing capacity. From this principle, it can be argued that a salutary strategy for dealing with conflicting information processing requirements is to adopt carious complementary processes (or channels). Donald M. MacKay had attempted to relate the informational uncertainty principle to spatial and temporal response properties of neurons in the mammalian visual cortex, and suggested that the spatial and the temporal aspects of such neurons are complementary. I attempt to extend his efforts and to show that the informational uncertainty principle may indeed underlie many complementary relations exhibited in human perception and cognition, such as the relation between the two principal processing streams in vision and the relation between parallel and serial processes in cognition.

THOMAS E. LUDWIG
Selves and brains: Tracing a path between interactionism and materialism

• Obituary: A dialog between Donald MacKay and Mario Bunge, printed in the journal Neuroscience over the course of two years beginning in 1977, provides a concise summary of MacKay's views on the mind-body relationship. In this dialog, MacKay contrasts the dualistic interactionism theory of Popper and Eccles with Bunge's emergentist materialism theory, and then builds a case for a third alternative based on the notion of mental events embodied in, but not identical to, brain events. Although neuroscience has made tremendous progress in the past two decades, MacKay's attempt to trace a path between interactionism and materialism is still worth considering.

WARREN S. BROWN
MacKay's view of conscious agents in dialogue: Speculations on the embodiment of soul

• 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.

JASON RICHARDSON
Responsible agents and the truth about their future states

• Abstract: In the posthumously published Behind the eye, the late D.M. MacKay gave the definitive statement of his position on determinism and responsibility. This position relies heavily on two basic insights: first, a prediction of a human being's future states is not accurate if the subject of the prediction believes it; second, a proposition is true only if some agent's ability to exert control depends upon the accuracy of the proposition. In this essay, I develop an argument for the incompatibility of determinism and responsibility, as well as a counter argument which takes advantage of the preceding two insights. Next, I clarify MacKay's conception of truth and apply it to these arguments. Lastly, I defend MacKay's position against three possible criticisms.

MICHAEL J. RULON
Donald MacKay's final lectures—The Gifford Lectures

• Abstract: Delivered only months before his death, the Gifford Lectures allowed Donald MacKay to clarify and to emphasize his views on many important issues. MacKay stressed the primacy of personal experience and the differences between persons, brains, and machines. These positions are reviewed here, as are some of the reasons why MacKay may remain relatively unknown among American psychologists, philosophers, and neuroscientists.

Review Essays:

JOHN BICKLE
Review of RODOLFO LLINÁS & PATRICIA CHURCHLAND's Mind-brain continuum

• Abstract: Philosophers and psychologists seeking an accessible introduction to current neuroscience will find much value in this volume. Befitting the neuroscientific focus on sensory processes, many essays address explicitly the binding problem. Theoretical and experimental work pertaining to the "temporal synchronicity" solution is prominent. But there are also some surprising implications for current philosophical concerns, such as the internalism/externalism debate, about representational content, epistemological concerns about the self, and implications from phantom-limb phenomena. Higher-level theorists about the mind ignore results like these from current neuroscience at their own peril, at least from the point of view of discourse worthy of serious atttention as the sciences of the mind/brain push forward into the 21st century.

MARK TIMMONS
Review of LARRY MAY, MARILYN FRIEDMAN, & ANDY CLARK's Mind and morals: Essays on ethics and cognitive science

• Abstract: This paper contains an overview of the essays contained in the mind and morals anthology plus a critical discussion of certain themes raised in many of these essays concerning the bearing of recent work in cognitive science on the traditional project of moral theory. Specifically, I argue for the following claims: (1) authors like Virginia Held, who appear to be antagonistic toward the methodological naturalism of Owen Flanagan, Andy Clark, Paul Churchland, and others, are really in fundamental agreement with the naturalists; (2) the prototype theory of moral concepts that is inspired by recent work in cognitive science does not necessarily jeopardize the aim of systematization characteristic of traditional moral theory; (3) nor does it threaten certain widely-accepted views about moral rationality that is part of traditional moral theorizing. Moreover, I speculate that (4) recent work in cognitive science can be expected to play a corroborative role in the justification of theories in ethics. Finally, (5) Fodor's recent critique of cognitive science makes clear the perils of methodologically ethical naturalism.

PAUL S. DAVIES
Review of FRED DRETSKE's Naturalizing the mind

• Abstract: Dretske asserts that the conscious or phenomenal experiences associated with our perceptual states—e.g., the qualitative or subjective features involved in visual or auditory states—are identical to properties that things have according to our representations of them. This is Dretske's version of the currently popular Representational Theory of Consciousness. After explicating the core of Dretske's representational thesis, I offer two criticisms: (1) Dretske's view fails to apply to a broad range of mental phenomena that have rather distinctive qualitative or subjective features, and (2) Dretske's view, in identifying conscious experiences with features of our perceptual states, casts its aim too low. It deflates further than it should and, consequently, fails to capture what are arguably some of the most important phenomena associated with our conscious lives.

Book Reviews:

ERIC SCHWITZGEBEL
Review of ROBBIE CASE & YUKARI OKAMOTO's The role of central conceptual structures in the development of children's thought

STEPHEN E. BRAUDE
Review of GEORGE GRAHAM & G. LYNN STEVENS's Philosophical psychopathology

HILARY KORNBLITH
Review of EDWARD STEIN's Without good reason: The rationality debate in philosophy and cognitive science

WILLIAM W. SCHONBEIN
Review of MICHALE COLE's Cultural psychology: A once and future discipline

THOMAS NICKLES
Review of THEO KUIPERS & ANNE RUTH MACKOR's Cognitive patterns in science and common sense