VOLUME 13 (2001), ISSUE 2

Manuscripts:

RON SUN
Symbol grounding: A new look at an old idea

• Abstract: Symbols should be grounded, as has been argued before. But we insist that they should be grounded not only in subsymbolic activities, but also in the interaction between the agent and the world. The point is that concepts are not formed in isolation (from the world), in abstraction, or "objectively". They are formed in relation to the experience of agents, through their perceptual/motor apparatuses, in their world and linked to their goals and actions. In this paper, we will take a detailed look at this relatively old issue, using a new perspective, aided by our new work of computational cognitive model development. To further our understanding, we also go back in time to link up with earlier philosophical theories related to this issue. The result is an account that extends from computational mechanisms to philosophical abstractions.

RALPH ELLIS
Consciousness, self-organization and the process-substratum relation: Rethinking non-reductive physicalism

• Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to see whether a concept of self?organization, such as used in dynamical systems theory (Kauffman 1993; Freeman 1975, 1987; Thelen & Smith 1994; MacCormack & Staminov 1996), can offer resources to make possible a coherent nonreductive physicalist account of phenomenal consciousness. A crucial part of the importance of this problem is that, on the one hand, states of phenomenal consciousness seem to many philosophers irreducible in principle to any combination of neurophysiological events of the kind that can be studied by the empirical methods of the brain sciences: As Jackson and others have suggested, no matter how much a scientist knows about the aspects of my brain that are subject to neurophysiological investigation and 'explanation,' this knowledge alone would not yield knowledge of what the corresponding phenomenal consciousness 'feels like'' or 'is like' for me (Nagel 1974a; Natsoulas 1978, 1981, 1990, 1993; Sellars 1980; Block 1995; Chalmers 1995). But on the other hand, many philosophers are reluctant to accept a nonphysicalist account, because of traditional problems associated with dualism ?? the problem of mental causation as it relates to the causal closure of the physical realm (Kim 1992, 1993), and the mass of empirical data supporting very regular correlations between conscious states and brain processes. (For an extensive collection of such empirical findings, see Ellis & Newton 1998a).

GEOFFREY NORTHOFF
Are 'Q-memories' empirically realistic? A neurophisophical approach

• Abstract: "Quasi-memories", necessarily presupposing a distinction between an "experiencing" and a "remembering" person, are considered by Parfit and Shoemaker as necessary and/or sufficient criteria for personal identity. However the concept of "q-memories" is rejected by Schechtman since, according to her, neither "content" and "experience" can be separated from each other in "q-memories" ("principal inseparability") nor can they be distinguished from delusions/confabulations ("principal indistinguishability"). The purpose of the present manuscript is to demonstrate that, relying on a neurophilosophical approach, both arguments can be rejected. Neuropsychological research shows that "contents" of memories are classified according to the accompanying psychological state such that the same "content" can be classified either as auto- or heterobiographical by the respective "experience". Since "content" and "experience" can be separated from each other the argument of "principal inseparability" must be rejected on empirical grounds. In addition, as demonstrated in an example of a schizophrenic patient, "q-memories" can be distinguished from delusions/confabulations considering the ability to distinguish between different sources of autobiographical memories as a differential criterion. In conclusion both arguments by Schechtman against the concept of "q-memories" have to be rejected on the basis of neurophilosophical considerations. Consequently the concept of "q-memories" can be considered as compatible with current empirical knowledge.

Symposium: Phenomenology, Embodied Cognition, and Brain Function

DONALD BORRETT, SEAN KELLY, & HON KWAN
Phenomenology, dynamical neural networks and brain function

• Abstract: Current cognitive science models of perception and action assume that the objects that we move toward and perceive are represented as determinate in our experience of them. A proper phenomenology of perception and action, however, shows that we experience objects indeterminately when we are perceiving them or moving toward them. This indeterminacy, as it relates to simple movement and perception, is captured in the proposed phenomenologically based recurrent network models of brain function. These models provide a possible foundation from which predicative structures may arise as an emergent phenomenon without the positing of a representing subject. These models go some way in addressing the dual constraints of phenomenological accuracy and neurophysiological plausibility that ought to guide all projects devoted to discovering the physical basis of human experience.

