VOLUME 13 (2001), ISSUE 3

Manuscripts:

PASCAL BOYER
Natural epistemology or evolved metaphysics? Developmental evidence for early-developed, intuitive, category-specific, incomplete, and stubborn metaphysical presumptions

• Abstract: Cognitive developmental evidence is sometimes conscripted to support "naturalized epistemology" arguments to the effect that a general epistemic stance leads children to build theory-like accounts of underlying properties of kinds. A review of the evidence suggests that what prompts conceptual acquisition is not a general epistemic stance but a series of category-specific intuitive principles that constitute an evolved "natural metaphysics". This consists in a system of categories and category-specific inferential processes founded on definite biases in prototype formation. Evidence for this system provides a better understanding of the limited "plasticity" of ontological commitments as well as a computationally plausible account of their initial state, avoiding ambiguities about innateness. This may provide a starting point for a "naturalized epistemology" that takes into account evolved properties of human conceptual structures.

KENNETH J. SUFKA & MICHAEL P. LYNCH
Sensations and pain processes

• Abstract: This paper discusses recent neuroscientific research that indicates a solution for what we label the "causal problem" of pain qualia, the problem of how the brain generates pain qualia. In particular, the data suggest that pain qualia naturally supervene on activity in a specific brain region: the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). The first section of this paper discusses several philosophical concerns regarding the nature of pain qualia. Section II overviews the current state of knowledge regarding the neuroanatomy and physiology of pain processing. Section III highlights the recent research by Bushnell and her colleagues (Rainville, et al, 1997) which suggests that pain affect is encoded in the ACC. The final section of the paper spells out exactly how this data affects the causal problem of pain qualia.

NARMAN TENG
A cognitive analysis of the Chinese room argument

• Abstract: Searle's Chinese room argument is analyzed from a cognitive point of view. The analysis is based on a newly developed model of conceptual integration, the many space model proposed by Fauconnier & Turner. The main point of the analysis is that the central inference constructed in the Chinese room scenario is a result of a dynamic, cognitive activity of conceptual blending, with metaphor defining the basic features of the blending. Two important consequences follow: (1) Searle's recent contention that syntax is not intrinsic to physics turns out to be a slightly modified version of the old Chinese room argument. (2) The argument itself is still open to debate. It's persuasive but not conclusive, and at bottom it is a topological mismatch in the metaphoric conceptual integration that is responsible for the non-conclusive character of the Chinese room argument.

JONATHAN KNOWLES
Knowledge of grammar as a propositional attitude

• Abstract: Noam Chomsky claims that we know the grammatical principles of our languages in pretty much the same sense that we know ordinary things about the world (e.g. facts), a view about linguistic knowledge that I term 'cognitivism'. In much recent philosophy of linguistics (including that sympathetic to Chomsky's general approach to language), cognitivism has been rejected in favour of an account of grammatical competence as some or other form of mental mechanism, describable at various levels of abstraction ('non-cognitivism'). I argue for cognitivism and against non-cognitivism. First, I show that the distinction between competence and performance in current linguistics is as clearly made as ever it was, in spite of recent interest in linguistic processing modules. Second, I use these facts about the practice of theoretical linguistics to refute various proposals for a non-cognitivist construal of grammatical competence, and to support cognitivism by reflecting on the inapplicability of a multi-level account of linguistic competence. Cognitivism is then defended against several objections centering around the problems of rational integration and conceptualization of grammatical knowledge. Finally, the conception of competence argued for in relation to linguistics is placed in the larger context of cognitive science research and its implications for philosophy of mind.

DANIELE MOYAL-SHARROCK
Words as deeds: Wittgenstein's 'spontaneous utterances' and the dissolution of the explanatory gap

• Abstract: Wittgenstein demystified the notion of 'observational self-knowledge'. He dislodged the long-standing conception that we have privileged access to our impressions, sensations and feelings through introspection, and more precisely eliminated knowing as the kind of awareness that normally characterizes our first-person present tense psychological statements. He was not thereby questioning our awareness of our emotions or sensations, but debunking the notion that we come to that awareness via any epistemic route. This makes the spontaneous linguistic articulation of our sensations and impressions nondescriptive. Not descriptions, but expressions that seem more akin to behaviour than to language. I suggest that Wittgenstein uncovered a new species of speech acts. Far from the prearranged consecration of words into performatives, utterances are deeds through their very spontaneity. This gives language a new aura: the aura of the reflex action. I argue, against Peter Hacker, that spontaneous utterances have the categorial status of deeds. This has no reductive consequences in that I do not suggest that one category is reduced to another, but that the boundary between them is porous. This explodes the myth of an explanatory gap between the traditionally distinct categories of saying (or thinking) and doing, or of mind and body.

ADAM VINUENZA
Sensations and the language of thought

• Abstract: I discuss two forms of the thesis that to have a sensation is to token a sentence in a language of thought-what I call, following Georges Rey, the sensational sentences thesis. One form of the thesis is a version of standard functionalism, while the other is a version of the increasingly popular thesis that for a sensation to have qualia is for it to have a certain kind of intentional content-that is, intentionalism. I defend the basic idea behind the sensational sentences thesis, and argue that the intentionalist version is either false or collapses into the standard functionalist thesis.

JOSE-LUIS DIAZ
Mind-body, dual aspect, and the emergence of consciousness

• Abstract: Dual aspect theory has conceptual advantages over alternative mind-body notions, but difficulties of its own. The nature of the underlying psycho-physical ground, for one, remains problematic either in terms of the principle of complementarity or if mind and matter are taken to be aspects of something like energy, movement, or information. Moreover, for a dual aspect theory to be plausible it should avoid the four perils of all mind-body theories: epiphenomenalism, reductionism, gross panpsychism, and the problems of emergence. An alternative dual aspect theory, patterned process theory is introduced and defended in neurological and individuality terms. The concept is grounded in a brain model of hierarchies wherein consciousness is conceived to be a cognitive aspect of the highest emergent brain inter-module activity which is situated in the context of a living organism coping with a changing environment. The notion of individuals as psychophysical units unfolding as patterned processes is shown to constitute an integrative approach to brain, consciousness, and behavior that can avoid the conceptual perils and meet the ontological requirements of dual aspect reality and thereby advance the foundations of an integrative mind-body science.

Continuing Discussion:

NEIL C. MANSON
State consciousness and creature consciousness: a real distinction

• Abstract: It is widely held that there is an important distinction between the notion of consciousness as it is applied to creatures and, on the other hand, the notion of consciousness as it applies to mental states. McBride has recently argued in this journal that whilst there may be a grammatical distinction between state consciousness and creature consciousness there is no parallel ontological distinction. It is argued here that whilst state consciousness and creature consciousness are indeed related, they are distinct properties. Conscious creatures can have, at one time, both conscious and unconscious mental states. This raises the question of what distinguishes the conscious from unconscious mental states of a subject: a question about what state consciousness consists in. Whilst the state/creature distinction may not be of use in explaining every aspect of a subject's consciousness, it does provide a key part of the explanandum for theories of consciousness and mind. The state/creature consciousness distinction is a real one and should not be dropped from our psychological taxonomy.