ALAN COSTAL
Getting seriously vague: Comments on Borrett et al.'s modeling of the primordial

• Abstract: Drawing upon the work of Merleau-Ponty, Borrett et al. (2000), have attempted to model the primordial, "empty heads turned towards the world." Putting the issue of embodiment aside for another day, they propose two separate models, one of movement and the other of perception. While I am sympathetic to the point of their project, I argue in this commentary that their models are insufficiently vague. The following analytic abstractions to which they commit themselves seem seriously at odds with the nature of their task: action versus perception; vision versus the other senses; spatial properties versus, for example, color and meaning; and 'a controller' versus the body and its environment.

J. SCOTT JORDAN
The role of "control" in an embodied cognition

• Abstract: Borrett et al. follow the lead of Merleau-Ponty and develop a theory of neural-network modeling that emerges out of what they find wrong with current approaches to thought and action. Specifically, they take issue with "cognitivism" and its tendency to model cognitive agents as controlling, representational systems. While attempting to make the point that pre-predicative experience/action/place (i.e., grasping) involves neither representation nor control, the authors imply that control-theoretic concepts and representationalism necessarily go hand-in-hand. The purpose of the present comment is to demonstrate that this is not the case. Rather, it will be argued that such necessity is only assumed because the authors attempt to apply the control-theory of servo-mechanisms to the behavior of organisms. By adopting this engineering control-theoretic perspective, the authors are lead, as are most of the cognitivists with whom they disagree, to overlook critical aspects of how it is that biological systems do what they do. It is the ignoring of these critical aspects of biological control, due to the acceptance of an engineering approach to control, that makes it appear as though control theory and representationalism necessarily go hand-in-hand.

FRED A. KEIJZER
Modeling human experience?!

• Abstract: Borrett et al. claim to provide neural network models of important aspects of subjective human experience. To sidestep the long-standing and assumedly insurmountable problems with providing models of inner experience, they turn to a body-centered interpretation of experience, drawn from the work of Merleau-Ponty. This body-centered interpretation makes experience more tractable by linking it closely with bodily movement. However, when it comes to modeling, Borrett et al. ignore this body-centered interpretation and revert back to the traditional view of inner experience as existing apart from the body. The result is uninteresting on two counts. The models that they present cannot be taken seriously as models of real inner experience. Additionally, these models do not apply to or extend the idea of a different, body-centered interpretation of experience either.

GUY C. van ORDEN & MARIAN A. JANSEN op de HAAR
Schneider's aprexia and the strained relationship between experience and description

• Abstract: Borrett et al.'s (1999) claim that unbiased, self-evident, direct description is possible, and may supply the data that brain theories account for. Merleau-Ponty's (1962) description of Schneider's apraxia is offered as a case in point. According to the authors, Schneider's apraxia justifies brain components of predicative and pre-predicative experience. The description derives from a bias, however, that parallels modularity's morphological reduction. The presence of biasing presuppositions contradicts the goal of direct description. Moreover, the authors' brain account is not necessary to explain Schneider's apraxia, and morphological reduction is not sufficient to explain emergent phenomena of motor control.

DONALD BORRETT, SEAN KELLY, & HON KWAN
Bridging embodied cognition and brain function: The role of phenomenology

• Abstract: Both cognitive science and phenomenology accept the primacy of the organism-environment system and recognize that cognition should be understood in terms of an embodied agent situated in its environment. How embodiment is seen to shape our world, however, is fundamentally different in these two disciplines. Embodiment, as understood in cognitive science, reduces to a discussion of the consequences of having a body like ours interacting with our environment and the relationship is one of contingent causality. Embodiment as understood phenomenologically, represents the condition of intelligibility of certain terms in our experience and, as such, refers to one aspect of that background which presupposes our understanding of the world. The goals and approach to modeling an embodied agent in its environment are also fundamentally different dependent on which relationship is addressed. These differences are highlighted and are used to support our phenomenologically based approach to organism-environment interaction and its relationship to brain function.